Why does "(base)" appear in front of my terminal prompt?

This can also be because auto_activate_base is set to True. You can check this using the following command

conda config --show | grep auto_activate_base

To set it false

conda config --set auto_activate_base False
source ~/.bashrc

To reactivate set it to True

conda config --set auto_activate_base True
source ~/.bashrc

This appears to come from your conda environment. In particular, you are activating conda from your ~/.bashrc as follows

# added by Anaconda3 installer
#export PATH="/home/jim/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"
. /home/jim/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate

and conda activate prepends your prompt with (<env-name->) - because you are not specifying a particular environment, that defaults to (base).

The behavior is documented at Using the .condarc conda configuration file:

Change command prompt (changeps1)

When using activate, change the command prompt from $PS1 to include the activated environment. The default is True.

EXAMPLE:

changeps1: False

So to make it go away, either find and modify your .condarc file - or don't activate conda from your ~/.bashrc file.

(base) appears due to change in conda environment.

The following command hides (base) environment.

conda config --set changeps1 False