Good morning. It’s Monday, Aug. 24.
- Southern California faces hottest week of summer.
- Golden Gate protesters sentenced to 30 days in jail.
- And people are calling Walnut Creek “The Nut.”
Statewide
1.
Trump Accounts, the investment vehicles created in last year’s tax bill, just got an unlikely endorser: Gov. Gavin Newsom. Under the new program, parents can open accounts for their children under 18, and babies born during President Trump’s second term receive $1,000 from the government. Newsom urged people who are wary of the branding “to not fall prey to the politics or the cynicism or maybe even the fear.” “It’s not Trump’s money,” he said. “It’s your child’s money.” N.Y. Times | Sacramento Bee
2.
“The heat is upon us.”
A heat wave kicked off in California that’s expected to persist through at least Saturday. It’ll be warm pretty much everywhere, but especially Southern California, which the National Weather Service said would experience “the hottest week of summer so far.” Even beach towns could see highs in the 90s, while inland valleys and deserts are projected to soar into triple digits. The forecast called for midweek highs of 93 in San Diego, 101 in Pasadena, and 97 in Santa Barbara. Weather West | CBS LA
3.
A 68-year-old French tourist died in Death Valley on Aug. 17 after the car carrying him and a companion got stuck in the mud and temperatures soared to 116 degrees, the park service said on Friday. The men set off on foot across salt flats in search of help, but after a while, Pierre Michel Formosa, could go no further, officials said. His friend carried on. Formosa’s body was later found less than 2 miles from Badwater Road, pictured above. Vast and desolate, Death Valley isn’t the deadliest national park, but it records among the most heat-related fatalities. L.A. Times | NBC News
4.
California is on the verge of barring social media platforms from providing “addictive” social media to anyone under the age of 16. The move by the nation’s most populous state — and the home of Silicon Valley — would be “a signal for the rest of the country,” said Zamaan Qureshi, 24, a founder of a youth tech policy group that supports the proposal. Nearly six in 10 Americans now want social media bans for kids under 16, Pew found. Opponents say they threaten free speech. Washington Post
Northern California
5.
A judge on Friday sentenced seven people who shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in 2024 to 30 days in jail, far less the maximum of five years that their guilty verdicts carried. Prosecutors had argued that the Gaza war activists threatened the welfare of motorists, who were immobilized for four hours. Judge Teresa Caffese noted that history offers “countless examples” of protests performed without breaking laws. “Let me be clear: You are not being sentenced for your beliefs,” she said. “You are being sentenced because a jury of your peers found you guilty of the crimes.” Mission Local | S.F. Chronicle
6.
Last summer, reporter Natasha Singer observed a workshop for teachers on artificial intelligence chatbots. “I was struck by how similar the sessions were to training I’d seen years earlier, while reporting on the health care industry: seminars for doctors, organized by pharmaceutical companies, that aimed to get physicians to prescribe the latest brand-name drugs,” she wrote. Singer chronicled how Big Tech managed to convince American schools to embrace Chromebooks and AI with few questions asked. N.Y. Times
7.
The conservative venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale decided he was done with the liberal Bay Area during the pandemic. He pulled his children out of school, moved his family to a compound outside Austin, and launched a campaign to address homelessness. His think tank Cicero Institute proposed a controversial solution: Make it a crime to sleep on the street. Five years later, it is now the official policy of the Trump administration, the Washington Post reported.
8.
Gen Z started calling Walnut Creek “The Nut,” and now even city officials are embracing the moniker. During a City Council meeting last week, Mayor Kevin Wilk said he’s hearing the name more and more around the Bay Area community. “If people are talking about Walnut Creek, then whatever they want to call it, great,” he later told a reporter. KRON asked locals what they think of the nickname. “Definitely ‘The Nut’ for sure,” one person said. “I would never say that,” said another. “I live in The Nut?” SFGATE
Southern California
9.
Late Sunday, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, called off a meeting with Paramount that was planned for Monday, accusing the entertainment giant of bad faith. Bonta and Paramount were to discuss potential ways to settle California’s antitrust lawsuit seeking to block a deal that would combine Paramount and Warner Bros. But Bonta told the New York Times that Paramount leaked details of an earlier meeting and misrepresented the discussions. “As soon as Paramount stops playing games and engages sincerely,” he said, “my office is happy to meet again.”
10.
Caltech has created a team whose job is to catch aspiring students who lie, as artificial intelligence makes it easier to falsify applications. The four-person team inspects every admitted student’s application, taking nothing for granted. They scour the internet to confirm obscure claims and contact competition officials and high school counselors. The Wall Street Journal profiled the crew known as the “fraud squad.”
11.
When building its latest roller coaster, Universal Studios Hollywood sought to make it as quiet as possible, so as not to disturb residential neighborhoods that abut the park. After riderless testing last month, residents said they were delighted by the “whisper quiet” machine. Then came the riders. “Screams — bloodcurdling screams,” said Craig Strong, who has lived near the park for 25 years. “Some people can hear it inside their homes with the windows closed.” A New York Times report includes video so you can hear for yourself.
12.
“Spanning 300,000 square feet, [the] five-story scheme is a tour de force of biomorphic engineering, utilizing more than 1,500 individually crafted panels of curved fiberglass-reinforced polymer. Dramatic cantilevers allow the building to meet the ground delicately, as if the structure were floating above the site. The seeming effortlessness conceals the cutting-edge structural acrobatics that nurture the illusion of buoyancy.”
Architectural Digest got an early look at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, which opens to the public on Sept. 22.
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