Good morning. It’s Friday, Oct. 18.
Today’s edition: 14 items,
• | A major fault shows unprecedented signs of life. |
• | A call to screen every student for childhood trauma. |
• | And home listings that are quaint, scenic, and silly. |
Statewide
1
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is known for linking childhood trauma with adverse effects on health.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who was appointed California’s first surgeon general in January, is advancing an ambitious plan: Childhood trauma screenings for every student before they enter school. “Toxic stress” can manifest as a stomach ache or a lack of impulse control, she said. “Instead of suspending and expelling or saying, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ we say, ‘What happened to you?'” NBC News
2
“Everyone’s freaking out.”
A landmark measure regulating California’s gig economy includes a limit on how many articles a freelance writer can submit to a publication per year. But writers commonly meet the cap — 35 — in less than a month. The Hollywood Reporter asked the bill’s author how the figure was chosen. “Was it a little arbitrary?” she said. “Yeah.” Apprehension over the new law has led a number of out-of-state employers to cut ties with California freelancers altogether. Hollywood Reporter
3
California invalidated the test scores of 1,400 aspiring pharmacists after it was learned that questions were leaked online. That’s caused an uproar among those who say they didn’t cheat yet they lost jobs, had to move in with parents, and can’t pay their student loans because their licenses fell through. “We are fully aware of how destructive it’s been for them,” an official said, “but we’re a consumer protection agency.” S.F. Chronicle
4
A cabin getaway is located near the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve.
Brian McCloud
On the market now: Homes quaint, scenic, and silly.
• | A pair of tiny cabins on 6 acres in the Russian River Valley are yours for $299,000. Amenities are minimal. “But the best part,” wrote Curbed, “is the wall of windows and spacious deck that feels a bit like a treehouse.” Curbed |
• | A modernist home by famed architect Mickey Muennig is perched cliffside on 20 acres in Big Sur. One writer said it feels like a miniature version of the iconic Post Ranch Inn. Asking: $4.9 million. Curbed | SFGate.com |
• | Fifteen miles from Skid Row, a Bel-Air estate is the most expensive home publicly listed in the U.S. Built in 1938, Casa Encantada has 60 rooms, each with each with a city, ocean, or garden view. Asking: $225 million. L.A. Magazine | L.A. Times |
Northern California
5
Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Georgetown University in Washington on Thursday.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP, via Getty Images
In a speech at Georgetown University, Mark Zuckerberg delivered his most assertive rebuttal to date against accusations that Facebook has become an amplifier of disinformation and hate. Invoking Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the tech billionaire said it wasn’t his company’s job to be an arbiter of speech. “I know many people disagree, but, in general, I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy,” he said. N.Y. Times | Politico
6
In 2017, a Stockton woman drove drunk while live-streaming and crashed, killing her little sister. Out on parole after serving two years in prison for the crime, Obdulia Sanchez, 20, was just arrested again. This time she fled after police attempted to pull over her vehicle, leading to a high-speed chase, officials said. Sanchez ended up in another wreck, then in police custody. Merced Sun-Star | A.P.
7
A Chinese developer has suspended construction on one of San Francisco’s largest projects, a 605-foot hotel and condo tower that would alter the city’s downtown skyline. The company cited construction costs, making the stoppage a glaring example of how soaring costs and fees are threatening the Bay Area’s building boom. S.F. Chronicle
8
The lighthouse on East Brother Island was originally built in 1874.
One of the Bay Area’s most unusual living situations is a historic bed-and-breakfast on a tiny island in the San Francisco Bay. When the East Brother Light Station was automated in 1969, conservationists rescued the keeper’s house, turning it into lodging. Ever since, a lineage of resident innkeepers has looked after the place. In May, a new couple took over the job. The pay is $130,000 a year: No internet, no TV, no neighbors. “People ask us that all the time — do you get bored? Do you feel trapped? Does it feel really really small?” one of the departing innkeepers told NBC Bay Area. “Absolutely not, no.” S.F. Chronicle | KGO
Southern California
9
A man inspected a fissure in the earth after an earthquake struck in the Ridgecrest area on July 4.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
A fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake began moving for the first time on record after earthquakes hammered the Southern California desert last July, according to a new study. Satellite radar images showed the Garlock fault causing the land to bulge. “This is surprising because we’ve never seen the Garlock fault do anything,” a geophysicist said. “Here, all of a sudden, it changed its behavior. We don’t know what it means.” L.A. Times | A.P.
10
“I’ll shoot you in the f—ing face.”
An Orange County sheriff’s investigator appeared to pull a gun on a teenager during an off-duty confrontation at a skate park in San Clemente that was caught on video. The teenagers said the officer approached them over the volume of their music. “Orange County Sheriff’s Department employees are expected to conduct themselves with professionalism on and off-duty,” sheriff’s officials said in a statement. “We take this incident seriously and will fully investigate.” O.C. Register | CBS Los Angeles
11
All schools in the Coachella Valley Unified School District — more than 20 in all — were ordered closed on Friday thanks to pollution from a dump fire that’s been burning for days. On Thursday, 25 students were sickened by the smoke emanating from the Sun Valley Recycling Center on tribal land in Thermal. Federal authorities ordered the facility’s immediate closure. Desert Sun
12
Here’s San Jacinto Peak draped in its morning finery. Rising abruptly from the desert floor near Palm Springs, it’s the granite apogee of nearly 440 square miles of protected wilderness and the second highest perch in Southern California. John Muir called the view from the top “the most sublime spectacle to be found anywhere on this earth.” Hiking there is an all-day challenge, but there’s a marvelous shortcut: a tramway that is itself one of California’s must-do experiences. DESERT magazine | Curbed Los Angeles
Nestled in the San Jacinto Mountains, Idyllwild is a small-town antidote to city life in Southern California. California Sun
13
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Bay said she is continually inspired by her young journalism students. “In this time that often feels so confusing and so dark and so fraught, I get an enormous and powerful sense of hope.” California Sun Podcast
In case you missed it
14
Rocky Creek Bridge in Big Sur.
Five items that got big views over the past couple weeks:
• | Each year, an estimated 5.8 million tourists visit Big Sur, which has a population of 1,728. A reporter who grew up near Big Sur investigated whether the onslaught had killed the once idyllic slice of coast. Outside magazine |
• | Architectural Digest named the country’s 50 most beautiful small towns, and included Carmel, Mendocino, and Boonville, where “the town’s bucolic-meets-boho-chic vibe extends to the Boonville Hotel and Pennyroyal Farm, a creamery that also makes wine.” Architectural Digest |
• | From 1989 to 1997, photographer Andrew Bush captured fascinating portraits of everyday people cruising the freeways of Los Angeles. The result, wrote one reviewer, is “a meditation on character, class, the human condition, precarious at any speed.” AndrewBush.net | Flashbak |
• | A mystery surcharge on gas is costing California families an estimated $1,800 a year — and no one seems to know why. Enough is enough, wrote the editorial board of the Mercury News. Mercury News |
• | Photographer Ian Ruhter spent two years designing and building a massive camera that would produce the world’s largest ambrotypes. Then he ventured out to the rugged communities surrounding Southern California’s Salton Sea. Popular Photography | IanRuhter.com |
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