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University of California regents approve rare tuition hike.

A rebellion grows over Los Angeles County's mask mandate. 

And a young Huntington Beach surfer aims for Olympic gold.

After getting $1.3 billion in extra state funding this year, the University of California voted Thursday to raise tuition over the objections of student leaders and some regents. The 4.2% increase will apply only to incoming freshmen, with additional hikes to be applied to subsequent incoming classes for five years. By 2026, tuition and fees are projected to surpass $15,000 a year. In 2000, the pricetag was $3,429. In 1965: $220. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was among the regents who voted no: "Our goal should always be to make UC education more accessible. I fear that this does the opposite." A.P. | Daily Bruin

In May, the University of California scrapped the use of standardized tests in admissions after critics labeled them as biased. In an essay, Caitlin Flanagan said the move deflected from the real injustice: that California consigns its most vulnerable students to some of the worst K–12 schools in America. "There can be no more obvious example of state-sponsored discrimination than the condition of these schools, which, decade after decade, have robbed students of 13 years and given them little in return. All the standardized tests do is reveal the obvious outcome of our cruelty." The Atlantic

Albert Dytch, an Oakland man with muscular dystrophy, has filed more than 180 disability lawsuits in California, targeting restaurants, movie theaters, and shops. In a nuanced story about the disability lawsuit industry, Dytch complains that serial litigants like him get unfairly maligned as greedy and unprincipled. "The law is subsidizing me to correct things,” he said. “Then I earn money to defray the exorbitant costs of being disabled.” N.Y. Times Magazine

California sued Activision Blizzard on Tuesday, accusing the video game giant of subjecting female workers to a “pervasive frat boy workplace culture.” After a two-year investigation, regulators said men at the Santa Monica company openly joked about rape, talked about women's bodies, and drunkenly harassed female workers. Multiple women quit. One committed suicide, the lawsuit said. Activision said it was "sickened" that the state brought up the worker's death, calling it irrelevant to the case. Washington Post | The Verge

After two years of critically low rainfall, the drought crisis has become so bleak in Mendocino County that there is talk of shipping water in by barge. Many wells are running low or even dry. This week, a key supplier, the city of Fort Bragg, shut off the spigot to safeguard its own supplies. “From fires to pandemic to drought,” said Supervisor Ted Williams, “I think drought might be the worst.” Press Democrat

Several Bay Area counties on Thursday urged employers to require that their workers get vaccinated. Following its own advice, Santa Clara County announced that its entire 22,000-person work force must be inoculated. Some businesses expressed worries about inviting lawsuits. But Dr. Chris Farnitano, Contra Costa County’s health officer, said employers can set workplace safety standards. "If an employee is creating an unsafe work environment, there are consequences for that,” he said. Mercury News | KQED

On July 10, 37-year-old Philip Kreycik went for a trail run in the East Bay hills and never returned. Despite a massive search effort, nearly two weeks later the authorities have not found a single clue to explain the Berkeley father's disappearance. For detectives used to resolving missing persons cases within hours or days, this one has seemingly defied logic. “We’ve come up empty,” said Sgt. Ray Kelly. “I mean empty.” S.F. Chronicle | SFist

In Los Angeles County, a sprawling patchwork of 88 cities, some local leaders are rebelling against the new countywide mask mandate. This week, elected officials from a half-dozen cities, including El Segundo, Torrance, and Manhattan Beach, demanded the order be rescinded. In West Covina, Councilman Tony Wu rejected it outright. “We are absolutely not going to enforce nothing about this BS,” he said. Washington Post

The surfer Kanoa Igarashi is a superstar in Japan, but he's 100% Californian. Igarashi's father was a surfer in Japan. When his wife became pregnant, the couple quit their jobs and moved to Huntington Beach, where they adopted the role of hard-driving American sports parents. Igarashi became a surfing phenom, and in 2018 he chose to compete under the banner of Japan, which he'll represent in the Olympics this month. A great profile of Igarashi by Daniel Duane included an exchange that the surfer, in his telling, had with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan.

Abe: “I’m putting my faith in you. Japan is putting its faith in you to win Olympic gold.”

Igarashi: "I feel like you’re sending me off to war."

Abe: “I hope you take it as a war.” Outside Magazine

After the Ivanpah solar field opened in 2014, the nation's thermal energy output nearly doubled. The sea of mirrors, spread across an area more than three times the size of Golden Gate Park in the always sunny Mojave Desert, work by focusing heat onto three gigantic "power towers." From above, the facility evokes art as much as infrastructure, a tension brilliantly captured in the photography of Jamey Stillings. Through his lens, one critic wrote, Ivanpah's mirrors are "like super-sized drawings on the walls of a cave, Nazca lines updated to the 21st century." Lens Culture  | JameyStillings.com 

On this week's California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman has a conversation with Katie Hill, a former congresswoman from Southern California. Once considered a rising Democratic star, she quit Congress in 2019 after her affair with a campaign staff member — and nude photos — became public. Asked if she regrets resigning, she said she felt she had no choice: "It felt like the only way to make the abuse stop was to step away." 

Five items that got big views over the past week:

The rivers of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta snake for hundreds of miles along wetlands, historic towns, and colorful places to eat. That makes it fantastic road-trip territory. Here's a good tour, including a stop in Locke, pictured above. 👉 Visit California 

Last December, a man in San Francisco followed a 15-year-old girl, grabbing her and telling her they belonged together. He was taken away in handcuffs. But months later, a judge dismissed the entire matter, saying it was “in the interest of justice.” In a scathing column, the Chronicle's Heather Knight asked, "Justice for whom?"

Last year, a Berkeley High teacher was stunned when she saw a 2003 yearbook photo of a teacher hugging a 17-year-old student and burying his face in her hair. An investigation followed that led to accusations that he got away with sexually assaulting and harassing students for years. Berkeleyside

Fred Zalokar, an accomplished marathoner, was found dead by park rangers in Yosemite on Tuesday. He had gone missing Saturday while on a solo trip up Mount Clark. His body was discovered near the summit. Reno Gazette Journal

A patch of public land atop a ridge in Beverly Hills provides one of the most glorious vantages to watch a Los Angeles sunset. The recommendation is included in Los Angeles Magazine's latest "Best of L.A." issue, along with the city's best cocktail bar, bowling alley, fish market, and cat café.

An earlier version of this newsletter misspelled an Atlantic writer's name. She is Caitlin Flanagan, not Caitlyn Flanagan.

Today's California Sun: University of California regents approve rare tuition hike, a rebellion grows over Los Angeles County's mask mandate, and a young Huntington Beach surfer aims for Olympic gold.

UC increases tuition over objections // Huntington Beach surfer aims for Olympic gold

A growing number of bars require vaccination proof.

New heights reached in California's white-hot housing market. 

And the search for extraterrestrial life in Shasta County.

The electric car crusade has been a point of pride in California. But surging demand for the lithium needed to power the cars has set off what's been called a "white gold rush" as extraction companies survey tribal sites, federal lands, and the ocean floor. “Front-line communities affected by mining are asking the rest of us: What sacrifice are you making?” said John Hadder, who is fighting a proposed lithium mine. “You are asking us to have our community and environment permanently disrupted. All you are doing is maybe driving a different car.” L.A. Times

California's housing market is white hot. A few reports:

Home prices in Southern California hit an all-time high in June, with a median sale price of $680,000, up 22.5% in a year. "It’s the craziest I’ve ever seen it,” an Irvine real estate agent said. L.A. Daily News | L.A. Times

A report found that homes in Berkeley are selling for higher above asking price — roughly 19% — than any other place in the country. Analysts attributed the demand in part to rising opportunities for remote work in San Francisco. Berkeleyside

In Truckee, where home prices have soared 30% in the last year, roughly 9,500 locals are now in need of housing, a study found. It's the latest evidence that Tahoe communities are morphing into “Zoom towns” for tech transplants. SFGate.com

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf in a piece titled "The California Dream is Dying": "If California fails to offer young people and newcomers the opportunity to improve their lot, the consequences will be catastrophic — and not only for California. The end of the California Dream would deal a devastating blow to the proposition that such a widely diverse polity can thrive. Indeed, blue America’s model faces its most consequential stress test in one of its safest states, where a spectacular run of almost unbroken prosperity could be killed by a miserly approach to opportunity."

Larry Elder is back on the recall ballot. 

State elections officials had blocked the conservative talk radio host, saying he failed to submit tax returns as required under a 2019 mandate originally targeted at then-President Donald Trump. But Superior Court Judge Laurie M. Earl said the rule didn’t apply to recall elections and, even if it did, Elder substantially complied. “I don’t find that Mr. Elder was required to file tax returns at all,” she said. A.P. | Politico

In May, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a North State Republican, hopped on a bulldozer to help tear down illegal marijuana greenhouses in Siskiyou County. On Wednesday, his office released video from the event. “I love the smell of diesel power in the afternoon. It smells like victory,” LaMalfa says at one point, riffing on a line from the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.” The timing seemed designed to further inflame tensions between the county and the region's large population of Hmong cannabis growers. Sacramento Bee

Brad Vinnard's sister pleaded with him to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Getting nowhere, she eventually gave up, worrying that her pestering was driving a wedge between them. In late June, Vinnard tested positive. He died two weeks later. His last Facebook post: "Please go get vaccinated. ... This is nothing nice." Vinnard, of Sacramento, was 68. KCRA

A handful of Bay Area bars and restaurants are now checking vaccine cards at the door, eliciting relief from some patrons and vehement opposition from others. The policy appears to be spreading. The San Francisco Bar Alliance, which represents 500 bars, said it's weighing a vaccine verification initiative. When asked if San Francisco might adopt a mandate for businesses, Mayor London Breed didn't rule it out. S.F. Chronicle

It's catching on in greater Los Angeles, too. L.A. Taco | KCRW

While the Pentagon puzzles over grainy video of mysterious flying objects, astronomers in the Cascade Mountains of Northern California are searching deep space for more reliable evidence of alien life. The giant array of 42 radio telescopes at Hat Creek opened in 2007 as the first instrument designed specifically for the extraterrestrial quest. Acting as one highly sensitive dish, the telescopes scan other planets for "technosignatures," phenomena such as laser pulses or radio waves that might suggest life.

The astrophysicist Adam Frank once calculated the odds that human civilization is unique in the cosmos at about one in 10 billion trillion. In a May 30 column in the N.Y. Times, he complained that the UFO story obscured the efforts being made at places like Hat Creek. "The work of science," Frank wrote, "though ultimately exciting, is mostly painstakingly methodical and boring. But that is the price we pay because we don’t just want to believe. We want to know." 

Earthlings are allowed to visit the Hat Creek facility. Sierra Nevada Geotourism

See a cool time-lapse of telescope array. 👉 YouTube 

UC San Diego plans to welcome a record number of students in the fall — as many as 41,000 — but it hasn't got enough housing for them. The campus is standing by a decision to eliminate more than 2,000 beds over coronavirus worries, even as the waiting list for campus housing has grown to nearly 3,200 students. Many have been stunned to learn that they are being tossed into one of the most competitive rental markets in California. “It's a debacle," said one parent. "Just abysmal." S.D. Union-Tribune | KGTV

Los Angeles County reported 2,551 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, the highest single-day total since early March. Hospitalizations have also jumped, with 645 patients now being treated, nearly triple the number seen a month ago. Officials have expressed growing alarm over the spread. "We are seeing a surge in cases in L.A. County that looks somewhat similar to last summer," said Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, while noting that widespread vaccinations would prevent similar death tolls. L.A. Times | Deadline

They're clacking their bills together. I'm not positive, but I think it's part of their mating ritual. I've never heard it before.

After the humans go to sleep, a magnificent chorus of animal sounds fills the air in the Sierra. Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brought sophisticated recording equipment into the blue oak woodlands in Sequoia National Park for a listen. His enthusiasm is infectious. Scientific American

At the end of a couple winding turns in Beverly Hills is a patch of public land atop a ridge that provides one of the most glorious vantages to watch a Los Angeles sunset. The recommendation is included in Los Angeles Magazine's latest "Best of L.A" issue, along with the city's best cocktail bar, bowling alley, fish market, doughnuts, specialty bookstore, botanical garden, and cat café.

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Today's California Sun: A growing number of bars require vaccination proof, new heights reached in California's white-hot housing market, and the search for extraterrestrial life in Shasta County.

Bars block the unvaccinated // California's white-hot housing market

Water theft soars to record levels during drought.

Poway synagogue shooter admits guilt and hate motive.

And a food writer searches for California's barbecue tradition.

As California's drought emergency grows more dire, water theft has soared to record levels. Officials say illicit marijuana operations are providing the demand for black market water pumped from city hydrants, water mains, and rivers. In Mendocino County, it's gotten so bad that they put locks on hydrants. “Any way that you can imagine that somebody is going to grab water, they’re doing it,” said the county sheriff. CalMatters

"This is, like, this is unprecedented.”

The sun turned red in New York City on Tuesday after smoke from wildfires in the American West drifted thousands of miles across the continent. By midday, the air quality was as bad as any major city in the world. Meteorologists warned people with sensitive lungs to stay indoors.  Los Angeles Magazine | CBSNewYork

Satellite imagery showed smoke sweeping across the country. 👉 @NWSNewYorkNY 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Tuesday to create an open access broadband network that reaches all corners of the state. The $6 billion plan will prioritize underserved areas such as rural communities and tribal lands, a need highlighted during the pandemic. Supporters of the bill hailed it as a historic step toward closing the digital divide. Visalia Times Delta | Sacramento Bee

The food writer Tejal Rao set out to learn what makes California barbecue what it is. She sampled cuts cooked beside coals made from red oak fires in Santa Maria, California's barbecue heartland, then visited a grill in Los Angeles that does Puebla-style barbacoa and another in West Oakland that serves whole hog barbecue on weekends.

"If you plot California barbecue out on a timeline," Rao wrote, "it doesn’t simply start at one point and end at another. It swirls and zigzags and folds back onto itself — layers and layers of styles swaying, coexisting, branching and overlapping in a great big cloud of sweet red-oak smoke." N.Y. Times

In San Francisco, a bitter divide has emerged between residents of Chinese descent and the city’s Asian American leaders. Furious and afraid after a string of attacks against older people of Asian descent, the residents are demanding more police patrols. The leaders, committed to criminal justice reform, don't want to involve law enforcement. “I haven’t heard of anyone in the Chinese community who doesn’t want more police,” said Leanna Louie, a former Army intelligence officer. “We are very dissatisfied with Asian representatives. We are going to work furiously to replace them.” N.Y. Times

Fred Zalokar, an accomplished marathoner who went missing during a hike in Yosemite over the weekend, was found dead by park rangers on Tuesday. Over his career, Zalokar, 61, ran the four original 100-mile races in America in a single year, traveled to 137 countries, and summited the tallest peaks on five continents. He went missing Saturday while on a solo trip up Mount Clark. His body was discovered near the summit. Reno Gazette Journal | KRNV

"Never forget that home is not a building."

In the Bay Area, top income earners make 12.2 times more than the lowest earners, the highest level of income inequality in the state. Though Elizabeth Herrera and her husband David Lima have always worked, they have shuffled with their four children through unsafe apartments, relatives’ couches, shelters, and the streets. This short documentary on their lives, intimately filmed by Herrera, challenges assumptions about what homelessness looks like. 👉 N.Y. Times (~12 mins) 

In 1974, a young photographer named Daniel Sorine snapped pictures of two random mimes in New York City's Central Park. He was impressed, he said, by their "unusual amount of intensity, personality, and physical fluidity.” Sorine tucked the photos away and forgot about them for 35 years. When he finally pulled them out, he realized he had photographed a young Robin Williams, then a student at Juilliard and still years from his first foray into standup on the stages of San Francisco. Williams would have been 70 today. PetaPixel

John Earnest, a 22-year-old former nursing student, pleaded guilty to murder on Tuesday, admitting that he shot congregants at a Poway synagogue in 2019 in an attack that left one person dead and three others injured. Earnest said he was driven by a hatred of Jews, prosecutors said. He was spared the death penalty but agreed to spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole. S.D. Union-Tribune | A.P.

Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Santa Monica businessman and close friend of former President Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday on charges he secretly acted in the U.S. as an agent for the United Arab Emirates. Prosecutors said Barrack, 74, used his access to the White House to advance the foreign policy goals of the Persian Gulf nation, once inserting pro-UAE language into a Trump campaign speech. Barrack denied wrongdoing. Washington Post | L.A. Times

A Drug Enforcement Administration special agent from Orange County has become the first federal law enforcement officer to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Mark Ibrahim, who was arrested Tuesday, entered the restricted grounds around the Capitol building and repeatedly showed off his badge and gun to other protesters, prosecutors said. A video posted online showed him carrying a flag with the words “Liberty or Death.” A.P. | Politico

A couple was charged with manslaughter after their gender reveal party ignited a fire that killed a firefighter last year, the authorities said. The El Dorado fire erupted on Sept. 5 when Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr. and Angela Renee Jimenez used a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device that ignited dry grass at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains. Strong winds stoked the blaze, which raced through national forest land. On Sept. 17, flames overran an area where firefighters were cutting fire breaks, killing Charles Morton, 39. The couple pleaded not guilty. Press-Enterprise | Desert Sun

Get your California Sun mugs, T-shirts, and hoodies.

Water theft soars to record levels during drought, Poway synagogue shooter admits guilt and hate motive, and a food writer searches for California's barbecue tradition.

Water thieves exacerbate drought // California's barbecue tradition

The UC system admits its most diverse class ever. 

PG&E says it may be to blame for sparking major blaze. 

And a beacon for Vietnamese Catholics in Orange County. 

The University of California system admitted its most diverse class ever for the fall, with Latinos making up 37% of the California applicants offered freshman seats, according to data released Monday. Asian Americans comprised 34% of the class, white students 20%, and Black students 5%. University leaders said the numbers resulted from stepped-up outreach and the end of standardized test scores, which yielded dramatic shifts in admission decisions. At UC Irvine, for example, offers to Latino students rose by 30% while those to Asian Americans fell by 25%. L.A. Times | EdSource

“This is so historic. It’s beyond life-changing.”

When classrooms in reopen in the fall, all 6.2 million of California's public school students will have the option to eat school meals for free, no questions asked. The largest free student lunch program in the country was prioritized in part because of the demonstration of need during the pandemic, when massive numbers of families turned out to pick up free meals at school parking lots. A.P.

California's plan to offer reparations to people sterilized during a eugenics movement that peaked in the 1930s will also compensate victims of a newer outrage: the forced sterilization of nearly 150 female inmates as recently as 2010. Kelli Dillon was just 24 when doctors removed her ovaries during what was supposed to be an operation to take a biopsy. “It was like my life wasn’t worth anything,” she said. “Somebody felt I had nothing to contribute to the point where they had to find this sneaky and diabolical way to take my ability to have children.” The Guardian

An appeals court on Friday tossed out part of a 2017 California law that made it a crime to deliberately use the wrong pronouns when referring to transgender residents of nursing homes. Associate Justice Elena Duarte said the court recognized that misgendering a person — referring to a transgender woman, for example, as “him” — can be disrespectful. "But the First Amendment does not protect only speech that inoffensively and artfully articulates a person's point of view." S.F. Chronicle | A.P.

PG&E said its equipment may have sparked a growing blaze tearing through the Sierra about 30 miles north of Paradise, another possible black eye for the utility linked to numerous lethal wildfires in recent years. A repairman responding to a circuit outage on July 13 observed two blown fuses and a tree leaning against a power line, with a fire on the ground. Since then, the Dixie fire has scorched roughly 63 square miles in Butte and Plumas counties. S.F. Chronicle | Mercury News

Mercury News editorial: "With every passing day, it’s getting harder to tell which is worse for California’s forests, climate change or PG&E."

Live fire maps 👉 S.F. Chronicle  | Cal Fire 

In 2002, Intuit, the Mountain View company that makes TurboTax, agreed to provide free tax filing services to most taxpayers. In exchange, the IRS promised not to develop its own filing portal. Instead, reporting by ProPublica revealed, TurboTax spent two decades luring customers into paying with deceptive practices, collecting billions of dollars. Now, as former customers pursue claims against the company, Intuit has announced that it is exiting the program. The N.Y. Times' Binyamin Appelbaum reacted in a column on Monday. "Good riddance," it said in part.

A hydropower plant that relies on water from Lake Oroville will likely shut down by September for the first time since 1967, a state water official said. Squeezed by drought, Lake Oroville's level is now just 28% of capacity and dropping fast, with barely enough water to power the plant's turbines. A shutdown would eliminate roughly 1,000 megawatts of power, straining a state grid that can't really afford to lose more power. E&E News | Vice

Last year, a Berkeley High teacher was stopped in her tracks when she saw the photo pictured above in a 2003 yearbook. It shows Matt Bissell, another teacher at the school, hugging a 17-year-old student and burying his face in her hair. A caption said the girl, Rachel Phillips, was voted “most likely to date a teacher." An investigation followed that led to accusations that Bissell, who still teaches at Berkeley, got away with sexually assaulting and harassing Phillips and other students for years. Berkeleyside

The Hearst Memorial Mining Building has been called the most beautiful structure in the entire University of California system. Opened on the Berkeley campus in 1907, the building reflected modern California's Gold Rush origins. Of 3,000 or so students in the early 1900s, roughly 15% majored in mining. Laying out his vision at the start of construction, the architect, John Galen Howard, said he aimed to translate the brute character of the mining profession into the building's Beaux Arts style. "The emotion roused must be a sense of power, rather than that of grace," he wrote. Yet with the building's soaring atrium and cathedral-like domes, the grace turned out to be unavoidable.

In Los Angeles County, not a single fully vaccinated person has been hospitalized for Covid-19, a testament to the extraordinary effectiveness of the vaccines. Of the county's roughly 4.67 million residents who are fully vaccinated, 0.06% have subsequently tested positive; 0.0004% have died. So why are public health officials requiring vaccinated people to wear masks indoors? It's largely about social norms, wrote the L.A. Times: "In essence, authorities hope requiring everyone to wear masks indoors will force the unvaccinated to do so, giving them more protection."

At the start of 2020, the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America had roughly 1,700 members. There are now 5,500. The growing ranks have been fueled by a new wave of Hollywood leftists seeking transformational change, including high-profile members such as "The Big Short" director Adam McKay and Rob Delaney of "Catastrophe." Hollywood Reporter interviewed dozens of showbiz workers for a piece titled "Hollywood’s Socialism Boom."

Thousands of Vietnamese Catholics gathered in Garden Grove Saturday to witness the unveiling of a 12-foot-tall Virgin Mary, a statue five years and $12 million in the making. Known as Our Lady of La Vang, it depicts Mary as she is believed to have appeared in the forest of La Vang in Vietnam to console persecuted Catholics in 1798. The first large-scale rendition of the figure in the U.S., it is expected to be a beacon for roughly 100,000 Catholics of Vietnamese descent in Orange County, the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam. Religion News Service | O.C. Register

Today's California Sun: The UC system admits its most diverse class ever, PG&E says it may be to blame for sparking major blaze, and a beacon for Vietnamese Catholics in Orange County.

UC's most diverse class ever // A beacon for Vietnamese Catholics in Orange County 

Explosive wildfires threaten small towns in the Sierra. 

Killing of Hmong man deepens tensions in Siskiyou County. 

And Shohei Ohtani puts on one of baseball's greatest shows.

State officials unveiled the lineup of recall election candidates, 41 names in all, far less than the roughly 80 who had filed statements of intention to challenge Gov. Gavin Newsom. They are 21 Republicans, eight Democrats, two Greens, one Libertarian, and nine with no party preference. The biggest surprise: the name of conservative talk show host Larry Elder was missing. Election officials said his paperwork was incomplete. Outraged, Elder said he'd sue. A.P. | Sacramento Bee

CalMatters has a helpful who's who of all 41 candidates. 

There are now 80 active wildfires burning across the West, covering an area of more than 1,800 square miles — the equivalent of about 39 San Franciscos. Latest updates:

The Tamarack fire, just south of Lake Tahoe, exploded from less than 1 square mile on Friday to roughly 36 by Sunday, engulfing six structures and threatening Markleeville, the county seat of Alpine County. S.F. Chronicle | A.P.

The Dixie fire, also burning in the Sierra about 30 miles north of Paradise, ballooned to more than 40 square miles over the weekend, forcing evacuations in the towns of Jonesville and Philbrook. S.F. Chronicle | Mercury News

The Sugar fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex tearing through Plumas County, became the first California blaze of 2021 to surpass 100,000 acres, or roughly 160 square miles. “These are the new norms now,” Jake Cagle, a U.S. Forest Service official, told the L.A. Times. “We used to say ‘unprecedented and historic.’ We’re past that now.”

It's boom times for Rob Thompson. His craft: divining streams of underground water using two L-shaped rods that together resemble a television antenna. Or so he claims. The mystical technique known as dowsing is thought to have come into vogue in the Middle Ages. Experts say it is totally without merit, yet desperate California farmers are putting people like Thompson in high demand. N.Y. Times

The masking up of California expanded over the weekend. The latest developments:

Seven Bay Area counties strongly urged everyone — vaccinated or not — to cover their faces indoors. Businesses and residents expressed a mix of frustration and acceptance. S.F. Chronicle | KQED

Sheriff Alex Villanueva declared that his deputies would not enforce Los Angeles County's new mask mandate. “Forcing the vaccinated and those who already contracted Covid-19 to wear masks indoors is not backed by science,” he said. Washington Post | N.Y. Times

More local school leaders said they would defy an order requiring masks on students in the fall. “I take the tack that I represent my community, and my community’s adamant about choice,” said the superintendent of Alpine Union, east of San Diego. S.D. Union-Tribune

The June 28 killing of a Hmong man by law enforcement officers in Siskiyou County has worsened already tense relations between the county and the region's Hmong American cannabis growers. The victim, Soobleej Kaub Hawj, a 35-year-old father of three, was fatally shot after he tried to evade a fire evacuation roadblock and pointed a gun at officers, according to the authorities. Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday in Yreka, demanding the release of body camera footage. One man has been on a hunger strike since July 9. Mount Shasta Herald | S.F. Chronicle

Last December, a man in San Francisco followed a 15-year-old girl for half an hour, grabbing her and telling her they belonged together. She darted into a bookstore, where the man followed but was blocked by a staff member. The man, a frequent target of criminal charges with the letters E-V-I-L tattooed on his fingers, was taken away in handcuffs. But months later, a judge dismissed the entire matter, stunning the girl's family. Judge Russell Roeca said his ruling was “in the interest of justice.” In a scathing column, the Chronicle's Heather Knight asked, "Justice for whom?" 

☝️ Yosemite National Park released this heartbreaking photo of a mother bear and her dead cub on Friday. The cub, no more than 6 weeks old, had been fatally struck by a motorist who left it to die on the road, an ocurrence that the park complained had become routine. A park ranger arriving to the scene found the mother bear calling out. For six hours, she tried to wake the youngling. Fresno Bee

The drive through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is dictated by the contours of the rivers, which snake for hundreds of miles along precious wetlands, historic towns, and colorful places to eat. That makes it fantastic road-trip territory. Here's a good nine-destination tour, including a stop in Locke, pictured above, the only surviving town in the U.S. to have been built by and for Chinese. 👉 Visit California 

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz were supposed to appear in Laguna Beach. But when word got out, the venue canceled the event. So they booked another place in Riverside. That was canceled too. They tried a third place in Anaheim. Canceled. 

With nowhere to go, Greene and Gaetz held their "Free Speech Peaceful Protest” Saturday outside Riverside City Hall, where they told a crowd of roughly 100 supporters that they wouldn't be silenced by the "radical left." Greene, known for wild conspiracy thinking, urged vaccine resistance: "Don't let your kids be forced to take a vaccine that's not FDA approved.” Press-Enterprise | The Hill

Mat George, the co-host of a popular relationship podcast called “She Rates Dogs,” was killed by a hit-and-run driver as he walked across a street in Los Angeles on Saturday, the police said. George was known for an infectious personality and wry sense of humor. One of his last Twitter posts was a picture of his mom with Snoop Dogg. "I’ve been in LA for a year and haven’t seen a single celebrity,” he wrote. “My mom comes for a weekend and meets Snoop Dogg.” George was 26. L.A. Times | BuzzFeed News

Shohei Ohtani is putting on one of the greatest shows ever seen in baseball. The Japanese phenom for the Angels, according to several sports writers, has established himself as a once-in-a-century force who can pitch, hit, and run better than most players. A few of his stats, as of Sunday: 

34 — home runs hit, the most in the league, putting him on track for the most in American League history

12 — bases stolen, with a sprinting speed that ranks in the top 10% of big leaguers

.083 — the rate at which opponents hit Ohtani's splitter, making it one of the most unhittable pitches in baseball

One baseball writer put it this way: "Babe Ruth comparisons have gone from outlandish to understatement in the span of about three months." What's more, Ohtani's teammates say he's a gem of person. He delivered an example over the weekend: Ohtani donated his earnings from last week's Home Run Derby to Angels support staffers. L.A. Times | Yahoo News

"Baseball is witnessing something insane." A quick primer on Ohtani's otherwordly talent. 👉 YouTube/MLB (~7 mins) 

… Wendy Dio, a rock music manager, entrepreneur, and widow of heavy metal music legend Ronnie James Dio. His autobiography, “Rainbow in the Dark,” which she helped finish, will be published on July 27 from Permuted Press.

Q: What is one place everyone should visit in California?   

A: Ojai. It’s become my second home since buying a weekend place three years ago. Ojai has its own microclimate, lovely people, and the vibe of a small town while containing lots of outdoor activities, excellent restaurants and unique shops.

What’s the best book you've read or podcast you've listened to recently? 

The best book I’ve read recently is “Confess: The Autobiography,” by Rob Halford of the metal band Judas Priest. It took me down the memory lane of growing up in England, but it also candidly addresses his ordeal as a gay man in a very testosterone-fueled industry and his courageous move to come out and reveal his true self to his millions of fans.

Ronnie and I always loved Indian food, and there is a great Indian restaurant in Encino called Anarbagh. It's hidden away in the corner of a shopping center. Ronnie’s favorite was always Lamb Vindaloo. I love all the vegetarian sides like Mattar Paneer, Aloo Gobi, and Bombay Potatoes. It's a great place to go with a group of people and share a lot of different dishes.

You’re organizing a dinner party. Which three California figures, dead or alive, do you invite, and why? How would you get the conversation started?

I would invite Harry Houdini, John Muir, and Leonardo DiCaprio, and I would start the conversation by asking John Muir what he thinks about the state of the environment now and what people like Leonardo are doing about it. Then I would ask Houdini what he thinks about the myth surrounding his house in Laurel Canyon and if the three of them believe in life after death. That should get the conversation going.

Famine relief, runaway children, cancer research, animal causes — you've been involved in multiple areas of fundraising for years. Is there a cause you think needs more attention these days?

I founded the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund in memory of my late husband who died of gastric cancer, making cancer research and education our priority. The need for regular checkups and cancer screenings is something that should get more attention, especially these days when Covid has kept many people from visiting their doctors with any regularity. I believe more attention should be focused on getting regular checkups because early detection saves lives.  

“5 questions with …” is a weekly feature by Finn Cohen, who edits the California Sun. Conversations are sometimes edited for brevity. Someone you’d like to see interviewed? Let him know: finn@californiasun.co.

Today's California Sun: Explosive wildfires threaten small towns in the Sierra, killing of Hmong man deepens tensions in Siskiyou County, and Shohei Ohtani puts on one of baseball's greatest shows.

Fires threaten small Sierra towns // The greatest show in baseball

Here are a few stories you missed in the California Sun over the last week.

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In 2019, Mike Snook began buying up properties in the rural town of Doyle near the Nevada border. His vision: to create an outpost for the free spirits of Burning Man who had been priced out of the Bay Area. “Five houses down, one left,” he said, tallying the destruction of the Beckwourth Complex fire, which raged through town last weekend. “I thought, ‘There’s no way it’s going to hit all of them.’” Reporting from Doyle’s only bar, the L.A. Times' Anita Chabria painted a vivid portrait of a dream crushed.

During summers in the 1970s and 1980s, the celebrated street photographer Paul McDonough set off on road trips from his home in New York. His series of pictures from along the Pacific Coast, collected in a new volume titled "Headed West," is exquisitely nostalgic. Huck Magazine | Flashbak

"Now I look upon photographs of people in New York City and these buildings, they have 5,000 people. And they go into that thing and they go up there and they spend eight hours and they come down. I can't believe it! That lifestyle to me is like so foreign it could be on the moon."

Charles Bello, an architect who once apprenticed under the famed modernist architect Richard Neutra, moved with his wife into the Mendocino redwoods in 1968 to create his own idea of paradise. His wife died, but Bello is still there, alone. Aeon created a gorgeous short film about him, titled "A Little Piece of Earth." Vimeo (~15 mins)

A British paratrooper training with U.S. troops crashed through the roof of a Central Coast home last week, officials said. Several people in the Atascadero neighborhood saw the soldier spiraling toward the earth as his parachute failed to properly deploy. Incredibly, he was fine, if a little banged up. “It’s a miracle in my estimation, really," said Rose Martin, a registered nurse in the neighborhood who rushed to check on him. "I mean, who lands like that without a parachute and lives?” KSBY | Military.com

An image purported to show the soldier sprawled in the kitchen after the crash. 👉 @TheWTFNation 

The long-tailed weasel has been described having the heart of a lion crammed into a muscular, 8-inch body. They're fearless, commonly attacking animals far larger than themselves. Long-tailed weasels roam throughout much of California, but prefer habitats with lots of cover, making them elusive. A photographer described seeing one chasing a rabbit along the Santa Cruz Coast, "the way a cheetah hunts a gazelle." KQED

The BBC captured heart-pounding footage of a stoat, a long-tailed weasel cousin, taking down a rabbit. 👉 YouTube (~1:50 mins) 

Gazing out an airplane window above Imperial County, the German photographer Lars Borges was surprised to see a massive green grid below. "I asked myself: How can that be — a field in the desert?" That sparked a yearslong photo project on the people of California's southeastern corner — a place of poverty, joblessness, and relentless heat that Borges says represents everything that can go wrong with the planet. LarsBorges.com | Leica Camera Blog

In 1970, Sérgio Mendes, a Brazilian musician, employed a shaggy-haired young carpenter to build a music studio in his backyard in Encino. The worker was an aspiring actor, but had taught himself carpentry to support his young family. That's him on the right. 👇

At the time, there was little to suggest that Harrison Ford, then 28, was destined to be one of the most famous leading men in Hollywood. A few years later, he landed a small part in George Lucas' "American Graffiti." But he returned to woodworking as his principal profession. In 1976, Ford was asked to help Lucas audition other actors for the director's next film. It was the carpenter, however, who stole the show. Ford became Han Solo and the carpentry became a thing of the past. Mashable | Entertainment Tonight

A few items shared in the newsletter last week.

Sunday sampler: Exquisite nostalgia from the 1970s and 1980s // Paradise in the Mendocino woods

Los Angeles County reinstates masking indoors as virus surges. 

California lawmakers approve a plan for guaranteed income.

And tech workers who swore off San Francisco are coming back. 

A month after California celebrated its long-awaited reopening, Los Angeles County said Thursday that residents would have to put their masks back on indoors, regardless of inoculation status. Infections and hospitalizations have surged among the unvaccinated in the last two weeks. The mask mandate puts the county at odds with the CDC, which has maintained that vaccinated people need not cover their faces indoors. But Dr. Muntu Davis, Los Angeles County's public health officer, said the alarming pace of viral spread demanded action: “Waiting for us to be at a high community transmission level before making a change would be too late.” The order goes into effect Saturday night. L.A. Times | A.P.

Yolo, Sacramento, and Fresno counties all urged residents to resume mask-wearing indoors, stopping short of a mandate. Capital Public Radio | Fresno Bee

Some California school districts are planning to defy the state's demand that students be masked in the fall. On Monday, state officials announced that unmasked students would be barred from campus, then hours later backpedalled, saying enforcement would be left to local school districts. But many superintendents in more conservative communities believe masks are unnecessary. “If the state is not going to enforce mask-wearing then neither am I,” said Amy Alzina, the superintendent of a small school district near Santa Barbara. CalMatters

The University of California announced that students and faculty would be required to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination before the start of the fall semester. Those who don't will be barred from campus, the system’s president said. The requirement is a departure from other higher education systems — including California State University — that are holding off on mandates until the vaccines are granted full FDA approval. EdSource | L.A. Times

California lawmakers approved the nation's first state-funded guaranteed income plan Thursday, committing $35 million for monthly payments to pregnant women and young people aging out of foster care. The votes — 36-0 in the Senate and 64-0 in the Assembly — showed remarkable support for an idea that has gained momentum nationally. “We should be doing all we can to lift these young people up,”  Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk said. A.P.

There's some evidence that tech workers who swore off San Francisco during the pandemic are trickling back. Rents are spiking in neighborhoods where tech workers cluster. Tech commuter buses are reappearing on roads. Greg Osuri, the founder of a cloud-computing company, fled to Ohio last year, declaring San Francisco a "hellhole." By April, he had returned. He missed getting drinks with colleagues and running into acquaintances on the street, he said: "The city is full of that — opportunities that you may never have expected would come your way.” N.Y. Times

On this week's California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman has a conversation with Matt Haney, a San Francisco supervisor. Haney talked about how advocates for criminal justice reform can be dismissive of people alarmed by rising crime. "I think it's something that progressives in San Francisco and in other places have gotten wrong," he said. "Not so much in a political sense but just in a right and wrong sense."

☝️ Karl Mondon, a staff photographer for the Mercury News, shared this great picture that he captured from the Golden Gate Bridge last week. It's his favorite part of walking the world-renowned landmark, he wrote: "watching cargo ship crew members get all goofy posing for photos as they pass under the span." @karlmondon

When campaigning for Los Angeles County sheriff in 2018, Alex Villanueva courted liberal voters by playing up a claim that he would be the first Democratic sheriff in the county in 138 years. Since then, he's made a jag to the right, going to war with the liberal forces that helped elect him. It's a deliberate strategy, according to Javier Gonzalez, a consultant for Villanueva. “We’re running against the woke left, and we’re going to win,” he said. “It’s going to be a revolt of the regular people who want things done.” L.A. Times

In January, the Orange County Register published an article on a man who died days after he received a coronavirus vaccine. The story of Tim Zook's death ricocheted around the globe as anti-vaccine activists amplified it on social media. This week, the county coroner shared the results of its investigation: Cook died from heart disease. Vaccines were not a factor, it concluded. O.C. Register

The number of Facebook shares of the Register's story on a possible link between the vaccine and Zook's death in January: 15,000

The number of shares of its story on the coroner ruling out that link six months later: 18

Charles Bello, an architect, moved with his wife into the Mendocino redwoods in 1968 to create his own idea of paradise. His wife died, but Bello is still there, alone. Here's a gorgeous short film about him. 👉 Vimeo (~15 mins) 

Gazing from an airplane above Imperial County, the photographer Lars Borges saw a massive green grid below. "I asked myself: How can that be — a field in the desert?" That sparked a yearslong photo project on the people of California's southeastern corner. LarsBorges.com | Leica Camera Blog

Ecologists looking to revive a dried-out floodplain in Placer County turned to nature's engineers: beavers, a once-abundant species that went to work building dams to retain water. The result was "insane," said Lynnette Batt, a conservationist. Sacramento Bee

Lake Mead is a lifeline for 25 million people across the American West, including Southern California. Its level is down nearly 160 feet from its high in the early 1980s. This tour of the crisis at Lake Mead includes some jarring photos. 👉 L.A. Times 

During summers in the 1970s and 1980s, the street photographer Paul McDonough set off on road trips from his home in New York. His series of pictures from along the Pacific Coast is exquisitely nostalgic. Huck Magazine | Flashbak

Today's California Sun: Los Angeles County reinstates masking indoors as virus surges, California lawmakers approve a plan for guaranteed income, and tech workers who swore off San Francisco are coming back.

The return of the masks // Tech workers who can't quit San Francisco

Brain implant turns thoughts into words for paralyzed man. 

Health experts call for more aggressive inoculation campaign. 

And San Francisco makes its dining parklets permanent. 

A California man, paralyzed and unable to speak since 2003, can now produce words simply by trying to say them after UCSF scientists tapped into the speech areas of his brain. The “neuroprosthetic” technology involved installing an electrode panel onto the man's brain, then collecting signals as he tried to form words. His first recognizable sentence: “My family is outside.” The remarkable advance, described Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, marks a step toward technology that could help people who lack the ability to talk but whose brains contain neural pathways for speech. S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times

Proponents of recalling Gov. Gavin Newsom have latched onto an unorthodox strategy: encouraging any and all Republican contenders to join the race. The hope is that each new entrant will attract more recall-supporting voters to the polls. At last count, 76 hopefuls had entered the race. “You have these candidates from some of the largest cities in California pulling in constituents, you knit it all together and it makes a ‘yes’ vote very possible,” said Tom Del Beccaro, a recall organizer. Politico

In Sacramento County, the coronavirus positivity rate surged to 4.5% from 1.7% in three weeks.

In Orange, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties, the daily average cases have tripled in just two weeks.

Even San Francisco, with 82% of the eligible population vaccinated, has logged an uptick in infections. 

As the Delta variant takes hold among California's unvaccinated population, some health experts are now calling for more aggressive inoculation campaigns. Among the proposals: sending outreach workers door-to-door and requiring vaccination at workplaces. Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo: “When being vaccinated becomes the more convenient of the two options, that will drive people to be vaccinated. You have to make it slightly less convenient to be unvaccinated at this point." L.A. Times

☝️ Here's how they sort tomatoes in the Central Valley, where most of America's processed tomatoes are grown.

The technology behind this machine has been around for decades, refined over time to be blindingly fast and accurate. It uses optical color sensors and a yes/no algorithm to detect unripe tomatoes, flicking them aside with little paddles. Giant harvesters equipped with the machines can collect 70 tons of tomatoes an hour, a job that once required a small army of pickers. Here's one in action at a Woodland farm. 👉 YouTube 

The Sacramento River is getting so hot that "nearly all" chinook salmon juveniles could die this fall, wildlife officials warned. When water levels drop during droughts, the river's temperature can soar, a threat to the endangered species exacerbated this year by unrelenting heat waves. “We have a patient that is hemorrhaging, and we’re going to lose them quickly,” said Jonathan Ambrose, a biologist. Sacramento Bee | CNN

One happy outcome of the pandemic: San Francisco supervisors voted this week to make outdoor parklets for restaurants and businesses permanent. The spaces were initially allowed as a lifeline to small businesses during restrictions on indoor dining. But few people wanted to see them go away. “I’m exuberant right now,” said Ben Bleiman, founder of the SF Bar Owner Alliance. “This is the biggest positive change for small businesses in my 20 years in San Francisco.” S.F. Chronicle | HereSay Media

A naturopathic physician in Napa was arrested over accusations that she sold fake Covid-19 immunization treatments and fraudulent vaccination cards. Federal prosecutors said Dr. Juli A. Mazi, 41, sold immunization pellets that she claimed would confer “lifelong immunity." Mazi is the first person to be federally charged for phony vaccination cards and what are known as homeoprophylaxis immunizations. Mercury News | A.P.

The produce section at Berkeley Bowl is famous. The L.A. Times once called the Bay Area grocery store “one of the nation’s most renowned retailers of exotic fruits and vegetables.” Michael Pollan, the food writer, called it “heaven for omnivores.” Yet despite the produce section's sprawling size, at least twice that of a typical chain store, Berkeley Bowl cashiers seem to never skip a beat, tapping out four-digit codes of some 3,000 different items from memory. “It's a little bit like learning another language,” a project manager explained. SFGate.com

Far from the lush forest groves of the “Emerald Triangle” of Northern California, the hot Mojave Desert has attracted hundreds of black-market pot farms in the last several years, many run by criminal organizations. The unprecedented siege has upended life in remote desert communities, with forced labor, violence, water theft, and the destruction of fragile desert habitat. L.A. Times

Responding to complaints, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to reconsider their ban on commercial marijuana cultivation. L.A. Times | L.A. Daily News

In the desert two hours northeast of Los Angeles is a place called Calico Early Man Site. To some, including the late archaeologist Louis Leakey, it's a globally important site, with man-made tools created as long as 200,000 years ago. To others, who believe the site has been wildly misinterpreted, it's nothing more than loose gravel and rocks. Here's a great longread on one man's lonely quest to solve the riddle. 👉 L.A. Times 

In San Luis Obispo Superior Court on Wednesday, prosecutors said a search of the home of Paul Flores, who is accused of killing Kristen Smart in 1996, turned up date rape drugs and video of him allegedly raping an intoxicated woman. On his computer, they said, was a folder of rape videos labeled “practice.” “Paul Flores is a defendant who likes to rape and drug intoxicated women,” a prosecutor said. “That’s who he is.” The Tribune | KSBY

A judge on Wednesday granted Britney Spears the right to hire an attorney of her choice, opening a new phase in the battle to end the conservatorship that controls her life. During an emotional hearing, Spears reiterated that she wanted her father, Jamie Spears, removed as conservator and charged with abusing his role. Her new lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, a former federal prosecutor and attorney to the stars, asked her father to resign on the spot. He declined through his lawyer. Washington Post | Hollywood Reporter

Today's California Sun: Brain implant turns thoughts into words for paralyzed man, health experts call for more aggressive inoculation campaign, and San Francisco makes its dining parklets permanent. 

Scientists restore words to paralyzed man // San Francisco makes parklets permanent

Millions of Californians are poised to receive cash payments. 

Report blames lead and fire for California condor deaths.

And exquisitely nostalgic photos from the 1970s and 1980s.

State officials estimated that roughly two out of three Californians would get stimulus checks under legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday. Under "Golden State Stimulus II," individuals earning between $30,000 to $75,000 a year will get $600; families with kids, regardless of their immigration status, will get an additional $500. Checks are expected to go out in early September. Sacramento Bee | SFGate.com

California condors suffered their worst year in decades in 2020, as 42 of the majestic vultures died, 34 of them in California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported. The deaths, attributed mostly to lead poisoning and wildfire, are a setback for the critically endangered species, whose numbers have rebounded from just 22 in the wild in the early 1980s to 329 at last count. Ventura County Star

Before California lawmakers approved a new contract in June granting prison guards a $5,000 bonus and an 8% raise, the guards’ union made some charitable donations. State senators who lead the Legislature’s Black and Latino caucuses had asked the union to donate to the foundations they run — and it complied. Donations from groups that lobby lawmakers to nonprofits run by lawmakers are commonplace in Sacramento. CalMatters

Today's California Sun: Millions of Californians are poised to receive cash payments, report blames lead and fire for California condor deaths, and exquisitely nostalgic photos from the 1970s and 1980s.

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