Good morning. It’s Friday, Jan. 9.
- Governor slams “California derangement syndrome.”
- California becomes only state with no dry areas whatsoever.
- And skaters fight San Francisco over an ugly fountain.
Statewide
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom delivered his final State of the State address on Thursday, portraying California as a “beacon” for the nation in contrast to President Trump’s “carnival of chaos.” In a 65-minute speech, the Democrat trumpeted gains in renewable energy, prescription drug prices, and the fight against homelessness. “Every year, the declinists, the pundits and critics suffering from California derangement syndrome look at this state and try to tear down our progress,” he said. “But we know the truth: California’s success is not by chance — it’s by design.” Politico | L.A. Times
- Republicans said Newsom’s rosy assessment was belied by the everyday lives of Californians. “While the governor takes victory laps, families are taking extra shifts,” said State Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh. A.P. | KCRA
2.
On the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown:
- Crowds gathered on Thursday in San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno, San Luis Obispo, and Eureka to condemn the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman, Renee Nicole Good, by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. They waved signs that read “Justice for Renee” and “End ICE death squads.”
- Somali Americans were left shaken after President Trump called them “garbage” and ordered immigration raids targeting the diaspora in Minnesota. In San Diego, home to one of the nation’s largest Somali communities, Somali child care providers said strangers were seen surveilling their workplaces this week. KPBS | KGTV
3.
California and four other blue states sued the Trump administration for freezing $10 billion in aid for child care and needy families, calling the move “baseless and cruel.” The administration said it had concerns about “potential” fraud and misuse by noncitizens, but offered no evidence. Tens of thousands of California families rely on the aid. Low-income families could find themselves with no place to drop off their kids, Radha Mohan, a child care industry spokesman, told the Guardian, “which means that they can’t go to work.” N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
Northern California
4.
This week, water managers opened the spillway at America’s tallest dam, in Oroville, and shared drone video of the roaring cascade. The release into the Feather River is to ensure that the 10-mile reservoir, which stood at 76% full on Wednesday, has room for future rains. “It’s a balancing act,” said Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist who specializes in water systems. “A dam engineer’s life is like a soldier’s life. It’s 99% boredom and 1% terror.” Watch the video. 👉 YouTube | Mercury News
- California is free of drought, and as of Jan. 6 it is the only U.S. state to have no dry areas whatsoever, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported. The last time the state’s water situation was this healthy was in 2000. SFGATE | ABC7
5.
Researchers tested artificial intelligence systems on hundreds of real work assignments and found that they successfully completed no more than 2.5% of them. In one example, they had an AI system produce a digital version of a hand-drawn floor plan. It was completely wrong. The arrival of ChatGPT three years ago prompted predictions that many kinds of human work would soon be done by computers alone, the Washington Post reported: “But economic data shows the technology largely has not replaced workers.”
6.
Romantic discourse has reached a tenor of disaster, wrote Amanda Hess. There is a marriage “crisis” and a loneliness “epidemic.” People are flirting with AI boyfriends. Hess visited the Love Symposium in San Francisco, a conference for people trying to solve modern relationships:
“Participants spoke of developing psychometrics to make objective measures of the mysteries of human relations, a promise of tenderness that could also devolve quickly into the brutal ranking of human beings.” N.Y. Times
7.
When the proposed design for Vaillancourt Fountain was unveiled in the late 1960s, the San Francisco Examiner polled readers. They hated it by a ratio of about 70 to 1. But it was built anyway, and in time Vaillancourt Fountain became hallowed ground for skateboarders, whose tricks on the plaza’s benches, stairs, and railings reached a global audience in skate films. The city’s skate community has now emerged as among the sculpture’s most ardent defenders as the city advances a plan to demolish it. Wall Street Journal
8.
About 10 years ago, an artist planted a garden in the median in front of her house in San Francisco. In time, it burst with purple-flowered ceanothus, Mexican marigolds bushes, salvia, and lupines. On Wednesday, city workers ripped much of it out, leaving behind what neighbors viewed as a crime scene. Officials said the plant life, which appeared to rise only a few feet, limited visibility for drivers. The artist, Fennel Doyle, said she couldn’t bear to look at the destroyed garden after hearing the news from a neighbor: “It would be too devastating.” S.F. Standard
9.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied the A’s request to trademark the names “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics,” saying the word athletics is too generic to be trademarked. Oakland baseball fans, still bitter over the team’s abandonment of the city, reveled in the snub. The sports broadcaster Damon Amendolara laughed on camera for 14 seconds straight. “It’s so perfect it hurts,” he said. Oaklandside | SFist
Southern California
10.
“A huge risk to the community.”
A 24-year-old woman suspected of a deadly hit-and-run in downtown Long Beach on Sunday was also accused of killing a bicyclist with her car just three months earlier. Prosecutors said Ahkeyajahniq Owens accelerated her BMW through a red light and slammed into a Nissan Altima on Sunday, killing two passengers, both in their 20s, before fleeing. On Oct. 6, a witness said Owens was driving at a similarly high rate of speed when she fatally struck bicyclist Raul Augustin Gallopa, 35. Long Beach Post
11.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Tom Freston, a founder of MTV. In his new memoir, “Unplugged,” Freston recounts going from a Beat-inspired life of global adventuring in the 1970s to the C-suite. He lamented how media consolidation and artificial intelligence are now upending the entertainment business. “It isn’t like the growth, fun, almost-anything-can-happen business that we grew up in,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound like just an old man whining for the old days, but that’s sort of the truth.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- There’s a 50-foot-tall lighthouse rising from the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert. The Desert Lighthouse is the work of a Los Angeles artist who was struck by the idea while driving through the blackness of the desert late one night almost two decades ago. “I felt very unmoored,” he said. SFGATE
- See a Google Maps satellite view.
- A California grocery store bag, of all things, is the latest international status symbol. The Trader Joe’s tote bag craze has spread to cities like London, Seoul, Melbourne, and Tokyo. Online resellers are listing them for thousands of dollars. Wall Street Journal
- Nestled along the Eel River in Humboldt County, Scotia was one of America’s last company towns. After the 2008 bankruptcy of Pacific Lumber, it might have just faded away. But an effort was mounted to lure homebuyers. Just 170 of 270 houses have been sold. Even so, some newcomers are thrilled. L.A. Times
- After the Los Angeles fires, Jeff Van Ness and his wife, Cathlene Pineda, were told by their insurer that they could return home. Reluctantly, they did. A month later, tests found dangerous levels of carcinogens and neurotoxins in their house — and in their bodies. N.Y. Times
- Ken Muench, the father of a 19-year-old who fell to his death on Mt. Baldy last week, spoke out about the circumstances of the tragedy: “They did not realize it was actually mountaineering, and the difference between hiking and mountaineering is a difference between black and white, a difference between life and death.” L.A. Times
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