“Totally unnecessary, totally unreasonable, just crazy.”

“It feels like the whole world just let this happen.”

“Most of my friends in Kyiv are ready to fight until the end.”

“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t breathe.”

The Ukrainian diaspora in California is estimated at more than 100,000 people, with sizable communities in greater Sacramento, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles County. They have watched the news from their homeland with horror and disbelief. Sacramento Bee | Mercury News | L.A. Times | KPBS

Impromptu rallies condemning the Russian invasion were held on Thursday in Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Demonstrators hugged, waved flags, and sang tearful renditions of Ukraine’s national anthem.

Scenes from around the state. 👇

Other Ukraine developments:

An analysis of 138 formerly redlined cities in the U.S. found that nearly all remain segregated. The practice of housing discrimination heavily targeted Black Americans, but in California it also caused broad generational harm to Latino Americans. That has been especially evident in San Diego, where formerly redlined zones are now the most segregated in the West. Explore maps depicting the effects of redlining in Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Diego. 👉 FiveThirtyEight

Coronavirus roundup:

For years, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee has been writing a series on his favorite works of art in permanent collections around the U.S. — and he just finished his 100th piece. Nine of the artworks are held in California museums, including the Bay Area artist Richard Diebenkorn’s “Seawall” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, pictured above. Smee described it as “a painting I can imagine mumbling about on my deathbed.” Washington Post

San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness, which has an annual budget of $598 million, has a professed goal of placing homeless applicants into housing 30 to 45 days after they’re approved. Yet according to a new investigation by ProPublica, eligible people have been waiting months or even years. Meanwhile, 888 units sat vacant as of Feb. 22, and only a small fraction of the available stock was occupied. The reason: bureaucratic issues.

On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Peter Hartlaub, the San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic and co-host of the Total SF podcast. He talked about his quest with two colleagues to ride every Muni line in the city in one day for a reporting project in 2018. It was a powerful reminder of what a beautiful and whimsical place San Francisco is. “Much of what you think is gone in your community is still there,” he said.

Los Angeles is spending as much as $837,000 to house a single homeless person. That’s according to a new audit of a $1.2 billion bond measure approved by voters in 2016 that was designed to fund 10,000 new units of supportive housing for people on the streets. So far, just 1,200 units have been completed. In a statement, the city comptroller noted that more people are homeless now than when the bond measure was passed. A.P. | L.A. Times

If Rep. Kevin McCarthy is to have a chance to rise to House speaker, he needs to win the support of his whole party — including the far-right wing most closely aligned with former President Trump. A New York Times profile suggested that was far from certain. The relationship between the Bakersfield Republican and Trump is cordial, sources told the newspaper, “but lacking in any loyalty.”

The Oscars announced this week that it would bestow the honors for eight categories — including sound, editing, production design, and music — off the air during the March 27 broadcast. The academy explained that this would allow more time for comedy, musical numbers, film clips, and movie tributes — in other words, wrote the film critic Ann Hornaday, “the very things viewers have historically hated about bloated, painfully unfunny, blithely self-owning Oscar shows.” Washington Post

Five items that got big views over the past week: