Good morning. It’s Friday, Sept. 25.
- Bear attacks a couple outside their Trinity County home.
- Court says Riverside sheriff illegally seized ballots.
- And Orange County embraces crackdown on e-bikes.
Statewide
1.
Between 2020 and 2025, pesticide safety inspectors took nearly 18,000 regulatory actions across California. But fewer than 30% resulted in fines, which were often as little as $50 to $250, an analysis found. In interviews, dozens of farmworkers complained about the nausea, burning eyes, and irritated throats caused by fields doused in chemicals. “Yes, there are laws,” said Jesus, who asked that his last name be withheld. “But unfortunately, at times the law favors the powerful — it sides with the wealthy.” L.A. Times
2.
A pilot project that installed solar panels over irrigation canals in the San Joaquin Valley last year is producing clean energy while limiting evaporation, early results showed. Scientists have called the solar canopies a win-win solution as the state scrambles to shift to 100% clean electricity by 2045. Testing on the Turlock Irrigation District canal has now revealed a third win, researchers said. The canopies also reduce algal growth, improving water quality. KQED
3.
On the brink of finishing college, Califia Carlisle appeared to have a promising future. Then she discovered heroin. Carlisle has now spent the last 10 years on the streets of Sacramento, battling schizophrenia and addiction. She has a loving father who appealed to every conceivable authority to compel treatment for her, to no avail. The Sacramento Bee’s Tom Philp examined how California fails some of its sickest residents: “Now 32, Califia Carlisle remains ill and adrift because that’s precisely what California’s mental-health non-system is designed to do.”
Northern California
4.
A couple was badly injured in a bear attack outside their rural Trinity County home early Saturday, reports said. Jeff Wilson had stepped outside to let their French bulldog Cassie back inside when the bear charged, knocking him to the ground. Cassie, tiny but valiant, went after the beast. Alerted by the commotion, Mallory Wilson came out to find Jeff on the ground and Cassie in the bear’s mouth. The bear then swiped at Mallory before fleeing. Jeff had broken ribs; Mallory suffered lacerations. Cassie — a “completely devoted” pet, according to Mallory — didn’t make it. KRON | Redheaded Blackbelt
5.
“He’s my oldest friend. … I’m excited that he’s doing something he loves, and it’s a pity that it’s going to destroy everything I love.”
A group of groomsmen gathered for their friend’s wedding in April 2022. Since their high school days, one had become an artist, another a comedy writer. A third, Dan Selsam, became an OpenAI computer scientist with unnerving ideas about the future of humanity. A fascinating short documentary followed how the old friends reckoned with one of them working enthusiastically toward a “post-human” world. New Yorker/YouTube
6.
“Sam Altman Comes Out as a Toddler”
“Oakland Matchmaker Helps Polycules Find Someone Who’ll Be in Charge of the Towels”
“Lull in Conversation Takes Unfortunate Turn Towards Microclimates”
A new mock news publication called San Francisco Currently made its debut on Thursday. Its stated objective: to be “an unserious and frankly belligerent publication that aims to provide no accurate information whatsoever.” N.Y. Times
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Michael Moritz, a Silicon Valley investor and the author of the new book, “Ausländer,” tracing his family’s escape out of Nazi Germany. Moritz explores about how the dread of that event echoes in the lives of descendants who never lived it. His unease, he writes, only intensified with the rise of Donald Trump: “As the shadows of Trump lengthened, the refrain I had heard from my parents rang ever more loudly … ‘If it did happen somewhere, it can happen here.'”
Southern California
8.
A unanimous California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco broke the law when he ordered the seizure of election ballots in March. During oral arguments last month, the justices had expressed incredulity at the lawman’s justifications, calling them “bizarre” and “more than counterintuitive.” Earlier reporting by CalMatters revealed that Bianco, a figure in the “constitutional sheriff” movement that claims to answer only to the Constitution, opened the investigation on the basis of little more than conjecture. CalMatters | L.A. Times
9.
Orange County is emerging as one of the nation’s most zealous jurisdictions in the crackdown against e-bikes. On Sept. 13, District Attorney Todd Spitzer, a Republican, organized what was believed to be the first e-bike buyback to purge machines that he blames for an epidemic of accidents. Residents surrendered more than 1,000 e-bikes and e-motorcycles in exchange for gift cards. “We are destroying these bikes,” Spitzer announced to cheers. “They’re going to be crushed!” Wall Street Journal
10.
The newest celebrities in Southern California are a pair of tropical olive ridley turtles, an endangered species, that laid eggs in the sand along the Orange County coast last week in what’s believed to be a historical first. Officials have since erected fences around the nests and stepped up beach patrols to guard them. Now a heated debate has erupted over plans for the raucous Pacific Airshow in Huntington Beach, scheduled for the first weekend in October. A petition was started calling for its postponement. California Post | Fox 11
11.
A music producer named Jay Judah built a program that creates musical tones from passing vehicles on a live traffic camera view of Highway 101 in Los Angeles. He essentially turned the freeway’s five lanes into a musical staff, assigning an instrument to each. As vehicles cross a superimposed line, a note sounds. The result may lack rhythm or melody, but it’s eerily beautiful. The Drive.
- Pick the instruments yourself at “The 101 Plays Itself.”
12.
In case you missed it
Five items that got big views over the past week.
- On assignment from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a pair of wildlife photographers captured some fantastic slow-motion footage of two native hummingbirds in the Coachella Valley: the reddish-pink Anna’s hummingbird and the iridescent purple Costa’s hummingbird. YouTube (~8 mins)
- When Clint Eastwood was drafted into the Army at age 20, he was stationed at Fort Ord near the Monterey Peninsula. That’s how he came to discover Carmel-by-the-Sea, where he would live for many years, open a pub, and even serve as mayor. Architectural Digest recalled Eastwood’s love affair with Carmel, in pictures.
- In 2018, Phil Levin and his wife bought a seven-unit compound in Oakland for them and their closest friends. Over the next eight years, the commune known as Radish housed as many as 20 adults and a giant gaggle of children. “What we basically learned over the course of Radish is like, there’s a pretty universal desire to live this way,” Levin said. N.Y. Times
- Jason Mraz, the Oceanside singer and avocado farmer, was traveling through the San Diego airport on Monday when a local performer, Evan Diamond, began playing his infectious mega hit “I’m Yours” as part of an airport music series. Mraz walked over and began singing along, without being asked. S.D. Union-Tribune
- See video of the duet.
- In 1952, a physicist recruited an architect to build him a home in the Berkeley Hills that would exemplify “precision, clarity, logic, and innovation.” The Kip House became a classic of West Coast residential design. It was listed for $1.4 million. *Wallpaper
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