Good morning. It’s Friday, Aug. 14.
- “Genuinely remarkable” El Niño takes shape in Pacific.
- Lawmakers move to let Jews identify as ethnic group.
- And an especially lazy Russian River beckons kayakers.
Statewide
1.
Government scientists said on Thursday that there is now a roughly seven in 10 chance that El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean will develop by late fall into the strongest such pattern since modern records began in 1950. The phenomenon, characterized by warmer ocean waters, has been associated with some of California’s most punishing storms. “This is a genuinely remarkable event,” the climatologist Daniel Swain said during a briefing Monday. If the numbers he is seeing come to pass, he added, “they will blow all historical events out of the water in terms of El Niño intensity.” SFGATE | L.A. Times
2.
Many self-identified Jews don’t attend synagogue or even believe in God. Yet Jewish tradition considers them to be Jews all the same. Consequently, California is now moving to become the first state to officially treat Jewishness as something more than a religion. On Thursday, legislation that would allow Jews to identify themselves as an ethnic group on state forms cleared a key committee in the state Senate. The New York Times called it “a shift more significant than it might seem.”
Northern California
3.
Details about Cami Clark, the wife of Dario Amodei, are scant online, where efforts appear to have been made to remove references to her. But she has been a key advisor to the Anthropic CEO as his company hurtles toward what could be a $2 trillion public offering this fall. In a profile, the Wall Street Journal sought to fill in Clark’s biography, including her time as the founder of what she described as a “revolutionary porn company” where she sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein.
4.
The reissue of a book on the 1978 Jonestown massacre has revived speculation about how 908 members of the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple came to die from ingesting cyanide or being shot for refusing to do so. In author Shiva Naipaul’s telling, Northern California and its political leaders played an important role. Willie Brown had declared Jones an “American Gandhi.” Harvey Milk said he was a “man of the highest character.” Naipaul writes: “Those who ought to know better nourish our crazy dreams of resurrection and redemption; those safely beyond the borders of our madness underwrite our lunacies.” The Atlantic
5.
Believe it or not, you can grow bananas in Northern California. Kyle Hagerty’s home in Sacramento looks inconspicuous from the front. But around back, the city fireman has transformed what was a weed-filled yard in 2019 into an astonishingly lush edible garden. Aside from bananas, he has grown more than 300 varieties of fruits and vegetables, including papaya, peppers, mouse melons, star fruit, figs, avocados, chiles, peaches, tomatoes, zucchini, and mangos. The Sacramento Bee paid a visit.
- Hagerty shares his gardening adventures on Instagram.
6.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Emily Hoeven, a San Francisco columnist, about her recent reporting on how data centers are reshaping rural America. In Ellendale, North Dakota, host of a massive new data center, rents have doubled and construction workers outnumber residents. Yet, as the data center backlash has intensified across the country, Ellendale seems to have made peace with the industry. While residents recognize the tradeoffs, Hoeven said, “they also appreciated that good things seemingly had come out of it.”
7.
From now through October, with little rain and dams controlling the water’s flow, the Russian River in Sonoma County is especially lazy. That makes this the perfect time to glide downstream on a kayak or inner tube, wrote veteran travel journalist Christopher Reynolds. The scenery, he wrote, “might as well be a Northern California highlight reel: vineyards, redwood forests, and eventually a beach scene full of driftwood and sea stacks.” L.A. Times
Southern California
8.
The murder trial of David Anthony Burke, better known as the singer D4vd, has drawn attention to the ghoulish items that one can purchase easily from online retailers like Amazon and Home Depot. Burke has been accused of buying cadaver bags, chainsaws, and a so-called burn cage in connection with the April 2025 killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. “Online retail appears to make it very easy and convenient to put together a possible murder kit,” said Dmitry Gorin, a former prosecutor. L.A. Times
9.
An 18-year-old pleaded guilty on Thursday to repeatedly kicking a sea lion as it sat on a sea wall in La Jolla last month, video of which was shared online to widespread outrage. Tyler Muehl violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which bars harassment of wild marine animals. He now faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. “Federal crime. Federal consequences,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said. S.D. Union-Tribune | CBS 8
10.
A judge on Thursday dismissed gun charges against Vem Miller, who was portrayed by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco as a would-be assassin of President Trump. In October 2024, Miller, an avid Trump supporter, was arrested for gun possession near a Trump rally in the Coachella Valley. Bianco subsequently told reporters: “I truly do believe we prevented another assassination attempt.” Miller said on Tuesday that the claim was like “a nuclear bomb being tossed in my life.” Bianco remained unrepentant: “Vem Miller will forever blame everyone else for his self-created problems,” he said Thursday. Press-Enterprise | L.A. Times
11.
Hiding below the waters off Southern California is a world as beautiful as the one above. During summer, the warm waters attract thousands of leopard sharks, beautifully patterned fish that are harmless to humans. A local diver who posts under the moniker Reel Slim Shady recently shared a spellbinding video of a leopard shark cruising through a luminous kelp forest. “When there’s good visibility, and the sun is just right, diving in the shallows is truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen,” he wrote earlier. Reel Swim Shady
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views in the past few weeks.
- Encased in concrete after a devastating 1938 flood, the Los Angeles River isn’t generally considered an inviting place to kayak. But people do, and by many accounts it’s a startlingly lush respite from the bustle of the city. Justin Sullivan, a photojournalist with Getty Images, took a recent paddle. The Atlantic
- A “Cancel Piedmont” movement is growing in one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest cities. Piedmont is completely surrounded by Oakland, yet its median home price of nearly $2.6 million is more than three times that of Oakland’s. Resentments have simmered over what detractors see as glaring inequalities. S.F. Chronicle
- Few bars in Oakland open before noon. Club 2101 opens at 8:30 a.m., and within a couple hours there are often as many as two dozen people at the bar. Oaklandside published a fantastic photo essay on what one patron called “the ‘Cheers’ of Oakland.”
- Every summer, as the sun dips low, a black swarm spirals out from beneath an elevated highway between Sacramento and Davis. It is made up of a quarter of a million Mexican free-tailed bats — and their dance is mesmerizing to see. KQED went on a tour of the “bat-nado.”
- See video of Yolo Causeway bat show.
- In the 1970s, an artist couple in Solana Beach enlisted Kendrick Bangs Kellogg to remodel their home. A master of organic architecture, he transformed what was an ordinary tract house into a work of art. It’s now been listed for the first time. Asking price: $4.75 million. Wallpaper
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