Good morning. It’s Thursday, Oct. 1.
- Donald Trump hovers over California governor debate.
- Meta exploits data centers to avoid billions in taxes.
- And a mesmerizing “sound map” of the Pacific Crest Trail.
Statewide
1.
In 2014, Solano County’s sheriff eliminated face-to-face visitation at his jails and signed a contract to introduce video calls instead as a new “profit center.” The contract details emerged in legal filings as part of a lawsuit arguing that bans on contact visits violate the rights of inmates’ families. Jail officials say going virtual thwarts contraband and saves money, the New York Times reported: “But in many jurisdictions, the video calls have also become a moneymaker for sheriffs and counties.”
2.
“Trump, Trump, Trump.”
Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton faced off Wednesday in potentially the only debate of the general election race for governor — and it featured two lines of attack “on endless repeat,” wrote columnist Joe Garofoli. Becerra brought up Donald Trump again and again, while Hilton tried to link his opponent to Democratic policies that he blamed for making California unaffordable and overwhelmed by homelessness. “The likely result of Wednesday’s interminable rally of one-note volleys: The race is unlikely to change,” Garofoli concluded. S.F. Chronicle | Politico
- An unchanged race is good news for Becerra: A recent poll showed him leading by 25 percentage points. N.Y. Times
- See five takeaways from the debate.
3.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a stack of new laws in the days before a deadline to act on legislation expired late Wednesday.
- Immigration agents will now be barred from wearing masks or using electric shock gloves. The measures were part of a package of more than 20 bills advanced in response to President Trump’s deportation crackdown. L.A. Times
- After years of contentious debate, child marriage will be outlawed in California. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU had fought the change, arguing that the prohibition would trample on young people’s rights. CalMatters
- California has lost roughly 40% of its local newspapers since 2005, according to one survey. A new law will seek to shore up those that remain with tax credits of up to $20,000 per journalist. Mercury News
- Also approved were measures to legalize plug-in solar; recognize Eid as a state holiday; and create new hurdles to offshore drilling.
4.
Given that the Pacific Crest Trail has been thoroughly photographed, Tom Kelly chose to chronicle his hike another way: He made hundreds of audio recordings, then plotted them on an online map. His first-of-its-kind “sound map” is strangely mesmerizing. “In the tall grass,” recorded in the Angeles National Forest, features a blend of lightly rustling grass and buzzing insects. “Woodpecker and re-breasted nuthatch,” in Plumas National Forest, sounds like a construction site. S.F. Chronicle
- Listen to the sounds of the trail.
Northern California
5.
In tax filings, Meta has been classifying its data centers as “experimental” to take advantage of a lucrative tax break created in the 1980s to spur innovation. The tactic trimmed nearly $4 billion from the company’s tax bill in 2025. Meta’s own accountants have acknowledged that the scheme rests on shaky legal ground. In securities filings, Meta has said billions in tax savings are vulnerable to being overturned by the IRS. Andre Shevchuck, a tax specialist, called it “kind of wild and out there.” N.Y. Times
6.
After Silicon Valley leaders signed a voluntary accord to keep their artificial-intelligence models safe at the White House on Tuesday, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and others questioned Anthropic’s Dario Amodei for sounding an alarm about the risks of the technology. The executives asked why Amodei “was being so extreme in public about the capabilities of AI models and risks they posed,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Amodei replied that it is important to be honest with the public, sources said.
- After their first meeting in 2022, Amodei called Huang “kind of Trump-like,” according to an excerpt from Kevin Roose’s forthcoming book “The AGI Chronicles.”
7.
“It slowed my thinking down.”
No tech giant has been as aggressive as Google in the effort to bring artificial intelligence into the American classroom. Yet the company’s own researchers have found that the technology poses a risk of cognitive and emotional harm. In interviews with more than 60 educators, parents, children, and clinicians, the Wall Street Journal found that students are becoming academically and emotionally dependent on AI. “We’re doing this experiment on an entire generation on cognitive development, with no control group,” said Mikel Rodriguez, a former Google research scientist.
8.
In August, the CEO of Driscoll’s stepped down after less than three years in the job. The Watsonville berry giant declined to discuss the reason for the leadership change, but the company has faced a intensifying backlash over its pesticide use. Now a whistleblower has added a new explosive lawsuit, accusing Driscoll’s of regularly shipping berries to Canada that exceed Canadian safety standards. The plaintiff, David Harada, was in a position to know: He was Driscoll’s manager of food safety and regulatory compliance for the U.S. and Canada. CBC News
9.
It’s-It ice cream sandwiches are as sacred as sourdough bread to many San Franciscans. So locals have been puzzled in recent months to find that the color of the mint version had changed from luminous green to a dreary pale. The San Francisco Chronicle uncovered the reason: The company stopped using Blue No. 1 food dye under new guidelines from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health secretary, who has called food dyes poison. Reporter J.D. Morris swears that the flavor has changed. “I describe it as a hint of mint, like the La Croix version of mint,” he said. “It’s really distressing.”
Southern California
10.
“She clearly knew the milk was going to a child.”
California is teeming with black-market raw milk dairies. After raw goat milk from a unlicensed farm in Temecula nearly killed a toddler in San Diego last year, state investigators collected strong evidence that the farm was indeed selling milk for human consumption. They declined to pursue charges. ProPublica investigated the disturbingly relaxed approach that California regulators have taken to illegal raw milk sales.
11.
Two people were killed and a third person remained missing after a medevac helicopter crashed into the ocean shortly after takeoff from Catalina Island late Wednesday, authorities said. Two other people aboard the helicopter were rescued in stable condition. Search-and-rescue efforts including a dive team, multiple aircraft, and boats were ongoing in the darkness overnight. Further details were scarce. KABC | NBC Los Angeles
12.
In September, students at Caltech organized what they called a “Mathathon,” a competition sponsored by Anthropic and OpenAI in which teams would try to solve hard math problems with the help of artificial intelligence. The backlash was swift. More than 2,000 academics signed an open letter denouncing the use of AI to tackle open problems. “To put it bluntly, AI companies are engaging in research misconduct,” the letter read. The flare-up laid bare the tensions between the AI labs and mathematicians who feel their profession’s values are increasingly under assault. EdSource
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