Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 26.
- Kevin McCarthy talks of impeaching President Biden.
- Sam Altman sees AI creating “a new kind of society.”
- And Bronny James suffers cardiac arrest during practice.
Please note: The newsletter will be off through next Wednesday, returning Thursday, Aug. 3.
Statewide
1.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested Monday night that the House was on course to pursue an impeachment inquiry of President Biden over claims of corruption tied to his son’s overseas business dealings. “This is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry,” he told Fox News. “We will follow this to the end.” The comments marked a striking escalation by the California lawmaker, who previously resisted calls to impeach Biden. It comes as Republicans are seeking to deflect attention from a potential third indictment of former President Trump, their party’s frontrunner. N.Y. Times | Washington Post
2.
California announced a plan this month to plug 378 orphaned oil wells across the southern half of the state, an initial step in tackling the massive cleanup project that has resulted from more than a century of drilling into the state’s underground deposits. Officials have identified more than 5,000 abandoned wells, a number of them leaking methane and benzene. One estimate put the total cleanup costs at a minimum of $13.2 billion; the industry has set aside about $106 million. L.A. Times | KVPR
3.
PacWest Bank agreed to be absorbed by a smaller lender, Banc of California, the banks announced on Tuesday, after PacWest was hammered during the panic that followed the March 10 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. In a sign of how diminished PacWest, based in Beverly Hills, became, the combined bank will have just $30.5 billion in deposits. At the start of the year, PacWest had $34 billion. N.Y. Times | Wall Street Journal
4.
The awesomeness of California’s redwoods lies in their reach into both space and time. They arrived in the fossil record more than 200 million years ago, making the homo genus, about 2 million years old, an infant by comparison. The oldest living redwoods have existed since before the rise of the Roman Empire, lifespans that have overlapped more than 100 human generations. In a popular TED talk, the nature writer Richard Preston asked what redwoods can teach us. “I think they can tell us something about human time,” he said. “The flickering, transitory quality of human time and the brevity of human life — the necessity to love.” TED.com (~19 mins)
- Find the nearest redwood grove to you. 👉 Savetheredwoods.org
Northern California
5.
Ross Andersen wrote one of the best pieces yet on where artificial intelligence is taking us. The Atlantic
A few memorable lines:
- Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, said the AI revolution will be different from previous technological changes. He said that it would be more “like a new kind of society.”
- During a talk in Seoul, Altman was asked what students should do to prepare for the coming AI revolution. He answered by addressing young people directly: “You are about to enter the greatest golden age,” he said.
- Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist, envisioned a future in which artificial intelligence spawns “autonomous” corporations as powerful as 50 Apples or Googles. “This is incredible, tremendous, unbelievably disruptive power,” he said.
6.
Seven people died on the Bay Area’s BART system in the first three months of the year, newly released data showed. Nearly all were attributed to suspected overdoses. The death count puts the transit system on pace to exceed last year’s total and far outstrip the per capita toll on the Los Angeles Metro. Sara Shortt, who works in homelessness outreach, said many drug addicts see the BART as a safe place to use. “It’s not even a matter of ‘Where can I go to do my drugs?’ It’s more like, ‘Where can I go to just be?'” she said. SF Standard
7.
CJ Sveen, a homeowner in the Bay Area community of Oakley, was shocked to get a letter notifying him that his home insurance would be terminated at the end of July. He called the insurer, which informed him that aerial photos revealed “clutter” in his yard, he said. “I kind of was offended. You know, how dare you judge me for my stuff,” he said. Sveen’s ordeal comes as insurers have been increasingly pulling back from California’s home insurance marketplace. ABC7
8.
During the pandemic lockdown, the photographer Arthur Drooker holed up at his family’s weekend getaway in the Sea Ranch, the utopian community along the Sonoma coast. Pondering what to do, he took a walk and encountered shafts of sunlight filtering through the trees and forming a pool of light on the ground. “The sight was so powerful, even sacred, that it stopped me in my tracks,” he said. The experience set him on a mission to document the region’s ethereal light. Blind Magazine
Southern California
9.
Bronny James, the incoming USC freshman and son of Lakers star LeBron James, went into cardiac arrest during a basketball practice on the campus Monday, a family spokesman said. The 18-year-old remained hospitalized Tuesday and was in stable condition after leaving the intensive care unit. Only 8% of those who suffer cardiac arrest — when the heart stops — emerge with a good neurological outcome. Most “have some degree of brain injury,” said Monica Sales, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. James’ swift transition out of intensive care was said to be a promising sign. L.A. Times | N.Y. Times
10.
Michael Torres, a California inmate and member of the Mexican Mafia, took over the empire of drug and extortion rackets in the Los Angeles County jails 20 years ago. At the time, another inmate told detectives that Torres’ ambition would get him killed. “They step on each other’s face to get to the top,” he said. Two weeks ago, his prediction came true. Torres was stabbed to death by fellow inmates on the yard on July 6. Reporter Matthew Ormseth told the story of how Torres built a booming black market empire that ended with his murder. L.A. Times
11.
A couple years ago, a San Diego man named Randy Williams bought a patch of desert near the Salton Sea and proclaimed it “The Republic of Slowjamastan.” It enjoyed a moment of media attention. But the micronation never died. Today, Slowjamastan has thousands of citizens, even if none actually lives there.
The Guardian reports: “In his mini desert kingdom, [Williams] mingles with the public like a politician would: greeting citizens, posing for photos behind his desk and giving extemporaneous speeches. ‘We leave all our labels at the door,’ says Williams of Slowjamastan. ‘I don’t care what you look like, what God you pray to, or what political party you are aligned with. I believe America, and possibly the world, can take a lesson from this.'”
12.
One of California’s strangest homes has been listed for sale in the woods outside Santa Barbara. Built in the 1970s, the Whale House was designed to meld into the natural surroundings, with a skin of undulating cedar shingles, no flat walls, and a highly unorthodox floor plan. A former occupant said it’s like living in “the world’s most luxurious tree house.” The asking price is $3.25 million. Design Boom | Dirt
- Also on the market: a blocky Lloyd Wright home in Hollywood, a Walnut Creek Eichler with a bright orange door, and James Cameron’s vast ranch on the Gaviota Coast.
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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