Good morning. It’s Friday, Feb. 16.
- Fight deepens over how to teach ethnic studies.
- Weekend storms threaten new flooding and landslides.
- And OpenAI unveils tool that instantly creates videos.
Please note: The newsletter will pause for the Presidents Day weekend. Back in your inbox on Tuesday.
Statewide
1.
In 2021, California became the first state to require ethnic studies in high school. As taught in universities, the subject is narrower and more ideological than the name “ethnic studies” might seem to suggest. It focuses on four groups — Black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans — and aims to critique forms of oppression. After protracted debate, the state’s high school curriculum incorporated other groups, including Jewish Americans. But prominent scholars are pushing a competing vision called “liberated ethnic studies” that largely excludes Jews — and some school districts are embracing it. N.Y. Times
2.
Two successive storms are headed for California, a one-day event expected Saturday followed by a more powerful system Sunday through Wednesday. Here’s what to expect:
- Forecasters said the first storm would deliver significant rain and snow across Northern California while kicking up giant surf. Waves could surge as high as 22 feet at beaches from Big Sur to Sonoma County. @NWSBayArea | Fox Weather
- The second system, arriving late Sunday, is expected to unleash heavy rain across most of the state, with some of the highest totals along the Central Coast, which could see up to 8 inches in 72 hours. Flooding and mudslides are likely, officials said. L.A. Times | @NWSLosAngeles
- Higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada could be buried in up to 5 feet of snow from both storms, the National Weather Service said. @NWSSacramento
Northern California
3.
The San Francisco startup OpenAI unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool called Sora on Thursday that can quickly create dazzling videos from a single descriptive sentence. Among the examples: woolly mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow, a man reading a book while sitting on a cloud, and a bustling town during the California Gold Rush, above. Some found the development unnerving. “I am absolutely terrified that this kind of thing will sway a narrowly contested election,” said Oren Etzioni, a professor who specializes in artificial intelligence. N.Y. Times | Washington Post
4.
California’s judicial watchdog agency issued a scathing complaint accusing a presiding judge in Humboldt County of years of bullying, boorishness, and cronyism. During a boat party in 2019, the filing said, Judge Greg Kreis called a public defender “Jewboy” and shoved him into a lake. At other times, he went on a cocaine-fueled joyride, called a female attorney a “bitch” in the courtroom, and exposed his genitals near a sleeping woman’s face, the complaint said. Kreis called the allegations “salacious and false.” Rolling Stone
5.
More U.S. golf courses have closed than opened every year since 2006. Most often, the defunct courses get paved over, but a number are now being reclaimed and rewilded. Reporter Cara Buckley took a tour of Marin County’s San Geronimo Commons, a former golf course on the way toward becoming a natural public park: “There was scraggly grass in one sand trap and wooden blocks and a toy castle in another, evidence of children at play. People were walking their dogs on the fairway, which was looking rather ragged and unkempt.” N.Y. Times
6.
Veteran tech reporter Kara Swisher on hypocrisy in Silicon Valley:
“I watched founders transform from young, idealistic strivers in a scrappy upstart industry into leaders of some of America’s largest and most influential businesses. And while there were exceptions, the richer and more powerful people grew, the more compromised they became … When people get really rich, they seem to attract legions of enablers who lick them up and down all day. Many of these billionaires had then started to think of this fawning as reality.” Washington Post
Southern California
7.
A natural-gas-powered semi truck caught fire and exploded near the Port of Long Beach early Thursday, sending flames 30 feet into the sky and injuring nine firefighters. Two were in critical condition, including one who had to be intubated and airlifted to a burn unit, the hospital said. The semi was fueled by two 100-gallon tanks of compressed natural gas under 3,300 pounds of pressure, said L.A. Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott. L.A. Times | A.P.
8.
“This project will happen.”
Public officials have portrayed a plan to shift a rail line away from the eroding bluffs of Del Mar in San Diego County as an inevitability. The question is where to move them. A regional government association wants to bore a tunnel beneath residents’ homes and send the trains underground. In tiny Del Mar, where the median home value is $3.6 million, some have reacted with outrage. During a recent hearing, they rattled off objections: the loss of homes around tunnel openings, toxic fumes, and vibrations. S.D. Union-Tribune
9.
After Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust” of 2021, New Mexico investigators blamed the tragedy on a cascade of mistakes that reflected the producers’ “plain indifference to the safety of employees.” But the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, one of the youngest and least powerful people working on the movie, is the likeliest person to go to prison for those mistakes. As she prepares to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter, her defenders say she is being used as a scapegoat. Hollywood Reporter
10.
Scammers used artificial intelligence to write an obituary for Los Angeles journalist Deborah Vankin as part of an elaborate hoax. She avoided reading it, telling herself she was busy. When she finally did, she felt a wave of profound grief: “Over the next week, a relentless cable news-like chyron of must-dos and questions scrolled in my mind: Send out that book proposal. … Get back to Iceland to see the northern lights … Cremation or burial? I was experiencing a near-death moment, stretched out over days in bits and pieces.” L.A. Times
11.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman chats with Harold Bronson, a founder of Rhino Records in Los Angeles and author of a new memoir “Time Has Come Today: Rock and Roll Diaries 1967-2007.” Bronson recounted four decades of L.A. rock history, highlighting the industry’s shift from fun and rebellion to business.
In case you missed it
12.
Five highlights from the past week:
- One Southern California man has thousands of acres of peppers, but nobody to buy them. Another has a massive pepper factory, and not enough peppers to keep it running. This, in short, is the crux of the Great Sriracha Shortage. FORTUNE
- Ben Chida rose through Berkeley and Harvard to become Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top education advisor. Yet he is bedeviled by thoughts of suicide. Chida offered a remarkably frank account of his struggles, along with a message to others like him: “You’re not alone.” L.A. Times
- James Nachtwey, the eminent war photojournalist, has never photographed movie stars. So a magazine dispatched him to capture 12 of the best performers of the year “in the wild,” away from the red carpets. N.Y. Times Magazine
- Jonathan Majors has maintained his innocence since being found guilty in December of assaulting a girlfriend. But two actresses who dated the actor before his rise to stardom described him as a threatening figure who isolated them from friends and career pursuits. N.Y. Times
- A beach full of kaleidoscopic pebbles. An all-female fishing operation that serves hot prawn po’boys. A restored Arts and Crafts inn overlooking a river. Travel+Leisure offered recommendations for a perfect getaway in Fort Bragg.
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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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