Good morning. It’s Friday, May 17.
- CNN unmasks attackers at April 30 UCLA melee.
- Kern County bets big on carbon-capture industry.
- And Compton reacts to hometown rap star’s latest hit.
Statewide
1.
On the unrest over Gaza:
- Late Thursday, dozens of police officers expelled an activist group that barricaded itself inside a UC Berkeley building a day earlier. At least 12 people were arrested. Berkeley Scanner | Mercury News
- CNN unmasked counterprotesters who attacked UCLA’s pro-Palestine encampment on April 30. Among them: an aspiring screenwriter, a high school student, and a 42-year-old named Tom Bibiyan. When a reporter found Bibiyan outside his home, he deflected questions. “You’re being a little rude,” he said, “and I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave.”
- Since March, the families of more than 260 students have applied to transfer into the East Bay’s Piedmont school district, a surge driven in part by Jewish families fleeing perceived antisemitism in Oakland schools. Jewish News
2.
Law enforcement agencies in California sometimes hold gun buyback events, promoting them as an important way to get the weapons off the street and improve public safety. But some departments then turn around and sell their used duty weapons to gun dealers. Between March 2019 and August 2023, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office resold more than 600 guns, an analysis showed. One ended up being used in a killing in Indianapolis. Another was recovered in Texas in connection with the shooting of a 15-year-old. The Trace
3.
A state analysis found that the projected cost of burrowing a tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to help move water south to farms and cities had risen to $20 billion, up from a $16 billion estimate in 2020. Even with the higher cost, attributed largely to inflation, officials said the project would save money in the long run by making water supplies more resilient. The analysis estimated that every $1 invested would generate $2.20 in benefits. S.F. Chronicle | CalMatters
4.
A real estate group analyzed data on home sales in Alameda County between 2021 and 2023 and found that those with granny flats, known as ADUs, sold for roughly $325,000 more than comparable homes with no ADU. But for many homeowners, the benefits of ADUs are as much about family as money. Bo Sundius, a Los Angeles architect, added a backyard cottage for his father, who had Alzheimer’s disease. “In-law relationships are always better when they have their own kitchen,” he said. Architectural Digest
Northern California
5.
Oakland is introducing the first all-electric bus fleet serving a major US school district. The 74 vehicles are expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 25,000 tons annually in an area plagued by some of the nation’s dirtiest air. Marjorie Urbina, who has been driving school buses for 23 years, recalled the foulness of the old diesel buses. “I would wipe my fingers along the inside of the bus at the end of the day and they would be black from diesel smoke,” she said. Bloomberg | KRON
6.
A pair of voice actors sued an A.I. company in Berkeley on Thursday, accusing the company of cloning their voices without their permission. In 2022, Paul Skye Lehrman was at a friend’s house when heard his own voice in a YouTube video about Ukraine. “It was my voice dictating the conflict and talking about weapons,” he said. “These are words I never said.” When his wife, Linnea Sage, found that her voice had also been cloned, they reached out to a lawyer. N.Y. Times | Hollywood Reporter
Southern California
7.
In the old days in Taft, where oil pumps nodded up and down for decades, oil money flowed into paychecks, schools, and a gleaming athletic complex. But starting about a decade ago, the city of 9,000 at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley began to lose its grip on middle-class prosperity as the oil industry faced market fluctuations, environmental litigation, and California’s retreat from fossil fuels. Now the region is betting on an audacious plan to survive the energy transition: a pivot to the carbon-storage industry to combat global warming. Grist
8.
After her son killed six people at UC Santa Barbara in 2014, Chin Rodger avoided the media for fear of upsetting victims’ families. Now she is speaking publicly for the first time. Experts said Chin was not at fault for failing to anticipate the mass shooting, wrote Mark Follman: “Yet, Chin came to believe that there had indeed been warning signs, even though she’d had no way of knowing back then what they were. She feels she can help spread awareness, especially for people whose own loved ones might be turning dangerous. ‘I hope my hindsight will be others’ foresight,’ she says.” Mother Jones
9.
“I’ve been a condiment and seasoning connoisseur for a while, and this seasoning is the best I have tasted.”
In 2018, the San Diego Navy Seal Edward Gallagher was accused by members of his own team of atrocities in Iraq,m including killing a teenage captive and picking off a girl from a sniper’s roost. Six years later, Gallagher has refashioned himself as a military influencer, promoting hot salt on Patreon. Reporter Jasper Craven wrote about how Gallagher has built an upper-middle existence on a public persona as “an innocent victim of cancel culture, a leading enemy of the deep state, and the last alpha in a beta-fied America.” The Baffler
10.
“Hot.”
“Masterpiece.”
“Genius.”
The rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which has featured the artists trading rapid-fire diss tracks, has resulted in a monster hit with Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” Released on May 4, it is now the hip-hop song with the most plays on U.S. Spotify in a single day (6.8 million) and the fastest to reach 100 million plays (9 days). This week, the track debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s latest singles chart. The L.A. Times sent a videographer to get the reaction in Compton, Lamar’s hometown, where people are loving it. @latimes
- Rolling Stone: “‘Not Like Us’ isn’t just a Drake diss, it’s a rally against perpetrators who shifted hip-hop from a Black and Brown community with culturally understood modes of being into an at-times parodic circus.”
11.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with veteran Los Angeles divorce lawyer Lauren Petkin. She talked about shifting attitudes around divorce in California at both ends of the age distribution. Young couples, she said, are increasingly cutting their marriages short, while older couples, even in their 70s, are also more apt to split: “Mainly because they’ve realized that at this stage in life they love each other, but they’re not happy and their kids are grown and they just want a different life.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Photographer Enoch Ku’s “Ordinary Sacramento” invites viewers to slow down and discover the beauty of the mundane in California’s capital city. IGNANT magazine | @ordinaryanywhere
- Rural California is home to more than 2 million people. Many have more in common with rural Texans than they do with city dwellers in California. Some enjoy putting on their cowboy boots and kicking up dust at the Redding Rodeo Steak Feed and Dance. The Record Searchlight shared 22 photos.
- The Joshua Tree area’s premier rattlesnake wrangler is a 29-year-old who sports 10-inch boots, a cowboy hat, and lots of tattoos. Danielle Wall has become something of a local celebrity, helping transform how locals interact with the unfairly maligned reptiles. L.A. Times
- Some people dream of working in the technological palaces of Silicon Valley. Others work in spare cabins in the wilderness — and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Herd Peak Lookout is perched atop a pinnacle on the doorstep of Mount Shasta. See a great drone view. 👉 @rynotime
- A couple reported missing on Mount Whitney was found dead, authorities said. Andrew Niziol, 28, a resident of South Lake Tahoe, and Patty Bolan, 29, who recently finished a physics doctorate at UC Davis, became separated from a third friend while descending after reaching the 14,500-foot summit. Sacramento Bee | L.A. Times
- In an Instagram post, Niziol shared a photo of him and Bolan. “I’ve finally surrounded myself with people to share these types of experiences with and I couldn’t be more thankful,” he wrote.
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