Good morning. It’s Friday, Sept. 27.
- California offers an apology for its role in slavery.
- Fans bid an emotional farewell to Oakland Athletics.
- And San Diego animal park welcomes baby aardvark.
Statewide
1.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a bill that formally apologizes for California’s part in American slavery. While California banned slavery in 1849, it enforced fugitive slave laws that allowed whites to keep slaves they had already brought into the state. The official apology asks forgiveness “for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity on African slaves and their descendants.” The measure also mandates that a plaque memorializing the apology be installed in the state Capitol. N.Y. Times | L.A. Times
Northern California
2.
After 57 seasons in Oakland, the Athletics bid farewell to the city on Thursday during their final home game at a sold-out Coliseum. In a poignant scene, a groundskeeper filled fans’ cups with dirt from the field as keepsakes. There were tears, but also bitterness. A banner hanging in the stands alluded to billionaire owner John Fisher’s perceived betrayal of Oakland. It read, “Generational theft.” East Bay Times | S.F. Chronicle
- Photos: Fans flood the Coliseum. 👉 KQED
- The A’s departure illustrated a dark reality of American professional sports, wrote the N.Y. Times: “A billionaire can take one of the most important cultural hubs of a community and just move it to another city, provided the money is right.”
3.
With the exodus of executive leadership at OpenAI, Sam Altman has consolidated power just as the company is reportedly shifting to a for-profit structure enterprise that could be valued at $150 billion. He could receive 7% equity, or the equivalent of $10.5 billion. Altman has been accused of manipulating the people around him to get what he wants, wrote journalist Karen Hao: “And Altman, many people have told me, pretty consistently gets what he wants.” The Atlantic
4.
In San Francisco last month, a coyote snatched the Pomeranian of a couple at the beach. In June, a coyote bit a 5-year-old girl in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Some residents dismiss worries about the city’s population of roughly 80 coyotes as hysteria, wrote the Wall Street Journal: “Others insist enough is enough: coyotes are killing our pets for God’s sake! Sterilize them. Shoot them (But don’t tell anyone I said shoot them — I’m an animal lover). Perhaps round them up and drop them across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin?”
5.
Roughly 80,000 birds have died at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge near the California-Oregon border since the summer as a result of an avian botulism outbreak, federal officials said. Botulism, which paralyzes birds and causes them to drown, has thrived in the stagnant pools caused by dams and heat. Conservationists have pleaded with the Bureau of Reclamation to release more water into the refuge. “Something has to change,” said Teresa Wicks, a biologist at the Bird Alliance of Oregon. “Without wetlands, there are no birds.” KRCA | Newsweek
6.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that classifies carrying a gun at a polling place as an unlawful “act of intimidation.” Supervisors in Shasta County, which was cited in the text of the measure as a hotbed of voter intimidation, responded by voting to draft a letter denouncing the law. Patrick Jones, the board chair and manager of a firearm shop in Redding, said the law brands gun owners as extremists. “So, I take offense to this,” he said. Record Searchlight | KRCR
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with the political journalist Sasha Abramsky, whose new book “Chaos Comes Calling” explores the hard-right takeover of Shasta County. The county has long been a red island in California’s rural north. But the disruptions of the pandemic years awakened a new style of governance. In this era, Abramsky has written, “Shasta County has embraced vitriol with at least as much gusto as any other place in the country.”
8.
Grant Petersen, a bicycle designer in Walnut Creek, has attracted an ardent following for his obsessive attention to comfort and rejection of what he believes is the poisonous influence of racing culture. Critics call him a “retro-grouch.” The magazine writer Anna Wiener took a test ride on one of Petersen’s bikes. “‘Don’t you just feel like a kid again?'” a riding companion asked, Wiener recalled. “I knew what he meant. But I felt, instead, a very adult sense of longing — as if I had just glimpsed, at a deeply inconvenient time, a new and appealing way to live.” New Yorker
Southern California
9.
Imperial Beach, just south of San Diego, should be prime beach territory. But the befouled Tijuana River, which flows from Mexico to the sea in Imperial Beach, has made it a place where the stench of rotten eggs fills the air and some residents say they are being sickened. Last weekend, the county reopened the shoreline after a closure of more than 1,000 days. It’s smelly, officials said, but safe. Some researchers aren’t buying it. “Just based on gases alone, this is a toxic pit,” said Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at Scripps. L.A. Times
10.
Palm Springs was the hottest city in America for three straight days this week. The temperature Thursday hit 111 degrees. On Wednesday, it was 114. Tuesday: 112. Buttressed by mountains in the Sonoran Desert, Palm Springs has had a summer of searing heat unlike any in memory. Historically, temperatures surpassed 110 degrees, on average, roughly 32 days a year. So far in 2024, there have been a record 75 such days. The city has had an annual average of just one day over 120 degrees. This year: six. Desert Sun
- Another California heat wave is on tap between Friday and Wednesday, forecasters said. S.F. Chronicle | National Weather Service
11.
The newest star at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park is a baby aardvark. The nosy, highly curious creature was born in July and has been charging frenetically around its burrow, wearing out its mother, zoo officials said. Its sex and name are to be determined. The zoo shared video. 👉 @sdzsafaripark | Times of San Diego
- Other newborn additions this year: a Sumatran tiger, a pudu, and an okapi.
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- A new coffee table book revisits classic Hollywood’s heyday of glamour and power as seen in Life magazine. “As we sit firmly in the age of C.G.I., perched on the precipice of the A.I. era, these reminders of tactile Hollywood land in ways both exciting and heartbreaking,” wrote reviewer Gilbert Cruz. N.Y. Times | Wall Street Journal
- See 22 pictures from “Life. Hollywood.” 👉 Variety
- More than two decades ago, Kamala Harris and Kimberly Guilfoyle were both rising prosecutors in San Francisco. But they didn’t get along. Reporter Matt Flegenheimer dug into “the long, strange saga of Kamala Harris and Kimberly Guilfoyle.” N.Y. Times
- The Northern California campground known as Tish Tang is so hidden that even many locals are unaware of it. Owned by the Hoopa tribe, the campground’s 38 sites hug a bend in the Trinity River surrounded by gorgeous oak and madrone forest and abundant wildlife. SFGATE
- In the 1960s, UC San Diego hired the modernist architect Robert Mosher to design its second college. The photographer Marco Petrini published a series on the campus, which is regarded today as among the most striking examples of the brutalist architectural style anywhere. designboom
- Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation this week that bans single-use propane cylinders popular with campers. Park rangers have long complained about the canisters, which are considered hazardous waste and end up littering campgrounds and dumpsters. S.F. Chronicle
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