California cuts solar subsidies // Twitter suspends journalists

Good morning. It’s Friday, Dec. 16.

Regulators reduce incentives for rooftop solar.
Twitter suspends several high-profile journalists.
And San Francisco takes 861 days for building permits.

Statewide

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Subsidies have made California a leader in residential solar, encouraging more than 1.5 million homes and businesses to add rooftop panels. But after a contentious debate, regulators voted Thursday to slash by about 75% the compensation home solar owners get for their excess energy, arguing that it amounts to a giveaway to the rich paid for by other customers. Solar companies were outraged. “This decision flies in the face of everything California stands for,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, a trade group official. Reuters | CalMatters

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Green indicates lower emissions. Orange is higher. (via N.Y. Times)

New maps that depict average greenhouse gas emissions per household across the U.S. revealed the stark disparity between neighborhoods close to city centers and everyone else. Neighborhoods like Westlake and Koreatown in the heart of Los Angeles, pictured above, have some of the lowest emissions in the country. In low-density, car-dependent suburbs, it’s the exact opposite. Explore your neighborhood. 👉 N.Y. Times

3.

Ernst Haas, an early pioneer of color photography, was known for photographing with the eye of a painter. In 1951, he moved from Austria to the U.S. where his first photo essay on New York so impressed the editors of LIFE magazine that they published them in an unprecedented 24-page spread. A newly published collection focuses on Haas’ fascination with the mythology of the American West. The Eye of Photography | Flashbak

More Ernst Haas. 👉 Ernst-Haas.com

Northern California

4.

Screenshots show the suspended Twitter profiles of journalists on Thursday.

Twitter on Thursday suspended the accounts of more than half a dozen journalists who cover Elon Musk, among them reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. Musk took to Twitter, a platform he vowed to transform into a bastion of free speech, to accuse the journalists of putting him in “assassination” danger by revealing his whereabouts. But a review of their tweets showed no evidence to support the claim. Critics suggested another motive was at play: to purge critical journalists. Washington Post | A.P.

The Wall Street Journal on Musk’s flame-throwing approach: “Mr. Musk has made it clear that those who trigger his ire should be prepared for him to use it to target them.”

5.

“They just told me, I gotta keep waiting,” said Lorenzo Mays. (Martin do Nascimento/CalMatters)

Lorenzo Mays, who is intellectually disabled, spent nearly nine years in a Sacramento County jail, where he was brutally assaulted and kept in solitary for long stretches of time. Yet he was never even tried for his alleged crime. “During his years in jail, he was represented by at least four different defense attorneys, came before at least 22 different judges and was evaluated by at least eight different psychologists, nearly all of whom considered him incompetent to stand trial.” CalMatters

6.

Developers complain of having to wait years for building permits in San Francisco. They’re not exaggerating. According to a new analysis of Department of Building Inspection data, the average wait time to obtain building permits for a house in San Francisco is an astonishing 861 days. State legislators say it should take 60 business days at most. “No wonder we have a housing crisis,” wrote the columnist Heather Knight. S.F. Chronicle

7.

☝️ Here’s a banana slug taking its time to cross a leaf.

The banana slug, which emerges in force in Northern California’s redwood forests during the rainy season, is one of the weirdest animals on the planet. They breathe through a hole in the side of their head. They also have penises on their heads that are eaten by their mates after copulation. And according to a patient biologist who checked, they are the slowest creatures on earth. More banana slug facts. 👉 Bay Nature | Treehugger

Southern California

8.

Weeks after Los Angeles voters approved a one-time transfer tax on property sales above $5 million to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention, the city’s rich are devising ways of avoid the tax. Some homeowners are looking to split up their properties. Others are rushing to sell before the April 1 deadline. Jason Oppenheim, a real estate broker, said sales will skyrocket for the next three months, but once the tax kicks in, the market will freeze. “It’s going to push developers out of L.A.,” he said. L.A. Times

Give something they’ll open every day.

Give a gift subscription to the California Sun.

9.

Tioni Theus was found dead on Jan. 8 with a gunshot wound to the neck. (via N.Y. Times Magazine)

Since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for American children. The N.Y. Times Magazine dedicated an issue to 12 American kids who were killed by guns in 2022. One of them was Tioni Theus, of Los Angeles, a girl whose “enthusiasm, her willingness to be effusive or goofy, was infectious.” N.Y. Times Magazine

10.

A Mojave Desert community agreed to pay nearly $1 million to settle accusations that it engaged in a pattern of housing discrimination against Black people and Latino renters. The U.S. Justice Department touted the settlement as the first to require an end to so-called “crime-free housing” policies aimed at evicting criminals. “This meant evictions of entire families for conduct involving one tenant or even guests or estranged family members,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said. L.A. Times | A.P.

11.

On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman chats with Mark Thompson, one half of the longtime Los Angeles radio team Mark and Brian. Thompson, who has a new memoir out called “Don’t Bump the Record, Kid,” talked about the secret to building a loyal audience. “The audience will sniff you out in a second,” he said. “They may not be consciously aware of it. But they know if you’re genuine. And they’re attracted to that.”

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In case you missed it

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