Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 19.
- California’s former inmates add to homelessness crisis.
- Police serve search warrant in Tupac Shakur’s killing.
- And a tribute to late Stanford soccer player Katie Meyer.
Statewide
1.
Other U.S. states require that parolees have housing or stay in a shelter when released from prison. California does not. An analysis found that since 2019 at least 36,400 inmates have been released from the state’s prisons without fixed addresses. Many end up on the streets, adding to the state’s homeless population. Last year one in five homeless people in L.A. County were on parole. NBC News published an investigation of California’s “prison-to-homelessness pipeline.”
- California spent $17.5 billion combatting homelessness from 2018 to 2022. The homeless population grew. CNN
2.
Nearly 30 years after the unsolved killing of Tupac Shakur, Las Vegas police served a search warrant in connection with the case at a home in nearby Henderson on Monday, officials said. Shakur, a central figure in West Coast hip-hop, was gunned down in 1996 while riding in a car with Death Row Records founder Suge Knight along the Las Vegas Strip. He was 25. Details of the latest development were scarce, but sources told local reporters that the warrant involved Duane Davis, a former Compton gang member. Las Vegas Review-Journal | KTNV | KLAS
3.
A coalition of environmentalists and Native American tribes are fighting to halt diversions of water from Mono Lake to Los Angeles, which infamously began drawing from the basin 350 miles away in 1941. Let the ailing lake be, they argue, so that balance can be restored to a precious and delicate ecosystem. But the columnist Jim Newton noted that without Mono’s water, which is transported by gravity, Los Angeles would have to ship in water from elsewhere. As a consequence, ending diversions would ultimately increase carbon emissions. CalMatters
4.
Neat piles of rocks commonly found in California’s wilderness areas look like little folk artworks or altars of an unknown spiritual practice. Yosemite National Park officials want you to kick them down. In a recent public communication, the park said the rock cairns violate the “leave no trace” ethos embraced by the park service system. Not only are the piles “distracting,” officials said, they disturb the homes of tiny creatures. SFGATE
Northern California
5.
Anchor Brewing may not die after all. Since the company announced its pending shutdown last Wednesday, at least 20 investors have come forward to say they want to buy it. They all appear to be united by a sentimental attachment to a 127-year-old brand that has become synonymous with San Francisco. “It’s been pretty exciting,” said Mike Walsh of Structure Capital, who is organizing investors on an offer. “Actually pretty emotional too. I wasn’t expecting to have this outpouring of interest and just of emotion from a variety of people.” NBC Bay Area | KRON
6.
“The largest companies in the tech industry have spent the year warning that development of artificial intelligence technology is outpacing their wildest expectations and that they need to limit who has access to it.
Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on a different tack: He’s giving it away.”
The N.Y. Times reported on what Matt Bornstein, a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, said could be a “watershed moment” in A.I.
7.
On March 1, 2022, Katie Meyer, a goalkeeper and captain of the Stanford women’s soccer team, took her own life. She was 22. On Tuesday, Naomi Girma, a soccer player for San Diego Wave, published a heart-wrenching tribute to her former teammate and friend:
“I remember her dancing like a goofball in the passenger seat of my car to every song.
I remember her trying a falafel for the first time and saying that it tasted like a pine cone.
I remember going for a jog through Hyde Park on our London trip, and thinking: We’re really here.” Players’ Tribune
8.
Greta Gerwig, arthouse director and favorite daughter of Sacramento, was baffled. Why did the corporate guardians at Mattel let her make a movie about Barbie?
The answer seems obvious now, wrote Willa Paskin. “They wanted Gerwig, with her indie bona fides, feminist credentials and multiple Oscar nominations, to use her credibility to make this multibillion-dollar platinum-blond I.P. newly relevant, delivering a very, very, very pink summer blockbuster that acknowledges Barbie’s baggage, unpacks that baggage and, also, sells that baggage.” N.Y. Times Magazine
- The “Barbie” reviews are in:
“A very charming success.” The Atlantic
“A truly original work.” Chicago Sun-Times
“A pleasing balance between the silly and the serious.” Washington Post
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Southern California
9.
“We don’t want perverts celebrated in the Temecula Valley.”
“[Trump] is a convicted sexual assaulter. Should he be mentioned in our history books?”
“I don’t believe that we in social studies should be discussing sex.”
“What I’m hearing is ‘Don’t say gay.'”
The Temecula Valley school board on Tuesday resumed its contentious debate over a social studies curriculum that makes mention of gay rights leader Harvey Milk. It got so heated, several speakers were kicked out of the meeting for name-calling. Daily Breeze
10.
California banned pay toilets in the 1970s, expecting municipalities to step up and provide them. They didn’t. Los Angeles currently has 189 public restrooms for its more than 4 million residents. That works out to just five toilets for every 100,000 residents. (In Oakland, the rate is 30 toilets per 100,00 residents; in Iceland, it’s 56.) That’s created an impossible situation in a city where homelessness is entrenched and public urination and defecation is illegal. LAist | Los Angeles Public Press
11.
In 1873, a renovated adobe school building opened as an opera house in downtown Santa Barbara, 10 years before Los Angeles would open its first opera house. The Lobero Theatre, rebuilt in the 1920s, is now celebrating its 150th anniversary as the oldest continuously operating theater in California. It also happens to be gorgeous, with intimate seating for 600 patrons and acoustics that performers rave about. Architectural Digest just named the Lobero Theatre among the 11 most beautiful theaters in the world.
- On the calendar this summer and fall: Jerry Douglas, Patti Smith, Pat Methany, and mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital.
12.
Leopard shark season has arrived in San Diego. Each summer, the largest annual gathering of leopard sharks convenes in the bluish-green waters off La Jolla. Mostly female and mostly pregnant, they are attracted to the protected shores’ warm water and food supply of crabs, clams, and fish eggs. Snorkelers mingle among the sharks, which are beautifully patterned and harmless to humans. Fox 5
- A drone photographer got a nice view. 👉 @flyingfish_ca
Correction
Tuesday’s newsletter mangled the wording in an item about tarantula hawk wasps. Tarantula hawk larvae eat paralyzed tarantulas, not wasps.
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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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