Good morning. It’s Tuesday, July 11.
- Another heat wave is poised to engulf the state.
- The first fentanyl murder conviction in California.
- And notorious hedge fund buys San Diego newspaper.
Statewide
1.
The California Coastal Commission was empowered by voters in 1972 to protect the state’s 840-mile shoreline. But a new bill designed to fast-track apartment development would not spare the coast, effectively cutting the 12 members of the commission out of the process. A lobbyist for the agency warned, “You’re going to lose some of the best things about California.” State Sen. Scott Wiener, the bill’s author, rejected that argument. “The idea we would be applying state housing law inland … while we literally exempt whiter, wealthier coastal communities is offensive to me,” he said. CalMatters
2.
Politico mapped out Gov. Gavin Newsom’s inner circle, the core group of confidantes who will likely be there should he launch a presidential bid in coming years. It’s dominated by San Francisco figures, among them former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and Doug Hendrickson, a friend from Newsom’s college baseball days. Explore what the outlet dubbed the Newsomverse. 👉 Politico
3.
A heat wave poised to engulf California is expected to be the season’s hottest and longest yet. Meteorologists said the warmth would build through the week, reaching oppressive highs over the weekend. On those days, forecasts called for temperatures well into triple digits across much of the state’s interior, including places such as Ukiah, Livermore, Bakersfield, Santa Clarita, and Riverside. And that won’t be the end of it, meteorologist David Sweet said. “We don’t see any end to the heat wave in the next seven days at least.” L.A. Times | Mercury News
See temperature outlooks:
4.
The comedian Sarah Silverman sued OpenAI and Meta, saying they “copied and ingested” her protected work to train their artificial intelligence programs, court papers showed. The dual lawsuits, filed last Friday and joined by two authors, accuse the Bay Area companies of violating copyright law by scraping their work from illegal online “shadow libraries” without permission. The law firm representing Silverman has referred to AI programs as “industrial-strength plagiarists.” N.Y. Times | Ars Technica
Northern California
5.
A 21-year-old man pleaded guilty to murder in a fatal fentanyl overdose in Placer County in what is believed to be the first conviction of its kind in the state. Nathaniel Cabacungan admitted to providing the drug to a 15-year-old girl who died shortly after consuming it in June 2022. District Attorney Morgan Gire responded to concerns that prosecutors are reviving the aggressive drug prosecutions of decades ago. “I have heard the criticism that this is a retread of the war on drugs,” he said. “It isn’t. Fentanyl is something different.” N.Y. Times | ABC7
6.
The Dolores Street “hill bomb,” a word-of-mouth bacchanalia that involves helmetless skaters rocketing down a hill lined by cheering spectators, is a long-running San Francisco tradition. But the latest event Saturday evening drew a massive police response. Dozens of officers, many in riot gear, arrested or cited more than 100 people over allegations that included setting off fireworks, trashing Muni trains, and inciting a riot. The crackdown divided city leaders, as some thanked police and others called it heavy-handed. SF Standard | KRON
7.
An escaped Northern California inmate accused of killing a hostage in a shootout with police in April was captured Monday after a 30-hour manhunt. Early Sunday, Eric Abril slipped past a guard at Sutter Roseville Medical Center, where he had been brought for a medical issue, and ran out of the hospital. The authorities credited a barking dog with alerting deputies to Abril’s hiding spot in a creek bed in Rocklin, where he was wearing only jail-issued boxer shorts and a belly chain. A.P. | Sacramento Bee
8.
Herbert Fingarette, a contrarian philosopher who taught at UC Santa Barbara, argued in a 1997 book that fearing one’s own death was irrational. When you die, he wrote, there is nothing. Years later, he realized he was wrong. Fingarette’s mortality began to haunt him, and he couldn’t think his way out of it. In a poignant short film, the 97-year-old philosopher explained how he was forced to rethink everything. 👉 YouTube/The Atlantic (~18 mins)
- Fingarette died in 2018. Read his N.Y. Times obituary.
Southern California
9.
The billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, sold its sister paper the San Diego Union-Tribune to a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known for gutting its newspapers. The new owner has already offered buyouts and warned that layoffs would be needed to “offset the slowdown in revenues.” The Union-Tribune newsroom reacted with a mix of dismay and anger. In a tweet, reporter Greg Moran said the newspaper worked to stay profitable and lean. “And for that the richest guy in LA sells us to the biggest chop shop in journalism.” Voice of San Diego | A.P.
10.
A landslide over the weekend caused a dozen hilltop homes in one of the most affluent areas of coastal Los Angeles County to buckle into a canyon. The slide created a jumble of collapsed roofs, shattered walls, and tilted chimneys in the picturesque city of Rolling Hills Estates on Palos Verdes Peninsula. The cause was undetermined, but some suspect the winter rains played a role. “It is moving quickly,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who represents the area. “You can actually hear the snap, crackle and pop every minute when you’re there as each home is shifting, is moving.” L.A. Times | A.P.
11.
“First it was nurses. Then graduate students. Then elementary school workers. Now it’s hotel employees, and TV and movie writers. Next up could be actors.”
Thousands of workers at hotels near the Los Angeles International Airport walked off the job Monday in a second wave of strikes at Southern California area hotels. The labor action came as SAG-AFTRA, the actors union, prepared to join writers on the picket lines if studios fail to reach a deal by midnight Wednesday. It would be the first time Hollywood faced two strikes since 1960. Washington Post | L.A. Times
12.
☝️ This is not a painting.
Laguna Beach’s annual Pageant of the Masters uses makeup, staging, lighting, and hundreds of volunteers to enact hauntingly accurate scenes from the artworks of old masters. It’s tempting to dismiss the event as cheesy fakery, the cultural critic Sam Anderson once wrote.
“It’s hard to convince anyone otherwise until they’ve seen the show firsthand. If you’re tempted to be cynical from a distance, however, consider that the three fundamental questions the pageant forces its audience members to ask — What am I looking at? How did it get that way? Why is it happening at all? — are not trivial questions at all; they are in fact the same questions we are forced to ask by serious art itself.”
The theme of this summer’s pageant, running now through Sept. 1, pays tribute to the world’s great art colonies. Foapom.com | Theme Park Insider
- See how the art is brought to life. 👉 YouTube
Thanks for reading!
The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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