Cracks, hacks, attacks: California’s vulnerable water system faces many threats
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH: "On a February morning in 2021, a water treatment plant operator in Oldsmar, Fla., noticed something unusual: An unidentified user had remotely accessed the plant’s computer system and was moving the mouse around the screen.
The operator watched as the intruder clicked into various software programs before landing on a function that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide, or lye, in the plant’s water system. The hacker then increased the amount of lye — a potentially dangerous substance used to control acidity — from 100 parts per million to 11,100 parts per million.
The plant operator reversed the change almost immediately, and officials said there was never any threat to public safety. But the incident has highlighted the threats facing major drinking water systems across the country."
Massive snowpack’s summer bonus: Clean, cheap electricity for California
BANG*Mercury News, PAUL ROGERS: "The huge snowpack that has blanketed the Sierra Nevada this winter has done more than end California’s drought and extend ski season. It’s also changing how Californians keep the lights on.
With reservoirs full across the state, hydroelectricity generation from dams is expected to expand dramatically this summer, after three dry years when it was badly hobbled.
In 2017, a wet year similar to this one, hydropower made up 21% of all the electricity generated in California. But by 2021, in the middle of California’s most recent drought, it provided just 7%."
CALMatters, ALASTAIR BLAND: "In a world of worsening heatwaves, flooding, drought, glacial melting, megafires and other calamities of a changing climate, Gary Gragg is an optimist.
As California warms, Gragg — a nurseryman, micro-scale farmer and tropical fruit enthusiast — looks forward to the day that he can grow and sell mangoes in Northern California.
“I’ve been banking on this since I was 10 years old and first heard about global warming,” said Gragg, 54, who has planted several mango trees, among other subtropical trees, in his orchard about 25 miles west of Sacramento."
Missing Data: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Capitol Weekly, STAFF: "It’s no secret that communicable diseases can have dramatically different impacts on different groups; elderly people, for example, saw the worst effects of COVID, with a death rate far beyond California’s average. Black Californians also had higher mortality rates from the disease. What of California’s LGBTQ community?
The truth is, we don’t know.
SB 932, a 2020 bill inspired by concerns about potential disparate impacts of COVID on LGBTQ people, directed the California Department of Public Health to collect sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data. A new report released by the State Auditor last month says that CDPH has fallen short and recommends that state law be amended to require more comprehensive practices around SOGI data collection."
Is Dianne Feinstein coming back? Democrats ‘panicking’ over her ongoing Senate absence
BANG*Mercury News, JOHN WOOLFOLK: "Is she coming back?
As weeks go by without word from California’s senior U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on when she’ll be back in the saddle after missing months recovering from a bout of shingles, her fellow Democrats are growing increasingly anxious.
It’s no longer just AOC, Santa Clara’s Rep. Ro Khanna and other congressional progressives sharpening their knives for the 30-year Senate veteran who at 89 is the chamber’s oldest sitting member and whose collegial, centrist leanings have long irked the Democratic left."
BANG*Mercury News, GRACE HASE: "An independent investigation into the conduct of Cupertino City councilmembers revealed “abusive and controlling behavior” from former Mayor Darcy Paul and a culture of distrust in city staff from two current councilmembers has significantly interfered with city operations.
The city commissioned the investigation following the release of a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report last December titled, “A House Divided,” which looked into complaints about a potential adversarial relationship between the council and city officials. The civil grand jury found distrust from councilmembers has led to an exodus of staff with 60% of senior management leaving since January 2022, and difficulty recruiting and hiring. The city has also had four different city managers since 2019.
In February, the council asked the attorney’s office to investigate the claims to determine whether there were any violations of the municipal code."
This S.F. supervisor is officially challenging Mayor Breed’s 2024 re-election bid
The Chronicle, J.D. MORRIS: "San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí has made it official: He is challenging Mayor London Breed in the 2024 election.
Safaí filed paperwork Monday morning formally declaring his intent to run for mayor next year, launching what could be an intense contest for the city’s top political job."
D.A. Jenkins warns S.F. supervisor against interfering with Banko Brown shooting case
The Chronicle, ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH: "San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins warned Supervisor Shamann Walton Monday in a sharply worded letter not to interfere with her office’s investigation into the April 27 shooting of Banko Brown.
Brown was shot and killed outside a Walgreens at 825 Market St. in downtown San Francisco; police described the incident as a “shoplift that went bad,” in which security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony shot Brown outside the store."
OUSD strike: School board splits over walkout demands
The Chronicle, JILL TUCKER: "Oakland teachers were expected to strike again Tuesday, as the walkout increasingly divided parents, teachers and the school board into angry factions.
District officials and union negotiators reportedly met Sunday evening and into early Monday to continue hammering out a deal. It appeared to be the first official bargaining since the strike started Thursday, although the union and administrators had been in talks through state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who took on a mediation role."
Michael Kirst on LCFF at age 10: What has worked and what remains to be done
EdSource, JOHN FENSTERWALD: "Michael Kirst, the architect of the Local Control Funding Formula and then its chief implementer as president of the California State Board of Education for the first five years after its passage in 2013, freely acknowledges the law needs some changes. In an interview marking the law’s 10th anniversary, he said these include refinements to steer more funding to the highest-poverty students, added emphasis to see that more qualified teachers and instructional resources reach high-needs schools, and more work to make districts’ accountability plans readable and useful.
Among his disappointments is the failure of school boards to use the power of local control to experiment more and go beyond what they’ve always done.
“This was their chance to get beyond formulaic budgets and the budget complexity to create a three-year budget plan with clear priorities. And generally, my impression is that they have not,” he said."
Hollywood is calling it ‘the Netflix strike.’ Here’s why
LA Times, ANOUSHA SAKOUI, WENDY LEE, MEG JAMES: "Netflix is one of the entertainment industry’s power centers — and its change agent.
So much so that the streaming giant also has become an avatar of anxiety for Hollywood writers who are entering the second week of a historic strike that has no end in sight.
Some in the 11,500-member Writers Guild of America have focused their frustration on the streaming company. In the industry, some are dubbing this year’s labor action “the Netflix strike.”"
This unassuming Bay Area nonprofit invented Siri and other AI. Here's what it's doing now
The Chronicle, CHASE DIFELICIANTONIO: "What if there was a company in Silicon Valley that was already years into applying generative AI technology to real-world scenarios? It would need investors to throw gobs of cash at it before parading its innovative technology on the world stage, because that’s how innovation works, right?
Not always. A staggering array of the technologies you may be using to read this article — from the computer mouse to the voice recognition technology known as Siri and even the underpinnings of the internet — weren’t debuted for investors looking to sink in billions. They were brought to life by a nonprofit situated in an unassuming leafy office complex in Menlo Park called SRI International.
Originally founded in 1946 as Stanford Research Institute, the organization that introduced the rudiments of the personal computer in 1968 eventually broke away as a renamed nonprofit. Defense spending “is the reason SRI spun off from Stanford … after student protests against its war work during the Vietnam era,” said Margaret O’Mara, a tech historian and University of Washington history professor at the Seattle campus, in an email."
A Bay Area Catholic diocese filed for bankruptcy in wake of hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits
The Chronicle, ROLAND LI: "The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland filed for bankruptcy Monday as it confronts more than 330 lawsuits over alleged sexual abuse of children by the clergy dating back decades.
“After careful consideration of the various alternatives for providing just compensation to innocent people who were harmed, we believe this process is the best way to ensure a fair and equitable outcome for survivors,” said Bishop Michael Barber in a statement. “Given our current financial resources, (the Roman Catholic Bishop of Oakland) could not shoulder the burden of litigating 330 cases.”"
Long-delayed study to have civilians, not police, make L.A. traffic stops set for release
LA Times, LIBOR JANY: "Most traffic enforcement in Los Angeles should be done by civilian workers, but only in tandem with major infrastructure upgrades that improve safety along city streets that are among the nation’s deadliest.
Those are the conclusions of a long-delayed report from the city transportation department that has yet to be released. The Times reviewed a draft of the document, which has been in the works for nearly three years, since the City Council first raised the prospect of removing traffic duties from the Los Angeles Police Department.
The debate over what role police should have in enforcing traffic safety comes amid an alarming yearlong rise in road deaths and injuries. It illustrates both the promise and the challenge of removing armed officers from traffic safety duties."