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sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:44 pmA San Diego man pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges related to twice landing his small private plane on San Clemente Island, a mostly barren strip of land about 70 miles west of San Diego that’s controlled by the U.S. Navy and under the command of Naval Base Coronado.
Andrew Kyle White, 37, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court to a felony count of theft of government property and a misdemeanor count of illegal entry into a naval installation. As part of his plea, he agreed to give up and not renew his pilot’s license.
White admitted that he landed his single-engine plane on an airstrip on the island without the Navy’s permission for the first time in October 2023. Despite signing a letter that warned him against landing on the island again and acknowledging that he could be charged with a federal crime if he did so, he landed on the island a second time in April, according to his plea agreement.
San Clemente Island has an airfield, a bombing range and a training facility used by special operations units. According to the Navy, there are typically between 80 and 100 people on the island.
After the second landing, White abandoned his plane, drove off in a Navy pickup truck, broke through at least one locked gate and spent a night on the island, prompting Naval Base Coronado’s commanding officer to place all personnel on the island on lockdown while security officers searched for him, according to his plea agreement and other court records.
“Mr. White’s unauthorized landing on San Clemente Island put Naval Base Coronado active duty and civil service members at risk while negatively impacting military readiness and costing the (Department of Defense) nearly 500 man-hours and (about) $500,000,” Capt. Loren Jacobi, Naval Base Coronado’s commanding officer, wrote in a victim impact statement to the court.
White’s attorneys said their client acknowledged his wrongdoing, but that it was clear he did not go to the island “with nefarious intentions of terrorizing the base or destroying sensitive equipment.”
In a sentencing memorandum, White’s attorneys described him as a lifelong San Diegan and “an intelligent young man who is passionate about everything having to do with the coastal and offshore fisheries he has grown up loving.”
Attorneys Domenic Lombardo and Trip Johnston wrote that White has designed and built “custom fishing equipment for the commercial fishing industry,” including harpoons and communications systems. They said his same curiosity and passion that led him to try to innovate solutions from the docks and his workshop also led him to begin flying and become an aerial fish-spotter.
“One of Mr. White’s favorite places to fly was around the rich fishing grounds that surrounded San Clemente Island,” the attorneys wrote. “In October 2023, Mr. White’s curiosity got the most of him, and he landed his plane on a small airstrip on the island.”
The defense attorneys did not explain for what specific purposes White landed on the island, or why he returned again in April. They wrote that when he was apprehended after spending the night on a beach, he told authorities “that he had come to the island to ‘get away from the noise.’ He also apologized about taking the truck, saying ‘Sorry about the vehicle.’”
Prosecutors and Naval Base Coronado’s commanding officer recounted a much more harrowing ordeal following White’s second landing on the evening of April 6.
“When defendant landed his plane … Captain Jacobi had no choice but to order a total lockdown,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “He had only five security personnel available to protect the approximately 80 people who were located on the island and did not know the nature of the threat or the level of hostility he faced. When his personnel found an abandoned plane on the island, he had very little information with which to evaluate the threat the Navy was facing; he had no idea who the intruder was, how many intruders there were, whether the intruders were armed, or what their intentions were. He had to assume the worst.”
Because of a thick marine layer, Navy personnel from the mainland were unable to arrive on the island until the next morning. Jacobi told the court that two security personnel had to stay with the plane overnight while three others searched in the darkness.
“Our personnel were dangerously exposed and ill-prepared to spend a full night on patrol,” Jacobi wrote. “Night tactical movements are always risky, especially for junior security personnel responding to unplanned events. Additionally, the overland search exposed my personnel to multiple historic bombing ranges that have not been swept for unexploded ordnance.”
White, who has been in pretrial custody for about four months, is expected to be sentenced later this month. Prosecutors said they would recommend a six-month sentence — that’s expected to be the high-end of his guideline range — while White’s attorneys wrote that they plan to seek his release with credit for time served. Prosecutors will also seek an order that White pay the Navy $8,077 in restitution for the broken gate.
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:29 pmThe 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony returns to Los Angeles on Nov. 8 with honorees that include hard rockers Bad Company, pop-rock singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper, and hip-hop duo Outkast among the artists who will join the hall this year.
The 40th annual induction ceremony at the Peacock Theater will also honor “The Twist” popularizer Chubby Checker, British blues-rock singer Joe Cocker, Seattle grunge band Soundgarden, and the indie rock duo The White Stripes in the performer category this year.
Hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa and singer-songwriter Warren Zevon will be recognized by the hall in the musical influence category. Record producer Thom Bell, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye join the hall for their contributions to musical excellence.
Record producer and record label president Lenny Waronker is slated to receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
Tickets to attend the ceremony went on sale Monday, Sept. 15, through AXS.com.
The hall also announced details of the broadcast of the induction ceremony on Monday. It will stream live on Disney+ starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8 and be available on Hulu the following day. The ABC network will air a special on the ceremony at a later date to be determined.
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:29 pmLong Beach has canceled this year’s Día de los Muertos Parade out of an “abundance of caution” related to community fears about possible federal immigration raids, officials said.
The decision to cancel the parade came at the request of Councilmember Mary Zendejas, who represents the First District, where the annual parade takes place.
“This decision did not come lightly,” Zendejas said in a Friday, Sept. 12, statement, “and was a result of concerns related to activities in the region being conducted by federal law enforcement.”
While the city is not aware of federal enforcement activity targeting the parade, officials said, the decision to cancel this year’s Day of the Dead event was made out of precaution and to address fears raised by community members, especially those who would be impacted by federal enforcement actions.
“This has been an event that I’ve looked forward to every year as mayor; it’s a beautiful event,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in a Monday phone interview. “This is a month where we should be uplifting, celebrating and recognizing Hispanic heritage here in Long Beach and in America. But instead, our communities are in fear.”
ICE raids have been ongoing across Southern California since June, as federal immigration authorities ramped up operations across the country to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations.
Administration officials say the operations have resulted in the arrest of many violent felons who have criminal convictions or pending charges, and that the increased enforcement is necessary to make the nation safe. But immigrant rights organizations say the raids have been targeting innocent working people or based on profiling, including day laborers and car wash workers.
“We’re taking every step to protect and defend our residents,” Richardson said. “Unfortunately, in this case, it means not moving forward with the Dia de los Muertos Parade this year.”
The parade was expected to take place in early November and would have been Long Beach’s 10th iteration. Typically, the parade draws hundreds of visitors to a route along downtown’s Pine Avenue.
It features floats, cultural performances, marching bands, equestrians, music and more to celebrate the Day of the Dead – an annual celebration, particularly for people in Mexico and Central America, and for many Latinos in the United States, to honor and commemorate the lives of the dead and welcome the return of their spirits. The holiday is celebrated each year from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.
Earlier last week, the City Council approved Long Beach’s fiscal year 2026 budget, which carried over the unspent parade funding from FY25 and combined it with the budget funding for FY26, making $100,000 available for next year’s parade, according to Zendejas’ statement.
The Arte y Ofrendas Festival, a separate two-day ticketed event hosted by the SoCal Suenos Foundation that typically coincides with the city’s Día de los Muertos Parade, is also not taking place this year, Zendejas said.
Long Beach’s Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration at City Hall, however, will still happen, Richardson said. That celebration is scheduled for 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, in the Civic Center Plaza.
“I deeply value the vibrant cultural diversity of our city,” Zendejas said, “and am looking forward to continuing our Día de los Muertos Parade next year.”
This announcement, meanwhile, was followed by another Long Beach car wash being the site of an immigration enforcement operation over the weekend.
Bixby Knolls Car Wash, on Wardlow Street, was the site of the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during which about seven people were detained around 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13, according to Órale, a local immigration justice organization.
Upon learning of the incident on Saturday, Richardson said, his team immediately visited the site to support the owner and employees, and to connect them with resources. The Economic Development Rapid Response team was also engaged.
“This is a difficult time and we need to stick together,” Richardson said. “We’re going to do everything we can to show up for (the employees) and show up for their families in this moment.”
Long Beach’s adopted FY26 budget has expanded legal and educational support for workers and local small businesses, including its Justice Fund and Values Act.
A number of families are going to face a difficult choice of whether they go to work to make a living or risk being separated from their families, Richardson said. With so much uncertainty, the city is trying to address this by having $500,000 in emergency cash assistance for immigrant families, part of an overall package of about $5.1 million that includes legal support, emergency rental assistance and support for immigrant small businesses.
Long Beach will continue exploring every legal avenue available to combat ICE’s harmful actions, city officials said.
“What we need to do is demand this federal administration stop these discriminatory raids upon the neighbors of our community,” Richardson said. “The presence of ICE in our city has not made us safer. ICE needs to stop these activities and leave the city and no longer conduct these actions in the city of Long Beach.”
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:28 pmThe early September death of a female puma along the highway connecting Riverside and Orange counties in the Santa Ana Mountains has wildlife advocates calling for more protection for California’s vulnerable mountain lion population.
Officials from the California Carnivores Program at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine/Drayer Wildlife Health Center confirmed Monday, Sept. 15, that a 3-year-old female puma, called ‘F390,’ was killed along Highway 74, also known as the Ortega Highway.
The animal was found dead along the highway by the San Juan Creek trail, on Thursday, Sept. 4, Program Director Fernando Nájera said. OC Parks officials found the body, with its identifying collar destroyed.
“We are deeply saddened to share that mountain lion F390, one of the collared lions in our study, was recently killed by a vehicle strike on Highway 74,” a Sept. 5 Instagram post announcing the lion’s death states. “At just 3 years old, F390 was raising her first litter … she had successfully crossed this busy highway many times before, but this time, traffic proved fatal. Her loss is a stark reminder of the risks carnivores face as their habitats overlap with our roads and communities.”
The mountain lion had been collared since February 2024, Nájera said. She had been spotted across the wilds of the Santa Ana Mountains, with her collar tracking a wide range of her whereabouts, about 16 square kilometers of the forest areas.
“It’s been devastating news,” Nájera said.
The California Carnivores Program, formed in 2001 originally as the California Mountain Lion Project, focuses on mountain lion conservation and protection, and has since expanded to include other carnivore species, such as wolves and bobcats. The program tracks mountain lion’s habitat use and movement, including the species’ overall health and lifestyle, living among urban development such as roads and highways.
“F390” was raising a male and female cub, who are now about 14 months old, officials said. There was no information on the whereabouts of the litter, who were not collared/tracked by the program.
“In only a few more months, she would have guided her young to leave her care and be independent,” officials wrote online.
Nájera said that four pumas/mountain lions are currently being tracked in Southern California through the Carnivores Program. The Santa Ana Mountains has a fairly large population, he said, though specific numbers are unknown.
The collar around these mountain lions helps to track whereabouts, and can report specific health data, biometrics, human interactions, their kill history and productivity, mortality, recovery, and “a wealth of information we can use to create better, informed decisions on their health,” Nájera said.
“If you protect mountain lions, you’re going to protect a wide range of species that live among them, and the habitat where they live … it’s vital to keep the co-existing balance to the region,” he said. “Mountain lions are very attractive to the public, and their existence highlights the importance of their conservation.”
“We know that mountain lions are going to be crossing roads in this area, and it’s almost impossible to try to avoid — the landscape is so fragmented. They live in a matrix of roads. So we need to promote more areas where animals can cross the roads more safely,” Najera said. “Losing a mountain lion is probably also putting a human life in danger.”
Through tracking their whereabouts, Najera hopes they can gather as much “finescale movement” and data to learn the best spots “to create mitigation measures” and prevent such deaths.
Tiffany Yap, a senior scientist at the nationwide Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for state wildlife protections and removing barriers to wildlife movement, called F390’s death a “gut punch” because, as a young mother, the animal was raising two cubs “who were just months away from becoming independent.”
“This struggling Santa Ana Mountains puma population can’t afford to lose another member,” Yap said. “Roads and development have constrained their habitat to a tipping point. Our best hope is to invest in more wildlife crossings and avoid poorly planned developments that cut through their home turf.”
In some places across Southern California, wildlife crossings and fences have been used along freeways and roadways to keep animals safe.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:33 pmRobert Redford, the dashing actor and Oscar-winning director who eschewed his status as a Hollywood leading man to champion causes close to his heart, has died, according to his publicist Cindi Berger, Chairman and CEO of Rogers and Cowan PMK.
He was 89.
“Robert Redford passed away on September 16, 2025, at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah–the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved. He will be missed greatly,” Berger said in a statement to CNN. “The family requests privacy.”
Known for his starring roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men,” Redford also directed award-winning films such as “Ordinary People” and “A River Runs Through It.”
His passion for the art of filmmaking led to his creation of the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit that supports independent film and theater and is known for its annual Sundance Film Festival.
Redford was also a dedicated environmentalist, moving to Utah in 1961 and leading efforts to preserve the natural landscape of the state and the American West.
Redford acted well into his later years, reuniting with Jane Fonda in the 2017 Netflix film “Our Souls at Night.” The following year, he starred in “The Old Man & the Gun” at age 82, a film he said would be his last – although he said he would not consider retiring.
“To me, retirement means stopping something or quitting something,” he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2018. “There’s this life to lead, why not live it as much as you can as long as you can?”
In October 2020, Redford voiced his concern about the lack of focus on climate change in the midst of devastating wildfires in the western United States, in an opinion piece he wrote for CNN.
That same month, Redford’s 58-year-old son died from cancer.
David James Redford – the third of four children born to Robert Redford and former wife Lola Van Wagenen – had followed in his father’s footsteps as an activist, filmmaker and philanthropist.
Born in Santa Monica, California, near Los Angeles, in 1936, Redford’s father worked long hours as a milkman and an accountant, later moving the family to a larger home in nearby Van Nuys.
“I didn’t see him much,” Redford recalled of his father, on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” in 2005.
Because his family couldn’t afford a babysitter, Redford spent hours in the children’s section at the local library where he became fascinated with books on Greek and Roman mythology.
Yet Redford was hardly a model student.
“I had no patience … I was not inspired,” Redford recalled. “It was more interesting to me to mess around and to adventure beyond the parameters that I was growing up in.”
Drawn to arts and sports – and a life outside of sprawling Los Angeles – Redford earned a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1955. That same year, his mother died.
“She was very young, she wasn’t even 40,” he said.
Redford said his mother was “always very supportive (of my career)” — more so than his dad.
“My father came of age during the Depression and he was afraid to take chances … so he wanted the straight and narrow path for me, which I was just not meant to be on,” he said. “My mother, no matter what I did, she was always forgiving and supportive and felt that I could do anything.
“When I left and went to Colorado and she died, I realized I never had a chance to thank her.”
Redford soon turned to drinking, lost his scholarship and eventually was asked to leave the university. He worked as a “roustabout” for the Standard Oil Company and saved his earnings to continue his art studies in Europe.
“(I) lived hand to mouth, but that was fine,” Redford said of his time in Europe. “I wanted that adventure. I wanted the experience of seeing what other cultures were like.”
When he returned to the US, Redford began studying theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.
Shy and closed off, Redford said he didn’t fit in with the other drama students who were eager to show off their acting skills. After a performance in front of his class with a fellow student that ended in frustration and disaster, Redford said his teacher pulled him aside and encouraged him to stick with acting.
In 1959, Redford graduated from the academy and got his first acting role on an episode of “Perry Mason.” His acting career was “uphill from there,” he said.
His big acting break came in 1963, when he starred in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” on Broadway – a role he would later reprise on the big screen with Jane Fonda.
Around this time, Redford married Lola Van Wagenen and started a family. His first child, Scott, died from sudden infant death syndrome just a few months after his birth in 1959. Shauna was born in 1960, David in 1962, and Amy in 1970.
As his acting career was taking off, Redford and his family moved to Utah in 1961 where he bought two acres of land for just $500 and built a cabin himself.
“I discovered how important nature was in my life, and I wanted to be where nature was extreme and where I thought it could maybe be everlasting,” he told CNN.
Redford made a name for himself as a leading man in 1969 when he starred opposite Paul Newman – already a major star – in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The Western about a pair of outlaws won four Academy Awards.
Redford said he “will forever be indebted” to Newman, whom he credited with helping him get the role. The two actors had great on-screen chemistry, became lifelong friends and reunited in “The Sting” in 1973, which won the Academy Award for best picture.
Redford starred in a string of hit movies throughout the 1970s: “Jeremiah Johnson”; “The Way We Were,” co-starring Barbra Streisand; “The Great Gatsby”; and with Dustin Hoffman in 1976’s “All The President’s Men,” about the Watergate scandal.
Teaming up with director Sydney Pollack on “Jeremiah Johnson,” Redford fought with the studio to get the film made the way he wanted – a precursor to his career as a director and his support for independent filmmaking.
“It was a battle from the get-go,” Redford told “Inside The Actor’s Studio.” “They (the studio) said … ‘You’ve got $4 million, put it in the bank in Salt Lake City, you can shoot wherever you want, but that’s it. If it goes over, it comes out of your hide.’”
With spare dialogue and stunning scenery, the film tells the story of a Mexican War veteran who has left the battlefield to survive as a trapper in the American West.
It was released more than three years after it was made because, according to Redford, the studio’s sales chief thought the film was “so unusual” that it wouldn’t find an audience.
“Jeremiah Johnson” ended up grossing nearly $45 million. It wasn’t the only time Redford’s passion for the art of filmmaking put him at odds with the studios that funded his work.
“The sad thing you have to work against, as a filmmaker, is held opinions about what works or doesn’t work,” Redford said. “Sports movies don’t work, political movies don’t work, movies about the press don’t work – so I’ve done three of them.”
Redford made his directing debut in 1980 with “Ordinary People,” a drama about an unhappy suburban family which earned the Academy Award for Best Picture and another one for him as best director. He continued starring in hit films such as “The Natural” in 1984, which tapped into his passion for baseball, and 1993’s “An Indecent Proposal,” which paired him with a much younger Demi Moore.
He later directed the 1993 film “A River Runs Through It,” which won three Academy Awards, 1994’s “Quiz Show” and “The Horse Whisperer” in 1998, which he also starred in.
Ruggedly handsome, Redford was often cast as the romantic leading man in films such as “Out of Africa” in 1985, but he wasn’t always comfortable with the label and feared being typecast.
“I didn’t see myself the way others saw me and I was feeling kind of trapped because I couldn’t go outside the box of … good-looking leading man,” he said. “It was very flattering, but it was feeling restrictive … so it took many years to break loose of that.”
Redford’s passion for the environment and independent filmmaking merged when he founded the Sundance Institute in 1981. The nonprofit supports “risk-taking and new voices in American film” as well as theater, and Redford’s Sundance resort in a canyon above Provo, Utah, hosts annual workshops for playwrights and screenwriters.
Each year Redford’s institute holds the Sundance Film Festival in Utah – the largest annual showcase in the United States for independent film. Many young filmmakers got their big breaks at Sundance, including Steven Soderbergh with “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” in 1989, Quentin Tarantino with “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992 and Ryan Coogler with 2013’s “Fruitvale Station.”
Redford’s lifelong impact on the film industry was recognized in 2002 with an honorary Oscar.
In his later years, Redford never lost his passion for storytelling through film and remained an outspoken champion of environmental causes. He frequently demurred when asked about retiring.
“I want to make the most of what I’ve been given,” Redford told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2015. “You keep pushing yourself forward, you try new things and that’s invigorating.”
Here’s a look at the life of award-wining filmmaker, philanthropist and environmentalist Robert Redford.
Birth date: August 18, 1936
Birth place: Santa Monica, California
Birth name: Charles Robert Redford Jr.
Father: Charles Redford Sr., an accountant
Mother: Martha (Hart) Redford
Marriages: Sibylle Szaggars (July 11, 2009-present); Lola Van Wagenen (September 12, 1958-1985, divorced)
Children: with Lola Van Wagenen: Amy, David James, Shauna and Scott
Education: Attended in the mid-to-late 1950s: University of Colorado, Boulder, Pratt Institute of Art, Brooklyn, New York, and American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York
Redford had polio as a child.
After losing interest in baseball at the University of Colorado, he worked in the California oil fields to earn money before moving to Europe to study painting.
Founder of Sundance Village, Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival and the Redford Center.
Redford, a life-long environmentalist, fought to preserve over 1.7 million acres of Utah wilderness from development until it became a protected site by presidential decree in 1996. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is twice the size of Yosemite National Park.
An outdoor enthusiast and athlete, his hobbies include skiing, both water and snow, horseback riding, tennis, football and baseball.
Redford and first wife, Lola, built their Utah home themselves.
Nominated for four Academy Awards and won one. Also received an honorary Oscar.
Nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.
1959 – First Broadway role as one of the college basketball players in “Tall Story.” The film version is released in 1960 with Redford reprising his role.
May 1962 – His first credited movie, “War Hunt,” is released.
1963 – Appears in Neil Simon’s play “Barefoot in the Park.” Reprises his role in the movie in 1967.
1969 – Stars in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
1973 – Stars in the film “The Way We Were.”
1974 – He pays $450,000 for the movie rights to “All the President’s Men” and later produces and stars in the film.
1981 – Wins an Academy Award for Best Director for “Ordinary People.”
1981 – Sundance Institute near Park City, Utah, is founded.
1985 – Stars in the film “Out of Africa.”
2002 – Receives an honorary Academy Award for “Actor, director, producer, creator of Sundance, inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.”
2005 – Kennedy Center honoree.
2010 – Receives the Knight of the Legion of Honor from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
November 22, 2016 – Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama.
2017 – Stars in the film “Our Souls at Night.”
2018 – Stars in the film “The Old Man & the Gun” about the bank robber Forrest Tucker.
October 16, 2020 – Redford’s son, James, passes away from cancer.
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sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:25 pmStop what you’re doing, the Coachella 2026 full lineup just dropped.
On Monday, the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival shared the lineup for next year’s extravaganza and Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G and Anyma are slated to headline. The annual festival is scheduled to return to Indio April 10-12 and 17-19.
The impressive lineup also includes hitmakers XX, Disclosure, Nine Inch Noize, Ethel Cain, Teddy Swims, Katseye, Foster the People, Devo, Sexyy Red, and Central Cee on Friday, with Carpenter headlining.
Bieber will headline Saturday’s show. Festivalgoers can also catch the Strokes, Addison Rae, Sombr, David Byrne, Interpol, Alex G and PinkPantheress and more.
Karol G closes out the festival on Sunday. Also on day three are Young Thug, Kaskade, BIGBANG, Laufey, Iggy Pop, FKA Twigs, Black Flag, The Rapture and other artists.
Karol G, Bieber and Carpenter have all hit the Coachella stage before. In 2024, the “Manchild” singer performed on the main stage and during Weekend Two, when she finished her “Nonsense” outro, she manifested her vision for 2026 and swapped the lyrics to “He’s drinking my bathwater like it’s red wine. Coachella, see you back here when I headline.”
Also of serious note on the lineup is the fine print at the bottom: “The Bunker Debut Of RADIOHEAD KID A MNESIA.” Could this be suggesting that Radiohead, which hasn’t announced any US dates as of late, is going to play their Kid A and Amnesiac albums at the festival?
Tickets for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival are on sale now. General admission starts at $649 for Weekend One and $549 for Weekend Two. VIP tickets are priced $1,299 for Weekend One and $1,199 for Weekend Two.
daily_otter_feed) wrote2025-09-16 11:45 am
Via Elakha Alliance, which writes:
New research alert! Sea otters, it turns out, aren’t fans of farm-fresh oysters in this study - no matter how fresh they are. In fact, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks found zero evidence of otters dining on oysters, even when these bivalves were grown in farms right in their foraging zones.
So what’s the takeaway? Otters are simply being their smart, energy-efficient selves. Diving dozens of feet to access caged oysters takes too much effort compared to other options - though they did go for the more accessible mussel ropes at one mixed farm.
🦪 As Elakha is conducting our own research study with oyster farmers here in Oregon, these findings help us clarify how otter activity can coexist with coastal economies and ecosystems.
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 12:00 pmFor the better part of 20 years, Republican politicians across the nation have taken advantage of whatever privileges their status as state legislators gave them to assure themselves of staying in office perpetually, or at least as long as they wanted.
This has all been done at the expense of Democratic politicians and the minority groups many of them represent in Congress thanks to districts that Republicans have drawn for themselves from Texas to Florida and from West Virginia to the Dakotas.
The GOP operatives never felt the slightest embarrassment or compunction about what they were doing, no matter how many times courts forced them to alter their maps and return to Square One in the gerrymandering wars.
That’s why it’s utterly laughable for figures like Joel Coupal, head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association or the newly elected Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who runs a fundraising operation called “Reform California,” to toss around words like “hypocrite” and “apostate” when California Democrats try for once to turn the tables on them.
This all began when the order came down from Donald Trump in the Oval Office to Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott, who despite his frequent toadying to the president nevertheless brags incessantly about what a political hotshot he is.
So when Trump essentially ordered Abbott early this summer to turn six minority Congressional districts in the mostly minority Houston area into five White Republican districts and just one minority district, it was clearly meant as a tactic to assure continued Trump or Trumpist rule in the House of Representatives in perpetuity.
Never mind that the Constitution very plainly says Congressional districts are to be drawn once every 10 years, just after the Census, and intended to last the full 10 years. Democrats have stood still for this chicanery every time it’s been tried in the past.
That’s likely why the GOP operatives who have pulled these trick plays so often in the past were taken aback when California Gov. Gavin Newsom, plainly running for president in 2028, decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Yes, California has a nonpartisan state elections commission to draw its decennial borders, and that’s how it worked in 2021, the year after the last Census. Newsom realized, though, that anything enacted by a California ballot initiative — such as the non-partisan election commission — can be undone by another initiative.
So he did the unprecedented: He decided to match Texas tit for tat, saying if they take away five Democratic districts in a 2026 election that figures to be extraordinarily tight, we’ll figure out a way to get them back, right here in California.
Hence, California’s Legislature quickly approved a new map with five districts that will likely switch from red to blue, mostly in the eastern and southern parts of the state. This didn’t sit too well with James Gallagher, the minority leader of California’s Assembly.
Gallagher had hoped to pick up one of the unknown number of changed seats due to come up after 2030. But James Gallagher, meet Jeff Stone.
Stone is a former Riverside County supervisor who devised another north-south split for California, this one intended to give the new eastern California state a couple more seats in Congress and two more Republican seats in the Senate. It was essentially the same things Gallagher wants to try now.
There’s no shame on Stone’s part in this attempted manipulation. It didn’t work, just like all the other 40-plus state-split schemes presented over the last half century. Meanwhile, Newsom’s lone-wolf attempt to thwart Trump’s attempt at self-perpetuation is the only significant effort trying to stop the Republicans from cementing themselves into power for years, maybe decades, to come.
It appears to be the sort of tactic frustrated Democrats want their 2028 hopefuls to attempt. So even if Newsom’s effort fails, at least he will have tried, putting himself ahead of rivals like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Breshears. For now, at least, it gives Newsom a leg up on the rest of the Democratic field, although no one knows how long that advantage may last.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
mrissa) wrote2025-09-16 06:53 amKaren Babine, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo. Babine's take on both camping and more generally living as a single woman is particularly interesting because she is very much not solo most of the time in this book--this is a book that is grappling with her roots, her family, and engaging with her current family. It paints a picture of a life that can be satisfying without fitting prior molds--and our demographics are such that there are a lot of tiny details that really resonated with me.
Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind. This is the third YA thriller about Native issues in the US, centering around the same families and clusters of characters. Boulley is writing them to try to be stand-alone but interwoven, and I'd like to see how someone who hadn't read the earlier volumes felt about how well this succeeded. I did read the earlier volumes, and I felt like there was quite a lot of "here's an update on someone you already know" going on here, and like the balance of that with the narrative at hand was a bit off. I also think she's set herself a very hard task, because when the real life issues you're writing about genuinely produce people who behave like cartoon villains, you don't want to sanitize them into something more understandable, and yet then you're stuck with the people who behave like cartoon villains. It's a tough problem. So I still found this worth reading, but I felt like the earlier volumes were stronger in some ways.
A'Lelia Bundles, Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. I picked this up from the "new books" shelf in the library, and I fear it's one of those books where the author had a reasonably good bio of a famous ancestor in her, and she wrote that already (a bio of Madam C.J. Walker) and has gone on to what is clearly a labor of love writing about her famous ancestors but doesn't rise to be nearly as interesting to me as the events and subjects on the periphery of the book. Probably mostly recommended for people with a special interest in this era/location.
Martin Cahill, Audition for the Fox. My copy of this arrived early, but it's out now, I think? Interesting take on gods and their relationship with humanity, a fun fantasy novella.
Emilie A. Caspar, Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience. This is a fascinating book by a neuropsychologist who has not only done the more standard kind of campus studies into obedience and the variables that affect (or, apparently, in many cases do not affect) it but has also done a lot of interviews and various kinds of brain imaging (fMRI and EEG primarily) on groups of people who could reasonably be described as the foot soldiers of genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda. Caspar's willingness to admit which things she does not know is only one of the things I find refreshing about her work. She's also willing and able to engage with these interviewees on the subject of stopping either themselves or others from committing similar acts, what factors might be important there. This is not a book with all the answers but I'm really glad she's out there asking the questions.
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Reread. The curious thing about this reread is that it's so smoothly written, it's such a pleasant and easy read, that it was startling to notice how little momentum this book has. Each chapter is a lovely reading experience if you like that sort of thing! (You've seen the number of 19th century novels I read. Of course I like that sort of thing.) But also each chapter is a conscious decision to have more of it, because there's very little of either plot or character pushing forward in any way.
Brandon Crilly, Castoff. Discussed elsewhere.
Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name. Only a handful of these poems really resonated with me, but the ones that did really resonated with me, which is an interesting experience to have of a poetry collection.
Georges Duby, France in the Middle Ages: 987-1460. This is largely about the evolutions of the concepts and theoretical bases of power in French society in this era, and was really interesting for the things it bothered to examine in that way--where and when and how the Roman Catholic church got involved in various life milestones, for example, generally later than one might think while living in a world so shaped by those processes that they may seem obvious. Worth having. Did not hate Philip Augustus enough but is that even possible.
Xochitl Gonzalez, Anita de Monte Laughs Last. I found this harrowing in places, because I am auntie age, so the story of young women making themselves smaller and less interesting for men has my auntie heart wailing "OH BABY NO DON'T DO IT" without, of course, being able to do one darn thing about it. Do they come through the other side from that behavior: well, what is the title, really, it's not a spoiler to say yes. More concretely: this is about a murdered (fictional) Latina artist in the 1980s and an art history student in the late 1990s putting the pieces together. Most of it is not about the putting the pieces together in any kind of thriller/mystery sense. If you're used to that pacing, this pacing will strike you as very weird. Mostly it's about the shapes of their lives. I liked it even when I was reading it between the cracks between my fingers.
Guy Gavriel Kay, Written on the Dark. I feel like the smaller scale of this bit of fantasized history doesn't serve his type of writing well--there's not the grand sweep, and he's not going to turn into a painter of miniatures at this stage of his career. I also--look, I know he's writing these things as fantasy, so he's allowed to change stuff, I just feel like if a character is still obviously Joan of Arc I'm allowed to disagree with his take on Joan of Arc, which I do, on basically every level. Ah well. If you like Kay books, this sure is one all the same.
T. Kingfisher, Hemlock and Silver. I was mildly disappointed in this one. The mirror magic was creepy, but the romance plot felt pro forma to me, some of the plot beats more obvious than a reinterpreted fairy tale novel would strictly require. Of course she can still write sentences, and this was still an incredibly quick read, it just won't make my Favorite T. Kingfisher Books Top Three.
Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners. Reread. This title could also have matched up with The Book of Love but definitely not, not, not vice versa. This is not a book of love. It's a book of disorientation and weirdness. Which I knew going in, but having been here before doesn't make it less like that.
Alec Nevala-Lee, Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs. Look, I can't explain to you why Alec, who seems like a nice guy, has chosen a career path that could be described as "writing biographies of nerds Marissa would not want to have lunch with." But he does a good job of it, they're interesting books and manage to learn a lot about--even understand--their subjects without falling the least bit in love with their subjects. This one is Luis Alvarez. Did a lot of interesting things! Also I went into this book with the feeling that even an hour in his company would be more than I really wanted, and I did not come out of it with any particle of that opinion altered.
Lyndal Roper, Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War. An account of a really interesting time, illuminating of things that came after, somewhat repetitive.
Vandana Singh, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories. Reread. Yes, the stories here were also satisfyingly where I left them, science fictiony and vivid.
Travis Tomchuk, Transnational Radicals: Italian Anarchists in Canada and the US, 1915-1940. This is actually a book about Italian anarchists in Canada that recognizes that there was a lot of cross-border traffic, so it also looked at those parts of the US that directly affect Canada--Detroit-Windsor, for example. Lots of analysis on Italian immigrants' immigration experiences either as caused by or as causing their radicalism. Interesting stuff but probably not a good choice My First History of Early Twentieth Century Radicalism.
Natalie Wee, Beast at Every Threshold. It is not Wee's fault that I wanted more beasts. Poets are allowed to be metaphorical like that. I did want more beasts, but what is here instead is good being itself anyway.
Fran Wilde, A Catalog of Storms. This was my first reading of this collection but not my first reading of the vast majority of stories within it. This is the relief of a collection by someone whose work I enjoy, knowing that each of the stories will be reliably good and now I have them in one spot, hurrah, glad this is here.
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 11:30 amANTIOCH – Antioch has finally turned on the taps of its long-awaited brackish water desalination plant, which is expected to help the city safeguard its water supply for decades to come.
The $160 million facility, hailed by city leaders as a milestone in California’s water sustainability efforts, will meet up to 40% of Antioch’s water needs.
Residents and businesses use up to 11 million gallons of water daily in the winter and 23 million in the summer. With the plant in service, the city can treat and convert into drinking water about 6 million gallons a day of brackish water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The city has already been pumping as much water as possible from the river; however, because of an increase in saltwater levels over the years, it has been unable to do so during the summer and fall. To fill the gap, Antioch purchases more expensive water from the Contra Costa Water District to fulfill the needs of some of its 110,000 residents.
“This project not only provides critical supplies for Antioch’s health and safety needs during severe drought, but also improves drought supplies for our neighboring communities and members of the Contra Costa Water District,” Mayor Ron Bernal said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday.
He hailed the completed project as the largest infrastructure investment in the city’s history. “This vast undertaking represents nine years and over $100 million of state financing, complete extensive environmental studies, and federal and state permits to protect endangered and threatened species,” Bernal said.
The desalination plant project broke ground in 2022 with Gov. Gavin Newsom in attendance. The governor said the plant was part of his plan to help California overcome worsening droughts and water shortages because of climate change through an array of new desalination plants, reservoirs and recycled water projects.
State officials have estimated California’s water supply could be reduced by up to 10% by 2040 due to hotter and drier weather.
State Water Resources Control Board Chairman E. Joaquin Esquivel said that with drought a constant threat, California cities need to be prepared for the future.
“We have 19th-century laws with 20th-century infrastructure challenges,” Esquivel said. “This is an example of the 21st-century infrastructure that we are going to need to help secure this community’s access to water for decades to come.”
Located south of Highway 4, the desalination facility is within the current water treatment plant area. It includes a 4.3-mile pipeline from the plant to the Delta Diablo Wastewater Treatment plant, where the remaining brine from the desalination – a process of removing minerals and salts from water to produce purified water by pushing water at a high pressure through a reverse osmosis membrane – is sent and discharged to the river.
Among those joining city councilmembers for Monday’s ceremony were State Sen. Tim Grayson; Assemblymember Anamarie Avila Farias; Contra Costa County Supervisor Diane Burgis; and Brentwood Mayor Susannah Meyer.
Grayson also praised city officials for having the foresight to collaborate with local, regional, and state agencies.
“You were able to bring resources, you were able to bring technology, you were able to bring the partnerships together to eventually get something done for Californians, California, and this part of the Bay Area, so thank you very much for your tenacity,” Grayson said.
After being conceived in the 2010s, the desalination plant got a huge boost in 2018 when California water officials awarded the project $10 million from Proposition 1, the state water bond passed in 2014. Other funding included a $60 million low-interest loan from the State Water Resources Control Board’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, $27 million from a state Department of Water Resources settlement agreement regarding water rights and from Antioch’s Water Enterprise Fund.
Bernal said the new plant will benefit Antioch not only as a reliable and affordable water source, but also as an engine for growth.
“It will benefit the city when we attract businesses and industries that depend on an uninterrupted source of water,” he told Bay Area News Group, “especially during severe drought conditions.”
sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 11:00 amThe Trump administration announced Monday it would redirect funding for minority-serving institutions into U.S. charter schools to support school choice.
The Department of Education said following the release of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores last week, which “showed dismal educational outcomes across the nation,” the department is shifting funding to “advance President Trump’s priorities.”
Testing data released last week revealed that, overall, students’ scores were lower in 12th grade math and reading and 8th grade science than the last time students were tested in 2019.
In May, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that the department planned to increase charter school funding by $60 million for fiscal year 2025, raising the program’s total budget to $500 million.
The additional funding announced Monday comes from discretionary grant programs the Trump administration ended funding for last week, including Hispanic-serving institutions (HSI) and other minority-serving institutions, arguing the programs were “racially discriminatory” because they required schools to maintain a percentage of minority students in their total student enrollment. For Hispanic-serving institutions, at least 25% of schools’ student body must be Hispanic students, while at least 40% of predominantly Black institutions’ student body must be Black.
According to California State University, 21 of the university’s 22 campuses meet the criteria to qualify as a Hispanic-serving institution. CSU Chancellor Mildred García said last week the university is “deeply troubled” by the Trump Administration’s decision to end funding for the grant program and the action will have “an immediate impact and irreparable harm to our entire community.”
“Hispanic students account for nearly half of the CSU’s total student population and reflect the extraordinary diversity of the state of California, which makes the CSU truly unique,” García said. “Without this funding, students will lose the critical support they need to succeed in the classroom, complete their degrees on time, and achieve social mobility for themselves and their families. Federal HSI funding is used by the CSU to support all CSU students, not just Hispanic students.”
The Department of Education also announced Monday a one-time investment of $495 million in funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, bringing the total funding for HBCUs to $1.34 billion and for TCCUs to $108 million for fiscal year 2025. The department also said it would invest over $160 million in American history and civics grants.
“The department has carefully scrutinized our federal grants, ensuring that taxpayers are not funding racially discriminatory programs but those programs which promote merit and excellence in education,” McMahon said in a statement Monday. “The Trump Administration will use every available tool to meaningfully advance educational outcomes and ensure every American has the opportunity to succeed in life.”
andrewducker) wrote2025-09-16 12:00 pmsavagelove_feed) wrote2025-09-16 11:00 amA man in a poly triad has a girlfriend. His girlfriend has a boyfriend, and they all live together, share a dog, and plan to have kids. The caller and the other guy will be at a wedding full of normies who don’t know the nature of their relationship. Should he just say they’re a … Read More »
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savagelove_feed) wrote2025-09-16 11:00 amI hate to admit this, but I have a hard time feeling comfortable having sex or even talking to guys unless I’m drunk or high. I’m a trans man. I’m a sexual assault survivor. Admittedly, I’m also a bit insecure about myself. And while I’ve been in therapy for years, I don’t feel I’m making … Read More »
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sjmerc_ca_feed) wrote2025-09-16 10:00 amAcross the world, cities have struggled to figure out how to provide more affordable housing to people in need.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, so-called social housing accounts for 20% of the region’s housing stock. In Auckland, New Zealand, a set of reforms initiated by the national government in 2021 created a building boom that dropped rents by 28%.
Coastal California cities, by contrast, have run a two-pronged strategy for low-income housing over the last several decades — the freeway system and inland counties hours away.
With the California Legislature’s recent passage of Senate Bill 79, a bill that automatically permits dense multifamily housing near high-frequency transit stops, many in the state’s most exclusionary cities have found their eyes filled with tears at the prospect of losing “local control.” (SB 79 now lies on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. He has about a month to sign the bill, which state legislators approved on Friday.)
But California’s century-long policy of handing land use policy off to cities and counties has allowed jobs-rich coastal areas to build gilded walls around themselves with segregationist zoning. The result is mass displacement of all but the wealthiest from coastal metros like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego to inland regions like the San Joaquin Valley, the Inland Empire and, increasingly, out of the state entirely.
Even the most strident neighborhood defenders agree that California is being strangled by a severe housing crisis. According to the Joint Center of Housing Studies at Harvard University, 6 of the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest share of cost-burdened households are in California. About 1 in 3 renters in the Los Angeles metro area spends 50% or more of their post-tax household income on rent. And as of last year, the city of San Francisco had about 1,000 more homeless people than all of Missouri.
How we got to this point is not mysterious, nor is it controversial — at least for those who study the issue. For about 40 years, California has simply not produced enough new housing to accommodate demand.
Further exacerbating this shortage is the fact that the vast majority of California’s new homes are built far away from the coast, even though coastal cities are where the majority of the state’s jobs are located. Land use politics are less fraught in places like San Bernardino or San Joaquin County, where there’s still undeveloped land to sprawl over and where poorer, mostly non-white communities lack the resources to oppose development like their wealthy coastal counterparts.
The result is an equilibrium that serves no one besides wealthy coastal homeowners.
About 11% of San Joaquin County residents and 7.6% of Riverside County residents drive more than 90 minutes each way to get to work. More than just devastating the lives of these commuters — most of whom earn under $49,000 per year and work blue-collar jobs — each of these cars on the freeway is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Also, the displaced newcomers being pushed hours away from their jobs end up competing for scarce housing with inland Californians, making housing more expensive in the regions where there are fewer high-paying jobs.
Bills like SB 79 are needed because a city’s land use policy has the potential to adversely impact the lives of many thousands more people than the ones currently living within its borders. When costs are borne by everyone, then it is only fair that everyone gets a vote.
If policy affects the entire state, then it is the state — not the city — that should have the final say.
California’s housing crisis produces untold human misery and environmental degradation. It also proves that control can no longer be local when the consequences are universal.
Stan Oklobdzija is an assistant professor at UC Riverside’s School of Public Policy, where he researches housing policy. He wrote this column for CalMatters.
azurelunatic) wrote2025-09-16 01:10 amelisem) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
communal_creators2025-09-16 12:36 amsnickfic) wrote2025-09-15 10:05 pm
