Californians Prepare for “Calamity” by Learning Military Tactics and Firing Guns

(p. 8) In the chilly dusk on a recent Saturday, nine people were creeping through the California hills. Their faces were painted in shades of green, yellow, brown and black, so that they blended into their surroundings. Moving uphill through thickets of trees, they tried to be silent, as if not to draw the attention of some unseen enemy. They were conscious of every breath, every dry leaf that crunched underfoot, every snapped twig.

These people were not military personnel. They were just civilians — biotech workers, a masseuse, an entrepreneur — who had decided to spend a weekend preparing themselves for a war, societal collapse or some other calamity.

A booming voice broke the silence: “Camo! Five, four, three, two, one!”

The person giving the order was Jessie Krebs, a wilderness expert who has trained hundreds of U.S. Air Force officers in how to stay alive behind enemy lines through an intensive course called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE.

. . .

Outdoor education programs, survival courses and military simulations have been in high demand as wars abroad intensify and prospective voters in the 2024 presidential election tell pollsters and journalists about their fears of a civil war or even World War III.

. . .

Mr. Yu said his interest in survivalism germinated after reading “Emergency,” a 2009 book by Neil Strauss on his transformation from “helpless urbanite” to independent survivalist. “The coolest thing to do is to develop a skill set like James Bond,” Mr. Yu said. Of late, he said, he had taken up flying lessons, despite a fear of heights; learned to pick locks; and fired guns.

For the full story, see:

Will Higginbotham and Marlena Sloss. “Getting Ready for the Worst. Just in Case.” The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sunday, January 21, 2024): 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 19, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

California Regs Requiring Electric Trucks at Ports, Raise Supply Chain Costs, Fueling Inflation for Consumers

(p. B1) Neri Diaz thought he was ready for a crucial juncture in California’s ambitious plans, closely watched in other states and around the world, to phase out diesel-powered trucks.

His company, Harbor Pride Logistics, acquired 14 electric trucks this year to work alongside 32 diesel vehicles, in anticipation of a rule that says diesel rigs can no longer be added to the list of vehicles approved to move goods in and out of California’s ports. But in August the manufacturer of Mr. Diaz’s electric vehicles, Nikola, took back the trucks as part of a recall, saying it would return them in the first quarter of the new year.

“It’s a brand-new technology, first generation, so I knew things were going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting all my 14 trucks to be taken back,” he said. “It is a big impact on my operations.”

. . .

(p. B5) Large companies, with deep pockets and big facilities, are best positioned to make the green transition. Mike Gallagher, a California-based executive at Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, said the company had a fully electric fleet, comprising some 85 vehicles made by Volvo and BYD, the Chinese automaker, for transporting goods up to 50 miles out of the ports of Southern California. And it has worked with landlords to install scores of chargers at its depots.

“We’re well ahead of the curve,” he said.

But smaller trucking fleets do most of the port runs — accounting for some 70 percent at the Los Angeles port — and they are going to find the transition hard. The California Trucking Association has filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s trucking rules, including the one focused on port trucks, contending that they represent “a vast overreach that threatens the security and predictability of the nation’s goods movement industry.”

Matt Schrap, the chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, another trade group, said the port truck rules lacked exemptions that would help smaller businesses survive the transformation. Getting access to chargers is particularly difficult for smaller fleets, he said: They are expensive, and the truck yard landlords may be reluctant to install them, forcing the operators to rely on a public charging system that is only just getting built.

“The landlord is, like, ‘There’s not a snowball’s chance in Bakersfield that you’re going to tear up my parking lot to put in some heavy-duty charging,’” Mr. Schrap said.

Concern exists beyond the trade groups. Mr. Gallagher, the Maersk executive, said that if the clean truck rules caused serious problems for smaller operators, it could be “a significant disruption to the supply chain.”

. . .

Mr. Diaz, the operator whose Nikola trucks were recalled, said that charging the trucks cost roughly 40 percent less than diesel, and that he was impressed with their performance. Even with the help of state grants, he estimates that the electric trucks cost him as much as 50 percent more than diesel models. During the recall, Nikola has been covering the payments on the loans Mr. Diaz took out to buy the trucks, but he said he was concerned about the truck maker’s financial situation.

. . .

Rudy Diaz, president of Hight Logistics, said the new regulations had pushed up some of his costs as his company brought drivers onto its payroll and reduced its reliance on contract drivers using their own diesel trucks.

“It’s extra headaches, extra costs,” he said. “But consumers are asking for products that are more sustainable, and they’re willing to pay the price.”

For the full story, see:

Peter Eavis and Mark Abramson. “California Is Pushing E.V.s As the Future of Freight.” The New York Times (Saturday, December 30, 2023): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. 29, 2023, and has the title “California Pushes Electric Trucks as the Future of Freight.”)

“Keeper” of Home Where Walt Disney Screened His Films Wants to “Inspire” the “Creative”

(p. M6) Walt Disney’s former Los Angeles home—now for rent asking $40,000 a month—looks like something out of one of his films: Largely covered in vines, the Storybook-style home has a turret, leaded-glass windows and a cobblestone motor court.

Disney built the four-bedroom Los Feliz home in 1932, and lived there with his wife and family for about 20 years before moving to Holmby Hills, according to Disney historian and blogger Todd Regan. The property is now owned by Kazakhstan-born film director Timur Bekmambetov, who bought it in 2011 for $3.7 million, according to public records.

. . .

He is now renting it out, he said, because he wants people to be able to experience staying there.

. . .

There is a screening room in the house where Disney watched his films, Regan said. In the yard sits a cottage-style playhouse, which Disney gave his daughters on Christmas Day in 1937 following the release of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” he said.

. . .

Bekmambetov, who has directed movies including 2004’s “Night Watch” and “Wanted” in 2008, said he has always been a fan of Disney’s work. When the home hit the market in 2011, he couldn’t believe it was tied to the late filmmaker. “I got a notification that there was a house for sale and it had the Walt Disney name,” he said. “I called my assistant and said to her, ‘Please call. I think it’s a mistake.’” But it wasn’t a mistake, and Bekmambetov decided to buy the home sight unseen.

Bekmambetov said he considers himself the home’s “keeper.” The house inspired a graphic novel and movie script he is working on, he said, about fictional Disney characters who never made it to the big screen. He said he hopes to rent the house to someone who is creative and will be inspired by the home, just as he has been.

For the full story, see:

Libertina Brandt. “Walt Disney’s Onetime L.A. Home for Lease.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, June 16, 2023): M6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 12, 2023, and has the title “Walt Disney’s Former L.A. Home Is Now Renting for $40,000 a Month.”)

Octopus Eggs Thrive in Hot Ocean Water of “Octopus Garden”

(p. 14) In 2018, Amanda Kahn, an invertebrate biologist at San Jose State University, joined an ocean expedition to scout the base of Davidson Seamount, an inactive underwater volcano off the coast of central California. She came for the sponges and corals.

But she and her colleagues stumbled across something much more astounding. As their remotely operated vehicle, which was probing the seafloor and streaming video back to their ship, rose from behind a rock, the crew gasped. In shimmering waters, they saw scores of upside-down octopuses nestled in rocky crevices with their arms clutched around their frames. A closer look revealed that they were protecting eggs, similar to the way that birds brood in a nest.

“Sometimes you recognize immediately the magnitude of something special that you’ve found,” Dr. Kahn said. “And I think that was one of those really special moments.”

When James Barry, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, got a glimpse on a later expedition, he instantly wondered why so many octopuses were here. “And so we set about to figure out,” he said.

. . .

The team’s findings, detailed in a new paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, suggest that this hot spot makes the octopuses’ eggs hatch faster, which improves reproductive success.

. . .

“That’s a big deal for these eggs, because in the deep sea, one of the really big challenges is that it’s cold,” Dr. Barry said. Chilly temperatures slow down the metabolism of coldblooded animals, including rates of embryonic growth. For this species of octopus, it could have taken anywhere from five to 10 years for the eggs to fully develop in ambient waters — but in this nursery, the scientists found that they were hatching in less than two years on average.

The earlier the better, the team reasoned, when it comes to reproductive success. Less time spent as an embryo reduces the risks of being eaten by predators, or suffering infections or injuries that lead to death. Because octopuses don’t eat while brooding — and die after reproducing — they also suspect that quicker egg hatchings might make for a higher chance of survival, since the mother is less likely to lose the energy needed to sustain them.

It’s the mothers’ last hurrah, Dr. Kahn said: “They go all out in protecting those eggs.” She added that brooding near a hot spring helps ensure the mothers’ final acts are a success.

The findings make sense to Michael Vecchione, a deep-sea cephalopod biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was not involved in the study. Dr. Vecchione, who had seen the discovery of the garden back in 2018, had also speculated that the octopuses were using the heat to speed up embryo growth. “I’m not surprised that the warm temperature was beneficial to them,” he said. “And apparently, it’s starting to look like it’s a pretty widespread phenomenon, even though nobody had ever seen it until just a few years ago.”

For the full story, see:

Katrina Miller. “Under the Sea, an ‘Octopus Garden’ Thrives in the Shade of a Hot Spring.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 23, 2023, and has the title “Atop an Underwater Hot Spring, an ‘Octopus Garden’ Thrives.” The online version says that the print version appears on p. 12. My national edition of the print version had the article on p. 14.)

California Regulations Raise Costs to Repair Damaged Homes and Mandate Insurance Firms to Charge Below-Cost Rates

(p. B10) Allstate has stopped offering new home-insurance policies in California, saying it has become too expensive to insure new homes in the wildfire-prone state.

. . .

“The cost to insure new home customers in California is far higher than the price they would pay for policies due to wildfires, higher costs for repairing homes, and higher reinsurance premiums,” Allstate said.

It has become increasingly expensive for companies like Allstate and State Farm to insure properties in California. Wildfires in recent years have burned down thousands of homes, driving up costs for insurers who pay for homes to be rebuilt or repaired. High inflation has also made construction more expensive.

. . .

State regulators in recent years have struck down attempts by insurance companies to raise property rates that would offset their inflation costs. The state last year required insurers to drop prices for owners who have fireproofed their buildings. The insurers must set home-insurance rates in California based on their historical loss experience, not future loss projections.

For the full story, see:

Alyssa Lukpat. “Allstate Halts New California Home Policies Over Fire Risk.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 6, 2023): B10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 5, 2023, and has the title “Allstate Stops Selling New Home-Insurance Policies in California, Citing Wildfire Risks.”)

Conservationists Criticize the Woke Who Raise Bees as a Virtue Signal

(p. 1) When the B&B Hotel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, decided to reinvent itself as an eco-friendly destination in 2015, it had to meet more than 150 criteria to earn a coveted Travelife certificate of sustainability. But then it went step further: It hired a beekeeper to install four honey bee hives on the roof.

. . .

The hives are managed by Gorazd Trusnovec, a 50-year-old with a graying goatee who is the founder and sole employee of an enterprise called Najemi Panj, which translates to “rent-a-hive.” For a yearly fee, he will install a honey bee colony on the roof of an office, or in a backyard, and ensure that its bees are healthy and productive. Customers get the honey and the pleasure of doing something that benefits bees and nourishes the environment.

That, at any rate, was Mr. Trusnovec’s original sales pitch. In recent years, he and other beekeepers, as well as a broad variety of leading conservationists, have come to a very different conclusion: The craze for honey bees now presents a genuine ecological challenge. Not just in Slovenia, but around the world.

“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, (p. 4) after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”

. . .

Honey bees, it turns out, are a commercially managed animal — essentially livestock, like cows — and large beekeeping operations are remarkably adept at replacing colonies that die. In the United States, about one million hives are trucked each year to places like California, where honey bees pollinate almonds and other crops, Mr. Black said. It’s a major industry. Revenue from beekeeping will reach $624 billion this year in the United States alone, reports IBISWorld, a market research firm.

While techniques for nurturing hives have improved, honey bees remain vulnerable animals. As of a few years ago, nearly 30 percent of commercial honey bees still did not survive the winter months, says the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s a large number and one that puts a financial strain on commercial beekeepers.

“But that’s an agriculture story, not a conservation story,” Mr. Black said. “There are now more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history.”

Figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations underscore the point. The number of beehives around the world has risen by nearly 26 percent in the last decade, to 102 million from 81 million.

. . .

Recently, the Museum of Modern Art posted an image of four hives on its Instagram account, along with text that read, “We recognize the essential part bees play in our ecosystem and that’s why we are proud to provide a home to all these bees here at the Museum.” In London, the sheer quantity of hives poses a threat to other species of bees, says a report issued in 2020 by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. The city’s financial district is now overrun with what Richard Glassborow, the chair of the London Beekeepers’ Association, calls “trophy bees.”

“We’ve had companies from outside London come with plans to put 20 hives a year on roofs,” he said, “and persuade businesses that this will tick some kind of corporate responsibility box.”

New York City has a similar problem, says Andrew Coté, president of the New York City Beekeepers Association. In February [2023], MoMA asked him to install the hives it recently showed off. He declined.

“The population is already overwhelming the finite floral resources,” he said. “We don’t need more honey bees here.”

. . .

With the number of hives rising, pressure is mounting on less charismatic insects, like moths, wasps and wild bees, which are essential to pollinating wild plants and many crops, and which academic studies have found are in decline. Apparently nobody wants 25,000 moths parked near the C-suites.

Today, hives are so ubiquitous in some places, especially urban areas, that the amount of honey each yields is dropping. Slovenia now produces less honey than it did 15 years ago, (p. 5) according to government figures, even though it has more than doubled the number of hives in the country. That’s because there is not enough nectar to go around, said Matjaz Levicar, a Slovenian beekeeping instructor, and honey bees are consuming it to survive rather than turning it into honey.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “In Slovenia, we need to feed honey bee colonies with sugar most of the year.”

For the full story, see:

David Segal and Ciril Jazbec. “Mind Your Own Bees, but Don’t Buy More.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sunday, August 20, 2023): 1 & 4-5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Aug. 21, 2023, and has the title “The Beekeepers Who Don’t Want You to Buy More Bees.” The sentence about the $624 billion in U.S. revenue from beekeeping appears in the print, but not in the online, version of the article.)

The “Deliciously Guilty Pleasure” and “Disorienting Joy” of California Skiing in August

(p. A20) This weekend, . . . hordes of Californians are smearing pink and yellow zinc oxide on noses, shoving feet into hard plastic ski boots and gliding over to the lifts at Mammoth Mountain for yet another day on the slopes. A reminder: It’s August.

. . .

Unpredictable change is the new status quo.  . . . it can also, in a rare instance like the chance to ski in the dog days of summer, bring a disorienting joy.

. . .

In mid-July [2023], well after all the hot dogs and fireworks, I headed up to the Sierra and ran into so much lingering snow that the road through Yosemite National Park hadn’t yet opened for the season. I took an alternate route, 108 over Sonora Pass, and saw people parking in turnouts, carrying skis up dirt trails through trees, stepping onto sunny snow slopes and linking turns back down to ice chests full of cold drinks before, you know, maybe going for a swim. When I finally got to Kelly’s place, the creek on her high desert property frothed in a fabulous white and clear torrent through sage lands sparkling with superblooming yellow mule’s ear, red paintbrush and white phlox. The big peaks, meanwhile — in the dead heat of a California summer — remained so heavily blanketed in snow that I felt I was seeing them the way Indigenous people must have during the Little Ice Age, 500 years ago.

The premise of California’s secular faith in nature is that water plus sunshine equals enlightenment. In high school I was transfixed by a description on the jacket of Bank Wright’s classic “Surfing California” of “skiing Mount Baldy in the morning and surfing Hermosa Beach in the afternoon.” That struck the teenage me as the absolute perfect way of snatching healthy peace and giddy fun from the predictable maw of adult misery.

. . .

. . . when I drove to Mammoth, put on my favorite cowboy hat against the sun and sipped iced coffee while watching tiny black figures ski down blinding white slopes, the experience was perhaps best likened to the queasy adrenalized thrill of an oncoming manic episode after a long and dark depression — worrisome, yes, bound for nowhere good but, as long as we’re just talking here and now, a deliciously guilty pleasure.

For the full commentary, see:

Daniel Duane. “The Upside of Climate Chaos? Skiing in August.” The New York Times (Monday, August 7, 2023): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 6, 2023, and has the title “It’s August. Californians Are Still Skiing. Don’t Ask.”)

Average Wages in Boom Towns Would Rise “Astounding” $8,775 If Zoning Laws Eased

(p. A13) Though some might expect areas populated by conservatives to be the most exclusionary, it is areas where highly educated liberals live that engage in the worst forms of economically exclusionary housing policy. Researchers writing in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2018 found that highly educated Americans have comparatively tolerant racial attitudes but hold “negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Americans with different levels of education all have biases, they wrote, but “the targets of prejudice are different.”

Exclusionary housing practices are a linchpin in the architecture of educational inequality in America. Because 73% of American school children attend neighborhood public schools, where you live typically determines the quality of schooling. Most people who are concerned about improving education naturally focus attention on what school boards and state education officials do, but it’s at least as important to focus on what the local and state officials running housing policy are up to.

For sixty years, researchers have found that the economic segregation of students. which is driven by housing policy, shapes educational opportunity even more powerfully than per pupil spending. In Montgomery County Maryland, for example, county officials pursued two strategies for raising the achievement of low-income students. In one program, starting in 2000, the school board spent $2,000 extra per pupil in high-poverty schools. In another, begun decades earlier, the county council enacted an “inclusionary zoning” law that to this day requires builders to set aside a portion of new developments for low-income families. Over time, as Heather Schwartz of RAND found in a 2010 study, what the housing authority did for students cut the math achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students in half, while the school board’s program had much less impact.

Zoning-induced housing costs also prevent workers from moving to places where they can make the highest wages, which is typically in coastal cities. Research shows that this barrier to mobility gravely damages American economic productivity, to say nothing of the aspirations of individuals and families. A 2018 study by Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, for example, found that “restrictive residential land-use regulation” had a price tag of “at least 2% of national output,” or about $400 billion. A 2019 study by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, found that if three high-productivity cities—New York, San Jose and San Francisco—relaxed restrictions on housing supply, more workers could move to them, and average wages nationally would rise an astounding $8,775.

When people do move to higher-wage regions, exclusionary zoning laws often force them to live in the far reaches of metropolitan areas. This means longer commutes, which are associated with higher blood pressure and divorce rates, and more miles on the road, which is bad for the environment.

For the full essay, see:

Richard D. Kahlenberg. “Only Zoning Reform Can Solve America’s Housing Crisis.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 24, 2023): A13.

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date June 22, 2023, and has the same title as the print version. The sentences in the penultimate paragraph quoted above (mentioning 2018 and 2019 papers) appear in the online, but not in the print, version of the essay.)

The essay quoted above is adapted from the book:

Kahlenberg, Richard D. Excluded: How Snob Zoning, Nimbyism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t. New York: PublicAffairs, 2023.

California Democratic Leaders Are “Shook” that Voters in Their “Liberal Bastion” Prefer Merit Instead of Affirmative Action

(p. 1) The 2020 campaign to restore race-conscious affirmative action in California was close to gospel within the Democratic Party. It drew support from the governor, senators, state legislative leaders and a who’s who of business, nonprofit and labor elites, Black, Latino, white and Asian.

The Golden State Warriors, San Francisco Giants and 49ers and Oakland Athletics urged voters to support the referendum, Proposition 16, and remove “systemic barriers.” A commercial noted that Kamala Harris, then a U.S. senator, had endorsed the campaign, and the ad also suggested that to oppose it was to side with white supremacy. Supporters raised many millions of dollars for the referendum and outspent opponents by 19 to 1.

“Vote for racial justice!” urged the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

None of these efforts persuaded Jimmie Romero, a 63-year-old barber who grew up in the working-class Latino neighborhood of Wilmington in Los Angeles. Homelessness, illegal dumping, spiraling rents: He sat in his shop and listed so many problems.

Affirmative action was not one of those.

“I was upset that they tried to push that,” Mr. Romero recalled in a recent interview. “It was not what matters.”

Mr. Romero was one of millions of California voters, including about half who are Hispanic and a majority who are Asian American, who voted against Proposition 16, which would have restored race-conscious admissions at public universities, and in government hiring and contracting.

The breadth of that rejection shook supporters. California is a liberal bastion and one of the most diverse states in the country.

. . .

(p. 12) Valerie Contreras, a crane operator, is a proud union member and civic leader in Wilmington, where half the voters were against the referendum. She had little use for the affirmative action campaign.

“It was ridiculous all the racially loaded terms Democrats used,” she said. “It was a distraction from the issues that affect our lives.”

Asian voters spoke of visceral unease. South and East Asians make up just 15 percent of the state population, and 35 percent of the undergraduates in the University of California system.

Affirmative action, to their view, upends traditional measures of merit — grades, test scores and extracurricular activities — and threatens to reduce their numbers.

Sunjay Muralitharan is a voluble freshman and a leader of the Democratic Party chapter at the University of California, San Diego. A Bernie Sanders supporter, he favors universal basic income, a higher minimum wage and national health care.

In 2020, as a 16-year-old, he joined the campaign against race-conscious affirmative action in California. Afterward, he and friends applied to elite private universities outside California and were often surprised by the rejections, reaffirming his view that Asian students need higher grades and scores to gain admission.

“There were lots of students of Indian and Chinese descent who had to settle for schools not of their caliber,” said Mr. Muralitharan, who grew up in Fremont, a predominantly Asian middle-class suburb of San Jose.

. . .

Kevin Liao, a consultant and former top Democratic Party aide, . . . was not surprised, . . ., that many Asian Americans balked. “The notion that you would look at anything other than pure academic performance is seen by immigrants as antithetical to American values,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Michael Powell and Ilana Marcus. “The Affirmative Action Vote That Divided California Democrats.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 11, 2023): 1 & 12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 5, 2023, and has the title “The Failed Affirmative Action Campaign That Shook Democrats.” The online version says that the print version had the title “California Vote Exposed a Divide Amid Democrats” but my national print version had the title “The Affirmative Action Vote That Divided California Democrats.”)

Even Environmentalists Face Trade-Offs: Plans to Refill the Salton Sea May Hasten an Overdue Large Earthquake

(p. A1) It has been about three centuries since the last great earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault, the most treacherous seismic hazard in California. For decades researchers have puzzled over why it has been so long. The average interval of large earthquakes along that portion of the fault has been 180 years over the past 1,000 years.

While seismologists agree that Southern California is due for the Big One, a group of researchers published a paper on Wednesday [June 7, 2023] in the journal Nature that offers a reason for the period of seismic silence along the southern San Andreas, the tension-wracked meeting point of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates.

. . .

Mr. Hill and his co-authors found that major earthquakes along the southern San Andreas fault tended to happen when a large body of water, Lake Cahuilla, was filling or was full with water from the Colorado River in what are now the Coachella and Imperial valleys.

The lake has drained over the last three centuries and all that remains is the vestigial Salton Sea.

. . .

The research published in Nature, which builds on a paper on which Dr. Philibosian was a writer in 2011, raises questions about plans to rehabilitate parts of the Salton Sea, . . . .  . . .  As the sea dries out, toxic dust is left behind and blown into the air, posing a hazard for nearby residents.

. . .

Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.Impounding more water in the Salton Sea could tamp down the dust.  . . .  But a major change in the water level could also trigger seismic activity, according to Dr. Philibosian.

For the full story, see:

Thomas Fuller. “Scientists Offer Reason for a Sleepy San Andreas Fault.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, June 11, 2023): A20.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 7, 2023, and has the title “The San Andreas Fault Is Sleepy Near Los Angeles. Researchers Have an Idea Why.”)

The Nature article published online on June 7 and mentioned above is:

Hill, Ryley G., Matthew Weingarten, Thomas K. Rockwell, and Yuri Fialko. “Major Southern San Andreas Earthquakes Modulated by Lake-Filling Events.” Nature (2023) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06058-9.

Musk on San Francisco: “Even if Attackers Are Caught, They Are Often Released Immediately”

(p. A3) A suspect was arrested in connection with the fatal stabbing in San Francisco of Cash App founder Bob Lee, police said, more than a week after the tech executive’s death shocked Silicon Valley.

Nima Momeni, 38, was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning and booked on a murder charge, said Bill Scott, the San Francisco police chief.

Mr. Lee, 43, was fatally stabbed in the early morning hours of April 4 [2023]. The suspect and the victim knew each other, said Chief Scott. He declined to elaborate on the motive for the killing.

. . .

Some tech-industry executives slammed San Francisco over crime after Mr. Lee’s murder. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted, “Violent crime in SF is horrific and even if attackers are caught, they are often released immediately.”

For the full story, see:

Alyssa Lukpat and Zusha Elinson. “Man Arrested in Killing of Cash App Founder.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, April 14, 2023): A3.

[Note: ellipsis and bracketed year added.]

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 13, 2023, and has the title “Suspect Arrested in Fatal Stabbing of Cash App Founder Bob Lee.”)