All posts tagged: Californias

This long beach startup powers California’s industries using off-grid power

This long beach startup powers California’s industries using off-grid power

Published by Sam Flores

Many companies in California struggle to get enough electricity to power their growing businesses. One Long Beach startup just raised $26 million for what it says is a quick fix for that problem. There are limits on how much power each company can draw from the public power grid so fast-growing industries can’t just crank up their consumption whenever they want. For uninterrupted supply, they sometimes have to wait for local utilities to build capacity, which can take years. Critical Loop — an energy tech company based in an office overlooking the Long Beach Airport — has already landed major clients and investors with its power management controller. It helps companies get more power when they need it and save money by seamlessly switching between the public grid, batteries and their on-site solar panels and generators. The company is thriving in California because there is so much unmet need for power, Critical Loop Chief Executive Bala Ramamurthy told The Times. “The amount of power-hungry industries here in L.A., especially across ports, logistics and manufacturing, is …

California’s Creative Job Losses Aren’t AI Casualties, Report Finds

California’s Creative Job Losses Aren’t AI Casualties, Report Finds

Published by Daniella Wilson

Industry insiders know the story all too well. Over the last few years, as Hollywood restructured to meet the demand for streaming entertainment and as major businesses saw fit to merge, the entertainment industry whittled down budgets, shed jobs and in some cases outsourced work overseas. This painful moment of contraction happened to coincide with leaps forward in generative AI like the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the same year that Netflix, and the rest of Hollywood, began shifting their streaming models to focus on profitability. But don’t blame generative AI for the devastating recent shrinkage in California’s creative workforce, says the latest report from the L.A.-based Otis College of Art and Design, which produces research annually encompassing the state’s film, fashion, gaming, media, advertising, arts and architecture industries. “The pattern of job loss in terms of the types of jobs that are being lost and when they’re being lost does not support the fact that there’s been this displacement of workers by AI,” says the co-author of this year’s research Patrick Adler, a founding …

California’s High Desert Is Rich With Beauty. An Art Fair Ups the Ante

California’s High Desert Is Rich With Beauty. An Art Fair Ups the Ante

Published by José Betancourt

If you got the uncanny feeling, while visiting the High Desert Art Fair (HDAF) last weekend, that you were on a movie set, that’s because, in a way, you were. The event took place in California’s High Desert, at the Pioneertown Motel, built in 1946 by Gene Autry and Roy Rogers to simulate a Western town on screen. It’s located a couple of hours’ drive (if you time it right) from Los Angeles; about an hour from Palm Springs, with its thriving artistic and design communities; and 30 minutes from the positively magical Joshua Tree National Park. HDAF, which hosted 20 galleries, nonprofits, studios, and publishers, is in its fifth year, and its second at the Pioneertown Motel (it previously occupied assorted Airbnbs).  Related Articles Also a bit unreal to me was how such a successful art fair, with plentiful visitors streaming through all day Saturday, could be going on in such an out-of-the-way place, but it’s not as far out of the way as you might think.  HDAF, which ran March 28-29, is the …

Newsom signs bill renaming California’s César Chávez Day 

Newsom signs bill renaming California’s César Chávez Day 

Published by Sam Flores

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill to rename the state’s holiday honoring disgraced civil rights leader César Chávez Day to “Farmworkers Day” on Thursday.  Several states have taken similar steps to remove Chávez’s name from official charters and celebrations following accusations that the late union leader sexually abused young girls.  Two women accused… Source link

Record heat, melting snow: What does it mean for California’s reservoirs

Record heat, melting snow: What does it mean for California’s reservoirs

Published by Sam Flores

A record-breaking heat wave is scalding California, with major consequences for the state’s most important reservoir: its snowpack. Providing about a third of the state’s water supply, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is a vital source of spring and summer runoff that refills reservoirs when the state needs the water most. But a warm wet storm followed February’s snow, and now, March temperatures are shattering records — prompting warnings of rapid snowmelt and swift rivers. Historically, the snowpack is at its deepest in April. But climate change is shifting runoff earlier, leaving less water trickling down the mountains in warmer months for homes, farms, fish, hydropower and forests. “In an ideal world, you’d have your reservoir full right now, and this additional huge snowpack reservoir that we know will help replenish and provide more water supply,” said Levi Johnson, operations manager for the Central Valley Project, the massive federal water system that funnels Northern California river water to the Central Valley and parts of the Bay Area. This year, he said, “we’re not going to have …

California’s Gov. Newsom supports move to rename César Chavez Day over alleged sexual abuse

California’s Gov. Newsom supports move to rename César Chavez Day over alleged sexual abuse

Published by Sam Flores

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he supports a proposal to rename César Chavez Day as Farmworkers Day following stunning allegations of abuse against the revered labor leader. Political leaders in states and cities are considering similar moves after the allegations became public, accusing Chavez of sexually abusing girls and the co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America union, Dolores Huerta, decades ago. There also have been calls to alter memorials honoring the man who in the 1960s helped secure better wages and working conditions for farmworkers and had been admired by many Democratic leaders. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office said Thursday that he won’t issue a proclamation honoring César Chavez Day this year while Denver officials plan to rename their annual celebration. Events in Texas and in his home state of Arizona have been canceled at the request of the César Chavez Foundation. In 2000, California became the first state to designate Chavez’s birthday as a holiday. Schools were required to teach students about his involvement in the labor movement …

Gambling law expert explains California’s crackdown on ‘complicated’ blackjack-style games in cardrooms

Gambling law expert explains California’s crackdown on ‘complicated’ blackjack-style games in cardrooms

Published by skeptic

“The deal must rotate.” That deceptively simple rule lies at the center of California’s gambling laws, according to top gaming law scholar I. Nelson Rose. But enforcing it has proved far more complicated. Rose, one of the world’s leading experts on gambling and gaming law, has spent years examining how cardrooms design games that resemble blackjack while attempting to stay within California’s legal framework. At one point, he said, he was even brought in to settle a dispute over a game’s legality. “I was once hired by both the DA and a cardclub to evaluate a game,” Rose told ReadWrite. “In fact, I concluded it was too much like blackjack to be offered in California cardclubs.” That long-running legal tension is now coming to a head. California’s newly finalized gaming regulations will reshape how cardrooms operate beginning April 1, restricting blackjack-style games and tightening rules on how player-banked tables function. A centuries-old definition of blackjack at the center of California’s cardroom dispute The regulatory debate traces back to a core principle embedded in California gambling …

How the spike in gas prices is jolting California’s giant economy

How the spike in gas prices is jolting California’s giant economy

Published by Sam Flores

With crude oil topping $100 a barrel, and the average price of gas in the state approaching $5.50 a gallon, every touch of the nozzle is painful for California drivers. Now, with the Iran war nearing its third week, the soaring costs of energy are rippling through the world’s fourth-largest economy. While economists say it‘s too early to gauge the long-term impacts on the state, one thing is clear: The higher cost to fill gas tanks is eating into Californians’ disposable incomes — what’s spent to buy food and other necessities, or to go out and have fun — while reducing the income of businesses, also facing higher fuel costs. “Inflation and affordability have been a big concern for the American public, and the longer this goes on, the greater risk there is of increasing overall inflation,” said Trevor Higgins, senior vice president for energy and the environment at the Center for American Progress. The group released a report this week documenting the inflationary impacts of the war and past conflicts. The price of a …

This O.C. city has California’s richest real estate. Why it beat out Silicon Valley gold

This O.C. city has California’s richest real estate. Why it beat out Silicon Valley gold

Published by Sam Flores

It’s hundreds of miles from the AI boom and tech billionaire class of Silicon Valley. It maintains an image, at least in some minds, as a beachside mecca for old money, big yachts and conspicuous consumption. And now, a new Times analysis of the highest home values in California shows Newport Beach perched at the top. Among California’s most upscale neighborhoods, a subtle reshuffling has taken place in recent decades, with the highest home values migrating from Northern California to Southern California. A Times analysis for 2026 shows three of the top 10 ZIP Codes for highest home value were on Newport Beach. Only one other community showed up twice on the list: Los Altos in Silicon Valley. Attendees toured the showcased pleasure yacht Aviator, with its opulent salon, during the Newport Beach Wooden Boat Festival. (Susan Hoffman) Shift from north to south Property values are just one way of assessing wealth and do not take into account such markers as income and tax base. But they do offer a window into the demographic patterns …

California’s Deadliest Avalanche Turned on One Choice

California’s Deadliest Avalanche Turned on One Choice

Published by José Betancourt

On the morning of the deadliest avalanche in California’s modern history, Cody Townsend was skiing above the west shore of Lake Tahoe. People like him, who live for untracked expanses of wilderness snow, had found little to celebrate this season. Across much of the American West, the temperatures had been high, and the hills bare and brown. According to the Central Sierra Snow Lab, operating from a cabin nearby, accumulation had been running seven feet below normal. But now snow was dumping. Dry, light flakes swirled around him, and with every turn, Townsend disappeared into great clouds of powder. It was the storm of the year in the Sierras, he would write that day. Yet something felt off. The wind was picking up. The temperature seemed odd. Townsend is a professional backcountry skier who learned the sport around Tahoe, and “it was just the consistency of the snowfall, the way that the flakes were coming down, the winds that were coming through, that had just something different, something I wasn’t used to,” he told me. …