Particularly starting when the pandemic hit, the governor used to favor (very) lengthy news conferences in which he reeled off facts and figures. He still does some of that during the budget-making season (first half of the year). But now, in the age of TikTok, he likes to release short little videos on different topics.
Anyway, you can see what was released, along with other topical items, at:
Lane Closures on Wilshire Blvd Between Westwood and Glendon Summary Frontier Kemper Tutor Perini Joint Venture (FKTP) and our subcontractors will be conducting Cone Penetration Tests (CPT) and road restoration on Wilshire Blvd. This work is being conducted at the request of the Metro Transportation Authority for the Purple Line Extension 3 project. Construction Period: October 2nd to October 23rd (Work the week of October 7th has been postponed in order to collect approval for traffic control from LADOT) Work Hours: 9:00 AM – 3:30 PM Traffic Control:
Noteworthy:
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The legislature held up $25 million from the UC budget pending a report on how UC would deal with campus protests. That report was due around now. So, where is it? Just wondering...
The NY Times carries an article focusing on CalTech's advertising of online programs (for money) that aren't in fact produced by CalTech.* But the same issue was also spotlighted by the state auditor in a report on UC:
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From a June 6, 2024 analysis by the state auditor: Online courses and programs have become increasingly common in higher education. Many colleges work with third-party vendors known as online program managers (OPMs), which assist in the development and implementation of online programs. OPMs generally provide instruction and support services, such as marketing, recruiting, course development, and technology-related support. In this audit, we examined the University of California’s (UC) use of OPMs at five campuses—University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley); University of California, Davis (UC Davis); University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego); and University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara)—and drew the following conclusions:
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UC Uses OPMs to Teach Students in Some Nondegree Programs but Is Not Always Transparent About Doing So
We identified 51 UC contracts with OPMs that were in effect as of January 1, 2023, none of which involved undergraduate education. Of those contracts, 30 were with the five campuses we selected for further review, and 10 of those 30 related to graduate education. However, these 10 contracts involved support services rather than instruction. Of the 30 contracts we reviewed, 15 related to continuing education, which UC provides through extension units that are associated with campuses but that operate independently. Under the terms of these 15 contracts, OPMs were responsible for providing instruction. However, at the five UC campuses we selected to review, we found that the campuses provided potential students with incomplete or misleading information about the OPMs’ involvement in certain extension unit programs. Further, the recruitment materials for one or more programs at each campus may have misled potential students about the industry value of some UC cobranded programs offered in conjunction with OPMs...
Full report at https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2023-106/.
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*https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/us/caltech-simplilearn-class-students.html.
Unfortunately, the book format that we used up through the first quarter of 2024 is no longer available. However, as we did in the second quarter, we still provide pdf files by date range that can be read on screen or downloaded.
The third quarter 2024 files are available at:
We like to take note of donations to the university that don't involve bricks and mortar.
From ABC-7: A billionaire Japanese businessman has donated $31 million to the UCLA College Division of Humanities, making it the largest gift in the program's history. The donation from Tadashi Yanai will support the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, which was created at UCLA - in partnership with Tokyo's Waseda University -- in 2014 thanks to a $2.5 million donation from the businessman. Yanai in 2020 donated $25 million to the initiative. The donation will support the initiative to promote the study of Japanese literature, language and culture.
Yanai, considered one of the richest -- if not the richest -- people in Japan, is the founder and CEO of Fast Retailing, the parent company of the Uniqlo clothing brand...
Full story at https://abc7.com/post/japanese-billionaire-tadashi-yanai-founder-uniqlo-donates-31-million-ucla/15388642/.
There is no recession projected for California or the US:
...(The) employment picture leads to a relatively weak California forecast for 2024 and a slow return to the national unemployment rate. Much of the weakness should resolve by the end of 2025 and ought to lead to higher growth rates through the rest of the three-year forecast, though labor force constraints could be exacerbated by more restrictive immigration policies.
The housing market in California may well be on the cusp of a trend toward normalization. Lower mortgage rates and the passage of time should begin to free up the existing single-family home market. The latest data, from August 2024, reflect a market that is still at depression levels. However, those data are derived from home sales that have been under contract for one or more months. It is likely that November and December 2024 home sales will reflect the new lower mortgage rates.
The California economy is expected to grow faster than the national economy in 2025 and 2026, but not by much. The risks to the forecast are political and geopolitical, and, on the downside, the interest rates could potentially still disrupt the current expansion and, on the upside, international immigration and accelerated onshoring of technical manufacturing could increase growth...
The fact that there has been no recession suggests that the current state budget semi-crisis is more a matter of prior exuberance by the legislature than a dip in economic activity. If indeed there is a pickup over the next two years, the process of adjustment can more easily occur with some benefits to the UC budget.
You can see the full presentation of the forecast and the climate material at the link below:
The Reversion Publishing Company is back with a second offer.* I don't really know much about pharmacology but they believe in me. (I do take my meds, so maybe that counts.) On the other hand, they want "399 USD" for my "eminent manuscript." So I think the eminent is not imminent.
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*For the first offer, see: https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/09/revert.html.
From Bakersfield.com: A new law directs the University of California to set up a new medical school branch in Kern County, thanks to a bill authored by Assemblywoman Dr. Jasmeet Bains, D-Delano. Assembly Bill 2357, also known as the "Grow Our Own" bill, was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom Sunday, creating a new endowment fund to finance the future school and its operations.
"This is dream that’s been a long time coming for Kern County," Bains told The Californian. "This is an opportunity for our kids to uplift themselves and truly be the leaders in the medical world that the community needs them to be."
The law establishes the University of California Kern County Medical Education Endowment Fund within the State Treasury to "support annual operating costs for the development, operation and maintenance of a branch campus of an existing University of California School of Medicine Kern County." Money in the fund — which can also accept public and private donations — will be invested with the goal of achieving a sufficient balance to support the school...
The bill can be found at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2357/id/2925427. A target of half a billion dollars is set for the fund.
From Sportico:
In a sign that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a case that has nothing to do with sports could greatly impact the future of college athletics, Dartmouth College on Tuesday answered a complaint for an unfair labor practice charge by insisting its men’s basketball players are relying on “an impermissible attempt to create new law that is not entitled to deference and will not withstand judicial scrutiny.”
In a 10-page brief filed by attorneys at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Morgan, Brown & Joy, Dartmouth notably cited the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. That case concerned regulatory fees imposed by a federal agency for the collection of conservation data by herring fishing companies. The Court held that courts may not defer to an agency interpretation merely because the statute is ambiguous.
Loper Bright overruled the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling in Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that courts were obligated to defer to agency interpretation when a statute was ambiguous and when the accompanying agency interpretation was reasonable or permissible. Loper Bright effectively means agencies are owed less deference from federal judges in interpreting statutes. Dartmouth appears to be banking on that point as it mounts a legal challenge over a statutory definition of employment...
Full story at https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2024/dartmouth-college-nlrb-answer-complaint-1234798663/.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/08/players-as-employees-part-4.html.
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2024 9:31 AM
Subject: Family Member Eligibility Verification – Multi-Factor Authentication to be Enabled on UnifyHR Portal as of 10-01-2024
Dear Colleagues:
Please distribute this notice to Staff and Faculty in your organization.
Re: Family Member Eligibility Verification – Multi-Factor Authentication to be Enabled on UnifyHR Portal as of 10-01-2024
On Tuesday, October 1, 2024, UnifyHR will enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for employees and retirees logging into their portal to complete Family Member Eligibility Verification (FMEV). MFA adds an extra layer of security by verifying a user’s identity before access is granted. Below are the steps that will be required for new and existing users:
New Users: After setting up their account, new users will be asked to authenticate. A code will be sent to their email address, and they will need to enter their username, password, and 8-digit code to log into the portal.
Existing Users: Upon logging in, existing users will be asked to authenticate. A code will be sent to their email address on file, and they will need to enter their username, password, and 8-digit code to log into the portal.
Employees and retirees who experience issues logging in may contact UnifyHR for assistance at 1-844-718-3970.
Imagine a great power outage (or maybe World War III) that blows out the internet and most of the history of the 21st century to date. Or maybe just imagine a lawsuit that has the same effect.
From Wired, Kate Knibbs:
If you step into the headquarters of the Internet Archive on a Friday after lunch, when it offers public tours, chances are you’ll be greeted by its founder and merriest cheerleader, Brewster Kahle.
You cannot miss the building; it looks like it was designed for some sort of Grecian-themed Las Vegas attraction and plopped down at random in San Francisco’s foggy, mellow Richmond district. Once you pass the entrance’s white Corinthian columns, Kahle will show you the vintage Prince of Persia arcade game and a gramophone that can play century-old phonograph cylinders on display in the foyer. He’ll lead you into the great room, filled with rows of wooden pews sloping toward a pulpit. Baroque ceiling moldings frame a grand stained glass dome. Before it was the Archive’s headquarters, the building housed a Christian Science church.
I made this pilgrimage on a breezy afternoon last May. Along with around a dozen other visitors, I followed Kahle, 63, clad in a rumpled orange button-down and round wire-rimmed glasses, as he showed us his life’s work. When the afternoon light hits the great hall’s dome, it gives everyone a halo. Especially Kahle, whose silver curls catch the sun and who preaches his gospel with an amiable evangelism, speaking with his hands and laughing easily. “I think people are feeling run over by technology these days,” Kahle says. “We need to rehumanize it.”
In the great room, where the tour ends, hundreds of colorful, handmade clay statues line the walls. They represent the Internet Archive’s employees, Kahle’s quirky way of immortalizing his circle. They are beautiful and weird, but they’re not the grand finale. Against the back wall, where one might find confessionals in a different kind of church, there’s a tower of humming black servers. These servers hold around 10 percent of the Internet Archive’s vast digital holdings, which includes 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, and 15 million audio recordings, among other artifacts. Tiny lights on each server blink on and off each time someone opens an old webpage or checks out a book or otherwise uses the Archive’s services. The constant, arrhythmic flickers make for a hypnotic light show. Nobody looks more delighted about this display than Kahle.
It is no exaggeration to say that digital archiving as we know it would not exist without the Internet Archive—and that, as the world’s knowledge repositories increasingly go online, archiving as we know it would not be as functional. Its most famous project, the Wayback Machine, is a repository of web pages that functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. Zoomed out, the Internet Archive is one of the most important historical-preservation organizations in the world. The Wayback Machine has assumed a default position as a safety valve against digital oblivion. The rhapsodic regard the Internet Archive inspires is earned—without it, the world would lose its best public resource on internet history.
Its employees are some of its most devoted congregants. “It is the best of the old internet, and it's the best of old San Francisco, and neither one of those things really exist in large measures anymore,” says the Internet Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, another longtime staffer, who loves cycling and favors black nail polish. “It's a window into the late-’90s web ethos and late-’90s San Francisco culture—the crunchy side, before it got all tech bro. It's utopian, it's idealistic.”
But the Internet Archive also has its foes. Since 2020, it’s been mired in legal battles. In Hachette v. Internet Archive, book publishers complained that the nonprofit infringed on copyright by loaning out digitized versions of physical books. In UMG Recordings v. Internet Archive, music labels have alleged that the Internet Archive infringed on copyright by digitizing recordings.
In both cases, the Internet Archive has mounted “fair use” defenses, arguing that it is permitted to use copyrighted materials as a noncommercial entity creating archival materials. In both cases, the plaintiffs characterized it as a hub for piracy. In 2023, it lost Hachette. This month, it lost an appeal in the case. The Archive could appeal once more, to the Supreme Court of the United States, but has no immediate plans to do so. (“We have not decided,” Kahle told me the day after the decision.)
A judge rebuffed an attempt to dismiss the music labels’ case earlier this year. Kahle says he’s thinking about settling, if that’s even an option.
The combined weight of these legal cases threatens to crush the Internet Archive. The UMG case could prove existential, with potential fines running into the hundreds of millions. The internet has entrusted its collective memory to this one idiosyncratic institution. It now faces the prospect of losing it all.
Kahle has been obsessed with creating a digital library since he was young, a calling that spurred him to study artificial intelligence at MIT. “I wanted to build the library of everything, and we needed computers that were big enough to be able to deal with it,” he says.
Full story at https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-memory-wayback-machine-lawsuits/.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2024/09/adverse-internet-archive-appellate.html.
