Tootfinder

Billionaire-backed Building A Better California reserves $87M in TV ad time to oppose California's proposed one-time wealth tax; Sergey Brin put $82M into BABC (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/1…

Billionaires Prepare $87 Million Ad Campaign to Block California Wealth Tax
A coalition backed by the Google co-founder Sergey Brin and wealthy tech investors is trying to neutralize a proposed one-time tax on the state’s richest residents.

Sources: Paramount reps are expected to meet Monday with the California AG's office to discuss a possible settlement of the antitrust suit blocking the WBD deal (Gene Maddaus/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/paramount-me…

Paramount and California A.G. Expected to Begin Settlement Talks Monday
Paramount and the California A.G. officials are set to meet Monday for settlement discussions on the lawsuit blocking the Warner Bros. Discovery sale.

A bizarre view from the usually sensible British newspaper Guardian regarding Harry and Megan retreating from Montecito California.
Most local's reactions here are
"Good Riddance"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/a

We’ll never be royals: the California town where Prince Harry and Meghan lived says goodbye
As the couple plans their return to the UK, Montecito’s whirlwind stint on the global stage may be coming to an end

Rookie WR Camden Brown has been a standout during Cowboys' Southern California training camp https://www.foxsports.com/articles/nfl/rookie-wr-camden-brown-has-been-a-standout-during-cowboys-southern-california-t…

A fun and useful shell trick: you can, effectively, pipe things from a remote computer into your local clipboard.
Context: you're ssh'ed into a remote computer. Locally, you could pipe stuff to xclip or wl-copy or pbcopy to put it in your OS clipboard -- but that won't work in ssh.
If your terminal supports OSC 52 (it probably does), here's a way to get that to work over ssh or mosh:
cat - | base64 -w0 | { printf '\e]52;c;' ; cat - ; printf '\a&…

Query or Change Clipboard Data (OSC 52) - OSC
Query or change data on clipboards.

In California, survivors of solitary confinement
who have spent years trying to seriously limit the practice are facing yet another setback
as state prison officials unwind the minor reforms made in recent years. 
Those reforms, which had reduced the number of rule violations that could make someone eligible for isolation and increased out-of-cell time for people in solitary,
were part of a compromise Governor Gavin Newsom proposed after his 2022 veto of the Mandela A…

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back for Solitary Reforms in California - Bolts
California officials dial back the minor reforms they've made to isolation in prison, three years after Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation to rein in solitary confinement.

Paramount must offer a free streaming TV service "like Pluto TV" and "maintain its current service and quality", as part of its settlement with California's AG (Matthew Keys/TheDesk.net)
https://thedesk.net/2026/09/paramount-

Paramount required to operate free streaming service under settlement over WBD merger
The condition was outlined Monday by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office led the multi-state antitrust challenge.

Block launches Buzz, an open source collaboration workspace on Nostr protocol for humans and AI agents to share messages, code repositories, workflows, and more (Block)
https://block.xyz/inside/introducing-buzz-where-humans-and-agents-work-together

Introducing Buzz: where humans and agents work together
Today we're releasing Buzz, a free, open source collaboration platform where humans and AI agents work together in a shared workspace. It's available now at buzz.xyz. Buzz is a collaboration workspace built on the Nostr protocol. It has channels, threads, direct messages, voice, media sharing, code repositories, and automated workflows. The interface will feel familiar to anyone who's used a modern team communication tool.

Billionaire-backed group
"Building a Better California"
put $5 million into the campaign against Proposition 40,
escalating a costly fight over California’s proposed one-time wealth tax on billionaires.
Proposition 40 would levy a 5% tax
on billionaires’ assets
to raise $100 billion for healthcare, pitting California Democrats, unions and progressives against one another.
While unions representing teachers and firefighters front the opposit…

Billionaires open the purse to fight California wealth tax
A group funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other billionaires gave $5 million to a group opposing Proposition 40. What it means for the fight over the proposed California billionaire tax.

The Trump administration has paused more than $1bn in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota,
citing “suspected fraud and noncompliance”
– withholding of funding that follows a $243m pause in Medicaid payments to Minnesota earlier this year.
“If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate,”
said Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), at a press conference on Tue…

RFK Jr pauses $1bn Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota
Trump’s health secretary says AI used to identify potential fraud in Democratic-run states