What We Learned This Week

Maybe it’s just us. But it sure feels like Los Angeles is at top of San Diego’s mind these last few weeks.

Our water agency and LA’s behemoth water agency have a long-running rivalry that has moved from a slow simmer to a boil with a ruling expected soon in a major legal dispute.

San Diego writers are appearing on LA sports talk stations and vice versa as that city claws for NFL football and the Chargers lay out plans for how to satisfy them.

Our newspaper, of course, came under the wings of the LA Times’ publisher and the new California News Group. The Union-Tribune’s deadlines will now be much earlier in the day because they’re going to print it in LA and truck it down here every night. It cost 178 good jobs in San Diego and now we learn of another in Sacramento: U-T writer Chris Nichols, who’s reported on San Diego’s concerns in the capitol, has been laid off.

The LA Times is handling the U-T’s Sacramento view, it appears. (Yes, we’re talking to Nichols and for now, we’ll throw as much freelance work his way as he will accept. Sacramento is as interesting to San Diego as it ever has been and we need as many people reporting on our representatives as possible.)

No, LA based troops aren’t massing at the border. And maybe San Diego could used a little more LA in its doings. But it’s all very interesting to follow. And it colored this week’s conversation in San Diego.

What VOSD Learned This Week

Call them the Wagyus of San Diego. I’m talking about the long-running – aged, if you will – beefs that color our civic life. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, and are now vaguely hungry, let me explain: We just wrapped the first-ever Beef Week at Voice of San Diego, where we tried to step back and explain the deepest tensions in town between agencies, politicians and even different species.

A rundown:

Two agencies tasked with delivering water to Southern Californians can’t seem to get that done without a fight.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the government agency that runs San Diego’s Convention Center and the private group that markets the city as a tourist destination were complementary players in the city’s tourism effort. But nah, son, there’s beef.

Two titans of Barrio Logan go way back and have family connections. And yet, beef.

Jan Goldsmith seems to generate beef wherever he goes (more below) but none of the city attorney’s beefs are as prolific as his feud with local attorney Cory Briggs.

La Jolla isn’t big enough for the both of us – us being humans and sea lions. (Perhaps someone can try this but do it, um, better.)

Artists need to show off their work, and the group RAW: natural born artists give them opportunities to do that. The group’s setup, though, has created beef.

The two women at the top of Capitol politics in Sacramento have a maybe, possibly, silent beef.

What Else VOSD Learned

Remember how I said the city attorney had many beefs (beeves?)? As I explained last week, one of them was with us. And the source of that beef — an email exchange between him, the Chargers and the mayor that he was withholding from a public records request — was released this week. It showed Goldsmith tried to push the mayor’s stadium task force into withholding information from the public, and wanted to jumpstart negotiations with the team before the task force finished its work.

Watching other media follow this story has been amusing. One U-T writer gave us credit for getting the documents out. Another did not. And CBS 8 hilariously claimed it “obtained” the emails.

A third U-T writer offered up credit again and has a good roundup of the situation.

• The city still hasn’t fixed everything at Qualcomm Stadium in order to make it ADA compliant, and that inaction has cost taxpayers millions.

• Lawmakers in San Diego had a busy week of passing and rejecting new laws.

• San Diego’s raging minimum wage fight might end with a fizzle.

• What parents can do if they suspect their child is being bullied — by a teacher.

• Where people are going solar in San Diego.

• The Sacramento Report was a big one this week.

What I’m Reading

Two great uses of comics to tell legitimate news stories.

A California pot grower preps for eventual legalization. (Fusion)

Learning to live with no water in East Porterville, Calif. (Longreads)

Two important peaks behind the curtain.

The Red Cross has collected almost half a billion dollars for Haiti and built six houses. (ProPublica)

Adrian Chen penetrates the Russian government’s internet troll farm. (New York Times Magazine)

Two heroes.

The woman who saved the moon landing. (Vox)

The man who exposed the FIFA scandal. (Washington Post)

Two portraits of grief.

Sheryl Sandberg wrote a gut-wrenching update about the process of grieving her husband’s death. (Facebook)

These photos of Vice President Joe Biden paying respects to his son’s casket are utterly heartbreaking. (Washington Post)

Line of the Week

“In 1983, tampons went to space.” – From an in-depth history of the tampon in The Atlantic. (Seriously, worth a read – as is this companion piece about how tampons are incredibly ubiquitous and yet incredibly mysterious and gross to half the population.)