Onlookers feed burglar beer and pizza
Tomo Chien
April 08, 2024
Good morning. It’s Monday, and I’m reading about the best places to eat near USC. Onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.
Correction: On Friday, I linked to a CBS article that incorrectly reported that a suspected burglar was arrested Thursday evening. More on that below.
1.
A man suspected of burglarizing a USC student’s apartment on Thursday camped overnight in an abandoned building while police waited outside. Authorities said they reached a “stalemate” with the suspect after he ran into the building and set a small fire, and decided to leave late that night so he’d be “less annoyed” and come down on his own. Onlookers apparently threw the suspect a beer and offered him pizza while he was holed up in the building. He was arrested Friday morning, and nobody was hurt.
2.
A UC Irvine professor thinks today’s solar eclipse could help heal the country’s partisan divisions. Paul Piff, who studies psychology and social behavior, says that awe — the feeling when you experience something so vast and mysterious that you reevaluate your worldview — can often cause people to set aside their differences and work toward the greater good. Expect LA’s partial eclipse to peak around 11 a.m.
3.
Almost everybody agrees that a troubled railway between LA and San Diego needs to move further inland: The problem is actually making it happen. Over the last six years, climate change-driven storms and sea level rise have shut down the Pacific Surfliner train at least a dozen times. But any effort to move the railway inland faces two big problems. For one, homeowners are diametrically opposed to the idea of the train tunneling under their neighborhoods. And even if they agree to it, the construction is prohibitively expensive.
4.
More than a year ago, a mass shooting at a farm in Half Moon Bay rattled Northern California. Now, a migrant farmworker who survived five gunshots that day is suing the farm and one of its owners, saying they failed to protect him from the coworker who opened fire. The suspected shooter killed seven of his then-current and former coworkers across two mushroom farms last January, and prosecutors say the company knew he had a history of violence.
5.
A San Francisco-based startup says it can identify STIs with just a photo of a penis. Doctors are sounding the alarm. Calmara.ai, which launched last month, notes either “Clear! 🌶️🔥🍆” or “Hold!!! We spotted something sus” after its algorithm processes the user-submitted photo. Forget about the long list of privacy and ethical concerns: The app is usually just wrong. Like, so wrong that it gave the all-clear to photos of a penis-shaped vase and penis-shaped cake. “There are so many things wrong with this app that I don’t even know where to begin,” one doctor said.
