Skip to main content

Teleportation through Southern California with Pegman!

Support Provided By
maps-shot

Briefly: Using the newly redesigned Google Street view is the closest I'll ever get to teleporting around California (or anywhere in the world, at that). It features Pegman, a tiny character you're free to pick up and drop anywhere those little Chevy Cobalts have been. To teleport, you ideally want to have a ton of zoom-out, so you only have the vaguest idea about where Pegman is gonna end up. When you do it at first it's a little disorienting: your environment has changed completely and all you can you be totally correct in predicting is that where you're going to end up will probably be sunny, those cars never do too much night driving. The first time I did it I ended up here in the middle of Idyllwild's most intense chaparral. When you end up in places like this it's kind of disorienting, you have to look around and get situated to your new surroundings, maybe go a couple of steps forwards or backwards. Lest you end up dazed and disoriented in front of a total stranger's mansion or the U.S./Mexico border.

If you decide to venture outside of the state, the sights get weirder. I found this mysterious reddish-brownish abstraction in the easternmost regions of Montana. Either way, get out there! Teleport!

Support Provided By
Read More
An oil pump painted white with red accents stands mid-pump on a dirt road under a blue, cloudy sky with a green, grassy slope in the background.

California’s First Carbon Capture Project: Vital Climate Tool or License to Pollute?

California’s first attempt to capture and sequester carbon involves California Resources Corp. collecting emissions at its Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, and then inject the gases more than a mile deep into a depleted oil reservoir. The goal is to keep carbon underground and out of the atmosphere, where it traps heat and contributes to climate change. But some argue polluting industries need to cease altogether.
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.