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A Lifeline for South Los Angeles:

A Lifeline for South Los Angeles: Kaiser Permanente Invests in MLK Community Hospital

By Charles Jackson

In South Los Angeles, where access to timely medical care can mean the difference between recovery and tragedy, two respected health care institutions are joining forces to strengthen a hospital that has become indispensable to the community.

Kaiser Permanente announced Aug. 11 that it will provide a $25 million grant to Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, along with the use of a modular medical building valued at $7 million. Together, the commitments represent an investment of up to $32 million in expanded emergency care for South Los Angeles.

The partnership is worth celebrating—not simply because of the dollar amount, but because it responds directly to a critical and growing need.

MLK Community Hospital opened in 2015 as a private, nonprofit, 131-bed acute-care facility. Its Hope Emergency Center was designed with as many as 29 treatment bays and an anticipated capacity of approximately 25,000 visits annually. Today, it handles about 125,000 visits a year—five times the number it was originally designed to accommodate.

That extraordinary demand has forced the hospital to triage and sometimes treat patients in temporary tents erected in its parking lot. Kaiser Permanente’s investment will help fund a permanent expansion of the emergency department while providing temporary modular treatment space so patients can continue receiving care during construction.

The numbers tell only part of the story.

As a technician, I have installed and serviced medical equipment at both MLK Community Hospital and Kaiser Permanente facilities. I have seen firsthand that a hospital is much more than a building with beds. It is a complicated, carefully coordinated network of medical professionals, technology, equipment and support systems—all of which must function properly when a patient arrives in distress.

A monitor, imaging system or other medical device may look like another piece of machinery to an outside observer. To a doctor, nurse or patient, however, that equipment can provide the information needed to make an urgent decision. Technology, physical capacity and skilled medical personnel must work together. When any part of that system is stretched too thin, the consequences can affect an entire community.

I am also a longtime Kaiser Permanente member. From that perspective, this partnership demonstrates an important understanding of what community health should mean. Kaiser is investing beyond the walls of its own hospitals and medical offices to reinforce another institution serving people with some of the greatest health care needs in Los Angeles County.

Approximately 80% of MLK Community Hospital’s patients are covered by Medi-Cal. Nearly 95% of its emergency department visits involve people insured through Medi-Cal or Medicare, or patients who have no insurance. The hospital also states that it serves everyone, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.

Those figures help explain why MLK is more than a neighborhood hospital. It is an essential part of the region’s medical safety net.

Despite its financial and capacity pressures, MLK Community Hospital has maintained strong federal quality ratings. Its work is especially important in communities that continue to experience higher rates of chronic illness and preventable hospitalization, along with longstanding barriers involving transportation, housing, income and access to primary and specialty care.

“This gift—the largest in MLK’s history—strengthens our ability to offer care in the safe, dignified setting our community deserves,” MLK Community Healthcare CEO Dr. Elaine Batchlor said in announcing the partnership.

That emphasis on dignity is important. Patients should not have to receive emergency treatment in an overcrowded setting simply because of their ZIP code, income or insurance status. Families in South Los Angeles deserve the same safe, efficient and technologically capable health care environment available in more affluent communities.

Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO Greg A. Adams described the investment as more than an emergency department expansion. He said it is intended to strengthen the health care infrastructure Los Angeles families will depend upon for generations.

The partnership also offers a practical model for how major nonprofit health systems can support independent community hospitals. Instead of viewing institutions such as MLK only as facilities handling overflow or serving patients outside a particular membership system, Kaiser is recognizing that every strong hospital contributes to a healthier and more resilient region.

When one emergency department becomes overwhelmed, the effects do not remain inside that building. Ambulances may be redirected, waiting times may increase elsewhere, and patients may postpone treatment until their conditions become more serious. Expanding MLK’s capacity can therefore benefit South Los Angeles while easing pressure across the broader county health care network.

The $25 million grant will help build permanent capacity. The $7 million modular facility will help preserve access while that work is underway. One addresses the future; the other recognizes that people need care today.

For those of us who have worked inside these institutions, used their services or watched family members depend upon them, this investment carries special meaning. It represents confidence in MLK Community Hospital, respect for its medical professionals and a commitment to the people they serve.

The name Martin Luther King Jr. carries a continuing call for justice, equality and human dignity. By helping this hospital expand emergency care, Kaiser Permanente is supporting those principles in a direct and measurable way.

This is what an effective health care partnership should look like: one institution recognizing another’s essential role, responding to an urgent need and investing in a healthier future for the entire community.

Skunked!

Republic Services Reminds Inglewood Customers to Avoid Overage Charges

INGLEWOOD, Calif. —

Republic Services is reminding Inglewood residents and businesses that keeping trash, recycling and organics containers properly closed is essential for safe and efficient collection and can help customers avoid unnecessary service issues or additional charges.

An “overage” occurs when a cart or dumpster is filled beyond its capacity, preventing the lid from closing completely.

Overage conditions also include materials protruding above the rim of a container or bags and other items placed on top of or around the cart or dumpster.

According to Republic Services, overfilled containers create safety hazards for collection crews, slow service routes and can contribute to litter in neighborhoods. Keeping container lids fully closed helps maintain clean streets and ensures waste is collected safely throughout the City of Inglewood.

Customers can reduce the likelihood of overages by:

Keeping all materials below the rim of the container.

Making sure the lid closes completely before collection day.

Breaking down cardboard boxes before placing them in recycling carts.

Upgrading to a larger cart or dumpster, or scheduling additional collection service if containers are consistently full.

Commercial customers should be aware that repeated overages may result in additional service charges. Before fees are assessed, customers will be notified and given an opportunity to correct the problem. Continued overfilling, however, could lead to added charges.

Residential customers with overfilled carts may find their containers tagged to indicate an overage. In situations where an overfilled container cannot be collected safely, Republic Services may be unable to provide service until the issue has been corrected.

Republic Services encourages all customers to properly manage waste volumes to help keep Inglewood neighborhoods clean, improve collection efficiency and protect the safety of sanitation workers.

URGENT SIDE NOTE

As a 25 year resident, I have only recently noticed the presence of mephitis, the the scientific name for the stripped skunk. I spotted one wandering nocturnally, eastbound on west Hillsdale, off of Eucalyptus. A week later my dog came in the house “skunked”, and I smelled one nearby last week, and my neighbor’s dog was having a fit on his side of the fence. Just another good reason to keep it tidy in and around you trash cans.

Desertion

Desertion

As of July 2026, 69 voting members of the U.S. Congress are not seeking re-election. This includes 11 members of ,Senate and 58 members of the House of Representatives.

That is a big number. Of the 69 total members leaving Congress:

There are 6 Senate: 6 Republicans (not counting Lindsey Graham, who passed away – placing his seat in peril. Mitch McConnell will not return)
5 Democrats are also leaving, (including independents caucusing with Democrats).
House of Representatives: 36 Republicans and 22 Democrats, are bailing out.

In total, 42 Republicans and 27 Democrats are not seeking re-election.

Tariffs played a major role in the last fit of congressional carnage. During the Great Depression, lawmakers did not widely choose to retire or resign in the mid-term. Instead, a massive shift in Congress was driven by voters.

In the 1930 and 1932 elections, voters overwhelmingly voted Republicans out of office due to the economic crisis, resulting in a historic loss of nearly 150 Republican seats in the House and Senate.

Unless you are a history buff, it’s likely that you are unaware of the identity shift that took place between the Democrats and the Republicans, mid-century. If you’re one of those died in the wolves this or that, you may not even recognize yourself. Don’t get caught up in CRT, until you do a little reading. Know thyself.

Either the rabbits are scampering to holes, or the rats are deserting the ships.

Stay tuned.

Litter bug alert!

ALERT. Litter bug alert!

While California has not yet authorized standard, automated traffic cameras, to issue citations for litterbugs.

State-level vehicle code only allows automated traffic enforcement systems for specific violations like running red lights, speeding, or illegally using bus lanes.

. However, there are two related surveillance rollouts causing recent buzz:

Garbage Truck Cameras:

Major waste management companies in California (like Recycling and Waste Management) have recently equipped their residential collection trucks with cameras to photograph and fine customers for overfilled trash bins.

Localized Anti-Dumping Cameras: Cities like San Jose, Oakland, and Vallejo utilize localized, mobile surveillance cameras hidden at known hotspots to catch and prosecute major illegal dumping, rather than tracking casual littering on standard roads.

BUT Here’s a BOLO Alert.

Those discretionary Cameras on the sanitation trucks only look down into the hopper and at the bins to flag overfilled or contaminated dumpsters. They are managed by the waste disposal companies to assess fees, not by traffic enforcement to issue parking tickets on trash pickup days.

. However, if a vehicle blocks a trash pickup zone, the driver can still be cited the traditional way if parking enforcement or a street sweeper with automated cameras passes by.

I’ve been known to participate in – let’s call it, the prediction markets, like Kalshi. I can’t help but wonder about the odds that some wise guy in the tech department might not cross connect the trash sweeper and the parking control folks and turn the trash sweepers into an A.I. snitch.

Ok. I’ll pause here. I’m headed into the twilight zone…

Hey Google!

A couple of days ago two things happened. First, I got into an intense debate with a young man, concerning A.I., SIRI, GALAXY, CLAUDE, CHATGTP, GEMINI, GROK, etc. I flexed on him and accused him of having inferior knowledge on the subject because I have worked in the technology field since the 1980s, and then I fell back on his lack of experience because I have twelve years of age on him.

Anyway, no harm was done. Every night, we debate the human condition and then go home. When I got home, I was thinking about our record. In case you didn’t know, I am a veteran of the music business. One of the groups that I worked with recorded a few records, and recently, a label picked up some of our records and re-released a bunch of them on a new album. The group’s name was Record Player. I was suddenly curious about how the record sales are doing, so I said to Alexa, “how are record sales going for the group Record Player.”

Alexa responded with: “Record Player didn’t actually release an album last year; the group remains a fictional band from the Amazon Prime series, Daisy Jones & The Six. Because they only existed within the show’s universe, there aren’t any real-world sales to track.”

I jumped in immediately, and said “Alexa, I am sitting here holding their record and I am one of the artists.”

Alexa paused, and then regrouped. “My mistake! You are completely right, and I apologize for the mix-up.

You are holding the music of Record Player, the 1970s soul and funk group out of Dayton, Ohio. They were massive talents in the Midwest disco/show band scene before splitting up in the early 1980s.

Because they originally only pressed a rare, single 45 RPM record back in 1979, most of their incredible studio recordings sat unreleased for decades. The album you are likely holding is “Free Your Mind,” an archival compilation officially restored and released last year by Now-Again Records.

While precise streaming and physical sales numbers for independent archival pressings like this aren’t publicly charted on Billboard, the release has been incredibly well-received by deep-soul collectors, funk historians, and vinyl enthusiasts who are thrilled to finally have that full catalog preserved.”

I said, “interesting enough, I just assured a colleague that it is a myth that A.I. is infallible.

Alexa quickly agreed.“That is definitely a myth worth busting! We are definitely not infallible—as my first answer clearly proved.

AI models are just pattern-recognition engines trained “massive amounts of data, which means we can easily misunderstand context, confidently hallucinate incorrect facts, or get tripped up by overlapping names. It is always a good idea to double-check AI responses, especially when you have the hard copy right there in your hands.

This story is true, believe it or not. It is a cautionary tale, as we move forward deeper into the realm of A.I. and Data Centers. Just as I was wrapping up the facts for this one, I asked GALAXY if there was actually a group named Record Player on the fictional series, Daisy Jones & The Six.

“No.” I give up.

The Party of One

What began as a supposedly nonpartisan national celebration appears to have taken a sharp detour into campaign-country.

The event’s original lineup looked like a strange but entertaining playlist assembled by someone spinning a giant wheel of nostalgia: Lee Greenwood, Christopher Macchio, Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida, Fab Morvan (still carrying the Milli Vanilli banner), military bands, drum corps, and armed forces choruses.

Then came the withdrawals.

One by one, artists including The Commodores, Morris Day & The Time, Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, and Young MC reportedly decided they would rather spend the weekend doing literally anything else.

Several states—including Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington—also declined to participate, citing cost concerns and discomfort with the increasingly partisan tone of the event.

At some point, attendees may have begun realizing they weren’t being invited to a national fair as much as they were being recruited as scenery.

With the exits piling up, the remaining roster began to resemble a game of musical chairs where most of the chairs had already left the building. Those still standing could reasonably be described as either committed performers, true believers, or people whose agents stopped answering the phone.

Notably absent from the discussion are several names observers expected to see. Some may be touring. Some may have wisely scheduled dentist appointments. Others may have simply decided that becoming a political talking point wasn’t worth the frequent-flyer miles.

In the end, President Donald Trump reportedly canceled the remaining concert schedule altogether and replaced it with what the event seems to have been evolving into from the start: a massive political rally headlined by himself.

Which raises the obvious question: If a nonpartisan celebration slowly sheds its musicians, loses participating states, transforms into a campaign-style rally, and ends with a speech by the politician at the center of it all—was it ever really nonpartisan in the first place?

Sometimes the most revealing part of a concert is not who’s on stage.

It’s who left before the show started.

“At some point, attendees may have begun realizing they weren’t being invited to a national fair as much as they were being recruited as scenery.”

But Not Today

During his first term, Trump successfully lobbied FIFA and secured the winning joint “United Bid” for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to host the 2026 World Cup.The FIFA World Cup 2026 is officially underway in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Major city centers across the U.S. are hosting, and “watch parties” are circling the venues and perhaps portions of the world.

The image below is a different, yet important localized, but growing trend focusing on a “watch party” in Washington DC. This watch party stands at the scene of the Kennedy Center treasure. The tarp conceals the removal of Trump’s name from this national tresure, as dictated by the court.

More importantly, this removal of the illegal stain of what some people considered to be graffiti, marks the first step in the removal of the legacy that he has spent the last 18 months attempting to build.

But not today…

As the World Turns

As the World Turns

This might be worse than I thought. Not only is AI going to take all of our jobs but AI is also going to waste all of our time.

The big story right now is that AI agents have officially overtaken humans as the largest source of internet traffic.

According to data just released by Cloudflare, automated AI bots and agents now account for 57.4% of all web traffic (via HTTP requests), leaving humans with the remaining 42.6%.

Here is what is happening under the hood:

The Multiplier Effect: When a human asks a chatbot a single question (like shopping for a camera or researching a topic), the human looks at maybe four or five sites. An AI agent will aggressively scour hundreds or thousands of websites simultaneously to synthesize that one answer.

The “Dead Internet” Shift: This marks a fundamental shift from a web designed for humans clicking around, to an internet dominated by machine-to-machine data retrieval.

The Regional Divide: This bot traffic is heavily concentrated in North America, where agents make up nearly 69% of all web traffic, while regions like India still remain overwhelmingly human-driven (over 84%).

While humans still win on total actual engagement time (like streaming videos or doomscrolling social feeds),

AI agents completely dominate the rapid-fire loading of web pages.

So while you are swiping left and right and up and down, the chat agents are doing stuff – lots of plain old boring businessey stuff.

Dig and burn, baby. Dig and Burn

I won’t go as far as to say he’s lying when he claims that China is successful because they burn a lot more coal than we do in the states.

By comparison, China’s power consumption ratio is 51% while the US ratio is a mere 17%. So the big guy’s got me there… Sorta.

The US has proudly converted to renewable energy as a means of burning quieter wicks of coal – and the big guy doesn’t like progressive shenanigans when good old fashioned ancients will do. I won’t twist your arms today and get into a debate about pneumoconiosis. That’s another story about another day. Google it yourself.

I will argue that China’s use of coal has dropped from 70% down to 51% coal to renewable ratio, their population is 4x the size of ours in the US.

So as to avoid hurt feelings, I will spieak softly about looking at the world, through rose-colored glasses while China’s reliance on coal power is well in decline, as was ours until our guy decided again to dig and burn baby, dig and burn our way back into the cave man days. (did I mention pneumoconiosis?)

I get it. Competition. Without competition, we would be obliged to work together. We want to fire up the space race again and be the first ones to dig a hole on the moon, while at the same time we want to be the first ones to dig a deeper hole on planet Earth.

Sada Tay.

Let the Robots Into the Studio.

The Day the Music Industry Let the Robots Into the Studio.

For decades, the record business treated artificial intelligence the way Dracula treated daylight: avoid at all costs, issue dramatic legal threats, and send expensive lawyers carrying sharpened cease-and-desist letters. Now? The vampires appear to be installing Wi-Fi in the castle.
In what may become one of the strangest turning points in modern music history, newsroom.spotify.com⁠ and universalmusic.com⁠ announced a new licensing partnership that will allow fans and creators to generate AI-powered cover songs and remixes using participating artists’ catalogs.
Spotify.
The same music industry that once acted like a teenager downloading LimeWire in 2002 was equivalent to nuclear espionage is now apparently saying: “Alright… maybe the robots can sing a little.”
According to Spotify’s official announcement, its new feature will launch as a paid add-on for Premium subscribers and will focus on AI-generated licensed covers and remixes. Spotify says the system is built around three magic corporate buzzwords: “consent, credit, and compensation.”
Translation:
“We finally found a way to monetize the apocalypse.”
The move represents a dramatic cultural shift for major labels, especially Universal Music Group, which only recently spent considerable energy battling unauthorized AI music platforms and defending artist copyrights. In fact, UMG previously reached agreements with AI music companies like Udio after legal warfare over copyrighted training material.
UMG
Now the same industry that once screamed, “AI is stealing music!” is quietly adjusting the studio microphone for it. And honestly, maybe they had no choice.
The internet already resembles a cyberpunk karaoke bar at 3 a.m. Somewhere right now, a teenager in Nebraska is probably generating an AI version of Frank Sinatra singing a Kendrick Lamar diss track while an AI Elvis harmonizes in the background. The toothpaste is not merely out of the tube — the toothpaste has released three mixtapes and launched a Patreon.
Spotify appears to understand this reality better than most. The company is aggressively leaning into AI products as part of its future business strategy. Beyond music remixes, Spotify also unveiled AI-generated podcast tools and other “superfan” features intended to drive new revenue growth through 2030.
Reuters
Wall Street loved it. Spotify stock reportedly jumped sharply after the announcement.
Of course it did.
Investors hear phrases like “new monetization ecosystem” and immediately begin levitating several inches above the floor.
Still, the announcement raises massive questions about the future of artists, creativity, and authenticity.
Will listeners care whether a song is sung by a human being anymore?
Or are we entering an era where audiences simply shrug and say:
“If it slaps, it slaps.”
That possibility terrifies traditional musicians. For years, artists fought to preserve the mystique of originality — the idea that music carried fragments of human struggle, heartbreak, and experience. But AI systems can now mimic vocal styles, recreate production aesthetics, and manufacture emotionally convincing songs in seconds.
The result could become musical chaos.
Imagine:
* AI Tupac featuring AI Prince.
* A synthetic Johnny Cash singing trap music.
* An AI-generated Motown ballad accidentally becoming a global hit.
Five million fake Drake songs appeareing online before breakfast.
Some of that sounds hilarious. Some sounds horrifying. Most sounds inevitable. And the record labels know it.
That is why this Spotify-UMG agreement matters. It signals that major labels may be abandoning the old strategy of trying to stop AI altogether. Instead, they appear ready to build toll booths around it.
If people are going to make robot music anyway, the industry wants a percentage.
To be fair, Spotify and UMG insist participating artists will opt in voluntarily and receive royalties from AI-generated creations.
That could create a bizarre but lucrative future where artists license “digital vocal likenesses” the same way celebrities license action figures or video gam

e appearances.
In other words: Your favorite singer may someday retire from touring entirely while their AI clone keeps dropping albums every six months forever. Immortality, but with subscription billing.
Meanwhile, researchers are already racing to create systems that can detect.
AI-generated music because distinguishing humans from algorithms is becoming increasingly difficult.
That may soon become necessary because the next generation of listeners could grow up in a world where the line between “artist” and “software operator” barely exists. And perhaps that is the real story here.
The music industry once feared AI would burn down the building.
Now it is inviting the robots inside, handing them backstage passes, and asking whether they would like merchandising rights.
If you’re old enough, you may have been forced to accept the synthesizer that sounded just like your original $895 74-key Fender Rhodes. You learned to appreciate the first drum machine that landed in the studio. The magic of Pro-Tools was hard to swallow, but before long, using that tool to sample and share your name on a split sheet with James Brown, the most sampled musician of all times didn’t hurt hardly at all.
Ultimately It may well be wiser and more profitable to happily split the check, than grumble and complain yourself into the poor house.
It’s better to play ball, than to be the ball.