Bear Essentials December 5th: The Moo and the Moon
December 5, 2025
California, never a state to pick a single storyline, is currently workshopping four at once: an economy doing jazz hands while limping offstage; taxpayers decamping to Florida like elderly New Yorkers; microbes in cow lagoons accomplishing what reams of regulation could not; and a water regime being redrafted like fan fiction. And don’t miss Steph Curry’s eye-popping L.A. billboard with a stunning celestial assist. It’s the kind of week that reminds you why this state is maddening, magnetic, and — occasionally against all good sense — utterly impossible to quit.
December is upon us. Into the breach!
BOOM AND GLOOM
The venerable UCLA Anderson Forecast — famous for calling past downturns before anyone else sobered up — now pegs California’s economy as impressively productive and yet visibly limping. AI and aerospace keep the state out front, powered by nearly 70% of national venture funding, yet payroll jobs flatlined in 2025 and unemployment has hovered above 5% for 19 months, which is…not great! The Forecast notes that deportations, tariffs and wildfire-era rebuilding delays are likely to prolong an employment recession into early 2026. Still, the Forecast expects California to claw back late next year, with job growth bumping up to 1.9% in 2027. It’s an odd piece of (potential?) good news in our split-screen economy, and one that’s unlikely to comfort the 1.1 million unemployed Californians worried about the present.
🤫 Everything you should know
💸 - CALIFORNIA TAXODUS — California is now shedding taxpayers faster than Florida can collect them, losing one every 1 minute, 44 seconds, while the Sunshine State gains a fresh filer every 2:09 and pockets an extra $4 billion a year for its trouble. As the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s Andrew Wilford puts it, “people like states with no income tax,” (in other news, water remains wet). With taxpayer losses jumping from $9B in 2018 to $29B in 2020, the Golden State is learning the hard way that zoning tweaks can’t outbid a tax exodus born of remote work and crippling unaffordability built over generations. The cherry on top? Not only are Florida, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina hoovering up our tax payers; they’re also absorbing our electoral votes and Congressional representation. Clearly, we have our work cut out for us. — San Joaquin Valley Sun
💩 - MOO POO BREAKTHROUGH
California’s next world-changing technological breakthrough isn’t emerging from a hermetically sealed chip fab but from manure-filled cow lagoons, where Bay Area researchers are weaponizing pink, methane-guzzling microbes against the planet’s most existential problem: spiraling GHG emissions. Windfall Bio’s “mems,” first nurtured in a Palo Alto gas grill, are bright-pink microbes that inhale methane with more discipline than any semiconductor line. In a recent test, the salmon-hued eating machines swallowed 85% of a Petaluma dairy lagoon’s methane. Scale the project up nationwide, and the microbes could cut 1.6 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent, effectively erasing 370 million gas-burning cars from the road. As CEO Josh Silverman says, “We’re not creating something new… they’ve evolved for a million years to do this.” With fertilizer and feed byproducts already in development, the market practically creates itself. Imagine: a climate fix that puts money in farmers’ pockets instead of regulations on their backs? — Washington Post
💦 - DELTA FORCE MAJEURE: — The Trump Administration’s new Delta directive yanks California’s water system back into improvisation mode, sidelining the painstaking 2023 operating framework in favor of 250,000–400,000 acre-feet of added supply for the San Joaquin Valley. State agencies warn the shift could strain deliveries to 27 million Californians and destabilize the delicate choreography between state and federal systems. At the same time, many of the Central Valley’s largest agricultural water districts hailed the decision. Virtually nobody thinks it will be an easy path to follow. As CA Fish and Wildlife’s Chuck Bonham put it, too many measures are “vague, unclear, impossible to implement,” a fitting epitaph for a water strategy that treats the world’s most engineered watershed like an Etch-A-Sketch. — LA Times
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🎙️ 💬 🎧 - ON THE POD: SPARKLETACK
Richard Miller — an early podcasting adopter turned accidental historian — hasn’t released a Sparkletack episode since Obama’s first term, yet he apparently still pays the hosting bills, preserving his lovingly obsessive dives into San Francisco lore for the rest of us. From hour-long narrative epics to snappy “Timecapsule” oddities, Sparkletack remains a smart, unsanitized romp through Fog City: charming, rigorous, and blissfully allergic to dumbing anything down. — SPARKLETACK
🏀 🤩 🌕 - STEPH SHOOTS THE MOON
Steph Curry’s new book promo comes with a cosmic flex: a Los Angeles billboard depicting his shooting form that, at the right moment, aligns perfectly with the rising supermoon—making it look like he’s lofting the moon itself. Meticulously timed and instantly viral, the stunt distills Curry’s brand: turn the absurd into the routine, the mundane into magic, and marketing into cultural moment. Only in California! — Instagram: @StephenCurry30
🏃♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE
- 😡 Only 15 percent of San Diegans can afford a median-priced home. Voice of San Diego
- 🔋 Once a Gamble in the Desert, Electric Grid Batteries Are Everywhere. NY Times
- 🏗️ Housing advocates win big as SF Mayor Lurie’s zoning plan advances. SF Examiner
- 📽️ Silicon Valley gobbles up Hollywood as Netflix acquires Warner Bros. WSJ
- 👩⚖️ Trump admin’s major homeless policy changes hit with lawsuits. CalMatters
