San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
If you missed it ...
In a week when female soccer players were worth their weight in gold, this also happened:
Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen said they would team up to develop self-driving cars and share electric-car components. The agreement calls for Volkswagen to purchase a stake in a Ford-backed startup that is developing self-driving technologies and for Ford to use electric-car components developed by Volkswagen. As auto sales slump around the world, hard-pressed carmakers have little choice but to join forces to fend off Silicon Valley challengers and avoid obsolescence.
Say it ain’t so, joe: It’s not 1995 anymore. Starbucks was selling newspapers along with its coffee back then, but now the green-logoed giant has said that it will stop carrying print editions of local and national newspapers starting in September. Starbucks did not give a reason for the change but said it would also remove shelving fixtures that display whole-bean coffee and grab-and-go snacks.
Utah isn’t so conservative anymore. More than 80 applicants have signed up for a handful of spots as licensed medical marijuana growers in the state. Some applicants worry the process stacks the deck against local growers in favor of Big Weed, or companies that have successfully grown cannabis in other states where the crop is legal. The application requires a $2,500 fee, and submissions are hundreds of pages long. Those who get a license pay $100,000 every year to keep it, in addition to buying tools and facilities that can cost millions.
Jim Bouton died. He was a good pitcher and a great author, writing “Ball Four” in 1970. In an era long before social media or even widespread cable television, his book was sort of a tweetstorm meets ESPN meets “Big Brother,” an early indicator that Americans would spend hugely for celebrity news and gossip, as long as it was interesting and fun. And “Ball Four” certainly was.