A California high-speed rail was supposed to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020. Billions of dollars later, no track has been laid, and completion of the project is still a distant dream. Now, officials are raising questions about the project’s future.

What did the commentators say?
California voters approved the rail project in 2008. It has since cost “billions more than planned” and is “years behind schedule,” said The Wall Street Journal. The original price tag of $33 billion has risen to $126 billion and could grow further before the completion date, now projected for 2040. 

Progress has been plagued by “rising costs, funding shortfalls and construction delays,” said the Daily Caller. Authorities point to the Golden State’s intensive regulatory environment as a factor. California was once “able to build infrastructure like this in a very short amount of time,” but “we kept regulating ourselves more and more and more,” said rail system CEO Ian Choudri in a speech, per The Fresno Bee.

One locale that has won the rail race is Morocco. The country built a 201-mile line thanks to a “structural simplicity” and “raw political will” that California does not possess, said Joe Mathews at the San Francisco Chronicle. Morocco has a completed railway; California has “excuses.”

Maybe there’s an alternative. The rail system will not be complete until 2040, but “robotaxis could use the I-5 sooner,” said AgentCloak CEO Peter Yared at Inc. Robotaxis from Tesla and Waymo have already “started operating on highways,” which makes them a plausible alternative to the “large capital expense and long timelines of high-speed rail.” 

What next?
The first high-speed rail segment in California connecting Merced with Bakersfield will be complete “sometime in the next decade, if it gets built,” said Dan Walters at CalMatters. Meeting that goal depends on the state continuing to dedicate revenue from its greenhouse gas permits system, but that would “require cuts in other projects.” For now, progress on the rail project remains mired in “seemingly endless political melodrama.”

Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI reached a fever pitch last month when developer Rockstar Games finally released a first look at gameplay. But while the long-awaited project is expected to have the biggest premiere in video game history, there’s also concern about what it will mean for the gaming industry’s future. 

‘Time of tumult’
GTA VI is expected to be a financial slam dunk for Rockstar, projected to generate up to $5.2 billion in sales by the end of its first launch week this November, according to gaming analytics firm Newzoo. But the release also “comes at a time of such tumult for the gaming industry as a whole,” as “open-world games are arguably tired,” and “online multiplayer games with $200 million budgets can crash and burn,” said Troy Farah at Salon.

Part of the problem is that this game is “such a big release that it’s scaring off other studios from releasing their own games around the same time,” said Farah. GTA VI’s $80 base game price and $100 ultimate version may “just seem like typical capitalist extraction, but the end result will likely be a narrower industry that squeezes creatives and makes things a lot more miserable for players.”

With the “cost of living crisis that’s eating every last penny of disposable income out of average household budget, it won’t take much to turn a chorus of Champagne corks into a firing squad aimed directly at the games industry,” said Jim Trinca at IGN. The “real issue here” is that the industry “finds itself both scared by and dependent on the success of one single project.” 

‘Halo effect’
Despite some nerves about current industry trends, Rockstar hopes its upcoming blockbuster will “retain cultural influence for another decade,” said Christopher Byrd at The New York Times. Many insiders also hope the game will have a “halo effect for the entire industry,” said Rob Fahey at gaming news outlet GamesIndustry.biz. If it succeeds, GTA VI will be a “rising tide that lifts many other boats around it,” as the effects from the “biggest media launch of the decade being a video game will be very significant.”

A happy-looking dormouse perches on a flower in a photo by Italy’s Andrea Zampatti. The image is among 91 past winners of the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards featured in London’s Frameless immersive experience next week.
Andrea Zampatti / Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

The Mediterranean is a place, a mood, a cooking ethos. Twenty-two countries border the body of water, each with its own specialized manner of feeding people. These books are an exhilarating starting point for experiencing the region’s diversity.

‘The Food of Morocco’ 
In 2011, Paul Wolfert published this deeply considered book about the food of the North African country. Her first text on the subject came out in 1973, and her influence across the decades has been immense. The popularity of clay pots for cooking and the ubiquity of preserved lemons in many an American kitchen are all Wolfert’s doing. Here, concocting tagines of all sorts and proper couscous can become second nature. ($60, HarperCollins)

‘The Food of Sicily’ 
You could argue that the region most influenced by the Mediterranean Sea is the island of Sicily. Fabrizia Lanza runs a cooking school in Palermo, and this book sings a song many Americans know well, being that so many Italian immigrants to the U.S. were Sicilian. But no entire cuisine travels with its migrants, so “The Food of Sicily” (2023) is loaded with surprises, too — swordfish stuffed with garlic and mint, octopus salad, and watermelon pudding included. ($40, Artisan)

‘The New Spanish Table’ 
All the hits are here in Anya von Bremzen’s book — Spanish tortilla, patatas bravas, paella. But “The New Spanish Table” (2005) is also a snapshot of the revolution in cooking that happened during the early part of the 20th century, an era in which Spanish cuisine began “usurping the culinary dominance of Italy and France,” said Publishers Weekly. ($25, ThriftBooks)