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Hardly Strictly Festival 2026 Awards

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026 took place in Golden Gate Park on Fri, Oct 2, 2026 – Sun, Oct 4, 2026. It is a free event. You can learn more about it at https://hardlystrictlybluegrass.com/.

The weather during the festival in 2026 was superb. For all the days the wind was light out of the west. On Saturday it was even hot and sunny getting up to the high-eighties. Many people did retreat to the shade by the trees. Come Sunday some high clouds moved in, it got cooler and the temperatures dropped.

There are basically two approaches to HSB. One is to travel light and get in as many acts in as possible, roaming from one stage to the next. The other is to bring a tarp or blankets, chairs and a small cooler full of food and drinks and park at a single stage. If you get to the festival early, it is easy to get a great spot. This year we did a bit of both. On Friday we parked at first at the Banjo Stage and enjoyed the mostly country music.  My buddy Steve was in town and we went all three days. It’s a pretty amazing free festival.

SHOWS ATTENDED

FRIDAY
Larry Williams and Teresa Williams
Reckless Kelly
Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives
My Morning Jacket
Lukas Nelson

SATURDAY
Anna Moss
Mavis Staples
AJ Lee and Blue Summit
Buddy Miller
John Craigie w/ The Coffis Brothers

SUNDAY
Miko Marks
Darrell Scott String Band w/ Rob Ickes
Jesse Welles
Punch Brothers
Emmylou Harris

Without further ado, here are the 2026 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival SF Journal Awards.

Outstanding Set: Jesse Welles

Sunday was probably my favorite day. It started at the Banjo Stage. Miko Marks had her full band, complete with background singers and sounded great.  Later, we made it over to the Tower of Gold Stage to hear Jesse Welles where we met up with a friend. We had near front row seats close to the stage.

People like to compare Jesse Welles to Bob Dylan as his music is both popular and political. He often rambles on with a sort of stream of conscious, free verse approach to lyrics. While Dylan was often oblique and metaphorical, Jesse Welles is direct and in your face. His songs are often like a collage of news headlines. He does not shy away from using the names of the villains in our midst. The names of Trump and Hegseth make it into his songs some of which are so full of words and move by so fast it can be a bit of information overload. How he flawlessly remember the words to all of his tunes is remarkable. At some point he may write an anthem people will be humming in grocery stores. He is part country, part folk and a lot of rock and roll. His band simply killed it.

Outstanding Soloist: Jesse Welles

We were pretty music blown away by his guitar playing and all-around musical ability.

Best Hair: Jesse Welles

I am not sure what Jesse actually looks like as he has this large mop of brown hair that covers half his face and often wears sunglasses. All you see is his lips and chin. I predict there will be a few folks getting dressed up this Halloween as Jesse Welles. It is but a matter of time.

Best Festival Dog: Large Shepard Mix at the Banjo Stage

I have no idea why anyone would bring a dog to music festival with fifty thousand people. I know that any dog I have owned would go absolutely crazy. But at the Banjo Stage on Friday there were two shepherd-mixes just chilling next to their owners, smiling in the sun.

Best Bluegrass Groove: AJ Lee & Blue Summit

AJ Lee & Blue Summit have been out on the road a lot the last few years. What their original songs lack in depth, they make up for in solid instrumental acumen. It is great that some local Bay Area bands are finally getting the big stages at the festival

Bob Wills “No Mumbling” Award: Jesse Welles

Bob Wills took the approach that if you are playing music keep the customers on the dance floor; do not be mumbling between songs. Jesse Welles kept the tunes going – one after another. It was a tight set.

Best Vocal Harmonies Award: Background Singers for Miko Marks

Miko Marks has an interesting musical story. Getting into the music business later in life, she started gigging in middle age. She embraces her family history in the west. You can read more about it at https://oaklandbca.org/

It is one of those seldom-told stories, about how African Americans are an integral story to the west. Out on the lonely plains and in the mountains more often than not many Black folk were embraced as part of the settler communities once white folk realized that their Black neighbors were indispensable to the community’s survival. For instance, A Black Woman’s West: The Life of Rose B. Gordon by Michael K. Johnson chronicles Rose B. Gordon’s life in small town Montana. There are surely many more similar stories that have never made it to print.

During the festival, many acts paid tribute to Dolly Parton who passed away this year. I have never been a big Country Music fan, save for a few artists and Dolly was never on that list but Dolly sure did have a lot of fans. Miko Marks did an incredible interpretation of I’ll Always Love You.

Singer that Sounded a Bit Like Willie: Lukas Nelson

Lucas can channel his pops Willie and can sing his songs with that high reedy voice. He is a great musician.

Best Harmonica Playing While Playing Guitar:

Willy Braun on “Wicked Twisted Road”. He really did the most intricate guitar/harmonica playing during the fest. There were a lot of people playing harmonica on a rack this year but Willy’s work was the best.

Great festival! Until next year.

HSB 2026 GALLERY

Past Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Awards – The List is Long

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September San Francisco Weather, Lyft Bicycle Racks, Billionaires and Taxes and Your Computer is Now “Thinking”

September San Francisco Weather is Always a Tossup

It never fails. In San Francisco in early September we get a few days of Indian Summer. People get all excited and head to the beach.  The skies are clear. The sun is shining. The swell is gentle. The winds light. The light is turning to that warm autumn golden.  Two-year-old’s can frolic by the shore in the sand. Everyone thinks that the long slog of summer fog is over. Time and time again it seems just a teaser as the nice days are followed by a few weeks of grim cold, wind and fog.

The weekend of September 19th, 2026 was just that sort of time. The entire Bay Area was betting on warm weather. There were a zillion events planned. Street fairs, Flower Piano, Music Festivals at Treasure Island, Lowrider Fests. It seemed like by mid-day it hovered around sixty-two and a cold wind blew from the northwest. Such is the fate of San Francisco weather in September.

Bill Ortiz Group at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell
Bill Ortiz Group at the Golden Gate Park Bandshell
Alemany Farmers Market - Where the Real Food is
Alemany Farmers Market – Where the real food is.

In a few weeks we will be in October and the forecast does look good. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival will be going on in Golden Gate Park the first weekend in October but anything can happen.

Lyft Bicycle Racks and the End of Your Business

I love bicycles. I ride a bicycle. I commuted to work for decades on a bicycle. Riding a bike to work was often the best part of my day. If you want to change the world, that Victorian invention, the bicycle is one solution that has many benefits. Often people assume that anything associated with bicycles is a good thing.

While I have taken a Lyft bicycle for a spin (was surprised how expensive the rental was and how crappy the bike rode), I have noticed that wherever the city of San Francisco allows Lyft to install a rack of their bikes, businesses nearby suffer. Historic Deli’s close (think Lucca’s on 22nd). Shops close. Restaurants become vacant. Lyft has taken over often two parking spots for their bike racks. Once again San Francisco bends over for big tech.

San Francisco has more than 12,000 public bike parking spaces across the city from over 6,000 public bike racks, alongside approximately 275 Lyft Bay Wheels bike-share station locations.
– https://www.sfmta.com/blog/bikeshare-pricing-frequently-asked-questions-faq

The deal that was cut with Lyft was a one-time $300,000 deal in 2019. This deal was written so it funded San Francisco to install common bike parking stations – the U-bar bike parking spots. All fine and dandy, but let’s do some math.

Generally it is $2.50 an hour to park at a meter so barring no tickets, the City collects $20 a day from a parking spot. There are 260 weekdays in a year so conceivably the City collects $5200 a year from a single metered parking spot. In six years that is $31,000 for a single parking spot.  This is a low-ball and does not even consider parking tickets. There are over 200 Lyft bike station in San Francisco. It does seem that whomever made this deal underbid.  In the last six years San Francisco could have been collecting at least $6,240,000 from Lyft! Perhaps twice as much as their bike racks often take up two parking spaces.

THE MATH:
2.50 * 8 = $20
20 * 260 = $5200
6 * 5200 = $31,000
31,000 * 200 = $6,240,000

So instead of $300,000 the City should be getting over a million dollars a year from Lyft. The reason I bring this up is that a parking spot is a public space. Giving it away to a tech corporation at a reduced rate (think Twitter tax break) is simply unfair to other businesses. With often everything in this city decided by a referendum, it is odd that this was never voted on. Once again, San Francisco shows itself in progressive garb that is essentially a sort of tech libertarianism. Whenever I hear a journalist say that San Franisco is the most liberal or progressive city in the United States, I just roll my eyes.

California Billionaires Can Afford a 5% Tax They Presently Hardly Pay Any Taxes

It is not unusual, seeing as how much billionaire money is in politics these days that here in San Francisco the billionaires are sending us mailers at least weekly telling everyone to vote no on Proposition 40. Proposition 40 is a one time 5% wealth tax on billionaires to help fund social services, mostly healthcare. Of course billionaires are not going to want this tax. Indeed, for years the wealthy have figured out how to dodge taxes. Presently most  billionaires pay no taxes at all or if they do it is actually less than 1% of their income! For example, Mark Zuckerberg pays hardly any taxes at all. Most of us humans pay around 25% of our hard earned money to the government. I make residuals on digital music from an album I was a part of in the late 1990s and even that is automatically taxed at 24%.

It is time to make the billionaires pay something. One arguments against the Proposition 40 is that it simple perpetuates our broken system whereby our healthcare is owned by insurance companies and that it is a big giveaway to these companies. Hello??? The entire financial world is based on insurance companies. Another argument is that the  billionaires will move to Florida. I say good riddance! Enjoy the hurricanes!!!

VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 40 – TAX THE BILLIONAIRES. THEY WILL STILLL HAVE THEIR YACHTS AND ISLANDS IN HAWAII

Your Computer is Now Thinking

In the 1960s TV show Get Smart there is a computer, the ARDVARC – the Automated Reciprocal Data Verifier and Reaction Computer. In the show, Max asks the computer a question. Lights flash. Some clicking sounds are heard. Eventually the computer spits out a three-by-five inch card with the answer. Of course the computer was “thinking.”

On the internet (and Smart TV’s), in order to let the user know that something is actually happening when you click on something or go to a page you see a spinning icon or  “indicator.” Often times in the background is an API request calling up information from another server. The indicator would often say “loading…”

loading...
loading…

Now, instead of “loading…” the indicators often say “thinking…”. I am not sure when this happened but surely with the advent of AI. There is probably someone in tech that can tell you the exact day when they changed “loading” to “thinking” and the marketing meeting when this decision was made. Language is a powerful thing that over time controls our perception of reality and the world.  The anthropomorphization of computers is at an all-time high and really out of control. In actuality computers are really still just “loading…”.

Those are my four rants for today and remember – think for yourself!

“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”
– Vice President Dan Quayle

$6 a gallon for gas in San Francisco. Over $80 to fill a tank. If the Republicans lose big in November, this is the reason why.
$6 a gallon for gas in San Francisco. Over $80 to fill a tank. If the Republicans lose big in November, this is the reason why.
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August San Francisco Photos

Golden Gate Bridge

August in San Francisco

Always chilly. A different climate in each neighborhood. Northwest winds over 10 knots. Most people in cars but the bikes and scooters are out. Tourists flock to Fisherman’s Wharf. The Golden Gate Bridge mostly shrouded in a marine layer.

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The Quarterly Report – News from San Francisco – August 2026

Peaches

The Quarterly Report: A brief synopsis of the news in San Francisco over the last three months. You are now reading “Slow News That Doesn’t Break” – the exotic internet. I’m not kidding. No one reads these reports.

Disclaimer

For the last three months I have been on assignment covering West Coast geography, Central American highways designs and journeys into the blast furnace that is the American Southwest. This quarterly report shall be brief.

Politics

I know nothing about this subject as I went on a rather rash news fast. Cold turkey. I unsubscribed to all the newsletters. Stopped listening to radio news. Zilch on the podcasts. I blew up my TV. Threw away my news paper. No print media. I survived. When I came out of this hole and reemerged the first thing I noticed is that basically nothing in the news had changed. Wars. Scandals. Corruption at the highest levels. Looming environmental catastrophe. More bullying. More absurdities. I think I will do my best to fend off the information overload but it a trying task. Mostly I listen to music. It seems to be way healthier.

Weather

Having been gone a lot of June and July, I would be the wrong person to ask about the weather. I did hear that San Francisco was fogged in as usual on the 4th of July. Some things never change.

The temperatures must have been warm as the peaches came in early. Blackberries were ripe in July as usual. Artichokes are still fresh.

Peaches
Peaches

Local Politics

Vote for Connie Chan for Congress.

That is The Quarterly Report – August 2026

Photo Gallery of SF

The Quarterly Report – August 2026

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Notes from the Road: Bicycling from Portland to San Francisco

To set off on this 800 mile bike trip from Portland to San Francisco you have to be a bit mad, maybe crazy, maybe escaping the toxic modern world, but probably you may just want to see the world on two wheels. It is an awesome adventure with a variety of geography and topography: coastal ranges, ocean views, beaches, redwoods, rivers, open fields and marshes. I did the trip from June 3-19, 2026. With all told three rest days it took a little over two weeks. Riding Amtrak (Amtrak Coast Starlight) from San Francisco you can reserve a seat in coach and make sure you reserve a spot for you bike ($20). The train gets into Portland around 4pm so you can get a hotel for the first night and follow the route outlined on https://www.bestcoastbiking.com/portland-to-san-francisco. Some of the details of this route are getting out of date (there are no saunas in any of the campgrounds, there is water in all) but the pace of 60 miles per day was good for me. It was a great tool as it has mile markers and information about eateries and stores along the way.

It does seem like at any given time during the summer months there are at least fifty other people riding along the coast. Most of these riders had the exact same idea as you and ride solo. Some are in groups of two or four. The riders are from all over the world with many Europeans. I met a fellow from New Zealand. A young fellow from Santa Cruz on a custom single speed. A guy from Ireland who was flying at over a hundred miles a day. Some take their time and do twenty miles a day and explore the rural towns and sights. Some travel light and stay in hotels. I met people from 18 to 70 years of age.

Fifteen miles before Crescent City along the road I rode by a run down house in the country. The front door was painted red, white and blue with a message “FU*K JOE BIDEN” and a pretty good mural of a hand giving you the middle finger.  Not sure what the guy had against Joe and was perhaps one of the few signs of this ilk I saw during this ride. I rode on.

At Crescent City – the half way point, I had a great meal at a local pub. That night I got a motel in Crescent City (Front Street Inn) and woke up the next day and did my laundry. You can take the local 3:00 pm bus to Klamath as suggested in my guide and bike to the lovely Elk Prairie Campground in the redwoods. I had the hike-bike spot campsite to myself. The bird songs were incredible and many.

Alder Glen Campground. One of my favorites on the trip. Quiet. Magical.
Alder Glen Campground. One of my favorites on the trip. Quiet. Magical.

Bicycling from Portland to San Francisco you can stay in these hike-bike spots in state and regional campgrounds. No need to make a reservation as these are overflow, drop-in spots. Often the spots are at the edge of campgrounds and so in many ways nice and private. Other times they are close to the gate and showers. In Oregon many had modern charging stations, lockers and bike tool stands. The price for the night varied from $5-10. In California they vary a lot –  make sure you have plenty of quarters for the showers. Always be aware of the raccoons and blue jays as they want your food. In one campground I spied at Blue Jay poking holes in a package of dehydrated chicken fettuccini. She obviously could read as the other option was beef stroganoff. Gualala Regional Park was full of racoons, blue jays and even barred owls.

Oregon Coast
Oregon Coast

Throughout the ride there is very little cell service. This was very refreshing and the only way to keep your phone functioning and battery not draining was to keep it in “airplane mode.”

Unlike the Midwest and East, along the West Coast there are few diners or breakfast spots and morning food options are limited. Most of the time I made oatmeal and coffee in camp. On the road the option was often a drive-through coffee spot with a greasy microwave breakfast sandwich.  These kiosks pop up even in rural areas. Evidently, on the West Coast people do not sit around diners and talk about the weather.

For lunch there are plenty of options. There are many amazing places that make delicious sandwiches and burgers, sometimes with homemade bread. Stewarts Point Store was amazing.  Pizza is often an excellent option. Of course there are Mexican and Chinese options along the way as well.

Eel River
Eel River

While I thought I would have tailwinds for this trip, due to the rain storms for many days the winds came moderately out the south. I did take a much needed rest day along the Eel River. It was eighty degrees and I had the place to myself. Delicious! The last day was a long ride from Bodega Dunes Park to San Francisco.  About eighty-five miles later I was back in the city by the bay.

San Francisco - Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco – Golden Gate Bridge

If you are considering this trip, I would just say that it is an awesome adventure and I highly recommend it. The ACA maps are surely very good. Not for the those who cannot deal with adversity as you will be going over the coast range and that is always about  a 2000 vertical foot climb.  Also Highway 1 in Sonoma and Marin Counties can be a bit dicey with no shoulder and cars. Lincoln City in Oregon is a bit busy with cars and RVs. But the views are stupendous. The Nestucca River. Southern Oregon south of Port Orford is amazing. The redwoods and north section of Highway 1 are breathtaking. The cliffs around Jenner are sublime.

A big shout out to the “Fearless Four.” You know who you are. Until we meet again.

 

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Henry Miller Quote – The Colossus of Maroussi

“We move in clock time amidst the debris of vanished worlds, inventing the instruments of our own destruction, oblivious of fate and destiny, knowing never a moment of peace, possessing not an ounce of faith, a prey to the blackest superstitions, functioning neither in the body or spirit, active not as individuals but as microbes in the organism of the diseased.”
Henry Miller – The Colossus of Maroussi

Published in 1941, Miller thought that The Colossus of Maroussi was his best work. I tend to agree. It is a travelogue while carousing around Greece during the early days of Word War II. Some of the quotes seem as though they were written last week.

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A Waymo is Towed Out of the Alemany Farmers Market

What happens when a self-driving Waymo gets lost, drunk or simply confused beyond repair? A tow truck comes and picks it up and takes it to a garage… just like all those other cars. I have seen this a few times. There is always someone driving the tow truck which is reassuring for us humans. This time however, it does seem a bit funny.

“I like got totally confused! People jockeying for position. Some moving right. Some going left. Very confusing street signs. Some aiming for the eggplant stand others for the strawberries. I decided to call it quits, smoke a cigarette and call a tow truck. It’s the weekend people. These are just fruits and vegetables. Relax!”
Waymo post-towing comments and download

People can be so intense when shopping for organic vegetables!

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San Francisco Carnaval 2026 Photos

Rumberos Sunday

Sorry. I can’t talk right now. I’m working…
– rumbero talking overheard

San Francisco Carnaval 2026 took place on May 23 and 24, 2026. The tradition continues! It is a very local festival celebrating the cultures of Latin America, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, Chicano culture, even Black culture from the southern United States. It may be the last place in San Francisco where there are no big tech or corporate sponsors. There are always a lot of local dance groups, school groups, amazing costumes and floats, way too loud local DJs and very good local bands.

This year there were a lot of groups in the parade from Colombia. The Mexican animales costumes (I know not where this tradition comes from) were off the charts. The parade is always on Sunday, starting at around 10am. It was a mild sunny day. Later in the afternoon the wind came up (as it does this time of year) out of the northwest – swirling around the Mission. Big kudos to Carlos Franco and his All-Star Band who pulled off a very challenging windy situation on the 17th and Harrison stage. Imagine a high pop fly in the gusty winds of summer at Candlestick – I’m not sure how they caught those things. Music was flying everywhere. Letter C everyone!!! Yes. The mambo!!! More clothes pins!

On Sunday near the end the Radio Havana Rumberos had the spot on Harrison by 21st. Amazing all-star cast of musicians and the drumming and dancing were off-the-hook. “Sorry. I can’t talk right now. I’m working…”

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The AI inevitability narrative

JoDX
As a teacher, I say again: AI has NEVER felt like something I ‘participate’ in — it has always felt like something ‘happening’ to me and my students and to schools everywhere. This lack of choice has been intentional from the get-go, supporting the AI inevitability narrative. Yet if any outside power had without warning eviscerated our educational systems in the way this tech has, it would rightly have been perceived as an enemy or terrorist attack of terrifyingly effective proportions. As Stiegler pointed out years ago, Silicon Valley regularly act as the terrorists in our midst — yet they are embraced and still unregulated, all these years later. It makes you wonder what we would act to protect if not our children’s minds.

From a comment on The Atantic website responding to the article
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/05/ai-inflection-point-trump-china/687202/

One can only wonder that this quote is the equivalent of the canary in a coal mine. Educators are always on the front lines of social changes and the impacts of learning and technology. JoDX: thank you for your insights.

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Latest Finding – Humans are Now Expendable, How to Cook Artichokes & Trump is Just Jealous

ACT 1: Humans are Now Expendable

STOP HIRING HUMANS
– Sign pulled by a plane flying over the San Francisco bay

These are strange times that we live in. The airplane was invented but a little over hundred years ago. At one point the only place airplanes landed in San Francisco was at Crissy Field, a small flat place on the bay by the Golden Gate Bridge. Not far from Chrissy Field, flying over the San Francisco Bay, on May 1, 2026 a small propeller-prop plane was observed pulling a sign that said “STOP HIRING HUMANS.”  In the background was Alcatraz. What can this mean? Universal income for all? Are we all going to just be able stay in bed all day, not go to work, roll over and hit the snooze button? It is very ironic that it was May 1st – International Workers Day. You definitely have to give credit to the gall of whomever paid for this advertisement, but the crucial question is: was there a person in the cockpit flying the plane? Does he have a parachute if things do not work out?

ACT 2: How to Cook an Artichoke

It’s that time of year again. You will see them in piles at the grocery store or better yet – at a farmers market. Maybe $2 each. Sometimes less. It is the artichoke.  What is this thing? Is it a vegetable? Maybe a plant from outer space? Actually it is but a flower. They love dancing in the fog. When they are fresh, they can be absolutely divine.

STEP ONE: Take a big pasta pot and fill it with water and set it to boil.

STEP TWO: Assess your artichoke. I prefer to take a clean scissors and cut off the leaf ends.  Trim off the often prickly ends. You will not eat this part anyway.

STEP THREE: Wash the artichoke under cool water. Open up the center and allow any bugs to come out of hiding. Use more water. Sometimes there are pincher bugs that like to move in. You are now the evil landlord evicting the tenants. Be gentle though, and take the creature to the window and toss her out of the house. You did her a favor. She will not be boiled alive.

STEP FOUR: Put the artichokes in the boiling pot. Add some salt. I try to get the salt into the middle of the artichokes. Boil for one hour. Yes. One hour. A good medium boil will do. Remember – Rome was not built in a day you know.

STEP FIVE:  After an hour, using tongs, take the artichokes out and put them in bowl. Poke them with a fork to make sure they are completely dead. If the stem is still hard, leave the artichokes in the hot water for more time, otherwise set aside.

STEP SIX: And here, ladies and gentlemen is my secret. Take a few tabs of butter and place them in the center of the flower, in the middle of the leaves. Squeeze a lemon on these same leaves. Add a little more salt. The heat of the artichoke will melt the butter. Wait about five minutes before serving.

Eat the meat in the leaves by pulling them off one at a time. Scrape the meat out with your teeth. Use an empty bowl and discard the remnants. When you make it to the heart, cut that out with a paring knife away from the hairy part (you’ll figure it out) and share with your friend. If you have no friends, sharing an artichoke heart will get you some.

That is my artichoke rant. Aren’t you glad you made it this far!

ACT 3: The Valencia Bike Lane Now Does Actually Work

While the San Francisco Chronicle rambles on about how great it is that humans are slowly being replaced by the tech bros in the taxi business, a story that goes unreported is that the Valencia bike lane now does work. Zig zagging your way down to Market Street was evidently the best way.  Humans. Sometimes they eventually get some things right.

ACT 4: Donald Trump is Just Jealous

It is an odd thing that no one has come to the realization that Donald Trump is simply jealous. When the U.S. sent in that stealth force into Caracas and kidnapped Nicolas Madura, what was really happening was that Trump was going after a leader who simply outdid him in the coup d’etat category. Maduro stayed in power by claiming he had won the election when it was quite apparent that he did not. Maduro outdid Trump by having a successful coup. Donald was perhaps pissed off that he had been outdone. Mob bosses hate to be one-upped. January 6th. If only that Pence guy had a spine!

By the way poor Nicolas seems to have fallen off the news radar. Reports about the prison food? What are the conditions like? How is the mattress holding up? We need details.

With Iran, it is a matter of simply being jealous of the Iranian style of government.  Iran is a Religious Theocracy, the exact type of government that the current batch of Republicans esteem to. Instead of Islam they of course prefer Christianity. Instead of Mohammed it is Jesus. In the end, it is simply jealousy. My God is better than your God. My misogyny is better than your misogyny.

While Trump is perhaps the most non-religious president in United States history, the reason he is in power is because of these religious fanatics, who  made a Faustian deal with the devil and who’s course he follows in his usual transactional style. Trump and his crazy entourage are all just fighting Iran because they have been outdone. Jesus, do save us.

Those are my rants. I have some artichokes to eat.

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The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters – A Review

I don’t know anything and have no perspective, but here is my comment… I feel better now.
Barnstorm in 2013 on the defunct website – Stoke Report

Introduction

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Tom Nichols (first edition) from 2018 is a book about how experts no longer have the influence that they did in times past.

Americans have reached the point where  ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy is an actual virtue. To reject the advise of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans  to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they are wrong about anything.
The Death of Expertise – by Tom Nichols

I am not an expert or professional book reviewer but I cannot help writing these reviews. They are a way for me to ponder the meaning and ideas of a book. It is simply an exercise in critical thinking.

One thing that you realize from his long resume that besides being a university professor, Tom Nichols is a military expert. I got to know his writing through his many Atlantic articles where he is on staff. His take on the Trump administration and the Commander in Chief is always spot on. It is truly unfortunate that before the current U.S. wars no one consulted Tom Nichols. He surely would have given some sage advise.  He is a throwback Republican – a thinking, well-read Republican. I know not whether he is still registered as a Republican but these days thinking Republicans seem to be in short supply.

Overall the book is a quick-read and in many ways is but a vehicle for Nichols to cathartically gripe about the state of the world. Much of these gripes are things that have arisen since the advent of the internet. Chapter 3: Higher Education: The Customer Is Always Right – Examines how universities treat students as consumers, lowering educational standards definitely is full of antidotes (often funny, sometimes depressing) about how universities have changed. Learning and scholarly pursuits seem to have taken a back seat to coddling the young adults.

College as a client-centered experience caters to adolescents instead of escorting them away from adolescence. Rather than disabusing students of their intellectual solipsism, the modern university ends up reinforcing it.
The Death of Expertise – by Tom Nichols

Indeed, if you have ever seen a college brochure these days, you get the feeling that the prospective students are but customers and of course “the customer is always right.” Fancy dorms. Extra dining options. State-of-the-art gyms. Nichols has been teaching at the university level for decades and has an inside view of this phenomenon.

With these rants and others The Death of Expertise is but a topical book. It is a book that in fifty years will be but a time-capsule of the first part of the twenty-first century and nothing more.

What is not in the book or skimmed over

While Nichols does a great job of explaining many of the current trends such as “confirmation bias,” psychology terms like the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Sturgeon’s Law he does not dig very deeply into why there is a death of expertise. He does give some blame to the internet as often a few Wikipedia pages often makes people feel like they are experts.  For better or worse the internet does  allows just about anyone to express their latest opinions and findings, but the internet is really just one big popularity contest driven by “influencers” and tech companies looking to make a buck.  Being popular and well-liked does not make you and expert. He but lightly touches on this conundrum.

Another area where he treads lightly is in the demise of the journalism profession. Here Nichols does not venture to ask why. Obviously it has to do with the monopolization of the media business. Laws and deregulations that enable corporations to dominate an industry.  The death of small news organizations and reporters. The dismal state of online journalism. This is but briefly mentioned. So called mainstream online journalism will couple articles about pet food next to genocide, weight loss drugs next to serial killers, the latest makeup eyeliner trends next a war in Africa. We seem to have have become normalized to this “expert” editorial style. I find it simply strange and dystopian. These are the “expert” editors? Perhaps it is what Steve Bannon calls “flood the zone.” In actuality he said “flood the zone with shit” but that is a minor detail.

Capitalism and Politics

And what seems to perplex Nichols the most, and where he never ventures is a main reason experts are in decline is because of capitalism. Experts have been in decline for a long time. Fifty years ago oil companies had their very own scientists and experts assess the effect of fossil fuels on the climate. They were overwhelmingly in agreement that fossil fuels would warm the planet and be a problem for humanity. The oil companies ignored their very own experts’ and scientists’  advise.  Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth was truly inconvenient so it was ignored. Greed and the all-important dollar won out.

You see this sort of phenomenon whereby experts are ignored in many fields and industries. Recently, in Trump Contagion by Brandy X. Lee you learn that medical organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) along with the New York Times put the kabash on a large group of experts in the fields of psychiatry,  law and others.  In 2018 they determined that Donald Trump was seriously mentally ill, unfit to serve as president and an existential threat to humanity.  Even though her earlier book  The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President  was a best-seller the APA killed her next book Trump Contagion because the pharmaceutical industry, one of their main donors, did not want the book to gain momentum and be taken seriously. The last thing the APA wanted was to be in the crosshairs of Donald Trump so they stifled their experts. What this means is that you have professional organizations ignoring and at times killing the advise of their very own experts. Capitalism and our messed up, mendacious politics is one of the big reason for this death of expertise. As the Paul Simon song goes – “people believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest.”

That is my review and thoughts about The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters but as this piece began “I don’t know anything and have no perspective, but here is my comment… I feel better now.” I do know one thing. If I was thinking about starting a war in say Iran, I would definitely want Tom Nichols in the room. He is an expert.

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The 2025/26 Ski Season Retrospect

Photo: Elephants Back along the scenic 88, Kit Carson Highway.

What a strange snow year this was. We had an early storm in December that made for skiing during the winter holidays, then during January  we had no snow and a month of warm temperatures and mild weather. In San Francisco, it got so warm people were wearing shorts to the beach, bringing their kids to frolic in the sand. It seemed like an endless Indian summer and more like the weather we sometimes get in  late-September. This rarely happens in January or February.

Early February came and we were hit by a significant storm. This was the one when a backcountry ski group at Donner Summit got caught in a tragic avalanche. After that the warm weather came back and it got to sometimes 65 degrees at 10,000 feet. The sun was out and a lot of snow melted. In early April things changed once again with a few late season storms that added a few feet of snow to the meager snowpack.

As of April 20th, most ski resorts are closed. Many did close early this year. Generally the snowpack is very low. See: https://snow.water.ca.gov/.

I had the arduous assignment as the SF Journal travel correspondent,  confirming these weather totals, at one point waiting out a storm for a few hours in Colfax, California before barely making it over Donner Summit. Later in April, we were able to enjoy a few days at Kirkwood, a ski resort that stayed open the longest.

The 2025/26 Ski Season Sierra Photo Gallery