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The Quarterly Report – News from San Francisco – February 2026

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.

Weather

After a few good storms in late December, January was a month of warm temperatures and sunny skies. The snow that fell in Sierra began to melt. As of mid-February the snowpack is about 50% of normal. The month of January made for amazing beach days and weeks on end of amazing head-high surf. The winds were out of the east and rarely very strong.

Ocean Beach San Francisco

As of late, there are a few storms brewing out at sea. In the coming week there is predicted a few new feet of snow in the Sierra. In earlier times people would know this as you start to see the storms out at see but also from the fact that the birds start moving around, seagulls flying inland. Oddly on my block a large cypress tree that for years has been home to crows has been taken over by a flock of robins. Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was inspired but such phenomenon.

Kirkwood, CA. January, 2026
Kirkwood, CA. January, 2026
Lake Alpine, CA. February 7, 2026
Lake Alpine, CA. February 7, 2026
Carson-Glacier Wilderness, CA. February 7, 2026
Carson-Glacier Wilderness, CA. February 7, 2026
Lake Alpine, CA. February 7, 2026
Lake Alpine, CA. February 7, 2026

National Politics

On January 3, 2026, U.S. forces executed a military operation, termed “Operation Absolute Resolve,” that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their residence in Caracas.

It is hard to read and listen to what is going on in national politics.  Donald Trump and all his corrupt cronies become tiresome. It really isn’t funny anymore. When politics merged with entertainment and scandal became a virtue we lost our way. People often quote Steve Bannon as saying that as a political strategy it is good to “flood the zone” but what he really said was “flood the zone with shit.” In past articles I have called our current age the “Age of Delusion.” People in our current times simply make up stuff to back up their personal narratives and then “flood the zone with shit.” However, this may simply be part of the human condition.  Don Quixote, the knight errant in Cervantes classic novel embodies this quality, idealizing the valiant and courageous warrior at all costs. He mistakes windmills for monsters and dragons, people peacefully traveling as enemies he must conquer.  Today people in power often no longer idealize war and the warriors but still make events seem to always support their delusional narratives. We are currently lead by a  delusional commander in chief who has never served in the military and disdains any actions of virtue. Hopefully we will still have a country come November but things could easily become violent.

ICE is pulling out of Minneapolis. Where these thugs go to at this point should be our chief concern.

And then there is the United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi in her own delusional rants during a senate hearing on February 11. 2026.

“This is so ridiculous. They are trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done. There is no evidence that he’s committed a crime. Everyone knows that.’
Pam Bondi, senate hearing, February 11. 2026

‘You’re a washed-up loser lawyer… You’re not even a lawyer!’
Pam Bondi speaking to the distinguished law professor and Senator Jamie Raskin

‘Don’t you ever accuse me of committing a crime!’
Pam Bondi, senate hearing, February 11. 2026

Local Politics

The SFUSD teachers went on strike demanding better wages and medical benefits. It went on for a week in February and eventually a deal was achieved.

If you want to keep track of San Francisco politics, probably the best place is https://missionlocal.org/. They actually have a few beat reporters and report on things like homelessness and the police.

The rents in San Francisco are still exorbitant, surely driven up by the AI companies and the venture capital backing it.

After a proposal to tax the billionaires a onetime 5% to help fund health care and education, Mark Zuckerberg looks to be moving to Florida. I say good riddance! In all my years here in The City I never saw the guy once though he had the nerve to get San Francisco General Hospital to rename itself Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. Perhaps he could spend the millions of dollars it will take to take his name off of this institution and update the acronym. His business model is purely extractive in nature and toxic, especially for children. Entire families have been decimated. Countries have been torn apart. He is indeed part of the “Epstein Class.” Billionaires who live by a different set of laws and rules. Of course, such people have a way of paying less in terms of taxes (some none at all) than the rest of us poor folk. All I can say is “enjoy the hurricanes.”

Sporting News

The Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl over the New England Patriots 29 to 13. The running of Kenneth Walker III was fun to watch.

The San Francisco 49ers season was full of injuries but they did make it through a playoff game in Philadelphia defeating the former champs.  The play of the game was a trick play whereby a receiver, after a few hand-offs ended up throwing the ball to a diving Christian McCaffery. Brock Purdy handed off to Skyy Moore, who flipped it to Jauan Jennings, who then threw to a wide-open McCaffrey.

You can see it here:

49ers.com/video/jennings-trick-pass-sets-up-mccaffrey-touch-down-philadelphia-eagles-wild-card-playoffs

After that win, they played the next game against the Seahawks and got blown out.

That is The Quarterly Report – February 2026

Photo Gallery of SF

The Quarterly Report – February 2026

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The AI Billboard Craze and What Do These Things Mean?

Billboards often seem to say more about the rich and powerful in a city than the actual messages. In Los Angeles there are often large expenditures for billboards promoting new movies. It is a “movie town” and the powerful would be remiss if they did not see a large photo of their multimillion dollar project along the Interstate. In San Francisco for the last few years it has all been about Artificial Intelligence or AI. Instead of billboards advertising shampoo, beer or whiskey, travel destinations or even the latest iPhones, the landscape is littered with signs for AI. It seems that almost a hundred percent of the billboards in San Francisco are AI companies. This surely tells us something about the deep pockets of the venture capital in the Bay Area that they can outbid General Mills, Coca Cola, United Airlines and Ford Motor Company for this advertising space.

In the past, billboards would have some sort of meaning to the average person on the street. Look at this great phone. Those Doritos do look pretty tasty. I really do need to use Yahoo as my search engine. But now, most of these billboards have absolutely no meaning to the average person on the street. Perhaps most are meant to build a brand or name with the hopes of getting into the subconscious of the general populous. But often the language of these billboards is programming lingo and surely is a foreign language to most. Targeted advertising? Probably not for the tech workers looking at their phones, making their way to Menlo Park on the Google buses.

AI Billboard along Interstate 101 in San Francisco
AI Billboard along Interstate 101 in San Francisco

So what does Prompt it. Then push it. actually mean?

In source control like git, you have a repository of code. Here you can see the changes that have been made over time. It makes ir so you do not lose any work and when there are bugs you can figure out what went wrong and perhaps revert to a previous version.

A command-line prompt would be something like:

git commit -m “I did all this work on my new app. Soon I shall be a billionaire.”

The “commit -m” is the “prompt” where “-m” stands for “message.” There are all kinds of prompts. It is 2026 and even though there are IDE (Integrated Development Environments) software to make things easier, programmers still use command-line prompts, like the early years of COBAL and UNIX programming.

And then to make sure none of your code gets lost somewhere, you “push” it up to the repository, often called server, now “the cloud.”

git push origin main

What is funny about the billboard that says “Prompt it. Then push it” is that in a different decade someone who was priced-out of the neighborhood might have replied “No buddy, do not Prompt it. Then push it. How about just shove it… and you know where!”

“No buddy, do not Prompt it. Then push it. How about just shove it… and you know where!”

That’s the joke in this rant.

Agents. At your command.
Agents. At your command.

Often there are hands on a keyboard or sometimes even hands with religious connotations in the sky looking a bit like a Leonardo Da Vinci’s Creation of Adam painting.  Another word that is used all the time is Agents.  
Modern computer culture and an excess of hubris seem to be a constant theme. Trust us. We will solve all your woes.

Now there is a “TOKEN FACTORY.” I am not sure what that is but I hope they have a union. Maybe ask your nephew?

Not sure what these two mean but I suspect that the customer service jobs in the Philippines, India and Texas may be getting some layoffs in the near future. Unlike the movie The Graduate where Ben gets advised by Mr. Robinson about the one word, plastics, the new word seems to be agents.

All the images above are just some of the billboards that I documented along the 101 interstate highway in San Francisco. There surely are more. One billboard actually got tagged. Not sure what that means about their “backend” but that was very “frontend.” Some things do stay the same.

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Sunset Dunes Art Exhibition

Sunset Dunes Art Exhibition is the Cheap Thrill of the Week. January 2026 was an amazing month to be at Ocean Beach. There was very little rain, the skies were clear and the wind was often light out of the east.  The first few weeks of February look to continue this weather pattern.

Of course there are many ways to get to the Sunset Dunes Art Exhibition. You can ride a bike and then enjoy the car-free park along the Great Highway.  Another fun way is to take the N Judah Muni Train to the end of the line, grab a hot drink and snack at the Java Beach Cafe then head out to Sunset Dunes Park. After passing the large WPA constructed “Convenience Station,” otherwise knows as bathrooms, on the main highway to your right is the Sunset Dunes Art Exhibition. This is a rotating exhibition.

After the ten minutes it takes to view the art, head south towards Pacheco Street where you can see brave souls surf the ten to fifteen foot waves. Some even have created racks on their bikes for transporting their surfboards.

There are so many options at Sunset Dunes Park, only your imagination is the limit.

 

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Books I Read in 2025

In 2025 most of the books I read were courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library. I read parts of books and checked out books that I was simply curious about. The San Francisco Public Library is an amazing resource. You can even check out vinyl records!

Below is a list of books that I finished. I do this exercise to simply reflect on the previous year.

Books I Read 2025


Crow Planet Essential Wisdom From the Urban Wilderness
Haupt, Lyanda Lynn
New York : Little, Brown and Co., 2009.


The Explosion of Deferred Dreams Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965-1975
Callahan, Mathew
Oakland, CA : PM Press, [2017]
see review

This is a really interesting book for those interested in San Francisco history.

Eiger Dreams Ventures Among Men and Mountains
Krakauer, Jon
New York, NY : Lyons & Burford, c1990.


The Fifth Risk
Lewis, Michael
New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Michael Lewis has spent the last few years investigating what the federal government does. The Fifth Risk illuminates how behind the scenes, dedicated, often eccentric federal employees do jobs that are very important for our safety and also simply to advance pure science.

James A Novel
Everett, Percival
New York : Doubleday, [2024]
see review

The review of James linked above is the most viewed post on this website.

Rasputin The Untold Story
Fuhrmann, Joseph T.
Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, c2013.

Bless Me, Ultima
Rudolfo Anaya
TQS Publications 1972

barbariandayscover200
Barbarian Days A Surfing Life
Finnegan, William
New York : Penguin Press, 2015.
see review

Indeed, underestimation is practiced with the greatest aplomb on the North Shore of Oahu. There, a wave must be the size of a small cathedral before locals will call it eight feet.

 

Buzzy Trent, an old-time big wave rider, allegedly said, “Big waves are not measured in feet, but increments of fear.” If he said that, he got it right.
– “Barbarian Days A Surfing Life”

Knoxville: This Obscure Prismatic City
(American Chronicles) Neely, Jack
The History Press; Illustrated edition (November 13, 2009)

Technofeudalism What Killed Capitalism
Varoufakis, Yanis
Brooklyn, NY : Melville House, [2023], ©2023

Indeed we are all serfs in the new economic order, with every social media post adding to the coffers of the the likes of Mark Zuckerberg. Give not your children away to these schmucks!

Notes From Underground
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2009.

1984
Orwell, George
San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, [1984], ©1949

It is always good to revisit the dystopian works of the twentieth century. 1984 rings true still.

The Song of the Hawk The Life and Recordings of Coleman Hawkins
Chilton, John
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, c1990.
see review

Walden and Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
New York : Union Square & Co., 2023.

If simplicity is a virtue, I think that Thoreau has vanished from the American psychique. We are a country where more is better and the accumulation of stuff is really the only virtue.

Tropic of Cancer
Miller, Henry
Mexican Publisher

Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
Miller, Henry
New Directions

“The language of society is conformity; the language of the individual is freedom. Life will continue to be hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality. Switching from one ideology to another is a useless game. Each and every one of us is unique, and must be recognized as such. The least we can say about ourselves is that we are American, or French, or whatever the case may be. We are first of all human beings, different one from another, obliged to live together, to stew in the same pot.”
– Henry Miller from “Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”

Teaching to Transgress Education as the Practice of Freedom
hooks, bell New York : Routledge, 1994.

Abundance
Klein, Ezra
First Avid Reader Press

Good grief! I have no idea why this book was taken seriously. The rose-colored glasses this book takes on the current situation is so devoid of the realities on the ground. It is for those who have this delusional idea that somehow technology will fix all our problems (Bill Gates is in this camp). Climate change is but a bug that we can fix. Miraculously affordable housing will emerge just as long as we get government regulations eradicated. It is as if the authors have no understanding of history.

The World’s Fastest Man the Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America’s First Black Sports Hero
Kranish, Michael
New York : Scribner, 2019.

Highly recommended book about Marshall “Major” Taylor and a view into the Gilded Age, extraordinary racism, courage and a short period of time when bicycles were the modern thing. The odd fact that the story of Major Taylor is obscure is unfortunate.

The Pirate’s Wife The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd
Geanacopoulos, Daphne Palmer
Toronto : Hanover Square Press, [2022]

King of Kings The Iranian Revolution : A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Anderson, Scott
First Doubleday hardcover edition
see review

Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service
Lewis, Michael
New York : Riverhead Books, [2025]

The Phantom Tollbooth
Juster, Norton
HarperCollins 1964

Not really a kids book, Norton Juster was a genius.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Turner, Fred
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006.

From 2006, From Counterculture to Cyberculture is a bit of love-letter to Stewart Brand and an interesting view of how counter-culture morphed into the techno-libertarian world we live in today. It was written before “social media” and illuminates how the New Communalists of the early 1970s morphed into a notion of a digital utopia where people became one and could communicate for the good of all humankind. Enter, Newt Gingrich and an ethos of libertarian deregulation and we have the current world we live in today. It briefly goes into the Telecommunications Act of 1996 but does not even mention the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – DMCA of 1998.

While Tanner’s thesis is correct, the book ignores a lot of the events and forces that were going on at the time and instead redundantly drives home the point that the people who drove VW Westphalia’s in the seventies are now surely driving Tesla’s and living in gated communities, counting their millions.

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In Defense of Knobs

Eventually it happens. Your perfectly functioning, twenty-year-old TV becomes obsolete. When it was born it was state-of-the-art. Great color. Big screen. A remote that had the channels, the volume control and the all-important mute button. There were other buttons but they were never pushed. No need. The game is on. Let’s make some popcorn. But that old SONY is not “smart.” It does not connect to the internets. Out with the old. In with the new. A rather large Smart TV is but $200 these days. A pleasant but rather laconic young gentleman at Best Buy will get you all set up. Bring in your old set. They will recycle it for free.

The new model is a Samsung. A very nice picture and when turned on greets you with an assortment of options for entertainment that would leave you with no time to bathe, sleep or go to work. YouTube. Netflix, Hulu, Disney, AppleTV – just for starters. Anything seems possible on this thing but as time goes by you realize that you begin to feel like Humphry Bogart in the African Queen, hacking your way with a machete out of the swamp, picking leaches off your back, regretting that Kathern Hepburn dumped out all that fine gin into the river. There is no way to easily control the menu items. No way to get rid of things you will never use. New things are marketed to you like you are in a Vegas casino. Go for broke. Roll the dice. Various shows you have no interest in automatically play while you try to figure out the search features. The voice activation only works with the proper remote (not included in the box). When you do click on a “platform” you get a spinning icon with a bunch of blue juggling balls. This can go on for a 10 to 40 seconds until things load. Evidently intelligence takes time. Could I have purchased the Moderately Smart TV? Did she graduate from Smart TV University? What were her grades by the way? And what is strange is that simply playing a slideshow of your Google Photos Album is next to impossible. Once you get it working, you realize that it only plays in portrait mode. No bueno.

After a few months, I began to reminisce about the old TVs. The ones with tubes, dials and knobs. As a user you were in complete control of these beasts. Finding your show was instantaneous and automatic. UHF, VHF. Two dials and you had your channels memorized. You could turn the dial and “bamm” you were there. If the picture got fuzzy or began to float up and down, usually a swift angry bang on the side of the box would fix the matter. Was is great? No. Did the technology work? Most of the time quite well. Was it smart? Seemingly more intelligent than many of the current models.

Recently Cory Doctorow came up with the term “enshittification” for the three-stage process whereby online platforms become progressively worse for users as companies prioritize profits. The companies lock customers in, often simply by controlling their personal connections and address book and then they begin selling more ads and littering your channel. To this observer, the new “Smart TVs” are really no different. Users get locked in, then they start selling subscriptions. In some ways this “enshittification” has been going on for a long time. I remember when cable TV first started, the big sell was no ads! That did not last long. Like cable TV your Amazon Prime subscription now lets you watch many movies with this same caveat: there are ads.

Many years ago, in the 1980s, out of pity, we were given a little fourteen inch black and white model. We watched Star Trek Next Generation on that thing. Jean Luc Picard took on the Borg and came out with his brain still intact.  Joe Montana made amazing fourth quarter drives, winning games with seconds left on that box. Somehow that fourteen inch screen was larger than life. The old black and white movies, late at night on Channel 9, obviously looked authentic. And when you had had enough, all you had to do is get out of your chair and turn the knob that controlled the volume counter-clockwise all the way to the left. You heard a decisive click and the screen would flash for a second and disappear. No one knew you had turned the dial. All was quiet. I miss knobs.

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The Quarterly Report – News From San Francisco – November 2025

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.

Weather

October and November are always pleasant months in San Francisco. The marine layer pushes back and we get warmer weather, often beautiful sunsets and good surf.  The water temperature at Ocean Beach was often around sixty degrees which is warm for around here. A large swell came in and surf at Maverick’s near Half Moon Bay had some forty foot ridable surf. The longer period swells from the Alaska always means storms in California. Starting on November 13, 2025 the seasonal rain began. Hopefully this is just an omen for a good snow year, but these days anything can happen.

If you are visiting San Francisco, bring a light jacket, layers and a rain jacket.

National Politics

There were a few weeks in October when people in San Francisco were a bit on edge. Donald Trump threatened to send in Federal Agents into San Francisco.  Somehow, Mayor Daniel Lurie convinced Trump that there was no reason to send in the troops. He told him that the fentanyl situation was getting better and that the city has things under control. Lurie must have read some behavior management and child psychology books about how to deal with toddlers as he was able to redirect Trump away from the beautiful city where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars. It probably helped that Lurie is a very wealthy white guy (a millionaire, for sure,  but no one knows) so he surely knows how to deal with other wealthy white guys.  For the time being Trump has forgotten about San Francisco. This is good. Please, for the love of God – stay away. There are already enough creepy billionaires around here.

October 2, 2023 New Yorker cover humorously commenting on the geriatric qualities of people in power these days.
October 2, 2023 New Yorker cover humorously commenting on the geriatric qualities of people in power these days.

https://www.newyorker.com/

Nancy Pelosi, will be retiring and not seeking another term. She has had a long and illustrious career in the United States House of Representatives and was a huge force in the ACA (Affordable Care Act). Time to move on and let the younger folk take over. This probably should have happened a decade ago. Her contemporary Senator Barbara Boxer retired in 2017.

My favorite curious episode involving Nancy Pelosi is when in 2019 she let on that she prays for President Donald Trump, for which Trump took great offence. I felt at the time that this was interesting seeing as his base are Christian Nationalists. I have a feeling that Trump’s religious education is a bit lacking. Remember, there are still a few Trump Afterlife Insurance policies left so make sure to call and get yours by midnight tonight!

“Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying “I pray for the President,” when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing that you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”
– Donald Trump’s letter to The Honorable Nancy Pelosi – 12/18/2019

Please do not pray for the President – It Creeps Him Out

The San Francisco Journal would like to thank Nancy Pelosi for her epic public service and for always being an adult in the room.

Local Politics

If you want to keep track of San Francisco politics, probably the best place is https://missionlocal.org/. They actually have a few beat reporters and report on things like homelessness and the police.

In September, District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio lost his recall election. The Sunset District is very car-centric and people in his district want to be able to drive their cars on the Great Highway. The rest of the city wants to use it as a park – Sunset Dunes.  Stayed tuned for how this will play out, but let it be known that Sunset Dunes, on a clear day is a great place to get outside and play by the ocean. It is getting a lot of use. San Francisco kids will be healthier because of it. More young people will be riding bikes.

Sunset Dunes Park – San Francisco

There is not much else to report on the local front except the Waymo driverless cars are everywhere, sometimes running over cats. It seems the Waymos are retreating to a barn at night and somehow procreating. They are starting to drive around San Francisco in litters.

Waymo Driverless Taxi
Waymo Driverless Taxi

Sporting News

The San Francisco 49ers are 6-4. I do not often pay attention to that sport until the playoffs.

Speaking of the playoff, in baseball the lead up to and the MLB World Series in 2025 was one for the ages. In the end, the Los Angeles Dodgers won in seven games. The quality of the games throughout the playoffs was amazing. The Yankees got booted out in five. The Brewers were looking good but then ran out of gas and faced what was to be a very difficult opponent – Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the LA Dodgers. The Toronto Blues Jays were looking good until they had to face Yamamoto and could not connect with their bats. The Dodgers had been slumping at the plate until Game 6 when they slowly came to life. Like as it happens so often in baseball, it was almost as if the tide began to turn. First Mookie Betts got a key hit. Then veteran Venezuelan journeyman Miguel Rojas, playing second base, starts making plays and hitting the ball and you knew the Dodgers had it. The Blue Jays ended the baseball season by hitting into a double play with the winning run on second. And so it goes.

Congrats to the L.A. Dodgers. We will see you next year.

That is The Quarterly Report – November 2025

Photo Gallery of SF

The Quarterly Report – November 2025

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San Francisco Photos – October and November

San Francisco Photos from October and November, 2025. Always nice this time of year between rains. The sunset are are often spectacular. It gets dark around 6 pm.

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Baseball, Big Pharma, 30 second ads and We Must All Just Be Sick

At one point it seemed that when you watched sports on television all you saw were either car commercials, truck commercials, insurance company commercials or fast food commercials. Everyone seemed to need both a Ford F150 truck towing off-terrain vehicles and of course – a Big Mac, fries and super-sized Coke. Some gravel road in a mythical mountain scenery with junk food trash strewn around the floor of your vehicle was the idea of nirvana. Those ads have not exactly gone away but now about a third of the commercials seem to be for pharmaceuticals whos names are as forgettable as they are sometimes impossible to pronounce.  Are these the new Greek gods of our era? “Dear Camzyos. Must I have this splitting headache for days? Ask my doctor?” Of course, at some point during the ads you get the warning about side effects. These always include nausea and dizziness, anxiety, diarrhea, muscle aches and frequently unfortunate side effects, things like death.  Oh well. Mortality has arrived, but at least my eczema cleared up and my poops were fine.

During the MLB Playoffs and World Series I have been keeping track of all the drugs advertised. Below is my running list. Remember to ask your doctor, provider or now prescriber about the list below and whether you need any of them.

Calquence – ask your doctor
Camzyos – ask your doctor
Dupixent – skin medicine
Ebdyss – skin medicine
Entyvio – ulcerative colitis
Keytruda – cancer
Panvorya – ask your doctor
Pluvicto – prostate
Ro – weight loss, Serina Williams endoresed
Skyrizi – chrons disease
Sublicade – opioid dependence
Tremphya – ulcerative colitis
Vandos – In the pursuit of happiness (this is a pharmaceutical company)
wegovy – weight loss
Xiafra – eye medicine

The irony of this advertising on such a large stage is that we live in an age of targeted advertising. Online we see ads dependent on what web sites we have visited and what products are in our “carts.” That a company has such deep pockets with niche “products” to buy ads in the expensive World Series market says something about the chicanery in our healthcare system. Health insurance premiums are going up.  Soon, many people will not have health insurance at all. Sorry for the buzz-kill folks. It may be time to pop a few Vandos.

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No Kings Day – Photos from SF

No Kings Day on October 18, 2025 in San Francisco was a day of peaceful protest. There were over 100,000 people that turned out. Below are photos from the march from the Embarcadero BART to the Civic Center.

IF GEORGE WASHINGTON was alive he’d be MARCHING on NO KINGS DAY!
– Sign held by protester at the October 18, 2025, NO KINGS DAY! march

SOME OF THE SIGN’S MESSAGES – So many clever signs!

No Health Care For You Peasants, But a Ballroom For The Queen.

No Kings in America SINCE 1776

WAKE UP, THIS IS A FUCKING COUP

HEY AMERICA, are you feeling GREAT YET?

THESE CRIMINALS DESERVE DUE PROCESS (arrow pointing to photo of Trump. Miller and the rest)

RADICALIZED BY BASIC DECENCY

MORE MESSAGES – CLEVER!

WANT TO END ANTIFA? STOP DOING FASCIST SHIT

IT’S GETTING SO BAD, EVEN THE INTROVERTS ARE IN THE STREETS PROTESTING

TRUMP TRAITOR

I PEDGE ALLEGANCE TO THE REPUBLIC – NO KINGS

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King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution – A Review and Reflections

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation is the full title of a book by Scott Anderson published in 2025.  The gist of the book is that the United States, distracted by the Soviet Union and the cold war, overly compartmentalized in its state department and spy networks, did not take the religious fundamentalism that was growing in Iran seriously.  Few people in the state department or even at the embassy spoke Farsi. Not many were in the smaller towns and countryside. Important warnings were ignored. Crucial reports where just filed away. While the book looks at the history of Iran and things like the 1953 coup, it mostly focuses on the leadup to the 1979 revolution. Three key sources are referenced throughout the book: Farah Pahlavi, Michael Metrinko and National Security Council officer Gary Sick.  Through this lens you see clearly the catastrophic miscalculations of the U.S. that lead to the fall of shah and the Iran hostage crisis. There are some juicy moments like when President Carter visited Iran in the 1970s and brought Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan along for entertainment. Their improvisations and informality were perplexing to the stiff Shah and gave Gary Sick insights into the monarch he was dealing with. Additionally, Michael Metrinko who was one of the hostages provides some interesting and humorous  observations along the way.

“By my count I worked with nineteen different American generals over there,” Metrinko observed in the autumn of 2021, shortly after the American forces had abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban, “but at this point I’d be very hard-pressed to tell you which one was the dumbest.”

When it gets to 1978 the book moves slowly and recounts the tense daily events leading up to the storming of the U.S Embassy and the Iran hostage crisis. The details and complexity of the situation are well-researched and conveyed. Eventually, you learn that the shah, battling cancer, leaves Tehran with his family – the shah in the cockpit of a Boeing 707, piloting the jetliner out of Iran. The book is quite the page turner and begs the question that if the state department was so incompetent then, it must be even more a disaster today. 5 stars.

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 5, 2025
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 512 pages

NOTE: The author of this review lived in Tehran from 1970 to 1972, attended fourth and fifth grade at Iranzamin international school, and while he does not speak much Farsi, he does remember a few swear words that he learned by listening to frustrated Tehran cab drivers. The photo above is indeed from the author’s stamp collection from that era.

RELATED POST: Later, while in high school back in the United States, he questioned a United States senator about the situation in Iran. The senator seemed a bit stumped by the question. In a way, it foretold the disaster about to unfold.

 I had always wondered how it was possible for the two disparate worlds to get along and how the meeting of the West with the Persian world would work out in the end. Stylish woman getting off the plane from shopping sprees in Paris, wearing the latest fashions  in the same streets with Muslim women in traditional chadors.  How is this possible?

Dear Senator, I have a question

 

 

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October San Francisco Photos

October is a special time of year in San Francisco. The fog usually moves out and the long period swells start rolling in. The surfing gets good. This year we have had some early season rain which is quite welcome seeing as fires have been a major problem of late. With the cumulous clouds in the sky the sunsets have been magical.

There is no reason to send in the National Guard or troops of any kind into San Francisco. As you can see by the photos there are no major disturbances. There is a fentanyl problem but that was actually started by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and both the City of San Francisco and many non-profits are working on the problem and helping those involved. On Saturday many of us will take to the streets for a No Kings – No Thrones – No Crowns  protest.  If George Washington were alive, he would surely be joining us.

We are not crazy. We are the Americans.

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Google AI Mode and Artificial Persectives

These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies – captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Journeys in AI and looking at how Google sees your website.

In the old days of SEO there was the Page Rank which was a cute play on words. Larry Page, a CEO at Google invented the phrase but everyone knew it was about how good your SEO (search engine optimization) was ranking. It was a scale of 1 to 10 and a 6 or a 7 was good and maybe meant you were on the first page of Google search results. About eight years ago Google got rid of exposing your Page Rank. No longer could you look under the hood or see the dirty laundry in the Google closet.

The other day I experimented with Google AI Mode and discovered some interesting assumptions by this everchanging technology. Little does Google know that I write these posts for fun and sometimes to vent and scream at the stars, but most often to embrace the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution and simply speak my mind. At one point the internet was meant to be a force for equalization and democracy. Imagine that!

Google AI Mode - September 28, 2025
Google AI Mode – September 28, 2025

Anyway, Google AI Mode is always changing. When I query “who writes for the san francisco journal?” over time I have gotten different results. At one point it came back with:

It is important not to confuse The San Francisco Journal with the much larger and more widely known daily newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle which has a large staff of reporters and editors.

This I thought an odd and and interest observation. It could have also said “It is important not to confuse The San Francisco Journal with the much larger and more widely known daily newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle which survives by advertising from major corporations (petro-chemical, pharmaceutical, big-tech, banking, etc.) which they rarely cover by doing real investigations and perhaps finding malfeasance and bad news. The editors do seem a bit spineless.” Evidently not being beholden to large corporations is no longer a good thing. For Google AI, independent journalism is not a value-add. Bigger is better. A monopoly is the best.

A few weeks later I did the same query and got different results. This time it stated.

The search results for “San Francisco journal” also show numerous journalists from the city’s main newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle.

Google AI Mode - October 9. 2025
Google AI Mode – October 9. 2025

My goodness! How did that happen? Numerous journalists from the Chronicle? It must be that darn “ghost in the machine” thing. The SF Journal is unrelated to the Chronicle though I do subscribe to the Sunday paper mostly to get the funnies.

Which brings me to one of my ideas that no one seems to get. The internet is all just publishing. It matters not whether the content is produced by aunt Gertrude and posted on Facebook or a fancy computer algorithm, it is all content which is owned and often “monetized” by someone – usually a big tech company.  While tech companies like to distance themselves from the responsibilities of this content with what they call “platforms,” in the end they are simply publishers.

And do remember, the San Francisco Journal is not the San Francisco Chronicle Just stating the obvious.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
– Kurt Vonnegut