Disappointing skier visits!

At long last, I just heard about Utah’s skier visit numbers for the 2025-2026 winter season. At just 4.8 million (an amount rounded up it seems, to suggest a bit less in reality) this represents a drop of 26.2 % for our 15 ski resorts compared to the previous season, a significant decline, even more than Colorado’s down by 24%. 

It was also a large drop-off from the record-setting 7.1 million visits recorded when Utah received a record-high snowfall during the 2022-2023 season. A Ski Utah spokesperson said that “...The big takeaway from this year is that it really is just an anomaly, and the ski industry here in Utah is really at the mercy of Mother Nature.” 

I wish I could agree that it’s just an “anomaly” when in fact, I believe, it’s more the beginning of a trend, showing that global warming is here to stay, should be taken much more seriously and won’t go away any time soon. 

Historically, Utah experienced its lowest snow-pack on record, which reflects the amount of water in new snowfall, but many resorts also struggled to maintain operations because of record-warm temperatures throughout most of the winter. Long, warm periods between storms and warmer precipitation that produced more rain in higher-elevation areas than is the case typically, while also making it difficult for them to produce artificial snow. 

What this dismal season tells me is something about politics. Short-sighted politicians are woefully unable to address long-term needs, like global warming and have no problem sacrificing long-term solutions for short-term gains. Not only in the US where Trump and his republican allies are turning their back to the environment, but also in Europe where the sacrifices required from a sound climate protection strategy seem unaffordable in their short-term lens.

Finding good information today (Part Five)

We all want to “develop a sound opinion” and today we’ll talk about a framework that will move us out of tribal narratives. We’ll start with the problem, not the positions by asking: 

• “What is the underlying issue?” 
• “What are the incentives of the actors involved?” 
• “What constraints shape their behavior?” 

We then identify the trade-offs, not the “right answer” Every real issue has costs, benefits, winners and losers. So, sound opinions come from mapping trade-offs, not picking sides. Nothing, for the most part, is ever black and white, plus constant mistakes are the background and fabric of our lives. 

Then we’re ready to separate the facts from the interpretations, as facts are verifiable, interpretations are narratives and predictions just guesses, while most media love to blend all three. In the end, let’s remember that we’re not looking for “news”, we’re looking for meaning, and meaning doesn’t come from volume. 

Instead it comes from context, synthesis, reflection, conversation and frameworks. If this discussion subject interests us, it also shows that we’ve already had the instinct for this, and what we need to build and be comfortable with, is a structure that protects our attention and channels our curiosity. 

The resources are overwhelming, so pick a selection you feel comfortable handling and stick to it. Good luck!

Finding good information today (Part Four)

In this section, we’ll see how to keep a critical view. If we want a method for keeping a critical view (without becoming cynical), we should say that critical thinking isn’t skepticism but a form of structured curiosity. 

Here’s a simple method we can apply to any issue; let’s call it the “The 5-Question Filter”. When we encounter a piece of news, let’s ask ourselves 

• “Is this important or just urgent?” 
• “Is this new information or recycled garbage?” 
• “What long-term trend does this connect to?” 
• “What would change in my life if I ignored this?” 
• “What is the strongest argument against the position presented?” 

If a story fails questions 1–3, we can safely let it go and ignore it. Then, use the “two sources, two perspectives” rule, for any issue we want to understand: We begin by reading one mainstream source, then we read one outsider or contrarian source. 

We read one left-leaning analysis, followed by one right-leaning analysis. We don’t do it to “balance” but to triangulate. Finally, we learn the “slow opinion” principle in which when an issue is emotionally charged we wait 48 hours before forming an opinion, as most early takes are either wrong, incomplete, or manipulated. 

If that sounds like luxury, it is as I don’t have quite that time at my disposal! In the next blog we’ll discover a method for forming sound opinions, so we’re not done yet.

Finding good information today (Part Three)

It’s pretty clear that faced with the information mess that is besieging us, we must build a personal information architecture, so instead of asking “What’s the right media?”, we should ask “What information do I need to live well, think clearly, and act meaningfully?” 

Based on that premise, we could structure our inputs around these questions. It begins with three tiers of information working as an effective filter: 

Tier 1 — Structural information (high value, low noise) These are long-term forces that actually shape our world. They are demographics, economics, technology, climate, geopolitics and institutions. Good sources for these, I am told, are The Economist (weekly magazine), the Financial Times (weekend edition), Foreign Affairs (magazine, 6 issues a year), MIT Technology Review (bi-monthly magazine) and long-form podcasts (Ezra Klein, Sean Carroll, Conversations with Tyler). Currently, I don’t subscribe and never read any of these, except the Economist on occasions. I will have to seriously look into these. 

Tier 2 — Curated analysis (medium value, medium noise) These are designed to help us interpret events without drowning in them: They are newsletters by domain experts, Substack writers we trust (online publishing platform that allows writers, podcasters, and video creators to publish content directly to their audiences via email newsletters and a dedicated website). There are think-tank explainers (Brookings, RAND, CSIS) that should be just skimmed. 

Tier 3 — Daily news (low value, high noise) This is what I use and according to the experts where the rabbit holes live. Again a “rabbit hole” is a situation where a seemingly simple inquiry leads to a complex, time-consuming chain of related discoveries, making it difficult to stop exploring or return to your original task. A list of these daily news sites are AP News, Reuters, the BBC and NPR Morning Briefing. 

These are factual, low-drama, low-spin and AP News as well as NPR are part of my daily news diet and are likely to remain that way. In the next blog, we’ll try to focus on keeping a direct and simple critical view...

Finding good information today (Part Two)

Yesterday, we wondered about finding a structured, practical way to gather good information, not necessarily a list of “better media outlets,” but a system that helps us stay informed without drowning. The fact is that today, as we seek good information, there are three forces are working against us: 

• A. The firehose problem By far, the worst of all problems, too much information, too intensively. News is no longer a daily digest; it’s a 24/7 stream optimized for engagement, not to make us think or provide us with insight as it creates constant novelty, shallow context, emotional overload and the illusion that everything is urgent. As a result, our brain is doing triage all day without having the time necessary to digest the information it encounters. 
• B. The fragmentation problem Every issue is broken into micro‑controversies, each with its own rabbit hole. This is a perfect recipe for ending up with more information, more data scattered all over, less meaning, more uncertainty and far less confidence. 
• C. The actionability gap By “actionable”, I mean providing the necessary information, tools, or grounds to produce an immediate, practical outcome. 

With this in mind, it’s also true that most news is not actionable, nor is it relevant to our life and totally disconnected to long-term trends, resulting as we finish reading that nothing has really changed. 

To address these points, we’ll explore in our next blog how we can develop a much better way to develop a mode of gathering information that is useful to us. So please, stay tuned!

Finding good information today (Part One)

I find it increasingly difficult to find good enough information that makes me think and help me develop a sound opinion about daily issues, whether they be political or societal. There is so much going on everywhere that the sorting of what’s important, useful and better yet actionable becomes increasingly difficult to wrestle with. 

All this is what pushes me to wonder if there’s a better way to get to the essentials without having the impression of having wasted my time by getting led to rabbit holes that deepen my uncertainties without improving my understanding? I’m asking where’s the right media, where do I find it and how do I keep a critical view? 

I feel that I’m describing something many of us feel right now: the sense that information is abundant but understanding is scarce. Not because we lack curiosity or intelligence, but because the modern information environment is engineered to fragment attention, amplify noise, and reward emotional reaction over reflective judgment. 

Before we go deeper into our search for solutions, here’s just a concise takeaway: Some ways we can regain clarity is by narrowing our inputs or sources of information, structuring how you consume the news, and adopting a deliberate method for forming opinions that resists the pull of the daily news cycle. This is what we’ll start exploring in our next blog.

The importance of good parenting (Part Two)

In the previous post, I made it pretty clear that the people best equipped to raise children are the ones directly responsible for them — whether they are parents, single caregivers, foster families, or, when life demands it, grandparents. 

This responsibility cannot be outsourced to schools, nor delegated to the screens of tablets and smartphones. Raising a child is not only a privilege; it is a duty. And with that duty comes accountability. Too often, when a young person causes harm, the entire weight of the consequence falls on the child alone, as if they were raised in a vacuum. 

But children act within the framework adults create for them. Until legal majority, the parent and child form a single moral and educational unit: the parent shapes, the child acts, and both share responsibility for the outcome. 

This means that when a minor causes damage, the consequences — whether financial reparation, community service, or other sanctions — should be borne jointly. Not because parents are to blame for every misstep, but because shared consequences reinforce shared responsibility. 

They encourage parents to stay engaged and teach children that their actions affect more than just themselves. It also acts as a dissuasive factor that discourages the abdication of parental authority. Of course, real life is more complex than any principle on paper. Many parents struggle with overwhelming circumstances. But acknowledging complexity does not erase responsibility; it simply means society must support parents so they can fulfill it. 

Without a renewed culture of parental engagement, there is little reason to expect meaningful improvement. Accountability begins at home — and so does hope.