2 August 26
Farmers Market at 50
Yesterday the Davis Farmers Market celebrated its 50th anniversary. We had a sketchcrawl at the market for the event. I didn’t stay long at the sketchcrawl, but did complete the sketch at left.
1 August 26
The Blackburn Side
The piece I wrote on rhoticity in the northwest of England has had me pondering a bit about my father’s origins, origins he was so eager to leave behind. His father and grandfather were freemasons, which I imagine isn’t especially high among the reasons he wanted to leave (the weather, narrow-mindedness and lack of modern conveniences such as showers and central heating were certainly much higher on the list), but he was well educated in this old mill town and to his death he loved Blackburn Rovers, living to see them become Premier League champions in 1995.
Over the next few days I’m going to be focusing on his family of origin. What was life in this bleak town like in 1931, the date on this certificate? What was life like for my grandmother, who I last saw in the Blackburn Royal Infirmary in Blackburn in 1965? And how does the city make its way now, in the post-cotton mill era?
31 July 26
The Sport of Kings
This past Tuesday FIFA president Gianni Infantino shocked the world by proposing to sell off partial rights to the World Cup to private investors, creating a $20 billion company to run the tournament. It was only slightly more shocking that the probable head of the investment group would be a member of Trump’s extended family, Jared Kushner’s brother.
Back in January I blogged about the concept of neo-royalism, which was receiving a lot of discussion at that time. This concept comes from a couple of international relations scholars, Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman. To summarize the concept, it is generally understood that the liberal international order is in decline. To replace it, many think that the system is falling back to what came beforehand, a “Westphalian great power system”, with each state looking out for its own interests. Goddard and Newman propose instead we are transitioning to an older analogue that they term “neo-royalism”, a system that “centers on ruling cliques, networks of political, capital, and military elites devoted to individual sovereigns, seeking to generate durable material and status hierarchies based on the extraction of financial and cultural tributes.”.
Infantino’s actions fit the neo-royalist model to a T. Infantino is trying to enter into the world of ruling cliques and be on top of his own network of tributes. He is attempting to buy agreement on the private investment plan by promising each of the 211 national football associations a one-time payment of $40 million if they vote for it. He has been ingratiating himself with Trump for a while —- this is surely the reason for presenting Trump with the “FIFA Peace Prize”. He frequently interacts with the Middle Eastern oil monarchs —- hence the 2022 Qatar World Cup and the upcoming World Cup in Saudi Arabia in 2034 —- and yesterday he met with King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Infantino is also trying to set himself up to be a power broker after his term as FIFA president ends —- he would be deeply involved with this investment group.
It is now clear that Infantino has been acting on his own accord, and the private investment proposal did not come from some upper-level FIFA cabal. Miguel Delaney writing for The Independent on Thursday reported that there are claims that Infantino’s inner circle did not even know about it, with one advisor describing this as Infantino “going rogue”. Today it was reported that FIFA’s chief operating officer said that staff were “deceived” over the project and that it has been the action of one person.
Fortunately, it looks like Infantino has overreached. The European confederation UEFA quickly opposed the proposal and in an emergency meeting on Thursday they decided that UEFA members would boycott any and all FIFA competitions until the proposal is off the table. CONCACAF (the North and Central American confederation) and AFC (the Asian confederation) have also rejected the proposal. With nations from those three confederations rejecting it, the proposal will not have the votes to pass.
Would such a network centered around Infantino and the investors be big enough to be seen as a neo-royalist power? FIFA does not generate tech giant-sized revenue but there is a lot of money flowing through it — one article says it received revenue of $13 billion over the 2023-2026 World Cup cycle. And football is the most popular sport on the planet, with the World Cup being the biggest single sporting event. This cultural capital is a tempting resource for the ruling elite.
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Update, 6:15 PM PDT 31 July 2026. Infantino has scrapped the proposal. The growing backlash may yet be large enough to sink his presidency.
30 July 26
29 July 26
Chaco Canyon Public Comment
I have started the practice of submitting public comments on contentious agency proposals, as I shared earlier with my comment on proposed changes by the Office of Management and Budget to the federal funding process . Yesterday I submitted another comment, this time on a plan by the Bureau of Land Management to revoke protections adopted during the Biden administration for a 10-mile buffer surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. This plan would open this area to oil, gas, and mineral extraction. Here is a good overview of the controversy.
As I did with the OMB proposal, I am sharing the text of my comment below.
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I strongly oppose the proposed revocation of Public Land Order 7923, the public lands withdrawal surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park. This proposed revocation is described in the July 2026 BLM environmental assessment document DOI-BLM-NM-F010-2026-0002-EA, hereafter referred to as the BLM document.
The Chaco Canyon landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has outstanding cultural and natural value to humanity as a whole. It is one of only 23 such sites in the United States. In 1972 the United States was the first to ratify the international treaty to preserve such sites for humanity. The Chaco Canyon cultural landscape extends well beyond the boundaries of the National Historical Park (NHP). It is a landscape sacred to the Pueblo peoples who live in the area. According to the BLM document, there are at least 145 traditional cultural properties including 9 great houses within the 10 mile buffer surrounding the NHP.
The BLM document itself states that “the Pueblo tribes view the Chacoan landscape as an integrated cultural system spanning northwest New Mexico and beyond, not a collection of isolated sites. They see its network of roads and interconnected communities as reflective of a society that thrived through regional connections rather than isolation…Maintaining this landscape is considered important by the Pueblo tribes for its cultural and historical integrity.” (Page 28).
The proposed revocation has been a travesty of public process. In April 2026 BLM opened a public scoping period for only seven days. This was entirely online with no in-person meetings. Despite the short window, BLM received over 100,000 comments, but Appendix E of the BLM document intentionally omits any summary of the content of these comments. The window to comment on the present BLM document is almost as short, only 14 days.
This dismissal of public input contrasts strikingly with the process that led to the issuance of PLO 7923 in 2023, which took a year-and-a-half with eight public meetings and a 120-day public comment period which elicited over 110,000 comments, all of which followed a decade of public engagement by Tribal groups such as the All Pueblo Council of Governors.
There is no justification in the BLM document for overturning this extended public process that led to the creation of PLO 7923, other than referring vaguely to the executive orders EO 14241 and SO 3418. By the analysis presented in the BLM document, the economic benefits of oil, gas, and mineral development within the NHP 10-mile buffer would be extremely modest. The analysis estimates that only 14 jobs would be created across the four county region over a twenty-year period.
But the BLM document fails to analyze possible economic losses to the region that might result from reduced visitation to Chaco Culture NHP as a result of destruction of the buffer lands. As an example, Chaco Culture NHP is renowned as a dark sky site for public astronomy. (See the Chaco Culture NHP webpage at https://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/nightsky.htm.) The BLM document acknowledges (Appendix C, AIB-11) the potential for increased sky glow as a result of development of the buffer zone. Brighter skies means less reason for amateur astronomers to visit the NHP. More generally, the failure to study impacts to the recreational economy of the region as a result of buffer zone development is a substantial weakness of the BLM economic analysis.
The cultural landscape surrounding Chaco Canyon dating back at least 1200 years is a treasure for all Americans. Any development in the vicinity would irrevocably disrupt the integrity of the landscape, all for a few dollars worth of energy resources seized in an unethical affront to the public engagement process. I urge BLM to keep Public Land Order 7923 as it stands.
28 July 26
In Praise of Public Transport
A friend of mine is flying to Germany today. We met at the Mexican restaurant kitty-corner from the railway station for lunch before she left. It’s now possible to get to San Francisco International Airport by taking the train from Davis to Richmond, switching to BART there and boarding a subway train that stops basically inside the international terminal.
Resources for public transport are always under tremendous stress. Improvements tend not to be lucrative for the local governments that implement them, but they do improve the quality of life of the citizens they serve. I’ve driven others to and from SFO and it’s not a lot of fun; there is always a lot of traffic on the Bay Bridge. So much better to hop on a train, spare the air, spare the aggravation.
These are the kinds of factors that are brushed aside in the name of efficiency…
27 July 26
Soccer Cultures of the United States
I recently watched a video on How can MLS become an elite league?. The discussion touched on the different soccer cultures in the United States. One of the discussants, Paul Tenorio, always responds to the question of “Will soccer make it in America?” with the assertion that soccer has made it in America, it is just very bifurcated, with many islands of soccer interest. This got me to try to enumerate the various soccer cultures in the United States. Researching this took me to some marketing literature which was helpful, but marketing clusters aren’t quite the same thing as cultures, which I will not very rigorously define as nexuses of activity and knowledge. Anyway, here’s my list. People can and often are members of several of these.
- Heritage soccer fans. These are subdivided into Latin American heritage soccer fans and European heritage soccer fans. These are people who grew up in environments where soccer was a dominant sport and they picked up their fandom from family, friends, or local traditions.
- World culture sponges. These are sports followers who at some point learn that soccer is the global game and start to absorb all that culture — the famous players, the teams, the geography, the history.
- Youth soccer culture. This is subdivided into children’s recreational soccer and elite youth club soccer. This includes both the youth participants and the parents who are organizing their activities.
- College soccer culture. These include both the players on college teams as well as the students and community members who go to their games.
- Local fandoms. These are people that get drawn into the fanbase for a nearby team. Think Portland Timbers or Seattle Sounders.
- Women’s soccer fans. These are people who are drawn to the dominance of US women’s soccer internationally and at the league level and appreciate its importance to youth and college women’s sports.
- Gen Z soccer fans. They tend to learn about soccer through global social media and video games (e.g. EA Sports) and often are fans of charismatic players rather than of teams.
- Multi-sports soccer fans. They follow lots of American sports but have been drawn into soccer because of events like the arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami in 2023 and now the 2026 World Cup.
- Long-time American soccer inhabitants. People for whom soccer has been huge in the course of their life. They often have played or play it at an amateur or professional level, and keenly track the development of the USMNT, USWNT, MLS, NWSL, USL, and so on.
26 July 26
Test Knit
Nimble Needles is the website of a German knitter named Norman. He is a brilliant teacher and I’ve learned a lot from him over the time I’ve been following him on YouTube. So when he asked for volunteers to knit a sample sock for an upcoming class and time themselves, I signed up.
Socks are divided into five parts: the cuff and leg, the heel, the gusset, the foot/instep, and the toe. Since the cuff, leg and foot lengths can all be altered by how long they are, the sample just has to contain these five pieces. I think Norman was hoping for an upper time limit of 1.5 hours; I did this in an hour and 37 minutes. I’m not a slow knitter and I have a lot of experience knitting socks, but I was watching a show while I knit this which might have slowed me down. Anyway, I hope the data is useful to him.
25 July 26
Boxcars
. There is a line of the California Northern Railroad that runs north-south behind the Davis Food Co-op near our house. I often like photographing the freight cars that are parked on this line. For my urban sketch today I drew two of the boxcars linked together and parked near the food co-op.
