I was at a party a while back when the conversation turned toward AI. A financially well-off fellow I’d just met told me how he’d given thank you letters to his best clients. He went on to boast that, while he handwrote out and signed his name to each of those thank you letters, he had ChatGPT write the actual words to the letters for him.
That didn’t sit well with me.
One-hundred fifty years ago, on March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first ever telephone call, but it took 75 discerning years for his invention to reach 100 million users. When the automobile came out, it took 33 years to gain 100 million users. The cell phone took 15 years for its first 100 mil, and the internet conquered the feat in seven years.
It took ChatGPT 60 days.
That mark was reached three years ago this month. And now the thing is everywhere, with about a billion users (and growing) relying on it for more and more things with greater and greater devotion. In three years — out of the 300,000-plus years of us homo sapiens walking on two legs around this word — that thing has changed the way we live and think and do.
And I don’t think that’s good.
It is 2026, and there’s no iota of a shred of a doubt that we are in the AI Era. It’s here, and it’s here to stay. But while it took thousands of years for us to go from stone to bronze to iron, it is precisely the quickness of the adoption of AI that should give us pause. Things are happening like a lightning-strike and only getting faster. It is 2026, and we all wake up and brush our teeth in a technological arms race of instant, instanter, and instantest without any idea if what is being shoved down our metaphoric throat is good for us or bad for us or just for the profit of the few.
What was wrong and what needed fixing? What’s the AI end-game? What, in 2026, does it mean to be human?
In so many facets of our human lives that weren’t broken four years ago, we are now being told (even forced) to “leverage the power of AI” in order to do things faster. But if everyone in a race starts speeding up at the same pace, everyone in that race is still going the same relative speed. Nothing is gained.
And when we start going faster just for the sake of going faster, things get lost. Learning gets lost. Texture gets lost. Wisdom gets lost. Where this seems most troublesome for our humanity, to me, at this stage, is with our written words.
Less than three years since the unveiling of large language models (LLMs), our culture now uses the machines to write (or “improve”) everything from our emails to our essays to our web copy to our songs to our books; our lesson plans, grocery lists, workout regimens, text messages, and, yes, thank you letters.
And let us not forget that true writing is rewriting — that it is in our editing, our reworking, our drafting, our human honing where we really get to know what it is we are trying to say and how we are trying to say it.
It is 2026, and I encourage us human beings to return to writing our own writing. Because if we don’t, like any language that is no longer practiced, we will one day lose the ability to do so. And when we human beings lose our ability to write, it is our ability to think, to figure out problems, to find creative solutions, to be human, that will wither and fade.
AI is here and it’s not going to go away. It will grow more astronomically powerful and more absolutely pervasive within our everyday existence. With access to it in our pockets, we human beings have essentially become cyborgs. Yet we are not meant to live as cyborgs, but as human beings.
So let us live like human beings. And a good way to make sure we do that is to get back to writing our own writing.
The 44th annual North Lake Tahoe Snowfest returns Feb. 26 to March 8 for all its activities, events, tomfoolery, and fun.
What started out in the early ’80s as a winter festival to entice tourists to continue taking ski trips into March (visits dropped way off after February) and to throw a party has evolved into 10-plus days of the community getting together for good times.
It all commences in grand fashion Thursday, Feb. 26, with Gar Woods’ annual kick-off party, where local legends The Blues Monsters (with Kendall Naughton) will get the dance floor going, the Wet Woodies will be flowing, and the Snowfest scholarship candidates — two local high school seniors recognized for their contributions to area nonprofits — will be introduced.
LE CHAMOIS’ Valley Throwback Party means different things to different people. Photos by Wade Snider/Moonshine Ink
Philanthropy is a crux aspect of the festival. “Snowfest raises an extraordinary amount of money for local nonprofits and student scholarships,” said Catherine Cooper, board member of Snowfest, with its every happening, sponsorship, and vendor giving back to Tahoe/Truckee in some way. “It’s an honor to work on this event for, and with, the community.”
On the 27th, everyone heads over to Olympic Valley from 2 to 5 p.m. as Le Chamois unleashes the Valley Throwback Party, its après-ski hootenanny humdinger of huge proportions.
Attendees are encouraged to don retro garb and come ready to party like it’s the early ’80s — when Snowfest was founded and both it and The Chammy got their share of screentime in the now cult-favorite ski comedy Hot Dog … the Movie. (Remember that snowball fight where the locals fire down from the rooftops onto bigheaded Rudi Garmisch and his gang?)
After The Chammy it’s on to the Tahoe City Winter Sports park from 5 to 8 p.m. for a fireworks show and live music by the local classic rockers The Nomads. The nearby Sierra Surf Club at the Evo Hotel is the spot for the afterparty.
THE TAHOE CITY STREET FAIRE has a little bit of everything for anyone and everyone, big and small, yound and old.
From 8 to 11 a.m. the next morning (2/28) the annual North Tahoe Firefighters Association pancake breakfast takes place at the T.C. Fire Station, leading attendees right into the extravagant Tahoe City Street Faire, which takes place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“I love how the Tahoe City Parade has morphed into the Tahoe City Street Faire,” Cooper said. “The first Snowfests held in the 80s had street dance parties, and that tradition is retained now as the street faire … for adults, families, kids. It’s a huge celebration.”
Saturday’s good times keep snowballing with the Tahoe Tap Haus BlizzardFest Brewfest in the Cobblestone, which — with its ear-catching lineup of DJs and Burning-Man-art-car Edna the Elephants’ laser light show — has become a rocking party that last year alone also raised over $10K for the Shane McConkey Foundation.
Sunday, March 1, sees some time devoted to our four-legged pals, with the dog pull in Tahoe City (ever seen a canine pull a keg?). After the quadrupeds pave the way, the next few days lend a bold bipedal sport theme; Monday, March 2, features the Tahoe youth figure skating recital at the Winter Sports Park, and Tuesday brings Pete ‘n Peters Bar Olympics (a triathlon of pool, shuffleboard, and darts). Wednesday, the 4th, holds opening day of the Town Race League at Palisades Tahoe in the afternoon and a night of qualifying rounds at the Sports Park ice rink for milk jug curling.
What in the heck is milk jug curling? Well, per tahoesnowfest.org, “A Snowfest original and modern Tahoe tradition … a hilarious and competitive twist on a winter classic” where, instead of stones, competitors (often outlandishly costumed) push milk jugs across the ice, aiming for their target.
“If you like playing bocce but want to up the level of stoke and risk,” longtime North Tahoe local and event attendee Rick Hengel said, “milk jug curling on ice is definitely something to consider.”
That said, on March 6, among other events, attendees can watch or compete in ice sculpting at Alibi Ale Works in Truckee, a hot-wing eating contest at Tahoe Tap House, Bridgetender’s Fat Friday 3-Point Jam, and/or Tahoe National Brewing Co.’s Gelande Quaff.
Gelände quaffing [ɡəˈlɛndə kwæfɪŋ], noun: an athletically inclined drinking game founded unintentionally in the mid-80s by original members of the Jackson Hole Air Force (the mountain’s legendary band of hard-charging skiers) when a beer mug sent gliding down the Bear Claw Café bar top overshot its intended target, fell off the edge, was somehow caught mid-air by a quick-reflexed patron and promptly chugged. In short time rules were established and a game was invented, with points awarded for successful catches (one point for a mug catch, two points for a handle catch) and successful chugs.
Yet if gelände quaffing isn’t your thing, that’s really no thing at all. Because the point of this article is that Snowfest has something for everyone. I mean, we haven’t even talked about the Rock & Roll Prom, the Alaskan Open Snow Golf Tournament, the Kings Beach parade, Incline Village’s Winterfest, the clam bake, the polar swim, the FreeHeel Fest, The Great Ski Race, River Ranch’s annual ice sculpture contest, or about a dozen-plus other events.
The thing is, Tahoe/Truckee is still, at its core, a weird, removed, eclectic, zany, music-loving, dog-loving, game-loving, sports-loving, sometimes crazy, sometimes party-hardy, milk-jug-curling good-time-quaffing mountain-town that enjoys coming together every once in a while to celebrate our awesomely unique culture.
Snowfest 2026 is that opportunity to do so. See ye out there.
For the full calendar of events, ticketed events versus free (most) events, nonprofit benefacts, scholarship awards, further details on milk jug curling or gelände quaffing, or general info, visit tahoesnowfest.org.
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I was at a party a while back when the conversation turned toward AI. A financially well-off fellow I’d just met told me how he’d given thank you letters to his best clients. He went on to boast that, while he handwrote out and signed his name to each of those thank you letters, he had ChatGPT write the actual words to the letters for him.
