Month: July 2026

This is actually about divorce and manipulation. My ex offered a car and insurance to my kid. The catch: He cannot live with me anymore. Not only is that illegal and conniving, it is a self-serving attempt to maintain her waning relevancy as he heads out of the home in six months while also being an effort to sever his relationship with me. She’s a terrible human. To attach conditions as such is clearly a manipulation, and one I don’t know that he really has the maturity to recognize for what it is. I hope he gets there. I hope he gets there fast. He’s six months from heading to college and discovering very quickly that few people have the time to wait for him to figure it out. Their jobs are on the line, so either he helps their plan or he’s overlooked.

I hate that the world moves so quickly. I hate that the people he’s supposed to trust have motives of their own to manipulate him. It’s a sad reflection of who she is as a human, but worse it is who she is teaching him to be as a person. I myself am not sure who to be in this moment. I don’t know what is best to do or what has the better stretch of value. There is a great deal of thinking that needs to happen on this.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Canadian goods, citing disputes over autos, alcohol and cheese“
2. Shooting for 20 WPM tomorrow.

I’m slow now. two and a half hours netted under 1600 usable words. That’s ten words a minute. That puts this post around 100 words. That is a tragedy, but also fair considering how short these posts have been as of late. What can I do? I want to start digging into the why of it as well as some brain health solutions such as the possibility of creatine. I cannot be this slow and be a professional. Ten words a minute simply will not do. I need to ramp that up to twenty. If I could do twenty at least I would be a far site better than I am now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Rising professional boxer killed by vehicle while riding her bicycle in rural Texas” According to witness reports, the driver stopped and then reversed into her. I’m thinking crime of passion. Or one hell of a case of road rage. Texas sucks.
2. The Lady Talis reminded me the other day that I check on news about our kid’s football team and career every day. That’s a particular kind of love… or fatherly obsession?
3. On that note, an interesting article from the Iowa camp predicting the matchup at Kinnick to be a 31-6 affair. No, not for UNI.

China is dropping new AI models for free. That reminds me of the whole Linux debate back in the day. I’m still not entirely sure who won that, but I know there wasn’t one clear winner out of all of them (macOS included). This Ai thing isn’t going away. In fact it is set to become as integral to our functioning as cellphones. We are moving more and more towards becoming fully integrated with our technology, and personal AI systems are the way I believe we will be coordinating the network of devices we wear and interact with daily.

It started with phones. Maybe it was before that with walkmans and other portable audio devices. Now we’re in a state where we have technology all over us. I wear a watch, carry a phone, and occasionally use headphones or low tier smart glasses. What about others who have chipped shoes, oura rings and more. The market for expanded tech is growing. We are finding both new ways and new places to integrate technology. In Japan there are sweat powered body patches that offer readouts on your physical condition, breathable nanomesh electrodes and flexible e-skin sensors measure other bodily functions. This is not to mention the recently developed (and tested) robotic wearables like tails and arms.

We’re beyond the place I usually write my science fiction about, and now I find myself playing catch up with a lot of these ideas. Some futurist, eh? I suppose the thing I get as a futurist is the likely impact on the socio-political ecosphere. you can thank my Sociology degree for that. What is going to be the impact of these devices? Normalization followed by exclusion and hyper capitalism. Happens every time. Except this time, the AI system linking everything together will become the baseline for social exclusion. Your OS is going to matter the way it mattered if you had Microsoft, Linux, or MAC.

I just can’t figure out which is which.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “People race through Madrid in high heels during Pride, in photos” Running in heels is wild, regardless of gender.

I did the math. If I can knock out six 300 word sections of this project a day over the next seven days I will have my WC goal in time for a Saturday celebration. That’s only 1800 words a day. If I can push the line to 7 a day I can get over WC and be feeling really good about the work I put together. That’s one more week of my life dedicated to this cause till I am done.

I can do that. I can put in the hours to do it too. I think if it holds over the course of a week it will be a big boost to my psyche moving forward. I need that right about now. I need that break just as much. I’m tired–mentally and right now physically. I spent a good chunk of the day walking around to the tally of ten miles. Another day, another 10. I’m getting into quite decent walking shape.

Still fat tho.

Going to need to get into the gym to cure that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Lettuce at Taco Bell in 5 states confirmed as a source of diarrhea-causing parasite” Why am I not surprised?
2. Seriously missing some Last Week Tonight

It is clear to me that we are losing the academic race. We are in a position where most students I teach at the community college level are using LLMs to do as much of the work as possible. In short, they are making no effort to learn and every weak effort to pass off that ‘learning’ to a system that can do it for them. I suppose an argument can be made that CC students are not the top shelf students who attend university straight out of high school. While experience has shown this to be true from my own anecdotal standpoint, this is not necessarily the case. Many CC students go on to a 4 year, carrying their CC experiences as their lower level (100, 200) credits. It is also my experience that those lower level courses serve as a foundation for 300+ courses. If they cannot or will not do the lower level work themselves, what expectation is there that it will or even can happen in upper level courses?

We’ve been taking shortcuts forever. In my college era it was cliff notes and those like it. These tools provided shortcuts to actual learning, however. LLMs don’t teach you anything. In fact, many students who send me assignments produced by the machines have not even looked at the work being produced. Quite a few research assignments contain hallucinations, leading me to realize that nothing is being learned or gained through the experience.

I’m working on ways to curb the appeal of the strategy. Process work, in class learning at each stage of a thing are strong deterrents, since you have to speak to the work and the choices the machine makes. This is not foolproof–especially in the online environment. I’m at a point of wondering how much of a police officer I am vs. a teacher. What is my role meant to be in all of this?

My philosophy is meet students where they are at, and take them as far as they are willing to go. Lately, they aren’t willing to go anywhere on their own.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Lionel Messi will play Lamine Yamal in World Cup final 19 years after viral baby photo”

Got a late start tonight, so I am going to slide directly into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: ” Israel’s latest strikes kill a dozen people in Gaza, including police officers“
2. Only to be immediately surpassed by, “Human rights groups sue over Trump administration’s sanctions on ICC for investigations into Israel ” What are we doing here people? Is the group victimized by perhaps the most well known genocide in the world now committing genocide? Are we trying to keep it quiet? How is this my reality?
3. There are only 41 TRUE 70MM IMAX theaters in the world. So, if you want to see the Odyssey in the true format, you’re gonna have to get in line. Or move. Or both. There is no shot I can see it properly where I am. I bring this up, because there are many theaters that have the IMAX label, but that doesn’t mean it is showing all of the footage. So, what is actually being lost in terms of screen view? It’s cropped. You lose 40% of the height of the shot, so what you see is likely the centered portion of the screen. I have no idea how to actually see it in 70MM once this situation goes to video and what have you. With 41 theaters available (it is only opening in 39), it is going to be a mess.
4. I guess I didn’t even have that many thoughts…
5. Oh, here is one: My kid is graduating early and leaving to play for Oregon State in December/January. I don’t know what that means for me moving forward, but I know it means not really have to see or deal with his mom pretty much forever. No more custody nonsense. No more sharing holidays based on some official tally. The kids are old enough to do what they want to do on these days. So, I will leave it to them to decide what they want. If that means they don’t roll with me, then it is what it is. I’ll be sad, but I prefer choice over force. This is the way.
6. And another thing: I am ready to be done with this project now. I’m aiming for next Monday as the completion date. So by then, no classes, no nada. I get to work on what I want to work on…

So, the kid didn’t make the preseason watch list. In fact, one DB from his school (a grad) made the watch list. This is the problem with switching schools so often. It impacts your visibility in a major way. While he got an honorable mention in terms of top transfer CBs, his visibility remains low in conference. The MVFC is widely considered one step down from FBS and at the top of the FCS, so doing big things there will get him noticed. Having a little brother at the FBS level might help too. His little brother, who verbally committed to OSU earlier this year, has taken steps to enroll early and join the spring team in Corvalis. Who knows what lies ahead for either. All I can say is that the season is coming up fast, and these first few games will establish expectations heading into conference play.

UNI is expected to finish 7th in the MVFC. They have the toughest schedule in the conference, thanks to a road visit to Kinnick and #23 Iowa. Is it a winnable game? Nobody seems to think so, but I have expectations of him playing very well in that hostile environment. Thats exactly the kind of spot he thrives in. Maybe that will change some minds.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Female American rower completes record-breaking solo journey from California to Hawaii” 2400 miles in a 21 foot row boat alone. You go girl. That is wild… and in record time.

Well, I hit the word mines today. Went pretty hard at it over these past few hours and I am feeling the burn out. Fact remains: I haven’t worked hard in some time. Fact also remains: I’m kinda into it. I still like writing and creating and shaping ideas, even if they happen to be fore a project that isn’t at the top of my list mentally or financially. I’ll say this, digging into this world has been super fun and has encouraged me to go back to fantasy once this sci fi run (The Justice Engine) is over. Write what you know, says the Lady Talis. Write what I want to know more about says the Talislegger.

I’m learning more about what that is. I want to do more fantasy, but I want to create a world that is different from the standard. I have ideas. I have modern and far flung past ideas. I feel like we are ready for a new modern. The overall success of the Mandalorian lore argues we do want modern or future fantasy a la Dune. All we ever get is old stuff convincingly recycled. I’m going to spend a decade or so creating something worth leaving as my memory in this respect. The clock starts now.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Museum honors a late artist by covering its floor in enough peanut butter to make 15,000 sandwiches” But why?! And the roaches and the rats and the… This could not have ended clean.
2. Got a scam letter today. Should’ve seen it up front, but it took me one reply to start digging and thinking about it. This scam is towards writers, inviting them to be a featured author on Goodreads. The thing is, that isn’t a thing. As the scam continued I was asked to contribute funds.. because of course I was. So I simply did not write back. We’ll see how it goes from here. Hopefully they give up. That would be best.

Last week of classes–both taking and teaching. Feels good for it to be over for a while. Feels even better to know that once I finish this writing project I am clean slate for a few weeks. That hasn’t been my reality for years. I’m kind of weirded out about that situation. I don’t have a ton of experience with nothing to do. I have a ton of experience putting off what I have to do, but not having the things is different. Psychologically it will be kinda dope to be in that state of mind for once.

My state of mind is pretty good lately. I have my ups and downs but I’ve been feeling pretty good overall about life in general. Things are good here. Things are not terrible back home. I’m not quite looking forward to leaving, but I am going to be okay when it happens. In the meanwhile, I am going to keep working on me and spending a ton of time with the Lady Talis.

All of this after I get this last bit of work handled. By last bit I mean several thousand words more…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “A July 4 boat trip, an 18-year-old’s death and a family’s search for answers in the Deep South” This is deeper than the headline. The dude was left on an Island and wound up dead.

I’ve been thinking about this idea of success and happiness. The two are not always tied together. I, for example, have not reached the definition of success I support. However, I live a very very happy life. If the two are tied together for me, I would argue that to push as hard as possible for personal success would limit the happiness in my life as it would limit the time in my life to do what makes me happy. That is probably true of a lot of people. Success demands time on task. If that ToT makes you happy, then it is all good. If that ToT takes away from how you define happiness, then it is more important to reach a balance where you can feel good enough about your success that it does not negatively impact your happiness. ‘Balance in all things,’ as the Lady Talis often points out.

Even having a Lady Talis is directly tied to the sense of happiness I feel. I would not be in this relationship if I focused all my energies on being a top 100 writer. Being that person means writing 8 hours a day. I don’t have 8 hours to write, because I don’t want to spend that much time doing it in lieu of spending time with my wife and my family. Balance, in these things, is being sought though not yet fully realized.

Last is the question of expectation and how it bonds to our ideas of success. I have long held the expectation of having a Mansion and a Yacht. These are unrealistic, I realize. That doesn’t stop me from expecting they could manifest at some point in my life. Note I say expectation vs. desire. I’m not dreaming about them. I’m trying to plot a way to get there. So without some version of that I am lacking that ultimate success.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “New York Times reporters are subpoenaed after Air Force One stories, raising press freedom concerns” We are certainly trending in the wrong direction. It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. This isn’t a leader who understands compromise or how to be a Lame Duck. He’s going to go hard and angry all the way out–if he allows for the out at all. There are terrible voices in his ear, which, as self serving as they are, have a vision of the future USA that does not align with the reality many of us desire. Case and point are the delusions of grandeur he manifests about his approval and his success.
2. Don’t get me started on the ICE stuff… That Miller-generated fiasco is going to have a reckoning one day.