Random Thoughts July 2026

I was talking with some parents who mentioned that their kids didn’t want to hear anything or talk about Artificial Intelligence with them. That got me to thinking. Unless we have some answers and some hope to offer, maybe we shouldn’t be asking those, who at this very moment, are being impacted directly by, and are right in the cross hairs of AI.

I am speaking specifically of the college age folks who were sold a bill of goods about what they were supposed to do to have a good chance at a productive life. (Go to school, get good grades, go on to college, learn a profession, etc.)

I am speaking of those whose college degrees will be obsolete before the ink is dry on their diplomas. What are THEY SUPPOSED to do about something WE have created? What are THEY SUPPOSED to think? Until we have some answers, maybe WE should be asking ourselves and those genius creators of the phenomena THOSE questions.

Artificial Intelligence is a thing. If you have any interest in it at all, read or listen to The Great Harvest: AI Labor and the Bitcoin Lifeline’.  Watch the movie “The AI Doc.”

I was wondering why there seems to be a general consensus that people’s body parts or physical attributes are sanctioned as appropriate grist for the comedy mill. Noses, feet, ears …….

I think a fun conversation around any dinner table would be, “Thinking back on the things I have done in my life, what in the world was I thinking when I ….”?

I was playing a game of Tic Tac Toe with my grandson and started to thinking “Where did that name come from?”  Then the game ended in a tie, and I heard myself blurt out “Cat got the game.” What????  Where????  Why????

I was listening to someone who was talking about their drinking and the thought rolled through my head, “What you are looking for won’t be found at the bottom of that bottle.”  Then I thought, “At the end of the scroll either.”  I have witnessed both the bottle and the scroll damage and even destroy intimate relationships.

My buddy said, “There is a funny sound coming from under the car.”  I got out and listened. There was an unusual noise coming from the transmission but apparently I didn’t get the joke (as in a “funny” sound.) 

I experienced a LOT of people who were experiencing really bad things happening to themselves and their loved ones last week. I said to a friend, “Hope, as a coping mechanism can be vastly overrated.  Especially when there is none.”  

A friend of mine said, “Well, you know, life is improv.”  As in, life is like improvisational theater.  “You may know where you start, but you never know how it is going to unfold or how it is going to end.” Like the TV show, “Who’s Line is it Anyway.”  What little I know about that art form suggests that those who are really good at it pay a lot of attention to the very last word or thing that has been said before they speak. In fact, it is pretty much the only thing that matters, they literally have to let go of what’s happened before.

It seems as if that would be a good thing for me to remember as I practice living my life too. Rather than stop listening before someone is finished talking and react to something they said before they quit talking, listen to how the conversation ends.

Help me with “Hunky Dory.”  “Off the cuff.”  “Around the horn.”  I know what they mean, but why do I know that?

I would love to meet with the genius folks who put medication in those blister cards. I’d enjoy watching them remove the medication. No fair using scissors, or garden shears, or box cutters, or matches.

I was speaking with a friend, and we were talking about the phenomena that in our country the common fate of elders is some version of warehousing while the wisdom and experience they have is wasted. She reminded me that some multigeneration organizations thrive in part because the old-timers are not only welcomed but revered.

Is there someone somewhere in a lab who is determining just how much comes out of those automatic paper towel dispensers in public bathrooms?  Is there someone who scientifically has determined how many inches of paper come out with each push of the button (or each wave of the hand? Do they count on a person pushing the button at least two times to make sure they get what they need?  I ask because it seems as if once is never enough and three times, even for me, is too much.

I overheard someone say, “I’m not blaming you; I AM shaming you” and grinned😊

Warning: Political Commentary to Follow

Since the current regime and its minions are so concerned about free-loaders, doing their free-loading thing I think it might be a great strategy to cut the debtor states off the federal dole. That is, those 37 states that take more from the Federal government in terms of money than they contribute in taxes to it.  The states who cannot pay their bills.  The states that are on welfare.   Require of them exactly what the BBB of 2025 is requiring of individuals who receive federal money.  The list of states in the debtor category does not surprise me.  The dominant political party color doesn’t either.

I was around in 1976. Our nation’s 200th Birthday. I remember it feeling fun and special. Despite the chaos of the previous 20 years, it seemed as if there really was something to celebrate, be proud of. It seemed as if we had learned our Vietnam lessons. It seemed that we had grown up in terms of our actions related to racism and sexism and equal rights and presidential inappropriateness. I remember feeling some pride around those things.

I realized as I read of plans for this summer’s celebration that I felt embarrassed, as if what is going to happen is more like an old time Las Vegas burlesque show. Gross, indecent, trashy, tawdry, and base. Not something I’d expose my kids to. And that is just the celebration part.

I am embarrassed to be an American based on our behaviors towards other nations and peoples. And our own citizens. Our government’s behaviors over the last year or so reminds me of what, historically, we have done to countries like Panama, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Chile. Sordid, embarrassing, wrong, criminal.

I heard a comment on TV that the president’s base is not deterred by anything he does, and as usual wondered how that happens. Then I remembered religions, who, without exception, have done (and continue to do) things over time that would make what the current regime has done and is planning on doing, pale in comparison.

Billions of people still sign up and are proud card-carrying members. For sure, when the latest religious behavior outrage is discovered, some people do say, “No More,” and quit. But the vast majority stay faithful and loyal, no matter what.

While a citizen of any particular state or country learns of atrocities done in their name might be embarrassed, the vast majority don’t leave. That answers the question of how and why. If I go too far into the facts, I have to give up the whole schema, and if I do that, I am in an existential crisis, which I am not prone to want to voluntarily do.

I have traveled internationally a fair amount.  Attending conferences, making presentations.  I always began with making an apology for what the United States had historically done to them. After 2016, when I traveled to other countries, I made sure as I began my engagement to include not just the past but the present. It was important to me to let them know that what was happening here and to them, didn’t represent myself or the majority of people I knew and what they were witnessing was an aberration.  I am not sure I can say that anymore with any confidence.

I was talking to a friend from Seattle recently. Canadian traffic has declined significantly, and he said that they weren’t mad at our government, they were mad at us Americans. I was sort of shocked. “Don’t blame me” I thought. Then I remembered the dynamic of an alcoholic family system. Without enablers (people who allow the drinking behaviors to continue) the alcoholic behaviors collapse. The alcoholic then dies or gets help.

As an American,  I’m an enabler, that is why they would be angry at me and every American. Without enabling, and enablers like me, the current regime would collapse.