July 7, 2026

I thought about using a random question generator to drum up some topics for these journal entries on days when I don’t have anything to really comment on, but I found most of them just offer inane topics that don’t really add anything. Add to that the issue that I was literally taught how to ask questions during college through my background as an English major, especially with journalism and theory classes.

Thinking on it - especially with the push towards AI to take over everyday tasks - that training feels more important each day, as I’m seeing a lot of need for solid editors to take what’s been pumped out and mould it into something that’s at minimum readable and at most intelligible. The joke about English as a useless degree’s been around for quite a while, and I still get “a blue curtain is just a blue curtain” as a response to overthinking, but if a lot of people are going to forfeit paying closer attention to what’s being generated by machines, we definitely need people out there who can spot the mistakes and correct the errors.

After last week’s heat wave, it’s nice to see that we’re getting a mix of some rain and cooler temperatures. I went camping last month, and while we avoided the heat, the humidity was awful enough to need to change my shirt 2-3 times throughout any given day. Thankfully, I’m no longer outside in a tent to see if that’s still the case here. Also, this being D.C., I was worried about how the 850,000 firework salute on the 4th was going to affect the air quality, and (to my surprise) it’s been manageable for me at least (still bad, but not lingering over the city for weeks bad). Heat index and air quality were still awful, but we didn’t get the massive amounts of smog I was dreading. Still no need to be blasting fireworks at 1am, though. Also, the dog was weirdly unaffected. He’ll freak out over gnats but not massive-ass fireworks? Weird.

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Decided recently to try out and actually listen to Dolly Parton. I don’t remember why I wanted to do this, but this seems to be a sticking point in my mind. Reading through the Wikipedia articles of her albums made me realize that most of her older albums were really short (less than 30 minutes), as were most of the songs on them. Country music before the late 1990s was known for doing that (it’s why Shania Twain’s Come On Over in 1997 was considered a big deal, since it was both a pop blockbuster and basically a double album for country music), but even by those standards, most of Dolly’s records were almost EPs instead of albums. Listening to her most famous record (1974’s Jolene), it’s pretty apparent why she got as successful as she did. Songs are catchy, her voice is pretty but also down-to-earth, and it’s easy music to enjoy without needing to invest too much brain power to focus on. The fact that she’s also a real peach of a human being only adds to that appeal. The universe blessed us with having her in our timeline.

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I’m not gleeful about the USMNT losing their game to Belgium last night, I’m also not heartbroken or surprised about it either. Belgium was clearly the better team, and no amount of influence-peddling was going to change that fact. I think I’m more intrigued about all the hoopla and memes surrounding Norwegian man-mountain Erling Haaland than anything else at this point with the World Cup, and I'm really curious how this all’s going to shake out towards the quarterfinals…

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I just found out today that Earth is getting hit with strange space debris off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Hope they figure out whose space balls these were...

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Saw this video last month and just remembered it while scrolling through my history:

https://youtu.be/U2D2LHJxhNw?si=A-YgSG0DVrA98Sf0

"Weird" Al, please never stop being weird.