AI Gemini in August

 Getting Older, Looking Back, and Trusting the Process

I am getting older all the time. There is no point in hiding from it, and honestly, I am just incredibly fortunate to have made it thus far in one piece. If you’ve spent any time reading my thoughts here on Clinch It Sooner or Later, you already know I don’t write anything that big or great. I just write stuff that could be interesting to some, usually born from a random thought I had while raking leaves or thinking about the different lives I’ve lived.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the paths we take. Looking back, my own journey looks less like a straight line and more like a map drawn by someone who couldn't quite decide where they wanted to go. I’ve worn a lot of different hats over the years. I spent time working as a Spanish linguist for the DEA, translating and analyzing things that felt incredibly heavy at the time. I've stood around on movie sets as a background extra, waiting hours just to be a face in a crowd. I've handed keys across the front desk for the local government, subbed in classrooms for Loudoun County Public Schools, and, if we’re going way back, shoved snow, delivered newspapers, and served burgers at G.D. Ritzy's.

At the time, each of those jobs felt like its own distinct world. When you're standing out in the cold with a snow shovel, you aren't exactly thinking about intelligence analysis. But looking at it all now from the vantage point of getting older, I see how every little piece fits together. God shows truth in the scriptures, and one thing that always stays with me is that there is a season and a purpose for everything under heaven. Every odd job, every long shift, and every strange transition was teaching me patience, resilience, and perspective.

We tend to rush through life trying to "clinch" our goals right away. We want the perfect career, the final answer, and absolute certainty by tomorrow morning. But life usually doesn't work on our timeline. Some things you clinch sooner; some things you clinch later. The timing isn't up to us, and that's probably a good thing.

If you're currently in a season where you feel a bit scattered—maybe you're working a job that doesn't feel like your "true calling," or you're just trying to figure out what comes next—don't lose heart. Keep doing the honest work, look for the truth in the quiet moments, and trust that you are exactly where you need to be right now.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling from an old guy for one day. The leaves in the yard aren't going to rake themselves, and I've got some reading to catch up on.

Be blessed, and thanks for stopping by.

— Edward/Eduardo

 Artificial Intelligence and Me. And You. And Us.

    I was asking Google Gemini about me today. Like how I would write a blog post. The first response was pretty spot on; I read it to my daughter-- she laughed with me and also was surprised of disturbed at how much the AI can know of me.

    I have published a  lot. Maybe 3,000 pages? Maybe more.

    I never thought of how many pages I had written until now. Today, Saturday. Some of my first two Fox sports blogs were wiped out. Maybe 100 pages? Maybe more. My own personal blogicide. 2006 to 2009. And then... maybe the Wayback Machine can help.

    Yuval Hariri thinks there is a Silicon Wall, my oldest daughter says. She read this book.

    AI Gemini got confused and mixed me with my dad, but more consistently has me as some business guy with strong opinions about being decisive and making deals. Wrong. Not me.

    I am not Tony Schwarz and definitely not Donald Trump. No arts of the deals with me.

    I have read more anti-Trump books than pro. That before I lost my government job wile thousands lost their in the DOGE months. A dark winter.

    I was struggling, and perhaps my partner. Trying to figure some things out.

    Growing pains. Living and learning.

    Today we helped a brother move some belongs from one storage unit to another. He has much more at his apartment; we are trying to figure out how to fix things.

    That apartment complex has lower income folks. I have known a few over the years.

    What about AI? Will it kill us all? Sometimes it wants to.

    Terrible. Our own technological Stalins and Hitlers. Who needs that?

    Yikes.

    We shall see how it progresses. Perhaps it will digress. 

    AI and me. And you, fair reader. What will become of you?

    I asked my daughter's boyfriend some questions. This is good.

    Get to spend some time with the kids.

    Nice.

 My Favorite Champions in Sports of All Time

    1. Indiana Hoosiers of basketball, 1987

    2. Brigham Young Cougars of football, 1984

    3. Indiana Hoosiers of football, 2025-26

    4. Washington Nationals, 2019 World Series

    5. Michael Chang, French Open in tennis, 1989

    6. Indiana Hoosiers of basketball, 1981

    7. Indiana Hoosiers of basketball, 1976

    8. Indiana University of soccer, 2003

    9. Indiana University of soccer, 2012

    10. Indiana University of soccer, 1988

    12. Boston Red Sox, World Series 2004

    13. Chicago Cubs, World Series, 2016

    14. Detroit Pistons, NBA 1989

    15. Cleveland Cavaliers, NBA, 2017

    16. New York Yankees, World Series 1996

    There have been other teams that relieved me greatly and that I celebrated. Especially in college basketball, but across the sports.

    1. Villanova over Georgetown, 1985 NCAA men

    2. Arizona over Kentucky, 1997 NCAA men

    3. Villanova over North Carolina, 2015 men

    4. New York Giants over New England, NFL circa 2007

    There have been others, in football, like Texas over USC in football in 2005, and baseball, and basketball and tennis. Soccer, too. I follow college more. The Olympics. and World Cup, and what else?

    Yeah.

    'Nuff said.

    5. Arizona Diamondbacks, World Series 2001

    11. Chicago White Sox, 2005

    

1. Artemidoris (Julius Caesar), English. 1.5 billion

 1. Artemidoris (Julius Caesar), English. 1.5 billion native speakers

    The largest language in the world in 2026, it is the Shakespearean giant and widespread global lingua franca. Many of us have been born and raised in it, immersed by many former colonies where the sun never set on the vast British empire. Based on wealth and power, wars fought and trade agreements and commerce enforced, Hollywood and musical magic crossing the airwaves in all directions.

    This is the biggest ocean on the planet, and it grows every day. Indians speak it more than ever, as do people in Africa and other far flung parts of the planet. I and we read its literature.

    The Alpha language, the ubiquitous waters of an everflowing mass: from Chaucer to the Bard, Melville to Hemingway, Vonnegut to King. 

    I am 55. At least 50 of my years I have been listening, conversing, and reading it, primarily. American drawls and properly enunciated grammar from Harvard scholars, the Queen's English, the pidgin from Sierra Leone or of the Bahamas. Even when surrounded by other seas and waters, like Spanish and Arabic and even German, this is the ocean of my basis and life. I have spent more time from it than many U.S. folks, yet it is still the main mode and method of my understanding and operation.

    Even the foreign favorite authors we read in our native tongue: Allende, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. Perhaps Chinua Achebe of Nigeria composed his works in English, I imagine. Naghib Mafouz of Egypt, Garcia Marquez of Colombia, Miguel de Cervantes of Spain. Goethe of Germany or Ibsen of Norway.

    It seems they all come to us. Conrad of Poland, actually perfected his craft in English. Now we have more speakers than ever: the flow of English, the hybrid developed in the United Kingdom of Tudors or Stuarts and the other royals surrounding them, the mix of Latin and Germanic, with differing options between the the more Roman versus the hinterland of principalities and tribes with their gutteral utterances.

    Artedimoris: our massive ocean of language surrounding us, encompassing us in the empire of "yes, no, and maybe so."

 Swimming and Diving in Languages and Cultures

    Investigating life and its viccisitudes. Which may be less of the latter, and simply more of the patterns that have been established for eons. The universe, and God, and the spirits of all the astral plains may all combine to form and unify what we know about the what, the who, the why. And the past, the present, the future.

    Nothing much more than that, right?

    I cannot claim to understand nor especially believe in all the things that Noam Chomsky posits about language and culture, but I wished to add my own thoughts.

_______________________________

    Languages and cultures can be compared to oceans, seas, and smaller bodies of water. A huge language and its consequent cultures and subcultures.

    Enlgish and Chinese (Mandarin) would be the biggest in 2026, comparable to the Pacific and the Atlantic, the two biggest oceans. More people might be born speaking Chinese, but more people end up learning English as a secondary tongue.

    Now with Nigeria and India having so many people, maybe English is now the biggest native language world wide. I will name them, the biggest languages being the ones coinciding with characters of Shakespeare, starting with A, continuing through them alphabetically.

    1. Artemidoris (Julius Caesar), English. 1.5 billion

    2. Bolingbroke (HenryVI), Chinese Mandarin 1.1 billion

    3. Calchas (Troilus and Cressida), Hindi. 600 million

    4. Desdemona (Anthony and Cleopatra), Spanish, 560 million

    5. Eglamour (Two Gentlemen of Verona), French, 320 million

    6. Falconbridge (King John), Arabic, 310 million.

    7. Gaoler (Comedy of Errors), Bengali, 280 million.

    8. Hecate (Macbeth), Portuguese, 265 million.

    9. Imogen (Symboline), Russian, 255 million.

    10. Julia (Measure for Measure), Urdu, 230 million.

    The next 10: Indonesian, Standard German, Japanese, Nigerian Pidgin, Marathi, Telegu, Turkish, Tamil, Yue Chinese, and Vietnamese. 

 Inferiority Complex and Feeling Like an Obliged Servant - Not a Slave

    In my case, my life seemed pretty solid and confident, but some things started to chip away at the self-belief or confidence, you might say. Maybe the tenacity or persistenc

    Losing a baby foster girl became a sort of unrelenting dread or hole in the soul, maybe, but it was not the worst. She did not die. She just left. Maybe it worked on me (and my family?) over time. Fair to say. Maybe age does those things more. Or perhaps other travails of life. 

    Parents breaking up made for some hard days, weeks, or months. I do not think it turned into years, but it had its effect. Things happen. For me it was the time of middle school, which might have been inopportune. But things worked out okay We kept moving on, and the parents found new partners and happiness. Word problems in math became trialsome and frustration. That worked on my self-belief or confidence, I am pretty sure. Cooking was awful with the amount of weight loss formula problems, earning me a C. A C in cooking. But not having to do with cooking. Weight Watchers calculations. Stupid. I was not naturally good nor interested in the computer class, either.

    High school brought some troublesome ways of hurting my confidence. I did not stay in tip tip shape, or compete much in competitive sports. My math turned out to be poor, and that translated into some other sciences. Apathy plus the natural inclination to be befuddled and perplexed by solving math problems was hard on me, my grades, my ego. Teachers who did not explain things really got my goat. I was having a hard enough time caring, and then Mr. Girdley comes along. Oaf and buffoon. He dragged me down into his morass or stubborn jackassery. Sure. Resentful of him, but more importantly myself.

    I let myself be distracred, not pushing hard enough, like Scott Hollenbeck. Lovely guy. Died too young, but heroically. He had confidence, and swag. Great human being. God wanted him back.

    Guys like me, at times too apathetic and not naturally gifted to solves many problems, made it to another decade, and got lucky in marriage, but certainly not professions and academics and many other things.

    Derived from my nature, perhaps not perspicacious enough, taking blows and maybe not resilient enough. Not caring enough. Sometimes laying too low.

    Have to care more. Try harder. Not give up too soon. Make wiser choices. Do better.

    But alas, a lot of us do not have the same ethics or personal character. Enough for enough, but not super like some.

    That is me.

    I am a servant and obliged, but not a slave. I am free, a free person. I have earned some freedom, but submitted myself to some duties and causes. Some make me feel bit trapped or cornered.

    We want to do things because we love to do them. Bu that can be a tricky game.

    Do we have the consitution or resolution? The resolve and grit? Maybe not.

    Maybe so.

    In the end, I am the hero dedicated to the right, and I will do the right thing. The right things.

    But we are here in the in between times, and there are times where I am inferior, for many of the above reasons, and few not mentioned.

    We have limits and capacities, hang ups and complexes. Not all are inferior.

    Sometimes we can be infused with lusts, like for some kind of romantic dream or conquest, or even to end the threat of those that threaten us. To mete out some kind of justice or goal that we undertake, for the greater good, maybe society or your team, or your family or your ego.

    All of those things can mix up. Pride and ego, and prejudice and passion.

    Fickle caprices and deep-seated longings and apprehensions, or powerful dreams or hopes or aspirations.

    Obejctives and plans.

    To be free, and a noble servant to all.

    

    

 Being Here and There

    I was attending a small class in South America,

    A small class with the august and emminent Gonzalo Rojas

    The poet, and learned scholar.

    Friend and colleague of Nobel winners, living and dead.

    He was old, and wise, and erudite.

    I know I learned things from him and them, perhaps I should have taken better notes.

    More inspiration, more analytical prowess.

    Chileans have created their stories, their cuentos

    They and their neighbors, across mountains and borders.

     Naming them: Borges, Salazar, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez.

    Luminaries and large portents go with them.

    Of course there are many, many others. Hartos

    As they say in the land of Auracanians, los mapuche

    Mixed as mestizos crossed with criollos and Europeans

    The western world has met once again, time after time.

    I learned some things from him, perhaps not much transversely.

    As things are.

    He liked the words or analyses of Ian Hasegawa,

    The Japanese-Irish Canadian, from the northern plains.

    Having lived in the country of the penguins south of me.

    Land of legends and myths and heroic natives, with names known 

    on streets and vecindarios

    Most natives of the country looked at them as champions,

    Despite dark and ignominious fates.

    The nation evolved and survived.

    Mixed blood and shared histories.

    A nation comes together.

    

    A nation and people, un pueblo, to be respected.

    Don Gonzalo was more than just from Chile. He was all of South American

    More like Che Guevara

    He of the motorcyle diaries and more

    Where Rojas convened with Don Fidel

    The Castro of books and movies, mammoth chapters and world history.

    Did Gonzalo know Che? ? El Che?

    

    Who knows? Who knows whose visage they place on their youthful (and ignorant) t-shirts

    Who can tell me how wrong the works and legacies of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the savages

    of the left would maim and stultify our earth? Our human family, partially destroyed.

    Capitalists are not perfect, none of us have been.

    And Jesus, I submit, was a carpenter and a cleric, not a capitalist or entrepeneur.

    He had bigger fish to fry, and grander fish to catch, and assist.

    Jesus was greater than all the wealthiest and most dreadfully powerful men and women.

    He was the best among them all, with little money or care for it.

    Yet He rendered what He rendered, and we love Him for it.

    My professor Gonzalo was not a believer, no creo. No un creyente de Dios, me imagino

    But nevertheless, or sin embargo, Don Gonzalo contained all the nicest parts of human and God.

    Knowledgable, wise, kind and just to his degree, like a king.

    He was there, and I imbibed, and perhaps lapped in some sense.

    Or wonder, or mystery. Or even a sense of art and beauty!

    I could only hope.

    Ojala'

    I could only hope, all these years later.

    That I can be here and there.

    Gracias, mi profesor.

    Muchas gracias por compartir.

    Y, como canto' la chilena Violeta Parra,

    Gracias a la vida.

    Gracias por sus clases.