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I wasn’t one of those familiar with Gary Hansard, the Irish Oscar-winning songwriter who recently died at the age of fifty-six. But I couldn’t help but notice tribute after tribute from the common to the famous. However, I finally recognized him for his prominent role in the Disney+ special Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming with Dave Letterman. And then it hit me that he’s the one who has put together the Christmas Eve Busk in Dublin for the last 15 years, which Bono always attends to help the homeless. Here’s an Instagram story of Hansard talking about how it came to be.

For those who know me well, yesterday was already a sentimentally heavy day for me. To add to it, I kept seeing stuff about Hansard’s funeral in Ireland. What really pulled at my heartstrings was his brother honoring him by song. He starts off with a few words thanking those near and far, and then he wonderfully sings a song I wasn’t familiar with but now love, I Can See God.  If you’re the sentimental type or the type who seeks spiritual growth, I’m not overselling it when I say it’s worth your time to watch (and listen to) this performance. But then again, maybe I’m a sucker for the Irish accent, with a strong and powerful voice, and knowing that he had a son too young to attend.

And she thanked her late husband “for the life we shared searching for beauty and truth side by side” adding that the beauty had been found “in our son Christy”.

She said Christy was too young to be at the funeral and too young to grasp the enormity of what had happened in recent days but said the “bright spirit he inherited from Glen is with us”.

I couldn’t find much information on the song itself, but I found this nice write-up to this TikTok video with a performance by the original artist.

Today, thousands of people discovered a song they had never heard before.

When Gary Hansard stood at his brother Glen Hansard’s funeral and sang “I Can See God”, it became one of those rare moments where music seemed to stop time. The performance has touched hearts around the world, with so many people asking the same question: “What is that song?”

The answer is a beautiful one.

“I Can See God” was written by Glen and Gary’s uncle, Paul Hansard, and originally recorded by the family band Papa Hobo. Gary, who delivered the unforgettable performance at today’s service, is also a member of the band – you’ll spot him in the black leather jacket in this video.

There’s something especially moving about that. At a moment of unimaginable loss, it wasn’t just a beautiful song – it was a family’s song. A nephew singing the words written by his uncle as a farewell to his brother. It was a reminder of just how deeply music runs through the Hansard family, and how songs have clearly always been part of their story.

It’s a timeless piece that has quietly existed for years, only now finding the audience it has always deserved. Sometimes it takes a single heartfelt performance to remind us that the most powerful music isn’t always the most famous.

Watching this now, it’s hard not to hope that “I Can See God” might receive an official release or be reissued in Glen’s memory – perhaps even as a charity single supporting a cause close to his heart. It would be a fitting way for this extraordinary song to continue bringing comfort long after today.

If you’ve arrived here after hearing Gary sing it today, this is where its story began.

The funeral had other wonderful musical tributes, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Eddie Vedder teamed up with Hansard’s Once co-star and former partner to perform a moving rendition of Hansard’s track, “The Song of Good Hope,” backed by members of The Frames.

I was also blown away by how the funeral ended. It was perfect. Everyone sang Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” as his wicker coffin was raised and carried on shoulders and led everyone outside. Below is a clip, but here’s the full 13-minute video.

Glen Hansard’s coffin being carried out of the cathedral to a mass singalong of Forever Young at the end of his beautiful funeral today. Impossible to watch this with a dry eye. 🖤 pic.twitter.com/ZDYCFlvWL6

— Ian Willoughby (@Ian_Willoughby) August 4, 2026

If you are wondering about the wicker coffin, the family had a private cremation service after the funeral.

Lastly, here’s his coffin being carried through the streets of Dublin with his music playing.

My father would have turned 103 yesterday. In honor of his birthday falling on the same weekend as the new Spider-Man movie, here’s a photo of the family with me wearing a Spider-Man shirt.

Speaking of the new Spider-Man movie, I watched it again since one of my awesome children wanted to watch it together. The first time I watched it, it was on a standard screen at the local Cinemark. This time, I watched it at an AMC in a Laser at AMC theater. I was surprised by how much more enjoyable the experience was, even if I had to suffer through that damn soul-draining Nicole Kidman intro. The picture quality, richer colors, increased brightness, sharper contrast, larger screen format, and sound were much more noticeable than I expected. I’ve watched other movies on the Laser at AMC format, but this was the first time I was able to compare it using one specific movie. And yes, I know that Cinemark offers laser projection, as well as Cinemark XD.

Other non-spoiler thoughts on the movie:

• I felt they went out of their way to show Tom Holland shirtless. Yes, the dude is ripped, but I felt all his shirtless scenes were a bit excessive.
• Marissa Tomei appeared at the London premiere and looks phenomenal at 61. I will forever have a crush on her.

  

• I heard at least one Bad Bunny song. I’m sure that’s going to unnecessarily infuriate some folks.

Google Chrome used to be my default browser on both my computer and phone, but since it no longer supports uBlock Origin, my experience visiting any news websites has stunk, with pop-up or flash ads appearing and videos playing in the background. It’s been over a decade, but I’ve made the switch back to Firefox, which supports uBlock Origin. However, I hear a lot of great things about the Zen web browser, and that it’s a completely different experience surfing the web, even a bit unconventional, but in a good way.

Here’s a review on Zen: I stopped organizing tabs the old way once Zen showed me what browsers could actually do. – Zen Browser rethinks the entire experience: 
Vertical tabs, workspaces, and a layout designed for modern browsing habits

And another: Firefox is better than Chrome, but this third option is miles ahead

There’s a new women’s baseball league. Right now, I think there are only four teams.

It’s well known that President Franklin Roosevelt used a wheelchair, though he and his staff did their darndest to hide it from the public. However, I recently learned that his cousin Teddy was almost confined to a wheelchair. Wouldn’t that have been the strangest coincidence if that had happened, to have two wheelchair bound presidents from the same family?

The story goes, while president, TR was riding in a carriage when a trolley car slammed into it. A Secret Service agent was killed, and Roosevelt was thrown from the carriage, badly bruising his leg. He downplayed the injury to the press and kept up a grueling speaking tour through the Midwest,  but the leg wound got infected, and by September 23, in intense pain, he had to have his infected leg lanced and drained in Indianapolis. He spent a short time in a wheelchair afterward, and legend has it, when told he might be confined to it, said, “All right! I can work that way too!”

Here’s another interesting fact. Again, let’s start with something well known: this famous diary entry.

On that day, in his New York City home, TR lost both his 22-year-old wife, Alice Hathaway Lee (from Bright’s disease following childbirth), and his 50-year-old mother, Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt (from typhoid fever). He later remarried and had five children.

But here’s the interesting part, his firstborn, Alice, the daughter and only child from his first wife, lived to the age of 96, dying on February 20, 1980. She was the last surviving child of Theodore Roosevelt and the longest-lived child of any United States president. Other fascinating parts of her life:

• As a leading Washington, D.C. socialite for most of her life, she met with sixteen sitting presidents of the United States[a] and is widely thought to be the person who met the most sitting presidents in history.
• Her marriage to House Speaker Nicholas Longworth was tense, and her only child, Paulina, was born from an affair with Idaho Senator William Borah. She privately joked that she should have named her “Deborah,” as in “of Borah.” Sadly, Paulina died from an overdose of sleeping pills. Nixon was a pallbearer at her funeral.
• As with TR’s other children, she wasn’t a fan of FDR.
• Perhaps her best quote regarding her father was, “He wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.“
• Her wedding was at the White House.

This story reminds me of an old Simpsons bit.

She was set to get married. The night before, she used a tampon to set fire to the Utah church, police say.

• When the bride spoke with law enforcement, the officer wrote, she provided a different first and last name than her legal name and a different birthday than the day on her Wyoming-issued license.
• The groom told police that he and the bride-to-be had gone to an Ace Hardware store earlier that day. In the probable cause statement, a Kaysville police officer wrote that he reviewed security camera footage from that store and saw the woman steal two BIC lighters, then hide them in her shoes.
• “The bride,” he wrote, “did not obtain a marriage license for her own wedding that was to occur the following day after the fire but had lied stating she had.”

I watched Spider-Man: Brand New Day yesterday. It was fun, and I liked how a lot of things were unexpected. The second half is good; it just doesn’t go by as fast as the first half. I still give it a big thumbs up.

The NFL preseason will kick off with the Hall of Fame Game on Thursday, August 6, 2026. For me, this is when I start to spot the commercials that we’ll be with us through the end of February, and then guess which ones will end up driving us nuts because they’re overplayed. Last year, it was the one with Meghan Trainor and Patrick Mahomes. Funny, the first 20 times I saw it, it was tolerable; the next 100 times it came on, it was nothing but annoying after mid-September.

Most folks won’t think twice about a clock tower unless they are watching Back to the Future. This article makes the point that at one point in history, most people didn’t own personal timepieces, so towns relied on a clock tower, placed proudly in the middle of town, and the ringing of the bell, the public authority on time, was a very communal experience.

Interestingly, my hometown of Mineral Wells didn’t have one. But the one I’m most familiar with was the one in the Weatherford courthouse. We would always pass it going to or from Fort Worth, unless he took one of those routes that bypassed downtown. I’m sure a handful of you know exactly the route I’m talking about.

Axios Texas has been holding a tournament for the Best Texas Drink. It came down to Margarita vs. unsweetened iced tea.

It’s a bit interesting that Dallas Market Hall is going to be converted into a data center. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. KDFW reports that it will more likely be torn down to make way for a data center campus. Now, I’m wondering if this will be the future for abandoned or about-to-be defunct shopping malls.

Alana Stewart, ex-wife of singer Rod Stewart, was in Dallas this week. She’s 81 years old.

US government’s map of Africa mislabels every country sparking confusion at global conference

State finds some registered Texas voters were wrongly flagged as potential noncitizens – The secretary of state told counties to immediately reinstate any Texans who were removed from the voter roll despite showing DPS proof of citizenship.

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday.

Texas imports of Venezuelan oil soar as war chokes off Middle East supply

I wonder, say ten years from now, if someone is going to use AI and do something like erase people’s debt.

Actor Camryn Manheim, who used to champion size diversity and even dedicated her Emmy win to “all the fat girls,” looks almost unrecognizable. I’m not sure how she lost the weight, but I have a feeling we’ll see a lot more of these unrecognizable transformations in the future with the availability of GLP-1 inhibitors.

James Burke’s perfectly timed shot on television in 1978 is hailed as one of “The Greatest Shot In Television History” pic.twitter.com/kCnADUMZep

— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) July 28, 2026

I’m posting this for no reason at all other than it makes me happy and brings me joy. It’s an anthem of perseverance that centers on resilience, self-worth, and making your voice heard despite feeling judged or overlooked by others.

I got stung by a wasp this weekend. That hasn’t happened in about 40 years. It happened while trying to find a nest, which was situated behind the flap of a cardboard box. The sting hurt more, and the pain lasted longer than expected. As a kid, I remember treating those by applying wet baking soda on the area.

Also, avoid buying Hot Shot Wasp and Hornet Killer. Rarely have I ever been so disappointed by a purchase.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to attend at least one of the San Diego Comic-Cons.

An example of what it’s like to jobhunt in today’s world.

Something smells fishy.

Pentagon quietly updates how it categorizes Iran war casualties

The Pentagon has updated its public-facing casualty database after abruptly revising its Iran war casualty figures last week, when it reduced the number of U.S. troops listed as killed in Operation Epic Fury from 18 to 14 and removed dozens of wounded service members from that tally.

The Defense Department now appears to be tracking casualties in its Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) under a new category labeled Overseas Operations rather than Operation Epic Fury, the namesake previously used for the Iran campaign – in effect restarting its accounting of dead and wounded in the war.

It’s unclear how defense officials are defining “overseas operations” and whether that’s exclusively counting Iran war dead and wounded.

While watching History’s World War II with Tom Hanks, I saw a locomotive being lifted by a crane. Since trains are so darn large and heavy, I honestly didn’t think it was possible.

Have you ever read a book or watched something and wondered what the characters’ journey looked like?

ReadingMaps.com

For example, here’s Captain Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick. As you can see, the maps are interactive.

So Sly was not wearing a tucked-in T-shirt; instead, he was wearing a bodysuit.

Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals Stallone has a custom shirt with a strap under the crotch to keep it tucked, ‘Who thinks about this?’

Arnold: “So I go to visit his set. And he says, ‘Arnold, I don’t like when your shirts are baggy.’ I said, ‘What am I going to do about it?… pic.twitter.com/Hw24fchwQm

— Zeus (@ZeusRebirth) July 25, 2026

In 1991, when Michael J. Fox hosted SNL to promote THE HARD WAY, Fox and Doc Brown from the future storm the stage to warn him the show’s going to bomb unless he travels back in time to save the show 😂 One of the best monologues the show ever did pic.twitter.com/zsTl7lHBHB

— Todd Spence (@Todd_Spence) July 26, 2026

It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History

Training Camp 1997 pic.twitter.com/tRXqjeNahc

— Old Time Football 🏈 (@Ol_TimeFootball) July 24, 2026

Swiss town to fine those who don’t wash up dog pee – Walkers will be expected to carry a bottle of water as well as waste bags, and to use it to dilute urine left in public places. First-time offenders will receive a warning; repeat offenders will face a fine of CHF 100.