Retirement is suiting me well so far. Haven't done a thing out of the ordinary yet, but I'm looking forward to and prepping nearly every day for events at the upcoming ANA in Pittsburgh. It's shaping up to be a heck of a show for the exhibits and educational programs alone. Be sure to stop by the NBS table and attend the Symposium and General Meeting. Otherwise numismatics this week has been mostly confined to working on The E-Sylum and helping people use the Newman Numismatic Portal to answer their research questions.

I've always been an explorer, so I've been experimenting with new walking routes in an around our neighborhood. Here are a couple recent photos.

The second one is from along the Washington and Old Dominion Trail, "Virginia's Skinniest Park". A couple kids passed me on electric bikes. These are seen all over now. In a sad accident that was waiting to happen, an area 9-year-old riding one of these things without a helmet crashed into the back of a van and was killed. Up ahead of me on the trail, one of the boys who'd passed me tipped over down an embankment. He was OK, but what I heard from his friend as I passed gave me some faith in the younger generation. He was admonishing his friend, saying "that's a ten-foot drop, you could have literally been killed! Safety first!"

Dog Money
On Thursday I drove over to the nearby town of Leesburg to visit the Loudoun Museum, and was delighted to find a numismatic exhibit right inside the front door.

And in an adjoining room was this classic cash register, which had been in use at a local business for 60 years.

Found online:

• If my name was David and I had a boy, I would name him Harley, so he could introduce himself as "I'm Harley, David's son."

When I find catchy phrases online they're usually snarky jokes. Here's one I think rings true: "illusory superiority", as in how nearly every driver believes they are above average.

Another encountered phrase is "Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money." "... smart-sounding people explain why something can't work… right up until someone builds it anyway."

Here are some interesting non-numismatic things I came across this week. Check out the video of Pittsburgh's Commercial Street Bridge Project. Those of us who took the shuttle to the May 2026 PAN Show banquet rode over that bridge. Building the new bridge took two years, but without a major traffic disruption. This month they blew up the old bridge and slid into place the new one they'd built right beside it. The switcheroo was completed in just 17 days, a week ahead of schedule.

And did you know there's a word for the words we use to describe people from a specific country, state, or city? demonym. Almost as scary as pyrocumulonimbus.

Commercial Street Bridge Project - Demolition & Slide Footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzSvTMIjflI)

Governor Shapiro, Lt. Governor Davis, and Secretary Carroll Announce Reopening of Interstate 376 Commercial Street Bridge a Full Week Ahead of Schedule (https://www.pa.gov/governor/newsroom/2026-press-releases/gov-shapiro-announces-reopening-of-interstate-376-commercial-str)

No. 1 on the Fortune Global 500: Amazon's Jeff Bezos on how his garage startup became the largest company in the world by revenue (https://fortune.com/2026/07/28/amazon-jeff-bezos-andy-jassy-ecommerce-ai-big-tech-global-500/)

Anduril takes its first Ohio victory lap (https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2026/07/27/anduril-ohio-fury-defense-drone-iran-war)

The Microchip Era Is About to End. Data centers will be the size of a box. (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-microchip-era-is-about-to-end-e71eb66a)

The Correct Terms To Call Locals From All 50 States (https://wordsmarts.com/state-demonyms/)

What is a ‘fire cloud', and how have they worsened wildfires in Europe? (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/27/what-is-a-fire-cloud-pyrocumulonimbus-pyrocb-france-spain-wildfires)

The World's First Vending Machine Dispensed Holy Water (https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/worlds-first-vending-machine-dispensed-holy-water)

The Fake Ancient Theater in Italy That Fooled Ticket Buyers for a Decade (https://weirditaly.com/2026/07/25/the-fake-roman-theater-that-fooled-ticket-buyers-for-a-decade/)

This 19th-Century Diary Written by an Enslaved Maryland Man Is a Crucial Record of His Life and Family History—and the Only One of Its Kind Found in the United States (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/this-19th-century-diary-written-by-an-enslaved-maryland-man-is-a-crucial-record-of-his-life-and-family-historyand-the-only-one-of-its-kind-found-in-the-united-states-180989146/)

PBS and NPR: Still here (https://www.cnn.com/newsletters/reliable-sources-07-28-26-110431)

Pluralistic: Discernment (28 Jul 2026) (https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/28/hitl-ers/)

The twisty economics of amusement parks (https://thehustle.co/originals/the-twisty-economics-of-amusement-parks)

The rise of ‘conspicuous waiting': The 19th-century economic theory that explains why Gen Z posts their place in line (https://fortune.com/2026/07/31/conspicuous-waiting-why-gen-z-posts-in-line/)

Where do you fit in the political typology? (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology/)

Bird droppings were a foundation of modern agriculture and American empire (https://theconversation.com/bird-droppings-were-a-foundation-of-modern-agriculture-and-american-empire-287441)

-Editor