217 – One of my butt cheeks every month
This week’s show kicks off with Adam showing off his brand new UV printer — a Kickstarter he backed a year ago that finally arrived — and the coasters he’s been making with it are genuinely impressive. He and Daniel get into a fun conversation about using AI to generate the artwork for them, which naturally spirals into a debate about whether AI-generated art actually hurts working artists (spoiler: they don’t think casual hobbyist use does). That leads into a deeper chat about Adam’s upcoming departure from his job, with Daniel breaking down a really useful concept he’s calling “sandbox budgeting” — a way of thinking about living off savings that might make the whole thing feel a lot less scary than it sounds. If you’re thinking about early retirement or a career transition, you’ll want to hear this part.
The contact segment brings a hilarious email from a listener named Deborah who has been patiently (and not so patiently) waiting for her Level 13 invite for over a month, and Daniel handles it live on air. Listener Kathy Bacon also weighs in with some great messages, including one about AI and water usage that Daniel and Adam push back on thoughtfully, and another about the evolution of gendered job titles like “waitress” vs. “server.” Then things get genuinely interesting when Daniel brings up something Joey Buchecker said about Adam on another podcast — and rather than just roasting him, Daniel does something unexpected: he defends him, sort of. He introduces a concept he’s coining “cognitive privilege,” and it turns into one of the more thought-provoking conversations the show has had in a while. As always, the News Game and Birthdays segments make their appearances, so stick around for those.
To close out the show, Daniel and Adam start planning Adam’s visit to Florida in April — dinner at a Michael Mina steakhouse, an escape room, maybe a swing through Disney’s Flower and Garden Festival, and potentially a full-on Mix meetup (if you’re in the area, reach out!). And Daniel shares a genuinely cool AI project he’s been building in his spare time called Ho Chi Malt — essentially a tool that lets you ask natural language questions against a fully searchable archive of any podcast’s transcripts. He’s thinking about open-sourcing it and even turning it into a subscription service. It’s the kind of nerdy, ambitious side project that makes you remember why you fell in love with what technology can do.
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