Why Everything Feels Like a Fight Right Now (AI, Energy, and the Shift)

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.
Lately, when you watch the news and see everything going on — when you go online — everything feels like there's a fight happening for something.
There's always a conflict.
Energy. Cost of living. Inflation through the roof. Groceries cost a ton. Gas is crazy priced.
Governments have a grant or program on, then it's off, then it's back on again — constantly changing based on the political climate and the financial struggles happening in the world right now.
Everything just feels kind of unstable. Very unpredictable.
And when you take a closer look at it, it feels like people are trying to grab their piece of the pie. Trying to hold on to something.

01:30 — What it feels like

When you look at how the world is working today — the resources, the things we use — it feels like there's not enough to go around.
Not enough stability. Not enough margin. Not enough room for everyone.
So people begin pushing and pulling.
Companies do the same. Countries do the same. Governments, political groups, businesses.
Everyone's trying to secure as much of what they think they need.

03:30 — The pattern

It reminds me of a farm trough.
When the farmer throws in the bucket of food — the animals come running.
They're not trying to cooperate.
They push each other. They bang into each other. They grab as much as they can.
And they're not doing it because they're overly greedy.
They do it because they know there's a limited supply.
If they don't get it — they don't get any.
And they don't know if there's more coming.

05:30 — Apply it to today

That's energy right now.
Oil. Gas. The infrastructure around it.
That's what people are grabbing at.
There's a limited supply. Certain people control the majority of it. A certain group refines it.
And when something matters that much…
people compete over it.
At every single level of the process.

06:30 — Where we put the effort

And something else I keep thinking about…
It's not just that energy is limited.
It's also where we put our effort.
For decades — money, lobbyists, big corporations — it all focused on oil and gas. The entire world runs on it.
So we put a lot of technology and research into it. We found better ways of finding it, more efficient ways of extracting it. The whole system got really good.
But it also means other paths didn't get the same push.
Solar. Storage. Wind. Water.
Not completely ignored — but not backed the same way. Because it wasn't as commercialized. It didn't have those large groups pushing it or controlling it.
And I've always said — if we had put the same amount of effort into those things earlier…
when we put our minds to something and start tinkering with it, things get better. We figure out how to capture it, store it, use it, be more efficient with it.
I wonder how different things might feel right now.

08:30 — Transition starting

And now it feels like that shift is starting.
Not all at once. But enough to notice.
The tools are better. The pace is faster.
AI is speeding up how we test and iterate.
The sun alone — we're using like one trillionth of the energy it provides. It's essentially an infinite supply. And now with AI and better technology, we're outpacing the old ways of refining and capturing it.
We're starting to see all those things coming together.

10:30 — The tension (core idea)

And this is where it starts to feel messy.
Because for a long time, we built everything around one system.
The old system is still here. Still what most people are using. And it's going to be for a while.
But it's slowly slipping away — and the people higher up, they see that. What once made them rich, gave countries leverage and power — that's going to shift.
Because AI is helping us more efficiently capture energy from the sun. And that starts to replace a system controlled by a handful of people… with something no one owns.
No one owns the sun.
People will own storage systems. Factories. Grids. That's still real. But as AI keeps pushing breakthroughs, there's going to be a situation where people could live off the energy grid entirely.
Power their home. Their vehicle. Their devices. Their activities.
There's no reason why that's not possible.
And I think people see this shift happening — and that's why those last groups are holding on harder than ever.

12:30 — Why it feels like fighting

It's like the trough analogy again.
The animals are going for those last bits because they don't know there's another bucket coming.
They don't want to be left without leverage.
And that's why everything feels like a fight right now.
Not because people are worse.
But because we're between systems.
Still relying on something that took decades to build… while something else is starting to become possible.
That middle part — that's where things feel tight.

13:45 — Personal / your voice

And this is something I've said for years.
To my wife. To people around me.
At some point, we're going to look back at this.
We're going to look back at fighting over something we drill out of the ground — something limited, something people have been hurt and killed over — and we're going to say…
Why?
We have an abundance now. Energy that isn't destroying the environment. Energy provided by the solar system itself, collected through devices that don't produce pollutants.
There'll still be minerals to mine. Still things to build. I'm not naive about that.
But I really believe we're going to look back and say — we really fought and hurt each other over something that now is just… there.
Not taken for granted. But just there.

15:30 — Bring it back

Right now, everything feels like a fight.
But maybe that's not just how people are.
Maybe it's the environment we're in.
The systems we built.
The transition we're going through.

16:00 — Solar Panels / Timing note

And there's a version of this I see even on the small scale.
Friends who put solar panels on their roofs — I always wonder about the timing.
You bolt something onto your roof thinking the technology won't change much. But I really believe the way we capture energy, the materials we use, how they operate — that's going to change dramatically and quickly.
Sure, you can feed energy back into the grid and get discounts now. But it's expensive, and you might end up dating yourself to an older technology that'll cost you again to replace.
I think the evolution is going to happen so fast — a lot of things we're paying a lot of money for right now are going to dramatically reduce in cost.
And that's going to change the landscape of the world quite a bit.

16:30 — Close

We built a world around scarce things.
And we're still acting inside that.
But if that starts to change…
I don't think we've really thought through what that changes.

17:00 — Outro

I'm not saying this is right or wrong.
Just something I've been thinking about watching everything going on.
This one was a hard one to get out — it's a big idea and it's hard to get across.
But I really wanted to push it out there. The analogy of people holding on to something, fighting over something that in the near future we're going to look back at and say… why?
Why didn't we go down both roads at the same time with equal effort?
Now with AI, we can catch up fast. We can detect patterns, run tests, iterate, push through breakthroughs.
Curious if you see it the same way. I'll take my time to read the comments on this one.
Thanks for watching.

Using AI to Brain Dump and Think Out Loud

00:00 — Opening

I've been noticing something about how my mind works…
It doesn't stay in one place for very long.
It tries to connect dots.
It'll start with something small — it happened yesterday actually. I was looking at how Bitcoin moves… and that turned into an app idea… and then I was like, well, everyone's talking about using Claude or whatever to help them invest and trade — how come I can't get access to that?
And then something random about a product someone mentioned… and then I need to call about my insurance…
And it just keeps going.
I don't have ADHD, I don't think so. But I do have a creative mind. A mind that wonders and likes to explore. And I haven't tried to stop that.

01:00 — What was missing

And for a long time… those thoughts didn't really have anywhere to go.
They'd start, but they wouldn't finish.
Not because they weren't interesting — but because there was no place to let them run through their course. To see what could actually come of it.

02:00 — How it used to work

Every idea used to hit friction.
You'd think about it… then you'd have to research it, write it down, figure out if it already exists, look everything up…
And most of the time? You'd find something similar already out there.
And that was enough to kill it.
Because with all that extra effort and friction, it felt like — it's not worth going deeper. Someone else already thought of it. Someone else is already working on it.
You really had to be in love with something to keep pushing through that.

03:30 — The "fool's gold" moment

It would turn into this thing where you think you had something…
but really it's already there.
So you just drop it.

04:30 — The shift

But now… that part is almost instant.
You think of something, you jump into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini — whatever — and you say does this exist?
And one of two things happens:
You find it → and you kill the idea immediately. Or you find it → and you realize you still want it → and you can actually build it.
And both of those happen inside the same flow. No break in the conversation. It used to take all that research and friction. Now it happens while you're literally talking.

06:00 — The real change

So now it's not: "Should I spend time on this?"
It's: "Let me just follow this for a minute and see what happens."
Five to twenty minutes. Just see what could come of it.

07:00 — The core realization

And I think what I was actually missing this whole time…
wasn't better ideas.
It was a place to let my brain and my ideas just kind of flow.

08:00 — Conversation as the space

Because when you actually let the thought run — especially out loud — it connects to other things.
That's what this channel is. An out-loud thought process.
You start with a product… it turns into a behavior… then why people buy things… then investing… then systems…
And suddenly you're somewhere completely different from where you started.

09:30 — AI's role

And I think this is where AI changes something for me.
Not because it always gives me answers — it does sometimes — but that's not what I'm always looking for.
It's because it sits right there in the middle of the flow.
I can start talking to it, typing to it, and it's checking stuff for me in real time. Then it expands on what we just found. Then we dismiss something. Then — and this is the part that still gets me — sometimes it's already building it in the background.
Like I'll be in Claude Code with bypass permissions on, going down a rabbit hole, just talking through an idea… and it's already like: here's your prototype.
So there's no break from having the thought, to exploring it, to watching something actually get built. That's kind of crazy when you think about it. You basically have a workforce that doesn't clock out.

11:00 — Forking paths

So every idea becomes this little fork:
Kill it quickly. Follow it a bit. Build a small version. Or just let it drift.
And none of that feels heavy anymore.
I don't have that extra pressure of — is there something here, or am I wasting my time? The AI does most of that work. I can jump from idea to idea. Maybe they connect, maybe they don't. It helps me find the connections.

12:30 — The tradeoff

But that also means more ideas are getting through.
Not because they're better. A lot of them are garbage.
But the garbage ideas — they get out of your head. They open something up. Like a little connection in your brain starts blinking, and suddenly it's linking to something else. You let it out instead of sitting on it, and now there's space.

13:30 — Personal realization

And I don't think I want to build most of them.
I don't even want to validate most of them.
I just want them out of my head. I want to throw them out there, see what connects, and let my brain expand into something more creative.

14:00 — The part AI missed

Here's the thing the original script didn't really capture…
I like to come up with crazy ideas. Like — what if this thing is connected to that thing, and there's this underlying pattern, and that person over there is connected to this digital thing down here…
Most people look at me like something's wrong with me. That's fine.
But I never had a big group of friends that would sit with me and let me explore. My wife puts up with me — but I can tell sometimes she's not fully listening. Co-workers, most of my friends are already further ahead with this stuff and I feel like an amateur.
So I'm connecting dots they've already dismissed. But I don't want to stop trying. Even if I'm wrong, going through the process of finding those patterns — and then dismissing them myself — is better than being told not to look.
I'm reading Silo right now and there's this thing where a character just keeps asking why. Why are we here, who did this, what's the plan? And the answer is basically: we don't need to know, just survive. But I want to know. I want to find the thing that makes it all click.
That's where AI actually helps me. Not just to validate ideas — but to go back, find patterns, and say: hey, is there a connection here? Even if the answer is no, I needed to ask.
And then sometimes it's something small — my kid needed a mailbox, and ten minutes later I've got a full business plan, growth charts, a lease draft, Alibaba sourced. Full mailbox rental operation. I've got a smash and splash fish tacos and Smashburger concept with a logo, full menu, three different rollout options — backyard Instagram pop-up, food truck, or storefront.
That's where AI allows me to go — the full spectrum — without anyone in the room looking at me like I've lost it.

15:00 — Final line

I think I just needed somewhere for them to go.
Somewhere I can say it out loud, follow it for a bit, see what it connects to — and then let it go if it doesn't stick.
Not every idea needs to become something.
Some of them just need a place to land… and a little space to run.
Alright. Leave a comment. Are you doing this? Are you just picking up your phone and rambling to it? Opening ChatGPT and just… talking? That's where we're at now. Used to be "just Google it." Now it's just… ask.
Have a good one.

Why I Pay a Little Extra for Flexibility

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.
I've been noticing something lately.
I keep paying a little more than I have to.
Not a lot.
Just enough that if you looked at my statements…
you'd probably say I could've saved money.
But I keep doing it anyway.
And I think I finally understand why.

01:00 — The Trip

I booked a Christmas trip almost a year early.
Flights, Airbnb, rental car… everything.
But the important part isn't that I booked early.
It's how I booked.
Everything is flexible.
The Airbnb — free cancellation. Always. Unless it's extremely last minute and I know for a fact I'm going.
The rental car — book it, hold the space. You don't even have to show up.
The flights — I paid more so I could get a full refund. Not just a credit. A refund.
That way I'm sort of locked in, but I gave myself an out.
And this actually came up with one of my kids.
They left recently on a cross-America road trip — just the two of them.
And they booked all their hotels along the way through Expedia.
Instead of paying the extra $20 per hotel to be able to cancel…
they saved maybe $200 total across five hotels.
To me, that just puts pressure on yourself.
What if the car breaks down? What if you want to stay somewhere longer? What if you're making great time and want to push through?
Now you can't.
You saved $200 and lost all your flexibility.
I didn't pick the cheapest options on my trip.
I picked the ones that let me change my mind.

02:30 — The Small Premium

And that's the pattern.
I'm paying a small premium…
not for luxury…
but for options.
The Airbnb is usually a bit nicer anyway.
The flight isn't first class…
but I can pick my seats, bring luggage, not get squeezed into whatever's left.
It's not the cheapest tier.
But it's also not over the top.
It just gives me room.

04:00 — Not Insurance

At first I thought of this like insurance.
But it's not really the same thing.
Insurance is something you add on at the end…
because you're worried something might go wrong.
This is different.
This is built into the decision from the start.
I'm not thinking: "What if something bad happens?"
I'm thinking: "I don't know what's going to happen."
I don't know if we'll change our minds.
I don't know if we'll need more space or less.
And I don't want to trap myself.
Because when you make decisions from a calm place — not from desperation, not from a time crunch — that's when you make good ones.

05:30 — What Happens If You Don't

Because if I wait…
or if I go with the cheapest option…
what I'm really doing is removing flexibility.
Later on, I have fewer choices.
Prices are higher.
Options are worse.
And I'm forced to decide under pressure.
That's usually where bad decisions happen.

06:45 — The Same Thing With AI

This shows up in smaller ways too.
Even with something like ChatGPT.
I pay for the premium version. Not the top tier — but Pro.
Not because I need the best model every time…
but because I don't want to hit limits.
Same with Claude. I hit the limit on Claude constantly. And I pay for that too.
I don't want to be in the middle of something — thinking through an idea, building something — and suddenly get stopped.
That happened to me recently. Had to wait hours before it reset.
And when you break that flow…
yes, you can move to a different tool, move to notes…
but if you were in a great back-and-forth, building on memory, getting good content…
you don't want to lose that groove.
So I pay for it.
Just to remove that friction.

08:15 — The Car Example

Same thing with cars.
You bring it in, maybe it's $900 to fix.
But you don't feel like spending $900.
So you just do the $200 thing you came in for.
But the mechanic's already got it on the lift. He can see everything. The brake's worn, there's rust, something's seized.
He's telling you: fix it all now while I have it, it'll save you money.
And you say: just do what I came in for.
So you save $500 that day.
And then six months later everything's seized up worse, there's a leak in the exhaust, and now you're looking at $3,000.
And now you don't have a choice.
It's either pay it or find a new car.
And you're shopping from desperation. If someone senses that, they'll take advantage of it.
I just went through this with my Jeep.
The price has gone up quite a bit — more than I expected.
But I looked at it compared to what my daughter's boyfriend is looking at: old used cars, high kilometers, no history, and they're asking almost as much as I'm paying to fix mine.
I know my Jeep inside and out.
I have a mechanic I trust.
It makes more sense to just fix it right.
Pay a little more now. Don't pay a lot more later.

09:45 — Paying for the Relationship

There's another version of this that took me longer to understand.
Paying for the relationship.
My accountant. I've had her for years.
I could do my own taxes. I could find someone cheaper.
But I don't.
And what I get back isn't just the return being filed.
It's access.
I can email her. I can ask if a receipt qualifies. I can forward something from the government and ask if it's something to worry about.
She knows my history — the audits, the rental stuff, the complicated years.
I'm not starting from zero every time.
Same with my lawyer. My house builder. My mechanic.
I don't try to grind them down to the cheapest dollar.
I pay their fees. I keep them happy. And because of that, they go the extra mile.
My mechanic gets me in right away when something comes up.
My lawyer helped out when my mom needed to redo her will — sent emails, didn't make it a big deal.
My builder will come over and give me a quick price on something without making me feel like I'm wasting his time.
There have been times I've asked: can you come down a little on this?
And because of the history, they're willing to do it.
They know I'm loyal. I'm going to be back.

11:00 — The Bank

Same thing with the bank.
I've been self-employed for a long time. Money coming in from US clients. I worked with a bank in Malaysia for a while. Wire transfers from all over the place.
And back then, wrong numbers, wrong digits, wrong currency — it happened.
Most banks make you come in. Sign things physically. Go through hoops.
But because I'd been consistently with my bank, built the relationship, stayed involved…
I could do things over email.
Just recently, someone wired money to me but used the wrong account and the wrong currency.
The bank caught it. The manager called me. Told me what happened. Made sure it got put in the right place.
I didn't have to do anything.
That's what the relationship gets you.
Not a better interest rate. Not a lower fee.
When something breaks, it gets handled.

12:15 — What This Really Is

And I think that's the part I didn't see before.
You're not just paying for the thing.
You're paying for how things get handled…
when they don't go perfectly.
When something changes.
When something breaks.
The cheap option doesn't come with that.

13:15 — Closing

So yeah…
I pay a little more sometimes.
Flights. Car repairs. Tools. People I work with.
And it's not about getting something better on paper.
It's about:
not getting stuck… not losing momentum… not having to solve everything from scratch under pressure…
and not being forced into decisions at the worst possible time.
It's the same pattern…
just showing up in different places.
And that small premium…
ends up buying something a lot bigger than it looks.

Why This Channel Isn't About AI

0:00 — Opening — Reset

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.
I think I needed to make this video just to reset things a bit.
Not because anything is going wrong…
but because I can feel how this channel might start to look from the outside.
Like it's turning into a tech channel.
Or an AI channel.
And that's not what I set out to do.

1:30 — What the channel actually is

This channel was always meant to be an extension of a book I want to write.
Something around life, money, family, decisions, habits.
Things I notice over time.
Just thinking out loud, but with some structure.
Not teaching. Not pretending I have it figured out.
Just documenting the process while I'm still in it.
And honestly — this channel is also an experiment.
To see if I can stick with it. Slow builds — if I keep at it, keep consistent, something should come out of it. Maybe not. But that's all I can do.
I want to see. And if nothing comes of it, that doesn't bother me.
It's just putting myself out there and seeing where things go.

3:30 — Why it started to look like AI

But lately, a lot of what I've been talking about involves AI.
And I think that can make it feel like: "Okay, this is just another AI channel."
But that's not really what's happening.
It just kind of looks like that from the outside.

5:30 — The realization — it's everywhere

The reason AI keeps showing up is because it's starting to show up in everything.
Not as a feature. As part of life.
We've seen this before.
The internet used to feel optional. Like it was for tech people only. Nice to have. Not every company needed it.
Now it's a requirement.
Smartphones felt the same way. We were happy with a cordless phone. Then flip phones — smaller the better. Now we can't live without one.
Online shopping, digital payments — same pattern.
Things seem new at first. They seem optional. Like you can opt in or opt out.
And then all of a sudden… it's just normal. It becomes expected. And then it becomes invisible — meaning it's just part of life. Like putting on clothes in the morning.

7:30 — Why this one feels faster

The difference this time is how fast it's happening.
Even from a developer perspective — it didn't feel gradual.
It felt like everything just showed up at once. The models, the tools, the integrations.
And everything around it was already built. I go into all these different tools all the time, I'm integrating with different services — and it was all just… there. Seamlessly. Like it had always been there.
It made me wonder — was this all just sitting around waiting? Like turning on a hose to see where it goes?
But I think it's simpler than that.
The infrastructure was already there. So when AI got good enough, these companies — GitHub, the hosting services, the issue trackers — they knew they had to put it in. There was no getting around it. And because the foundation was already built, they just plugged it in.
It didn't have to build a whole new world. It just fit into the one that already existed.
Like a skeleton key that unlocks every door.
And that's why it happened so fast.

9:30 — Where it's already invisible

Here's the thing — AI is being used in a lot of places we don't even know about.
It's not making decisions exactly… but it finds patterns fast.
It's under the surface, helping direct the conversation. Moving things through the queue. Getting you to where you need to be, quicker. Deciphering the probability of what comes next.
Most people aren't even aware it's there.
That's what invisible means.

10:30 — What this channel is doing

So what this channel is actually doing isn't focusing on AI.
It's noticing what's changing.
And right now, AI is one of the biggest changes happening.
So it shows up — not because I'm chasing it, but because it's part of how I work, how I think, and how things are evolving.

11:30 — The real theme

The real theme of this channel is trying to stay grounded while things change.
Not rejecting it. Not blindly following it.
Just paying attention.
Trying to figure out what to keep, what to adapt to, and what to question.
The why, the where, the when, the how — and should I?
When I have those questions, that's why I want to make these videos.

13:00 — Bringing it back to life

Because at the end of the day, this isn't about tech. It's about life.
Tech just happens to be part of life now. The way we work with money. The way we communicate. Transportation. Anything you do — technology is in the middle of it.
You're watching this video. That's tech. Tech recorded it, tech helped me write it, tech is putting it out there.
AI is just the latest layer on top of that. And it's becoming frictionless — which is the word I love for this. When there's no friction, things just happen. They flow. They become part of everything without you noticing.
That's what AI is doing right now.

14:30 — Closing — real talk

So if this channel ever looks like a tech channel… it's not.
It's a reflection of what's happening. My ramblings. My ideas. Random thoughts that flow through, and some advice I want to put out there and leave somewhere.
And yes — AI helps me write the scripts. But it's my voice. It's me. I go back and forth because I want that to be real.
Same with comments. I don't have many, but when I get them, I read every one. And I try to reply in a way that doesn't sound cookie-cutter.
This whole thing is an experiment. I want to see if I can get a voice. Get some traction. Actually have real conversations back and forth.
So I'm just trying to stay present. Stay aware of what's going on around us and how our lives are changing.
And right now — this is a big part of what's changing.
Thanks for watching.

AI Made It Too Easy to Start (Now I Can't Finish Anything)

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.
Lately I've been building a lot. Probably more than I ever have in my life.
Like — sitting down and starting a new project? I'm doing it all the time.
And that's actually new for me. I went through a phase where I was burnt out, or I couldn't really come up with ideas. I was genuinely worried for a while that my mind was kind of out of gas — out of creative fuel.
But I'm back. My mind's constantly trying to put pieces together, come up with new ideas.
It's not always in a clean way…
But things are moving.
And that's actually the problem.
Because nothing's really getting finished.
Nothing feels done.
And I think AI is a big part of why.

01:15 — What It Looks Like From the Outside

It's strange. Because if you looked from the outside, it would probably look like a lot is happening.
I have a trading app live — people can use it. I have this YouTube channel. I've been posting consistently, more than I planned. There's a book I've wanted to write for years that's probably 70% done.
So things are happening.
But internally? It feels scattered.
Like everything is in motion… but nothing is landing.

02:45 — The List (Let Me Actually Walk Through It)

So I started listing everything out.
There's the kid's trading app — that one's actually live. It's out there. They want to make some changes, but technically that one's done.
There's Steady — that one's personal. It's like a coaching app, SMS-based, interacts with AI. But it's very personal to the people who'd use it, so I don't want to put it out until I fully trust it. Privacy, auth — all of it has to be right. So that one's intentionally slow, and I'm okay with that.
There's a dividend tracking app — that one was going well, then AI took it down a different road. Feels like it's going nowhere right now.
There's GoChores — started as an app for my kid, they lost interest, but I converted it into kind of a template. A test bed I run everything through to make sure my agents and infrastructure are set up properly.
There's my kid's website — AI built the whole thing, we got the URL, connected to Railway. She's got a marketing company she's spinning up. That one's basically done, just waiting on her to approve the changes.
And then there's the book.
And this channel.
And then… I started getting deep into OpenClaw.
That's where things started to feel different.

04:30 — The OpenClaw Rabbit Hole

I set up a server at home. Got OpenClaw running — agents, schedules, automation, all of it.
And it's genuinely cool.
It can post to X, read responses, generate ideas, build things. It's connected to Linear so it tracks issues, bugs, testing. It deploys code. It does all kinds of things.
I have a Telegram channel where it gives me updates every morning.
I even set it up for this channel — I have an X account where it does nightly posts, responds, follows, all of that.
And I really started leaning into it. Like — what if I just let this run?
Let it come up with ideas. Let it build. Let it iterate.
And it does.
It just… never stops.

06:00 — The Treadmill Feeling

At first it feels like progress. Because something is always happening.
You check in — it made changes, it tried something, it improved something.
But after a while… it starts to feel like a treadmill.
It's moving. But not arriving anywhere.
Every morning I get my Telegram messages. I see what happened last night. But I'm not touching it. I don't actually know what's going on.
There's no definition of done in that system.
So it just keeps going.
And that's where that quicksand feeling comes from.

07:30 — The Bigger Realization

And I think it's bleeding into everything else.
Because AI makes it so easy to start something. To explore ideas. To keep iterating.
There's almost no cost to continuing.
So you don't have to decide anything. You don't have to say — this is enough.
Before, effort forced you to choose. You had to validate something before building it, because building cost time. Now? I don't even have to validate. I can just spin it up, see what it looks like, compare it to what exists.
I'm not doing the hard lifting anymore.
But the fast-building cuts both ways. Because now I can quickly throw something together — and then never finish it.

09:00 — Finishing Feels Different Now

And finishing isn't just finishing anymore.
It's saying: This is good enough for someone else to see.
This might break.
My name is attached to this.
That back-developer part of me, that engineer brain — it knows you can't just throw things out there. Especially if you're collecting money, collecting people's information. There have to be guardrails.
Which is actually part of why the OpenClaw infrastructure thing consumed me — I was trying to build those guardrails automatically into the system.
And I got so caught up in that… that there's no ever-done. There's just a never-done feeling.

10:30 — Everything Leads to Something Else

Here's a good example of how this works.
I built a little widget for my kid's website — so she could leave notes about what she wanted changed, or use AI to make quick edits herself. I could log in, see all the notes, which page, what she wanted, whether the AI edit worked or failed.
It was really cool.
And as soon as it worked, my brain immediately went: wait — maybe there's something here. Maybe this is a WordPress plugin. Maybe it's a website widget people would actually pay for.
That's the cycle.
You start touching something, AI makes it easy to jump onto something else. Another hole. Another fork in the road. And you go, well, maybe this is a viable product.
I'm not trying to build the next Facebook. I just want small apps that run. Things I want to use. Things other people might want and would pay a few dollars a month for. Just enough to keep the lights on — cover the hosting, the tokens.
But every idea spawns three more.

12:00 — What I'm Actually Starting to See

I don't think the problem is that I have too many things.
The problem is I'm not deciding what gets finished.
Everything just stays in progress. And AI makes that very easy to do.
You can always tweak one more thing. Add one more feature. Improve one more flow.
There's no natural stopping point anymore.
The projects that did finish? They had someone else's expectation attached to them. My kid's trading app — there was a real reason it needed to ship, a real timeline. The Glove Box GPS app — I knew what it needed to do. Done is clearer when there's someone on the other end.

13:30 — Where I'm At

So I think what I need to do is simpler than I've been making it.
Not build more.
Not organize more.
Just pick one thing… and actually finish it. Even if it's rough. Even if it's alpha. Let it exist.
Glove Box GPS is basically there. It's on my phone, my wife's, going on my kid's. We're testing it. And I'm going to let that be good enough for now.
That's the shift I'm trying to make. From done to done enough.

14:30 — Closing

Right now everything is moving. But nothing is landing.
And I think the real shift isn't about building anymore.
It's about being willing to look at something and say: this is done enough. And letting it go.
If you're out there building with AI — and you don't even have to be a developer, because AI makes it so easy for anyone — if you're creative and you're using AI to start things… books, channels, apps, agencies, whatever it is…
Are you finding that starting is easy, but there's never an ending?
Let me know. I'd genuinely like to know.
Thanks for watching.

When AI Does the Work… Who Is the Creator?

Intro

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.
A lot of my videos have been focused on AI lately, which I didn't really want to happen. But it's becoming such a big part of my life — from work to personal projects to just everyday life — that I'm really trying to get my head around it.
And that's where this video comes from.
There's something I've been thinking about that I don't think we've all really figured out yet.
When AI is involved in creating something… who is the creator?

The Everyday Example

A few years ago the answer felt obvious.
If you saw an image, a video, even a piece of writing or code online, you could usually tell if it was generated. It didn't feel authentic. It wasn't made by a person.
But now those lines don't exist anymore.
There are still people who think they can figure it out. I try to tell them — even if you think you can spot it now, those days are almost gone. It's getting to the point where there won't be any way to tell the difference.
I see it all the time with my father-in-law. Whenever we're over there, he'll pull out his phone and say "Hey, look at this picture. Do you think that's real or is that AI?" And everyone passes it around, zooming in, looking at the shadows, looking for anything off. It's almost become a competition — who can figure it out first.
A photo isn't just a photo anymore.
Every image comes with a little bit of doubt in the back of your mind.
I even heard a YouTuber talk about this — maybe we'll eventually need some kind of stamp of approval. A percentage. "This is 100% me" or "This was made with AI." But who's going to put those guardrails in?

Where It Gets Interesting

But the thing that's really interesting to me is that the same question is starting to apply to the things we create ourselves — the inventors, the writers, the developers.
For me, it's code.
I'll design the system. I'll have the idea. I know what the program should do. I decide the architecture, the tools, the inputs and outputs. I decide all of it.
But AI is the one who actually writes the code.
It helps me make a plan. It generates the code. And then I'm the one who approves it.
So who wrote the software? AI did write it — but it took my designs and translated them into something I could use. I had the idea. It built it.

Writing Example

The same thing's happening with writing.
I've always wanted to write a book, and AI is finally making it possible for me to actually do it. I've been collecting notes for years — ideas, tidbits, stories.
Everything in it is mine. The stories are mine. The mistakes are mine. The lessons and advice are all mine.
But they start from very rough notes. And the words surrounding those details are starting to become not entirely mine. AI is tightening the structure, fixing the grammar, piecing things together differently to make it more organized.
It's shaping things based on my input.
And I never put anything out without going through it multiple times. I read it all. I still find mistakes. I'm still adjusting. I'm even getting to the point where I'm writing parts myself because AI gets confused and I need to get the stories back in line with the real timeline.
So is it co-authored? Or is it still me?

Even These Videos

These videos are a little different — because I'm the one who has to speak. These aren't faceless videos. There's no AI-generated voice. This is me, as uncomfortable as I am with that.
But they still start as just ideas.
Maybe I'm working out, driving, up late at night — I'll open my phone, start a new chat in a project I have set up, and just start talking. I don't even wait for it to respond. I just get everything out and keep going.
At the end of it I'll ask: "Do you think there's something here?" And honestly, a few times it told me no — not enough, or I'd already covered it. But most of the time I get enough out where it'll say this could be a short one or you could make a full video out of it.
Then I'll ask for the title, description, first comment, thumbnail idea, and a full script. If it's a longer video I'll say aim for 15 minutes, shorter ones keep it around five to eight.
Then I save it to my notes and go through it section by section. I adjust, rewrite, cut things that don't sound like me, add new ideas. And then when I record, I still go off script half the time.
So what is that?

The Roles

I think in that case… AI is my editor. Or my muse. I'm not totally sure.
But I think what it comes down to is this:
I'm the editor. The reviewer. The architect. The director.
And AI is the writer, the coder, the worker — the agent that produces the pieces.
So who is the creator?
I think I'm going to answer my own question here — in the end, it's really an assistant. It's not the creator of the content. It's the facilitator.

Reflection

I don't think we've really figured this out as a society yet.
But it does make me think that the line between human and AI creation isn't really a line anymore.
It's more like a process — where ideas, tools, and decisions all mix together. And the final result is partly human and partly machine.
It's pretty crazy to think about. A very high percentage of everything we see today — and soon, everything we touch — is a combination of human and machine.
And the funny part? It's not even a physical machine. In the end it's just code. Ones and zeros. And that's our partner in creation.
It can't think for itself, but we can use it to help us think deeper and stronger. It helps us make things better — as long as we want those things to be helpful, entertaining, and not harmful.

Outro

Anyway, you can tell I went off on this one a little bit.
Curious what you think — when AI helps create something, who do you think the real creator is?
See you next time.

What If Energy Is the Real Currency?

00:00 — Opening

Hey, and welcome to Slow Builds.

This one is going to be a real pure ramble — some wild theories that go on in my head sometimes. So bear with me. This one's going to be a little odd. I'm trying to connect some thoughts that probably aren't really there, but I like playing those games to see what connects and where things turn up in the end.

This one's definitely not advice, it's not a prediction, and it's honestly probably not going to make a lot of sense. But I like talking through these things just to see what could come of it — and if there's any possibility of some truth behind it or a link to something realistic.

00:58 — Everything Comes Back to Energy

This one is about something I've been noticing.

The deeper I've been looking into the world — economics, technology, AI — everything in my mind comes back to the exact same thing.

It all breaks down to energy.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a second.

You're always told the one thing you can never get back is time. So we always looked at time as the most valuable thing.

But now — yes, obviously time is important. You only live a certain amount of time. But energy seems to be the underlying theme.

02:14 — The Digital World Still Runs on Electricity

Everything I look at, if you break it down far enough, almost everything relies on energy.

Driving a car. Eating. A house. Building a factory. Growing food.

It all comes back to energy being converted to something.

And even the digital world — which is abstract, kind of weightless — it's still all about ones and zeros. Which in the end is power on, power off. Data centers, servers, cooling systems, GPUs, electricity flowing through massive buildings full of machines.

Even AI, which feels almost magic in a way, is really just energy being used.

Electricity goes in and thinking comes out. That's basically what AI is.

03:21 — Tokens Are Just the Meter

I've been watching some videos and you see it in the corner — the limits, the tokens.

When you use a model, everything's measured in tokens. You ask a question, it has to digest your question. Then it has to find and research the answer, and generate the answer. All tokens.

And tokens cost money.

And what you're paying for in the end is compute power — which is electricity, which is energy.

The hardware doesn't produce the answer. Tokens are basically just the meter. Like the meter on your house for heat and light. It's a way of measuring how much thinking is required.

How complicated? How deep do you want it to go? Do you want it to plan, research, execute? Or just give you a quick answer?

It's just electricity. The tokens are just fuel.

04:45 — Tokens as Units of Digital Work

So if tokens aren't quite money, they're something closer to real energy.

Units of digital work. I like that phrase for it.

You burn tokens to create something. You burn them to create code, to research, to run automation, to play through random ideas. Agents running tasks in the background.

Tokens are fuel for intelligence.

AI pieced a lot of this together for me. I sit down with ChatGPT, turn on the transcribe, start spilling ideas. This is one idea I had and it turns into a script. That's me burning tokens to create the script, then sitting in front of a camera to put it on YouTube — which in the end is all energy.

Those tokens are becoming more valuable because they're unlocking more. It's like opening up a new encyclopedia. Giving you access to vast amounts of intelligence and knowledge and computing power.

06:47 — What Determines the Value of Tokens?

This is where my mind goes somewhere even stranger.

If tokens are like energy, then what determines their value?

Right now we just price them in dollars. But that feels like a layer on top of something much deeper. Under all of it the real cost is just energy. Electricity, computing, hardware.

Which brings me to Bitcoin.

I'm not here to convince anyone about Bitcoin. I'm not an economist, I'm not a strategic trader. But one idea about it has always stuck with me.

Bitcoin is created through energy. Mining requires energy. Computers perform massive amounts of work. So in a weird way, Bitcoin represents energy that was spent. And unlike money that can be printed endlessly, Bitcoin has a fixed supply.

That's why a lot of people call it digital gold — or even stored energy.

08:26 — The Chain in My Head

So this is where the thought experiment starts for me.

What if the future economy looks something like this?

Energy powers everything. Energy powers computing. Computing powers AI. AI produces intelligence and work. Tokens measure that compute. And Bitcoin — or something like it — becomes the base layer that stores value created from that energy.

The chain in my head looks like this:

Energy becomes compute. Compute becomes intelligence. Intelligence becomes economic value. And somewhere underneath all of it, energy is still the thing that makes it possible.

09:24 — AI Isn't Just Software — It's Infrastructure

This also makes me think differently about AI itself.

People talk about AI like it's just software. But it's not really just software. It's a massive infrastructure. Huge data centers, thousands of CPUs, gigawatts of electricity.

The AI boom isn't just a software boom. It's an energy boom.

And whoever controls the most efficient energy and compute might end up controlling the most intelligence.

Knowledge used to be something only humans produced. If you give AI a task, it goes through the analytical process to decipher it, find the patterns, unlock things we can't even see — not because it's smarter, but because it's more powerful. Which means it uses more energy.

10:51 — Where It Gets Weird

This is the part where people laugh at me.

When you start following ideas like this far enough, things get weird pretty quick. You start wondering about simulations. Digital worlds. Entire systems running on energy and computation.

And suddenly, movies like The Matrix don't feel as ridiculous as they once did.

I'm not saying we're living in a simulation. But it's interesting how quickly technology can turn science fiction into something that feels plausible.

Ten years ago, AI writing code would have sounded crazy. Now people do it every day. We're more or less reviewing code at this point — and sometimes we're letting AI review it for us.

Some of those old movies and books feel really close to now. That's where I started thinking: did someone already know this was happening? Maybe it's not time travel. Maybe it already existed. Maybe it's just a simulation.

No, I don't believe that. But it's fun to let your mind go to those places.

12:45 — Why I Keep Thinking About This

The reason I keep exploring ideas like this isn't because I think I've figured anything out. It's the opposite.

It reminds me how big and complicated the systems really are.

Economics, technology, energy, AI — it's all sort of become one thing. Different layers of the same reality.

Most of us are just participating in these systems without really understanding what we're doing. And sometimes you have to ask these odd questions to help see things from a different angle.

When your mind is allowed to wander, it brings you back to reality.

Maybe energy really is the base layer of everything. Maybe tokens become the fuel of digital intelligence. Maybe Bitcoin ends up acting like some kind of energy-backed store of value for all the energy that's spent.

Or maybe none of this happens at all. Maybe it's just one of those late night thought experiments that goes nowhere.

I do that a lot. Which is fun. I'm glad I have a place now to just spill out what I'm thinking.

14:48 — The Sun Thought

This one kind of came about because I had a thought about the sun.

If we use just solar energy alone, the whole earth would only use one trillionth of all the sun's energy. That's free energy. Free to grab. Free to use.

Whoever harnesses that has a huge advantage.

There's only one person I know really focused on that — from a space angle. Putting data centers in space, solar panels, satellites.

Anyway, that's where my mind goes and why I started thinking about this.

Thanks for watching. Love to know your thoughts.

The Message Didn't Change. The Person Did.

00:00 — When the message stays the same but the person changes

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

This is going to be a bit of a ramble. It's just something I've been thinking about, and I'm still kind of on the edge of it. I'm not really sure which way I land.

What I've been thinking about is something a little uncomfortable.

What do you do when a quote, a book, or a piece of music really meant something to you — when it resonated with you and you liked it — and then the person behind it becomes someone you don't really want to be connected to anymore?

They do something that changes how you see them.

The quote still stays the same.

The lesson still makes sense.

The music still sounds the same.

But somehow it doesn't feel the same.

Every time you hear it, there's that little voice in the back of your mind.

And I think most people have run into this at some point.

01:18 — The Bill Cosby quote in my email signature

For me, one of the places this started was with a quote.

I used to always put quotes at the end of my emails. It's something we started doing years ago, and I really liked it.

One of my favorites happened to be a Bill Cosby quote.

At the time — and honestly even now — I liked it because the message felt true. It was simple:

"In order to succeed, your desire for success must be greater than your fear of failure."

It's a very good quote. I still think the idea behind it makes perfect sense. A lot of progress in life really does come down to pushing through fear.

But once everything came out about Bill Cosby, someone messaged me after I sent an invoice and said, "Yeah, payment sent — you might want to remove the quote."

And I understood why.

Because at that point, the issue wasn't whether the sentence was true.

It was the name attached to it.

I could have changed it to anonymous, but people still knew where it came from. It was a famous quote.

That's what made me start thinking about this whole thing differently.

Because it's interesting how much the name attached to a quote changes how people hear it.

03:04 — When words and the person behind them split apart

There's that old idea people say sometimes: do what I say, not what I do.

That feels related here.

Sometimes the words themselves are meaningful, but the person attached to them degrades them and completely changes the way you look at them.

Even someone as evil as Hitler has quotes that, if you removed the name, might sound like something people would repeat.

But because they came from him, the meaning changes completely.

It's not just changed — it becomes almost taboo.

And in my mind, you have to look at intent too. Even if the words sound good on their own, the intent behind them may not have been good.

It just shows how separate the words and the person can sometimes be.

A sentence can be true.

A lesson can be useful.

And the person behind it can still be horrible.

That's where it gets awkward.

A lot of the time, we don't just respond to the idea.

We respond to the association.

05:00 — Music feels even more personal

I think music might be where this gets even more personal.

Because with music, it usually isn't just an idea. It's memory.

A song brings you back to a certain time. It lets you close your eyes and remember parts of your life — where you were, what you were doing, how it hit you.

An artist makes something that genuinely moves people.

Songs that got played in cars, bedrooms, parties, first kisses, weddings.

And then later, that artist says or does something that makes you stop and question whether you should even still be listening to it anymore.

The music hasn't changed.

The tracks are the same.

The lyrics are the same.

The feeling you had when you first heard it doesn't go away.

But the person behind the content changes the way it lands now.

It's always in the back of your mind.

06:10 — Kanye West and not knowing where the line is

For me, this one hits home with Kanye West.

I've always been a massive Kanye fan, and not just the popular stuff. I listen to a lot of the deeper cuts too.

I've appreciated him as a genius creator and lyricist.

And for a long time, people were willing to give him leeway — to treat him like an eccentric, someone pushing boundaries, thinking deeply, trying different things.

To me, he pushed music, and the genre he works in, to different levels.

But after everything he's gone through, everything he's done, and how far off the rails he's gone, I've caught myself wondering what you even do with that.

Do you stop listening completely?

Do you only listen to the older stuff from before he started going a certain way?

Do you separate the art from the person?

Do you decide there's a line somewhere, and once it's crossed, you're done?

I honestly don't know.

And I don't think most people really know either.

I think they just draw the line quietly in their own way and figure it out for themselves.

Because people are still listening.

The songs are still on the radio.

They're still being streamed and downloaded.

So everyone is making their own choice.

08:05 — Books bring a different version of the same problem

Books have another strange version of this, and in some ways it's even harder.

It feels harder when you have kids too, because some books have lessons you want to pass along.

But then things happen.

And sometimes the name on the cover isn't even the full source of the lesson.

A book like Rich Dad Poor Dad changed a lot for me.

It changed how I looked at money.

It taught me about leverage, assets, cash flow, and how to think differently.

Those ideas helped me move forward in life, and for me, they worked.

You start understanding how to use money differently. You sell one house to buy two. You leverage debt and assets. You begin to see how money can be used as a tool.

Those were lessons I wanted to pass on.

But then years later, you find out more about Robert Kiyosaki. You hear about bankruptcy and all the criticism around him.

So then you pause.

Are the lessons suddenly not valuable anymore because he himself went bankrupt?

Maybe he overleveraged. Maybe he didn't follow the lessons he taught.

So you stop and think: he taught this, and I still think it's useful, but is it real?

10:01 — When the lesson still helped you

For me, I made a personal decision there.

His lessons taught me well.

I played the Rat Race game. I learned from the framework. I got value from it.

So to me, just because he later failed or went bankrupt, it didn't erase what I had already learned from the book.

That was my decision.

But from the outside, it still makes you pause.

Not every idea in a book becomes useless just because the person tied to it becomes harder to trust.

But it probably does stop some people from ever picking the book up for the first time.

So sometimes it takes someone who got the lesson before the person's image changed — someone who already saw the value in it — to decide whether they still want to pass it on.

And I chose to.

10:55 — Ghostwritten books make the question even stranger

Then there's another version of this.

Back in the day, I was a big Trump fan. I don't really like saying that out loud now, but way back when I read every book that came out.

I learned things from those books about business, negotiation, and thinking bigger.

But later, you look back and realize a lot of that writing was done by ghostwriters. It wasn't even really him writing the lessons.

And that makes this whole thing even stronger.

Because if the person on the cover didn't really write the lesson, then who does the lesson belong to?

The public figure?

The brand?

The face on the cover?

Or the actual writer?

To me, I think the lesson belongs to the writer.

Not the brand, not the image, not the fake story being sold.

So in that case, I think the ghostwriter deserves the credit.

But then you still run into the problem that people see the cover, see the name, and judge the lesson through that person anyway.

12:23 — Ideas feel clean, but people are messy

I think this is why the whole topic bothers me.

We like to think ideas are clean.

True or false.

Useful or useless.

Good or bad.

But in real life, they usually come wrapped in people.

And people are messy.

The idea is rarely just the idea.

It's the person delivering it, or the person associated with it.

Some people say wise things but live badly.

Some people build powerful brands around ideas they didn't fully create.

Some people make beautiful, life-changing art and then make a mess of themselves.

They go off the rails.

They say things, do things, and end up tainting the work they made.

And then the rest of us have to decide what to do with that work.

Do we keep the lesson?

Do we throw it out?

Do we keep the art but let go of the artist?

Do we keep the book but stop believing the image around it?

13:50 — There probably isn't one clean rule

I don't think there's one clean rule for this.

I think sometimes the lesson really is bigger than the person.

And other times the person damages the work so much that it changes how it feels forever.

Maybe that line is different for everyone.

Maybe that's why this topic is so uncomfortable.

Because it forces you to ask where the value actually lives.

Does it live in the words?

Does it live in the work?

Does it live in the person?

Or does it live in what it meant to you when you first found it?

Maybe that's the strangest part.

Sometimes the hardest thing isn't deciding whether the quote is true, or whether the song is good, or whether the book helped you.

It's deciding what to do when the messenger falls apart but the message still stays with you.

That's the part I keep coming back to.

Not because I have the answer.

Just because I think a lot of us quietly wrestle with it.

15:15 — The extra thought at the end

One thing I kept thinking about after recording is how personal people's lines really are.

Even at the gym, if I put on Kanye in my headphones, I feel a little awkward about it.

I'm almost glad it's in headphones. I don't know if I want that out there.

There are other artists I've fully stepped away from.

Kid Rock is one of them. I've removed him from my stuff completely.

There are some lines I do draw.

But there are also some things that meant so much to me that I'm almost willing to separate the value I got from the message from what the person later became.

Because when that thing was written, or said, or recorded, it had value to me.

And I don't think that value automatically disappears.

It just becomes something you work through quietly on your own.

You make your own decisions.

You can still take motivation from something without announcing it to the world.

Your life is personal.

Your preferences are your own.

And that's part of what makes it complicated, but also part of what makes it personal.

So thanks for watching.