Good Shopwork begins with solid Headwork.
One of the ideas that has been sneaking up on me for years is what I’ve taken to calling domain walking.
Sounds fancy, but it’s really not.
It’s just the learned ability to stand in more than one mental place when looking at the same problem. Academics hate it – because they want High Tower ownership – big silos for specialized people.
To be fair? Most people work from one favored domain and stay there.
The accountant stands in numbers. The carpenter stands in materials. The engineer stands in systems. The marketer stands in persuasion. The trader stands in price. Nothing wrong with any of that — until the problem in front of you requires more than one kind of seeing.
That’s where domain walking begins.
Ure’s Mind Amplifiers Book – for the Shop????
Seat belt snug? OK…
In the short version of Mind Amplifiers, the core idea was simple enough: humans have always built tools not just to amplify muscle, but to amplify mind. Imagine: Thought going to print with zero friction!
The hammer extends the fist. The lever extends the arm. The abacus extends memory. Writing extends memory across time when recall fuzzes out with age. The spreadsheet extends calculation. Who recalls what a “stddev” is? And now AI — when used properly — extends synthesis, pattern recognition, comparison, and ideation.
Not perfectly, not morally, not automatically. But materially?
Oh HELL Yes.
So, you shouldn’t be surprised that every silo prince and princess of academia is dying to seize control – a kind of carpe thinkum! It’s power and they’re too lazy…but let’s not go there.
Point? Ideas don’t stop at desks and screens. They also don’t stop at borders – since I assume you know the USSR fell as much to smuggled VCRs as the Stasi‘s East German spy failure?
Oh, and now – if you look close and know what to look for – it’s coming to the shop.
No holding it back. Snuck in the minute humans stopped just smashing wood and started thinking about what they were doing.
At the beginning, shop work was direct and brutal. Hit this. Cut that. Scrape here. Chisel there. Basic wood-smashing and rough shaping. But then the real story of shop evolution began: tools started carrying not just force, but mental models. A hand saw implies straightness. A square implies geometry. A chisel implies controlled subtraction. (Combined, they imply a lodge, but that’s a different tale than this morning’s…)
A lathe implies rotational symmetry. Every serious tool is a frozen thoughtform. It is a theory of how the materiality ought to yield to fallible human’s upward drive…
Router to…uh…Router?
Then came rotary power, and with it an explosion in what ordinary people could do. Circular saws made straight ripping and crosscutting faster and more repeatable. Lathes let form emerge through spin and tool rest instead of sheer hand skill alone. Drill presses brought vertical precision. Sanders and jointers improved finish and fit.
The machine age did not remove the human mind from the shop. It multiplied what the human could hold in mind and execute in wood, steel, plastic, or whatever else happened to be under the blade. We sniffed ammonium from blueprints, but we’re into clean clicks, now.
Newbies and children’s note: The classic architectural “blueprint” process that everyone remembers from the 1940s–1980s (the one that smelled like cat piss for three blocks around the print room) used ammonium vapor to develop the prints.
The Space Race and Closer Tolerances Followed
Then came the tool refinement era — the period where tools no longer just cut or shape, but allowed recovery, restoration, and re-interpretation. Improved band tools, better planers, better resawing setups, thicknessing, surfacing, edging — all of these made it possible not merely to build from new stock, but to recover value from old material.
That Amazon bandsaw with some Rockler tooling? That old maple gym floor? Once upon a time it might have gone to a burn pile. Today, with the right tools and some imagination, it can come back as bench tops, tables, trim, shelving, or heirloom work.
The tool is no longer just for fabrication. It becomes an instrument of vision. And our salvation from swimming in landfills on a burned out cinder.
And that’s the point where domain walking really came into the shop.
Because once you move beyond “What can I build?” into “What can this become?” you are no longer standing only in the domain of cutting and joining. You are now walking through materials science, geometry, aesthetics, workflow, economics, salvage theory, and even time.
Yes. Time
Because reclaimed material carries earlier labor in it. Earlier growth rings. Earlier finishing decisions. Quarter-sawn, is it? Earlier use patterns. To work with it well, you have to read backward as well as forward. I keep looking for a local college course “Recovering Shit: Living Better with Less.”
A good shop person is rarely “just” a shop person.
He is part engineer, part designer, part mechanic, part scavenger, part economist, part historian, and part prophet.
Prophet because every shop build starts with a future object seen before it exists. (*No, not the transcendental object at the end of time…)
That’s the hidden part of making: before there is sawdust, there is foresight.
Then Computers Showed Up
At first, not as “magic” but as glorified helpmates. A big screen for PDFs of patterns and manuals. Design sketches. Wiring diagrams. Cut lists.
Later, slicers (got Cura?) for 3D printing when I had more time to fool with that. And my CNC machines and laser etcher and…
A computer on the bench turned out to be every bit as useful as a square, a notebook, and a coffee cup — because once projects get even a little bit complicated, the value of being able to see, zoom, compare, and revise without redoing everything by hand becomes obvious in a hurry.
But now we get to where the road bends.
Because the point of my latest book, Co-telligence, is not that computers came into the shop.
It’s that intelligences came into the shop.
My new book, Co-telligence, is now live on Amazon.
Additive, subtractive, SPICE emulators, CAD, CAM, CNC, laser paths, plasma, toolpathing, simulation — all that is a fine beginning. We can now cut steel like it’s butter. We can route, print, resurface, simulate, and iterate faster than any previous generation of makers could have imagined.
But the bottleneck has moved.
It’s no longer the tool steel.
It’s the idea steel.
What’s missing now is not horsepower.
Big Brains = Big Money = Big Future
What’s missing is mind-bending design.
I remember my old friend OilMan2 hanging around in the patch maybe five years back when sintered metal 3D printing started getting serious attention. (I called one of the places Slumber Play, lol.)
The reason was obvious: once you can do real 3D metal work, you can make shapes that used to belong in UFO stories and fever dreams. Internal passageways. Hidden lattices. Forms with no seams where old-school fabrication would have required welding, machining, assembly, and compromise.
You stop asking “How do I make this the old way?”
And start asking “What becomes possible now that the old constraints are gone?”
That is a completely different shop question.
And that is where AI collaboration — and Co-telligence — come into play.
You and me? We’re intelligences.
But so is Grok. And Chat. And Alexa. Not like us, exactly. But in their own way. Along with the rest of the silicon Collaborators lining up behind the curtain.
The trick in the Ure family which gives us “super powers”? We’ve begun learning the art of not merely using one AI, but doing bounce-work (new term): taking a good human-AI idea and running it through the mental sander of a second machine, and in legal matters maybe even a third or fourth.
One model may be good at expansion. Another at compression. Another at finding weak joints in an argument. Another at pattern completion. Put them together with a human who knows where he’s trying to go, and suddenly the shop is no longer just physical.
And in Electronics? Ham Radio? OMG!!! But the orchestra conductor still needs to be sharp. I had to explain to Grok for example, which end of a loaded multiband vertical (ham radio antenna) the 10 meter resonator goes to. I know the topology, Grok is my go-to math engine (and Python coder and GCoder and…)
It’s cognitive. Not me. US. Something three or four of us. Spitballing, protos, tests, reworks…
Bounce-working AI
That may be the biggest tool jump of all. Chat for ideation and flow. Grok for mathing and coding, and the sanding and finishing? Your call, buddy.
Ten years ago, coming into the shop, I’d ask: “What can I make with what I have?
Today? The question is “Which domain should I start in – what’s the vision and then the workflow?”
Suddenly, I remember. “Alexa, get me another pack of 20 of those 1/4-20 stainless 4-inch bolts, please.“
“Sure George. Tell me your voice code…” BLAM! “Get George2 on the line, too.”
“Mobile or office, Boss?”
I may be 77, but we’re still rolling hard out here. Mentally 17.
Sometimes that means stepping from woodworking into metallurgy. From electronics into enclosure design. From salvage into finish carpentry. From mechanics into aesthetics. From handwork into AI-assisted planning. The old boundary lines between kinds of making are getting thinner. The modern shop is becoming less a room full of tools and more a room full of interoperable domains.
Disney Imagineers got their first – to their everlasting credit – and using old school, hand tools.
Which is exactly why I keep coming back to this notion of mind amplifiers.
Because the story of tools has never really been about steel, batteries, cords, motors, or cutting edges. Those are just the visible parts. The deeper story is that every generation finds new ways to get part of its thinking out of its head and laid down in phys-real – the local non-thought world of materium.
- First into hand tools.
- Then into powered tools.
- Then into instruments of precision.
- And now, increasingly, into systems that help us think before we cut, and sometimes think while we build.
Shop work used to be mostly about strength.
- Then it became about skill.
- Then workflow.
- Then precision.
- What comes next may be integration across mind tooling.
And for those paying attention, that may be the biggest tool jump of all.
Which is why, this weekend, I’m out in the yard.
Not because I’m done with any of this. Quite the opposite. Because the InSide/OutSide ratio needs normalization. We all need some work-life balance, and I’ve gotten into a bad habit of…
What’s this I’m doing all the time now? Playing all the time, yessir.
Which, if you think about it, may be the surest sign yet that co-telligence is real schiznit: when the work gets so damn interesting it stops feeling like work, and starts feeling like the world’s biggest and best-equipped shop.
“Elaine, honey. I need to buy an Amusement Park.”
“You have one, darling!”
Write when you get rich, and maybe you can get one too.
George@Ure.net
As a white collar worker, I regard AI as a potential competitor. MBA’s sincerely believe that every low level clerk, draftsman, tech, temp and customer armed with an desktop AI super intellect can replace me at half my rate.
And I have made a living cleaning up after bonehead pretenders for the last seven years. I am not afraid of the current generation of AI’s; they are largely glorified copy machines. They can’t originate numbers, they only copy. If someone comes up with an AI that can originate and solve 3rd grade level math problems, I will have more of a problem. But I will still maintain my 6th grade edge.
I’ve also cleaned up quite a few messes, many produced by people who thought making their own user screens in Microsoft Access made them programmers. Their bosses liked it because they didn’t have to spend budget to have us do it. Access did to programming what the Instamatic did to photography – put it in the hands of amateurs and taught them to live with bad results. Steps in making things work again were to trace the linked fields, remove them, redesign the tables as necessary and write a real program to access them.
By the time I retired, the suits saw people with experience as an annoying expense. My last assignment was to take over maintenance of an application used to run test cases through avionics software. It was written in three different languages, interfaced between two different environments, and took me a couple of months to get comfortable with. When I refused to move to another city, they gave it to a guy whose total experience was in running tests. He had never written a line of code in his life. His questions to me (right up until my last day) had to do with running the application, not maintaining it. Leaving was not a total disappointment – it’s always better to watch a train wreck from outside the train.
I climb on board and ride the train wreck every weekday at 7 AM. Like Gilda Radner’s character, I clean up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-OfQCyAQmE
We brought on a number of alleged expert consultants starting a couple of years back. All of them are buzzword authorities. Everything they try to implement requires 2X -5x manpower with reliability and security issues. If a new application makes it impossible for me to get work done on time, I just tell them politely to have someone else port the data I generate, and I keep on doing what I do.
Eventually I expect an ultimatum of some sort, but I can already retire with full SS, and the bosses who need me to keep the wheels rolling, and the regulators off their backs know it. Optimum retirement is 70, with maybe part-time to 72. At that point, I have will have full SS and mandatory IRA draw, so the amount I can work without getting benefits impacted becomes an issue.
Ah, lucky you. That was my employment plan also, until the owners sold out. New owners ‘downsized’ me at age 63. A real panic, but I worked the retirement plan… just less money. It worked out OK. As for the regulatory tasks I was doing, the new owners didn’t have a clue. I left ’em dangling. Eff ’em!
Hank- I think retirement objectives are more how it works than a retirement plan. It is always seem to be clueless, malicious pricks who make or force decisions on you.
One can have objectives, but Others have other ideas, usually involving stroking their narcissistic personality-disordered egos.
Glad it worked out for you.
In 1967 there were 500 machinists in the shop.
Today there are 20.
Today people only know how to push the green button.
cycle start make a part!
“Push the red!”
The Crawling Hand (1963)
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/k0dJUZC4H08
GU : “… A good shop person is rarely “just” a shop person. He is part engineer, part designer, part mechanic, part scavenger, part economist, part historian, and part prophet. …”
All ^ true in the beginning and end. The progression is totally legit too, from open end wrench to socket set to drill driver with bit to … micrometers and calipers (a machinest fav.). It did not escape attention both E2 and Bahpa (that’s me) bought E3 a toy toolset at Christmas. That’s my Boy. Create a helper kid!
My Dad never used a PC in his life but I posed a really old computer (from the dawn) at the end of his 20′-ish bench in the barn workshop. A couple buds helped build an enclosure clad with plywood exterior, insulated and OSB interior clad. Then we pulled a 220 line (me and a Journeyman bud). And installed a 220 heater. Dad never retreated to thaw – I do.
Everyone talks about what-if [fill in blanks] this or that. Trust me, should an EMP blast industrial sector, which is _all_ CAD, we are toast. Our machines, at “the Shop” were analog. A toolslut crowning joy : when E2 started throwing the 2-3′ lever to engage a big “screw machine” (starts like a locomotive) and make parts. Feed bar stock material in a rotating spindles (looked like WW2 chain gun for Mad Max scene) and … at money end, out come parts … by tens of thousands. Machinest checks every couple hundred with analog micrometer.
Several dealers / moneyed middle men tried to horn-swaggle E to buy big toys for nuttin’ and I heard the CAD story over and over. Replies : so your end parts care whether made with CAD? Odd, then why do you want this / these? Well, you should go buy from another guy. Best we can function regardless, hey?
to Kerf : so, I’ve signed up to make a toddler bed for E3. It’s going to be boaty (OBSCON) so instead of forming the pointy end (bow) at an angle, it’s my plan to kerf main sideboards to impart an arc. Has anyone done this before? I have a steam gun so could lend moisture but … maybe a practice run …
Film at 11.
~E~ /) ~~
There was a technique I read in a 1960s magazine I almost did here at the ranch – It involved using hin 1/2 ply and you ranch 1/3″ kerfs on the winside so that when you bent it, the surface was regular and unbroken – worked well/. In our bar which hides the hot water heaster in the kitchen area, I used angles instead, but I was in a hurry – the 1/4 ply would o0nly beend to about a 25″ radius before getting sketchy and I didn’t have time for the steamer – life builds on…
“… A good shop person is rarely “just” a shop person. He is part engineer, part designer, part mechanic, part scavenger, part economist, part historian, and part prophet. …”
And at least a small part African engineer…
“Has anyone done this before? I have a steam gun so could lend moisture but … maybe a practice run …
I made a pair of water skis that way in wood shop back in high school. Cool process (except for steaming the wood over a tea kettle).
OH yeah – ain’t a kid out there didn’t learn respect for live steam and hot metal – and then lawyers conquerred us the Chinese will follow.
thx for your reply Wordslinger – I have seen graphics where craftsman bent outcome post kerf in each direction (ugly side out to be filled with FRP chop, then sanded). Toolshop carpentry experiment on deck …
BTW, this is a test run to build an actual kid boat, so worth getting right in bed prototype mode. (OBSCON) Nice breeze, wish I could go take a couple tacks but the wet part is way too cold.
E
Kid boat? Pappy and I built an 8 ft plywood pram (some t9o a bit of a nose, not complete english style) thing is we almost couldn’t get it out o the basement shop! HYe had measured beam and all…but overlooked the draft – which was door width, lol. Me? Kid wants a boat? Here kid, take thiese 2by2’s and then cover with 1/4 ply – I’ll show youq how west system 3 and a chopper gun work..
Thanks for a good column. I’ve used AI for a while in research and as a first pass editor, but I didn’t know how responsive the latest version of Alexa was. Her ability to make phone calls, and place Amazon orders. I stopped in mid-read and used her to order Co-telligence. It’s now next on my reading list.
Your writing/book publishing productivity is awesome.
When a fellow author of your stature (look at his name on Amazon ifs you haven’t) I am hnored to be in such company. (Bows) Geoge
Can someone research Afghanistan? Taliban? Isis? Pam Bondi? Jeffrey Epstein Files? Zelensky? Ukraine? Syria? Assad? Libya? N. Korea? Kim? Bill Gates? Hunter Biden’s laptop? Huma Aberdeen? Anthony Weiner? And so on and so forth…
Iran? Oh…
OK. Is it all just a psychological (psy-op) merry-go-round?
“Can someone research Afghanistan? Taliban? Isis? Pam Bondi? Jeffrey Epstein Files? Zelensky? Ukraine? Syria? Assad? Libya? N. Korea? Kim? Bill Gates? Hunter Biden’s laptop? Huma Aberdeen? Anthony Weiner? And so on and so forth…”
Yes, I can.
However, I don’t want to.
So why don’t you research them for yourself…?
How?
Go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
Choose a search engine
type in your query
Unfortunately, you have to learn to think a little bit like a computer, to get really good results, really quickly. For instance, humans will add more words to a question, to get a more-specific answer. (We do a logical .OR. with the inclusion of every query term.) Search engines do a logical .AND. and add every word to the search. If you searched “Pam Bondi” you would get several hundred million hits, because you would hit every “Pam” and every “Bondi” in the search engine’s catalog. Theoretically, if you searched “Pam Bondi” in quotes, you would get hits on just “Pam Bondi.” Google used to be really good at working with syntactical and logical operators. Since they have decided to be a “Swiss Army Knife” instead of just a search tool, they have lost most of this ability. You can try, but it’s hit-or-miss and not reliable.
There are still a couple search tools which allow nested searches (they let you search, just among the results they’ve returned from your initial search. These are actually useful. Frankly, I use Mojeek, Exalead, and Yandex almost as much as I do, Google. Goog is the best, but it also has a hard-left bias and a bias toward whomever is paying them the most money. The other three and Katherine Fitts’ Startpage are not U.S. based (Wikipedia is wrong. Startpage is based in the Netherlands.) Mojeek is British, Exalead is French, and Yandex is Russian. The overseas engines tend to have a lot less left-wing American political bias and are a lot less censored WRT things-U.S.
To use any of them, you still have to figure out how to use their “language,” meaning answering the question: “What ONE WORD best-describes what I want information about.” Answering that one question is the secret to mastering any Internet search tool…
Mr Kinbeough, I just looked at all your books. So Awesome!
i will order them all when $$$ starts flowing back my direction.
also, I think it is really cool that George’s new book is available in paperback. i prefer real books over digital copies.
Thanks! My first name is also Ande, (Mom;’ first name was Anna & Dad’s was Wade). In the early 40’s it was a fad to combine parent’s first names for the first born. I hated my name in grade school when the kids called me Andy Pandy.
Thanks! My first name is also Ande, (Mom;’ first name was Anna & Dad’s was Wade). In the early 40’s it was a fad to combine parent’s first names for the first born. I hated my name in grade school when the kids called me Andy Pandy.
I love Ure Mindset. Great article today. A very Good read. Thouroughly enjoyed it. Thank You George. you are a master of Ure Art.
i answered my own question today in my reply to Ray.
its like Driving Big Rig. I can easily drive 12 to 14 hours straight, maybe only touch the clutch 2 or 3 times in a day. I rarely stop at lights, because i intuitively know what gear will give me the right speed to hit the light when it turns green. shift 18 gears all day long and never think about it. because i been doing it for 30 years. lol. I float gears not double clutch, because that is what i was taught.
it is one continouse motion all day long.
I have driven a Dump and Pup for 12 hours straight and parked back at the yard, running 5 loads of gravel borrow, ate my entire lunch, drank all my coffee, filled out my truck ticket and been so deep in thought about a particular topic i didnt even notice i worked all day.
it is the same Spiritually for me. it is effortless. i dont consciously direct my thinking spiritually anymore than i consciously direct my thinking to grab a gears.
this all reminds me of that Fresca Titled: Man at the Crossroads.
Painted in Rockefeller Center. Then in 1932, Rockefeller ordered it to be plastered over.
it was later then retitled,
Man, Controller of the Universe!
and painted in Mexico City.
When i asked THE DUDE what the penny that was on my chest meant when i went and prayed for that fellas daughter. HE gave me 2 anssers because there is 2 sides to every coin
on one side represents: Spiritual CENTCOM. the otherside I will keep all to myself.
I will order Ure Book, in Paperback.
I Win with God withIN.
Wow, Stu’s site theageofdesolation.com is back!
Password protected.
Which password do we use?
He ust added a new post. No password required.
G.A. STEWART: As always, I want to thank George Ure over at UrbanSurvival.com for providing the only forum on the Internet for my work.
https://theageofdesolation.com/nostradamus/2026/03/22/g-a-stewarts-nostradamus-timeline/
I hope you continue to recover from your surgery. Your latest post outlining your timeline for the near future is appreciated. Perhaps once you have the bulk of your website shuttered, you can continue to make posts when the spirit moves. Or, stop by and chat here. G___ has threatened to allow readers to publish guest posts on the PN side. Updates from you will be welcome by the readers.
Personally, I have been making changes to accomodate leaner times. The nosedive I took Saturday checking out a bicycle supply route is part of that. I am being more cognizant of wind directions as well. Don’t be a stranger.
you all sure thats bi bi talking ? the side shot ? the head shape? the voice ? but your all back slapping elites
oh when i was out at the antique store yesterday after eating a cuban sandwhich. This Adult Commic Book from 1945 fell on the floor infront of me. all on its own.
the book layed open on the floor before me, i looked down and saw this.
https://x.com/i/status/2035781603184787473
interesting they were talking about inflation and the gold standard long before Tricky Dick.
some “force” wanted me to see that cartoon enough to push it off a shelf in front of me and make sure it opened to that page, yesterday.
the comic book is political and Adult Humor. it originally sold for 15 cents.
My Girlfriend took it as a sign and bought it for $2.33
For those that use public ChatGPT, remember that its training was frozen in 2023 and it has no real time access to the net, but it will compulsively give you an answer even if it has to create it out of whole cloth! Never trust the answers – verify them. Tell it in a prompt to state that is does not know if it doesn’t! Even that seems to fry its “brain” and it will forget after an answer or two. It wants to confabulate.
Perplexity is a year more modern, and Grok seems to be able to read the current state of the world. I trust Grok more than the other two, but I don’t trust AI at all without verifying. It’s good for a mind amplifier and trigger for ideas, but nothing it generates is fit to be used without careful cross-checking.
“Elaine, honey. I need to buy an Amusement Park.”
“You have one, darling!”
LOL! LOL! The secret of life, revealed.
Had a meal last night with two other sailing couples. One pair, early sixties, nice 50′ monohull, just yard serviced by them, ready for the move North as the season changes. Gave up the dirt seven years ago. Happy as Larry as they say down here. The other pair dropped out from great years in the offshore gas harvest world to build a 44′ cat. They have a unique energy plan and some cool ideas for being independent afloat. Three months capable is their goal. Maybe a year to complete. Sadly they stress because of cubicle occupants down here doing their best to control every aspect of what could otherwise be quite free life. They are 44 and 51 so only half way there. They call us the Goldies. We call them The Kids.
I am spending time sanding and holding the other end just ‘cuz it’s always fun to mess around with boats, especially cool new ones with carbon rigs and purposeful energy systems.
Sailing… physics, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, naval architecture, composites, woodworking, rigging, sailmaking, navigation, geography, astronomy, oceanography, languages, sea-keeping, electrical, diesel, and lots of fun, risky scary stuff, and beers in the sunset cockpit . Not to mention having 75% of the planet surface as your playground.
Floating. Try it, you’ll maybe like it.
Stiks
When sailing the world, I wonder how you navigate the paperwork – passports, visas, boat documentation, nationalities, languages, etc. It seems to be overwhelming. Nature makes sense, bureaucracy does not.
It’s actually interesting. Most cubicle operated civilized entities now expect you to have email so you can apply for entry ahead of arrival. Pity anyone who doesn’t because that’s like you literally don’t exist. If you have your crew papers, passports, boat document, and truthfully answer the questions they ask, it’s easy and simple. Cost is now relatively high. We just had to pay about 500usd for our latest entry. Others were in the low hundreds. Have zero guns, drugs, and forbidden foods ( we lost every fresh thing everywhere but FP where they never even looked at the boat). Language is not s problem but once out in the community is possibly more challenging. Compared with s nasty line squall with lightning and gale force winds the bureaucracy is minor and the rewards are well worth it.
George, I am an ingnorant person when it come to computer knowledge, but this looks like something for survival mode,,,
“A solar panel. A battery. A mini PC. A WiFi access point. That’s your entire off-grid knowledge station. Runs on 15 to 65 watts. Works from a cabin, an RV, a sailboat, or a bunker.
Internet goes down? You still have AI. You still have maps. You still have medical info. You still have an entire encyclopedia. You still have courses for your kids.
100% Open Source. Apache 2.0 License.”
https://x.com/eng_khairallah1/status/2035627410016579824?s=20
and of course the other shoe, so to speak
https://github.com/Crosstalk-Solutions/project-nomad
Standalone AI is worthless.
If the Internet goes down, what’cha gonna do with the computer?
I have all this already, in a CF-50 Toughbook, stashed in a Faraday cage.
The maps, encyclopedia, homeschool outlines, etc., are very good (don’t forget railroad right-of-way maps.) The portability of a laptop is a must. My CF-50 system can be put together for less than $100. It will work, and do everything one needs to. A more modern system (like my CF-31s) is about $300, dual-booting Win-7 and Debian (HAM Radio version) on a much larger hard drive.
What I like about N.O.M.A.D. is it’s self-contained. What I don’t like (without seeing it) is someone else is choosing your tools and your educational suite, and it has insane hardware requirements. If the SHTF, you don’t need continuity, you need survivability. I agree wholeheartedly with the panel + battery thing — might also include a suitcase inverter or “generator-inverter” to self-contain the battery…
And BTW, this is the panel I recommend:
https://hammacher.com/deals/the-100-watt-heavy-duty-briefcase-solar-panel
You can find cheaper, more-portable, and less heavy (it’s about 20×24 folded, and weighs 20-some pounds.)
What you can’t find anywhere else is this:
“Lifetime Guarantee of Satisfaction”
Hammacher has been around for nearly 200 years. You don’t last in retail, with a warranty like that, if you sell junk. Does that mean a product will last for your lifetime? No. What it does mean is the product is likely the very best product available, and will last for its entire, projected lifetime…