Fermenting Solutions 2025.05: AIs Side Shut

Published: Thu, 05/29/25

I'm in the midst of wrapping up one of the bigger side projects I've been working on over the last few months. That meant the last few weeks have been filled with meetings and discussions to try and determine the next thing that I want to take on. Obviously, the world is changing rapidly, and often, the skills required for the most interesting projects are in high demand. I've always enjoyed thriving in this space and have used these side projects as an excuse to keep up on emerging trends. Unfortunately, many people in my network don't enjoy this, so it's become more difficult to find people I trust to work with on these projects. In an effort to get in front of this trend, I recently setup another email list that I'm using to farm out chunks of work for these various projects. If you're interested in finding an outlet to play around with new things, shoot me a message and we can discuss if getting on this list would be of use to you.

Just like everyone else, I've been relying more and more on AI in just about everything I do. I've been recommending Venice.AI for a bit now. I don't know that I've really explained why this is in detail, but it basically boils down to the emphasis on keeping things 'open', decentralized and 'private'. Venice is rapidly iterating and adding new features almost daily. Most recently, I'm creating AI "characters" for the many different scenarios where I use AI. You can think of this mostly as a grouping of system prompts that give the underlying AI an appropriate 'personality' for tackling the task. I've also been working on using Venice's API to plug it into any service that I use that provides support for it. In the last month, I've hooked it up to Zapier's AI agent framework and replaced the Leo AI in all of my instances of the Brave browser with a connection to Venice.

image generated by Venice.AI using this email newsletter as a starting point

The remainder of the time since the last issue, I've been battling this odd spring-like weather in order to get my garden completely planted. I have a few more seed starts to transplant, but the cold temps and rain have really thrown a wrench into getting that wrapped up!

Fun with Foraging

This month's foraged delicacy was stinging nettles! There are records that date back to ancient Egypt of this plant being used medicinally. I was first exposed to it when looking for ways to deal with the foot pain that plagued me for much of last year. I initially used the plant externally to sting my foot, but through research quickly discovered that it has a host of positive properties when ingested as well. I've actually become pretty good at harvesting the tender shoots without getting 'stung'. My wife and I used this month's harvest to make a 'chimichurri' like sauce by combining it with some of the ramps we foraged last month. You can pretty much use it in any context that requires 'greens'. Just make sure to cook it first, ideally in several changes of water to turn off the stinging properties.

Thoughts On the Paw Paw

It's not the time of year to forage for them yet, but the flowers on my trees at home inspired me to write my Ode to the Paw Paw. If you've never experienced this unusual native to Pennsylvania fruit, I encourage you to go out looking for some. You won't regret it! If you're interested in knowing more, check out:

Ode to the Paw Paw Tree - Transmutable Explorations

The magnificent paw paw tree. Eastern North America's largest edible fruit. I describe it's place in…

Favorite Relevant Purchase

I mentioned one of my main goals for the year was to address my excess visceral fat. I haven't made tons of progress on that front yet, but one thing that I have found out is what exercise seems to make the biggest dent for me. In my experiments, walking on an incline treadmill with a weighted vest is the best way to target visceral fat without sacrificing muscle. I set the incline as high as I can while still being able to maintain 3 mph for 30 minutes. I've been doing this twice a week but plan to bump it up in the near future. It's important to focus on recovery on off days. I ended up stressing something in my hip when I first started doing this which made it impossible to continue until I healed. I've since found the right mix of yoga to balance this out and hopefully will prevent future injuries.

J checked in on Untappd!

Busy beer month! 75% of what I had this month doesn't show up in Untappd because of all the homebrew judging. I judged Strong English Ales, Strong Belgian Ales and Dark Lagers. Additionally, I did the best of show judging for Malt Madness XIX (see the winning entries). The winning beer just happened to be a Belgian Dark Strong Ale. I was also asked to judge the barrel aged competition for the local homebrew clubs. This is an honor usually reserved for commercial brewers, but there were so many brewer scheduling conflicts on this day that I was asked to fill in.

My favorite check-in of the month was Mont Sainte-Victoire: Spruced (Blend 1) from The Referend Bier Blendery. Mont Sainte-Victoire: Spruced is the Referend's spruced-up spontaneous impression of the monolith of saison. This first foray was brewed in the spring of 2019 with NJ wheat, buckwheat, and rye, and spontaneously open fermented on 2019 harvest local NJ spruce tips. After a year of aging in neutral oak, the beer was conditioned on freshly gleaned 2020 harvest spruce tips from some of the same trees. I enjoyed this at a newish event that Bonn Place Brewing has been having every month. They pick a beer style and then get their friends in the industry to provide an interpretation of that style to serve on guest taps next to Bonn's own interpretation. They pair this with complimentary local breads and cheeses. It's a great way to spend a Thursday evening! Keep an eye out on Bonn's social media for the announcement of the next one.

Many of the beers I've had over the last month are available via Tavour. You can get $10 off your first order by using my link.

See Favorite Check-in

Fermented Solutions

When it wasn't raining this month, I managed to cut down a tree and clear a space that I'm hoping to use for an outdoor shower next to my sauna. I've done most of the research, so I hope to start the physical portion of that project soon.

Google recently had their I/O conference. There used to be a time where I would never miss this, but it's become so 'meh' over the years. Even before they had this event (where they announced new AI versions of everything), I started thinking about a world where 'search' as we know it ceases to exist. How does this impact discoverability for a ecommerce company like Threddies? How do you train an AI to fulfill the job that SEO does today? Google's solution seems to be to embed ads on the Gemini chat screen. I'm hoping we come up with better solutions. As an experiment, we've pulled all Threddies ads so we can get a better understanding of some of the implications that an ad-free, top of funnel might have. It hasn't been long, but we've already noticed some interesting correlations. Anyone else thinking about this? Let's discuss.

Happy Fermenting!

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Telford PA 18969
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