Deep Dive AI • Workflow Essay From the AI Conveyor Belt to Real Tools That Actually Help The shift from producing endless AI output to building useful systems for real life. Retirement tools Garden planning Baseball calendars AI workflow For a long time, I was productive in the most suspiciously modern way possible: always making something, always posting something, always generating another clean little piece of AI-assisted output that looked a lot like progress. And some of it was progress. But eventually I noticed a problem that content alone could not solve: my life was still full of recurring decisions, recurring friction, and recurring little annoyances that no blog post or thumbnail was ever going to fix. The AI conveyor belt is very go...

If you're a Catan fan looking to add a whole new layer of adventure to your game nights, the Explorers & Pirates expansion is your ticket to the high seas. This expansion transforms your familiar Catan landscape into a sprawling archipelago full of hidden islands, pirate lairs, and trading missions. In the Explorers & Pirates expansion, you start with a central island but soon set sail into the unknown. You'll explore new sea hexes, establish harbor settlements on distant shores, and take on a variety of scenarios that add fresh twists to the gameplay. From battling pirate lairs and earning rewards to gathering spices from far-off islands, each scenario adds a unique flavor to your Catan experience. And yes, if you want to bring more friends along for the ride, you can pick up the six-player extension to expand your crew. In short, Explorers & Pirates is perfect for anyone who wants to turn their Catan sessions into a grand seafaring adventure.

Best Rail-Trail Bar Ride Near Mount Pleasant, Michigan: Clare to Coleman on the Pere Marquette There’s a certain kind of bike ride most of us are actually looking for, and it is not a heroic gravel death march sponsored by electrolytes and regret. It is this: park the car, ride somewhere flat, feel just healthy enough to be smug about it, and end the day with a burger and a cold drink like you’ve personally conquered western civilization. If that is your flavor of outdoor ambition, the best rail-trail bar ride near Mount Pleasant is not, ironically, in Mount Pleasant. It’s in Clare. Because sometimes the best plan is the one that quietly minds its business and works. The Setup: Clare Wins by Being Useful The route you want is the Pere Marquette Rail Trail, which runs on an old rail corridor between Midland and Clare. It’s paved, flat, and blessedly free of the kind of chaos that makes you question why bicycles were ever invented without cup holders. For riders coming from t...

Deep Dive AI • Family, Grief, and the Quiet Weight of Estrangement The Last FAFSA: When Paperwork Becomes One of the Last Bridges For years, filling out my daughter’s FAFSA was not just a yearly administrative task. It was one of the last predictable ways I still heard from her. That is why this final one did not feel like paperwork. It felt like grief with a login screen. Read More Deep Dive AI Blog Full articles, reflections, stories, and long-form pieces. Watch YouTube Channel Stories, commentary, reflections, and AI-powered creative work. Listen Spotify / Podcast Audio stories, spoken reflections, and Deep Dive AI content. Follow Facebook Ongoing updates, personal posts, and project releases. A Class-Ready Reflection on Estrangement, Parental Alienation, and Grief ...

Team Jellie’s Dive Bar Research Continues There are two kinds of research in this world. The first kind happens in labs, with clipboards, white coats, and somebody using the phrase statistically significant. The second kind happens when Team Jellie rolls into a small Michigan town, studies the menu like it contains state secrets, and orders food at a place called Full Moon Saloon. Today was very much the second kind. While out geocaching and doing what we are now officially calling our Michigan Dive Bar Research Project, we landed in Hastings, Michigan, and found ourselves at the Full Moon Saloon, tucked right on Jefferson Street downtown. It had exactly the kind of energy you want from a place like this: local, unpretentious, a little rough around the edges in the best possible way, and confident enough to put Scott’s Tots on the menu with zero apology. That is the kind of place that already has my attention. First Impressions: Local, Low-Drama, and...

Deep Dive AI • Work, Money & Identity The Retirement Lie We Were Handed Way Too Young A cleaner, class-ready version of the piece—written to read like a real feature article, not a busy dashboard with commitment issues. Some of what we call retirement advice is planning. Some of it is just fear wearing a respectable cardigan. I can still remember those school placement tests, the ones that made childhood feel like the opening scene of a corporate onboarding process. You sat there filling in bubbles about interests, skills, and preferences, while some invisible system seemed to be deciding whether your future involved a desk, a toolbox, a uniform, or a lifetime of pretending you enjoyed meetings. At that age, it did not feel casual. It felt official, like your life was already being gently nudged into a lane. And that gets into your head earlier than people admit. You start imagining adulthood not as something wide and u...

Who, What, When, and Why: The Day Team Jellie Adventure Corp Became Real There are moments in life that do not arrive with fireworks. They arrive with forms. With signatures. With phone calls. With hold music. With questions like, “Can you confirm the business address one more time?” And somehow, in the middle of all that deeply unglamorous paperwork, something huge happens anyway: you become real. That is what this moment is for us. This is the story of Team Jellie Adventure Corp finally stepping out of the idea phase and into the “well… I guess we really did this” phase. Who Team Jellie is me and Kellie. It is our shared name, our shared effort, and now, our shared company. It is not some polished boardroom fairy tale with a dozen investors and a glossy launch party where everyone pretends they always knew it would work. It is two people who have lived enough life to know that big dreams usually come dressed in ordinary clothes. It is us. A couple with a lot of heart, a l...