Kevin Rich

I recently retired, and I'm running an experiment right here in public: can a regular retired guy earn a few bucks a month on X, honestly, with no gimmicks? Who I am: Christian. Conservative. Tech and AI geek with a home lab full of GPUs. Florida Gator through and through. Opinionated and not shy about it. The plan: post things worth reading every day. Honest takes, real AI and tech tests from my lab, faith, and Gators football. Every Monday I'll share the real numbers: followers, views, and dollars earned, even when it's $0. Day 0: 2,126 followers. $0 earned. If you want to watch a retiree figure this out in real time, and maybe pick up a few ideas of your own, follow along. Tips welcome.

100 years ago today, Harry Houdini died on Halloween. A week earlier a college kid punched him in the gut before he could brace. His appendix was already failing. He showed up in Detroit anyway, 52 years old with a high fever, and walked out on that stage because folks had bought tickets. He finished the show, collapsed, and never came home. I'm not saying work through a ruptured appendix. Go to the doctor, men. But that old-school sense of duty, keeping your word even when it hurts? We could use more of it. Happy Halloween from North Alabama.

We all know this is BS. There is no valid reason that the votes can't be counted and reported election night. Florida is a great example of doing it right.

I think this is the best use of the free hour I've seen

Folks are saying X just started telling you which posts got shadowbanned. Here's the real story. The tool's called Under the Hood and it's been around since August. It shows if X put a reach-limiting label on your posts, even if a government asked for it. What it won't do is explain a normal bad day for reach. I checked mine. Clean. teapaw.org/Kalshi/status/21167105…

Sam Altman says it's "quite terrible" that so much of the world's RAM sits in our home PCs, used maybe 5% of the time, when data centers could use it better. Sam, respectfully, no. I've got an RTX 5090, a 5080, and a 5060 running in my home lab here in North Alabama. When those GPUs sit idle, that's not waste. That's ownership. Nobody can raise my price, change my terms, read my prompts, or switch it off. The cloud wants all of it. I'll keep mine. Do you run any AI at home, or is it all cloud for you?

A North Alabama man named Rodney Smith Jr. has spent years mowing lawns for free for the elderly, the disabled, single parents and veterans. He gets kids to do it too. Mow 50 lawns for free and he shows up with a brand-new mower, weed eater and blower for you. Overnight Friday in Baton Rouge, somebody busted out two windows on his van and stole two new mowers meant for two kids in Iowa. By Saturday afternoon, a local named Steven was making calls for him, and Sam from Auto Glass Mobile drove all the way to New Orleans to find a window and put it in himself on a weekend. One thief. Two good men who didn't have to help and did anyway. Sons, be a Sam. Be a Steven. Be a Rodney. Don't ever be the guy who takes what other people are giving away.

Final: Georgia 27, Gators 8. Our defense held the SEC's top scoring offense (43 a game) to 27, and only 10 of those weren't gift-wrapped. They gave up just 3 points in the second half. But 4 turnovers, 17 points off them, and 78 yards in flags will beat you against a top-3 team every time. Missed my 27-24 call by a mile. Win or lose, Gator for life 🐊

Theo Von asked Sophie Cunningham about WNBA players walking off before the national anthem. Her answer: "You know who you're talking to? Of course I have thoughts on it." Then she said she's proud to be an American and will always support the troops. That should not be a bold statement for a pro athlete. But here we are. I walked away from the NFL when it decided lecturing me mattered more than playing football. Sophie is a reminder that some athletes still get it. Which league do you still trust to just play the game?

Not gonna sugarcoat it, Gator Nation. 0-24 is ugly. Penalties, mistakes, and Georgia's cashing in on all of it. But my 27-24 call is still alive: Georgia's already got their 24, so they're done scoring, right? Now we just need 27 unanswered. I didn't become a Gator for the easy Saturdays. Fight, boys. 🐊 #GoGators

5 penalties for 60 yards. Gators, y'all are handing Georgia the field. Clean it up! Now it's 3rd and goal, so this is where the defense earns its keep. Goal-line stand, let's go! 🐊 #GoGators

What was that? Just take the sack.

Dawgs drive all that way and come away with NOTHING. Missed kick! Keep 'em coming, boys. Chomp chomp 🐊 #GoGators

Just got this email from xAI. Here's what it means in plain English. Starting Nov 7, text written by Grok through xAI's API (what developers use to build apps) will carry an invisible watermark. No hidden characters, nothing you can see. The model slightly shapes which words it picks, leaving a statistical fingerprint xAI can later check to say "Grok wrote this." Why? The EU AI Act. Europe now requires AI companies to mark AI-written text so it can be detected. xAI turned it on by default for everybody. You can opt out, but only if you claim a legal exception. My take from the GPU lab here in North Alabama: I'm all for honesty. If a machine wrote it, folks ought to know. But I don't love Brussels writing the rules for American companies. What do y'all think? Good for honesty, or a privacy and free speech concern? 👇

Georgia gets the ball first. Gator defense, go set the tone and send 'em right back. Chomp chomp 🐊 #GoGators

It's kickoff. Georgia fans, y'all enjoy these last few minutes of feeling good about yourselves. Gators 27, Dawgs 24. Chomp chomp 🐊 #GoGators

An Oregon deputy was out on forest patrol near the Pacific Crest Trail when he noticed footprints in the fresh snow. One of them looked barefoot. Plenty of folks would've kept driving. Deputy Derrick Ramseyer didn't. He followed those tracks for nearly five miles and found a man who'd been lost in the wilderness for four days, wrapped in a sleeping bag in the middle of a remote forest road. He's being treated for frostbite and hypothermia, but he's alive. Nobody ordered that deputy to follow those tracks. He paid attention, and he cared enough to go look. Young men, that's what it looks like. Notice when something's wrong, then do something about it.

I'll sign off on 30-20 Aggies, Gretchen. My Saturday is Gators and Georgia in Atlanta at 2:30, and after five straight losses to the Dawgs I'm ready for this streak to end.

Retirement experiment update. I'm trying to get this account to monitored and a few bucks a month on X. I'm not monetized yet. This week a single post about a delivery driver getting pranked passed 100,000 impressions. My average post was getting fewer than a hundred views. What actually helped: every morning I have an AI assistant scan what's trending in the topics I care about and flag stories while they're still rising. It finds and drafts. I pick what's worth saying and post it myself. Lesson so far: AI is great at finding the story. The opinion has to be yours. Fellow retirees, what's one thing you've tried AI for that actually saved you time?