Just Two Good Old Boys

Send us Fan Mail A Linux install should be boring. Ours turns into a full-on troubleshooting spiral: USB sticks, flashing tools, Mint editions, and the one thing everyone skips until it’s too late, verifying the ISO hash. That setup mess is the perfect launchpad for the real project we’re chasing: a practical, cross-platform app that monitors AI subscription usage across services like Claude and G...

Send us Fan Mail A “flying car” demo shows up on a Tesla livestream and suddenly we’re arguing about physics, safety, and whether the whole thing is an elaborate troll. We walk through what we’re seeing, what would have to be true for it to work, and why even a legitimate thruster or suction based stunt opens a can of real-world questions: repeatability, street legality, failure modes, and what ha...

Send us Fan Mail A bot that hunts RFPs for you sounds like a cheat code until you have to decide what you trust, what you verify, and what you never delegate. We walk through a real hybrid AI setup where Grok handles internet-facing scraping and link gathering, then a local LLM takes over for summarizing, classifying, and formatting clean output you can actually use for sales pipeline work. It’s t...

Send us Fan Mail Diesel costs more than gas in places it never used to, and that single fact ripples into shipping, groceries, and basically every price tag you touch. We dig into why the diesel versus crude oil relationship feels “off,” what global refining constraints might be doing, and how energy decisions like coal gasification and cleaner syngas concepts can look brilliant on paper and still...

Send us Fan Mail A cheap TV, a goofy fishing game, and an AI that rewrites code in under two hours sound like three unrelated stories. They’re not. We follow the same thread through all of them: incentives shape behavior, and the hidden costs show up later, whether that cost is privacy, quality, or resilience. We start with a ridiculous little Steam fishing game that turns into a crash course on s...

Send us Fan Mail A browser pins the CPU, a photoreal shooter makes us rethink what “graphics” even means, and then we stumble into something we did not expect to be discussing on a government domain: Arcade.gov. That whiplash sets the tone. We talk through what’s actually happening with GPUs, DLSS hype, and why the demo footage you see online often comes from absurd hardware setups that don’t matc...

Send us Fan Mail Shrimp and grits Ingredients Grits: 2 Tbsp. beef tallow 1 medium shallot, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup) 3 cups chicken broth 1 cup whole milk 1 tsp. kosher salt 1/4 tsp. black pepper 1 cup uncooked quick-cooking grits Cheddar cheese, shredded (about 1 1/2 cups) 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream Shrimp: 2 Tbsp. beef tallow 1 lb. jumbo raw shrimp (about 16 shrimp), peeled fuck de-veinin...

Send us Fan Mail Fireworks are loud, but the bigger signal is quieter: a lot of Americans sound less defeated than they did a year ago. We start with real life stuff (back pain, fatigue, summer heat) and then zoom out into why the Fourth of July felt like a morale shift, how the U.S. soccer run played into national pride, and why public patriotism is showing up again as the 250th anniversary chatt...

Send us Fan Mail Your washer explodes, you price the repair, and suddenly you’re standing in Lowe’s asking yourself why everything is built to be replaced instead of fixed. That little domestic crisis kicks off a wide-ranging hangout where we jump from appliance economics to building a practical home AI server, including what you need to know before you buy an older data center GPU like the NVIDIA...

Send us Fan Mail Something weird happens around big milestones: you can feel the same on the inside, but suddenly everything around you starts asking for “proof” that you’re doing well. We kick off with a raw, funny look at turning 40, the slow creep of conspicuous consumption, and why the pressure to signal success can nudge otherwise practical people into expensive decisions they do not even wan...

Send us Fan Mail A society runs on shared rules until people decide the rules don’t apply equally. That’s the thread we keep pulling as we bounce from personal health choices into the most uncomfortable civic questions: what do you do when the legal system feels slow, selective, or gameable, and who gets to decide what “justice” means when everyone is angry? We start light with food, sleep, and th...

Send us Fan Mail A vacation recap turns into a surprisingly sharp window into how modern life works when everything is a system: airports, loyalty points, laws, media, and even video games. We start with the human stuff, travel exhaustion, Dallas terminal chaos, and the little wins like US customs preclearance and getting Global Entry set up for the kids. From there, we break down a Bahamas Atlant...

Send us Fan Mail Support the show Want to hear old episodes? All subscribers have access to the full back catalog of episodes and specials!  Just Two Good Old Boys (Just Two Good Old Boys +) Communicate with us directly on x.com by joining the Good Old Boys community!  https://x.com/i/communities/1887018898605641825 Can't donate? Listen to Amy Clare Smith Music   Check out Gene's other p...

Send us Fan Mail A war with a soundtrack, a daylight strike that decapitated command, and crowds in Iran dancing to pop songs they weren’t supposed to love—today’s events flipped the script on the Middle East. We walk you through the surprise choice to hit IRGC leadership under the sun, why that timing mattered, and how it pried open bunkers and psyches built for midnight raids. As shaky propagand...

Send us Fan Mail A new PC arrives with a satisfying thud, but the real story isn’t RGB—it’s what powerful, affordable hardware unlocks. We compare notes on an AMD-based build that outpaces an older flagship, then get into the gritty work no one sees on YouTube: wiring a dedicated 20-amp circuit, crawling the attic, and running clean Cat6 drops that still punch 10G when you do it right. That practi...

Send us Fan Mail This is our Christmas card to our listeners and especially to our monthly supporters! Ben and Gene wish you a very Merry Christmas! Support the show Want to hear old episodes? All subscribers have access to the full back catalog of episodes and specials!  Just Two Good Old Boys (Just Two Good Old Boys +) Communicate with us directly on x.com by joining the Good Old Boys community!...

Send us Fan Mail Did the election night in Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt catch everyone off guard, or was it a masterstroke of strategy? We unravel the surprising victory of Trump and the eerie calm that followed in cities like DC and Baltimore, which were braced for chaos. As we ponder over the lack of expected unrest and the implications of these results, our personal stories and firsthand expe...