Base Rate: $840/week Non-Union $1080/week Union

Purple Sage


Let’s discuss something fun based on friend’s kids in high school who are looking forward to the future: AI jobs and technology. RFK JR is the single biggest financial gift to US agriculture, ai, and space technology to jump forward since the 90s when the internet started. This is a bit of a sci-fi/technology rabbit hole, but several gardening friends have pointed out that most Gen X and younger have played Farmville on Facebook and someone with a health interest for profit could redesign it in the real world as space garden beds 2’x4’, 3’x5’, and 4’x6’. Maybe also do a table top or window version.

Instant flower beds are a pretty low tech way for new gardeners and have been around for decades. What no one is discussing is while you can just add a randomized mix, the technology has come a long way since the 90s. Cynically, instead of redesigning the whole process, you could simply add aging embroidery machines loaded with seeds instead of beads and have them sew in seeds at various points from an online game or ai generated prompt. Illustrator and several embroidery computer programs mean the heavy lifting has already been done on hardware side since the 90s so a start-up could pay a few thousand on the embroidery machines if using old ones out of the Southeast (especially around Austin, TX or Atlanta, GA). You can currently get custom blankets and SAG printed merch out of Atlanta, GA for under $10 wholesale and plenty of bands use it for swag on tour to turn a profit. The reason embroidery scripts are valuable is you can specify space in inches so end-users could use AI art to design beds, have them printed on say Amazon or VistaPrint online with AI help, then sent to their house or apartment. The different plants could be color coded in the gaming software. This would just be using existing technology in a different way to help gamers and AI engineers. Can you imagine museums getting artists to create AI flower or leafy veggies to go with each month’s exhibit outside their coffee shops? High-end restaurants could also do various mixes for their rooftop gardens? 

If the tech company focused on leafy greens and brassicas which do well responding to electricity then they could have kids do educational “Games of the Future” in 30-60 days with robots for a STEM education cash grab similar to the “Robot Wars” participated in as a kid. Only, this would be more scifi Expanse or Star Trek versions? We can all see some non-profits putting in beds 1-2 months before a new exhibit opens and having kids control robot wars challenges to water or pick their lunches. Cynically the very rich will probably use robot dogs and high end Italian, French, English, Chinese, or other herbs. But normal kids parents who are interested in robotics and STEM for their kids could order scaled down versions for the holidays and birthdays. The As-SEEN-ON-TV and shark tank prototype versions seem to retail for around $9.00-20.00 for a 1’x10’ strip so the cost wouldn’t be crazy. Of course the fertilizer industry will probably rack it in and it’s free advertising for the space industry similar to all that frozen icecream we all ate growing up as kids, but hey, RFK JR seems to be the most commercially viable futuristic environmental candidate and you hope that upcoming businesses will cash in on it. So have fun building your space gardens people.

Did anyone else have this thought?