My GMRS radio is the most AI-free thing I own and I love it
Sometimes you just want to talk to a person 10 miles away. Zero tokens required. Extremely good.
I spend most of my working hours inside language models.
I build workflows. I test prompts. I watch AI parse things I wrote and give them back to me slightly worse. It’s my job and I genuinely enjoy it.
But my GMRS radio is the best.
What GMRS is
GMRS is General Mobile Radio Service. It’s a licensed radio band in the US — you pay $35 for a 10-year family license and you can run up to 50 watts. It goes through walls. It goes over hills. It reaches the repeater 15 miles away that my neighbor set up on a mountain.
No internet required. No app. No subscription. No context window.
Why I love it
My son and I did a hike last fall. We split up at a fork — he went up, I went around. We stayed in contact the whole time on handhelds. The conversation was something like:
“You at the top yet?” “Almost. You see the lake?” “Yeah. It’s good.”
That’s it. That’s the whole exchange. It was perfect.
There’s something genuinely restoring about a communication tool with this little surface area. You push a button. A person hears you. That’s the whole protocol.
The AI connection, since I can’t help myself
GMRS is making me a better AI workflow builder, actually. Using a low-bandwidth, high-friction communication system reminds me that the goal is the message, not the medium.
I think about that when I’m writing prompts now. What’s the minimum viable context for this task? What can I cut?
The radio doesn’t have a retry button. Neither should your prompt.
If you’re reading this and you’ve been GMRS-curious: the Baofeng UV-5G Plus is $30 and works on the GMRS frequencies. Get the license first. It’s worth it.