From the computer of Peter Clark

Brodsky advised his listeners to give up trying to evade the feeling, and start respecting it. Boredom exists “to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life,” he said, “the lesson of your utter insignificance.” Boredom puts us in our tiny, fragile, finite place—and thank goodness for that, for “the more finite a thing is, the more it is charged with life,” with love, pain, excitement, and fear.

I really like this MCP — it basically acts as middleware between LLMs and Plaid, allowing you to connect your bank accounts to Era, and then have LLMs connect to Era via MCP to access those bank accounts.

Now, sure, there’s a lot of risks to doing this in terms of giving LLMs access to your financial data, but if you did want to give Claude your financials, this is the way to do it!

The service also has a lot of pretty clever functionality such as categorizing transactions that then gets applied across whatever LLMs you have connected.

I’ve always had a soft spot for soothsayers and energy healers. Like most writers, I have a yoga teaching certification. I have dabbled in astrology, tarot, acupuncture, cupping, Rolfing, the Alexander Technique, craniosacral massage, hypnotherapy, and herbal medicine. (My children are vaccinated, I hasten to assure you.) I dipped back into familiar territory: yin-yoga classes where I opened my hip-flexor muscles to their fullest because, as every yoga teacher loves to remind you, the hips store a lot of emotions. Then I did a session with my favorite psychic, who encouraged me to ask my ancestors for help when I needed it. They did not oblige. So, weeks later, I took the logical next step: I called a shaman.
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She took out a box that looked like something children would be invited to explore at a nature center, and it was full of twigs, rocks, bark, shells, and bones with a few polished crystals thrown in. She told me to pick whichever ones I wanted, and as I selected each, she said, “Oh, that’s a good one for you,” in a serious tone that made me believe she really meant it. Then I lay down on a long padded bench and closed my eyes. E. arranged the stones I’d chosen on my stomach and chest.