From the computer of Peter Clark

This podcast killed me. Hilarious.

The thing I find both exciting and shameful about this is that I have got interesting results from so little creative input. The projects I’ve described here are loosely ordered by how much effort I’ve put into them. Not a single project represents more than four hours of my work (plus many more hours of Claude Code churning away by itself).

Just bring back the medieval theme!

By taking away the escape hatch that allows families to apply to schools across the city, the district is abandoning its status quo, forcing it to make every neighborhood school worth attending in hopes of increasing districtwide enrollment and academic outcomes. Su rallied a majority of the board behind that more restrictive approach, even as some parents warned it could push families out of the district before neighborhood schools improve.

Sex House is an American reality television parody web series produced by Onion Digital Studios. Its ten episodes were released on YouTube from July 12 to September 13, 2012. A parody of reality television series such as MTV's The Real World, Sex House follows three men and three women who move into a large house called the "Sex House" together for three months to have sex with each other. They soon realize that they are trapped within the house, which is quickly deteriorating as their health declines, and they have to fight against the show's producers and host to survive. It was lauded by critics, who praised it for its dark satire, its editing, tone, and camerawork being accurate to an actual reality television series, and its cast.

Pascal contends that a rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and should strive to believe in God. The reasoning for this stance involves the potential outcomes: if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.

I’ve always wondered about this, how funny that this wasn’t a unique thought of mine or anything but something thought about since ~1650s

Sometimes I open my copy of Richard Scarry’s classic children’s book Busy, Busy Town just to remind myself how the world ought to function. One of over 300 books Scarry published, Busy, Busy Town is about the world of work, depicting all of the animals going about their jobs. Everything is refreshingly straightforward. At the garage, “when something is wrong with the motor, the mechanic fixes it.” The painter paints the walls. “On Main Street you can buy medicine, tools, apples, and oranges.” When there is a pothole, workers from the city come and fill it.

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.

From this month, it will be expanded to A&E units. It means patients, loved ones and staff in busy emergency departments will be able to call a dedicated phone number to trigger an urgent review if a patient’s condition is deteriorating and they think their concerns are not being listened to.