Can LLMs Use Real-World Tools? Mercury-2, ELO, and the Umwelten Setup We ran 39 models against real Rivian driving data via MCP tools. Inception's Mercury-2 delivered a perfect 15/15 in 8.6 seconds. Here's the standout model, the ELO narrative rankings, and how the same...

mercury2 is good thefocus.ai/posts/mcp-to...

Sraffa's Gesture, the Crack in the Crystal, and Why the Stochastic Parrot Still Bites Wittgenstein's shift from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations—triggered by Sraffa's Neapolitan gesture—reframes the stochastic parrot debate. The danger isn't that LLMs lack secret under...

thefocus.ai/posts/sraffa...

One great use of these models is to ask them to compare the points made in the stochastic parrots' paper and compare it with Wittgenstein' "On Certainty", and then dig into anecdotes why he flipped the script to think that playing "language games" are required to effective have interiority.

I have 5 kids and feel that mansplaining and tone policing are, for at least the next 10 years of my life, my actual role here on this earth. Looking forward to the "get of my lawn" phase, soon I hope!

If one sees no beneficial use cases for synthetic text then their eyes are simply sewn shut, and thus this person is safely ignored.

macOS already ships age verification

Final fasting update:

Big drop last night! Down 2.2kg -- water, stress, something like that. The body seems to have learned a lot from the last time and is freaking out much less. Everything feels way more relaxed.

One detail that might interest you is that after day 3 or 4 you really get into keto breath, which smells sort of like nail polish remover (acetone). Maybe that would add a little weight to someone claiming to be a "breath-a-tarian"

I do 11 day fasts fairly regularly, so that's the line past which I personally think it's extreme! Past that I start to get tired and slow down. The body goes though a set of different transition states so evolutionary (or whatever) I think it's a fairly normal stress to put the body through.

What did they consider extreme? I'd fully endorse the soul and body cleansing aspects of fasting.

Tufte-style infographic for Day 4 of an 11-day water fast, Cycle 2. Cream background with serif typography. Top status bar shows: weight 89.8 kg (down 3.5 kg total), sleep score 81, readiness 84, lowest heart rate 60 bpm. Center left: line chart of daily weights declining from 93.3 to 89.8 kg over 4 days. Center right: three sparkline charts showing calories burned (2298, 2810, 3063, 1936), sleep hours (6.0, 7.3, 3.6, 6.2), and sleep scores (71, 92, 62, 81). Bottom three columns explain metabolic state (ketones at 1.5-3.0 mmol/L, autophagy upregulated, HGH elevated), physical state (sleep recovering after disruption, HRV low at 24), and what to expect (hunger disappearing, steady energy, mental clarity improving). Data sourced from Oura Ring.

Day 4 of 11 — Ketosis Established

89.8 kg (-3.5 kg total)

Sleep bounced back to 6.2 hrs after yesterday's brutal 3.6 hr norepinephrine night. Hunger fading as ghrelin suppresses. Autophagy ramping up.

vs Cycle 1 Day 4:
• Overnight loss: -1.1 vs -0.4 kg

#fasting #waterfasting #autophagy #oura

We are at it again! Down 5.7kg (though it was a wild funeral/celebration of life where rules got thrown out the window for a few days right before starting) and it's much easier mentally the third time around. The body learns so much, which is getting me thinking that its body learning not mind

Nice golden age you've got here... would be a shame if the historically-rare period of peace led you to distress when history returns to its turbulent norm

Dark Disco in a Brooklyn Warehouse | Tinzo YouTube video by Book Club Radio

Feel it www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYsg...

A report from this retreat is now available. It's a good, thoughtful summary of how AI is changing software engineering. It avoids breathless hype, but it doesn't bury the head in the sand either. www.thoughtworks.com/content/dam/...

You kids forget who invented all this shit. No one is explaining anything to Gen X.

I think at that age they are mostly just figuring out how to use their vocal cords and practicing. I know that moms have different reactions than dads but you learn to "understand the crying" and most of the time its babbling. (Father of 5 reporting in)

I want to believe

I just published a "how to do business ops with claude code" so it's of the moment. thefocus.ai/case-study/a...

I've got a whole series of how Claude code isnt really about code... thefocus.ai/posts/claude...

Donor cycles: a great service that motorcycle enthusiasts provide to society is a steady supply of healthy organs

Database schemas are technical debt from day one.

My "database" is a folder of markdown files.

When the structure needs to change, Claude just... changes it. No migrations. No API versioning.

"But that doesn't scale!"

It scales to exactly what I need.

thefocus.ai/posts/data-f...

Refeed Day 5 Metabolic Restoration infographic for post 11-day water fast. Shows current status (89.8 kg, +0.2 kg overnight, -8.5 kg total), five metabolic processes with illustrations (enzyme restoration, gut microbiome revival, glycogen replenishment, insulin sensitivity, muscle protein synthesis), daily intake targets (100-120g protein, 1400-1600 calories, under 30g carbs, 2.5-3L water), and four-meal timing guide from morning to evening. Tufte-style scientific design with cream background and black serif text.

Today is the day when I start eating more like a normal person. Very exciting!

Getting close to real food -- very exciting and my hunger is starting to return

Claude Code, not Code The real power of Claude Code isn't writing software—it's orchestrating skills for research, newsletters, browser automation, and turning one-off requests into repeatable workflows.

Sorry, Not Sorry — how I use Claude Code for not-code tasks. In the past I would either a) not do it, b) do it manually and poorly, or c) write an annoying little script. Now I just describe what I want. thefocus.ai/posts/claude...

The refeed is a bit wild, but we're getting there!

Everything is getting better so much faster

Morning commute

Doing a dexascan this afternoon to see what actually happened, I'm mostly curious about the visceral fat. But the mental clarity aspects are amazing. I've been so productive.