592: what MCPs are, how to get AI into Whatsapp, and masculine rites of passage
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I last minute daytripped to Ephemerisle this weekend, the ‘burning man on boats’ in the Sacramento River Delta that’s more like ‘juplaya on boats’ because there’s no central organization. It started as a libertarian seasteading experiment and has since evolved into a delightful week on the Delta with several ‘island’ raftups.
Previously I went for the weekend but learned this year daytrips are possible with the volunteer ferryman’s consent - but of course the event is best experienced over days and with your full contribution! Just have to find someone’s boat who’ll host you.
This Saturday the Sphinx Gate people are hosting another fundraiser at The Loom, which is where the Robot Heart residency was last year. Should be good.
Technology
‘AI powered agents for X’ is in full force now, with one example being travel’s Mindtrip or government’s 3Branches. Both have AIs trained on specific datasets that can presumably give you better answers, or take privileged actions, on your behalf than the general LLM giants.
Greg Isenberg’s explanation of what MCPs are is a tight explainer on a term I’ve been hearing in the AI circles. Basically it’s like a USB translator dongle for all the USB drives of the separate AI agents. But the LLM giants leave it to the service providers to code something that lets their agents speak to the MCP, so it’s less work for them.
The How I AI podcast has some solid actionable tips for using AI in one’s work, like this one for AI growth marketing with the head of growth from ElevenLabs.
It’s instructive to see how one creates such a workflow - it’s like the old B2B SaaS hopscotch workflows I’ve been using for decades, just with fewer steps and more polish. His trick to get an AI agent to pose as Whatsapp Web in order to get into his whatsapp chats is a good one too.
Ideologies
Susannah and Andre are life coaches who were very much #couplegoals for me in the last decade, so I’m saddened to hear they broke up over having kids.
Susannah’s explanation as to why, and how men everywhere suffer from the same issues (around not ‘growing up’ due to a lack of rite of passage’) might be too woo for some, but I saw some truth there relating to my own lived experience.
I’ve been meaning to pick up the Warrior King Magician Lover book she mentions on male archetypes, so now’s the time.
Memes
Somehow I only just now attended my first Stern Grove festival in their stunning wooded amphitheater in SF’s Sunset District. Unlike the other large free folk forward event Hardly Strictly Bluegrass which is funded by a billionaire’s endowment, this one is also free but entirely crowdfunded. I guess we can have nice things!