Optimizing AI Token Spend, while Minimizing Expense This past weekend I conducted an experiment on myself as much as on a machine. Anthropic's new Claude Fable model had been available to me for three days, and the announcement had already come down that access would soon move out of standard subscription allowances and onto metered usage credits today. The clock was running. Rather than ration my remaining allocation cautiously, I decided to do the opposite. I resolved to sp

Last week, the United States marked two hundred and fifty years since its founding, and it is worth remembering what actually provoked the founders. The colonists who boarded ships in Boston Harbor in December 1773 were not protesting a large tax. The duty on tea was three pence a pound, and the Tea Act had in fact made tea cheaper. What they refused was the arrangement itself: a small, metered charge on every pound, levied by a distant monopoly, with no voice in the terms, a