Happy New Year! 🎊

How was your New Year’s Cleaning 大掃除🧹? The weather here on the west coast was mild so we had all the doors and windows open as we dusted, wiped, scrubbed and swept the house. We paused to eat osechi ryōri throughout the day(s), watched the Japan news, and of course made a trip to the temple to ring the new year in.

The family jūbakko.

Once holidays were over things did not return to normal. My wife and older daughter left for Japan on Jan 5th as my younger daughter trudged off to her first day of school. For the next couple of weeks I was a single dad and things were pretty quiet around here (my daughter got to experience monastery life! 🤣). Meanwhile in Japan my wife surprised my anime loving daughter with a Hatsune Miku-themed hotel room upon arrival in Tokyo. They had adventures in Harajuku and Shibuya, then visiting friends in Osaka and the family grave in Kyoto. (My younger will get her chance to travel with mom in 2 years). The older daughter flew back to Canada on her own (first international flight by herself!), and a week later my wife came back reuniting the family. After dealing with jet lag, things finally returned to normal.

During the whole month I have prepping to leave for London (tomorrow!) for an event I am doing. Expect lots of pics of Ol’ Blighty! I am going to put the GRIV I bought myself for Xmas last April 😇 to the test.

Once I am back in February I need to knuckle down and figure out 2026. Last year was the year of the Snake, a year of exploration. And I did that! And I learned a bunch of things! And some unexpected opportunities came up! Now I have to consider how to arrange some of those things to support myself, my family, my community — and all with wisdom.

This holiday season has been one of deep consideration for me, which explains why I have not been writing (publicly) or have a large list of fun links for you this month. There have been many conversations with friends about values and how we should be approaching the moment (considering the politics of the day) with wisdom. I haven’t been writing about this publicly… I be be still processing, or maybe it actually is the wise thing to not add to the noise. I am no public leader, what can airing my views do to help the situation? Better that I stay in close conversation with those around me and together we navigate our situation together in a positive way.

Once the London trip is wrapped up my schedule will open up for consulting while I consider follow-on events in Italy and Toronto, plus community organizing here in this city. I can’t ever say things aren’t exciting!

Take care! And I hope you have a great 2026. 🍾

— Chad

🖋 From the Blog

Competition Bureau Canada report on Data Portability
How does the Canadian government think about data portability? And how could we apply it to the consumer digital landscape like social media?

🧭 Elsewhere

My annual list of “interesting” conferences for 2026 Link →

Why Buddhism is not a cult 🤣 Short Video →

The above is from Ajahn Kovilo. His “partner-in-crime” delivered one of the most powerful talks about meeting the political moment Video →

Good first ep in The Maybe’s new series on Digital Public Infrastructure with a wild story about how Walmart and Google ended up owning the digital pay rails in India 🫨 Link →

📖 What I’m Reading

Katabasis by RF Kuang (15% Complete)

RF Kuang’s Babel was an amazing book. When Katabasis was released I immediately ordered the Special Edition (unboxing vid here). So far the story is a “dark academia” tale of magick-using Cambridge grad students that journey through Hell in search of their supervisor who they need to complete their PhD and secure recommendation letters for a future job in a vanishing market. Yeah, so, for anyone at grad school, the allegory is a little on the nose 🙃

2026 is the year I leave  GoodReads. 🎉 For the month of January I have been using 📘 Hardcover which has been a delight. Check me out there at hardcover.app/@chadkoh