It is cold. It has been really cold this entire week. No bike rides. No walks. Just staying indoors and working, reading, and writing. I miss our morning walks in the park, and our bike rides later in the day too. The snow and ice is old, and the city is quite a mess. I did manage to get out twice this week for a talk and brunch, but the rest has just been staying inside. I am thankful though, that we have a nice spacious and warm apartment with an amazing view, so I really can’t complain.

I went to see Ken Burns talk about the filmmaking behind his Revolutionary War documentary. It was exactly the antidote I needed for how the week began. The news of Alex Pretti’s death and hypocritical response by the right in this country regarding his 2nd amendment rights hit me hard.  Listening to Ken Burns talk about the filmmaking that went into his documentary and hearing them all talk about the importance of this work in the 250 year anniversary of the founding of this country, has breathed some new life into my writing and storytelling.

My head is full of new ways I can unpack my upbringing that was steeped in Revolutionary War culture. From the classroom to my home life, I consumed a lot of images from the Revolutionary War period, and the art historians I saw on stage with Ken Burns did an amazing job in unpacking how 99% of the images we’ve consumed about the time period were created afterwards. And these images were all part of our indoctrination into not what this country is, but what white supremacy and patriarchy was all about, and I found how contemporary artists have used “Washington Crossing the Delaware” a very compelling look at what I experienced, but something that you could do to every single image we’ve been fed over the years.

I had a conversation with a friend recently about burning out and leaving tech, so I wanted to work throughly ideas again about why I am staying in technology. This is a conversation I regularly have with myself, and I need constant reminding why the hell I stay here. I do have a purpose and reason for staying here, and I have a whole visual image in my head of what technology is doing to us personally and professionally. In short, it is the stories and the money. I like finding the human stories in here amongst the machines and circuit boards. I also have ratcheted my career up to a level where I make good money and that is hard to walk away from. So storytelling and talking to people here in the digital factory is how I make sense of things, but also perpetually work to not lose my soul as a stay within the machine with my API Evangelist and Naftiko work.

If you hadn’t noticed the weird images I use across my Kin Lane and API Evangelist newsletter and blog, it is OK, you aren’t alone. Most people probably don’t think a lot about them beyond, boy that is weird once or twice. This is how I think most people go through the world. Encountering things they might not understand and not responding with any sort of curiosity for why something is. This is is why I do my algorotoscope images to try and get people stop even for a moment and think about the bias that exists across everything we do online. Well, the primary reason I do this images to to get me to stop even more a moment and think about the bias. If you do as well, AWESOME!. I appreciate the few people who do notice the images, click on the link to algorotoscope in the footer of my site, and share with me their thoughts. However, I also understand it is also much more comfortable not to think about these things.

I have some new algorotoscope filters I am currently developing using images of the Boston Massacre. I was captivated by the drawings themselves, but also the variances in the drawings because at the time there was no copyright, and different people recreated the image on their own and had a bunch of copies printed. Not all were just stealing to make more money, it was also a way to just get the word out. I love this. I am training three separate TensorFlow machine learning models right now on three separate variations of the Boston Massacre drawings. I don’t have it applied to any images yet, but I am looking forward to what effect it has on some of my photos, but also applying to some of the photos I am seeing in the news right now. 

You hear a lot of things in the technology industry said over and over, and one thing ee keep saying that tech is "democratizing" things, but when I pick up my head and look around me I don't really feel like anything we've applied that word to over the last 25 years has come anywhere close to being true--and I don't just mean for you, but for us. I will definitely be working to scrub this word from my vocabulary as I talk about anything to do with APIs. It is meaningless. It is harmful.

Audrey shared a story about how scientists are making the power of invisibility a reality — I love this kind of work. Because it reflects our storytelling in books, television, and movies, but really smart people are actually able to find ways of bringing this stuff to life in small and actually useful ways. I wish that we could fund more universities to just let smart people run with this kind of shit with it not being about patents and other things. Just let people explore, and maybe there will be a useful application, or maybe not. Either way people get to explore their dreams, and we get good stories.

While heading into The Met this week to see Ken Burns after work there were three animals out front that caught my attention. There were more, but these three were right out front looking pretty cool in the evening light. It reminded me of the Redwall book series that my siblings were interested in when they were kids back in the 1990s.

I particularly like the pigeon one that looked like some of the rough old-timers you run into around the city that may or may not cut you to get some food. I loved the lighting on them, and stood for about 10 minutes after I left soaking up the vibes from them as I stood in the cold waiting for my Uber to come and take me home to the warmth.

Audrey and I had an amazing brunch at Super Nice Pizza the Sunday before writing this newsletter. It was my first breakfast pizzeria, which was amazing!! The egg drippings. The crust. OMG. It was so good. I never ever thought I’d be eating pizza for breakfast that wasn’t leftovers. The pancakes which Audrey had were also amazing, and triggered some strange memories of pancakes at some backwoods diner in the 1970s, where the pancakes were solid and cooked in a cast iron. They really were perfect.

Every Indian is a disciplin’d Soldier. Soldiers of this Kind are always wanted in the Colonies in an Indian War; for the European Military Discipline is of little Use in these Woods. - Benjamin Franklin to James Parker, March 20, 1751