I write this week's newsletter as I roll into a sunny Monday morning, after one of those weekends that leave you feeling alive and blessed. I got back from Amsterdam late Thursday evening, and it only took me just a couple steps on Friday to get my NYC rhythm back, with Saturday and Sunday being everything June promises to be.

Audrey, Poppy, and I set out Monday morning for our normal Central Park walk, but instead of looping around the baseball fields and coming back home we headed up the bridle path towards the Upper West Side for the Sunday Farmer Market. Poppy was able to access some new off leash territory, including going under one of our favorite bridges.

After taking full advantage of the nice bathrooms by the Shakespeare in the park theater we headed into the Upper West Side for a coffee on a park bench to the north of the Natural History Museum. When done with our cofee we headed over to the market which offered an amazing range of fruit, vegetbales, breads, cheeses, meats, and other items we filled our bags (which Audrey carried) with. Taking note of additional items we'd come back for next week.

Afterwards we headed over to the West Side Park and found our usual evening walking path home. Once we got back, Poppy got to work on her newly acquired Bison bone, me on some fruit, granola, and yogurt, and I don't remember what Audrey ate. Smoothy if I recall? It was one of those perfect 3 hour NYC experiences that leave you feeling very blessed and fortunate to be alive in this city.

I finished Cyberlibertarianism, The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology, by David Golumbia this last week. The book has completed destroyed the foundation I had built my belief in the Internet and Web on, completing was was set in motion by David's The Cultural Logic of Computation book back in 2015. This is a good thing. It comes at just the right time as I am doing the work to assess what the hell is happening with technology.

I also finished Empire of Normality, Neurodiversity and Capitalism by Robert Chapman. Another worthy addition to my deprogramming list of books. It is the best coherent narrative of the jumbled and broken thoughts I have around how capitalism is chewing us all up in this moment. The book thoughtfully walks you through how we got here from the industrial age and through the evolution of our medical industry and pharmaceutical evolution in the 20th Century. Where we've managed to lose our humanity through just seeing us as working or broken machines in the service of capitalism.

I wrote this week about what I was feeling as I came out of the Claude Mines this week. It is what I call my state of min(e)d over the last six months as I immersed myself into working with artificial intelligence. It isn't good. You find yourself separated from what makes you human. It shifts your priorities away from what matters to the people around you. I've gone from 80% Claude Mine Work and 20% Human Wrok to 20% Claude Mine Work and 80% Human Work in the last week. I'll get back to reading and writing more. I'll keep one foot in the mines to remind me of what is happening to many of the people I work with, but it isn't a future I will be celebrating.

Claude was searching for some patterns across my API Evangelist blog this last week, and when asked about the origins of the blog, it said I had created the blog while living in Arkansas. Uh, no? I was living in Oregon, which I guess could be mistaken for Arkansas some times. I realized how some of my blog is missing key portions of my story, so I got to work beginning to fill in the cracks. AI is just a pattern search engine, and if I am using to search my body of work, I want to make sure there are as few cracks as possible, otherwise AI likes to fill things in with halluciantions.

While out and about with Poppy in Central Park and midtown Manhattan this weekend I made time to connect with "Meena", one of my team members from Postman. Meenakshi had joined the developer relations teams as I took over the leadership, and later joined my open technologies team. She weathered the covid pandemic on my team alongside 40+ other individuals, forming a bond that has seemed to transcend our time at the company. She got to meet Poppy in person and see us riding around the city. I wish you the best in the next part of your journey Meena, and look forward to seeing you in NYC again.

I wrote last week's newsletter while in Amsterdam, but wanted to also reflect on my time there. It was exactly the type of event I needed as I shift back into my API Evangelist ways. The conference venue and city made for some amazing conversations. It was exactly the human connection I needed as I came out of the Claude mines. It reminded me why I do API Evangelist. I am thankful for Mehdi and APIDays for always making me feel like my work matters and I am someone special. I also like that most of the people had no clue who I was, but engaged with me about their work in the ways that matter most to what I do. I'll be headed to Munich in a couple of weeks and look forward to more of that European energy to balance out what is happening in the US right now.

I was staying right across the water from downtown Amsterdam. There are numerous ferries that will take you back and forth for free. I managed to navigate this all days I was there except for the final evening where after a lovely dinner by myself downtown I stepped on the wrong ferry. I was standing on the bow looking out at the sunset behind the buildings and shipping cranes to the right, when the ferry turned and headed into the sunset and began heading out to sea. After 10 minutes it did manage to come to the shore, which I just got back on and rode back to the original destination. Which I then got back on the right ferry to my hotel. I couldn't think of a better metaphor to represent this moment. It was beautiful.

"This boat that we just built is just fine - And don't try to tell us it's not. The sides and the back are divine - It's the bottom I guess we forgot." — Shel Silverstein