The week to week rhythm of my newsletters is giving me structure and purpose in this moment. It’s funny that when I tell people I produce four email newsletter every Sunday and Monday, they always remark how much work it must be, and question the value. Where I feel the exact opposite, and crafting the newsletters for my personal, professional, and company domains leaves me feeling in more control of my week, more aware of what matters to me, and feeling like I would be completely lost without doing this work each and every week.

I love sitting down to plan and write my newsletters. I do not use AI at all for my Kin Lane or API Evangelist newsletters, but I do use Claude to edit and both my internal and public Naftiko Manifest newsletters. I intentionally want my personal voice muted in the corporate ones. It is still there, but softer and more robotic. I also use Tensorflow Machine Learning to produce the Algorotoscope images for my personal and professional newsletters.

The process of outlining, writing, editing, and publishing all four of these newsletters allows me to get a handle on what is Kin Lane, API Evangelist, and Naftiko each and every week. I just couldn’t do it all without the writing.

A story about the mapping of ship activity in Tokyo’s Bay was mind candy for me this week. I love systems, and thinking about surveillance tracking at this scale, especially with shipping related tracking in an automated way using Automatic Identification System (AIS). I find my brain to be soothed after reading such a story. Tracking, like any digital tracking can be used for good and bad purposes, and I am always keen to learn how industries are doing it well, and I find maritime systems to be particularly interesting and thought provoking to study.

New York City has been very cold this week.  The snow has lingered in between and after two very big snowstorms. Walking in Central Park each morning is pretty treacherous, but we are thankful that we get to do it. The snow has been deep. The paths have been icy. But the city and the park has been beautiful to walk through as part of our morning ritual.

The Riverside Park along the Hudson River was very cold this week. But Poppy absolutely loves the deep snow along the park trails. She hilariously loves running through the snow chomping at it like “Rottigator”. She makes me walk through the deep spots with her, sinking up to my knees in the snow, trying to keep up with her, while I get some serious cardio.

Riding the bike in Central Park is very cold this week, but I am super thankful we’ve managed to get some rides in. I am very out of shape not having had any exercise in weeks. It feels so very good to be out there moving and peddling my ass off, even with the e-assist on the hills. Poppy has gotten lots of attention and a couple of hot dogs as we enjoyed the cold days.

I love having a kiddo getting their library sciences degree. Kaia regularly sends stories to me, and recently shared one on discard studies, which looks at the wider social, economic, political, cultural, and material systems that shape waste and wasting. I absolutely love looking at things like this from different angles, questioning why it exists. This is something you just don’t see much about in the mainstream realm, and it takes people existing within academic tracks to think this deeply about the regular world around us.

“I think the defining line for who we are in the future will be drawn between people who spend their lives online vs. those who spend there lives offline.” - Me

I have come across them before, but this week I found myself sitting with the hand-drawn infographics by W. E. B. Du Bois again. His work contains city and rural Negro population, assessed value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Georgia negroes, saves and free negroes, land owned by negroes in Georgia, and other compelling hand-drawn infographics. The story showcased other photographic, as well as his unique infographics, speaking to the power of visual storytelling when it came to helping define what it meant to be black in that moment.

Audrey’s nephew Emmett came down from Hampshire College, a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts this weekend. It is always good to have guests. Poppy loves it. We ordered sandwiches in from the Milano Market, learned about what he was studying this term and what he was up to in the city, and enjoyed a “fart walk” in Riverside Park.

I cannot believe we are bombing Iran. This is some Déjà Fucking Vu. I swear that Republicans have  standard playbook of punishing people of color, punishing poor people, make life easier for the rich, and starting a war in the Middle East. I just can’t even with this administration. I just can’t with the military budget, warmongering, and killing of innocent people right now.

The widow of a friend who passed away from cancer a couple years back published a poem of his about New York City—we miss you Curt.

My buddy Norm is deep in winter slumber. It took a few days for the deep snow on his branches to melt this week. Poppy and I stop along the road and talk at him when doing our ride, but this photo is always from below as Audrey, Poppy, and I walk by as part of our early morning ritual—with this particular leg on the way back as we walk under the bridge and pass Norm.

I am traveling this week, and heading to Bend, Oregon to hang lout with my siblings (the nice ones) in celebration of our late mother’s birthday. I am doubly stoked cause my kiddo is coming this time. I will be looping through Seattle to Bend for the weekend, and will fly back to Seattle—spending the night on either side in Seattle, right behind her apartment in a AirBnB I found.

A guy stopped us in Central Park a while back to ask us why we rode around the park. He said that he had told his friends how this menacing looking guy was riding around looking like a Nazi with his Rottweiler. I was taken aback, but kindly said it was probably the helmet. Which he responded no, it was the sidecar. Which sent me down a sidecar rabbit hole. It is interesting how people see the world, and it was the first negative opinion I’ve gotten in almost a year of riding that has been all big smiles and joy!

"Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Our models do have a strong congruence with the world. Our models fall far short of representing the real world fully." — Donella H. Meadows