It was a lovely week all around in NYC. The weather keeps acting like it is going to switch to fall, but the temperature keeps coming back up. It is just that sweet spot in the 70s, and sometimes 80s. Rides in the park have been disrupted a bit due to work related activities, but overall the rides in central park have been stunning—with just a handful of squirrel infractions.
I try to block off 9:00 to 11:00 AM every morning for rides, but when calls get in the way, Poppy patiently and sometimes not so patiently waits for me to finish. I have put almost 3000 miles on my bike this summer, with numerous tires along the way. I am super thankful I get to do this with Poppy in such a beautiful city as New York.
I am still making my way through the Moral Codes, Designing Alternatives to AI, by Alan F. Blackwell, but I found one sentence in the book thought provoking, leaving me laying on the couch staring off into the skyline—“In an information economy and a computerized society, abstraction is the source of control over your own life, and potentially the source of power over others.”
Audrey and I finished listening to The Fort Bragg Cartel, Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, by Seth Harp. I was born at Fort Bragg. My father lived, worked, and died there. I have never been, but this emotional connection with the story, combined with the backdrop of what the current administration is doing with our military in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland—leaves me pretty concerned for the present and future. This shit is out of control.
I am not on Bluesky as much lately, but I did agree with Tressie McMillan Cottom this week, when she said, “I think we’re really going to have to do a lot more of this. A massive deprogramming so that people can read more than ten words at a time without anxiety.” So very true. Reading has been a key to unlocking my anxiety, as well as minimizing screen time. But it is the reading part that I am most interested in. There is no way we can unwind what is giving us anxiety without reading. We can’t.
https://bsky.app/profile/tressiemcphd.bsky.social/post/3m2etdy26us2o
I wrote a blog post on Kin Lane this week. I haven’t written there in a while. But this week I found myself wanting to unpack thoughts around how I’ve managed to turn down the volume on some of the narratives that were put in my head from my older brothers. I find that our parents and older siblings have an opportunity to lay down tracks in our head that can get stuck on repeat many, many years later.
Every morning we walk to Central Park. Poppy can be off leash, and we make sure she gets a good hour long walk. It is something that has become a magical ritual. After we cross a bridge, Audrey has been taking the same picture of Poppy and the park every day since we moved here. I have made it a habit to take pictures of her taking the picture, producing some pretty good shots this week.
My business partner Jerome came up to New York for an all day workshop this week. I think this is our fourth monthly workshop, which are always jam packed and exciting as we do the work to build Naftiko. Things are good. The business is getting established. I am enjoying the scope of our work. It keeps me busy. It is the kind of work that I like. It is building. It is talking to people It is understanding complex systems. It is the type of work I feel I was meant to do. I am living in New York, happily married, one child, one Rottweiler, and building an interesting and international business. I couldn’t be happier. I am thankful.
