Stories

I had the best Ramen I have ever had last night at a place appropriately called “Kin Ramen”. Like so many things for me in this moment the meal was a sort of milestone reached in a much longer journey that began as it does for many youth in this country with Maruchan Ramen, but it was also the accumulation of meaning, purpose, and flavor in other richer ways over the last 40+ years.

The week ended on a thick note. Audrey was sitting in her office and she caught what she said looked like a large bird flying by. It wasn’t a bird. It was a person. She texted me what just happened, and thank god, because of her poor eyesight, she couldn’t see details of this beautiful human being lying on the garden rooftop 30 floors below. I hesitated in writing this post and sharing this story, as it is a very dark one. However, this is my domain. My space. I won’t be sharing outside on...

I was programmed from an early age that New York City is bad. I fully understand that in the 1970s and 1980s New York was a very different place, but as I see the same programming flowing from my elders on social media in 2024, I’ve learned this has very little to do with New York City. I lived in New York City in 2017 and 2018 for the first time, which I enjoyed, but this time living here, I am falling deeply in love with the city I’ve spent a lot of time fearing. As I rode the 1 from Col...

I am here. I reached that place I saw in my minds eye all those years ago. Those undeniable images I had in my head back in the 1980s have been realized. I live in NYC. I enjoy my career. I get to tackle large scale problems. I make good money. I have savings. I am married. I have a kid who is getting ready to graduate from University, which I was able to pay for. I am there. I am writing this post to remind myself that I need to accept that I have made it. Breathe. Breathe.

I have recently started a new ritual where I begin my Sunday mornings off listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Before I look at my cell phone or flip open my laptop. As the kettle is cooking water for my tea–I turn on the album. I find that the album listened to from end to end to be a soothing end (or start) to my week. While listening to the album has end to end experience provided to me by the band, it is also my personal experience with the album over the years that soothe ...

I asked Audrey for her latest thoughts on the groundswell of artificial intelligence (AI) fever everyone is suffering from right now. She has always been my grounding rod in technology, and while I still find myself swept up in currents from time to time, she can almost always see through the stories. When I asked about why the AI story is being told right now, she answered simply that it was about labor in this moment. It isn’t that AI is a thing, or the average people’s lives are being s...

I find it hard to continue working in tech and taking things seriously. I genuinely want to use technology wisely, make a good living, and live my life. I historically have gotten caught up in doing things the right way, where many around me seem fine with riding the waves of the day, cycle, and latest trend. As I watch the FTX trial wrap up with a verdict of guilty on all counts, I can’t help but think people will once and for all see through crypto hustle. But no, it is the opposite, the...

I regularly fall into the belief that work is real. I end up caring too much about some technology, corporation, or other capitalist song and dance. I do not love money. I really enjoy what it can afford me, but I don’t dwell on it and chase it like many other people do. I refuse to live each day focused on getting rich, scamming or taking from others, but I do enjoy making good money, and enjoy having a top-tier hustle to keep me living the best version of my life. I first learned to hust...

I went to bed pretty early last night. It was about 8:30 PM when I laid down, and about 10:00 PM before I fell asleep. As I was waking up at about 5:45 AM, I laid there thinking that going to bed was just preemptively sleeping in. I love to sleep in. I am not a morning person, although in the second half of my life I realized that I am a better person when I get up. So it makes sense for me to also begin to retire earlier in the evening.

About 3-5 times a week I get overwhelmed with the scope of things in my work. Things are just big. There is a lot going on. There are many moving parts, people, all built on a whole lot of history. I find myself feeling like I am drowning in the details and escape multiple times a week. However, thankfully, each time, within hours I am able to find a solution to whatever led to me feeling overwhelmed, and I was able to connect the dots in a way that resolved things for me. While the feelin...

I love writing. I need to write. But once again I find myself unable to write. Well, I’ve been writing in my notebook, fleshing out some ideas, but I haven’t been publishing anything on any of my domains. This is mostly due to recently recovering being chewed up by the content factory that is expected within tech startups, but it is also the shift in the social media landscape, forcing me to ask the hard questions regarding why I publish stories. I am brutally honest with myself about thes...

I recently saw a meme on social media from a friend about how backwards it is for us humans to work inside in offices under fluorescent lights. I’ve seen several variations of this meme over the years from people I know who live in small town America. I want to workshop this concept because work in a skyscraper in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, but also because I am in the Contrafabulist business, I want to understand, explore, and call out w...

I have read more books in the last five years than in the previous 40 years of my life. I have always loved to read, but have always managed to come up with a range of excuses why I couldn’t. Television, movies, and the Internet just don’t cut it for me like they used to, and honestly there are way more nutrients available via books, than anything I can find online today. Reading is nourishing, but it also has really helped me deprogram much of ...

I have long struggled and written about the people I leave behind in my life. There are a long list of people I have moved away from, severed communication with, and just evolved beyond over the years. Honestly, very, very, very few people can keep up with my mercurial approach to living, my appetite for travel and learning things, and more recently my determination to do the hard work of unraveling the programming of my youth has left even more people behind.

I’ve done a lot of thinking lately. The 3rd anniversary of Isaiahs death has me reassessing everything around me. The last three years have been surreal. The covid pandemic dictated the shape of how I see the world around me, but it was something in which Isaiah’s death had taken to new levels. The world always has seemed a little off to me, but in May and June of this year, everything seemed off and in need of shaking up. So I did just that—I shook the Etch A Sketch with all of the powers...

During my recent wanderings in Oakland, I came across a parking sign that promised a “Contactless” experience, which got me thinking about the concept of contactless in our world today. It’s a term we hear quite often, either explicitly stated or implied by barriers, plexiglass, or the absence of human presence. As usual, I have some questions about this phenomenon:

I have been thinking about the storytelling surrounding the recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) a lot lately. I just gave a talk at a company retreat about the importance of storytelling, and how all dimensions of the SVB situation is about telling and believing in stories. From our belief in money, markets, banks, to our continued belief in technology and venture capital, the recent goings on was all about stories. A significant part of this storytelling involves how we see t...

I am struggling lately. I made it through the kid passing, covid, and managed to quit drinking, lose a bunch of weight, and get healthier, only to be really, really struggling in this moment. I want to make sure and document this moment in the calendar, if nothing else just to be able to look back and remind myself of the ups and downs of being Kin Lane. I have a well-paid job, amazing team, and yet I am struggling with showing up to work and giving a shit. It has been about 3 weeks now, a...

I was watching a documentary on Fat the other night on PBS. They were conducting a study on a tribe in Africa to better understand why they don’t struggle with obesity and heart disease. The long story short is that our challenges with obesity is wrapped in a mix of our genes, processed foods, and our sedentary existence. The tribe in Africa is just always on the go, and they aren’t eating food that is as processed as ours is, and they have been doing this for many, many generations. I am ...

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I setup Mastodon instances for my personal and professional domains. Over the last month I’ve invested time into understanding how this federated world works and doesn’t work, and began doing the hard work of building community in this new space. Numerous folks from my Twitter community have come over to Mastodon, but many I know have opted to stay in the Twitterverse, or opted to join other communities for a variety of reasons. The main reason I’ve seen is th...

We made it as far as Coalinga, CA, formerly known as Coaling Station A, before dark. This is where we’ll be spending two nights here before we continue on through Bakersfield to the edges of Death Valley. As one journeys to Death Valley you have to suspend your traditional views of the world, and no better place to do that than amongst the almond and orange orchards looking out across Interstate 5 outside of Coalinga, CA.

As we all sit and watch the dumpster fire that is Twitter it can be easy to cheer on the demise of this platform. Although as I stare into the multi-color flames I can’t help but think about tall the work we’ve done on the Twitter plantation of the years, and the role it plays it our world. One are that comes to mind is how many of us received public health news as Covid gripped the world via Twitter. I spent months working on a Covid tracking w...

I made a conscious decision in 1997 to immerse myself in the incoming technological apparatus that capitalism was unleashing on the world. Until this moment in time I had purposefully avoided capitalism, a career, and understanding how business was applying technology. I had spent the previous decade actively working to subvert the system from the outside-in, and for me to have the impact I wanted on society I knew that I had to get closer to the machine and operate from within, otherwise ...

I haven’t been writing about my apocalyptic upbringing lately because for the most part I’ve moved beyond it. Writing here on my blog and pondering the subject since the 2016 election has put me in a pretty sweet spot when it comes to living life and not stressing about the programming I was raised with. However, recently a story was shared with me about someone I grew up with sharing rantings about how the apocalypse was just around the corner and wanted to make sure this person I was tal...

I was driving my friend and fellow API conspirator Fran Mendez around Oakland this week while he was in town from Spain. I regularly drive people around Oakland, and most have had some experience in the city, but most have experienced West Oakland, and have very little awareness of the redlining that has shaped the city. Most people just see poverty and trash and assume a traditional racist stance and think that the people living here have chosen to live like this. When in reality, it has ...