What I'm up to - May 2026 | Philip Ilic Thomas

My monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media:

What I did in April

Visited NYC briefly. Discovered a new cafe I like called WatchHouse - they even happened to be serving coffee from my favorite farm. (Suited continues to be a solid go-to and SEY has vibes).
Stopped by Tucson for a weekend and learned about agave death spires. My flight got delayed because the FAA banned parallel arrivals at SFO - end of an aviation era!
At Chroma, I built a launch integration with Stripe Projects - a new agentic provisioning protocol. I gave a talk on it at Stripe Sessions conference last week - take a look at the recording on YouTube (100k+ views!).
I published Agent experience about optimizing applications for AI.
Saw Mere Mortals, the ballet by Floating Points.
Started tennis lessons.

Articles: Scaling Serendipity on the social fabric in cities (I'm mentioned). "Perhaps consuming a few dozen book pages a day should become the new 10,000 daily steps — a basic foundation of activity to maintain cognitive fitness." Sponge cities and climate change. "Is driving the next great culture war battlefield?" (Occasional reminder that Shinkansen trains have moved 10 billion people over 60 years with zero fatalities). "Japan is one of the only countries to have privatized parking." Blackbird Spyplane's Ultimate Bay Area Guide.
Videos: Inside Floating Points' mighty Sunflower Sound System. The Little-Known World Of Minelaying Submarines.
Books: Reading the new Noma Guide to Building Flavour (my Amazon review says "Noma delivers a punch (of flavor)"). I revisited the Dishoom and Silo cookbooks, which are two of my personal favorites.