Seattle Travelog Sat 10/22

Part of a series from the travelog of my trip to Seattle in October 2022.

Away From Keyboard. ABIA, waiting for boarding on Alaska Airlines.

Flight from Austin Bergstrom International Airport was delayed 10 minutes because the ground captain failed to close the communications hatch on the fuselage after pushback. Had to hold on the taxiway for a mechanic.

Seatmates kept the window shade closed. Ugh. Exciting takeoff; I miss the thrill of getting pushed into my seat. Squeezed for elbow room in Coach class. Watched 2 episodes of “Sandman” and played some “The Room 2” on my tablet. No air meals, only pretzels, cookie, and coffee. Alaska Air requires preorder for lunches.

SEATAC International N-Terminal is confusing. No maps or kiosks — still under construction, so it looks like a dead mall, but filled with people. Found the central downstairs escalator to the train to A-Terminal, Ground Transportation. Inter-terminal trains are tunneled underground. Body now on “jet lead” to Pacific Daylight Time.

SEATAC Inter-Terminal subway

My friend “Joe” surprised me at the airport. Hah! I crossed the bridge from the terminal to the parking garage, then found the bridge to the SoundTransit #1 train. Saw some masked guy walking directly toward me from the side, I was about to freak. Oh shit, it’s Joe! Hugs! Thankfully he was there to navigate transit, since the train was shutdown in the middle for track maintenance, with connector buses between sections. I was too far gone to focus.

SoundTransit transfer to bus

35 pounds of luggage on my back, carry-on and daybag (more than my Europe trip). Up 14th Ave from the station on Broadway to his apartment. Seattle is far too three-dimensional. And there are worse hills in this town. But, that view. That. View.

View from CapHill to downtown, typical weather

Dropped off luggage at his place since I couldn’t check-in until 3, then we went down to pickup lunch and coffee, Dingfelder’s Jewish deli — no dine-in, carry-out only (it’s a theme here in Seattle). And of course, heavy rain started as we hit the sidewalk. My backpack’s not as waterproof as my raincoat. Ugh. Lessons.

Northbound platform of SoundTransit 1 line, at Broadway

Found our way up to U-District on train, then over on the 44 bus to Ballard, uphill walk to my weird-ass AirBnB. Check-in, drop off, freshen, then off to meet “Jane” and friends at Gracia for dinner and drinks.

Mole Enchilada and a variation on a Gin and Tonic, at Gracia, in an outdoor dinette.

Still stuffed from lunch. Ate half, kept mostly quiet during conversation. Social scene was overwhelming in the restaurant; couldn’t hear well enough to focus, so I just gave up. We walked to Miro Tea for drinks and coffee, then on to Jane’s house to chill and chat. Homey, warm, creaking floors. Discussions about hikes and rocks and transit. Me phasing in and out. Travel fatigue.

The unused bedroom table in my weird-assed AirBnB

Joe walked me home on his way to his bus, not very far. I unpacked, showered, slept. First day. Seattle. I’m in Seattle.

Turning Cranks With No Thanks

I have seen the greatest minds of my generation copied, co-opted, ripped off, written over, memified, stolen, and misapplied whenever they put their best efforts into the work they post on the internet.

I have no illusions that my own work has become grist for the mill. I’ve seen it. Most of my readers are robots. They steal and repost without attribution. They hotlink and use up my bandwidth allowance. They feed my words into their models as training sets, without permission.

It is no wonder that my creative output has stalled. I share, hoping to make connection and find love and appreciation. To increase my own social capital. It’s why I got into making music. It’s why I learned web design. It’s why I write. It’s why I draw.

But I don’t. Not anymore. It’s a zero-sum game now, for me at least. Creativity was my bread and oil. But now it’s an input to the machine. Original art is now available at the push of a button. And I can’t help but feel culpable just by putting my best out there and making it available to all those voracious vacuum cleaners. I can’t control the bots or influence their masters.

Art is now ephemeral and cheap, because the economy of art is in a race to the bottom. Anybody hoping to make a living from it risks starvation. And I can’t help but feel my generation made this happen, one because generative art is an interesting problem to solve, and two that our own works just fed the grinder.

The fully automated future is just fucked.

Mastodon Test, Formatted

So, I changed the ActivityPub plugin format type back to “Note”, have enabled Media federation, and am testing the conveyance of formatting to Mastodon.

  • Here is an unordered list.
  • This is option two of UL. Are you Elle?
  • And I like 3. Three for me. None for you.
    • Boo-hoo. Nested two.
    • And this too.
    • Oooh-wooh-wooo.

This block of text is in bold.

This block is in italics, but not because it’s Italian. In Spanish, that’s called “letras bastardillas“, but that says nothing about its parentage. Don’t get it twisted. There’s also green in the background. Them fatherless kids is wild.

This block is preformatted text.
Hey kid, I'm a computer.
Stop all the downloadin'.
Help computer.

My Heading

Anywho, we’re doing weird things here at Phaysis Dot Com.

Below is an image of something from the media library.

Gettin’ ready for tHANKSGIVING bok bok gobble boggle

@rufus @rufus wrote this, but you know that already.

And so ends our tour.
Please exit through the gift shop.