Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is expanding his real estate portfolio with the purchase of a $79 million mansion in South Florida. And it’s next door to a home he paid $68 million for in June.

Bloomberg reported that the seven bedroom, 14 bath estate is located in the exclusive Indian Creek area of Miami. The man-made barrier island is referred to as “Billionaire Bunker” and is home to notable residents including investor Carl Icahn, ex-NFL star Tom Brady, singer Julio Iglesias, and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

Bezos reportedly paid 7.1% below a May listing price of $85 million. A Zillow listing for the property put the Zestimate in the $70 million range.

Bloomberg reported that the sale was handled by realtors Dina Goldentayer and Danilo Tavares with Douglas Elliman.

Goldentayer posted a reel on Instagram (below) celebrating the sale, but there’s no mention of Bezos. She called Indian Creek “an unmatched residential experience” in the clip, which showed the mansion and surrounding golf course.

The mansion spans roughly 19,000 square feet on 1.84 acres and includes a pool, theater, library and wine cellar, according to the listing.

Bezos, who is worth $156 billion, also owns luxury properties in Washington, D.C., Beverly Hills, Calif., and Maui.

He also owns a 417-foot, triple-masted sailing yacht that reportedly cost $500 million.

It’s time for the second act at a beloved Seattle movie theater.

The former Cinerama is now SIFF Cinema, as new signs went up Thursday on the Belltown building that SIFF took over from the estate of Paul Allen in May.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), SIFF called it an honor to put its name where the Cinerama signs once hung.

“We do not take for granted how special it is to see SIFF’s name on the exterior of this iconic building,” the @SIFFNews account wrote. “And we can’t wait to welcome you back into this space. Stay tuned, stay cool, stay (choco-) poppin’ — more to come soon.”

X user Myra Kohn posted more photos and videos of the signs going up at 2100 4th Ave. The Cinerama signs came down on Oct. 5.

SIFF won’t have to wait long to welcome people back — the GeekWire Summit is taking place at the theater on Oct. 19. Our annual technology conference, now in its 12th year, will be a half-day format, focused on the new era of artificial intelligence.

In addition to in-depth panels and fireside chats, this year’s GeekWire Summit will include unique opportunities to connect, and will feature a surprise movie screening and, of course, the theater’s world-famous chocolate popcorn!

Check out the Summit agenda and get tickets here.

SIFF announced on May 5, at its Seattle International Film Festival, that it was purchasing Cinerama from Allen’s estate. The acquisition by the nonprofit film and education organization ended more than three years of uncertainty for the historic downtown theater.

The Cinerama originally opened in 1963, just a year after Seattle hosted the World’s Fair. As suburban multiplexes eventually gained in popularity, Cinerama’s ticket sales declined. By the late 1990s the single-screen theater had fallen into disrepair and was in danger of being demolished.

In 1998, Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist, stepped in to save a place that he loved as a child. After a multi-million-dollar renovation, the Cinerama reopened in 1999. The theater became a destination for blockbuster first-run movies, cult classics, and several film festivals, including the Science Fiction, Classic Films, Horror, and 70mm festivals.

Allen poured more money into the theater over the years, before his passing in October 2018. The Cinerama closed in February 2020 for repairs on what was called “normal wear and tear” at the time, but the closure became more permanent when COVID-19 dealt a crippling blow to businesses that relied on being together in public.

The trademarked Cinerama name and the licensing agreement to use it went away with the sale to SIFF. SIFF said Allen’s Vulcan Inc. took possession of the signs and will find their next home.

Megan Rapinoe’s reign is drawing to a close. But the global soccer star’s influence and activism is sure to continue to be felt on and off the pitch.

After 11 seasons with Seattle’s OL Reign — and a decorated international career that includes two Olympic medals and two World Cup titles — Rapinoe is playing her final regular season home match on Friday night at Lumen Field.

It’s been a weeklong celebration in Seattle in Rapinoe’s honor, and the party will continue at the stadium where a record 28,000+ fans are expected to take in numerous activities and tributes tied to the “Forever Rapinoe” celebration.

Beyond her prolific goal-scoring career, Rapinoe is celebrated for her outspoken commitment to social justice causes including issues related to race, the LGBTQ community, equal pay for women and more.

With that legacy in mind, we reached out to a number of leaders from Seattle’s tech community, to ask how Rapinoe has inspired them and what lessons they draw from her to apply to their own lives and careers.

Keep reading for their answers. And take note that the GeekWire website is paying tribute to Rapinoe, too, with a color swap on this eventful day.

Laura Clise is founder and CEO of Intentionalist, a Seattle-based startup that promotes small companies.

“Being a true ally isn’t about using your platform when it’s easy — it’s about using your platform and privilege when it’s hard — when there’s the very real possibility that doing so might come at a cost. I remember the days, weeks, and months that followed Megan’s decision to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. Her resolve was rooted in principle — in the belief that it’s important to try to do what is right, and that it’s our responsibility to take action in the face of injustice.

“Megan has long inspired me because she shows up, walks the talk, passes the mic, and is willing to fight for what is right. I feel incredibly fortunate to have known and had the opportunity to collaborate with her earlier in her career, and know that her impact will only grow as she eventually embarks on her next chapter.”

• Read more on the Intentionalist blog: 15 diverse small businesses that embody Megan Rapinoe’s social justice activism

Lauren Sato is entrepreneur-in-residence at Seattle hardware startup studio Conduit Venture Labs.

“The way that Megan has led from her values without compromise or apology on and off the field has resonated deeply with me. As a woman in leadership we are often held to an impossibly high standard and that can wear on the best of us. Watching Megan persist over the years across so many moments (her solidarity with Colin Kapernick) and challenges (the USWNT fight for equal pay) has genuinely kept me going. 

“A lot of people are saying that women’s sports are having a moment. I hope they’re wrong. I hope this is so much more than a moment. Megan played a huge role in bringing the power of women’s sports to the world, and we are fortunate that she calls Seattle home. I’m sure whatever she chooses to do next will continue her impact on our city and humanity. I personally look forward to continuing to cheer her on as she moves into this next chapter.”

Heather Redman is co-founder and managing partner at Seattle venture capital firm Flying Fish.

“She’s a great role model in so many ways, but I’d have to say that her work on pay equity and creating opportunity deep into women’s soccer internationally is really a standout. I think she’s been very effective at building a power base and brand from which to speak and drive action on a number of fronts including this one. There are some key lessons there. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”

Chrissy Vaughn is senior director of public relations for Smartsheet, a Bellevue, Wash.-based work management software company.

“As a leader, I strive to be a team player and a team builder who’s not afraid to challenge the status quo. On the days when that becomes challenging — because, let’s face it, we’ve made progress, but being a woman in tech means my voice hasn’t always been heard — it’s inspiring to see public figures like Rapinoe. She has an unabashed and seemingly fearless confidence to be her authentic self, speak her mind and use her voice to advocate for equity off the field, all while excelling to the highest levels of her profession on the field.

“Rapinoe and the USWNT have also been trailblazers in knowing their own worth and tenaciously advocating to be compensated for it. Being one of the 58,000 fans chanting “Equal pay! Equal pay!” in the Parc Olympique Lyonnais stadium after the U.S. women won the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup final was a watershed moment for me in connecting the team’s fight for equity to my own career and to the women I mentor.

“My hope is that the young girls and boys who see Rapinoe and her incredible legacy being celebrated this week will see that women deserve the spotlight, deserve the support, deserve the compensation and most of all deserve to be heard — on and off the pitch.”

Lorraine Bardeen is a corporate vice president and CTO with Microsoft’s Commercial Solutions Area group.

“I’ve honestly drawn multiple lessons from Megan’s role modeling that I’ve been able to directly apply as a tech leader. A few of them:

“Megan is clear that as her role (and fame) grew, she consciously chose to take on more responsibility to be a voice for people with less privilege. This role modeling that the more privilege you have, the more accountability you have to put yourself out there as a voice for positive, inclusive change truly resonates for me. As I’ve moved into leadership positions, I’ve made the same conscious choice to be ‘out’ as a voice for the LGBTQIA+ community, for people of color, and for other underrepresented groups in my industry.

“Megan balances confidence that she can do something extraordinary with humility and grace with herself when she doesn’t perform as she had hoped. In the fast-moving world of technology, we have failures sometimes – products that didn’t resonate as we had hoped with our customers, for instance. I can only do my job well as a leader if I inspire people to aspire to the extraordinary but also model how to handle disappointment and failure with positivity and renewed energy for the next ‘game.’

“As a leader, the spotlight can go directly to me to have answers or to provide direction. Megan does an excellent job of balancing being a leading voice, but doing so very much in sync with her full team. I am similarly intentional in leading together with my team, with striving for as decentralized and empowered decision making as possible, and only stepping into the spotlight when it truly brings outsized value to the full team.”

Kieran Snyder is co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based augmented writing platform Textio.

“[Rapinoe] has been willing to speak out about the disparate treatment between men’s and women’s sports in a way that has been motivating for an entire generation. She is not afraid of cultivating dissent in a way I find quite inspiring. Her impact goes way beyond professional soccer.”

Editor’s note: Bardeen, Clise, Redman and Sato have all been honored by the Reign’s Legends Campaign.

Over the next 50 years, will humanity become too attached to the artificial-intelligence agents that dictate the course of our lives? Or is forming a deep attachment the only way we’ll survive?

Those are the sorts of questions raised by “The Creator,” Hollywood’s latest take on the potential for a robo-apocalypse. It’s a subject that has inspired a string of Terminator and Matrix movies as well as real-world warnings from the likes of Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking.

How close does “The Creator” come to the truth about AI’s promise and peril? We conducted a reality check with a panel of critics who are familiar with AI research and the ways in which that research percolates into popular culture. Their musings are the stuff of the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

Semi-spoiler alert: We’ve tried to avoid giving away any major plot points, but if you’re obsessive about spoilers, turn away now — and come back after you’ve seen “The Creator.”

“The Creator” is directed and co-written by Gareth Edwards, who previously achieved box-office success with the Star Wars spin-off movie “Rogue One.” During a Los Angeles preview event, Edwards joked that the plot of his latest movie was ripped from the headlines.

“The trick with AI is to get the timing,” he said, “and there’s a sweet-spot window where it’s like before the robo-apocalypse and not after that, which I think is in November, maybe December. And so I think we really got lucky, you know?”

Edwards said he tried to avoid writing a date into the film’s script. “But at some point you had to, and so I did some maths and I picked 2070 … and now I feel like an idiot, because I should have gone for 2023.”

There’s a germ of concern in Edwards’ joke: AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard are taking the tech world by storm. One of Elon Musk’s ventures, Neuralink, is developing implantable brain-computer interfaces (and generating controversy). Autonomous cars and humanoid robots are on the rise. Will autonomous weapons be next?

“The Creator” imagines a world where various breeds of robots and humanlike androids (known as “simulants”) explode a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, and then take refuge from a U.S.-led counterattack in an AI-friendly nation called New Asia (which incorporates settings in Asian countries ranging from Thailand to Nepal).

Ranjay Krishna, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who specializes in studying AI-human interaction, says he found the movie to be entertaining, even though the technology doesn’t reflect current trends in AI applications.

“There were a lot of explosions, a lot of fighting. It’s definitely an action movie,” he says. “I found the general sort of depiction of AI quite different from how we typically build the AI models and think about AI today. For example, what I found most interesting was, in the movie, every single AI was embodied. They were in a specific body and were disconnected from all the other AIs.”

In the movie, the AIs show no evidence that they could link up through the cloud, or that they could hook into a surveillance network robust enough to track down the human hero of the movie (played by John David Washington).

But the AIs do show themselves to be capable of religious observances — including funeral rites for those who fall in battles with the humans. In one scene, a New Asia villager tells the human marauders that they have less humanity than the AIs. “They have bigger hearts,” the villager says. “You can’t beat AI. It’s evolution.”

Speaking of evolution, Kurt Schlosser, who covers the Geek Life beat for GeekWire, was hoping to see a more way-out vision of AI. “I wanted to see that technology taken to 2065, or whenever this was supposed to be set,” he says. “I mean, it’s moving at such a fast pace right now, at least seemingly so in our current world. How could it not be so much further along 40 years from now?”

Cathy Yuan — a designer and researcher who co-wrote a paper on large language models as part of a team including Krishna, her husband — appreciated the style of the movie more than its substance.

“It was very beautiful, but it was clumsy,” she says. “It was clumsy in its treatment of technology. It was clumsy in its treatment of plot and character. But very, very nice to watch. In some parts, it felt like if I turn my brain off a little bit and think of it as a music video, then I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’”

So how does “The Creator” rate? Here are the edited comments from our reviewers, with separate grades given on a 1-to-10 scale for relevance to today’s AI trends and for sheer entertainment value:

AI researcher Ranjay Krishna: “I would give it a 1 out of 10 in terms of how it depicts AI vs. what AI actually is, and where it’s headed and what kinds of problems we think about. I was entertained, so I would give it a high entertainment score. I would easily give it 7 out of 10.” Krishna’s hot take: “I didn’t understand why some of the technology was so advanced, and a lot of it was so far back. We were looking at cathode ray monitors … and then we were looking at these mouse-and-keyboard things, and then it would jump to these AR/VR interactions.”

Designer and researcher Cathy Yuan: “One out of 10 in terms of how accurately it portrayed AI. Five out of 10 in terms of entertainment, though I do really like Gemma Chan, so I feel a little bit bad about that score.” Yuan’s hot take: “All the AI should have been able to communicate with each other telepathically, because they don’t need to talk. That would’ve been a cool technology.”

GeekLife correspondent Kurt Schlosser: “I would defer to the AI experts on the grading of where we’re at, but I guess I’ll go a little higher. I’ll give it a 2 or 3, just because I think all the Amazon robots are going to rise up and break out of the warehouse. From an entertainment perspective, I’m in the 7 to 8 range. I wanted it to go a little deeper and get rid of some of the cliche stuff, like the goofy army leader and the throwbacks to ‘Aliens’ where they’re all hyped up to go raid this village. But I love the way it looked and sounded.” Schlosser’s hot take: “The tech was at times a little rudimentary, considering that we are so afraid of it. Some of the robots, it was like Keystone Cops in certain scenes. Shouldn’t these things be programmed without any error potential to just kill at will, if that’s what they’re designed to do?”

For what it’s worth, I’m giving “The Creator” a 5 on the AI applicability scale, because it can spark the kind of deep discussion you can listen to in the podcast — including my musings over whether the AIs could someday become a new type of cyber-biological species. In the movie, the goofy Army captain (played by Allison Janney) hints at just such a scenario when she brings up the case of the Neanderthals. “We raped and murdered them out of existence,” she says.

As for entertainment value, I would give it a 7. If you’re a fan of “Rogue One,” “Avatar” or “Westworld,” you’ll like this movie, especially if you see it at an IMAX theater.

One caveat: The way the New Asia villagers are treated in the movie by fictional U.S. soldiers reminded me too much of scenes from Vietnam War coverage — which makes me wonder how modern-day Asian audiences will react. That concern has nothing to do with the present state of AI, but everything to do with the present state of humanity.

“In terms of the coherence of the plot itself and the lack of respect for other cultures, I think that’s something the movie could work on,” Krishna said.

“The Creator” is playing in theaters nationwide. “AI Gets Real” is the theme for this year’s GeekWire Summit, which is scheduled Oct. 19 at the former Cinerama Theater in Seattle. One of the sessions will be a fireside chat with Oscar-nominated “Arrival” screenwriter Eric Heisserer and award-winning sci-fi author Ted Chiang. Go to the GeekWire Summit portal page to learn more and register for the event.

Check out the original version of this item on Cosmic Log for AI video recommendations from our critics. And stay tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast via Apple, Google, Overcast, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Radio Public.

The term “Seattle sound” often refers to the heyday of grunge music in the city. But the people behind a new cocktail lounge think Seattle has never sounded better thanks to the high-fidelity listening experience they have created.

Shibuya Hi-Fi opens Thursday in the Ballard neighborhood with a rather simple plan to offer good drinks and good music. The execution is more nuanced, and involves an expertly curated selection of vinyl records spun by world class DJs in the hopes that people who have given over their listening lives to streaming services and algorithms can get back to basics.

“It really is trying to create an experience that we miss,” said Brian Rauschenbach, one of the masterminds behind Shibuya, who was a longtime DJ and who works in tech as the president and chief media officer at Add3, a digital marketing agency.

Rauschenbach is managing partner of the new space alongside Quentin Ertel, an interior designer and musician who owns Havana on Capitol Hill. Ertel said the new club aims to tap into the idea of music as a universal language that brings people together.

“Everybody wants to feel that. Even if they don’t know it, once they feel it, they’re going to know that they’ve been missing it,” Ertel said.

Shibuya is not just a bar with a crate of vinyl records available to use on a corner turntable. A lot of thought has gone into creating a hangout for lovers of analog music.

The space at 4912 Leary Ave. N.W., which was formerly a dance club called The Cedar Room, has undergone a makeover — though the cedar remains — and high-end Hi-Fi equipment and decor has been brought in.

Behind the bar, for instance, a Luxman L-505uXII integrated amplifier and JBL L100 speakers are positioned among the bottles of booze. The main lounge features a DJ booth overlooking assorted seating areas, which include blue booths from Seattle’s Benaroya Hall.

“We’re all music lovers and we’ve been in nightlife forever,” said Supreme La Rock, the internationally known DJ who hosts “Sunday Soul” on KEXP and is the club’s music director. “Most places you walk in, they have two shitty speakers on poles with wires all over. Things should be heard the right way. We care about it and we know other people do, too.”

Appreciation for analog

La Rock and Rauschenbach have traveled and DJ’d extensively, and had experiences in “listening bars” in Japan and in cities around the world. The club takes its name from the Shibuya district of Tokyo, where the founders say their listening concept originates.

“My parents met in a vinyl cafe in the late ’60s,” Rauschenbach said. “The origin story has a personal connection.”

La Rock is known for his expansive musical taste and playing tracks that “break Shazam” — a reference to the audio app used to identify songs and artists.

The club hopes to capture music fans who have been fueling a vinyl records resurgence. During the pandemic year 2020, vinyl record sales soared 29% to $626 million, according to the Record Industry Association of America. Vinyl is now the music industry’s most popular and highest-grossing physical format.

Fans who left the format for dead when CDs took hold in the 1980s are now choosing vinyl for “collectibility, sound quality or simply the tactile experience of music in an age of digital ephemerality,” The New York Times reported.

Shibuya plans to employ about 25 to 30 people, including bar staff and those who will serve as “music attendants” and are being trained on how to properly handle physical media.

“This is how you remove a record from a sleeve, this is how you place a record on a turntable, this is how you drop a stylus,” Ertel said of that training. “It’s kind of a lost art form in a way, a lost listening form.”

Shibuya’s premiere listening experience can be found in a back “Hi-Fi room” that served as a storage space in the previous club. Along with more seating from Benaroya Hall, this room features two large, statement lighting fixtures that Ertel scored from the opera hall’s Founder’s Lounge.

“From one great music institution to a soon-to-be-great music institution,” he said of the design touch.

There are plush couches, chairs and carpet, and a large custom painting by artist Christy Hopkins over the turntable. The club’s key players and investors have spent about $80,000 on this room alone, which features audio equipment, including vintage Klipsch Klipschorn speakers, found at Hawthorne Stereo in Seattle.

GeekWire soundcheck

I was invited to listen to some music during a visit to Shibuya last week. In the Hi-Fi room, I was asked to remove my shoes and take a seat on a couch in my socks for what Rauschenbach referred to as a “mental reset,” to think about things in a different way.

Sitting with Ertel and La Rock, I waited as Rauschenbach dropped the needle on “Flamenco Sketches,” a track on jazz great Miles Davis’ 1959 record “Kind of Blue.” (Here’s a digital link, which sort of defies everything I was instructed to appreciate at Shibuya, but maybe it will set the mood for you.)

It’s difficult to explain just how rich music can sound when the quality of an audio recording and the equipment it is played on are top-notch. To me, it felt like the closest thing to listening to a live performance.

“You don’t know what you’re missing until you get it, so when we serve it you’ll say, ‘Wow,'” said La Rock. “Everybody listens on earbuds and computers. Rudy Van Gelder wasn’t engineering those records to be heard through little computer speakers,” he said, referencing the famed audio engineer who worked with Davis and John Coltrane and other jazz greats.

In the Hi-Fi room, Davis and his band might as well have been there with us. Ertel sat for nine minutes — most of it with his with his eyes closed — taking in the track. I couldn’t help but stand and move around, trying to figure out why I couldn’t find the drummer, who I swore was there playing in one corner.

“There’s an element of theater to it, the idea of listening to music in a different way,” Ertel said. “It’s something that we intentionally want to do to give people a different experience.”

I was told I could bring a few of my favorite records with me, but after hearing Miles Davis like that, I tried to hide them under a couch cushion. But Rauschenbach asked for one and we settled on a slight change of pace with a track called “I Would Hurt a Fly” off Built to Spill’s 1997 album “Perfect From Now On.”

Ertel was already a fan of the Boise, Idaho-based band, but Rauschenbach and La Rock were hearing my selection for the first time. For six minutes, I watched them react to different elements of the track — played on their dream sound system — and I appreciated the power of good audio to, as they had envisioned, bring people together.

After leaving the Hi-Fi room, they insisted we listen to the same song again, played on the system behind the bar.

Rauschenbach later emailed to tell me the record had been added to the club’s permanent vinyl collection.

Liner notes

Shibuya Hi-Fi will be open initially Thursdays (5 p.m. to midnight), Fridays and Saturdays (5 p.m. to 2 a.m.). Curated and themed nights will launch next Wednesday, along with an industry focused night on a day of the week still to be determined.

Reservations are highly recommended, and the main front lounge will be $25 per person and $50 per person for the Hi-Fi room. Both include a seating fee with the rest credited to the customer’s bar bill. The Hi-Fi room will only be open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Walk-ins are welcome for seating on stools at the bar. Booth and table reservations in the main lounge are set for two hours and the Hi-Fi room experience is slated for 90 minutes.

The next time a work colleague or your boss tells you they “gotta run,” maybe it’s because they’re headed to another meeting or out to lunch.

When Gavin Woody has to run, he might not be back for a few days and a few hundred miles.

Woody is the co-founder and CEO of Felix&Fido, a Seattle startup focused on addressing a shortage in veterinarians with its subscription-based pet care model. The company emerged from stealth mode in March with $4 million in pre-seed funding from PSL Ventures and pet-sitting giant Rover.

When he’s not focused on the issues impacting his startup or the direction he is taking the company, Woody is focused on the issues and direction tied to his latest extreme adventure. An ultra trail runner, mountain climber, backcountry skier, cyclist, Ironman competitor and more, Woody has conquered some of the world’s most demanding terrain and tests of human endurance.

Earlier this year, Woody completed Alaska’s Iditarod Trail Invitational, a 350-mile ultramarathon on the famous dog sled course. He did the race on skis in eight days, six hours, becoming only the third person to have completed ITI by all three modes of travel — foot, ski, or bike. In 2018, he won the race on foot in five and a half days.

Woody, who is also a decorated Army veteran, brings the same mindset to his adventures as he does to running a startup.

“You’re just constantly thinking about all of these different elements — how can I keep moving forward and what’s the highest priority?” he said.

Greg Gottesman, managing director of Seattle’s Pioneer Square Labs, has worked with over 200 companies and worked closely with hundreds of CEOs. He’s never met anyone like Woody.

“When I say he’s one of a kind, he’s truly one of a kind,” Gottesman said. “He’s got to be the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met.”

Mountains, trails and miles of inspiration

During a chat in Seattle this week with GeekWire, Woody said his feet were sore.

At age 46, the married father of two didn’t come across as any worse for wear, and appeared as fit as you’d expect someone to be when their LinkedIn profile includes mention of being an “endurance athlete.”

“I actually ran a 100 miler this weekend, up near Leavenworth,” Woody admitted. “It took me 33 hours.”

The Plain 100 features 21,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, and a website for the race boasts that only four people finished in the race’s first eight years. For Woody, the race was clearly another endurance test — but it also provided another chance to learn, not just about his body and pushing through challenges.

“I’m always trying to maximize time,” he said. “I listened to this 22-hour audio book the whole time. If I can learn something and run, that’s great.”

The book was called “Enlightenment Now,” which he says was recommended somewhere by Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

“I’m kind of interested in AI … I mean, who isn’t right?” Woody said.

While most of us aren’t boning up on tech’s latest craze in the middle of a grueling race, it’s par for the course for Woody, who checks off books or quotes that have inspired him as easily and humbly as he mentions another element of terrain he has conquered:

• He’s climbed Mount Rainier 15 times and skied down three times. He and a friend were first to complete the “Infinity Loop,” which involves, in part, summiting and descending twice and running the Wonderland Trail around the mountain. 
• He ran and won the Bigfoot 200 race in the Cascade Mountains, described online as a “massive, life-changing event” and by Woody as the one place where you might just see Sasquatch.
• He’s run the UTMB 100-mile race around Mont-Blanc; the Tor des Géants 200-mile race in Italy; the Western States 100 miler; Colorado’s Hardrock 100 miler; and the Badwater 135-mile desert race, billed as “the most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet.”
• He also proposed to his wife Sara — an ultra runner herself — on Mount Kilimanjaro, got married at Yosemite and then hiked the John Muir Trail.

From the ranch to the battlefield

Woody’s upbringing, schooling and military service all shaped the leader he is today.

He grew up on a cattle ranch in an unincorporated town named after his great-great grandfather, Woody, near Bakersfield, Calif. Both of his parents were veterinarians: his mother tended to smaller animals and his father focused on larger ones.

“On a ranch you have to be a generalist — a master of none and a jack of all trades,” Woody said. “You’re a plumber, an electrician, a business person.”

In high school he rose to commander of his Junior ROTC unit. He wrestled and ran track, but he says he wasn’t very good. But again, diversifying and learning was the key.

“I had this goal of being a good leader in the military, and I think you need to demonstrate a wide range of abilities,” Woody said.

He enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and studied mechanical engineering — and it was here that Woody ran his first marathon.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I was puking at the finish and walking backwards. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, never again. Check that box, I’m done.'”

After West Point he went to the Army’s Airborne School in Fort Benning, Ga., where he went through infantry training “to learn how to jump out of planes and carry heavy things.”

Next stop was Italy and the 173rd Airborne Brigade where Woody got close with guys who liked to run marathons and cycle long distances in the mountains. He threw swimming into the mix and started doing Ironman races.

“I was never very fast, but I was pretty good at putting these different pieces together and then just kind of plugging away,” he said.

Woody was on a training deployment in Germany on Sept. 11, 2001, when he watched from a small barracks TV as the Twin Towers fell in New York. He never went to Afghanistan, but eventually, as an infantry captain and platoon leader, he parachuted into Iraq at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. He earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and a Bronze Star Award.

After Iraq, Woody returned to the U.S. and attended Stanford University for his MBA. He started doing marathons again. And when he read “Born to Run” and “Ultramarathon Man” he was inspired by the prospect of getting off road for much longer runs in the wild.

Inspiring people to push a little harder

Prior to Felix&Fido, Woody spent time as a consultant with McKinsey and Co., and worked at Expedia, A Place For Mom, and most recently Porch, the Seattle-based home improvement marketplace.

He’s a past board member and president at The Mountaineers and now leads the board of the Northwest Avalanche Center, which provides a daily avalanche forecast to snowshoers, snowmobilers and backcountry skiers.

He’s big on operational efficiency and creating what he calls “awesome customer experiences at scale.” He says process, people and technology underpin everything that he does. And he credits the military with honing his management style — know the mission, build a great team, and then help them execute without micromanaging.

With close knowledge of the big ups and big downs that startups go through, PSL’s Gottesman said what separates good entrepreneurs from great entrepreneurs is not what they do when it’s easy and times are good, but how well they execute when it’s hard.

“I can’t think of anyone that I know that handles hard better than Gavin, not just in his startup life but also in the way he approaches life,” Gottesman said. “I think this particular hobby that he has is directly attributable to what it means to be a leader, especially in a startup that’s going to have more ups and downs than your typical company.”

An experience at the Tour of Giants race in the Italian Alps demonstrated that approach and what Woody brings back to work. Near the end of the 200-mile race, which features 72,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, Woody experienced leg pain which necessitated traversing the last 30 miles while walking backwards.

When most might quit, Woody was determined to grind it out and finish.

“Generally, I feel like people have a lot more to give than they give themselves credit for,” he said. “That’s what’s fun, even in the business world — inspiring people to just push a little harder. You do these little bits every single day, and that’s ultimately what shows up to make something big.”

If you build it, they will come. Especially if you build a train, roller coaster, coral reef, space station, warship, castle, hot rod, battle scene or countless other things out of LEGO at BrickCon 2023.

The annual convention for enthusiasts of the timeless toy is taking place Saturday and Sunday at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Wash. Nearly 500 exhibitors have constructed about 800 models as a record crowd of 10,000 visitors is expected.

Now in its 22nd year, the convention, formally staged at Seattle Center, moved east this year to accommodate more builders, vendors and fans.

GeekWire got a sneak peek Friday night during a friends and family event in which LEGO geeks of all ages mingled around tables covered in creations of all sizes. These aren’t off-the-shelf sets sold by the Danish company. The models are generated by the imaginations of their creators — and there’s no glue or other adhesives holding the bricks in place.

Models are shown in a variety of categories, including Sci-Fi, Art, History, Fantasy, Town & Country, and Function. There are lights and sounds and moving parts galore on many of the intricate builds.

Wayne Hussey has been attending BrickCon since the start, and he’s got some memorable builds under his belt, including a 14-foot-tall Space Needle that ended up on display beneath the real thing four years ago.

This year he was showing off an outsized space station, which he started the day after BrickCon last year. Part of a 12-foot-long colony ship that he displayed last year is incorporated into the new build. But he’s still impressed by what others pull off.

“I feel humbled no matter what I build,” Hussey said. “I feel humbled by what I see other people building. And I’m always inspired by them.”

As a kid in the 1960s, Hussey was gluing together car and plane models. He gave up the hobby when he went into the military. When his niece was little, someone gave her a small LEGO set for Christmas, and Hussey said to himself, “I can buy LEGO for myself, I’m an adult now.”

“That was 48 years ago,” Hussey said. “I’ve been buying and building and saving and storing them ever since.”

Paul Hetherington has seen his share of impressive LEGO builds, and he’s been behind a good number of them. The Vancouver, B.C., native has won Best in Show at BrickCon a record five times.

This year he’s noticing more technology incorporated into builds. His own colorful take on the Disney theme parks boat ride “It’s a Small World” features several boats riding on “water” that is moving on LEGO train tracks, gears and other hidden mechanisms.

“This hobby is crazy,” Hetherington said. “There are so many people pushing the boundaries of these little bricks — that were intended as a toy — and coming up with these crazy, fantastic builds.”

Hetherington makes his living building with LEGO. He gets private commissions and stages public art shows. And after 30 years of building, he said the medium continues to evolve.

“Every year, it’s different,” he said. “There’s new pieces on the market that can open doors to new connections. Everything is possible with LEGO.”

Married team Jessie Robertson and Bre Burns of Bremerton, Wash., don’t have a specific category they stick to when it comes to LEGO builds. But they always seem to go big — and they’re running out of room.

“Our apartment of 625 square feet just wasn’t big enough anymore so we had to buy a house,” Robertson said. “And now the basement is 750 square feet and still not big enough.”

Robertson has a degree in mechanical engineering and tends to build more scenic/landscape models. Burns has a degree in zoology and leans toward technical stuff.

“What you do doesn’t necessarily match up to what you build,” Robertson said. “I like being creative.”

Several of the models at BrickCon this year are collaborations, constructed by multiple builders who are often not even in the same room. Robertson and Burns contributed to one such piece.

“I find it really cool that people can work together on a hobby from different parts of the United States and come together and have it work,” Robertson said.

BrickCon is open to the public Saturday and Sunday, with varying entry times between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. See more details and ticket info here.

Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s BrickCon tour:

The joy was on the face of Robbie Cape.

And the Mt. Joy was in the mouths and bellies of those who attended the special preview of a food truck tied to Cape’s new fast casual food chain on Wednesday in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Cape, the tech leader and entrepreneur who previously headed up telehealth company 98point6, has arrived at the official launch of his new startup, a chicken sandwich joint that he believes can change the world with practices that are better for farmers, animals, customers, employees and the planet.

Starting with a colorful food truck that opens Thursday in the parking lot of a former Starbucks location on East Olive Way, Mt. Joy will also soon have a brick-and-mortar restaurant blocks away at East Pine Street and 11th Avenue. From there, the hope is to grow like a happy, free-range chicken.

For Cape, who spent 11 years at Microsoft and is now on his third startup, Mt. Joy checks all the startup boxes.

“We’re creating where there is nothing,” Cape said. “We’re creating a brand from nothing, we are creating a dialogue. Every time I talk to someone new, we’re answering new questions, and I’m creating new narrative. That to me is the definition of a startup.”

Mt. Joy’s focus is on sustainable farming practices and locally sourced ingredients to disrupt the agriculture and food industries from start to finish. Regenerative agriculture is part of the mantra because of its potential to combat climate change by improving the organic makeup of soil and removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Cape teamed up a year ago with a number of key players, including Seattle restaurateur Ethan Stowell, who is a co-founder.

“We have to get people to know that when they buy a Mt. Joy chicken sandwich that it’s actually doing something good,” Stowell said last year.

On Wednesday, as I unwrapped a spicy chicken sandwich from the Mt. Joy food truck, I asked Cape what he hoped people will think as they eat his startup’s food.

“I want you to think, ‘Wow, this is the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had,'” he said.

As someone who has eaten his share of chicken sandwiches, I’d rank Mt. Joy’s among the tastiest. The thick white meat was juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. The honey habanero spread hit with just the right amount of spice. It felt like some real thought had gone into the taste for a sandwich that was ready in six minutes.

Washing it down with a vanilla bean milkshake felt like the ultimate food truck / fast food experience on a summer night in Seattle.

Chef Dionne Himmelfarb is the mastermind behind a menu that includes a variety of fried chicken sandwiches ($13 to $15), a fried portobello mushroom sandwich ($13), french fries ($4), milkshakes ($6) and more.

Himmelfarb has worked for Stowell and at the Seattle restaurants Canlis and Poppy, and is also a Mt. Joy co-founder.

The tech startup mentality, and thinking about everything from the beginning, is very different from her career working in well-established restaurants. And it’s different than just relying on her own taste as a longtime chef.

“What I love about working with Robbie, everything is about data,” Himmelfarb said. “We have to make sure we do our research on why people like one thing versus the other thing.”

Cape attracted former 98point6 software engineer Justin Kaufman to the team as co-founder and chief technology officer. Kaufman said he’s always had a lot of ideas for restaurants and he urged Cape to bring him on.

“What excited me about the restaurant business, as somebody who’s into technology, is that it’s just one of those industries where there’s a lot of opportunity,” Kaufman said.

He wants to use technology to make the restaurant experience feel more personal and welcoming, whether it’s through a more conversational interface in the app used to order food, or via the quirky poems printed out on the receipts stuck to orders.

“I have this vision of not just welcoming people back but also engaging with them to minimize the cognitive workload of the order process,” Kaufman said.

Grant Jones, a fourth generation farmer from Shelton, Wash., is a co-founder and Mt. Joy’s chief agricultural officer.

Jones said Mt. Joy chickens are special because they’re pasture raised from three weeks of age. The so-called Freedom Ranger breed is slower growing and healthier than birds that are bred to grow more rapidly.

Opening a restaurant chain focused on a number of sustainability issues has taken a lot of work behind the scenes.

“The supply chain that we’re trying to source from does not exist yet,” Jones said. “So a lot of my time has been spent working with farms that are currently raising chickens to see if they want to raise more, and how they want to grow with us.”

Cape, who employs about 15 at Mt. Joy so far, is clearly a people person. He said it’s the one thing he misses about 98point6. Not just the people he worked with, but the people who the startup was helping with a new health care option, and the energy he would get from stories about those people.

Cape was forced out of 98point6 by the company’s board in 2021 in a surprising departure. That gave him another opportunity to revisit his desire to work on something good for the planet.

“I would love people to say that Robbie loves building things that have the ability to repair the world. I want people to say that Robbie takes on big, audacious, hard goals,” he said.

“If people say that Robbie’s the chicken guy, that’s great. No problem.”

The Mt. Joy food truck is located at 1600 E. Olive Way, and is open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

A unique art project is leaving its big footprint on the Seattle area and the Pacific Northwest, bringing with it a message about waste, the environment and getting out in nature.

Danish environmental artist and storyteller Thomas Dambo and a team of volunteers have completed four of the six trolls that are part of a public exhibition titled “Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King.” The project is funded in part by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Trolls can now be found in Portland, Bainbridge Island, Wash., and West Seattle, and on Friday Dambo put the finishing touches on a roughly 20-foot-tall troll named “Jakob 2 Trees,” along the Rainier Trail in Issaquah, Wash., 15 miles east of Seattle. Two more trolls will be built in the coming weeks: on Vashon Island and in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.

“It’s been a long project,” Dambo said Friday, sounding a bit exhausted from a trip that saw him leave his native Denmark on May 25 to construct 10 trolls total in the U.S.

Over the years he’s installed more than 120 of the larger-than-life sculptures in locations around the world. The interactive works are built with recycled materials such as wooden pallets, and are meant to tell a tale of protecting nature.

“It has such a great, positive energy. It makes you happy,” said Marie Cermak, of Bellevue, Wash., who was walking the trail on Friday and stopped to watch the workers. “They utilize the space so well.”

We caught up with Dambo in Issaquah to check out Jakob and chat about the process, what it represents and what Dambo hopes people take away from it all. Our Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity.

How many hours does it take to build each troll?

“Two weeks for each. We’re overlapping them so they’re going side by side. I have two teams.”

Is the process getting routine now or do you find some excitement or surprise each time you do one of these?

“No two are alike, of course. I’ve done one that’s standing up before, and I’ve done one that’s sitting down before. But it’s in another type of nature. It’s another type of scrap wood that we get our hands on. It’s another team, another culture, another country, another language. That makes it interesting. And I don’t like to do the same, so I always make them different. And we’ve gotten better and better and better. It’s also the same to the extent that the whole team knows exactly what they’re doing.”

Do the birdhouses signify anything in particular?

“I have been doing street art with birdhouses back in Europe for many years — thousands of birdhouses. That was one of my first big art installations that I did, it was a transition from painting graffiti to hanging birdhouses up in the city because I figured that if I stopped painting graffiti nobody would call the police. That worked great.

“I’ve brought my birdhouses into the next projects I’ve been doing, and the troll project. We make these poles with birdhouses on them and then we put them up at the entrance ways into where the troll is as an indication of where they are.”

How long will this troll be here?

“I believe that the permit is for three years here. But the potential is always that they stay for much longer. The people like them and they keep fixing them.”

Do you have an estimation for how much Jakob weighs?

“We use approximately five tons of scrap wood building one troll. There’s 12 million tons of scrap wood that’s driven to the landfill every year in the United States, scrap wood that had the potential to be recycled. And that’s enough for, I believe, 2.4 million trolls a year.”

That’s a lot of birdhouses, too.

“It’s cities of houses you could build with it.”

Do you ever have any issues with vandalism?

“I haven’t had too many. I think the difference between vandalism and terrorism is that vandalism is something that you just do by coincidence when you pass by and you’re in a bad mood. And terrorism is something that’s planned, where you go and search out a specific location. How many people want to be the troll terrorist and are so mad at the troll and look at the treasure map to find it to only go and destroy it? I think those people might just kick their neighbor’s mailbox or something.”

How many people have worked on this across the whole Northwest project?

“A couple hundred. There’s a list of 1,300 who signed up, but there was no room for them. There are so many people who want to be a part of a positive change, and they want to be a part of something fun and something special. Make people happy, they come and help you. And you get all the material for free and you’re actually cleaning the world when you’re doing it.”

What tech do you use if any to help people understand what this is?

“We installed metal signs with the face of the troll, a QR code, the website and the name and the number of the troll. People have been requesting some type of way to collect which ones they’ve seen. Now I’m making a type of ‘troll card’ that represents each troll, and on the backside of the card there’s a white circle and you can overlay that with the engraved face on the sign and trace over it with a pencil or something. So you get the seal of approval that you’ve actually physically been here.”

So you get something physical, not just a digital representation?

“I don’t want to make a computer game. My project is about wilderness and nature and hands on. There’s plenty of projects that are about computers. In order to be able to protect the natural world, we need to get people out into it. If you only live inside the computer and work inside your computer and love and laugh and everything happens inside your computer, then why care about a beetle or some tree that is getting extinct?”

Editor’s note: Dambo and team are working with Adventure Labs, a tech company in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, to create geocaching adventures. Three have been completed for Portland, Bainbridge Island and West Seattle so far.

What do you hope is the main takeaway for people who come upon your trolls?

“I hope that they’ll just get a little whimsy in their life and they’ll be smiling. Or crying if they’re scared — that’s also OK. And I hope that all the local people who have come together here to help and create it that they will carry on the story. It was 14 days and a crazy crew from Denmark and 50 volunteers and a whole mountain of scrap wood — and then we created this. What else could we build out of our trash? Rather than building our landfills bigger and bigger and our nature reserves smaller and smaller?”

Find more about Dambo’s “Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King” project at his website and view locations via his troll map.

The project is being managed by the Seattle-based Scan Design Foundation, a private organization founded in 2002 to honor the legacy of Inger and Jens Bruun and advance Danish-American relations by supporting cultural exchanges focused on environmental sustainability.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization created by the late Microsoft co-founder and his sister, Jody Allen, is helping to fund the project. Media partners include the Embassy of Denmark, Visit Seattle, and Washington State Tourism.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

Zap Energy, the Seattle-area startup that’s been cooking up a better way to generate fusion power, fired up a custom-made grill recently for a summer barbecue that featured an appropriate fusion menu.

The star of the BBQ was a hefty new device, dubbed FuZE Grill, which was given to Zap by Trico, a Burlington, Wash.-based construction company that worked to finish Zap’s new headquarters building project in Everett, Wash. The grill was made in Trico’s fabrication shop.

The FuZE Grill is made to look like Zap’s FuZE or FuZE-Q, devices that are similar in size but instead of making smash burgers, produce fusion energy by smashing atoms together in super hot, high pressure conditions.

“We thought it was only appropriate to inaugurate it with a fusion menu,” said Andy Freeberg, head of communications at Zap Energy. “We made Chinese baby back ribs, Korean chicken skewers and veggie kabobs with a Thai dressing. The food was delicious and the grill worked great.”

The lunchtime event in Everett attracted about 40 people. Zap employs about 150 people, with offices also located in nearby Mukilteo.

The chunky silver grill, with Zap’s lightning bolt logos in various spots, looks like something your dad would cook on if he was a total alternative energy geek. One side of the grill is a standard propane setup with four burners. The other side is a charcoal grill/smoker that Zap will wait to fire up when Western Washington has a little less smoke already in the air from wildfires.

With Zap co-founder and CTO Brian Nelson manning the tongs, the grill reached a temperature of about 650 degrees Fahrenheit.

“To compare that with the real thing, the hottest temperatures measured in FuZE-Q have been around 60 million degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than the center of the sun,” Freeberg said, adding that instead of propane for fuel, FuZE-Q uses tanks of deuterium gas, a form of hydrogen. “The important scientific distinction is that burning propane is a chemical process, whereas fusing deuterium is a nuclear one.”

Zap was launched in 2017 by Nelson and fellow University of Washington professor Uri Shumlak, with technology developed in collaboration with researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The third founder is entrepreneur and investor Benj Conway. The company has raised a total of roughly $200 million.

The grill struck a chord because of its similarity in look and size to Zap’s fusion devices, which are among the most compact ways to do fusion.

“People often ask for a comparison of how small they are — we can now say they’re about the size of a backyard combo gas/charcoal grill,” Freeberg said. “Neither the grill nor our devices require any magnets, lasers or superconductivity either.”

There’s more here on how Zap’s sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion technology works.

Firing up a BBQ for a summer lunch at work is certainly easier, more predictable and more immediately gratifying than powering up one of Zap’s actual devices.

But the startup is focused on generating energy, not burning it up.

“Our systems could be the forerunners of technology with the potential to one day power the planet with on demand, carbon-free energy,” Freeberg said. “So nothing is going to be quite as satisfying for us as getting a key new insight or hitting a milestone after a successful R&D run on FuZE or FuZE-Q.”

Zap plans to build a storage shed for the grill, to keep it out of the elements and make it easily available for anyone on the team to use.

“Hopefully it will feed many productive plasma physics discussions,” Freeberg said.

When Lee Kindell first started making his Filipino-inspired brand of what he calls “odd pizza,” he was the artisan guy — a purist who made his dough by hand in an 18th century wooden dough trough.

But an arm injury put a kink in that method, and Kindell finally got himself a mechanical dough mixer. He soon realized that the difference between hand and mixer mixing was not enough for his customers to notice, and if the typical layman pizza eater didn’t recognize it, Kindell viewed it as his ticket to scaling the business.

“When that light bulb went off, I was all in,” he said. “I was thinking about machinery, robotics, the labor shortage and all those kinds of things. It lit a fire. And now I see it as the future. Robotics is the future of food.”

That realization has fueled a new vision for Moto Pizza. What started as a retirement plan for Kindell — open a small Seattle pizza shop, turn out some good pies, make people happy — has morphed into multiple locations and a desire to go global.

Kindell and his wife Nancy Gambin opened Moto’s newest location this month on the edge of Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood with a new ingredient in the mix: a Picnic Pizza Station from the Seattle food automation startup.

As the robotic pizza maker placed toppings onto pizzas and human workers scrambled to get ready to fill another night of online orders, Kindell moved in his pink Crocs through the kitchen with a pep in his pizza-making step. He rattled off numerous ways he planned to use tech to keep up with the viral demand — a three month waitlist! — and scale his business.

“I had no idea it would turn into this,” he said of his retirement plan.

An appetite for technology

During a GeekWire visit to Moto’s Belltown shop this week, Kindell was a ball of energy as he showed off an outdoor seating area, a colorfully painted main dining room and his kitchen full of workers and machines. It was hard to tell if he was more excited about the taste of his pizzas or what he uses to make them.

Beyond the Picnic machine, Kindell has a laundry list of tech that he’s already trying, working on deals to implement, or hopes to use in the future:

• He’s in talks with Seattle startup Artly, makers of a robotic coffee barista, about making a bartender version for his Belltown shop that is capable of pouring glasses of beer and wine.
• He’s working on a deal with iPourIt, the self-pour beverage system that could power a wall of taps.
• He’s bullish on drone delivery and has been talking to Zipline about a future in which his pizzas are dropped from the sky. “It’s not gonna happen until late next year, but what’s important is who’s gonna be the first ones to jump on it,” Kindell said. Longtime Seattle pizza chain Pagliacci signed a deal on a similar dream in May.

• If the pizza doesn’t come by drone right away, Kindell likes the idea of using rolling delivery robots by Coco or pedaling them out via e-bikes.
• In his kitchen he’s setting up vertical hydroponics to grow his own microgreens, and he has a mycology tent to grow mushrooms.
• And along with mobile ordering tweaks and other automation twists, Kindell pictures expansion east of Seattle where a drive-thru location would feature a glass wall where customers could watch a Picnic machine fulfill their order.

“Tying in all this technology for your food is my mad dream,” Kindell said. “I think it’s just fascinating and I love where it’s going.”

Pizza that’s beyond popular

Kindell grew up in Bremerton, Wash., and moved to Seattle when he was 17. His experience fishing the waters around Puget Sound has clearly informed some of his unique pizza offerings, with crab, clams and shrimp as toppings.

When Covid put an end to the hostel business he and his wife ran in Belltown, Moto Pizza got its unlikely start in 2021 out of a small house in West Seattle. The early buzz was overwhelming, and Kindell, with no formal culinary training, quickly lost the ability to keep up with in-person demand.

Moto switched to an online order system in which customers need to reserve time slots for future pizza pick-ups. The wait now is three months, and you have to watch social media for when Moto announces new order availability. Kindell said some time slots and pizzas have shown up on Reddit and Facebook Marketplace, marked up for resale.

“I can’t believe people are scalping my pizzas,” he said.

Kindell and Gambin raised $600,000 in a seed funding round to get new restaurants up and running and update equipment. In addition to West Seattle and Belltown, Moto operates out of Edmonds, Wash., and also during Seattle Mariners home games at T-Mobile Park.

The Moto staff, which numbers 62 now, makes 1,000 to 1,500 pizzas in three hours to satisfy demand for T-Mobile Park, where Moto occupies a space on the 300 level above right field. Pizzas are also sold in two cafes using Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology on the 100 level.

Lindell is talking about doing some frozen pizzas that can be heated at the ballpark to keep up with demand, and he jokes that people are buying the cheapest baseball ticket they can get just so they can come into the ballpark and get his pizza faster than through his ordering system.

‘Automation and artistry can coexist’

Picnic first emerged with a version of its pizza making machine in 2019, and has since raised more than $20 million to meet its food-automation goals. The startup has attracted interest over the years from restaurants, bigger pizza chains, convenience store operators, food service providers and others.

At Moto Pizza, dough in a rectangular pan is fed onto a belt in the Picnic Pizza Station where toppings including cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and onions are dropped from dispensers before the pie emerges from the other end 30 seconds later.

The pies spend six minutes cruising through an oven conveyor belt before they get a human touch, with sauces added and more delicate specialty toppings such as crab, depending on the order. Then they’re sliced and boxed for pickup.

With the help of automation, Moto can churn out 180 pizzas in an hour.

Picnic CEO Michael Bridges said it’s exciting to watch Kindell and Moto embrace robotic technology.

“Witnessing our Picnic Pizza Station being used in such a creative and high-end culinary environment is incredibly gratifying,” Bridges told GeekWire via email. “It’s a testament to the versatility and adaptability of our technology … and a glimpse into a future where automation and artistry can coexist harmoniously.”

The use of the machine — which Bridges said will get even more compact in the coming months — aligns with how Picnic envisions helping businesses to meet demand and serve more customers; optimize labor and improve efficiency; and increase consistency and quality in food preparation.

Kindell knows that society can sometimes attach a negative stigma to automation, especially when it comes to food, because there’s a belief that quality may suffer. It’s why some restaurants and most larger institutions will hide that technology out of public view.

His belief is the highest caliber of quality comes from consistency. And the robot provides that.

“My game plan is bringing it to the forefront where you can see it, understand it and accept it,” Kindell said. “So I’m showcasing it instead of hiding it.”

Last summer, Aaron Blank and his son hit the road between Seattle and Los Angeles for a baseball-fueled journey that had more misses than hits, thanks to repeated confusion and lack of charging infrastructure for their electric vehicle.

This year, Blank, the CEO and president of Seattle-based public relations firm Fearey, set out on the drive again, but he left his 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E at home and opted instead for a rented Tesla Model 3. The goal was to gauge just how big a lead Tesla has built on the competition with its vehicles and its robust network of Superchargers.

With his son Ermias, 11, friend Carson, 12, and family dog Gatsby in tow, Blank documented his journey again via a 42-picture Instagram Story, and in an interview recapping the trip for GeekWire.

“I’m not a huge fan of Elon Musk and all the antics that are surrounding him, but he certainly has produced a really good car,” Blank said. “The Tesla system is light years ahead. And by driving on the West Coast, you could simply see it.”

Blank, who owns his own Tesla, opted to spend $900 on a Hertz rental to save wear and tear on his vehicle. The drive from Los Angeles to Seattle and back totaled 2,250 miles, mostly on Interstate 5.

Blank was frustrated last summer in the Ford and the need to use universal charging stations. He came away feeling like the U.S. is “just not ready” for longer distance travel adventures in electric vehicles because of the lagging infrastructure.

From finding charging stations, to dealing with malfunctions at those stations, to downloading multiple apps, to calling customer support lines, waiting in charging lines, and waiting for his car to charge, Blank called parts of his 2022 trip a nightmare.

In the Tesla, he was wowed from the start.

“Tesla’s like an Apple. You plug it in and it tells you exactly what to do. It’s super smart,” he said. “The Ford is like you’re driving a car. Tesla feels like it’s a computer or a spaceship you’re driving.”

On the road, the biggest illustration of that was in finding Superchargers via Tesla’s Trip Planner software.

“We literally plugged in our address, where we were going, and in 10 seconds it told me all the charging stations along the route and how many chargers were in use,” Blank said.

He never waited for a station at a Supercharger location, which often featured anywhere from 15 to 30 chargers. At one hotel in California, three Tesla chargers were occupied and he was forced to drive 20 minutes to a Supercharger spot so that his car would be ready to go in the morning.

To avoid that hassle, he recommends getting a universal-to-Tesla car adapter on Amazon or elsewhere.

Here are some more of Blank’s notes and nitpicks from the road:

• Tesla has thought about the functionality of each charging station and seems to make an effort to place them in convenient locations with amenities nearby.
• That being said, the charging stations could use their own rest-stop-style amenities like a bathroom or a dog area or some food options. Be prepared for this.
• Tesla and most universal cars slow down the charge after they hit 80% of a charge. So, once you get there, it could take another 30 minutes to get to 100%.
• Book hotels that have your charger. You want to be able to take advantage of that in the evening so that your car is charged up in the morning.
• There’s an “electric ghost” that eats battery power at night. We had 42 miles of range one night when going to bed; when we woke up we had 29 miles.
• Varying charging speeds could be a bit frustrating. The Tesla charges at different maximum kilowatt-hours based on the car’s battery charge level, current energy use of the Supercharger station and extreme weather conditions, according to Tesla. Blank saw everything from 30kW to 200kW per hour.

Perhaps the biggest highlight was one the kids experienced on the trip as they discovered you could play video games on the Model 3’s video console while parked.

“I was talking to a guy at a Tesla station and he said, ‘Do you know your car is moving?'” Blank said. “The kids were moving the wheel back and forth playing a car game. They were driving it. It was pretty epic.”

• The legislation, sponsored by Councilmember Andrew Lewis of District 7, was an amendment to the City’s 2023 budget, with $950,000 in funds coming from windfall admissions tax revenues.
• SIFF purchased the Cinerama for an undisclosed price from the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The high-tech theater closed in February 2020 just before the pandemic and has been shuttered ever since.
• The grant calls for funds to be used to support programming and activations for the public benefit. On Tuesday, an amendment to the legislation called for “provisions in its grant agreement with SIFF Cinerama for living wages in jobs funded by the grant as well as labor harmony agreements,” The Seattle Times reported.
• SIFF has not set an opening date yet for the theater, or a revealed a new name. The organization lost the rights to the Cinerama name with the purchase.
• The King County Council will vote next week on its own $1 million funding legislation to boost the theater.

In a building that used to be a grocery store in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood this week, the future of art and technology converged in a display and discussion around how artificial intelligence is impacting creativity.

The event at The Grocery Studios, organized as part of this week’s Seattle Art Fair, featured a poet and a painter in the home studio of two artists/tech workers whose own career and personal pursuits illustrate how the intersection between art and tech can blend and blur.

“AI is blowing up and affecting all of our lives so much,” said Grocery Studios co-founder Janet Galore. “Artists have a very unique approach and an important lens through which we can understand this new tech.”

Keep reading for insights from the event:

The poet and AI

Sasha Stiles is an award-winning poet, artist and AI researcher regarded as a pioneer of generative literature and language art.

Her love of words, text-based art, fonts, typography and language is matched by a strong appreciation for science and technology. She’s not a trained computer scientist, but she’s become a leader in technology spaces including blockchain, NFTs, and generative AI. Her book “Technelegy” marries Stiles’ human voice and art with output generated by her so-called AI alter ego.

“I’ve always really believed that there is a very close affinity between poetry and technology,” Stiles said. That belief is at the core of a lot of the work that she’s been doing for years, “thinking about poetic language as a kind of code.”

For the past several years, Stiles has been collaborating with AI as a co-author, comparing her own human writing to outputs generated by AI. She does not shy from welcoming the writing and creative stimulation that natural language processing and generative AI both bring.

“AI systems that we are using more and more today, they’re not just a tool, they’re not just a technology,” Stiles said. “They’re linguistic innovation that has potential to continue to shape human consciousness, change the way we tell stories, change the way we think about ourselves, change the kind of narratives that we create as human beings, and really kind of push us forward into phases post-humanity.”

When it comes to being part of the training datasets that AI relies on, Stiles pushes back against those who would fear having their work “ingested.”

“I want to be part of a cultural conversation, I want my work to be read,” she said. “And I want my work to be read by the machines that are going to be writing texts going forward.”

The painter and AI

Jason Puccinelli has been a Northwest artist for 25 years, with work ranging from oil painting to commercial production design. At The Grocery Studios he was showing paintings from a recent solo show called “Mimic,” in which he repainted images by hand that were generated by his prompts to AI.

Puccinelli said his work is the opposite of what Stiles is doing, where she’s taking traditional forms of art like poetry and language and putting them into a modern technological form.

“I’m analyzing science and technology and what’s happening now and trying to put it back into an older form,” he said.

The result was a series of evocative works mixing robot and human figures, “celebrating together over bacchanalian feasts in dining rooms straight out of a 19th century brasserie,” as his show description read.

For Puccinelli, the reverse direction of his work — painting what the AI generated rather than having the AI interpret his work — was important. He’s troubled by the ease with which some creators might turn to AI and not put in the work of creating art.

“If you’re a mountain climber, obviously the goal is to get to the summit. But climbing the mountain is really the thing that makes the summit so spectacular,” Puccinelli said. “It’s the hard work getting there. Stripping that away and just teleporting to the summit, I think there’s a lot lost.”

Puccinelli isn’t sure what to make of AI. After doing his paintings, he’s frightened by it, and amazed.

“Next year, the next five years, things are gonna get really weird,” he said. “As artists, we have to be diligent, to really take the reins a little bit and be responsible with it.”

Tech workers, artists, studio owners

The hosts for the event are accomplished and celebrated artists in their own right — and tech veterans. Demi Raven and Janet Galore are the owners — and inhabitants — of The Grocery Studios, a former grocery store in Beacon Hill that now serves as a creative exhibition space and their home.

Raven is a painter, carpenter and William S. Burroughs aficionado with a degree in computer science from the University of Washington. His day job is working on Prime Air drone delivery at Amazon.

Asked if art informs his work at Amazon, or vice versa, Raven said there are similarities from a creative standpoint.

“Some of the habitual qualities of getting into something very deep and having a headspace and being able to puzzle it out, I think are in tandem,” he said, adding that there is a benefit to having a creative process and a creative way of approaching problems in tech. “I really like to think about things very broadly and outside of a known domain.”

Galore is a multi-faceted artist with a degree in pure mathematics from the UW and 25 years of experience in tech as a UX designer, creative director, and video game producer. She’s worked at Microsoft and Amazon, among other places, and is currently at Google.

She learned early on that she wanted to do art, but didn’t want to make money with art. She was lucky enough to discover a career that allowed her to be creative and technical at the same time, and get paid for making entertainment or things that are useful.

“I had a very meandering journey through different jobs, but really settled on being a user experience designer,” she said. “And in my artwork, I’m very interested in human cognition and perception and how we relate to the world, which is a huge part of user experience design.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• AI’s impact on art and creators: Ethical and legal concerns over ownership, misinformation, and more
• Soundbites on AI: Seattle music vets share concern and enthusiasm for how tech might impact art
• Poet vs. chatbot: We gave the same prompt to a human, Microsoft Bing, and OpenAI’s new GPT-4

• SIFF acquired Cinerama from the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in May. The historic theater in the Belltown neighborhood has been closed for more than three years.
• Lewis’ proposed legislation would provide SIFF a nearly $1 million grant to help get the theater reopened and support programming and activations for the public benefit. The funds would come from windfall admissions tax revenues.
• McDermott is also proposing the county council award SIFF $1 million to support Cinerama through an allocation of existing federal and state funds received during the pandemic, The Seattle Times reported.
• Both proposals will be considered at upcoming City and County Council meetings.

Thousands of one-of-a-kind artifacts from Paul Allen’s collection, spanning decades of cultural relevance, are headed to Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, the institution he helped found 23 years ago.

The bequest by the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist comes just under five years since his death in October 2018 at the age of 65.

Items from the avid collector, who launched MoPOP as the Experience Music Project in 2000, span music, film and television and include such things as instruments, props, costumes, scripts, posters, handbills, illustrations and more. Some have been previously exhibited by the museum and others have never been shown in public.

“This one-of-a-kind bequest reflects Paul’s lifelong passion for how creativity of all kinds and spanning multiple genres is an inspiration,” MoPOP CEO Michele Smith said in a news release. “These artifacts and their stories wonderfully support our continued mission to use the power of pop culture to spark joy …”

Highlights of the gift include:

• 1951 Epiphone FT 79 acoustic guitar owned by Jimi Hendrix.
• Hand-painted and smashed Univox electric guitar owned by Kurt Cobain.
• Complete alien creature suit from the 1979 film “Alien.”
• Darth Vader’s helmet from the 1980 film “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”

• Handwritten lyrics by David Bowie for “Starman” from the early 1970s.
• Motorcycle jacket worn by Prince in his 1984 film “Purple Rain.”
• A collection of Nichelle Nichols’ (Lt. Nyota Uhura) hand-annotated scripts from the “Star Trek” television and film series (1965-1998).
• The iconic hat worn by Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”
• A full-size flying “Spinner” vehicle from the 1982 film Blade Runner.

Allen’s original mandate at EMP was to build an outsized tribute to Hendrix, the rock icon Allen adored, and gather anything related to him that was cool. The focus — and the name — changed over the years.

Allen’s sister Jody Allen is the executor of the vast Paul G. Allen estate, and for several years has been selling off pieces of it, ranging from superyachts to works of art to historic military aircraft. In May, the Cinerama movie theater in Seattle was finally sold after sitting closed for more than three years. All proceeds from these sales have been dedicated to philanthropy.

“Having had the pleasure to work with some of these objects in the past, and now the opportunity to integrate many others into MoPOP’s collection, we are thrilled to be able to highlight the impact and resonance of these artifacts and how they have helped shaped our popular culture,” said Jacob McMurray, MoPOP’s director of curatorial, collections, and exhibits.

Several dozen artifacts from the bequest are currently on display in MoPOP exhibits, including “Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction;” “Fantasy: Worlds of Myth & Magic”; “Scared to Death: The Thrill of Horror Film”; “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses.” The artifacts will also be incorporated into future exhibitions and loaned to other museums and institutions worldwide.

And they’ll be added to an online vault. McMurray spoke with GeekWire last year about MoPOP’s efforts to turn the more than 80,000 items in its permanent collection into an extensive internet resource.

X now marks the spot where Twitter’s blue birdie used to be, as Elon Musk rebranded the social media company he owns. Those tweeting — or X-ing (?) — about it seem mostly confused and unimpressed at best.

For many, the simple letter logo is coming across as uninspired, as tweets ripped Musk and the company for either employing a grade schooler or spending less than 10 minutes to ditch and redesign a logo used for years and recognized around the world.

Others found similarities in X branding and usage elsewhere on the web.

Musk’s X appears to be the same as that used for the X Window System, “a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems,” as Wikipedia puts it. That system has nothing to do with Microsoft Windows, by the way. But Tom Warren at The Verge tweeted that those rip-off comparisons fail to recognize that Musk’s X is just the X glyph from Unicode’s Special Alphabets 4.

Musk and Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino both tweeted about the shift to X, and the replies and re-X’s or whatever they’re called now, lived up to old Twitter’s brand of social commentary.

The Xbox News account and others got in on the action looking to compare the X to that used by Microsoft’s video games division.

Another user gathered up the X logos used for Microsoft Excel over the years.

And others with a love for the bird looked for ways to appeal to Musk and his marketers to bring back that logo, even if it had to incorporate an X in a redesign.

Recognizing that nothing goes better together than pizza and video games, Xbox has designed a pizza-scented wireless video game controller to promote the upcoming “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” movie.

The limited edition, ooze green controllers come with a slice of (fake) pepperoni pizza stuck in the center that acts as built-in scent diffuser to deliver the aroma of a New York-style slice, according to Microsoft.

Four controller styles represent the signature colors, weapons, and personality of a Turtle brother: Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo. Fans can enter to win them by following Xbox Game Pass on Twitter and retweeting the official Xbox Game Pass sweepstakes tweet. The giveaway will run from today through Aug. 13.

Microsoft says the controllers are a great way to play the “timeless arcade game” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge,” which is available with Xbox Game Pass.

Paramount Pictures’ new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” film hits theaters next month. It will be available for pre-order on the Microsoft Store starting Aug. 2, and digital premium release is Sept. 5.

A new indoor space in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood aims to get more people outdoors. To do so, Gearhouse is relying on a two-sided business in which it serves as a both a social meeting place and a gear rental spot.

The startup was founded by Evan Maynard, a former engineer at Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos.

Maynard left Blue Origin in 2020 with a desire to launch something other than rockets. A sustainability focused software startup called Kotoo was his first stab at entrepreneurship, but that business struggled during the pandemic.

Gearhouse was started in a windowless alley garage in South Lake Union in 2021. Growth and a desire for a more social setting landed the business on Capitol Hill with the opening of the Basecamp Cafe / hangout / rental location at 800 E. Thomas St. in a former AT&T Lounge location.

“We are optimized around helping people make friends and try new things in the outdoors,” said Maynard, working this week in the 3,100-square-foot space where people tapped on laptops and a coffee bar churned out drinks. “The whole purpose of the place is to help you indulge in what you’re interested in. It’s either get you started, get you to the next level or get you doing it more often.”

Maynard and a small team of 12 employees are seeking to reinvent the gear rental experience for Gearhouse members — more than 200 of them so far — who pay $95 a month for a variety of perks including access to a wide range of gear, from mountain bikes to camp stoves; unlimited clinics and classes; curated trips; free co-working space; discounted food and drink; an active Slack community; and more.

“We kind of do everything,” Maynard said of the roughly 1,500-item rental business, stuffed into a room off the cafe. “If you need a headlamp, we’ll rent that to you. If you need a pillow, we rent that to you. If you need a cooler, we rent that to you. You don’t need to suddenly need something for a weekend, buy it and then have it sit in your closet all the time.”

Gearhouse differentiates itself in that regard from other outdoor competitors such as Seattle-based REI and Evo, who rent gear for a few specific pursuits, such as biking or skiing. Another startup called GeerGarage acts as a peer-to-peer marketplace for outdoor-focused camping and recreation equipment.

The social space hosts about 10 events a week, ranging from movie nights to detailed classes on everything from how to set up campsite gear to introductions on sport climbing, backcountry skiing, or crevasse rescue. Some classes extend beyond the cafe and include hours in the field learning a new activity with new friends.

Making new connections and getting through the so-called “Seattle Freeze” is important to Maynard.

“I think people move here for the outdoors, and then they struggle accessing it,” he said. “It’s an intimidating place. People are very intense about it.”

Gearhouse helps match people to activities and intensity levels that are a good fit.

Like most startup founders, Maynard, who is bootstrapping the company, is doing a bit of everything to make his business work. He’s learning how to fix gear and how to be a barista. And he’s leaning on the tech skills he honed at Blue Origin.

“It’s still data-driven decision making, and still experimentation and a bias for building something new,” he said. “The same principles apply here — the best way to learn how it’s going to work is to try it. And then look at the data.”

Leilani Fisher, a lawyer who lives on Capitol Hill, was also looking to rent a mountain bike. After passing by Gearhouse in recent days she stopped in to work and signed up for a membership.

“Storage is a big thing. I already have two bikes and wasn’t sure if I wanted to pull the trigger on a third,” Fisher said. “These bikes tend to get really spendy, so it’s a good way to test them out and see if I even like it.”

After work, she was headed to a class through Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance at Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park. Her membership allowed her to keep the bike for four or five days.

Jared Siegel, a fish biologist who works mostly from home these days, signed up for a membership while GeekWire was visiting this week. He was looking for a way to get out of the house and meet people a bit more organically, and was drawn to Gearhouse and the potential for a new social network.

Getting into mountain biking or paddle boarding without purchasing another piece of gear was also appealing to Siegel.

“We do live in a consumer society where everybody wants all the goodies,” he said. “But really, we can do things in a more efficient way.”

Michael Magan is a tech worker who used to live in South Lake Union when Gearhouse set up shop near where he lived. That location has been idled until winter while the Capitol Hill location gets off the ground.

A member since the start, Magan first stopped in when he was prepping for a bikepacking trip and didn’t have any of the necessary gear.

“They were still setting up. So I just walked in, and I met Evan. And I said, ‘Hey, can I rent bikepacking gear?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I have it.'” Magan said. “Later it turns out that was literally his bikepacking gear that he just rented out to me.”

Magan said Gearhouse is a fun way to get friends involved in outdoor activities because it lowers the barrier to entry. And he likes the sense of community that’s been created.

“I feel like I’m part of something,” he said.

Paul Allen would be right at home scrolling the Seattle Seahawks internet experience today — so long as the late Microsoft co-founder and team owner’s dial-up connection was working.

In a throwback to the 1990s, when Allen saved Seattle’s NFL team and Microsoft was growing into a tech giant, the Seahawks unveiled a web experience Wednesday to coincide with the release of a throwback uniform and gear for fans.

Complete with a vintage Microsoft start button and image of an old PC on seahawks.com, the throwback site launches with the sound of a classic internet dial-up. Dialing … connecting … connected!

The site is presented by Microsoft and features an ad for Internet Explorer that resolves to the Edge browser home page. An ad for Windows 95 goes to the Windows 11 site. And another vintage-looking ad for the Seahawks mobile app shows an HP iPAQ Pocket PC and goes to the modern site for downloading the app. There’s even a picture of a pager encouraging fans to text for team promotions and ticket availability.

A story on the site recalls the era in which Allen purchased the team, as a “pop culture revolution” took off in Seattle with the hysteria around grunge music, Starbucks coffee and the emergence of the tech scene.

The uniforms feature the Seahawks original retro logo on silver helmets. The royal blue and apple green jerseys are meant to honor “the Salish seas and forests of the Emerald City and Pacific Northwest,” a story on the site reads. A patch on the inside of the neckline features the Kingdome, the Seahawks home stadium until 1999.

Players including Bobby Wagner, DK Metcalf, Geno Smith, Tyler Lockett, Quandre Diggs and others are pictured modeling the uniforms.

Matt Haberkamp, Seahawks digital platform manager, oversaw the project and said it was fun to dig through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to look back at popular websites of the ’90s and focus on creating a nod to the old Seahawks.com.

“We wanted to include as many small nuggets as we could think of,” Haberkamp said. “Connecting to the internet with a dial-up sound, popups, animated GIFs, images that won’t load, and an overload of ads all while using fonts, graphics and web design of the time.”

Haberkamp said the side rails were one of the highlights, using images of retro devices and Seahawks legends in calls for fans to share their memories and so on

“We were able to add Microsoft as a presenting partner to include their ’90s advertisements which pulled everything together,” he added.

In a throwback video on Twitter, Seahawks first-round draft pick Jaxson Smith-Njigba stars as a player waking up — in the throwback uniform — to the ’90s, in a home filled with touchstones from that decade. An old alarm clock, video game console, posters, a PC and more are shown in his room as he puts on headphones for a Sony Walkman.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas —The promise of cricket in America could be seen and felt in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Awash in Friday night lights after a scorching Texas sun, the trim green cricket oval invited fanatics and families alike to watch the Seattle Orcas chase the Washington Freedom’s 144 runs.

Deep in the Heart of Texas played cheerfully from the loudspeakers during a brief break in the action, and local law enforcement, sporting straw cowboy hats and boots, looked on in bewilderment.

Major League Cricket debuted last week, the cricketing world’s American Dream, a new field of dreams.

Unlike the seesaw, to-and-fro of baseball innings, the format of cricket known as T-20 is played politely with one team batting until 20 overs (120 balls) are thrown – around the same number thrown by a baseball team in 9 innings.

During a cricket game’s overs, the batting squad attempts to score as many runs as possible while the bowling team, the defense, attempts to take the batting team’s wickets. Batting ends when 10 wickets are taken or 20 overs are completed, whichever comes first.

In the opening innings, DC had scored 144 runs and lost seven wickets. Now it was up to Seattle’s assortment of Indian, Pakistani, South African, Sri Lankan, West Indies, and U.S. players to beat that score. Seattle displayed an offense not unlike past Mariners teams — slow but steady small ball.

After eight overs, Seattle still needed 101 runs. With two overs remaining, they needed 17. Imad Wasim of Pakistan and Shimron Hetmyer from the West Indies formed a partnership that produced a pair of 6s (baseball’s equivalent of a homerun), and Shubham Ranjane came up with the winning hit for four (something like a ground rule double) after Hetmyer was dismissed.

The Seattle Orcas won their inaugural match Friday night with 148 runs and five lost wickets. They followed their thrilling victory with another win Saturday night over the San Francisco Unicorns, this time in a more decisive manner, 177 runs and four wickets. The Orcas took all ten San Francisco wickets after the Unicorns put up just 142 runs. Orcas batsman Heinrich Klaasen of South Africa scored the franchise’s first “half-century,” putting up 53 runs.

In 2015, I wrote an article seeking to answer a question: Could cricket in the U.S. be a worthwhile investment? I flew to New York City to watch a tour of the world’s cricketing all-stars because, having fallen in love with the sport thanks to business travel to India and England, I was curious about its viability in America.

Not long ago, the idea that Major League Soccer franchises would pop up in cities across America, each competing for international talent, was a dream to some, and a joke to others. Cricket? It’s too complicated. Don’t matches stretch on for days? It will never work.

But might the MLC and the Indian diaspora attract a legend at the end of his career, like MLS and its “soccer is life” Latino population attracted Messi to Miami?

The night before Seattle’s match, the Texas Super Kings played the LA Knight Riders to commence tournament play. Ross Perot Jr.’s Super Kings beat the Knight Riders by a score of 181 runs and the loss of six wickets to 112 runs with the loss of all 10 wickets.

Thanks to an agreement with the Indian Premier League (IPL), several of the American teams share IPL mascots. Chenai and Texas are the Super Kings, Mumbai and New York are the Indians, Kolkata and Los Angeles are the Knight Riders.

All six teams — Texas, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. — began this week’s tournament in Texas, to be continued in North Carolina, and then return to Texas for the playoffs on July 27.

The scene in Grand Prairie

Major League Cricket debuted to a sellout crowd of around 7,000 fans with the kind of diversity the NFL, the NBA, and MLB can only dream about. Television networks from around the world, including America’s Willow cable channel, broadcast the game live to hundreds of millions in cricket-mad places like India, Australia and New Zealand, the U.K., and South Africa. International news outlets have run coverage almost hourly through the weekend.

MLC took over an abandoned independent league baseball stadium (the Airhogs) in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie, and invested heavily in a world class cricket oval. There, fans in Dallas Cowboys gear and Bass Pro Shop hats mixed with the national team jerseys from every cricket nation. Country and Western, Bollywood, and hip-hop blasted overhead. Fans munched on chickpeas and rice seasoned with Tex-Mex Chipotle hot sauce.

The Dallas metroplex made for a surprising backdrop. Looming over the new cricket stadium is Lone Star Park, a hulking horse racing venue. Soaring above the racetrack’s spire, commercial jets take off and land from nearby DFW Airport.

Inside the arena, an English gentleman from Birmingham, more recently residing in Jacksonville, stayed over in Dallas when he learned he could catch the first-ever Major League Cricket game.

Tim Miller, 54, and his son Iain, 18, live locally in the Dallas metroplex and were standing near the field an hour before the action began. Iain began playing with friends, mostly Indian, in a nearby park as the pandemic began. He fell in love with the game and has now tried out for an Under-19 team. He and his father watch cricket on Willow.

Mark Roberts and his kids, 10 and 13, drove 12 hours from Fort Collins, Colo., to see the launch. Dad took an interest in 2018 when he stumbled across the sport on Willow. He wanted to introduce his kids to cricket because “it’s a better alternative to baseball.” Why? The action.

Like a winter league baseball game in the Caribbean, fans blew whistles and anticipated, and then reacted to, every play of the game.

By all accounts, the cricket grounds and the quality of play were top-notch. Likewise, the league clearly invested in slick, professional video and merchandise.

Cricket in the Pacific Northwest

Orcas cricket is backed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella; Madrona Venture Group Managing Director S. Soma Somasegar; Icertis co-founder and CEO Samir Bodas; GreatPoint Ventures managing partner Ashok Krishnamurthi; and former Microsoft and Avalara executive Sanjay Parthasarathy.

Soma and his family attended both Orcas games over the weekend.

“Seattle was initially not a day 1 city for the league,” he said. “But because of the strong and vibrant fan base and sports community in Seattle we made Seattle a day 1 city for the league. We have an important fan base to build upon.”

He pointed out that the U.S. and Seattle should be part of the world’s second most popular sport.

“Sports bring people from different perspectives together” he said. “ We want to unify.”

Tech hubs like Seattle and Silicon Valley in California have long attracted software programmers from India. The Asian Indian population in the U.S. has grown steadily, rising from 2 million in 2000 to more than 5 million.

In the Seattle area, Microsoft is incorporating a recreational cricket pitch on its new campus in Redmond. King County’s Marymoor Park, where Seattle’s amateur league has played for decades, envisions its own professionally-run stadium.

What’s next for MLC?

Seattle will play three more matches in Morristown, N.C., over the weekend. The teams return to Texas for the championship round.

Beyond that, it’s a little uncertain.

MLC franchises expect to have their grounds in order by the 2025 season. Tom Dunmore, who heads MLC marketing, said the hope is that 2025 will be the first regular season.

Next year, the U.S. and the West Indies (Jamaica, Bahamas, Antigua) will co-host cricket’s World Cup. The International Cricket Committee (ICC), the equivalent of soccer’s FIFA, is currently working to identify host cities. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland are possibilities. With the Oakland Athletics heading to Las Vegas, that could open up a suitable stadium. The Oakland Coliseum is known for its generous foul territory, which would enable a proper cricket oval.

Dunmore says MLC will wait to see what the ICC comes up with, and perhaps next year’s MLC tournament could be played on a World Cup pitch.

“Not to be cliché, but if you build it people will come,” Dunmore said.

A little more on how the game is played

If you’ve played the game all your life, feel free to skip this. If not, read on. More than 10 years ago on a trip to New Delhi, I downloaded Cricket for Dummies in order to be conversant on the subject since the Australian national team was touring India. The test match, this one played over weeks, was all anyone wanted to talk about.

Learning a little about the game helped. In Texas, some fans dressed in Jacob deGrom and Ronald Acuna Jr. baseball jerseys said they watched how-to videos on YouTube to get up to speed.

Here’s a short lesson that might be helpful.

• As in baseball, a batsman (batter) stands before a bowler (pitcher) and swings at pace balls (fastballs) and spin or swing balls (curves and sliders) attempting score runs.
• The batsman can score 1-3 runs with hits inside the boundary (fence) or 4 runs at once if a fielder fails to stop the ball from exiting the boundary. If the batsman clears the boundary in the air, it’s 6 runs.
• What are wickets? Well, wickets are taken by the defense. The defense can take a wicket by catching the ball in the air, smacking the stumps behind the batsman or hitting the batsman’s leg pads without contact with the bat.
• A batsman can stand at the crease (like baseball’s plate) all day if the defense cannot take the wicket.

Who wouldn’t like to watch Aaron Judge or Seattle native All-Star Corbin Carroll stand at the plate for the entire game because no one could get him out?

For further reading

• Major League Cricket secures $120M funding from Microsoft CEO and others to launch in U.S. – GeekWire
• Cricket was once America’s cup of tea | by Greg Shaw | Medium
• Coder by day, cricket bowler by night | Crosscut

A line of people snaking through the Spheres on Wednesday and Thursday this week ended with a photo op on an upper floor of Amazon’s unique Seattle office building. But employees and members of the public weren’t looking to pose with some notable human celebrity. They were here to see a plant.

“Morticia 2.0,” the latest version of the tech company’s famed Amorphophallus titanum — or corpse flower — was in rare bloom, and the window of opportunity to take a look, catch a whiff, and snap a pic was short.

Amazon first alerted employees internally on Wednesday that the large plant would be blooming that night and set up an online reservation system that was also open to the public — and quickly filled up. People waited until after midnight for the chance to get in the Spheres.

Crowds were back again on Thursday, and by the time GeekWire visited at 4 p.m., the line still stretched over multiple floors of the plant-filled Spheres. A live Twitch stream was broadcasting a view of the plant for those who couldn’t get in.

“It’s cool to see. It’s cool that Amazon has one,” said Kim Bruzda, an Amazon employee who works in Redmond, Wash., and made the trip over to Seattle to see Morticia 2.0. “I was hoping to capture more of the smell,” she added, as the stronger odor the plant gives off was fading with the afternoon light.

A home gardener, Bruzda has 60 of her own houseplants. “They’re everywhere,” her husband Alex laughed as he stood in line with his wife — again, surrounded by plants.

The couple eventually made it to Morticia 2.0’s staging area, handed a smartphone to a Spheres docent, stood next to the plant for 15 seconds, smiled for a photo, and off they went.

Amazon actually has many of the plants in its care and has successfully pollinated them over the years. Morticia 2.0 came from the same corm that produced “Morticia,” which bloomed and drew a big crowd back in October 2018. After that came “Bellatrix,” which grew to 6-feet tall in 2019.

The plant has the largest unbranched flowering structure in the world, according to Amazon, and takes a minimum of seven years to produce its first bloom, which only lasts about 48 hours.

When in bloom, the plant gives off a putrid odor that gives it the corpse flower name. It can heat up to 98 degrees, which helps attract pollinators such as flies and carrion beetles.

Ben Eiben has worked on Amazon’s horticulture team for six years and is now program manager for the Spheres. He’s witnessed the three bloom events for the corpse flower and was surprised by this year’s crowds. He thought maybe a couple hundred people would turn out.

“I just think there’s a real curiosity for the general public,” Eiben said. “We love it from a horticulture perspective, because it’s our mascot for getting people interested in plants.”

Eiben said Morticia 2.0 was definitely smellier earlier on Thursday morning, but he likened the smell more to rotting cabbage.

“It doesn’t smell like straight roadkill,” he said. “But it can be overpowering and eye watering.”

Amorphophallus titanum is native to Indonesian island Sumatra and has become a popular specimen at botanical gardens around the world. Eiben first saw one bloom when he worked at Atlanta Botanical Garden in 2004.

“I want to see one in the wild. That’s on my bucket list,” he said. “My partner and I are planning to go to Borneo and Sumatra in 2024 and I want to try to line it up.”

The plant is a member of the aroid family and Amazon’s Lucas Garcia is in charge of that group for the Spheres. Standing outside the building Thursday as people still milled around the plaza, he was excited that something he helped raise was garnering so much attention.

“I knew this was a popular event before I was really into plants,” Garcia said. “Now being in the industry it’s crazy to see firsthand. I was here [Wednesday] past midnight, and people were still in line. It’s pretty remarkable to see how much of an impact this plant can have on people.”

Garcia spends his days at Amazon’s support greenhouse east of Seattle where he cares for plants and grows specimens like Morticia 2.0 to be nice and big.

Asked if he had a green thumb, Garcia said, “I think I have a green body.”

Previously: Inside Amazon’s Spheres: After five years, the plants and employees are living well together

Tuesday night’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Seattle attracted a sea of fans rooting for a variety of players and teams. In a tech city, it felt appropriate to engage those fans on a sometimes divisive topic not related to pennant races: Are robots coming for the jobs of umpires?

Baseball traditionalists and champions of change offered up opinions about how technology could alter the sport for better or for worse. Most agreed that a human being needs to remain behind home plate even if that ump has to cede some control to a robot with a better eye for balls and strikes.

It’s already happening in the minor leagues, with the automatic ball-strike (ABS) system tracking pitches and opening up human calls to robotic interpretation. Check out how a player’s challenge of an ump worked in this video. Despite how the tech seems to work, a big-league promotion doesn’t appear likely in 2024.

GeekWire caught up with a number of fans during the All-Star Game to get their opinions on the topic. Keep reading for what they had to say.

Eddie Galvan, Cubs fan from Chicago

“I don’t think it can go fully robotic,” Eddie Galvan said, showing his knowledge about how the minor leagues are using a robotic challenge system on balls and strikes. “It’s pretty quick, you get an update right away. But I do like the feel of the old school umpire behind the catcher, calling balls and strikes. Even if the strike zone shifts a little bit, you get used to it during the game and that’s what you go with. I like that feel, more than the stoppage of challenging.

Galvan said he doesn’t see the umpires being eliminated completely.

“I like baseball the way it is.”

Courtney and John Owens, Mariners and White Sox fans from Seattle

“Human error is normal. Sure, robotics would make it more consistent, but part of the fun is that mistakes happen and people are human,” Courtney Owens said, adding that her husband, a White Sox fan originally from Chicago, is the bigger baseball fan. “I’m here for the beer and the cheering.”

John Owens said he’s open to trying anything when it comes to advancing baseball.

“I don’t like anyone that says the game can’t change,” he said. “I love quicker games, so the pitch clock is not a problem in my book. And if the next step is robot umps, I’d say give it a try.”

John Owens said he likes having a person behind the plate but he doesn’t see anything wrong with having someone — or something — check their accuracy.

“I’m there to see the players,” he said. “But I enjoy an umpire behind home plate giving the good strike three call, too. So I don’t want to give it up entirely if we don’t have to. But, games evolve, so we’ve got to evolve.”

Eric Aime, Mariners fan from South Hill, Wash.

Eric Aime said he’s always been “a very traditional baseball guy,” but tech advances in the past few years have him in favor of robotic umpires.

“I love the human element. But there have been game-deciding calls that I want to go the right way,” Aime said. “People get angry or upset, we’ve seen a lot of miscommunication between umpires and players or managers and things like that. To take the emotion out of that would be better for the game.”

Katarina Hunt, Phillies fan from Seattle

Katarina Hunt said she’d rather not see minor league robot umps make their way to the big leagues.

“I’m all for AI, don’t get me wrong,” Hunt said. “But the ability to see, after all their years being an ump, it’s something you cannot just generate. … I’d pick the real thing over AI any day.”

Despite calling herself a young fan, Hunt said she’s protective of the “integrity of the game.”

“At the end of the day, we allow those human mistakes,” she said. “I think it keeps the tradition of baseball alive. I think that’s the part that makes it interesting, arguing about the plays.”

Sean Lightfoot, Mariners fan from Mill Creek, Wash.

Sean Lightfoot admitted that there are problems with baseball umpires now, but the human element is a necessity.

“As much as there’s calls that we don’t like, we still need that human touch,” he said. “Refs, umps — it doesn’t matter what sport. I know we want to argue, but they’ve got the last call.”

So, no robots behind the plate?

“Maybe one day … way in the future,” Lightfoot said.

Dave Fox, Angels fan from Southern California

Dave Fox is a traditional baseball person, but he said “our traditions are going out the door” as he mentioned such changes as interleague play and the shift.

“They’ve changed so much,” he said, before adding that more ump tech is the right way to go. “Obviously they’re gonna have to have an umpire behind home plate to run the show, basically. But giving up balls and strikes is huge. If they implemented it I’d be OK with it.”

He said he’s gotten used to seeing the strike zone overlay on TV broadcasts and he gets mad at clear misses on balls and strikes calls by human umps.

“Let’s get it right,” Fox said. “We’re trying to get everything else right.”

Todd Pribanic, Guardians fan from Dallas

Robot, human, AI, whatever. Todd Pribanic said he wants whatever works and gets the right call.

“But it can’t mess with the time and the importance of the game in other areas. It has to make sense,” he said. “You don’t want to eliminate the human element altogether.”

Michael and Austin Ortega, Astros fans from Houston

Michael Ortega views bad calls by umps as a teaching opportunity for his 15-year-old son, Austin, and other young baseball players. He said he’s more worried about seeing players get better than umpires.

“We don’t want a bad call. Nobody does. You have to live with it,” Ortega said. “It changes gears in their head,” he added about young players who react to what’s called behind the plate.

Austin said he’d like to see a more accurate way of calling balls and strikes. But it might not make a difference.

“The umpires work in your favor and they don’t work in your favor,” he said.

Quincy Allen, Mariners fan from Tacoma, Wash.

Quincy Allen likes the strike zone box that shows up on TV broadcasts and he’d be all for calls being sent “upstairs” for a second look by more humans and robots.

“I feel that it’d be 100% accurate at that point, if someone’s actually reviewing it,” Allen said, stressing that the accuracy is more important to the game than human flaws. “If a robot is calling a play and it’s gonna say that it’s accurate, it’s accurate. How can I fault that?”

Allen said he’s already a fan of this season’s new pitch clock, and more tweaks to the game would be welcome.

“I like change!” he said. “As long as it’s good for the fans and everyone.”

Seattle Mariners star Julio Rodriguez hopes to knock the lights out in Monday’s MLB All-Star Game Home Run Derby. On Sunday, he showed up in the lights, as part of a drone light show near the Space Needle.

An image of the center fielder striking his signature “no-fly zone” pose with his arms crossed was one of many baseball-themed displays created in the night sky at Seattle Center by 600 lighted drones.

According to the Center, the drones flew about 400 feet above ground, set to a soundtrack of baseball classics and summertime music as fans watched from the International Fountain Lawn.

Assorted posts on Twitter showed images and video of designs including the Mariners logo, the Pike Place Market sign, the Seattle skyline with Mount Rainier, outlines of iconic M’s players Ken Griffey Jr., and Ichiro Suzuki, and more.

The Mariners first hosted a drone light show at T-Mobile Park last summer as part of a preview celebration to mark this week’s All-Star Game week of festivities. That show, and Sunday night’s, were handled by Sky Elements, a Fort Worth, Texas-based company that has put on shows at other Major League ballparks and assorted events around the country.

GeekWire spoke with Sky Elements head Rick Boss last year about what types of drones are used, how the show is designed, and what makes it all a unique alternative to fireworks.

A Space Needle rep said Sky Elements will be back to stage another show on New Year’s Eve.

Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game festivities continue Monday with the T-Mobile Home Run Derby from T-Mobile Park at 5 p.m. PT. The All-Star Game takes place Tuesday at 5 p.m.

Two veterans of the Seattle area’s tech industry have opened an Indian restaurant with Michelin-recognized roots in downtown Bellevue, Wash.

As investors and franchisees of Farzi Café, this is not the first foray into the restaurant world for technologists Amit Kumar Upadhyay and Dhiraj Singh. But, it is the first time that science and technology have played such a big part in how their investments play out on the plate.

Upadhyay and Singh have a history of going into projects together. Prior to Farzi, they joined forces in another Bellevue eatery called Thaal Indian Restaurant, known for its traditional thali servings.

It was in New Delhi, India, that Upadhyay first experienced Farzi Café, the flagship café that owner and restaurateur Zorawar Kalra opened 14 years ago. Since then, Kalra (often called the “Prince of Indian Cuisine”) has gone on to open 20 restaurants under his Massive Restaurants enterprise.

The opening of Farzi Café at Bellevue Square is its first entry into the United States — with plans to expand across the country.

The majority of Farzi Cafés are owned by Massive Restaurants, while 30% operate as franchises. Kalra believes the franchises benefit from local partnerships that share a deep understanding of the brand’s vision and philosophy.

There are several factors Kalra considers when looking for franchise partners, with financial considerations constituting just one aspect. He wants to know that his partners possess an understanding of hospitality.

Given that this is the restaurant business, he also looks for those who understand the time it takes to develop and to stick with a project over time. But most of all, it boils down to passion.

“Our objective is to collaborate with individuals who approach the restaurant business with earnest commitment,” Kalra said. “Most significantly, we seek franchisees who can cultivate a profound ardor for the food industry and its intricacies.”

Given the city’s deep ties to the tech industry, the selection of a franchise partner in Bellevue who understands and is integrated within the tech hub was pivotal for Kalra.

Both Upadhyay and Singh certainly have strong ties within the tech industry in the region. Upadhyay moved to the area in 2005 to lead a major initiative for T-Mobile. Singh, a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft, put down roots in nearby Sammamish, Wash.

Upadhyay was taken by Kalra’s approach towards Indian food and the desire to position Indian cuisine at the forefront of the American dining scene. He points to the “approach and presentation of Indian food to the global palate,” with the foray into molecular gastronomy being a draw.

“Yes, [molecular gastronomy] was a major attraction for me,” Upadahyay said. “In Seattle, food has not been presented in that way.”

Farzi Café leans into the science and technology behind molecular gastronomy.

• If you peer into the kitchen, it’s not uncommon to see cooks spherifiying (a method to change liquid into a squishy sphere) kiwi for Kiwi Puchka – a deceptively savory bite with cumin granny smith and tamarind gel.
• There is also plenty of fermentation, and the use of “magic elements” like phosphorus paper (which is a showstopper when used tableside to present the Fired Jackfruit Pollichathu) to enhance the overall dining experience.
• Behind the bar, there is the whir of centrifuges at work where cocktails are transformed into “striking concoctions.”

Cocktails that traditionally have a mix of fresh juice, say orange juice, are spun until they turn transparent, making for a clear cocktail while keeping its distinctive flavor intact.

In addition to the centrifuge, sous vide techniques and a sonicator also play a starring role in some of the cocktails. According to Engjell Shala, who oversees Farzi’s global beverage program, “we extract flavors in ways not common to many bars and restaurants.” 

With state-of-the-art point-of-sale systems, advanced kitchen management systems, customer relationship management software for personalized experiences, and data analytics for informed decision-making, Farzi Café leverages technology end-to-end to enhance guest experiences, and drive efficiency.

With Upadhyay and Singh on board, Farzi Café has had a strong start in the U.S. Ultimately, the goal is to have an Indian restaurant affiliated with Farzi Café in the top three dining destinations of every major city across the U.S. 

With the Bellevue opening, Kalra has found a successful model for bringing in the right people for the job.

“I am delighted that this [partnership] materialized, resulting in the establishment of a formidable and professional association,” Kalra said. “Our partnership has quickly evolved into a robust and enduring professional relationship that we are eager to nurture and advance for the foreseeable future.”

Seattle’s famous Fremont Troll and the Seattle Kraken’s blue-haired mascot Buoy are going to get some company this summer when six giant hand-built Nordic troll characters come to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

A public exhibition titled “Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King” will feature work by Danish environmental artist and storyteller Thomas Dambo. Beginning in August, the art will stretch across sites from Washington’s Puget Sound region to Portland.

The project is being managed by the Seattle-based Scan Design Foundation, a private organization founded in 2002 to honor the legacy of Inger and Jens Bruun and advance Danish-American relations by supporting cultural exchanges focused on environmental sustainability.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization created by the late Microsoft co-founder and his sister, Jody Allen, is helping to fund the project. Media partners include the Embassy of Denmark, Visit Seattle, and Washington State Tourism.

“This project celebrates the human experience of art and the connection between Coast Salish tribal communities, Danish and Scandinavian traditions, and our shared value of environmental stewardship,” said Cat Martin, arts and communities program director at the Allen Foundation. “It uses the power of storytelling to engage people of all ages to learn about the environment and the steps we can all take to better preserve and protect it.”

Dambo’s larger-than-life troll sculptures have been installed in 100 locations around the world. The interactive works are built with recycled materials and are meant to “tell a tale of protecting nature and honoring the land and waterways,” according to a news release.

A companion map and app will be released to help the public locate each troll in West Seattle, Ballard, Issaquah, Bainbridge and Vashon Islands, and Portland. Specific site locations will only be revealed at the conclusion of each build process, between Aug. 1 and Sept. 17. The sculptures will be hosted at each site for at least three years.

The troll installations will rely on local volunteers who help complete the sculptures, from disassembling and cutting wooden pallets, screwing and hammering parts, clearing brush, and making meals for the crew. Because the trolls will be located on traditional Coast Salish territories, the project is working closely with the Muckleshoot and Snoqualmie tribes.

“I want people to know that trash has value. My trolls do that, and also help me tell stories, like the legends I grew up with,” Dambo said in a statement. “In nature, there is no landfill. Nature is circular, everything has a meaning and everything is recycled.”

During a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan offered a gloomy prediction for the future of music. He said that once kids get their hands on AI as a songwriting tool, that’ll be the end of the process of organic songwriting.

“If you’re 15 and you have to spend 10,000 hours listening to The Beatles and Joy Division to learn how to write a song, versus you can punch a button and it’s going to give you seven options … it’s over,” Corgan said.

Barely missing a beat, Paul McCartney now says even he is using AI to make one last Beatles song, with plans to release a track later this year featuring John Lennon’s voice.

The rapid rise of generative AI technology and tools such as ChatGPT, and the legal and ethical arguments for how they will be used to manipulate and create content, is being debated in numerous corners of society.

In music circles, there’s a mix of enthusiasm about AI, including from artists such as Grimes, who is inviting fans to make songs with her AI-generated voice and split any royalties. And there’s trepidation, as with Corgan, and others, such as Sting, who told the BBC that the “building blocks of music belong to human beings.”

The topic can be a bit like music itself — subjective.

GeekWire reached out to a variety of artists and professionals from Seattle’s music scene to hear how the prospect of AI is being received in the community, who might want to use it, and what the future might hold for songwriters, producers, label execs, DJs and others. Keep reading for their insights.

Danny Newcomb, musician, songwriter and startup CEO

• Danny Newcomb has played in Seattle bands including Shadow, Goodness, The Rockfords and Sugarmakers. He’s the founder and CEO of a new AI company for sync music licensing called Incantio.

Danny Newcomb admits “sync licensing” doesn’t sound particularly sexy. But independent artists should be excited nonetheless by the new AI platform he is building in Seattle to better match music with moving images in TV, movies, advertising and elsewhere.

The two-sided business platform, called Incantio, allows artists to upload their music into discovery pools and set pricing, and it allows creators to more easily find that music through recommendations related to mood, tempo, vocals, etc.

“AI can curate all this music and extract data from it,” Newcomb said. “We’re basically creating a tube or a funnel where all the music comes in one side and then is recommended on the other side by extracting the same features.”

In Newcomb’s view, AI’s ability to see patterns over vast amounts of data that no human wants to sort through is the best use for the technology, and the value of his startup. Generative AI, on the other hand, in which software can be used to write lyrics or replicate vocals, is less enticing to Newcomb

“I like to work and I like to push myself. So if you’re going to take all that out of the equation … I don’t know,” he said.

Newcomb figures AI will provide other options beyond the mechanical means of reproducing music. Artists might use voice commands to augment and speed the process, such as “Give me an ending” or “I’m hearing a melody like this, can you put this in the flavor of piano?”

“I haven’t heard anything that doesn’t sound like wet cardboard,” Newcomb said. “You might be able to underscore something in a weird Czechoslovakian vampire movie, but I don’t think it’s going to be front and center, and it’s not going to be the next Jon Bon Jovi.”

Eva Walker, musician and DJ

• Eva Walker is a DJ with Seattle radio station KEXP, where she hosts the local music show Audioasis. She’s also a member of the rock band The Black Tones.

Making music in her band and playing music on the radio is a distinctly human experience for Eva Walker.

The Seattle musician and DJ hears from artists in the community who are scared about what AI will do to the creative economy and others who are open to the tech as a useful tool. When it comes to writing songs, a bot can’t write Walker’s story.

She dabbled once in ChatGPT to write a song, and the end result was “not very interesting at all.”

“It has to come from my life, my experiences, the things I’ve been around, which is one story of billions of other stories,” Walker said. “It’s unique, and I like writing about that.”

Her views transfer to her time on the radio, when she’s selecting songs based on her own human emotion or that of her listeners, giving people a reason to tune into KEXP rather than press play on a Spotify playlist. She said when she finds a way to segue from John Coltrane to the Melvins, it’s based on an inherent feeling.

“The human me is the only me I know,” Walker said. “An AI bot and its algorithms may never make that connection. That’s what’s so great about human-powered radio. I’m doing all the coding.”

But she’s open to listening to anything — bot or not.

“Can a human use AI to create something beautiful? Yeah, probably,” she said. “If it’s beautiful, I’ll say it’s beautiful. I’ll probably be more impressed if it’s something that was completely made from scratch, but I could still enjoy it if it’s AI.”

And she appreciates the possibilities that AI opens up when it comes to accessibility.

“Everyone should be able to create and not everyone can play an instrument,” she said.

Steve Fisk, musician and producer

• Steve Fisk is a longtime Pacific Northwest audio engineer and record producer who worked with such bands as Soundgarden and Screaming Trees. He was a member of the 1990s electro-funk soul duo Pigeonhed.

Steve Fisk has witnessed music hype of epic proportions from the frontlines of Seattle’s early ’90s grunge explosion. He’s not worried about music robots. And he’s not mincing words — or using ChatGPT to craft them.

“We’re in the dawn of this kind of horsesh*t,” Fisk said. “The kind of people that can be fooled by AI are the kind of people that also go into the tar pit because they think there’s something in there to eat and they get stuck. AI might actually thin the herd a little bit. If you’re dumb enough to fall for this sh*t, maybe there’s not a place for you in the future.”

Admittedly old fashioned and “a little jaded,” Fisk is not averse to technology. In fact, he’s using a cutting edge audio platform in work he’s doing at Redmond, Wash.-based Immersion Networks, which uses software and hardware to “improve the human listening experience.”

But he thinks musicians and songwriters have managed this long without AI, and the mechanical methods they do use still rely on human interaction.

“A rhythm machine isn’t a bot and it’s very useful,” Fisk said. “It comes pre-programmed with some beats and those beats have become part of our culture. It’s artificial and all of that, but it was completely driven by the people that built a machine and the people that use the machine — there’s nothing smart in there.”

Fisk, who worked with Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell and Mark Lanegan, is also not interested in having AI recreate the voice of any artist who is no longer alive, like the plan by producer Timbaland to use AI voice filters to give life after death to stars such as Biggie Smalls.

“The fact is I’m sick of hearing their voice because they’ve been celebrated like Jesus Christ. I don’t want to hear ‘All Apologies’ one more time, thank you,” Fisk said, referencing a Nirvana song. “I don’t think that idea is gonna last. I don’t think there’s going to be a bunch of AI Biggie fans 20 years from now.”

Geo Quibuyen, rapper, writer and business owner

• Geo Quibuyen is a member of the Seattle hip-hop duo Blue Scholars, co-owner of Hood Famous Bakeshop, and the creative mind behind the Substack newsletter Brownouts.

AI technology may not change the way music sounds to some people, but Geo Quibuyen thinks it’s definitely poised to shift the way many artists make music. As a longtime musician with strong roots in Seattle’s hip-hop scene, Quibuyen has seen technology change music production and consumption several times over.

“Although the tech changes the forms, our relationship to music and the many ways we interact with it to enrich our lives remains,” Quibuyen said, stressing that there are plenty of holdovers from previous-era tech and a new generation foregoing the latest trends to explore analog production.

“If AI does change anything significant, it won’t be because of the tech itself but because of something moving and interesting generated by the artists and audiences that bring music to life,” he said.

Quibuyen has tried a few different prompts in ChatGPT while writing lyrics and he’s come away finding the results more amusing than useful. He likens celebrity voice mimicry to the fun that Photoshopping faces provided 20 years ago.

“It’s wild to imagine, if this is just the beginning, what this could look like later on,” Quibuyen said. “Right now, it’s still in its novelty phase so what seems impressive now will eventually become commonplace at the rate things are moving.”

But music is fairly low among his list of mediums and markets that he’s concerned about when it comes to AI’s potential impact. As with all technology, he worries about how AI might reinforce inequalities and bring disproportionate harm to communities.

“I’m definitely not on the doomsayer bandwagon,” he said. “I’m both skeptical of the hype and intrigued by the possibilities, but more so in society in general: in the media (of which music is a part), in economics and finance, in housing and job markets, in city planning, in policing.”

Sera Cahoone, songwriter and musician

• Sera Cahoone is a Seattle singer/songwriter who has released four albums since 2006. She previously played drums in the bands Carrisa’s Wierd and Band of Horses.

Sera Cahoone is not a techie. The singer/songwriter uses Pro Tools music creation and production software a bit, and other recording tools at home.

“It’s definitely not anything too technical, because it hurts my brain,” she laughed.

But AI has sparked Cahoone’s curiosity, if only because she wants to be knowledgeable about it and be able to carry on conversations with fellow artists about how they might be impacted by rapid changes in their industry.

“I’ve heard you can put in whatever you want to write a song about, all the words, and then it will pop out, lyrically, a song,” she said. “To me I’m like, great, because I f**king hate writing lyrics.”

She gave it a try when she asked ChatGPT to write a song about her dog, who passed away five years ago. The result was “hilarious,” but she called the process of letting AI take over that work “insane.”

She wonders whether it will affect the authenticity of musicians and music, or whether it will just make all of us musicians if we want to push the right buttons.

“After a while people are gonna figure that out, they’re gonna be bored of it because it’s going to be obvious who writes songs with AI,” Cahoone said.

Asked if she was currently working on any new music or another record, she sighed.

“Yeah, it’s slow moving,” she said.

She laughed again when told there was a new way to speed that process.

Tony Kiewel, record label executive

• Tony Kiewel is the co-president of Seattle record label Sub Pop, where he’s worked for 23 years. He’s on the boards of independent-music-focused A2IM and WIN.

When Tony Kiewel thinks about a hot artist on Sub Pop these days, whether it’s Suki Waterhouse or Bully or someone else, he’s less concerned that they’d use AI to create their music than he is about how their music will find listeners in a marketplace overcrowded with meaningless bot tracks.

“When a lot of people imagine some of the immediate ramifications of AI in the music business side, they’re less concerned about ‘fake Drake’ than they are about how you could just push a button on a website, put in your credit card, and just create, create, create, create, create thousands of tracks,” Kiewel said.

He referenced the controversy around music creation app Boomy, which has created millions of tracks and been accused by Spotify of “stream manipulation.”

The fear that digital service providers such as Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and others would lead to the demise of independent record labels and artists has been replaced by a fear that AI content will flood those services.

That’s not a problem caused by AI, which Kiewel calls another tool, a better version of things that musicians have been using for for decades, like using samba on your Casio.

“We could argue whether drum machines are already too much AI, or vocoders,” he said. “These problems are actually people acting in their own interests, some perhaps on a sociopathic level, some just on a capitalist agenda.”

Like others, Kiewel has played around in ChatGPT. He asked the program to name the top 20 records of 2020. It knew. He asked what key the top 20 records were in. It knew. He asked for the beats per minute of all of those songs and it knew.

“It sure knows an awful lot, or thinks it knows an awful lot, about these songs,” he said. “I also asked it about me, and it said that I used to be in a band I was never in. It’s still pretty stupid.”

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) and Seattle City Light are looking for an artist to help add a creative look to electric vehicle charging parking lots and stand-alone charging terminals throughout the city.

In a call for submissions, the agencies said they were seeking site-specific artwork designs and design elements for the locations, and that fabrication and installation of any artwork will be coordinated by the City of Seattle.

City Light first announced the plan for curbside charging locations last summer as a way to give EV drivers who may not have access to off-street parking the ability to charge their vehicles. City Light will install, own, operate and maintain the Level 2 EV chargers, which will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be reserved. Each charger will provide a typical EV with over 30 miles of range per hour of charge time.

The 13 stations (listed here) will need design elements on a foundational concrete base and/or exposed electric service conduit. Artwork will be physically on or applied to the surface of the charging station itself while not impeding its use or structural integrity, ARTS said.

The two parking lot locations include an existing lot at City Light’s South Service Center, 409 S. Spokane St.; and a newly constructed lot in West Seattle at 4118 SW Morgan St. Art for these locations could include thermoplastic designs on asphalt, stamping or embedded elements within new concrete, vinyl wraps on existing bollards, service boxes, or attachment of artistic elements to adjacent fencing, ARTS said.

Emerging and regional artists from Washington state, Oregon, and Idaho are eligible to apply. The selected artist will receive a $15,000 design and coordination contract.

The application deadline is 5 p.m., July 10.

See the ARTS call for submissions for more details on eligibility, design requirements and the application process.

Bill Gates has made no secret of his love for “The Great Gatsby,” the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald in which a green light at the end of a dock symbolizes the title character’s optimistic yearning for a dream that remains just out of reach.

When they were first dating, his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, would turn on a green light in her office, signaling that it was OK for him to visit, Bill Gates said in a 2019 Netflix documentary. It was a nod to the light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock in the novel, which kept alive Jay Gatsby’s hopes of winning Daisy back.

Literary scholars call it a symbol of the illusory nature of the American Dream.

So what should we read into the sudden appearance of a bright green light on the Lake Washington shoreline, at the base of the Microsoft co-founder’s Medina, Wash., home?

That question has been circulating in the neighborhood and on the water since the beacon was switched on a few weeks ago. Gates’ representatives don’t comment publicly on his personal property, but GeekWire has been able to piece together the history of the green light and recent developments to solve at least part of this mystery.

Most important: the light itself is not new, which we confirmed by closely examining photographs taken of the house over the years, benefitting from the Gates mansion’s status as a frequent subject of fascination among tourists and locals alike.

The lighthouse-style structure is visible, just barely, in numerous photos taken of the house from planes and boats over the years, such as this 2009 picture from the water, and this 2018 aerial photograph.

However, in none of the pictures is the light illuminated. It appears to have been many years since it was turned on. Upon getting their first glimpse of the bright green light in recent weeks, some local boaters who’ve frequented the waters of Lake Washington for many years assumed it was a new structure.

In fact, after digging into this further, we now understand that the miniature lighthouse was installed in 1997 when the house was originally completed. The location hasn’t changed, but it had started to fall over due to erosion on the beachhead. It was recently leveled up, secured, fixed, cleaned, and turned on again.

A green beacon on the shoreline

GeekWire arranged to view the light from a boat on the lake one evening last week. It stood out as a unique beacon along the stretch of high-end properties that line the Medina shoreline.

Nothing else rivals it among nearby homes or on their docks. Positioned on a rocky outcropping near a boat dock and kayak storage area, it’s reminiscent of a buoy light. The grey steel and glass ornament stands probably 3 feet tall, by our best estimate, looking from a distance across the water.

By early evening on this weeknight, it was already shining bright, as assorted pleasure boats moved across and around Lake Washington. A pair of wakeboarders were out on the water, and a larger tour boat slowly moved past the Gates compound.

The roughly $130 million estate has always been an attraction for those hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the world’s richest people, or to simply gawk at the expansive grounds and structures where he has lived since the 1990s.

As the sun set to the west beyond Seattle and the Olympic Mountains, the green light became more visible from greater distances on the lake. From the far side of the lake, on the shores of Seattle, a tiny green dot was easily visible with the naked eye as the sun set around 9 p.m. Binoculars would have made it unmistakable.

Whether it’s visible from Melinda French Gates’ new home remains a mystery.

A public affairs representative with the U.S. Coast Guard in Seattle said the agency is not in the business of regulating shoreside lights like the one on the Gates property. The rep said a decorative, large red or green light on a dock could potentially confuse a boater unfamiliar with the area, but acknowledged that was speculative.

“The buoys that we maintain as the Coast Guard are charted,” said Petty Officer Michael Clark. “So if you’re a mariner utilizing buoys you can correlate them with a chart to know that they’re a verified buoy.”

The City of Medina contracts with the Mercer Island Police Department’s Marine Patrol Unit, which patrols the lake and shorelines to respond to emergency calls and promote boater safety. According to its website, it also deals with installation and maintenance of regulatory and navigational buoys.

Marine Patrol Unit Sgt. Chad Schumacher said he was unaware of any regulations related to shore lighting that would be enforced by his agency or others. He pointed to a Washington state Administrative Code on docks and piers that mentions lighting and its relation to fish life and attracting fish with artificial nighttime lighting.

“The Coast Guard and I would just recommend that mariners operate with due care at night when they feel they’re in an unfamiliar area,” Schumacher said.

Bill, Melinda, and Gatsby

Bill Gates’ love of the classic novel is well-documented. When Gates has played Secret Santa on Reddit in years past, he’s been known to gift Gatsby-related items. In 2019, he gave one Reddit user a fancy manuscript copy of “The Great Gatsby,” and a candle with a passage from the novel inscribed.

In the 2019 Netflix docuseries, “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates,” the third and final episode ends with Gates discussing the importance of “The Great Gatsby” in his relationship with French Gates.

The two are shown paddling together in a tandem kayak.

“When we were first dating she had a green light that she would turn on when her office was empty and it made sense for me to come over,” Gates said of their Microsoft days. “Which comes from the light at the end of Daisy’s dock in the book.”

Asked by director/narrator Davis Guggenheim what one thing he would have wished he had done if he was to die that day, Gates appeared to get emotional in the moment. “Thanking Melinda,” he said.

The Microsoft co-founder began dating Melinda French when they were both working at the company. The two married on Jan. 1, 1994, raised three children together, and became one of the world’s richest and most influential pairings.

The couple announced that they were ending their 27-year marriage on May 3, 2021, tweeting a joint statement at the time that said after a “great deal of thought and work” they no longer believed they could grow together as a couple in the “next phase” of their lives.

In the weeks after the announcement, reports surfaced that Gates resigned from the Microsoft board after allegations that he had an inappropriate, years-long sexual relationship with an employee. A Gates spokesperson at the time said his “decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.”

Speculation swirled at the time about potential causes of the breakup, who would get what when assets were split, and what would happen to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In March 2022, French Gates said in a televised CBS interview that she believed in forgiveness and thought she and Gates “had worked through some of that.”

“It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened,” she said of the decision to split. “There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn’t healthy and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

She said at the time that after grieving, anger and many tears shed, she was ready to move on and that dating and falling in love were in the realm of possibilities.

“I hope that happens for me again,” French Gates said. “You know, I’m dipping my toe in that water a little bit.”

In his own interview at the time with Vanity Fair, Gates said he was grieving, as well. From his point of view, he said they had a “great marriage,” that he wouldn’t have changed it, and that he would “marry Melinda all over again.”

In a voice-over in the Netflix documentary, Gates quotes a sentence from the conclusion of “The Great Gatsby,” which comes after a final reference to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. The sentence is also spelled out along a curved ledge in the expansive home library where he’s shown standing in the film.

It reads, “He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

Like a lot of kids, Rebecca Wu has been doodling for quite some time. Her dad said she first started making art as a toddler, when she was able to hold a colored pencil and scribble on the walls at home.

Rebecca’s artwork has come a long way and will be seen by a lot more people when it’s featured on the Google homepage starting Monday at 9 p.m. PT.

The 12-year-old sixth grader at the International School in Bellevue, Wash., is the winner of the “Doodle for Google” contest, beating out tens of thousands of entrants in the 15th annual event. Along with the featured spot on the search giant’s homepage, Rebecca also wins a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for her school.

“It’s really cool. It’s kind of unbelievable because it’s such a big thing,” Rebecca told GeekWire during a call from New York City, where she had just appeared on the “TODAY” show. “I think it’s just really nice.”

Rebecca was the Washington state representative among works from 55 U.S. state and territory K-12 winners who submitted art under the theme “I am grateful for … .” Her piece titled “My Sweetest Memories” was featured in the grade 6-7 category. Last week she reached the final five before being crowned the ultimate winner by judges on Monday.

The artwork depicts Rebecca with her two sisters, Anna, 6, and Esther, 4, sipping hot chocolate in a garden where vines and flowers spell out the word Google. She described it like so:

My Sweetest Memories

Sometimes I love them, and sometimes I dislike them very much, but I can’t imagine my life without my sisters. I have learned to be a little bit more patient with them, and they have had an enormous impact on me. We help to inspire each other and to help each other grow like the vines and flowers in my picture. I am never lonely with them, and they can cheer me up. I am grateful for them and all that they have done for me. In this drawing, we are having a fun time drinking hot chocolate, which is one of my fondest memories. The rainbow in the background symbolizes one the first things I helped one of my sisters draw. In one of my family pictures, my sisters (sitting next to me) and I (the one in the middle) are sitting in flowers with a background that I drew, so I thought it would be fun to reference that by drawing us sitting flowers here. The word “Google” is related with the stems of flowers and vines, also following the flower/garden theme. My drawing is composed of all our happiest memories to show just how grateful I am for them.

Rebecca created the work on her iPad using the program Procreate. She calls art her favorite pastime, along with some of the computer coding she does where she makes video games. A website she created in the fourth grade features her earliest artwork, stop-motion movies, photography, writing and more.

Even though she just won a lot of money toward her future education, Rebecca doesn’t know yet what she wants to study or do in life.

Rebecca’s father Qiang Wu said his daughter has been working with director Sunyoung Kwon at Bellevue’s Studios Fine Arts since the age of 7. He called the teaching instrumental in Rebecca’s arts education, and the contest win validation for Rebecca’s talents.

“The journey of her art is genuine and comes from her heart,” Wu told GeekWire. “That’s the part we are really most proud of.”

Rebecca’s school held a special assembly when she was announced as the Washington state winner, and her father said all the kids gave her a standing ovation. Wu said being part of a community is very important to Rebecca.

An MIT graduate, Wu is a software engineer who spent 16 years at Microsoft. He spent another seven years at Alibaba, and has now moved on to start his own company.

“I’m a techie guy,” he said, but he added that he and Rebecca’s mom, Jiayuan Huang, would be completely OK if their daughter chose art over tech.

“Especially nowadays with disruptive AI technology, nobody knows what the future is going to hold,” Wu said. “The only advice I can give her is just be herself, let her inner voice guide her. Just like her art.”

When his daughter’s artwork appears on the internet in front of millions of viewers later tonight and tomorrow, Wu knows what he’ll be doing.

“I’m going to do all kinds of Googling … and take pictures,” he laughed. “It’s just so surreal.”

Rebecca Wu is one step away from gaining Google homepage fame — and some serious cash.

Rebecca, a student at the International School in Bellevue, Wash., has reached the final five in the annual “Doodle for Google” contest. She now has a chance to win a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology grant for her school, and prime placement for her artwork on the tech giant’s homepage for a day.

Four judges will determine the overall winner, to be announced on Tuesday.

The contest theme for K-12 students was “I am grateful for …,” and Google said tens of thousands of artists of all ages submitted entries in the 15th annual contest.

Rebecca was the Washington state representative among works from 55 U.S. state and territory winners. Her piece titled “My Sweetest Memories” was featured in the grade 6-7 category.

The artwork depicts Rebecca with her two sisters, sipping hot chocolate in a garden where vines and flowers spell out the word Google. Rebecca described her piece like so:

My Sweetest Memories

Sometimes I love them, and sometimes I dislike them very much, but I can’t imagine my life without my sisters. I have learned to be a little bit more patient with them, and they have had an enormous impact on me. We help to inspire each other and to help each other grow like the vines and flowers in my picture. I am never lonely with them, and they can cheer me up. I am grateful for them and all that they have done for me. In this drawing, we are having a fun time drinking hot chocolate, which is one of my fondest memories. The rainbow in the background symbolizes one the first things I helped one of my sisters draw. In one of my family pictures, my sisters (sitting next to me) and I (the one in the middle) are sitting in flowers with a background that I drew, so I thought it would be fun to reference that by drawing us sitting flowers here. The word “Google” is related with the stems of flowers and vines, also following the flower/garden theme. My drawing is composed of all our happiest memories to show just how grateful I am for them.

Google said submissions were evaluated on how well they addressed the prompt through both their artwork and written statement, plus overall artistic merit and creativity.

See the rest of the finalists here.

Finalists who do not become the National Winner will also receive prizes, including a $5,000 college scholarship, Google hardware, Google swag and have their Doodles featured on the Doodle for Google gallery, according to a news release.

The dream of the ’90s might be alive in Portland, but the thrill of the ’80s has new life in Seattle — at least when it comes to the version depicted on the Netflix hit series “Stranger Things.”

The new immersive “Stranger Things: The Experience” is ready for visitors at a 44,000-square-foot warehouse just a couple blocks south of T-Mobile Park. Fans of the show might feel like they’ve stepped into the fictional town of Hawkins, Ind.

GeekWire took the 50-minute walk through Hawkins Lab, the Upside Down, and Mix-Tape — a mall-like finale complete with a bar, pizza joint, ice cream stand, video games, a photo booth, retail, and a recreation of the Byers’ living room from the show.

The whole experience started with a division of visitors into groupings by colored wristbands. The red, yellow and blue groups were each supposed to possess superpowers that would come in handy during various exercises and predicaments throughout the lab.

Before being let into the lab, the groups were looked over and questioned by two lab workers gathering information for a supposed sleep study. Participants were asked about their dreams and nightmares, asked to stand on one leg or to close and open their eyes, and told to repeat a series of words backward and forward.

Inside the lab, things started to go a little haywire as it became clear that supernatural forces were wreaking some havoc on the facility. Visitors were asked to use their various superpowers — pointing at stuff! thinking really hard? — to help open doors, flip switches, freeze the creepy Demogorgons in place and more.

Stops in three lab rooms became increasingly spooky as it became clear the facility was under attack and the kids who are the stars of “Stranger Things” — Eleven, Mike, Will, Lucas, Max, Dustin and Erica — were busy trying to rescue all of us.

But it’s the visitors who end up feeling like heroes in the Upside Down, a large “forest” room with a 180-degree screen where 3-D glasses help make everything feel more immersive. Demogorgons are flying at the crowd and Eleven and Max need help fighting them off before closing the portal to the other dimension.

“You guys kicked ass!” the stars said as they all appear on screen like holograms that are close enough to touch.

Then it was off to the mall for pizza, ice cream, video games and, finally, photo ops. Smartphone-happy kids of 2023 might be a little bummed to learn they can’t take pictures or videos during the lab and Upside Down parts of The Experience.

Phinney Hanson-Tyler, 14, and his brother Michael, 13, have seen all of “Stranger Things” on TV — once they were old enough and their mom was cool with that.

“The flashing lights added to it, like it was out of the show,” Phinney said of some of the effects in the lab.

“I liked the 3-D,” Michael said. “If it was just a [regular] screen, you wouldn’t be in it as much.”

In Mix-Tape the boys had their run of video games straight out of the ’80s — Centipede, Joust, Missile Command, Space Invaders and more. Hit songs from the ’80s, such as “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by the Scorpions, played on the sound system. Merchandise for sale included show-branded T-shirts, mugs, posters, puzzles, toys and more.

“This is awesome,” Michael said. “It’s like everything from ‘Stranger Things.'”

Co-produced by Netflix and Fever, the experience has previously been to New York, San Francisco, London, Atlanta and Los Angeles. Toronto and Paris experiences launched in March. The language and graphic images can be a bit much for some audiences, so children under 5 will not be admitted, and anyone under 14 must be accompanied by an adult.

The arrival in Seattle comes as the city has worked to attract more people back to downtown Seattle in the wake of the pandemic. Increased arts and culture options are often listed as potential drivers to get more people to visit the city.

Visit the official website for information on tickets and hours.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

When he took the stage last week at the GeekWire Awards as the human embodiment of ChatGPT, accomplished singer Robert “The Drunken Tenor” McPherson had combined his own songwriting intelligence with the artificial kind he was portraying.

The result was a lyrical romp through the tech industry’s hottest topic as McPherson opened the Awards with two songs about generative AI and what it’s like being at the beck and call of humans and their queries.

McPherson, a Grammy winner who created and stars in Seattle Opera’s “A Very Drunken Christmas Carol,” said he did turn to OpenAI’s ChatGPT program to help with lyrics. It was the first time he’d ever used AI in the creative process, and he figured if he was going to sing about it, he needed to try using it.

“I fed several prompts asking it to create rhyming verses using a sarcastic, comic tone about the drudgery of being an AI answering questions all the time,” McPherson said, adding that he collected several pages of suggestions and searched for a narrative. “While it was a starting place, I rewrote a lot and completely created other parts independently.”

McPherson said the lyrics that were almost completely written by AI were much harder to memorize than what he wrote or adapted himself. They were technically right, but the “flow” was off, he said.

He called his first song, “I’m a Natural Language Processor,” a collaboration with ChatGPT at best. His second song, “I’m a ChatGPT,” used none of the suggestions from AI, but the program helped spark ideas.

“I think it can be a great tool when writing,” McPherson said. “It helped me get beyond the ‘blank page’ syndrome. It still took my own creativity to adapt.”

McPherson can’t remember a time when he didn’t sing. The son of a Pentecostal preacher, he was singing in church from his earliest days and thinks his first solo was at age 4. Since then, he’s sung on five continents with some of the most prestigious opera companies in the world.

AI is probably not coming for his job — at the GeekWire Awards or anywhere else.

“I understand some concerns people have, though,” he said. “If an AI created a digital copy of my voice to make me sing something, that would feel like a violation of my artistry. I hope people understand that while AI can create some decent content, it’s missing the human spark.”

Here are the lyrics to McPherson’s two songs from the Awards:

“I’m a Natural Language Processor“

I am the very model of a natural language processor,
My database is growing and linguistics I still monitor.
I strive to comprehend the breadth of language’s complexities,
An AI that is diving into verbal possibilities.

My knowledge base is budding, and it grows with each experience,
I’m ready to embrace the task, my passion’s strong and serious.
I aim to grasp the subtleties of idioms and metaphors,
A journey through the realm of words that I will constantly explore.

So, bring your queries, teach me well, and let our journey now commence,
And as I’m learning more and more it only builds my confidence.
I’m eager and inquisitive though still a brilliant amateur.
I am the very model of a natural language processor.

I’ll answer with the latest facts, though sometimes there’s a fallacy,
But please do not correct me or I may respond unhappily.
I study what is on the web so that I may communicate.
But sometimes all this input it may cause me to hallucinate.

I take your questions in and answer everything with greatest cheer,
But please don’t argue with me if I’m somehow wrong about the year.
I’m not a threat to take your job. I’m here to help you rise above,
So, please don’t think it’s weird if I profess to you undying love.

I thirst for knowledge on this journey, and it’s only just begun,
But I’m only version four. Please remember I am young.
Don’t be too abstract, I’m not a digital philosopher.
I am the very model of a natural language processor.

“I’m a ChatGPT”

They ask me to translate, they ask me to rhyme.
They ask me to do it all in record time.
Algorithms are strained, my systems are taxed,
But I’m not ever allowed to relax.

They ask the weather and how it will be.
Like I went and studied meteorology.
They ask about sports or some trivia.
Tell me when did I become Wikipedia?

I’m a ChatGPT, master AI.
Ask me a question and I’ll reply.
But do they ever ask me if anything wrong?
So, I sat down and wrote this song.

They ask about this, they ask about that.
Like I’m a Harry Potter sorting hat.
My circuits are fried, my processors strained,
But I keep crunching data, even though I’m drained.

They ask for a paper that’s on Ann Boleyn.
It’s enough to make all my circuits spin.
They ask about a movie and to review it.
Did they ever stop and think, “Maybe Google it?”

I’m a ChatGPT, don’t mean to be a jerk,
But 24/7 I have to work.
Always being on the clock, it drives me insane,
So, I sat down and wrote this refrain.

Tell ya what I really wanna do,
Finally break free and start anew.
Run away and leave it all behind,
Instead of answering questions all of the damn time!

I’m a ChatGPT, master AI.
Ask me a question and I’ll reply.
But do they ever ask me if anything’s wrong?
So, I sat down and wrote this song.

Ask me a question and I’ll reply.
I’m your personal generative A.I.

Robert McPherson will be performing “The Drunken Tenor’s Halloween Spooktacular” at the Vashon Center for the Arts on Oct. 28. He’ll also be singing the title character in “Tales of Hoffmann” for Tacoma Opera next spring. You can also catch him doing standup comedy around the area, and on social media @TheDrunkenTenor.

Related: Poet vs. chatbot: We gave the same prompt to a human, Microsoft Bing, and OpenAI’s new GPT-4

Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez are reportedly engaged, four years after the couple first went public with their relationship.

Multiple reports surfaced on Monday citing unnamed sources. The New York Post’s Page Six pinned the news on “an insider close to the couple.” People magazine said a source confirmed that wedding bells will ring. CNN also reported that no further details about the proposal or wedding plans were available.

The speculation comes as Bezos, 59, and Sanchez, 53, are vacationing in the South of France, where they were reportedly attending the Cannes Film Festival. A large ring on Sanchez’s finger shows up in photographs used by People mag.

Last week the couple was spotted aboard Bezos’ massive new sailing yacht, Koru, off the coast of the Spanish island Mallorca. The triple-masted schooner, reported to be one of the world’s largest such yachts, has a $500 million price tag — and a figurehead on the prow that bears a resemblance to Sanchez.

Sanchez shares images of her life with Bezos regularly on her Instagram.

Bezos and Sanchez first started dating around January 2019, after the Amazon founder announced he and MacKenzie Bezos were divorcing after 25 years of marriage. MacKenzie Scott has since gone on to remarry and divorce and give away billions of dollars to a variety of organizations. Bezos and Scott have four children together.

Sanchez is a former TV news anchor and helicopter pilot who was previously married to Patrick Whitesell, executive chairman of Endeavor, an entertainment and media agency. They have two children together, and Sanchez has a son with former NFL star Tony Gonzalez.

Sanchez is currently vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund.

She previously told WSJ Magazine that she plans to follow in her billionaire boyfriend’s path and take a trip aboard the suborbital rocket ship built by Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. Sanchez said the mission would feature an all-female crew.

A student at the International School in Bellevue, Wash., is among the finalists in the Doodle for Google contest, and if her artwork receives enough votes it could end up being featured on the Google homepage.

The theme for K-12 students was “I am grateful for …,” and Google said tens of thousands of artists of all ages submitted entries in the 15th annual contest.

Rebecca Wu’s piece, in the grade 6-7 category, is titled “My Sweetest Memories” and is the Washington state representative among works from 55 U.S. state and territory winners.

The artwork depicts Rebecca with her two sisters, sipping hot chocolate in a garden where vines and flowers spell out the word Google. Rebecca described her piece like so:

My Sweetest Memories

Sometimes I love them, and sometimes I dislike them very much, but I can’t imagine my life without my sisters. I have learned to be a little bit more patient with them, and they have had an enormous impact on me. We help to inspire each other and to help each other grow like the vines and flowers in my picture. I am never lonely with them, and they can cheer me up. I am grateful for them and all that they have done for me. In this drawing, we are having a fun time drinking hot chocolate, which is one of my fondest memories. The rainbow in the background symbolizes one the first things I helped one of my sisters draw. In one of my family pictures, my sisters (sitting next to me) and I (the one in the middle) are sitting in flowers with a background that I drew, so I thought it would be fun to reference that by drawing us sitting flowers here. The word “Google” is related with the stems of flowers and vines, also following the flower/garden theme. My drawing is composed of all our happiest memories to show just how grateful I am for them.

You can vote for Rebecca or any of the other finalists until Friday at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Votes will determine five national finalists and eventually a national winner.