Sorry to immediately be a bummer, but I can’t stop thinking about the state of technology. About how we could have done anything in the world with it at this point, and yet this is where we landed.
Waist-deep in a slop gauntlet run by the most corrupt/least cool (in every sense of the word) grifters imaginable. An internet that currently looks like shit and works like shit, in service of shareholders who will monetize it until there is nothing left to extract. I won’t belabor the point.
Except of course I will. We are supposedly inching toward an era of AI grandiosity beyond our wildest dreams/nightmares, but until that happens, can we make one website function correctly? It would be incredible, if in the year of our 2026, I could look up what time a show starts without being led to a third-party ticket site, bloated with ads, with some out-of-date map widget that blocks the screen while their glitchy AI asks if you want whatever the fuck. Anything but the information you’re looking for. You will never find it; you will forget what you came here for.
Woman yells at [the] Cloud, I know. But if you are a venture capitalist reading this (hiiii), let me whisper my incredible idea, then: Make the internet work again.
Beyond its current janky state, AI’s insidious seep into the arts raises genuine concerns around labor displacement, authorship, surveillance capitalism, and the slow evaporation of expertise. Another concern is simpler: The people pushing AI are fucking dweebs. Mikey Shulman (of generative AI start-up Suno) literally said, out loud, in an interview: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software.” Concluding that this is a problem to be solved (by him, for money) rather than, you know, the entire point.
Finally. We are so close to solving the problem of having a creative process.
Okay that is enough rain! The days are getting longer, my friend, and I am once again trying to keep it weird around here. What are the interesting people of Seattle doing with their one precious life?
My moodboard for this issue was ARTS, of course, with a special interest in: anti-slop, DIY out of ethical necessity, weird/cool/fun, hands-on, physical media, in real life. We may not be able to escape algo-driven toxicity entirely at this point, but I was curious about the people and places operating outside of all that. People dedicated to the value of physical experience, or people doing strange or difficult or specific things with a lot of dedication. Some as a deliberate statement, some just because it’s what they’re into, or it’s what they’ve always done. I’m tickled by the results. People are making such neat things!
In these pages you’ll find artists who deal in physical media—less because the aesthetic still fucks (it does), but because every other option sucks. We make the case for recession-era art, repairing your own clothes, and the joy and frustration of a dumber phone.
Elsewhere, what’s more analog than a baroque flutist? An opera singer, perhaps—did you know they are just belting it out without amplification up there? We also learn about the ancient techniques like the Korean paper art of hanji, and Turkish meat-carving with giant blades.
We also envision something better. A city with a healthy bodega culture, a city that invests in the arts, a city with unique arts spaces, and a city that envisions something better for a neat old building in a queer/arts neighborhood than a… McDonald’s.
Spring is coming.
— Emily Nokes
COVER ART
Samantha Yun Wall
Diaspore No.15 (2026)
From Let There Be Light at Cannonball Arts
This Issue Brought to You By…
The same intensity with which Spencer Pratt reads the audiobook of his memoir The Guy You Loved to Hate
Hot Slog Buns
Zoloft
Gabapentin
The weight of the world
Gun soup
Chappell Roan’s nipples
Alexander Skarsgård’s slutty little glasses
The community fig leaf
Realizing I’ve been wearing my carabiner on the wrong side
Season two of The Boyfriend on Netflix
Joy sobbing to videos of Alysa Liu
Hilary Knight refusing to make excuses for men’s behavior
“Regular Rabbit” by Stephen Spencer
Keri Russell’s wigs on The Americans
Puppy anticipation
A powder day, finally
My last fried nerve
Chu Minh Tofu and Vegan Deli
Ex-Lax
LITERALLY MAKING PHYSICAL MEDIA
Cold red wine
Lightrailers is a real word, Henry
The Kissenger Pocket Pussy for Kissing
Ring, the dogcatching company
Being Chinese before Chinamaxxing made being Chinese cool
Sparkle kicks in Las Vegas
