Off-season, non-SXSW Austin is its own sort of weird

AUSTIN, Tex.

It feels like I barely visited my favorite part of Texas, and that’s not just because my trip here for the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Unify conference only spanned three days. This visit has also reminded me that SXSW, my usual experience of Austin aside from one trip here in September of 2018 for the Online News Association’s conference, is not a reliable reflection of the city.

The sidewalks this week aren’t crowded with hipsters and would-be hipsters (i.e., me) wearing the same conference badge, in the process making the number of unhoused people here a little more obvious. Bars and restaurants downtown go by their normal names instead of being rebranded as “activations” for one #brand or another. And instead of delightful spring weather, it’s ghastly hot out–not Vegas-in-August scorching, but also much more humid.

Avoiding that heat by spending so much of my time in Unify’s air-conditioned confines at the Hilton Downtown made this even more of a fake visit for me. I did at least think to stop by a dive bar off Red River Street Wednesday night to get in some local color and put some money into the non-hotel economy.

One other change I noticed compared to March: Austin’s streets seem to have picked up a lot more robotic occupants. Waymos are as ubiquitous as ever, but I also spotted several of Austin-based Avride’s refitted Hyundai Ioniq 5s, at least two Zoox toasters on wheels and one of Tesla’s two-seat, gold-colored Cybercabs–plus delivery robots rolling up and down sidewalks.

(I didn’t get a good enough look at most of the non-Waymo vehicles to see if they had humans at the controls or otherwise overseeing them. Nor did I get rides on any of them, since it was such a short walk from my hotel to the conference venue.)

But one part of Austin did take me right back to my usual marketing-spring-break nonsense: being greeted outside by the airport by the squawk of grackles.

London, eh?

#coffee #Fuckoffee #Hipsters

NOTA DE LOS AÑOS '20: Este test es de 2012, los hipsters de aquella época ya son señores, así que oficialmente esto es contenido nostálgico U.U

#hipsters #nostalgia

https://www.maikciveira.com/2012/02/test-del-hipster.html?m=1

Trust Fund Hipsters Return To Ancestral Coachella Grounds to Mate

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://thehardtimes.net/breaking/trust-fund-hipsters-return-to-ancestral-coachella-grounds-to-mate/

"This video is about why liberals struggle to connect with the working class and how we can collectively do better :)"—Alice Cappelle

NYT’s Recipe for Losing the Working Class >

https://youtu.be/L6_6duR0n9s?si=wHpPD6JGNdajMiwA

#working_class #workers #media #series #class_divide #class_struggle #media_narrative #liberals #hipsters #collective #meritocracy #low_salary #agency #equal_rights #work #mass_media #USA #France #society #politics

As AI builds the internet, hipsters will insist on coding HTML by hand so the website has “texture.”

#ai #hipsters #thefuture

The next generation of parents has arrived.

They come wearing baseball caps, moustaches and jeans that are too short.

#parenting #hipsters #fashion