Complete Event Schedule For DexCon 21 This Week

Description: Logo for DEXCON 21

It's been a little quiet on The Code lately, and that's because I've been hard at work with Kitsune Entertainment to bring interactive improvisational gaming to Dexcon 21 at the Morristown Hyatt Regency & Conference Center in Morristown, New Jersey from the 5th to the 8th! I'm taking it easy today (though if you see me wandering around, please say hello!), and will be helping run the following events this weekend:

Friday, July 6th 2PM - 4PM:
The Purgatory Saloon; "Oreo Madness" by Kitsune Entertainment.

From the minds that brought you the Adventures of Dr. Dolotts comes a new LARP series. Welcome to the Purgatory Saloon! I'm the proprietor, Mr. White. We have an interesting predicament going on at the Purgatory. It would seem that we are under siege by Oreo cookies. They just keep popping up all over the place with no end to their invasion in sight. How are we going to solve this little dilemma? Help! Please? Players will create a Purgatory Saloon customer who happens to be present at the time of the incident in question, and then role play that character in a bar-type scenario. This is a pure role play event with no combat whatsoever.

Friday, July 6th 4PM - 6PM:
The Purgatory Saloon; "A Lean Lunchtime with a Two Drink Minimum" by Kitsune Entertainment.

We're open at all hours of the day, much to the chagrin of our staff. Today's tale comes in the form of what happens at the Purgatory during that little thing called Lunchtime. Now, as we aren't known for our food, just our ambiance, it begs the question of why people are even here at all. Well, we'll both find that out together, won't we? Players will create a Purgatory Saloon customer who happens to be present at the time of the incident in question, and then role play that character in a bar-type scenario. This is a pure role play event with no combat whatsoever.

Friday, July 6th 6PM - 8PM:
The Purgatory Saloon; "Regular's Night" by Kitsune Entertainment.

The Proprietor, Mr. White, is hard at work keeping the Saloon's wild assortment of regulars entertained with a night just for them. Those regulars are from all walks of life, temporal eras, and even planets in the galaxy. What will happen? Even Mr. White doesn't know. What he does know is that once you become a regular, you won't ever want to leave. For this LARP, players will invent one of the Purgatory's regulars and then role play the character in a bar-type setting. This is a pure role play event with no combat whatsoever.

Friday, July 6th 10PM - Midnight:

The Purgatory Saloon; "A Cold Night for the Newbies" by Kitsune Entertainment.

You're a new face here. Here at the Purgatory, we like new faces. New faces keep us in business. Now, I know that what you're thinking. You have no clue how you got here tonight, as this place was not your intended destination. Honestly, I don't know how you got here either. But the Purgatory does. It always knows. Eventually, as the night wears on, you'll find out as well. It may shock you. It may surprise you. But I can guarantee it will change your life. Come on in, sit down and have a drink, and tell us all your story. For this LARP, players will invent one of the Purgatory's new customers and then role play the character in a bar-type setting. This is a pure role play event with no combat whatsoever.

Saturday, July 7th 2PM - 4PM:
Clue, the LARP; "The Great Cheesecake Mystery" by Kitsune Entertainment.

Celebrity Cooking Host, Mr. John Boddy, is about to host an episode of his famous televised cooking competition, "Mr. Boddy's Cutthroat Kitchen". He's assembled an interesting assortment of individuals for the event. A single slice of his world-famous cheesecake. A slice this size has been known to fetch thousands of dollars. However, that prized slice has gone missing! What happened to it? Whodunit? The classic characters of Clue are coming together where murder is the order of the day. Yes, there will be cheesecake. All character slots are completely filled. You may sign up for this event as an Alternate in case of a no-show.

Saturday, July 7th 4PM - 6PM:Clue, the LARP; "The Boddy Mansion Murders" by Kitsune Entertainment.

Mrs. Jane Meadow-Brook, the head of Meadow-Brook Tours, is taking people on a tour of some of the United States' most infamously haunted locations. The latest destination is Boddy Mansion, where it is said that the spirit of the often murdered John Boddy uncomfortably rests. What will happen on this tour? Will the tourists be confronted by the restless spirit of John Boddy? If so, will the tourists add to Boddy Mansion's legacy of death? The classic characters of Clue are coming together where murder is the order of the day. This LARP will take place in a dimly lit environment.

Announcing BLERD CITY Con

Via Black Girl Nerds, the following awesome announcement:

WHAT:
The first annual BLERD CITY Con will hit New York City’s historic neighborhood and Silicon Valley East, DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.) Saturday, July 29 and Sunday, July 30, 2017.

BLERD CITY’s mission is to provide the Black community with substantial connections to talented and cutting-edge professionals in the craft of positive image making. BLERD CITY comes from Black + Nerd = Blerd, a conference dedicated to showcasing the complexity and multi-dimension of NERDiness through Art, Science, Film, Literature, and Technology.  The conference includes panels, workshops, film screenings, and a marketplace. The BLERD CITY marketplace will feature a mixture of curated gaming and comic books, and a children’s area for science and technology exploration.

BLERD CITY panels and workshops announced so far include: Women In Comics, Martial Arts and the Urban Landscape, Afropast and Afrofuture, Cosplay Interaction, SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Film Screenings, an L.A. Banks Tribute and more. Guests announced include:Tim Fielder, graphic artist, cartoonist, and animator, Afrofuturism The Next Generation; Nicole Franklin, CBS Sunday Morning Daytime Entertainment Emmy® Award winning editor, filmmaker, and co-producer and co-moderator of the weekly Monday night Twitter series #BlerdDating, Warrington Hudlin, and Regine Sawyer.

WHERE:

The Dumbo Spot, 160 Water Street​
Green Desk, 155 Water Street
Creative Chaos, 28 Jay Street
Automatic Studios, 52 Bridge Street
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Empire Fulton Ferry (Near Main Street)

Visit the official website for more information about BLERD CITY or to register for the convention.

Listen Up: Nerds of Prey

I first heard of the Nerds of Prey podcast during their guest-host stint on an episode of the Food Fight podcast. The Nerds of Prey podcast debuted earlier this year, and hosts Shannon, CG, Lauren, and Mel already have a great rapport with one another. Four Black nerd women hold court of everything in the geek galaxy- movies, comics, television and gaming. They've managed to score some impressive interviews too, like Executive Producer of Lost, Alias and Fringe Monica Owusu-Breen.

Follow along via the Nerds of Prey Podcast website, via iTunes on iOS or soundcloud.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Science YouTubers' Tribute To Hamilton

No, no, not not the politician Hamilton-- the scientist Hamilton. They do use a pretty awesome homemade acapella cover of the first song from the play Hamilton to do it, though. It's arranged well and diversely cast, too, Check it out!




So what did William Rowan Hamilton discover? He discovered quaternions, which are an extension of complex numbers: rather than just one number (i) that equals -1 when squared, these use thee (i,j,k). Also in that formula, multiplication is no longer commutative (the order in which things are multiplied matters, so a times b is not the same as b times a). They can be used to represent rotations.

How Nerds Dreamt of Rebel Alliance But Became The Empire

 Laurie Penny, author of Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies & Revolution, is also a prolific columnist and blogger and has written on everything from capitalism and feminism to pop culture and science fiction. She recently read Scott Aaronson's comment on a blog post about sexism and the roles of men and women on the STEM fields, where Aaronson writes of the pain, confusion and isolation he experienced for years and how while he felt he agreed with most of the ideas behind feminism, when it came to discussions of privilege, he stopped dead in his tracks, saying the be was sure that "...being a nerdy male might not make me 'privileged' — that it might even have put me into one of society’s least privileged classes" and that he spent years growing up "... feeling not 'entitled', not 'privileged', but terrified."

Penny, in her personal essay "On Nerd Entitlement" responds with understanding and empathy:

"As a child and a teenager, I was shy, and nerdy, and had crippling anxiety... desperate for a boyfriend or, failing that, a fuck... I hated myself and had suicidal thoughts. I was extremely lonely, and felt ugly and unloveable. Eventually I developed severe anorexia and nearly died... Having been a lonely, anxious, horny young person who hated herself and was bullied I can categorically say that it is an awful place to be. I have seen responses to nerd anti-feminism along the lines of  being bullied at school doesn't make you oppressed. Maybe it's not a vector of oppression in the same way, but it’s not nothing. It burns. It takes a long time to heal... [S]hy, nerdy boys. Your suffering was and is real. I really fucking hope that it got better, or at least is getting better, At the same time, I want you to understand that that very real suffering does not cancel out male privilege, or make it somehow alright. Privilege doesn't mean you don't suffer, which, I know, totally blows."

She points out though, that unlike Anderson, she also had additional barriers in her way. "I was also female, so when I tried to pull myself out of that hell into a life of the mind, I found sexism standing in my way. I am still punished every day by men who believe that I do not deserve my work as a writer and scholar." In fact, men outnumber women in STEM fields, and a recent Yale study showed that when faced with equally qualified men and women applicants in a STEM field, professors were more likely to offer the man a job than the woman. If the woman was hired, her starting salary was, on the average, $4,000 LESS.

Penny further explains:

"...imagine what it's like to have all the problems you had and then putting up with structural misogyny on top of that [or] also faces sexism and racism. This is why Silicon Valley is fucked up. Because it's built and run by some of the most privileged people in the world who are convinced that they are among the least. People whose received trauma makes them disinclined to listen to pleas from people whose trauma was compounded by structural oppression. People who don't want to hear that there is anyone more oppressed than them, who definitely don't want to hear that maybe women and people of color had to go through the hell of nerd puberty as well..."

The entire essay is a nuanced, empathetic response, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.