Tag Archives: geek culture

Comic Creators, Cosplayers, and Gender Roles

Looking at the site for San Francisco Comic Con, and I see their guest list. First, there’s “Celebrity Guests”, which are a mixed bag. Then come “Comic Creator Guests”: folks named Steve, Allen, Gerhard, Arvell, Casey, Joe, Jack, Erik, Bob, Steve, Mike, Paolo, and so on. There is a Trina. And then, right under that, there’s […]

Why Do We Care About The Force Awakens?

It’s less than two weeks until The Force Awakens hits the theaters. The promotional team has been doing a bang-up job of building advance buzz, with everything from product tie-ins like two flavors of ice cream to getting Pentatonix to do a medley of Star Wars music alongside a 75-piece orchestra at the American Music […]

Book Review: The Martian, by Andy Weir

In something of a departure from my previous themes of web/software development and political/cultural issues in tech, I’m doing a book review. Given that it’s The Martian, it is something that that’s likely of interest to geeks… but as time goes on, I may branch out even more. What I’m saying is, this coyote’s tracks are […]

I Feel Like Part of the Problem

In San Francisco now, I no longer feel like a useful, contributing member of The City’s social or cultural scene. Merely by virtue of being “a developer”, I feel like I’ve become Part Of the Problem. I sure as hell try not to be. I try to encourage the arts; I try to defend and promote […]

The Problem With “Objectify A Man In Tech Day”

Update: While putting the finishing touches on this post, I found out that its creator is cancelling Objectify Day, for a host of very good reasons. I think much of what I wrote here can still be useful, so I’m posting this piece anyway. I’m glad to see that the purpose I had in mind […]

Is It Getting Better? Or Do You Feel the Same?

I don’t normally want to “harp on” gender issues in tech by doing two posts about them in a row, but I’ve gotta write about this while the news is still kind of current. In my last post, I wrote about the Geeklist fail and the Sqoot/Boston API Jam fail. At the end of my […]

What to Do When the Tech Failboat Sails

The tech world is no stranger to occasional outbreaks of Sexism!Fail, but the past two weeks have seen a rare double instance of it. Naturally, I’ve got to speak up. By the way, for anyone who missed the events, here are a pair of quick recaps: Boston API Jam’s Marketing Problem Oh Hai Sexism And now, […]

A Single Context for All Social Interaction: Merely Quixotic, or Dangerously Misguided?

I recently read a blog post by Leo Widrich, the co-founder of Buffer, entitled “Why do we have so many lives?” In it, Mr. Widrich says: We have a private life, a public life. We have a work life, a school life, a party life, a love life and I am sure you can name lots […]

A Failed Goal

Near the beginning of this year, I published a piece called “Ada Lovelace Day Is Not Enough“. In it, I noted that only 8.69% of my 2010 posts had been marked with the “gender” tag, and it would be nice to increase that percentage. (But it was still an improvement over 2009’s 4.76%.) I said: So […]

Can You Strike it Rich in a Startup?

Startups are known for being places where people work really hard, often at unsustainable paces. “Work hard, play hard,” is the oft-invoked slogan, and there are usually foosball tables, game consoles, and other signifiers of fun lying around the office. (How often they get used is another story; the reality can easily be more like “work […]