DATE: 9/16 TIME: Doors at 6, show at 6:30 PLACE: DC9 Nightclub TICKETS: $10 @ bit.ly/septnerd WHAT: Three irreverent-yet-informative lectures by passionate experts separated by short breaks for drinking and socializing with your fellow nerds!
THIS MONTH’S TALKS:
“The Glomar Explorer: What we can confirm and deny about “vast government conspiracies” from Project Azorian” by Andrew Thaler Project Azorian was the most expensive and complex covert operation in US history, yet it was, by all accounts, a complete failure. What lessons can we learn from the OG Vast Government Conspiracy about how misinformation spreads, how government works (or doesn’t), and how projects like Azorian can shape international policy half a century later.
Bio: Andrew Thaler is a deep-sea ecologist, conservation technologist, and ocean educator whose work on high seas policy and the environmental impacts of deep-sea mining often collides with some of the stranger moments in the history of deep-ocean exploration.
“Sex Ed Summer School– Who Will Be Teacher’s Pet?” by Rebecca Rose Vassey, aka Diva Darling Did vibrators cure hysteria? What sex toy is a disability assistive device? Will a yoni egg fix your haunted vagina? Forget STI scare tactics and condoms on cucumbers, sex edutainer Diva Darling fills you in on the erotic know-how you wish you’d gotten in school– and busts some myths along the way. You’ll be begging for detention!
Bio: Diva Darling is the producer and femme-cee of the sex-themed storytelling show Smut Slam DC. She’s a sex educator, dating/relationship coach, and writer for The Pincus Center for Inclusive Treatment and Education. She’s also a burlesque performer and teacher, actor, playwright/producer, and an author whose short story “Frenzy” was just released in Best Women’s Erotica of the Year Vol. 8. Follow her at divanations.com.
“Artificial Gravity and Faster-Than-Light Travel: Spacetime in Sci-Fi” by Erin McDonald Join Erin Macdonald (PhD, Astrophysics and Star Trek Science Advisor) as she walks us through the history and science of spacetime physics and how we can cheat (or not) these rules to make long-term space travel in sci-fi possible!
Bio: Erin Macdonald, PhD (she/her) – Erin Macdonald is a tattooed one-woman STEM career panel, with recognition as a researcher, educator, speaker, engineer, and consultant before her current career. She lives in Los Angeles working as a writer and producer and is also the science consultant for the entire Star Trek franchise. She is also the founder and CEO of Spacetime Productions, a production company dedicated to lifting marginalized voices and providing opportunity in traditionally under-represented genre stories.
You know the drill. Three amazing speakers. Three weird-but-fascinating talks. One great evening.
This month’s lineup:
“Speedrunning: The Art of Going Fast and Breaking Video Games (and all my controllers in the process)”by RUBIEHART Why play a video game for fun and relaxation when you can master it and break it’s physics into a million pieces? Join RUBIEHART on a deep dive into what speedrunning is, and the journey of one of the greatest e-sports of this generation.
!!!! ALSO !!!! come to the show early (6pm early, not 6am early) and have a chance to try your own hand at a boss battle speed run. Who knows, you might even beat RUBIEHART’s best time? (Lol, right. Good luck n00b).
“Bees?! Strength, irrelevant. Resistance, futile. They wish to improve themselves.”by Katherine Offutt Contrary to popular belief: DC’s most productive residents do in fact work on capitol hill! The district is home to over 200 urban beekeepers, and 15 million bees – what makes bees so well suited to receiving aid from people, and why have people been messing around in hives for centuries? We’ve been assimilated, of course.
“Butt Soft, What Butt Through Yonder Window Butts??: An Exploration Of Butts and Things That Aren’t Butts But Look a Whole Lot Like Butts”by Rae Pendergrass WTF is a butt!? Can butts be weaponized?? If an animal plops some goop out of their all-purpose hole that is both a mouth and an anus, is it pooping or throwing up?! Is it really biologically likely that an anaconda wouldn’t want none unless you’ve got buns, hun!?!? Is being a buttface really as bad and shameful as Andrew from 2nd grade once tried to imply when he called me one while blowing raspberries in my direction???????????????
$10 tickets available online or at the door (until we sell out)
We do a short break between lectures so you can socialize, intoxicate yourself, pee, call your agent, plan a heist, etc. There’s tasty food and drink at the venue, so come hungry and thirsty.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
We also have an extra special show for you this month IN ADDITION to our regular Nerd Nite programming! We love you so much, we want to see you more than once this month!! If you love sea shanties, you will shat you pants when you hear SPACE SHANTIES!!! Come see Captain Ben Corbin’s Space Shanty Singalong Spectacular! Not to mention, we will have Space Burlesque by Maki Roll, Space Comedy by Kasha Patel, and Space Swag by NASA!!
COSTUMES ARE HIGHLY ENCOURAGED FOR SPACE SHANTIES!!
Space Shanties are on TUESDAY, 07/18 at 7:00pm @ DC9 (later than our normal show time!)
Our regular show at DC9 Nightclub features one of science’s most polarizing battles: BIRDS VS FISH!!
Representing #teamfish is Nerd Nite DC’s own Tiffany Atkinson with her talk “Flyer than a Motherfisher: Why Fish are Fire and the Obvious Choice in the Birds vs Fishes Debate”
Making the case for the superiority of our feathered friends is Zach Slavin with his talk about how “Birds Are Real, and Really Cool”
And we’ll also have a talk from the fantastic Sereia Spinner all about the horrifying, horny, how-is-this-a-true-story-wtf tale of “Operation Midnight Climax: the CIA Mind Control Brothel”.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:
If you’re attending Awesome Con, swing by room 204 at 8pm for a special Nerd Nite Awesome Con show, featuring talks from three Nerd Nite all-stars:
Nerd Nite DC host Rae Pendergrass will be dissecting frogs with her talk on “A Bot, An Anthropologist, and A Comedy Researcher Walk Into A Bar: The Science of Comedy”
Ben Corbin will be returning with his now-infamous talk on “The Human Rocket: The Efficacy of Using Bodily Fluids to Propel Yourself in Space” (complete with, uh, original research).
And Dr. Pete Thompson will show us the wonders of the ocean with his talk on “Why is My Thumb Bleeding and My Mind Blown?: Stomatopods, AKA Thumbsplitting Shrimp”
