Welcome to the monthly Nerd Nite, where nerds can share their passions and unusual research with a room full of people eager to spend a weekend night in a bar learning.
Nerd Nite DC is DC’s original science + nerd + drinking event. See us nerd out!
“What Happened in DC Before Gentrification?” by Tanya Golash-Boza
Talk Description: Let’s explore how DC went from being the murder and incarceration capital to becoming one of the most gentrified cities in the country.
Bio: Tanya Golash-Boza was born and raised in Washington, DC. She is a proud graduate of DC Public Schools, the University of Maryland (BA in Philosophy), and the University of North Carolina (PhD in Sociology). She currently works as the Executive Director of the University of California Washington Program.
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“Beakers and Boners” by Joe Meany
Talk Description: Chemistry these days is actually pretty cool, producing beer, vaccines, and batteries, but in the past it was a practice heavily seated in superstition. The history of alchemy was hyper-focused on perpetuating life and virility (cough cough male life and virility cough cough) and other discoveries are “well this is cool too I guess.
Bio: Joe is a science consultant and author currently living in Arlington, VA. He has a background in chemistry and materials science, and you can find him around the internet as The Crimson Alkemist.
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“From The Enterprise to Anonymous: A Smutty Public Speaking AU History of Fan Fiction” by Lisa Crawford
Talk Description: Lisa will take you on a journey through a brief history of modern fan fiction starting with its “creation” in the 70s all the way to a recent hacker attack of a popular fan fiction site to punish us for our fictional degeneracy. She’ll discuss why something so dorky is so compelling, explain how fan fic writers transform their stories into best selling original works, demonstrate the science—nay! the art of choosing a good fic, and bring it home with a highly intellectual audience-participation game called “smut or angst” where the audience decides on the genre of a fic based solely on its title.
Bio: Lisa is a badass shark biologist who works for the government. In her spare time, she enjoys rotting her brain with television and reading excessive amounts of fan fiction. Lisa is a mother of 22 guppies—only because she can’t keep a shark in her apartment.
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!)
