#geekdom for good

[histrionic-dragon]

Someone was absolutely awful and robbed a food bank, stealing the food and ruining an expensive freezer while doing it.

I invoke the powers of the internet and fandom. Let's help them recover from this. The people we squee over would very much approve! Steve Rogers in particular, I bet, but y'know: Kel would dig in about protecting her people, the Jedi would be all about justice and service (or should be), wizards are all about slowing entropy and chaos, every iteration of The Doctor would be pissed and want to fix this, Crowley would make sure the thief steps on a Lego while Aziraphale miracled up some fresh, organic replacement food..... Let's do them proud.

https://arlingtonfoodbank.networkforgood.com/projects/84635-donate-today

[wilwheaton]

I want to underscore that these two descriptors — “weird” and “nerd” — are not synonymous. As a card-carrying nerd myself, I would have to say that Vance’s love of stereotypically geeky interests has nothing to do with his creepy tendencies. If anything, he has shown himself to be the worst kind of nerd, one who reinforces the toxic masculinity that was at one point inseparable from overarching geekdom. It is to Vance’s discredit that he will likely be unable to see how deeply his rejection of all things “woke” isolates him from a community that has come to embrace the “good weird” that doesn’t fit into his homogenized vision of America. [...] Along with this purposeful blindness comes the lack of recognition from Vance and those like him that the nerds have won. Geek culture has become a pop culture Goliath. The most popular franchises in the world have realized that it matters that everyone gets to see themselves in the stories being told. For Vance and others, it’s not their interests in comic books or sci-fi that sets them apart now. What’s weird is their refusal to share that win with anyone who doesn’t fit the outdated stereotype of who and what a nerd is.

JD Vance has shown himself to be the worst kind of nerd, one who reinforces the toxic masculinity that was at one point inseparable from overarching geekdom.

The most popular franchises in the world have realized that it matters that everyone gets to see themselves in the stories being told. For Vance and others, it’s not their interests in comic books or sci-fi that sets them apart now. What’s weird is their refusal to share that win with anyone who doesn’t fit the outdated stereotype of who and what a nerd is.

[handyowlet]

AO3 finally came back so I could finish this. Read it- there’s penguins, geekdom, and a whole lot of smut. It’s awesome. Thanks @caedmonfaith !

[khaicrafts]

TW: Mentions of War & Genocide The variant who never went to camp...

At first, there was nothing really concerning in the trajectory of Khairi Dior's life if he had never been summoned. Another child of Hephaestus would take his place and he could finish his masters and PHD.

He would have gone on to use his knowledge to contribute in the world of engineering. His own tech company in which he'd make a promise to overthrow the billionaire tech conglomerates. His advancement in robotics and AI bring about change for how people lived...

Because his mind would lend to that of warfare.

What he desires to do for GOOD, for his fellow godlings; that skews into deeply morally gray territory in this AU. Military contracts meant money. Money was comfort. He wouldn't have the comfort of knowing true comradery and appreciate the value of life like he'd learn at camp.

His designs would be used in conflicts. Millions of lives snuffed out due to his hand in building those weapons of mass destruction. World War III once again trending on Twitter; yes, because he'd buy the platform from that South African douche and restore it to what it once was. It's the small bit of good he could do.

Instead of a late night research project on magical mishaps...

Instead of quests taking him through time...

Instead of a simple autumn evening shared with true companions as they lick their wounds and appreciating another day to their memories with one another...

It's that tall luxury penthouse in a Dubai high rise; the decor devoid of even his passion for geekdom has he'd succumb to being cold and ultimately alone. For a man that has everything but also had nothing.

His lips take a slow pull of cognac as his phone chimes with yet another report of a strike claiming the lives of families from the DiorAurum missiles dropped on their apartment complex.

Didn't matter to him. This Khai never had a family to care for or care for him.

[transgender-er]

Compiling the list if actually good queer youtubers that hbomberguy gave because I haven't actually seen anyone do that yet (+ a couple of my own suggestions)

Matt Baume (I love his culture cruise so much)

Khadija Mbowe (I love them too)

Lady Emily

Shaspeare

RickiHirsch

Verilybitchie

Alexander Avila (formerly Are They Gay)

My suggestions:

Jessie Gender - she makes a lot of trans content, especially video essays (+ she has a movie in production!)

Philosophy Tube - another trans video essayist! She's a delight to listen to

Council of Geeks - Mainly focuses on Doctor Who and other geekdom stuff, but has video essays about queer issues thrown in there sometimes

Jessica Kellgren-Fozard - she makes videos with discussions about being queer and disabled

CopsHateMoe - makes videos discussing queer issues and also queer history that one time

Kaz Rowe - informative discussions about queer history (also a joy to listen to)

Tee Noir - Talks about queer issues and black issues (very informative)

[dragon-ball-meta]

DBtubers like Geekdom101 definitely need to hear the "the Super anime and manga are different continuities, and the anime isn't adapting the manga" because he's been peddling out that misinformation for years and won't hear otherwise.

I'm acquainted with Geekdom. We've chatted quite a few times. He's a friend of a good friend of mine. I don't recall him saying the anime was adapting the manga though? If he thinks that, it's news to me, anyways.

[madgastronomer]

I'm baffled by the idea that the second picture is "more manly", even. Like. That is a man who does nothing but workout in very specific ways. He doesn't do any of the things I was raised thinking of as "manly" (in my 80s-and-90s-Republican-Florida upbringing). He doesn't build things. He doesn't hunt or fish. He doesn't play sports. He probably can neither throw a punch nor take one. He just lifts. I remember when my oldest cousin got into bodybuilding competitions in the early 90s, and even won a few low-level ones. Everybody in the extended family thought he was nuts. He'd played football in high school and college, he hunted, he fished, all kindsa shit, this guy was manly. And we all thought he was losing some of that by bodybuilding. That he looked awful and unhealthy before and during competitions. That he was losing the agility that had made him good at football. That he was giving something essential about himself up to do this. He definitely did give up any kind of dating life to do it. We were worried he'd get onto anabolic steroids and shrivel his nuts to nothing.

The idea that this kind of bodybuilding is anything but niche as hell and kind of weird is pretty recent and highly manosphere. It is a very particular idea of masculinity that frankly leaves out almost anything that could make a man interesting. It was like being a computer geek (before tech became a bro thing), but without any of the intelligence or knowledge usually associated with geekdom. Also without any career opportunities, really. Hans and Franz on Saturday Night Live were laughable. Because they thought they were more manly than other guys, and they absolutely weren't.

I don't know how to break it to men who are trapped in these ideas that there are ways of being masculine that appeal to women and are acknowledged by other men as masculine. That this one actually remains niche.

i think the reason a lot of men are screaming, puking, and crying about this is bc it forces them to acknowledge that the reason they can’t get women to like them is not actually bc of their physique but bc of their shitty personality

[cuddlecr33p]

I passed the truest test of geekdom yesterday. After 10 years of not playing mtg, I espied a strange polyhedron on the floor of my friend’s house. A 20 sided shape, cast from plastic with intricate numbers on each side. Your average nerd would’ve gone “D 20!! :D” but, even though it was covered in dust, and partially obscured by a low table, I said confidently “spin down counter!! :D” and low and behold, the 20 was next to the 19 was next to the 18 was next to the 17 ad etcetera. I am so good at identifying dork paraphernalia I am so fucking happy I didn’t embarrass myself.

[sugirandom]

We had a good time this weekend at Thy Geekdom Con.

The TL:DR first and then the long version under the cut as usual.

We had a great time at our con this weekend, fun panels and friendly welcoming people. Got a good amount of video games from our wishlist for pretty good prices and overall had a great first impression. I'll go into more details including personal accounts of hotel experience etc. under the cut. No trigger warnings that I know of...

Friday afternoon after I finished my tutoring online my best bro and I headed out to PA to go to Thy Geekdom Con which was being held at the same place Too Many Games is held. In reality when we got to the area our hotel was in we discovered the street we needed to go to to go to the hotel's parking lot was blocked off...

This is apparently a street that the area blocks off on the weekends every every during the early summer months (but I guess starting the last weekend in May) for increased foot traffic or something...idk but anyway because of that we had to call our hotel and the front desk lady told us where we could park and met up with us to help us carry our bags to the hotel.

I'm not sure if it's polite to say the name and I mentioned this stuff on a review of their place so I probably won't name them just in case. The hotel itself was in an older building and is classified as a 2-star hotel which under normal circumstances I wouldn't have booked but the reviews still seemed decent and I was trying not to pay a fortune for a hotel, easier said than done these days ...The building seemed cozy though. A little on the smaller side but our room was on the first floor and right near the front desk so that part was convenient.

It was nearing 7 by the time we got settled in and my blood sugar was dropping so we decided to get dinner at the hotel's restaurant. The food was good but man was the restaurant noisy AF. We were tired so ultimately we waited to get our con badges till the next day.

Saturday morning we grabbed a quick breakfast at a small cafe nearby our hotel. We loved how there were so many things in walking distance from the hotel, it made us nostalgic for Japan and Italy as well as a bid sad remembering that our town is not at all like that. We stood in line for about 10 miuntes, not too bad, other than other con-goers vaping and blowing smoke to the people behind them (i.e. us) but that's not the con's fault at all.

We got in, got our badges and it was a pretty quick process. We actually went to the dealer's room first this time. Our DBZ-dub biases clearly showed because we didn't really even care that we were going to miss the DBZ voice actor's panel (that had a few of the Funimation dub voice actors in it) because the dealer's room was too big to do in only 30 minutes. The vendos were pleasntly friendly and it was nice to see some pride artists selling merch. In Saturday and Sunday combined we got about 22 games I believe, thanks to some good deals I used to dread the dealer's room because for the longest time I was unemployed and felt too broke to buy much so it's nice to have a little bit to spend for once, my best bro and I tend to share expenses which is very different from when we were teenagers.

We also went to a good amount of panels, the first involved guessing an Anime based on a 'roast' of it or a bad description that if you didn't know these people were fans you'd say it was mean, that type of thing...My best bro ended up participating and he got the first two right but neither him nor I are current with Anime so when Demon Slayer came up he couldn't guess it...I wouldn't have been able to either but the first two were Naruto and The Devil's a part-timer so those were easy lol. I don't feel so bad though because one girl that went up couldn't guess Yugioh, we weren't sure why until at the end she actually looked at the screen and had no ides what it was even looking at it. I was shocked but hey there's always one person who doesn't know the classics.

Let's see...other panels...a very cool one about the history of Fanfiction, I've been to a few panels about fanfiction so I knew a lot of the 'history' part of her presentation but the panelist added two parts that were new so it still felt worth it's time. I knew next to nothing about Fanfic on Tiktok and the fact that some fans like to get bound copies of Fanfic. Very interesting and she takes it seriously since she did a Master's thesis on Fanfic. Those are the types of panlelists I get excited to see! It's like seeing a Youtube essay except in real life and not online!

We met a podcaster who is local to Maryland and networked with him so you may see/hear From Our Basement Gaming on his podcast one day. He's a small podcaster but I was more interested in connecting with him since he's local and I rather share a small close-knit audience that could be local rather than feeling like we don't have much interaction with a huge one. I mean both is good but...am I making any sense? Another panel we got to participate in involved my best bro playing Mario Kart without being able to see the screen and I had to navigate for him...it was surprisingly hard. We didn't win...even remotely but it was fun and I promised him we could try the opposite at home sometime.

The only panel that sucked at all was the only 18+ Panel we went to called WTF did I just watch? Which, honestly, had no business being labeled 18+ IMHO because the only nudity was censored and there was no cursing in the footage, so it felt like a PG13 panel that he labeled 18+ to be edgy. He mostly showed clips from weird Japanese commercial, a few questionable gameshows and music videos, and the Japanese versions of Silent Library and whatever the other one that takes place in a school instead of a library is called. I learned that I in fact hate the Japanese versions of those shows as much as their American ripoffs. I was never a fan of slapstick humor so the idea of hitting someone on the ass with a bamboo stick or other object when they fail to avoid laughing is not something I enjoy and I tend to consider abusive...is that why he labeled it 18+? The show in question is rated 13+ on our TVs I think...at the same time we were at this panel the DJ was right nextdoor blasting music at max volume so we left early because I wanted to rip my ears out I was in so much pain.

That's the legit only time I felt pissed off at the con, which is very good really because I've had several cons where I get micro episodes of getting pissed off so I was quite relieved. I also did better at socializing a little. I managed to get our channel three new subscribes. Also, @aisuryuu one group of vendors I told about our channel praised our avatars as being really expressive so I gave you a shoutout. Sadly, I didn't have any of your URLs to share but if I see them at the next con I'll try to have them ready just in case!

To intice them I did let the cat out of the bag so to speak about a game we're going to start in June despite not revealing that on our channel itself nor revealing it on here (at least I don't think I revealed it on here? It wasn't planned but it gave me a talking point since I'm still new to this um...selling? promoting? thing... Maybe if I practice enough doing it for our channel I'll have more confidence doing it for my voice acting too.

Let's see other than that...yeah outside of the con we had our meals which were pretty good. My best bro and I don't do junky food from the cons since most venues do cheap fast-food, that's overpriced (i.e. cheap in quality only). The hotel bed was a struggle, old spring mattress that complains every time you move. I don't take up as much space as my best bro and I felt like I barely dented the bed and was up too high so I worried if I turned wrong I might fall off the bed. Bathroom was tiny, almost as tiny as the one from my Kyoto apartment but hey at least we had a toilet and toilet paper right? So yes, overall a good experience. We are seriously talking about going to Too Many Games for maybe 2 out of the three days but we'll probably get a different hotel. I don't regret going to this hotel but the parking was enough of a hassle that we don't want to deal with that part again even though it means shelling out a little more money.

So yeah, wanted to give you the update, thanks if you read the long description and hope you enjoyed. Sorry for any typos, I really don't like proofreading my rambles, rants unless I'm trying to talk about serious stuff so...thanks for your understanding.

[jessicafangirl]

Christopher Lee is your number one? Good choice. But who's your number 2 and 3? If you're choosing between David and Copia.

That's a hard choice because I love em both. David though is like the uber geek of all geekdom. He literally grew up reading the same comics as me, watching the same stuff as me. He's just a doll baby and a good dude. Copia I love too but David's literally a clone of Chris Lee if Lee was a complete nerd. Copia is a very high 3.

[fortressofserenity]

The other side of geek culture

When it comes to representing geek culture, The Big Bang Theory does give into certain misconceptions, but in the sense that almost none of the geeks there are involved in the arts in any way. At least from what I do know and understand, in the sense that perhaps other than something relating to comics, it doesn't seem to show up much despite its significance in geek culture. Speaking from my experience, there are a lot of geeks involved in the arts.

A lot of them work in illustration, graphic design, painting and animation in some capacity or another, not that they don't do comics at all. But there are aspects of both comics cartooning and geekdom that even those who do know may not always immediately get, in the sense that a good number of people doing newspaper comics aren't that deeply involved in geek culture themselves. But a good number of animators alive today have a geeky background, which comes in handy for other things.

Even if TBBT does try to get geek culture, there's something about geek culture that even most well-intentioned outsiders don't get. It's actually more to do with art and literature from my experience, than it does with the sciences at times since some of the scientists I know (from going to their websites) aren't that big on geek culture themselves. But many of the animators and illustrators I do know tend to have a geeky background, which is something TBBT missed altogether.

[devkyu]

Only managed to get one day off this weekend to attend Thy Geekdom Con, so I mostly went just to do a bit of shopping. There was actually a good amount of Digimon art that I wasn't expecting but was very delighted to find!

[shadowwingtronix]

Geekdom Vs Christianity?

BW Media Spotlight looks at the odd question of Geekdom Vs Christianity?

I may be misreading the article and comments I’m about to respond to, but it still makes for a good title, right? So last night I responded to a fairly recent article by author JW Cowan declaring that geek culture wasn’t just “dead” but was never really a thing. I had my disagreements as someone who is surrounded by “geek culture”, “genre media”, or whatever term you want to call it. It’s like…

[mugiwara-lucy]

Isn’t it funny that Geekdom said the N-word and he has a Frieza pfp. I mean it’s funny because I’m not surprised not because he said the N-word

It is typical of the anime fan to be racist pieces of shit.

Hell, he was all crickets when his "good friend Qaaman" got hate when he exposed himself being a black man.

[stormswrath]

D&D Characters

Among many of my other geekdoms, I am big fan of RPGs and tabletop games. I played D&D for the first time in college far too many years ago. I started out in 2nd edition, and have played at least one adventure in every future iteration up to 5e. I will say role playing was a challenge. Until then, I had no experience with it. The closest I'd come to that point was the RPG video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior and the like. Of course this was way different. I never immersed myself in a character completely of my own design. Now, I did know a small amount about the D&D world prior to my first game, having read a number of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. Also read one or two Ravenloft books, which was good since the game was taking place there.

Having just re-read the Dragonlance Chronicles, and having no alignment restrictions for the parts, I opted to play as a Knight of Takhisis who happened to stumble into the Mists. I named him Samhain and made him an evil Paladin. As it was my first character, my actual role-playing was...rough. I found it extremely difficult to stay in character, and I kept inadvertently meta-gaming not realizing that was frowned upon. Our DM, due to it being the end of the semester, decided a few adventures in to go with the "rocks fall, everyone dies" approach to end the campaign. Needless to say, I was pissed. It would be a while before I would do it again, but I did. While I'd love to go more into this character (stats, personality, backstory, etc), it has been way too long since then, so those details are fuzzy. I do want to post more about my other characters and experiences, so hopefully I'll get that opportunity. But those are posts for another day.

[audio-luddite]

Vinyl Sound

I love the word ineffable. The sound of vinyl is like that.

I have said many times that convenience and quality are inversely proportional. That I use that term will tell you I am technically educated. Things that are easy just aint that good.

I read somewhere in the tumblr-verse that some guy did not understand the attraction of vinyl. High rez digital is all over the place and easy to get, blah blah blah. Hey if it works for him....

Geekdom likes to quote two parameters for sound quality. One is resolution in bits per second. The other is dynamic range in bits. More bits per second is better. Every bit you add to dynamic range doubles it. 17 is double 16 and on and on. Easy peasy. The bit rates keep going up as do the size of the digital numbers.

But converting strings of bits of numbers to sound is not easy and depends on changing (developing) standards and algorithms. The hardware is intrinsically complex and variable in quality. The best is very good, the rest aint so much.

Vinyl does not have the dynamic range of many digital formats, but it does surpass the most common ones. Mp3s please get away from me. Vinyl records have a dynamic range of 55 to 65 db. Take 60 as the middle and think that 60 db is a ratio of a million times. The quietest is one millionth of the loudest. Not enough for you?

To be totally fair many LPs are compressed to get more on them, or to sound better in bad systems. We don't buy those. (much)

True believers adhere to the idea of pure analog from performance to speaker is best and they are not sure why. Hey that is what faith is for. Believe something for reasons you forgot or never knew. There are two ways to have pure analog in your home one is tape the other is vinyl. So the faithful have only two options. ( Yes FM radio if they play LPs or tapes on air)

Tape has a possible dynamic range of 60 to 70 db at consumer level.

Resolution gets interesting.

Resolution is a bit tricky as it is based on a high frequency modulated signal to put the sound on the tape. For simplicity lets just say that tape will reliably respond from 20Hz of 20 kHz which is all us humans can hear. Tape is pretty good. In the golden age all albums were recorded with tape with a very few exceptions.

Resolution in vinyl is hard to pin down. As it is a continuous analog signal it can be claimed that the resolution is infinite. Beat that high bit rate boys. But I have heard that like tape the cutting of master disks uses a high frequency modulation to help with the cutting process. Be that as it may frequencies up to 45 kHz have been cut into vinyl records and successfully played back. Suck on that bandwidth fans.

(45 kHz was used to encode 4 track sound on LPs back in the "Quadraphonic" days)

My Current Grado phono pickup claims response fro 10 Hz to 60 kHz. Need more?

infinite resolution and bandwidth of 45 to 60kHz. Sorry digital. OK I am being more than a bit facetious. You do not see this in the real world often, but when debating technical capacities look out for the old ways.

Above I said "with very few exceptions" I have a few such albums in my stash. In the 70s a method called direct to disc was used. In that Musicians would get together and play a set that went right on to a cutting lathe. There were back up tapes, but the discs you bought were purest analog with no intermediate media at all. These sound amazing! They have to be experienced.

Now to be absolutely fair some of my favorite albums were recorded "digitally". One is "Famous Blue Raincoat" Jennifer Warnes. Another is "Trinity Sessions" by Cowboy Junkies. Interesting that in both examples tape recorders had a hard time with the bandwidth of the digital signal so they used video recorders. Computers were just not fast enough. An advantage of recording a digital signal with analog is the digital data can be reconstructed even with analog losses. Digital bits are all square waves.

I have both CD and LP versions of both of those albums. And to my ear I prefer the vinyl copies.

I do find it fun that digital recordings had to be recorded with analog tapes. Har har har.

Since the early days digital recording has improved. Computer hardware is now fast enough to capture very high bit rate digital streams so tape is not needed. There was a recent scandal when MOFI started to record precious master tapes on to DSD streams. The purity is VIOLATED.

DSD is very good, and fun fact it is ONE BIT. As a former computer geek who could do assembler code I actually understand how it works.

So have I actually said anything about how vinyl sounds? This is the hardest part. Recall that word at the top? My analog playback system is several times more expensive than my CD player which also does my Apple Music Streaming. More money spent there, so probably a lot better? But what do I hear.

My old ears top out at 12 kHz last time I checked. Still I hear a delicate cymbal strike or the edge of a high note on a string. On most music I hear a convincing image of a performance digital or analog. On vinyl it feels different, more comfortable. I am not doing double blind tests, but when visitors hear my system they always prefer the vinyl to the digital. It just sounds better.

I can hear Diana Krall open her mouth to sing on her "Live in Paris" album. There is that word palatable I am almost reluctant to use. It was used to death by the old team at "Absolute Sound".

In the end I prefer it. That is all you can really say.