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(two people looking at a burning iPhone) All I did was ask Siri whether Ancillary Justice passes the Bechdel Test, and then my phone started getting warm, and then...

AppleCare never saw Ann Leckie coming

AppleCare never saw Ann Leckie coming published on No Comments on AppleCare never saw Ann Leckie coming

If you’ve read Ancillary Justice and enjoyed the hell out of it, then yay: you’re my kind of people. Maybe you’ll enjoy this little parody I wrote a while ago.

If you haven’t read the Nebula and Hugo award-winning novel Ancillary Justice and its sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, then a) this cartoon won’t make a lot of sense, and b) do I ever have a treat waiting for you, especially if you like brilliantly imagined literary entertaining-as-hell space opera.

This cartoon has been bopping around in my mind (and more recently my sketchbook) for a while now. I was kind of delighted, kind of chagrined, when I saw that author Ann Leckie tweeted pretty much the same joke yesterday. But then…

https://twitter.com/ann_leckie/status/684436984060854273

 

https://twitter.com/ann_leckie/status/684440806590164992

Awfully decent of you, citizen.

And now, a few tweaks to the cartoon idea later, here we are.

Quick briefing if none of this makes sense to you: Ancillary Justice‘s narrator usually refers the story’s characters as “she” regardless of their gender. And the Bechdel Test (or Bechdel-Wallace Test) arose from a great Alison Bechdel comic where one character says she only sees movies that have at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something other than a man. Oh, and iPhones get warm if they work hard.

By the way, I do believe this cartoon passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test. :)

These teeny tiny plastic boots were made for walkin’

These teeny tiny plastic boots were made for walkin’ published on 7 Comments on These teeny tiny plastic boots were made for walkin’

October 26, 2010: WOW, that’s a lot of traffic today! Thanks for visiting and spreading the word, folks. As far as I can tell, this cartoon is either spreading by email, or was in someone’s (pretty large) email newsletter. Anybody know the source? I’d love to thank them.Oc

October 27, 2010: And the answer’s in. Commenter Patricia Washburn, below, explains the cartoon was posted to Systers, the legendary mailing list for women working on the tech side of computing, started by Anita Borg back in 1994. That couldn’t be more cool!


Happy Ada Lovelace Day, all. May all of our daughters grow up in a world of open doors.

Updated: And here’s the cartoon being drawn:

Updateder: And here’s the four-minute speeded-up version (maybe imagine Benny Hill music in the background):

Vogue meets PC World

Vogue meets PC World published on 1 Comment on Vogue meets PC World

Jolie O’Dell sparked a fascinating thread on marketing to geek women – specifically, marketing cutesy pink stuff to them.

Okay, so maybe there is a long-tail market for Barbie’s Dream Server Farm. But my experience in shopping for consumer electronics says there’s plenty of room for folks who sell technology of all kinds to get a little more savvy on how gender relations have changed.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked into tech stores with Alexandra and had the salesman (I use that word advisedly) glom onto me… despite the fact that Alex is the household video, audio and telecommunications geek. Some get it after a few not-too-subtle hints (Alex: “Now is that true MEMC 240Hz, or just scanning backlight?” me: “TV’s hard! (giggle)”), but a surprising number of them can’t seem to resist directing their pitch exclusively to me.

I’d like to think times have changed from the days when cars were sold to women on the basis of how many cupholders they had. (The cars, not the women.) But I wonder.

Originally published on ReadWriteWeb.

Problem solved

Problem solved published on No Comments on Problem solved