Friday 13 October 2023

Why orange

My correspondent P alerted me to a new Women in STEM event which is part of the Cambridge Festival of Science, which wrapped up on 1st October . . . for this year - back in 2024. The CFoS has been running since 2007, although they may have taken some Covid gap years. It's grown in a similar way that PRIDE marches have grown - they've grown slicker and more corporate.WHEN banks and multinationals move in on an event where marginalized people had been getting together to be together - and stick it to The Man - THEN maybe it's time for reg'lar gays to stay at home? Not my dog, not my fight, but I'd be delirah if Brin&Page's Alphabet would fuck off back to Mountain View CA and let, say, Dublin's LGBT⚧QI2S+ community extend their alphabet as far as they want: rather than how far AIB can monetize it?

The Cambridge (MA!) Fest gave house room to a peculiar exhibition #IfThenSheCan where The Man sought out 120 Women in STEM, put them in a 3-D scanner and spat out a bright orange no-singing, no-dancing, no-thinking life-size acrylic printed replica. These lumps of plastic have then been shipped around the country - Dallas TX, Washington DC. Cambridge MA. Venerable science institutions like AAAS, the Smithsonian and National Geographic have lurried money into the venture. Here's what you get (if you can't afford 120 , you can negotiate a price for fewer):


Why is this a good idea? More to the point, why does this project rile me up so bad?  I'd invite you to browse through the extensive, high-production-value, site but refer you to the Terms of Use:

This Site is offered and available to users in the United States who are 13 years of age or older. By using this Site, you represent and warrant that you meet the foregoing eligibility requirement. If you do not meet this requirement, you must not access or use the Site.

So I'm already in violation and I expect to be taken away in chains by their #MonetizationPolice. Maybe that's what is triggering me? Here are four members of the #IfThenSheCan project and four members of the cast of #OrangeIsTheNewBlack. But in a massive archive cock-up, I've forgotten which is which



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