Nerd Night - April 2024 edition

Nerd Nite London is a monthly event where three speakers give 18-21 minute fun-yet-informative talks across all disciplines, while the audience drinks along.

This month, learn about a Death ray battle, investigate a mysterious damp patch, and discover what intersubjectivity is all about.

Intersubjectivity / Constructing and Reconstructing Social Constructs

Even if you’ve never heard the word, you experience intersubjectivity all the time. You couldn’t live without it. In this talk, Pete hopes that teaching you Intersubjectivity’s proper name and ways, as though it were a dragon from Earthsea, will give you power over it rather than letting it have power over you. The talk is structured as a fan dance, slowly revealing various contours of the subject in a way that aims to be alluring, amusing, and memorable. Well received at Nerd Nite DC!

Pete Miller has the thinnest tissue of academic credential for this talk owing to a dusty bachelor’s in behavioral science. But, decades of managing information technology organizations and volunteering for theatrical organizations have contributed much more to his insight into how people tick. He may arrive at the Backyard travel stained from 3 weeks of country walking in the north, and very much appreciates the opportunity to explore his latest obsession with nerds of London. When not walking in the North, he can be found on Facebook at petemill

Damp Deductions

The tale of how we applied the scientific deductive process to a mysterious damp patch on our kitchen wall, including words like ‘bisect’ & ‘instrumentation’, as well as ‘guilt’, and ‘sewage’. It contains unexpected surprises suddenly showing up in time-lapse photography, curious & unpredictable strangers, and high-powered lasers marking the Greenwich Prime Meridian.

Roberto Tyley is a software dev at the Guardian theguardian.com/profile/roberto-tyley, who does things like Tardis treasure hunts & no-budget period dramas, and did open-spot standup comedy many years ago. He’s active on X at @rtyley

The Great Death Ray Battle of 1924

Before it was a science fiction trope, the death ray was cutting edge science – and exactly a century ago, rival British inventors fought for dominance. Who would win out to become LORD OF THE BEAMS OF DOOM?

Andy Riley is an Emmy-winning scriptwriter and a bestselling author/cartoonist whose latest work is the movie SEIZE THEM! His hobbies include building houses from sticks, mud and wire. He’s active on X and Instagram at @andyrileyish