Ari Schlesinger illuminates a unique path of social responsibility carved through the tech world, using feminism as a guide while bearing attacks, criticism, and contortion. That trail led Ari to ask how programming languages shape society and, eventually, to research Elm—the compiler, error messages, and community.

Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.

Music by Jesse Moore.
Edited by Toni Cañete.

Recording date: 2025.06.06

Guest

Ari Schlesinger

Show notes

[00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically

[00:02:27] Introduction (for real)

University of Georgia
Socially Responsible Tech Lab
"A Case for Feminism in Programming Language Design", co-authored with Felienne Hermans
Addressing Computing's Discrimination Problem: A Framework for Anti-Discriminatory Computing by Ari Schlesinger
Elm Town 88 – Wonder: Unconscious bias with Felienne Hermans

[00:04:57] Origin story

[00:14:33] Why Did School Suck?

[00:20:41] A little thing called Y Combinator and 4chan happened

HASTAC (Cathy Davidson)
"A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway

[00:30:43] Anti-discriminatory framework

"Good intentions are not enough: how informatics interventions can worsen inequality" by Tiffany C. Veinot, Hannah Mitchell, and Jessica S. Ancker
Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy

[00:43:00] Language shapes reality

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

[00:49:22] Glaciology

"Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research" by Mark Carey, M. Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, and Jaclyn Rushing

[00:58:11] Relation of Ari's research to Elm

Strange Loop
Papers We Love Conf
"The Hard Parts of Open Source" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2018
Propaganda by Edward Bernays
The Last Whole Earth Catalog

[01:04:32] Elm error messages

[01:43:00] Picks

Ari's picks

Jared's picks

"Queer Theory for Lichens" (archive) by David Griffiths
- https://jayjinsing.github.io/files/QueerTheoryLichens.pdf (PDF)
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
The Rehearsal on Max by Nathan Fielder
Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich

Elm Town

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