Benjamin Woo
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geekworlds.bsky.social
Benjamin Woo
@geekworlds.bsky.social
150 followers 210 following 130 posts
Assoc. Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Carleton University. Studying comic cons and festivals as interfaces between media industries and fan communities. Reading comics, playing TTRPGs, cooking Chinese food. #CatDad
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geekworlds.bsky.social
Perusing the most important resources in the library at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne.
A shelf of identically clothbound comic books in the library. The titles stamped on the spine say Alpha Flight 1 of 4, 2 of 4, 3 of 4, and 4 of 4.
November 7, 2025 at 2:44 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
I don’t think of it that way but had never seen the video before, and it’s … unwholesome.
Screencap from an episode of the Simpsons. Bart is flying a kite at night in the front yard while Marge looks on, concerned, from her bedroom window.
October 31, 2025 at 1:00 AM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Commonwealth countries:
A modified screencap from an episode of the Simpsons showing a young Homer being denied entry to a treehouse. Another child, looking down at him and holding up a finger, says, “It says ‘no kings.’ We’re allowed to have one.”
October 18, 2025 at 3:05 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Making tofu at home really is that wet-the-dry/dry-the-wet meme in action.
Tofu-making equipment. A can of kidney beans with a bright yellow label sits precariously on top of a tofu press, a beige plastic container with slits for liquid to escape. It’s sitting on top of a metal rack inside a glass baking dish half-full of whey, and the whole thing is on a light-grey stone kitchen counter.
September 28, 2025 at 10:40 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Yeah, these weird alien glyphs definitely point to a.i.
Detail from the above posted slop. One of the Green P logos floats off the board it’s on into a separate plane, and the letters of “Green Parking” appear to have been eaten by moths or selectively treated with acid.
September 24, 2025 at 4:00 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Instead of sitting here all night get cooked by takes, I took a cooking class with Nancy, a former chemist who’s been teaching for 20 years now. We made pork bao, har gow dumplings, and stuffed tofu skin rolls.
Yours truly, a middle aged man in a respirator mask, ball cap, Oxford shirt, and apron stands at a stove in a big suburban kitchen, stir frying a big mound of shredded vegetables and pork in a wok. Nancy is adjusting another pan in the background.
September 11, 2025 at 1:36 AM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Betimes a gift from Pallas’ hand arrives unbidden and unsought for.
A sandwich made from a homemade cinnamon roll sliced in half with a slab of vanilla ice cream.
August 31, 2025 at 5:36 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
I’m so excited to welcome my friend Dylan Mulvin to Carleton as the 16th Attallah Lecturer. I hope you'll join us Thursday, September 18 for “The Moment of the Rage Room: Media, Purgation, and Politics.”

RSVP at carleton.ca/sjc/cu-event...
Poster for Dylan Mulvin's Attallah Lecture, "The Moment of the Rage Room," featuring a man screaming to the heavens.
August 27, 2025 at 2:31 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Two weeks before the start of term, my university is asking instructors to develop detailed AI policies for their syllabi. The new requirement is accompanied by a series of model policies that are … not good.

Here’s the text of a letter I sent to our Vice-Provost about it.
Part 1 of the screencapped email: I am writing to comment on the new requirement that course outlines contain a substantive policy on the use of AI tools and, more specifically, on the sample policy language prepared by Teaching and Learning Services. As you know from past conversations, my personal position lies somewhere on the spectrum between Luddism and Butlerian Jihad, but I can appreciate the need for more specific communication to students, given the variation in what their instructors consider acceptable and unacceptable use from course to course. Nonetheless, I have significant concerns about the model policies that have been circulated to the University community. They incorporate many claims that seem to me at least debatable enough that they ought not to be stated as fact on documents that carry the implicit authority of the University; to wit: The “minimal use” policy conflates very different technologies in a way that is likely to increase rather than decrease confusion among students. MS Word’s spellchecker is not by any reasonable definition an AI technology but is here equated with Grammarly, a platform that markets numerous AI agents, including ones that promise to predict the grade a paper will receive from specific professors based on their RateMyProfessor reviews. Email continued: The reference to “Word formatting tools” is vague—does it mean clicking “bold” or “italic”? Using styles to generate a table of contents? Or starting from a document template? The “enhanced use” policy says, “By using AI to handle routine or supplementary tasks, students can focus more on deeper learning and analysis of their assignments,” while the “full integration” example claims as a matter of fact that students using AI will “maximize their productivity and efficiency.” Is there compelling evidence that AI use in fact promotes deeper learning and analysis? Or even that AI tools actually produce the promised productivity gains? Despite encouragement for instructors to talk about how current generative AI technologies actually work, both the “enhanced” and “integrated” use policies deploy language of “collaboration” or “partnership” between the student and LLM-driven chatbots. As educators, we should not be promoting the false idea that chatbots are persons or have minds—they cannot be partners or collaborators, by definition. Finally, the “full integration policy” justifies itself as “preparing students for a future where AI is prevalent in professional settings.” Rest of email: Obviously, AI’s boosters predict many different futures, ranging from the AI-mandatory white-collar workplace signalled here to planet-spanning data centres and Roko’s Basilisk. But there are other futures—what if AI turns out to be another hype-driven market bubble? What if the LLMs plateau due to insufficient new training data? What if we realize we simply cannot allow tech companies to use up so much of our energy and water? This bland policy language in fact endorses a claim about the future that is highly ideological. I know the obvious response to these concerns is that the sample policies are just that—samples—and instructors are free to write their own, so long as they meet the three core criteria. But with the new policy requirement being announced only two weeks before the start of the term, it would be foolish not to expect many instructors to adopt the language suggested by TLS with only minor modifications, if any. These model policies deserve much more scrutiny. I worry a great deal about what they are already teaching students about generative AI and about the intellectual work they’re being asked to do in furtherance of their education. Yours sincerely, Benjamin WOO Chun How (he/him), PhD Associate Professor, Communication & Media Studies
August 21, 2025 at 9:41 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
@annodominaysayer.bsky.social made this lovely galette for lunch with beets from our CSA share.
A slice of beet galette on a teal plate. The rest of the thing is sitting on a cutting board in the background.
August 17, 2025 at 5:51 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Don’t make me tap the sign.
A version of the “Don’t Make Me Tap the Sign” meme from The Simpsons. A yellow cartoon hand reaches up from outside the frame to point at a placard reading, “THE DOING OF THE THING HAS VALUE & IS WORTHY IN ITSELF.”
August 17, 2025 at 4:58 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Just hanging out.
The front half of a seal-point cat dangling off the corner of a ledge of a cat tree.
August 14, 2025 at 4:44 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
And it’s idling, too!
Whale of a pickup truck parked perpendicular to the street, sticking out from a driveway so that it blocks both the sidewalk and the bike lane.
August 11, 2025 at 12:24 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Sabbatical vibes.
Screencap of Outlook with an empty: an illustration of a hot air balloon and the message, “Nothing left to read. Enjoy your empty inbox.”
July 18, 2025 at 11:27 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
And we have a poster now! See roccetlab.ca/convention-c... for more details on this exciting workshop.
Poster in glorious ditto-machine purple. Text reads, "A Workshop Organized by the Swarming SDCC Collective. Convention Cultures: Media Industries and Audiences at Fan Conventions and Beyond. February 13–14, 2025. St. Michael's College, University of Toronto. Visit roccetlab.ca/convention-cultures to view the Call for Participation. Basteleur by Keussel (Velvetyne Type Foundry). Libre Caslon Condensed by Ertekin Erdin." Image is a halftoned photograph of crowds at New York Comic Con, superimposed with an irregular grid, reminiscent of the layout of an exhibitors map at a convention or expo.
July 17, 2025 at 2:02 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Attending the International Comics and Graphic Novels Conference in Brussels this week was a fabulous way to transition to sabbatical mode. Thanks to the organizers and everyone who shared their work!
Big mannequins of Tintin, Snowy, Professor Calculus, and Captain Haddock in their Explorers on the Moon space suits.
July 5, 2025 at 7:03 AM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Inspired in no small part by a paper on fanbinding I reviewed for @journal.transformativeworks.org a few years back, I took a bookbinding workshop last night and made these cool little notebooks.
A trio of small, hand-bound notebooks displayed on a table.
June 18, 2025 at 2:03 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Taking a quick lunch break, but it’s so lovely to see TCAF in its new home.
A cavernous hockey arena seen from high up. The playing surface has been replaced with rows of tabling artists and publishers.
June 7, 2025 at 5:13 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Rainy trainy day. Heading to Toronto for the week to attend the Canadian Communication Association conference at @federationhss.ca #CongreSSH and TCAF @torontocomics.bsky.social.
Rain dripping down the window of a train car stopped at a station.
May 31, 2025 at 2:21 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
This is a test of the Emergency Bird–Cats System. This is only a test.

#Cats #CatsOfBluesky #FelineFriday
May 30, 2025 at 12:29 PM
geekworlds.bsky.social
Our lab hosted a one-week intensive course on comics and cartooning for high school students last month. Checking out these young artists’ minicomics thanks to a special delivery from @kathrynfedchun.bsky.social, who animated this year’s mini-course for us.
An array of simple, black and white zines produced by students laid out on a pine tabletop.
May 29, 2025 at 10:06 PM