Hola, Femmebots(!) Welcome back to The FACTory.
If you’re a new subscriber, you may be wondering: What is The FACTory? Where is it? What does it do?
The FACTory is a blue globe in downtown Orlando that looks like this:
You’ll never believe what’s inside, but if you zoom in (or click here if you’re a paid subscriber), you’ll see that Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots® are diligently dreaming up new ideas and apps to “solve the most pressing issues of the day!”
Flying cars!
Kava-to-door delivery!
PizzaNowBitch!
These Femmebots have been pitching Sharky B the Investor nonstop, without fully re-charging, since January 2024. Amazing, right?? That’s because they are not human. They don’t need breaks like we do.
Here is a blueprint/layout of The FACTory so you can get an idea of how it’s set up: a stage, re-coding center with full kitchen, tech therapy room, memory file vault, VR simulation salon, a conference/exhibition center, and more!
One of the most important parts of The FACTory is Dr. Nutmeg’s laboratory (aka re-coding center), where the kitchen is located. This is where she mashes up past and present brains of Latinas in Tech, Latina Geeks, and Latinas in Data with market trends from Silicon Valley, snOrlando, Brooklyn, Houston, Prague, London, Miami, Brazil and beyond. The end result is the “Mofongoware” that gives each Femmebot her unique personality. When all the ingredients gel in a copacetic fashion, it looks something like this:
When there is an error or bug in the Mofongoware, a Femmebot starts malfunctioning. That’s when the emo tracker app comes in handy:
Usually Dr. Nutmeg can fix a Femmebot by tweaking the code, or adding another brain to the Mofogongoware mix, pero two back-to-back hurricanes completely burned out The FACTory, including:
The Kitchen
Dr. Nutmeg’s Tech Therapy wing (completely flooded)
Back Deck of Humility almost blew away
It was all very super emo telenovela dramatic style. Dr. Nutmeg usually laughs it all off while simultaneously re-coding and projecting her true emotions into the Mofongoware of her newest fleet of Femmebots, but her tricky survival tactics went into complete failure this time.
Needless to say, Dr. Nutmeg is in a coma.
Yeah. It’s some complex, whacked out shit. Are you sad? Probably not. Dr. Nutmeg was always a villain with severe Mal de Ojo issues (even with that perpetual smile on her silly face). It’s usually a happy ending when a villain dies, or in this case, goes into a coma. Would you agree?
From the perspective of the author (MelFeliciano.com), this ending feels “truthful,” but also a little too Disney black-and-white style. Villains nowadays are never ALL bad. In fact, half the country roots for them all the time (shameless political jab). Either way, it’s a great telenovela tactic for bringing Dr. Nutmeg back for another season (if we decide to renew the trademark)!
Regardless, I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to Femmebot 7.0. Shortly after Dr. Nutmeg went into a coma, our lone sentient robot disappeared from The FACTory for about three weeks until a couple of teenagers found her decapitated and disemboweled in a haunted forest:
According to AI officials and the FBI, Femmebot 7.0 is also in a coma. Now there’s a twist, for all you true crime fans…and perhaps cause to shed a tear for all the women who have been similarly discarded and forgotten and torn to shreds by an unforgiving Capitalist culture that considered DEI another #hashtag for a minute.
Is that the pretentious overarching theme of this story? Maybe. Especially during this 2024 presidential election…but I think I can get even more pretentious: It’s also a story about climate change. That blue globe isn’t just The FACTory and a representation of our collective brains; it’s Earth. If super fabulous Latina mad scientists like us don’t get back to roots, and recognize our addiction to tech and our rat-racing toward this most recent wave of new AI apps, we’re just as bad as the Sharky B Vulture Capitalists we critique for speeding up the destruction of our planet…and, coincidentally, our mental health…oh! There it is.
The REAL crux of all three seasons of Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots® — underneath the pretentious layers of tech, feminism and climate change — is #MentalHealth. #Grief.
Dr. Nutmeg was a lonely Latina entrepreneur who was supposed to find the fulfillment she was longing for by creating a fleet of new Femmebots to become her team, and ultimately the family she never had. Instead, she works herself and her team into a coma. But why? Was it just about money? Nope. Mal de Ojo/jealousy, the place where Dr. Nutmeg was originally formed, is apparently the “lost” symptom of grief. But which grief? The loss of work? The loss of a dream? The loss of home?
It’s time to go deeper.
It’s time to pivot.
Which way?
The only way, after the emo tracker hits rock bottom: Upward, of course!
If you look at the blueprint of The FACTory above, you’ll see there is an eyeball that has been peacefully observing Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots® from a zoomed out, alien perspective. We quietly introduced this character as a reporter for “The Third Eye Witness News” a couple of episodes ago (thanks again to Marisa Diaz of Latinas in Tech for the fabulous voiceover). After Dr. Nutmeg went into a coma, The FACTory automatically reset to the original 2008 settings, when Chakra Girl was the wizard behind the scenes.
Who the heck is Chakra Girl?
Chakra Girl is a beam of light. She is music. She is balance. She is energy efficient. She is resilient, strong, full of beauty, grace, and the power to decide how The FACTory will move forward…and backwards.
Chakra Girl is essentially the light inside that salutes and honors the light inside everyone around her…until Dr. Nutmeg hacked into The FACTory, “discovered” Chakra Girl, and colonized/isolated each chakra to power up all The Femmebots (haha, we’re back to pretentious metaphors as Dia de Los Muertos appropriation will be hitting the interwebz this week). But I digress into my own hypocrisies…
As we know from all mythological stories, light always defeats darkness. Entonces, please meet Chakra Girl! She’s your new hostess for this Monday night “Latinas in Tech TV Show!” At least…until we have to pivot again.
Chakra Girl’s outside costume can shape-shift into many forms, species, races, and styles, so over the next few weeks, she might get a little tricky and appear like a different person every time she hosts the show (great excuse for me as I learn RunwayML — I mean, look at that weird, hilarious foot in her crotch!).
But the main thing Chakra Girl is going to do is get back to roots and tell the origin story of Dr. Nutmeg loooooong before she showed up in Washington, DC circa 2010. In other words, Chakra Girl is getting back to roots and unpacking Dr. Nutmeg’s grief, which began a long, long time ago, when most modern-day human grief began:
In the 1920s?
Or in the 1980s?
Do we go back to “Maria La Gata?” Or do we do “Model Ricans” at this point? Hmmm. Something to think about this week.
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