Notes
I was using Bing to play with ChatGPT-4 and I asked it who I am. It returned what is perhaps the most truthful answer.
📚 Today’s library haul. Catching up on Holigays22 and some other holiday reads, plus a YA biography of my hero Sarah Bernhardt - quand même!
Finished reading: Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur 📚
The first holiday rom-com of a month where I hope to read many. Elle is an astrologer who dreams of a big love. Darcy is an actuary who’s terrified of having one. This book’s heat level is sensual, a couple explicit scenes. A lovely book but I wish the third act break-up had been resolved more quickly so I could’ve had more joyous reunion time.
It reveals something about my character that I’m really psyched about being on someone’s dissertation committee.
🔖 Read Bring back the blog by Alan Jacobs.
Hear, hear.
Fun with migraines: in the past year or so I’ve started having vertigo in the prodrome stage, tilting involuntarily when I walk. In the past couple of months I’ve developed olfactory hallucinations. I don’t like migraines, y’all.
🍿 Watched Airplane!.
Super fun. I can’t begin to imagine how delightful it must have been for the people who saw it when it was first released.
🔖💻 Read The Indie Web Manifesto.
Before the IndieWeb, there was the Indie Web. This was published in 1997.
🔖💻 Read The Hacker Manifesto.
the beauty of the baud
I love this turn of phrase.
We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons…
This was published in 1986.
🔖 Read True/useful by Seth Godin.
Seth shares a handy matrix for helping us stay resilient and cultivate belief, shaking off cynicism and avoiding traps.
📺🍿🎄 Watched The Naughty Nine.
This is a heist movie about kids on the naughty list breaking into Santa’s workshop. It honors all the heist tropes and is super fun. Watch with a kid if you can.
A list of lists: in his book Keep Going, Austin Kleon writes about a variety of types of lists you might keep and I made a list of them:
- to-do
- to-make (he says to-draw)
- to-learn
- Someday/Maybe
- to-not-do
- pro/con
- thanks for/help me
- end-of-year
- commandments
New bio on most of my profiles: Mom & PhD with a librarian’s heart and an academic’s mind. I manage multiple chronic illnesses and I love books and games. 🌈♿
📓 I know Twitter is all the things we all know it is now but I still love that some scholars wrote a journal article about the relationship between emojis and identity in Twitter bios.
📺🍿🎄 Watched Reporting for Christmas.
I really like this one. A hard-hitting Chicago reporter heads to a small town in Iowa to cover the 40th anniversary of the local toy company’s most popular product. Life changes ensue.
Super cute, winning cast.
Me: I’ll put this little tumbled sodalite crystal on my bedside table, it will make me happy.
The Kitten: Ooh a new toy!
💬
“Recover yourself. That’s where your creativity is.”
Kate McKean in today’s Agents & Books Q&A issue.
I was thinking about Austin Kleon’s urging to show your work and I thought, “But Austin, what do I do when I don’t even feel up to making things to show my work on?” and then I thought, “Well he already told me: Keep going.”
🔖Read Twenty Rules for the New Escribitionist.
23 and a half-year-old blogging advice that is still pretty solid.
I’ve had kimberlyhirsh.com for fifteen years today. I had other domains before that. I’m really glad I claimed this one. It’s been great for me both personally and professionally.
🔖 Read You Can’t Unsubscribe from Grief by Jenessa Abrams (Electric Literature).
This is a gorgeous essay. I really needed it right now.
📺🍿🎄 Watched A Biltmore Christmas.
Mostly for Jonathan Frakes & Robert Picardo 🖖🏻 but I ended up really liking it. There’s a lot of 40s Hollywood glamor. Also, I love Biltmore. I’ve been there only twice but I still love it.
Well, it’s taken more than 7 years, but it’s finally happened: my child’s taste has completely eclipsed mine in my Spotify Wrapped.
📺🍿🎄 In the movie A Timeless Christmas, I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept that a man time-traveled from 1903 to 2020, but asking me to accept that his love interest is a shoe-in for a history faculty job simply by virtue of having a PhD is a bridge too far.
🍿📺🎄 Watched A Christmas Frequency. A radio producer sets her show’s host up on on-air blind dates to save the show from the slump it’s in because the host is no fun after separating from her husband. It’s not a solid movie but I liked it because the cast is adorable.