Notes
📚💬 “To me intellectual life is fundamentally different from academic careerism.” bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work
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It is precisely because common structures of evaluation and advancement in various academic jobs require homogenous thought and action… that academia is often less a site for open-minded creative study and more a space of repression that dissenting voices are so easily censored and silenced… it is dangerous for us to allow academic institutions to remain the primary site where our ideas are developed and engaged." bell hooks, remembered rapture: the artist at work
🔖 Read Katy Simpson Smith on Writing a Southern Woman Louder Than Herself.
Writing, as a career, is inherently boat-rocking.
📚💬 “Science fiction is the literature of social and technological change.” Nalo Hopkinson, “What is science fiction for?” in Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination
🍞 This bread is from Simple Mills’s Artisan Bread mix. It has a beautiful crack, but vinegar as a leavening agent leaves something to be desired. The texture is a bit dense. Motivation for me to use the copy of Gluten-free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day I ordered on @cygnoir’s recommendation.
In response to @mbkriegh’s :
This post reminds me of Austin Kleon’s writing on Brian Eno’s concept of “scenius”:
I myself feel the same way about choral music, as well as a variety of other forms of collaborative art (theatre, movies & TV, video games). I’ve been a choral singer and I’ve been a soloist, and for the longest time I thought my worth as a singer was to be measured by how often directors wanted to give me solos. But over time, I’ve come to realize that people don’t want a choir or chorus full of bad singers, that being a choral singer is a special skill, and that I tend to get chills more often listening to a good choral piece than a solo.
Finished reading: The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller 📚
This is a lovely romance set in Gilded Age New York, where a scandalous society widow and a famous inventor fall in love as they try to exorcise a ghost from the Gothic mansion she just bought. Content warning: spousal abuse, neglectful parents, bad treatment in a mental health facility.
💬📚 “Real life is people leaning on each other when things are hard. It’s loving each other so much there’s no question about facing things together. It’s fighting for each other and with each other and being damned grateful for every morning you wake up together.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller
Halfway through the week of no school or camp and we’re not doing too badly, thanks to grandma time, the pool, and a moratorium on screen time limits…
📚💬 “Love isn’t naïve, Alva. It’s hope, and it’s faith, and it can outlast buildings and wars and empires.” The Widow of Rose House, Diana Biller
🔖📚💖 A couple of links about pleasure reading for your reading pleasure:
- What Romance Novels Taught Me About Taking Pleasure More Seriously by Stephanie Fallon (The Good Trade)
- Don’t Call Them Trash by Sophie Gilbert (The Atlantic)
I like how when I text someone and am a lot, knowing they’re a lot too means I know we’ll both be okay because we’re both a lot and they won’t be mad I a-lot-ed at them.
🎙🖖Listened to Our Opinions Are Correct, Episode 131: The State of Star Trek, with Mike McMahan. Spoilery still from the Strange New Worlds Season 2 trailer on that page.
This is a lovely episode, full of thoughts on what makes Trek Trek, when it’s at its best, and what Lower Decks does.
🔖 Read A LETTER FROM THE NEW CORPORATE OWNERS OF HOOPER’S STORE (McSweeney’s).
This is hilarious and ends with a perfect button.
📝📓 Fascinated by this ethnographic study on youth’s “pocket writing” practices.
Most fiction I write happens in my pocket now and is mostly private, shared only with very specific people. As a teenager, I did a lot of writing that was tucked away in my backpack, only shared with particular friends.
🔖 Some interesting links around “wholesome” as a word for things that restore us, rather than a conservative metric by which to judge people:
- When Did ‘Wholesome’ Become a Gen Z Compliment? (NYT Gift Link)
- Why Are We Craving “Wholesome” Things? (The Good Trade)
- Wholesome Games 🎮
🔖📓 Read How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward.
I love some of these alternate ways of creating age groupings. I could especially imagine grouping people according to their age at the time of key historical events or technological innovations producing valuable insights.
📺 Watched The Baby-sitters Club S02E07, Claudia and the Sad Goodbye. 💔😭
If you know, you know.
🔖📓 Can ChatGPT Replace UX Researchers? An Empirical Analysis of Comment Classifications
This is an interesting study with implications for qualitative research beyond UX. Looks like the answer is, “It’s too soon to tell.”
Finished reading: Wyngraf #1
The first issue of a cozy fantasy magazine. Full of lovely stories I very much enjoyed. Mother-daughter dragon calming, fairy diplomacy, what happens 20 years after you save the world, and more. Highly recommend.
📺 The Babysitters Club S02E03, “Stacey’s Emergency,” brilliantly depicts what it’s like living with chronic illness.
I’m only now catching up on the second season of The Babysitters Club and having Mary Ann as a triple virgo is brilliant. 📺