🎮 Playing Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe with my kid. Super fun. Couch co-op Kirby seems to be his gateway to playing instead of just watching. Might do Kirby Star Allies next.

Hi friends! It’s time for an Amsterdam Photo Dump! There are 8 photos here so if you’re viewing this on a timeline, be sure to click through to kimberlyhirsh.com to see them.

Here’s what you’re seeing:

  1. A street lamp that has been decorated to look like Nijntje (known as Miffy in English).
  2. The facade of the Royal Palace Amsterdam. (The word for “rabbit” in Dutch is “konijn” and the Dutch name for the Royal Palace is “Koninklijk Paleis,” so I keep trying to come up with a rabbit-palace pun.)
  3. A detail of a relief on the front of Amsterdam Centraal Station featuring the patron deity of our household, Athena.
  4. The clock tower at Amsterdam Centraal Station.
  5. A pedimental sculpture on the National Maritime Museum featuring Neptune, whose image is used heavily in Amsterdam due to the importance of sailing to its history and economy.
  6. and 8. Votive ships made of wax at the National Maritime Museum.
  7. A house near the Vondelpark that I thought looked cool and haunted.

A street lamp that has been decorated to look like Nijntje (known as Miffy in English).The facade of the Royal Palace Amsterdam.A detail of a relief on the front of Amsterdam Centraal Station featuring the patron deity of our household, Athena.The clock tower at Amsterdam Centraal Station.A pedimental sculpture on the National Maritime Museum featuring Neptune, whose image is used heavily in Amsterdam due to the importance of sailing to its history and economy.A votive ship made of wax at the National Maritime Museum.A house near the Vondelpark that I thought looked cool and haunted.A votive ship made of wax at the National Maritime Museum.

🔖 Read Sci-Fi Publishers Are Bracing for an AI Battle by Elizabeth Minkel (Wired).

I’m interested to see how this shakes out.

Finished reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚

Happy to have read it. Turns out vibes are enough when you’ve got charming characters.

🔖 Read The Battle for the Soul of Buy Nothing by Vauhina Vara (Wired).

This is an excellent long read. There are a lot of good questions here. How can we scale non-capitalist initiatives in a capitalist world? How can we acknowledge volunteer labor in that scaling? How can we support local action without resorting to geographic discrimination?

Currently reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers 📚

Now that I’m reading for vibes & character instead of a narrative arc, I’m enjoying this properly. The book didn’t work for me the first time I tried it.

My kid’s school is hiring a classroom teacher in his age range. So if you got the gig you might get to teach him, and I hear he’s pretty delightful.

🔖📝 Read IF YOU LOVE WRITING, YOU SHOULD RELISH REJECTION.

This is a really helpful piece that reframes rejection as the water writers swim in.

🔖🎓 Read All my classes suddenly became AI classes.

I love the assignment here that asks students to work with ChatGPT as if it were a student and they were a teacher coaching it to get better writing out of it.

Yesterday I saw 3 people (I’d guess women) at Amsterdam Centraal 🚄 walking together wearing matching pairs of gorgeous plain black Docs and then felt super sad that I’d only had room for one pair of Docs in my suitcase and went with the floral ones.

Status: in a parasocial relationship with the crew of the Enterprise D.

I’m not saying I’m just saying, the introduction to GENDER AT SEA talks a lot about Moana and what the story can tell us about women in maritime pursuits and how Moana saves the environment and teaches Maui it’s okay to be vulnerable, so… I chose wisely. 📚🌊🎓

Who goes to the Dutch National Maritime Museum and buys an edited collection titled Gender at Sea as a souvenir? This academic. 📚🌊🎓

Hello, I require this shirt.

A black t-shirt. Written in a swirling script font in white, "Goth Vibes Only."

🔖📝 Read Why PhDs Need to Study Creative Writing by Anthony Ocampo, at the recommendation of Dr. Ravynn K. Stringfield.

This is one of the reasons I want to study creative nonfiction, to dig into public communication of the social sciences.

Today I’m grieving the closure of Catapult magazine and classes. 📝

The latest Dutch food: nasi saté ajam. This is an Indonesian dish. Because Indonesia was once a Dutch colony, there’s a lot of Indonesian influence in some of the most popular food here. I really loved this.

🔖📚📝 Read Mess Up Your Good, Premium, Luxury Notebooks.

Yes! Great advice from Anna Havron.

🔖 Read Antisemitic text was projected onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. 💔

Finished reading: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 📚

This one took me a while to get into. Before giving up, I hunted down a review. The review indicated that there was more to this than vestibules, halls, statues, and tides, so I stuck with it. I’m glad I did.

🔖 📝 Joanna Penn discusses her use of AI to help her write a short story. This could be a valuable model for educators to use to teach students how to use these tools ethically and for effective writing.

🔖 Read The Summer-Camp Feeding Frenzy Has Already Begun.

🔖 Read Theater never recovered from COVID — and now change is no longer a choice.

…the people who live in the shadow of the refinery often don’t have the bandwidth to think about attending an experimental physical theater show on a bus.

“The problems in these communities – where am I going to live? Do I have enough food? – are so large, that it’s hard to even talk to people about any of the environmental injustices,” Cummings said.

Another Dutch meal. This is hutspot. It’s smoked sausage with gravy on a bed of potatoes, onions, and carrots. I liked it better than the one with kale but since I basically like all my foods separated as though I were a toddler, still not my fave.

🔖 Read THE JEDI ACADEMY WILL NO LONGER TEACH ANAKIN SKYWALKER’S MASSACRE OF THE YOUNGLINGS.

A+ geek satire.