Notes
Want to read: A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs đ
Want to read: Saving Time by Jenny Odell đ
Want to read: The Magician’s Daughter by H. G. Parry đ
Ah yes, that weird need-to-cry, don’t-know-why feeling… (I suspect this is about the fact that the amount of stuff you have when traveling expands to fill the luggage available.)
Scenes I want to explore more: TTRPGs, literary (incl but not limited to sff). What pubs, websites, podcasts, people, other stuff should I check out?
đ¨ď¸ My response to
Happy anniversary, Jason! Is the font on that Notes entry Tahoma or Verdana? I’m having some big early blogging nostalgia looking at it.
I love what you say about the kottke.org being a process. I got the web only a little while before you started kottke.org. I was 14 or 15 and I’ll be 42 this year. Since I first opened up Netscape (after my dad, who ran IT for Duke Law School, told me that Prodigy and AOL were a waste of my time and the web is where it’s at), the web has been a key piece of my identity development and construction.
Here’s to 25 more years or as many as you would like, if that’s too many.
đş Shrinking is doing a great job dressing a teen in 90s throwback clothes and if y’all see me walking around in overalls with one side undone now you know why. THIS IS OUR MOMENT, XENNIALS, find a grown-up way to wear the clothes you loved as a teen!
hey hey you know how that moral philosopher profiled in the New Yorker would solve the trolley problem? whichever way would give her the most material for her next book
Had abbrevia.me describe me based on my tweets. Alt text contains the text of the description, which was too many characters to include here. I know personal branding is whatever, but “friendly and knowledgeable” is a brand I’m happy to have.
Finished reading: Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto đ
This has been a great read while wandering Amsterdam. I have a much better understanding of the significance and uniqueness of the city, and have been able to attach more meaning to particular places, than I would have if I hadn’t read it. Highly recommend.
đđŹ “Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.” Frieda Menco, Holocaust survivor, quoted in Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto
“She didn’t die. She was killed. Because she was a Jewish girl.” Hannah Pick-Goslar, a friend of Anne Frank’s đ
đ Read Understanding Blogs by Tracy Durnell.
An excellent exploration of what makes blogging its own medium.
I guess I missed World Book Day & International Cat Rescue Day in Europe but it’s still March 2 back home, so happy both of those! As I like to say when beatboxing poorly, BooksAndCatsAndBooksAndCatsAndBooksAndCats. (Because boots are good but books are better.)
Haven’t listened to Worlds Beyond Number yet but Erika Ishii in this TechCrunch interview is making me cry so that’s cool:
“When you find people to create with, you gotta grab onto them and just keep doing that for the rest of your lives together.”
I’ve got a couple recent co-authored articles:
Description framework of makerspaces: Examining the relationship between spatial arrangement and diverse user populations in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
&
Makerspaces in Libraries at U.S. Public Colleges and Universities: A Census in portal: Libraries and the Academy.
My excellent co-authors are Dr. Maggie Melo, Dr. Laura March, & researcher Emily Arnsberg.
đŽ 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:
- A street lamp that has been decorated to look like Nijntje (known as Miffy in English).
- 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.)
- 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.
- and 8. Votive ships made of wax at the National Maritime Museum.
- A house near the Vondelpark that I thought looked cool and haunted.
đ 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 đ
Happy to have read it. Turns out vibes are enough when you’ve got charming characters.
đ 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 đ
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.
đđ Read IF YOU LOVE WRITING, YOU SHOULD RELISH REJECTION.
This is a really helpful piece that reframes rejection as the water writers swim in.