Notes
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Blippi asks. “A law doctor & a father,” M says. “Why do you want to be a law doctor?” I ask. “Basically, I want to be like my dad. And I want to be like you, too. That’s why I’m going to be snuggly.”
Finished reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚
This dude is so prolific and so fun to read. I would like to write things that are fun to read.
🔖 Read A CRITIQUE OF DARK ACADEMIA: THE ROMANTICIZATION OF OVERWORK.
Wearing tweed and wandering old bookshops is fine. Denying yourself sleep over an essay that isn’t due for days is not.
Say it with me: school should not take priority over your mental health. School should not take priority over your physical health. School should not take priority over your relationships.
If Einstein could take a nap, so can you.
🔖 Read Wear Me This: Dark Academia could be the answer to the very problem it romanticizes.
I would venture that slipping on a tailored button-up and sitting in the library because Aesthetics Wiki told you “studying and reading” are “activities” of Dark Academia could be the impetus for a powerful academic pursuit or useful social connection.
🔖 Read THE SCHOLARSHIP OF SEXY PRIVILEGE: WHY DO I LOVE DARK ACADEMIA BOOKS?
This ownership over dark academia gives me the courage to keep going with real academia; to forge a space again in the gaps and achieve immortality in the sharing of ideas without boundaries. This ‘dark academia’ reminds me not to take things so seriously, to see the rot in the foundations of an institution I can’t stay away from, and build my own school in defiance.
🔖 Read What’s Dark about Dark Academia
I think the real power of dark academia is the way it compresses—and thus preserves—humanistic study at a time when the humanities are under constant threat… Creating and emulating dark academia content offers students a way to fantasize about a world in which higher education isn’t instrumentalized, but rather self-sustaining and inherently valuable.
An aesthetic that evokes the academy is more flexible, more malleable, than the academy itself.
But if dark academia commodifies education, they learned how from the corporate university itself. Their commodification as style has far less insidious ends than the university’s spreadsheets of departmental deliverables.
Today in Pokemon Research Reflects Real Research: an early career researcher didn’t have access to a journal article she wanted to read, she posted about it online, and a senior faculty member sent her the article. ❤️
Took the Buzzfeed Inner Aesthetic Stranger Things Character quiz & got Will Byers and Cottagecore: “If you haven’t already, you should absolutely spend a day baking, gardening, or anything else that feels cozy and homey.” Like D&D and Nintendo?
Currently reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚
💬📚 “…a story’s as much a house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, _Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative _
💬📚 “The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
💬📚 “As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
I’m wearing an oversized Sailor Moon tee and black bike shorts with lace trim, so hello from 1995, I guess.
I’ve got an ARC of The Nap Ministry’s book REST IS RESISTANCE ready for me to download from NetGalley, and will probably take it to the beach with me next week. I also asked my local library to purchase it. They ordered FIVE COPIES. 📚
💬📚 “Perhaps people who experience the world in ways that are considered atypical have an intuitive feeling for the limits of typicality.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
💬📚 “A scientist’s explanations about other animals are dictated by the data she collects, which are influenced by the questions she asks, which are steered by her imagination, which is limited by her senses.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
Good to remember about all research.
💬📚 “[The senses] pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.” Ed Yong, An Immense World
🔖 📺 Celia Rose Gooding, who does an amazing job playing Cadet Nyota Uhura on Strange New Worlds, wrote a beautiful guest column for The Hollywood Reporter on Nichelle Nichols’s legacy. 🖖
🍿 Watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
It was super refreshing to watch a movie that was deliberately, though not ploddingly, paced. This one’s a classic for a reason. Highly recommend.
📚💬 “Animals are not just stand-ins for humans or fodder for brainstorming sessions. They have worth in themselves.” - Ed Yong, An Immense World
I’m devoting the next few weeks to healing and rest, aside from my existing obligations. I release myself from worry about the future, pressure to have a cohesive personal brand, and the need to maximize my network. That will all keep until September.