I like to ask from time to time and I haven’t in a while: what’s my brand?
Planet Word Museum in Washington, DC
Hi there! I'm Kimberly Hirsh. My pronouns are she/ her/hers. I'm somebody's mom. I work as a school librarian. I have a PhD in information and library science. I love to read, play tabletop and video games, and make things. I used to perform in theater and improv comedy and I may one day again. I have been extremely online since 1993 and still enjoy tinkering on the web. I manage multiple chronic illnesses. I'm married to my kid's dad. We have a cat.
Want to get in touch? You can reach me by email.
Recent posts
Whoever wrote that thing about how 13 yos don’t write fanfic has everybody on Twitter talking about their Sailor Moon fanfic. I wrote mine (the redemption of the Spectre Sisters) at 14. (Also had a Star Wars fic where my sister was sister-insert version of Luke & I was Leia.)
Want to read: Information Hunters by Kathy Peiss 📚
The Klein Librarian for Science Fiction at UC Riverside sounds like a pretty cool job.
🍿 Watched Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga because it was nominated for a Hugo. I had a lot of fun with it. I like this kind of gentle performance from Will Ferrell & Rachel McAdams always makes me happy.
Finished reading: How to Make a Living with Your Writing Third Edition by Joanna Penn 📚
Great advice on creating multiple income streams as a writer. Tons of recommended resources and helpful questions to consider.
How I win at Wordle (when I win at Wordle)
I don’t share my daily Wordle result, but I do play it most days. I get it in 5 or fewer tries 94% of the time, 3 or fewer 32% of the time. I wanted to share what I do in case it spares anyone else some frustration.
The first key is to memorize this combination of nonsense words that will help you remember English letter frequency: etaoin shrdlu.
I try to start with a word that uses five of those letters.
Next there are two tricks I rely on most of the time:
- Familiarity with common letter combinations/placements
- Systematic movement of yellow letters
The first one involves things like knowing that H is often part of a two-letter combo like SH, TH, or CH, and that these combos usually occur at the beginning or end of words. Likewise thinking about how there are vowels in most words, different things that often come before E at the end of a word (like ATE, ACE, ALE), or how two letters often appear together (like UI).
As for the second: once I get a yellow letter, I try words that use that letter in different positions so I can eliminate places where it doesn’t belong.
The last thing I do before random guessing is look at the unused letters on the keyboard and try to build words combining them with the pieces I already know.
I hope this has been helpful. I’ll try to post a sort of “play-aloud” with screenshots and my thought processes soon.
We are at DEFCON Falling Asleep to Mr. Rogers.
Will the giant invasive ballooning spiders eat the mosquitos in my yard? If so, I don’t welcome like ALL of them but you know, a couple would be okay. In the yard. Not in the house if I can help it. (I’m from Florida so the part where they’re the size of a kid’s hand is meh.)
In case you’re wondering where my head is at, I spilled the PCR testing solution while trying to test my kid, had to ask the pharmacy tech for a new vial, am terrified that I fucked up the test somehow & think I’m the worst. We may be seeing a depression relapse here.