Kimberly Hirsh

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.

🔖 Read A LETTER FROM THE NEW CORPORATE OWNERS OF HOOPER’S STORE (McSweeney’s).

This is hilarious and ends with a perfect button.

🎙🖖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.

📝📓 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 🎮

Installing Linux on my Windows machine…

🔖📓 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.

Does anybody else know why all I feel like doing is lying in bed and watching Netflix Originals? 📺

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.

🔖📓 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.”

📺 Watched The Baby-sitters Club S02E07, Claudia and the Sad Goodbye. 💔😭

If you know, you know.

🎙️💬

“Sometimes it can be hard when we’re fucking exhausted to choose the thing that feels nourishing.” Lindsay Mack, Tarot for the Wild Soul Episode 229, June Is Breaking Away

I’m only now catching up on the second season of The Babysitters Club and having Mary Ann as a triple virgo is brilliant. 📺

📺 The Babysitters Club S02E03, “Stacey’s Emergency,” brilliantly depicts what it’s like living with chronic illness.

Jami Attenberg’s #1000WordsOfSummer starts June 17 and the Slack is hopping right now, in case you want to join in on the fun. 📝

Finished reading: Demon in the Wood Graphic Novel by Leigh Bardugo 📚

Gorgeous graphic version of the Darkling’s origin story.

It was hard finding time to write while traveling, so I didn’t do all the travel blogging I would have liked. But I have consistent childcare for the next couple weeks, then for several more weeks after a one week break from now, and I’m hoping to write up some travel stuff during that time. 📝

🌊 Today is the first day of the 10th Annual 100 Days of Blue Mind challenge. As often as you can between now and Labor Day, “get near, in, on or under your wild, domestic, urban or even virtual waters.” Today I took a shower and hung out with my kid on some rocks near South Ellerbee Creek.

🔖📚 Read “I think, like marriage, home is a fantasy” - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Amanda Montei

Here are all of my intellectual intentions and here is this adorable, smiling, chubby baby, swallowing it whole.

When writing real life, there is always going to be a connection between what is happening at the breakfast table and how you are showing up on the page.

🔖📚 Read This Is Dedicated To Anyone Who Ever Left - Kelly McMaster interviewed by Lyz Lenz.

I like Manton’s Where have I been post and have had a pretty significant change in where I’ve visited since the start of the year, so I thought I’d make my own list.

As for what counts:

If I simply passed through in a car, train, or bus, it doesn’t count. If I was only there at an airport for a layover, it doesn’t count.

Everything else counts.

7 Countries:

• United States
• The Netherlands
• Germany
• Scotland
• Ireland
• England
• France

14 States:

• Arizona
• California
• Florida
• Georgia
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maryland
• New York
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Virginia

📺 Watched Velma. The two primary criticisms - that it relies too heavily on meta-humor and that the characters are selfish & don’t grow - are spot on, and yet I still found it compelling enough to watch all 10 episodes.

🔖 Read Monkey House: Strange Reflections at the Singerie by Kate Zambreno (VQR).

📺 Me, watching Bridgerton: How can anyone tell these Bridgerton brothers apart? They all have the same coloration. I guess two of them are a little taller? But I’m not sure.

🔖 Read The Winter Zoo by Kate Zambreno (The Yale Review).

For a few years when M. was a toddler, our family went to Knoxville - the place of my mother’s birth - for The Collective library conference. W. would present and M. and I would wander about town, exploring the best haunts and generally enjoying the adorable downtown and the home of the 1982 World’s Fair.

One of the places I took M. was Zoo Knoxville. We were there in mid-March so it was pretty much a winter zoo like Kate Zambreno talks about here, and our experiences there were very similar.