Kimberly Hirsh

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to spend my time and one of the things I want to do is make higher ed better for caregivers. It only just occurred to me that both my parents were student-caregivers & staff-caregivers when I was young. ❤️

New bio: Extremely online since 1995. Mom. Household COO. Consulting scholar-librarian. Book person. Geek-of-all-trades. PhD in Information & Library Science. ♿

🔖💻 Read Why bad technology dominates our lives, according to Ron Norman. If you didn’t already believe we were living in the Matrix, this article will convince you we are.

📽️ Watched In a Lonely Place.

I watched this because it’s on the movie list on the aesthetics wiki page for dark academia. I’m not sure what qualifies it as dark academia; is it its noirness? The suspense? The sad inevitability of its conclusion? It doesn’t have a connection to learning or school.

Regardless, I enjoyed it and recommend it.

One of the elements of the film is that temperamental screenwriter Dixon Steele (one of the inspirations for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Dixon Hill writes feverishly, composing by hand and then giving pages to his neighbor/girlfriend, Laurel Gray, to type up. He also gives her elaborate breakfast orders and makes other demands of her that are things people normally get compensated for doing. This reminded me of stories of J. D. Salinger and other writers relying on the women in their lives to take care of everything except the writing. It didn’t sit well with me in this movie and I think Steele’s behavior is supposed to serve as evidence that he is Not A Great Guy. It’s a little hard to be sure, as the film was released in 1950, but within the film a massage therapist tells Gray that she should be getting paid for typing and to look after her own career.

Steele being a dude who can alternate between charming and scary reminded me of Jenny Offill’s term, “art monster,” a concept I first encountered in Austin Kleon’s writing. He can be terrifyingly violent. At one point in the film, Steele’s friend’s wife says to Gray something like “He’s an artist; he can get away with being temperamental.” I read this not as an excuse being made by the film, but rather as another moment that is designed to make the audience worry for Gray’s wellbeing.

All told, a great movie, well executed.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first time the Internet Archive captured my first personal domain. The 20th anniversary of my first blog post was in March. That first post was in hand-rolled html, written in Notepad and FTPed to my host at envy.nu. It used fixed scrolling over a background image of Death from the Sandman comics.

My early blog posts were typical of a personal blog: what was going on with my classes, what I thought of video games I played and movies I saw, political opinions that thoroughly embarrass me now. My current blog posts aren’t that different now than they were then, but it’s much harder to find other personal bloggers now that blogs are a ubiquitous marketing tool.

I’ve liked blogging all this time. I plan to keep doing it.

🥳🎈🎉🎊🎂

Me:

yesterday for #StarTrekDay: AHHHH Star Trek, everything Star Trek!

this morning when it was all gray and rainy: AHHHH Dark Academia, everything Dark Academia!

after watching the new #Matrix trailer: AHHHH Cyberpunk! everything Cyberpunk!

I contain multitudes.

This Picard/Riker 2024 merch is all well and good but what I want is reprints of the Picard/Riker 1992 merch.

The Voyager theme is over here tugging at my heart strings. This is unexpected. #StarTrekDay

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I will never not have a crush on Wil Wheaton. #StarTrekDay

It’s taken me a while but I think I have a stable connection for watching #StarTrekDay and I’m so psyched for Prodigy. I’ve watched the teaser with my kid & can’t wait to show him the full trailer.