Kimberly Hirsh

Themes have emerged.

🔖 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. ❤️

I’m wearing an oversized Sailor Moon tee and black bike shorts with lace trim, so hello from 1995, I guess.

💬📚 “Do not let your self-doubt turn into self-sabotage.” 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

💬📚 “The essential element in nurturing our creativity lies in nurturing ourselves.” Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

💬📚 “…a story’s as much a house or garden as song.” Jane Alison, _Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative _

Currently reading: Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King 📚

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?

This is a gorgeous book, full of grief and beauty.

Selected quotes:

Water

In water
my sister is no longer
lonely. Her right leg is crooked and smaller
than her left, but she swims straight.
Her whole body is a glimmering fish.

Eating Alone

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas > fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

Visions and Interpretations

Truth is, I’ve not seen my father
since he died, and, no, the dead
do not walk arm in arm with me.

💬📚 “[The senses] pull relevance from randomness, and weave meaning from miscellany.” 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.

💬📚 “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

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. 📚

🔖 📺 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. 🖖

Selected quotes:

Eidolons

We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.

To the States

…Resist much, obey little

Thou Reader

Thou reader throbbest life and pride and love the same as I,
Therefore for thee the following chants.

It’s August, so I’m going to do The Sealey Challenge and plan to read a book of poetry every day this month.

📚💬 “It is all that we know, and so we easily mistake it for all there is to know.” 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.

📚💬 “Animals are not just stand-ins for humans or fodder for brainstorming sessions. They have worth in themselves.” - Ed Yong, An Immense World

🍿 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.

Selected quotes:

6:45 pm

…God, it’s pretty.

But what does any of it mean?

A Unified Theory

You think, what if I am stuck like this? What if

I never change? So what.

Never change.

Moments are not for revision—

if they are lived honestly, they are open to one interpretation.
only. They make you like a child.

Of course that’s what they make.

Finished reading: The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales 📚