December 19, 2021
A core question that must eventually be answered about every space, physical or digital, is “Who is this for?” and if your answer is “Everyone!” you are necessarily being disingenuous because every design decision communicates who belongs in the space.
EDITED TO ADD: I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that my thinking on this has been significantly shaped by working with Dr. Maggie Melo at the Equity in the Making lab.
I had a dream where there was a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer motion comic where the writers had made a new character say “I’m going to kill @kimberlyhirsh in every timeline” and I was both flattered to be included & also upset/scared, but mostly thought “Nobody in Buffy fandom calls me that.”
Watched A California Christmas & A California Christmas: City Lights. They’re… Fine. There’s the use of a trope in the City Lights epilogue that actually makes me a bit sad. Happy to chat in replies if anyone is interested. ❤️💻🍿🎄
Listen Vanessa Hudgens is winning regardless of the quality of the script or her accent.
December 18, 2021
Excuse me, there is a Netflix Rom-Com starring Damon Wayans Jr and Rachel Leigh Cook? Be still my geriatric millennial heart.
December 17, 2021
Io, Saturnalia!
As a person who made some of my dearest friends online before video chat was a thing, I’m strugglign with the protagonist of Love Hard being super angry that the dude she matched used a fake picture when everything else was true. Like… That’s not cool, but still.
I have something else to say about Single All the Way. Not only is it lovely to see Michael Urie be a lead, but it’s also lovely to see him being weird and sweet and vulnerable. Also, plant shops ARE a thing, we have a shmancy millennial one in Durham.
December 16, 2021
I just watched Single All the Way while making part of W’s Christmas present. It is the anti-Happiest Season and I love it extra for that. More stories about out queer people being in love and their families being excited for them, please. 🍿💻❤️🎄🏳️🌈
Some how I did not realize Cary Elwes would have a Scottish accent in A Castle for Christmas and I. Will be. In. My. Bunk.
It dinnae matter to this wee American lassie that Cary Elwes has a naff Scottish accent.
December 15, 2021
O no I am up too late pondering cool possibilities for the web.
I AM TESTING USING GOOGLE LENS TO MAKE A BLOG POST.
It works with my block print. I’m going to try cursive next.
Cursive paper blog post Google Lens attempt:
“I am using. a blog
mas Leng
post.”
Less successful, but that’s to be expected.
Next, regular print.
“I am Google make
testing Lens g fusing to blog post. a”
That’s regular print. It looks like for now, the limits of OCR mean I’m not quite there with a paper website on my already existing website unless I want to use caps all the time, which for blog posts, I don’t.
Upon the death of bell hooks 🎙️
Transcript:
Hello internet friends. I’m experimenting today with doing a micro cast. I have this capability on my website and I thought I would go ahead and try it.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk about. But I just looked at Twitter and my timeline is full of people grieving for the loss of bell hooks. I have read a lot of a little of the work of bell hooks and I have not read as much as I would like to have read of the work of bell hooks.
The part I have probably read the most of would be - Oh, now I can’t remember the title of the book but it’s about writing - Remembered Rapture. And I started reading that because Kelly J. Baker mentioned it in an essay she wrote about writing. And I had to return it to the library before I was done with it. I haven’t picked it back up.
I am planning to purchase it from Rofhiwa Books and Cafe here in Durham, North Carolina, which is a bookstore you should check out. It is a Black-owned bookstore that focuses on the work of Black authors. It’s where I picked up my copy of Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s book The Dark Fantastic and I will probably get Remembered Rapture and maybe Feminism Is for Everybody. And All about Love I think is the title of another one that I will - that I will probably pick up.
Anyway Remembered Rapture is the one I’ve read the most of. And not only is the language hooks uses just, you know, incredibly beautiful in it. But the way she talks about her identity as a writer and about the ways that she has integrated being different kinds of writer - being an academic writer, and being a poet, writing essays, all of the different kinds of writing she has done - and how it has been not hard for her to do but hard for other people to accept from her, especially as a Black woman, is just really moving and inspiring to me.
I apologize for any background noises you may hear. There’s always someone doing yard work by my house so I probably will never be able to record anything without that being a risk. But I wanted to go ahead and get this down now. Before I forgot.
I don’t have a lot more to say on this topic. I look forward to reading more of her work. I’m sorry that what we have now is all that we will have of her work. And I send so much love to people who are grieving her more deeply than I ever could. Thank you for listening.
Book Riot published a reading pathway for the work of bell hooks a while back, if you are overwhelmed by her prolific work.
Today, I completed my hiring paperwork for UC Irvine & tried to figure out public service loan forgiveness. M & I stopped by Freeman’s Creative to pick up supplies for making part of W’s Xmas gift. It just happens to be across the street from Cocoa Cinnamon, so of course we had to stop for warm drinks & churros before heading to Barnes & Noble to pick up the last thing needed for W’s gift.
December 14, 2021
🔖 Read and highly recommend Neurodiversity in Academia: The Autistic advantage in qualitative research.
🎨 M & I are doing Craftsy’s Jump Into Drawing class together. The first activity was shading a unicorn picture. I learned that I prefer line shading to cross-hatching or stippling.
Want to read: Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky 📚
Target app: Okay so listen we know you’ve bought your kid like 5 sets of pajamas this quarter but look at this one IT’S SO CUTE
In case you’re on micro.blog and missed it, @JohnPhilpin is asking people interested in joining a Micro.blog Reader’s Club to complete this form. 📚
Peak Kimberly struggle: There’s 54 minutes of childcare left. Do I spend it tweaking my website or playing FF7R?