You Know What. I’m Starting A New Aesthetic, Population Me.

Julian Morrow is just Lord Henry if Lord Henry were somehow more of a coward, change my mind

In 2021 I will not be Richard-Papening myself over mysterious and sexy snobs I will BECOME the mysterious and sexy snob

I can’t help but wonder what The Secret History would have been like to read had I not immediately lost all respect for Julian Morrow as soon as it was mentioned that he had a drawer full of Montblancs. (bc... come on that’s about the tackiest thing I’ve ever heard of)

how to learn new content and never forget it

save this for your next academic year and finals, and it’ll save your grades and time.

1. whenever you read a paragraph with new content, close the book/look away and ask yourself: “what have i just learned?” explaining the concept to yourself right away and asking follow-up questions will change the way you retain new material forever.

2. at first, it’ll be daunting, and it’ll be pretty hard to actually bring yourself to do this. trust me, it’ll be worth it - as this is scientifically proven one of the most effective study techniques.

3. to try this out, set yourself a timer for how long you estimate learning a concept might take. now take away 20% from that estimate. you won’t be able to reach this goal with basic highlighting and re-reading techniques - but with active recall, you will.

4. once you’ve understood the concept, use spaced repetition systems like anki flashcards to force yourself to retrieve this information in a set period of time. this way, your brain will always be reminded of this concept before it could possibly forget it.

5. teach it to others as much as you can. as with the old wisdom “see one, do one, teach one”, one of the only guarantees you’ve really gotten something is when you can effectively teach it.

hope these are helpful for you!!

more content like this on my instagram, @softmedstudent

I am full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry. 

- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro

(not my pictures)

My favourite used bookstore is opening again and I am hyped. Really want to read The Brothers Karamazov this winter, because winter is Dostoyevsky season apparently, but I refuse to buy it new when I might find a lovely old edition for a third of the price.

fuck you, my child is completely fine!

your child romanticises the idea of running far away and completely changing their personality, looks & soul as a way of coping with having no control over their life & being generally dissatisfied with who they have become

Who has a ‘morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs’? Couldn’t be me, a person who started a dark academia blog.

The Secret History AKA the experience of starting a book for the Æsthetic (TM) and slowly falling in deep appreciation with Judy Poovey

So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:

1) Binary files are 1s and 0s

2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches

You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…

You can knit Doom.

However, after crunching some more numbers:

The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…

3322 square feet

Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.