Google Maps is the mind killer. We all worry about social media controlling the way we think, feel, vote etc. but Google Maps literally manipulates where people physically go in real life, what they do on holiday, where they hang out, what they eat etc. I got so sick of feeling like a four point five star Google Maps automaton I had to mostly stop with it. In addition to OSM, personal recommendations etc. the best substitute for me for a 4.5 star review is my nose, eyes and ears
Either IBM has cracked optically transparent coatings that cycle from 300 to 1K repeatedly and acrylic that has a metal's thermal conductivity, or it's a sham.
Oh hush, you're not going to nerd snipe me into doing the thermal flux calculations today.
Optical photons don't carry an impossible amount of energy: I've seen liquid helium through a small coated window. The window was there for ion beam purposes, not "entertaining the grad student", and it was a big element in the heat budget!
This is great advice, parties are a lost technology in some parts of society, like the pyramids. We should throw more parties
For a dinner party specifically I like to force everyone to go for a walk before dessert. By that point they’re all hot and drunk, sending them outside for a quick lap cools everybody off, gets them talking, and is good for the digestion. Then you can come home and crack into that bottle of wine someone brought
I don't think it fits in the genre particularly? Been a while since I read it though.
The bigger omission is Byatt's Possession, predating The Secret History by a couple years and I think possibly being the type specimen of what is now called dark academia.
The list doesn't have to be exhaustive. It also misses the vita nostra series, which is interesting as an example of the same subgenre occurring outside the anglosphere.
The Secret History is generally regarded as the prototype for the modern subgenre though.
No of course it isn't exhaustive I wouldn't want or expect that from this kind of article.
> The Secret History is generally regarded as the prototype for the modern subgenre though.
Well, but that's why I mentioned possession. I know the secret history is considered the original dark academia, but possession predates it, is retrospectively just as firmly within this genre as it is understood now, and while not as famous is probably as influential on authors within it. It's a striking omission in an overview of the history of the genre.
Vita Nostra definitely fits the genre descriptively but I think it's more connected to a russian fantasy/slavic magical realism tradition that there isn't really a name for and that we only get a little bit of translated decades later. To me it shares a lot more with like mariam petrosyan and sergei lukyanenko than it does donna tartt.
Tangentially - it's an absurdist character rich fantasy bound by a 70 generations old castle (or university? Well, no, but shade is thrown).
Not a clean fit to Dark Academia, but a lesser known and worthy forerunner.
Also, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Stephen Fry, and many others in the 2000 TV adaption is good entertainment for anyone with a DA bent. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsPC8m4zo9g
Oh that’s interesting - I’d never thought of Possession as being dark academia. But you’re right, it is. It’s certainly one of my favorite novels, on another level than The Secret History which I also enjoyed. Every time I re-read it I am impressed all over again by how it’s woven together and, not least, how Byatt managed to write all the poems herself.
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