Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 209

Children

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First, sorry this is so late. We were up at 3 am for some family stuff, and didn’t get back to bed before 5:30. I then woke up at nine, and am only now more or less human.
Also, the family stuff started at 1 pm, which means I forgot to take my add medication, and spent the whole afternoon walking in circles in my own head and sometimes physically. It takes a lot of caffeine to fix the same issue, and I never had enough, because I wasn’t organized enough to.

No, nothing is gravely wrong. Well...

Everybody Knows

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There is a Leonard Cohen song that came out in the nineties. I want to say early nineties, but for much of that decade I had small children, so it all runs together. Also, I’m uncaffeinated and late and too lazy to look.

Anyway, the song is called “Everybody knows” and it’s a marvel of double-meaning.

What the song says explicitly is a bunch of stuff people like my brother — look, European, left — believed at the time. Stuff like “Everybody knows the war is over/everybody knows the good guys...

Late and Snippet

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Sure, that thing above looks like a law firm, doesn’t it?

For those of you wondering, Greebo, my fuzzy editor is doing well. Apparently he ate well, hasn’t thrown up and greeted the vet tech with a long speech about something being wrong. She doesn’t know WHAT. I didn’t tell her it’s that he really wants to get back to work, and doesn’t trust me to put my nose to the grindstone in his absence.

He might not be wrong.

I’m having some trouble writing a short story, which is why I’m so late. It’...

Beyond Price

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One of the greatest gifts from reading Jordan Peterson — for me — was being made aware of how little I value myself. And also that this is normal. (Heck, it’s probably evolutionary.)

This was brought home today because in less than half an hour we have to try to corner and bag Greebo so we can take him to the vet to do a procedure to cure his hyperthyroidism.

He’s our fifth cat to go into hyperthyroidism and we’ve tried the other treatments extensively, from the rub in the ear (Pete, now 18...

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike and Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog. Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so. As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste. If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or...

In Motion

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What I’ve been talking about for the last few posts, in case that’s not obvious to everyone else (sometimes things stay in my head) isn’t precisely future shock.

In fact, it’s rather weird that Alvin Toffler concentrated on the psychological effects of rapid change, as it were in a vacuum. He makes mention of adopting and discarding identities, but honestly, that isn’t the issue at all.

I think the reason for his walking around the elephant, carefully, describing everything he sees without...

Are you in the Path of the Steamroller?

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Are you in the path of the steamroller?

When I talk about catastrophic technological change, that’s more or less what it is.

Look, it’s generally a good thing, okay? The technology we now have makes specialized production possible. It makes it possible for someone with an idea to create something and put it for sale without intermediaries.

But few science fiction writers and even fewer “futurists” saw what it would do to various sectors of the economy.

Because, I mean, the net? What’s the...

So, How are we Doing? Economy, Age And Confusion

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In his books about a future, underpopulated Earth (the other humans have gone to the stars) Simak paints an attractive lifestyle, with each human living in an estate served by robots.

My brother told me that surprisingly that’s not what’s happening as the population falls (and in Portugal it is already clearly and obviously falling, not to mention edging overwhelmingly to the elderly. And no, I have no clue what the statistics say. It’s obvious to anyone on the ground.) Instead people are...

So, How Are We Doing?

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As the election approaches, and ramping up, the left is going to do their best to talk the economy down and inspire lack of confidence in order to — if they can pull it off — bring about something like the crash in 08, which gives the average uninformed voter the impression that they can do better.

I don’t need to tell any of you that, right? You’ve all seen it. And you know what, they can’t do better. All they have are prescriptions for 100 years ago, and even then the wrong prescriptions....

The Economy Seen from the Dealers’ Room Floor by Leigh Kimmel

[image error] The Economy Seen from the Dealers’ Room Floor by Leigh Kimmel

My husband and I run The Starship Cat, a small business selling at various kinds of fannish and nerdy events. For the most part we stay in the Midwest, although an exceptional show can take us further afield.

As a result, we have an unusual perspective on the economy. As Jim Baen was fond of saying in reference to writers, we’re competing for “Joe’s beer money.” However, we’re doing it at events scattered widely across a region,...