Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 338

Lost Children

The first time I heard the Heinlein dictum about not handicapping your children by making their life too easy, I was still technically a child myself. Technically, because I was around fourteen I think. I didn’t know how easy I’d had it, relative to the world at large (who does?) but I knew I had it better than my parents, who only didn’t have to walk up hill barefoot in the snow because it rarely snows in Portugal.

So I was mildly resentful of the idea that it was bad for kids to have it too...

Pocket Full of Promo – Jason Dyck

*So I managed to decide that my driving lesson — to get me back on the road after being sidelined for three years for various reasons — was tomorrow, not today, which means I missed it. Subconscious avoidance? Getoutoftown. It’s like I have a mild phobia or something. Yeah, okay. This is going to make it very hard, as I’ll have to have lessons after the move. OTOH it gives me the day to work. I’ll be back. Tomorrow – SAH*

Pocket Full of Promo – Jason Dyck Cedar Sanderson Twisted Mindflow: A C...

And Stories Are All We Have

Heinlein, towards the end of his oeuvre concluded that reality was not logical but whimsical. Given various things going on right now, he might have had a point, but not quite.

Pratchett talked about a force “Narrativium” holding reality together. And he was right, at least for humans. The problem is that the rest of reality doesn’t really much care what humans see, and also that Narrativium can be an unwittingly deceptive force.

Pratchett played it both seriously and for laughs. I.e. he was...

Collapse

Okay, I’m sick and tired of hearing in every group I belong to that “Doom, gloom, the end is coming soon.”

Now, I join with you in thinking that we’re on a difficult path and with the pool of two joker-Americans to pick from for the presidency, it might be a mighty step for joker-Americans, but the rest of us are going to suffer a worse economy, diminished prospects and likely, in either case, because hyenas smell blood, war at home and abroad.

The severity of all of these could range from a...

The Source

Over the last few days I’ve been reading endless numbers of fairytales — in effect all of the fairy “color” books. Not on purpose, precisely, except insofar as I downloaded a compilation of them from Amazon and at this time they’re a useful thing to read.

You see, I’m trying to finish two books before the end of the month, which means I can’t afford to get captured by a story and end up sitting and reading all day. the (mostly Andrew Lang-compiled) fairytales are very short, about three pages...

Do You Kipple? – Alma Boykin

Do You Kipple? – Alma Boykin

Asking Huns and Hoydens if they’ve ever heard of Rudyard Kipling is a bit like asking a fish if it knows how to swim. You’d get a blank look (assuming you spoke the right dialect of Fish) and a response along the lines of “Doesn’t everyone?” At some point in our lives, the majority of us were introduced, stumbled into, or discovered Kipling’s poetry, and probably his short stories. I suspect fewer of us have read his novels, especially Kim. The Light that Failed...

It’s Time For the Grownups To Come Home

There seems to be in human civilization a great seesaw like movement between forward movement and a great forgetting, a shedding of the fetters of civilization.

Normally this takes extraordinary measures by the country’s rulers. China’s history is infuriating to read, because they advanced so far so fast and then got caught in this cycle of civilizational forgetting, of running away from everything they’d known and been. Honestly the last one, the Cultural Revolution, was less successful than...

If I Had A Promo – Jason Dyck

*Sarah high-jacking Jason’s microphone for a sec. Yes, Royal Blood will come out this month. Might be the last day of the month. We were delayed by cheese, laser, houses. However we’ve settled on the short sale, even though it’s way more than we’d decided on, and even though the repairs will cost us more. It has that undefinable quality of being “ours” which other houses don’t have. Which means I must work like a demon to pay for the repairs and help with mortgage. So, when I’m not here one d...

Cake or Death, the Grudge Match

Years ago I was talking to a colleague from Sweden, and he was complaining about their insane tax system which makes it impossible for anyone to really consider more than two kids, unless they’re very rich or destitute.

Being a libertarian and all around evil person, I took the opportunity to point out that’s what socialism does.

And then he surprised me by coming back with “Yeah, but capitalism doesn’t work either. My great grandparents remembered cannibalism in famines.”

At which point I tr...

Sigh

House, lasers, plague of locusts.

Will post later, or not depending on how long I’m out. Just wanted you to know I’m not dead.