Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 92

The Death Of Cities

Possibly the least American thing about me, the one thing that acculturation can touch, is that most people not just born and raised in, but immigrating to America, seem to long for the untouched spaces, the miles and miles from the nearest neighbor.

Me? I am a creature of cities. I feel safer — in normal times — in a large city. I like to know there is someone within reach of my cries.More importantly, since my body seems to need walking and since it refuses to walk nowhere, I like to be...

Halfway to Success by Thomas Kendall

Halfway to Success by Thomas Kendall

               I think what’s dead clear at this point is that half the takes about the Starship launch indicate that people don’t know what Starship is for, or how the program around it within SpaceX operates. In 2021, Everyday Astronaut did a tour of Starbase guided by Elon Musk, and interviewed him the whole time. Even if you’re not a fan of Musk, the whole interview should be required listening for people who are serious about understanding Starship...

TEST TEST TEST

Puppet Masters, by Robert A. Heinlein is one of my favorite novels.

Yes, I know. “It was just a metaphor for communism.” This is usually said with a superior air, as though the idea of communism as brain bugs that control the unwilling is such a ridiculous thing. Fine. You be superior. Me, meanwhile, am looking at the brain infestation of Soviet communism still wrecking the world after the Soviet Union was relegated to the midden of history, and I reserve the right to laugh at you for bei...

Illusions

The last century hasn’t actually brought about great “scientific” improvements in governance or the condition of man. It has brought about better production and better commerce, which was enough to stop the periodic famines which plagued our ancestors.

Famines and scarcity subsist only where pernicious central governments stomp on human liberty and individual freedom. And they need to stomp pretty hard. We haven’t managed it. But there are rumors out of China and Venezuela. And of course...

Ghosts

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I was born less than twenty years after the end of World War II. It hit me as an anvil the other day that when I was bumming around Europe with an Eurorail pass in the early eighties, the people I ran into had been children in World War II. Like my dad, who, back then, was in his late 40s. Or even adults, for the older people.

Those guys in the back of the bar in Germany, saying nasty things about the American tourists? It’s entirely likely they’d foug...

Rare, Collectible Tuesday Book Promo and Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike be the First In Your Neighborhood to Have One.

*I swear I did a promo post. Took me two hours. Then…. Well, then I went to make the house safe for Kittinity. Imagine my surprise when I found out the post had no content. WordPress Delenda est. And once more into the promo, my friends – SAH*

Book Promo

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 my relative. Deal.) One book pe...

I DID do an entire Promo Post

This is a new trick of word press I DO NOT APPRECIATE. Took me two hours to do the promo post, and it ate it.

Sigh. Redoing.

We’re Home

We’re safe, kittens are safe, everyone is well.

We just let late, then had stuff to do when we got home.

I probably won’t post at instapundit till tomorrow, because I’m falling asleep on my face.

But I didn’t want you guys to worry.

Gathering of TX friends was FUN, but I’m glad to be home. Peopling is hard. However, I do feel better.

Promo post tomorrow, so many kittens

Okay, there’s only three of them. Helen and Pol, which we’re going to keep, and one for Marshall, little Harmony who look like one of those q-tips that’s starting to unravel and looks fuzzy.

This is Sweet Helen. We couldn’t get Pol to linger with us, though he played with Dan and let him tickle the little fuzzy belly.

Harmony was also really active, and didn’t linger, but I got a picture. She was determined to keep Cedar’s Toast stuck in a little Amazon box, so every time toast tried t...

Saying Goodbye

Years ago, when these things were notional and far in the future, my father in law asked me to give his eulogy. He’d just read a memorial I’d written for my grandmother, because I’d never got to say goodbye to her, and I can only grieve — or do most things to be honest, being fairly useless by nature — in writing. And he thought he’d like to be remembered like that.

He was then younger than I’m now, probably by ten years or so.

Time does go by very fast.

I met my in-laws when they s...