The Writer And The Forces of Evil

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt
Sarah Hoyt’s life the last two days. Artistic rendition. Fake but accurate.

The person who completed the title with “Are natural allies” can stay after school to help scrub the old gum from under the desks, thank you so much.

This is in lieu of “this is not a post” mostly because I meant to write a post early this morning and instead ended up chatting with friends. Sigh.

Writers these days, no discipline, no pride of hustle, no–

Okay, the problem is I couldn’t write it yesterday because yesterday I spent the day walking into walls.

It started at 7 am with our pest control people who were scheduled to come “in the morning” deciding it was vital to ring our doorbell to tell us they were here. Look, they were scheduled to come. We’d have seen them on the cameras later. DO NOT RING THE DOORBELL BEFORE 9 AM, what’s actually wrong with you?

This normally wouldn’t be that big a deal, but two nights before I got hit with the “tribalism” post at midnight and was writing till 1 am. And then the night after that I was “dry” on posts till one am and wrote till 2 am. Which means when I was wakened I’d slept a grand total of 5 hours. Plus I had a plumber appointment for the morning, which mestatized into an all day thing, so naps were out of the question.

Oh, and I was typesetting and dealing with Amazon, which…. is like dealing with a dental appointment without anesthetic, even if nothing goes wrong, just… dot all the ts and cross all the is. (Yes, I mean that. it’s what I normally do,a nd then I have to go back and fix it.) Oh, yeah, and the isbn place and…. argh.

Oh, and on Tuesday I DID have a dental appointment.

Anyway, the point is, I was really tired, and by the middle of the day was walking into walls. By night time I was starting to do “I can’t quite control my mouth, so I’m trying to speak and just making weird sounds.” So I just went to bed at ten. Without writing a post.

And this morning I’m apparently just lazy. And should be doing a chapter of Witch’s Daughter for the serialization in the substacks and figuring out the shopify store thing so I can sell my own ebooks (and others, if I can connect it to pod and fulfillment by printer.). So I’ll go and do that rather than write a blog post.

Ahem. No, seriously, I truly am fighting a tentacle monster. But it’s a tentacle monster of the mind.

And before I do any real work I have to go fight the litter boxes, the worst monster of all.

So, I’ll see you tomorrow. Think fondly of me as I battle the “Cat poo armagedon” (I should have done the boxes yesterday. I’m trying to avoid “poo in my shoe” at this point.)

Sarah Hoyt heading out to clean cat boxes. 2025, colorized.

77 thoughts on “The Writer And The Forces of Evil”

  2. In my family, we call them “editorial comments.” My cat gave me one the other day. I was gone a little bit longer than she was expecting me to be visiting my daughter; only one day longer, three nights instead of two. I should’ve done her box before I left (it’s automatic, so once every week or two). So, she waited till I got home, then peed on my bag of tank tops. Comment received and acknowledged.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Sigh. I need to hit the Thursday litter box clean up too. (Friday is garbage day, so Thursday at minimum. We have 4 boxes, at least 2x’s per week or son has to clean them because I can’t lift the boxes. Do have auto ones coming, we’ll see how those work out.)

    Feel better.

    Today is the first “cooler” day we’ve had in 5 days. Which means I don’t sleep very good until it starts cooling off (at 5 AM). Floor/window air conditioners just don’t cut it when it pushes 100 F even with our western “dry heat”.

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      1. One of the 4 boxes (high type, top entry, with limited opening, to keep dog from the, um, kitty “candy”) cracked today while emptying. Just a short crack but failure will happen. I use SiftEasy (TM) to pour out the box. Gets a lot cleaner than just scooping. But when the litter is wet, it is heavy and awkward to lift and pour. I can’t wait for the auto ones to show up. Hopefully they will work with extensions.

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  6. Youtuber Mark Rober spent several years devising bait for porch pirates. When opened, the boxes would shower the perps with eye-safe glitter, spray them with long-lasting fart spray, record it all online (video), and send the GPS location so the police could be alerted and the bait recovered. His videos are very satisfying.

    While I’d hate to see this on your porch, it might be satisfying for the people who ignore “DON’T RING BEFORE 09:00!” signs

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      1. Do not talk to me before I start talking, which will happen either during the second “cup” of coffee or 3 hours after I have been woken up. My mother-in-law did not believe the warnings she was given, and the first Christmas she was over at 6:00 in the morning to see her grandson, I snarled. Several hours later all was good, and she was “Ok, I understand the warnings now”. And so was born a family tradition of me being handed a cup of coffee and nobody talking at me while the cheerful morning people all jabbered at each other leaving me alone until I actually said something.

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          1. I do this. Speaking in tongues when sleep deprived is special when you know more languages than ‘English’ and ‘Bad English.’ Mngdfshkr, iggnxp, si’l vous plait?

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        2. Early in the Reader’s marriage, his new bride attempted to engage him in conversation before the Reader had assimilated coffee. Bad things ensued. The new bride was sent scurrying away from the monster in the kitchen. We quickly evolved our routine where the Reader awakes first, has coffee, and then brings coffee to his wife in bed. It has worked for 43 years.

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          1. Similar experience early on; we discovered it was low blood sugar. Coffee does help, though I’ve been sentenced to Decaf by my doctor. Spouse was a morning person, as was her whole family and as her sister still is.

            That last is interesting, since SIL and I are talking about going on a cruise together next year. We’re friendly, but not share-a-cabin friendly; not only because of the obvious, but her life is offset to mine by about three hours.

            Back in 1973, quite early in our marriage, there was the Roseville Bomb Train incident; we lived sort of close to it and the explosions were clearly audible. Newspaper stories on line say that started about 8 am.

            I don’t recall what time that woke me up, but I said to myself “Hmm, artillery’ and went back to sleep. Up a few hours later, I realized ‘Hey, artillery in Sacramento is Not Normal!’

            —-

            So, with OGH off for the day, we get to BBQ in the front yard, right?

            As a polite guest, I will bring three copies of ‘A Kitten’s first tool box’, and the ‘Watchmaker’ and ‘Boilermaker’ expansion packs.

            What did offspring and DIL think of Return and Exchange? My mom told my wife ‘No takebacks!’

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            1. Oh, I remember the Roseville Bomb Train. (Vietnam war era, munitions train, hotbox (friction due to lubricant failure) Lots and lots of BIG booms.)

              It’s a bit weird how many in this SF ish associated group are from the Sacramento area.

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              1. Eventually, the local radio station traffic helicopter borrowed a Forward Air Controller and they flew above the mess calling out bomb damage.

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        3. Had a college friend, spouse was a classmate, who was the same. No one talked to the friend before the first cup of coffee. Stayed with them one term a few nights a week. Had been commuting from family home (only 40 ish miles) until I wrecked my car one spring morning (still hate that dang corner). I definitely do not wake up grouchy in the morning.

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      2. So many people are convinced that old folks get up before the crack of dawn, kick the rooster out of bed, and wake up the Sun. I can’t imagine why they think this since like most office workers my retirement fantasy was getting out of bed and beating the alarm clock to death with a baseball bat.

        And yes, technically I am retired. Since I am a caregiver that means I am on call 24/7 but I choose my own hours to do housework.

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        1. Just because I’m up at 5:30 every morning, doesn’t mean I’m human enough until after the coffee to talk to. When I turned 50 the body said “You WILL be up at 5:30 from now on”. But I want to sleep! “NO, 5:30 UP!” but..but.. “UP”.

          I now understand better the old folks of my youth. Not a fan of some of the understanding I have been giving this last decade.

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          1. I have to constantly inform medical offices that my husband and I are not available for an 8:00 a.m. appointment ever on any day.

            There is some sort of automatic setting in their minds that everybody wants to get their doctor appointment done on the way to work even if we’re retired.

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            1. I had to get several CT scans when my knee went out last year (a couple for the knee, two for “incidental discoveries”, sigh). Seriously rural county, and the CT scanner is booked heavily. So 3 of the 4 were between 6:30AM and 8:00AM. One double set was at 11 and 11:30.

              I’ve had a handful of surgical procedures where I had to show at 7AM for preop, with festivities starting at 8:00. OTOH, I’m an early bird. 4:30AM wakeup means I’ve slept in.

              If it’s a winter appointment, and I have a choice, I try for 10AM or later. The small mountain on the way to town has a dicey road early in the morning.

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            2. It is a problem. I think it is in the software they use.

              Oh. I know! I’ll let nephew know! He is in the early training phase of his first post college degree job. A company that makes and supports hospital, clinic, and lab, software. It is the same software used by the PeaceHealth hospitals, etc., locally. (Kidding. He is very, very, new.)

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            3. The appointments I dislike are later in the afternoon. My new-patient one next week (got tired of Dr. Mengele) is at 3:40. I get to find out how bad the commute traffic is.

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            4. I prefer 8 am for physicians appointments – because it’s easy to do fasting bloodwork immediately after – and late afternoon for massage and chiropractic appointments – because it uses less sick time.

              It all depends on what needs done!

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    2. Been a few people in high porch pirate area that have packaged up used kitty litter, put a label on it, and put it out on the porch. Not like they are making arrangements to be picked up by a legit postal service. Just swap out with new the next time boxes get cleaned out …

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  7. New Game title:

    Where in which world is Sarah Hoyt?

    On the other hand, soon to be visiting daughter I haven’t seen for a few years. Chatting this AM she asked if I wanted to go to gym with her. She knows my back porch is my gym that I use every AM. I said yes. She said, “I’ll try not to get up at 3AM to go like I often do.” I said “Whew, so I guess my 4AM wake up is OK then?”

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  8. Here’s the scoop!

    I get litter box “duty” for the last remaining cat and yard “duty” for two large canines.

    I’m also the household appointment greeter, receiving, security, waste disposal, yard management, and food service department due to being the one with a home office instead of a commute.

    Up at 5:00 AM and hopefully in bed by 11:00 PM. A “good” weekend is one with no vistors and the possibility of a at least one mid-day cat nap.

    This is probably the last household cat since the spouse rescues them and I end up being the one spending 99.9999% of the time with them. She’s more of a dog person, so it’s more like 80% of the my time with the mutts.

    The Last Cat is spoiled rotten with her own space away from the dogs and access to every room except the master bedroom (due to age related fluid issues). She has no use for dogs, especially the puppy.

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  9. So apropos only it’s recent, this is interesting:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-025-00822-w

    Blood Pressure variations statistically correlating with changes in Earth’s geomagnetic field driven by solar variations.

    Human blood pressure fluctuates constantly and is influenced by various factors such as hormone levels in the body and environmental conditions. Geomagnetic activity is change in the Earth’s magnetic field as a consequence of the sun’ s activity, such as the impact of solar winds. We used six years of data to investigate whether changes in geomagnetic activity have an impact on blood pressure. Our results show a relationship between geomagnetic activity and blood pressure, particularly during periods of high geomagnetic activity. Understanding this relationship could enhance our knowledge of the geomagnetic environment’s clinical significance and potentially contribute to better hypertension risk assessment and management.

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    1. Well, I’ve know ham radio operators that have blood pressure spikes when there is a geomagnetic storm during an important contest or rare country on the air. So that tracks ;)

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      1. Their half-million data points are from two cities in China (Qingdao and Weihai) and I am not sure there are any Hams allowed in the Middle Kingdom…

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        1. A search on DDG says yes, they are allowed. It’s not exactly private communication, so beyond some clever tech [various thoughts, redacted], you aren’t going to hear “Down with the CCP”.

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        2. There are. I’ve worked a few. But nothing beyond exchanging signal reports and best wishes. Politics and religion are pretty much avoided in ham radio anyway (a few notorious groups on certain frequencies notwithstanding)

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        3. That is a matter of basic methodology, whether the results should be trusted, and whether the PRC is incidently zapping people with their cellphone networks.

          Frankly, I could buy that we zap people with our smartphone networks, and that we do so more when the geomagnetic situation is noisier.

          And, well, if you have a professional job you have to keep playing the praise winnie the pooh thought smartphone app to get social credit points. Oh no, I cannot get my points could be a legit cause of high blood pressure.

          Liked by 1 person

      1. Apologies, yes I am having a few reading comprehension issues.

        I overlooked a detail.

        MRI are often pretty strong, yes.

        If mode three can be measured, and verified as real, I would imagine that MRI could do something like that.

        However, MRI are basically getting a interaction off of quite a lot of different kinds of material. I still don’t understand the target model, or how it changes the signals, or really much of anything. But I am pretty sure that they are targeting an atom much more common than hemoglobin.

        I don’t know about mechanical forces inside ordinary tissue with an MRI.

        I’m sure it would probably be bad for me in some way to build a conventional power level MRI, and use it at home daily for inspecting my body. I am sure that high magnetic power medical scanners have enough unknowns that we should expect something to be a problem, even for cases where we can that a specific issue is not a real problem.

        MRI and the tech these days is pretty cool. It seems like it is possible to get reduce some of the need for high field strength, and for some of the power usage.

        (As a hobbyist, I just dislike a bit the idea of needing helium cooling to do a thing.)

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        1. MRI generated fields are also very wiggly at a variety of frequencies and orientations (most of the noisiness when you are in the torpedo tube getting scanned is the mechanism moving those big honking magnets around pretty quickly). The imaging resolution is based on looking at how different molecules resonate with those field wiggles.

          On the other hand, geomagnetic field variations are fairly small variations in a very stable dipole field, with the north magnetic pole staying up north. The varying solar wind pressure on Earth’s shields changes them slowly over time, and various CME impacts jangle things around causing resonances that right like a bell, but overall geomagnetic fields are super stable compared to a transients field like an MRI.

          And both data collection locations are also noted in the paper as being mid-latitude, so the field lines would be basically more sort of parallel with the Earth’s surface, which I am sure means something.

          The main point I take from this is that it’s yet another example of humans being a lot more attuned to, and affected by, aspects of the environment of this planet than anyone would have ever predicted just a few years ago.

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        2. I gather that the main(?) magnet (at least the big one–I haven’t had reason to learn much about MRI) is superconducting. OTOH, there’s been word of a smaller unit, intended for limbs. Not clear if it was a lab-only unit, or if it reached production.

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      1. My not entirely informed reaction is to insist that, no, the forces are too weak for there to be a net pressure.

        Pressure is force over area, and work is force acting through a distance. Would not matter if blood vessels were rigid, but since they flex, that probably means some sort of work done. If we are talking net pressure on certain molecules.

        Anyway, I was just reading up on electrical dissipation (looking for materials with high loss tangent), and ethyl alcohol and water have a pretty high loss tangent. Which makes sense given the explanation that dielectric losses are due to the forces acting on charged molecules. Water and ethyl alcohol are a bit polar, and they are liquids, and maybe they are pretty viscous.

        Okay, I am pretty seriously quibbling on technicalities to be going ‘one of the modes of dissipation is clearly going to thermal energy’, because thermal energy does also increase pressure a bit. (Mode one of water solutions, whatever is happening in terms of ionic conduction. Mode two, dielectric dissipation going to heat. Possible mechanism three is pressure effects.)

        By, the reason I mentioned work is a conservation of energy argument based on the idea that the input powers might be weak. I’m a bit scared of the really high power EM wave sources, so to the extent I pay attention to what I use, I use low power sources. This biases me to the thought that EM waves are generally low power. (Which obviously has cases where my working inference is known to be untrue, and those are hilarious.)

        The reasons I am scared of hgh power, is that a) I don’t trust my handling techniques enough b) I have learned some about what we might not know about RF bioeffects. The conventional explanation, seen in standard references like Pozar, is that you do your safety calculations based on the thermal energy. This maybe doesn’t fully cover molecules that resonate a bunch, frequency dependences, and really short pulses or other waveform stuffs. Depending on how much of that we should worry about, past experimental data may not have found everything.

        Anyway, for a given power level of a wave at some frequency, the forces it can generate are based on charge distribution, or on magnetic spins of electrons, and those will be influenced a bit by molecular bonds. (Which seems to mean that calculations of properties from nothing are a bit harder to do well than people would think.) Power level will give you the fields of a plane wave in freespace. For that field strenth on a single molecule, you calculate a force.

        Now obviously in practice, you don’t average or add up a bunch of molecules, you do some sort of bulk material property measurement, and calculate your field strength, and then average the forces over your field.

        For this specific case, that is also an exercise that sucks. Which means I don’t know how to do it. (I think everything I don’t know how to do is hard. That is wrong for situations where I haven’t tried for laziness, or where I just did it stupidly hard early on.)

        Anyhow, I should know better, but I have a bias towards thinking of EM fields as weak. I think I have also have zero intuitive idea of how strong or weak the forces are.

        Anyway, we respond to light so we should not be expected to be entirely isolated from all EM energy. I’m reasonably sure we do not know all of the ways that stuff happens, so I would be sure that it is more likely to be some sort of sensitivity of the CNS than it would be the direct mechanical effect. (Unless I run the numbers, and again find that I am an idiot, and badly misled by my intuitions.)

        I would also note that Nature does not only publish sound work, and the statistical methodology would be critical to understanding whether it is ‘noisy test indicates noise’.

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        1. The Reader agrees that if the effect is real it is unlikely to be a work (energy transfer) effect. The Reader notes that the sources of high blood pressure are poorly understood (no one can explain his although medication controls it). It may be that low level magnetic fields influence something else in the body that in turn drives blood pressure.

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          1. This is more likely it – something that is impacted by continuous background magnetic field variations in turn impacts something at some remove that changes average BP.

            It might be interesting to instrument up people flying over the poles on airliners, as they transit a bunch of changing magnetic field lines during the trip, but it might be too fast of a change for whatever the mechanism is to react before their flight ends.

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              1. The Discussion section talks about latitude, noting they don’t find anything in this research or the literature that’s conclusive.

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            2. From the Discussion section of the paper, re how fast this response appears to be, after noting their statistics seem to show a lag in this BP response to normal (non-geomagnetic-storm) variations on the order of a month or so:

              Similarly, some studies have investigated the effects of strong GMA on BP, such as during geomagnetic storm periods (Ap>30nT). They have reported rapid changes in BP within a few days and an increase in cardiovascular-related illnesses or hospital admissions {footnote hyperlinks 23 and 24 omitted to avoid two-link-purgatory; WPDE}. These previous findings do not contradict the results reached in this paper—rather we come to the analogous and more general conclusion that the higher the GMA level, the shorter the statistically averaged lag time of BP fluctuations.

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            3. Yes.

              Couldn’t think about it when I was raving earlier. But, I have a different type of knowledge about apparent magnetic effects on human states of well being.

              Lot we do not know about how human bodies.

              I also have a lot to learn when it comes to formal knowledge of electromagnetics.

              Liked by 1 person

      2. Banshee, I think that you’d have to test the theory by comparing people who are sedated with people who are aware, because the sound of the MRI is enough to raise your blood pressure, according to several people I know who have had scans. Which … leads to other problems with establishing a stable control group and a homogeneous test group.

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        1. Oh, definitely. I am not instantaneously claustrophobic. But any length of time in that tunnel? OMG! Get Me OUT! Had to have a scan because of the back spasms (solution found, chiropractor for the win). Scan probably took longer than it should have because tech kept saying “stay still, breath shallowly”. What part of involuntary back spasms wasn’t understood? If I could control them wouldn’t have been there. FWIW, not fun.

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  10. Can understand the whelmedness. I’m known in my area of specialty(ies) for being able to take on enormous projects and devour the proverbial elephant, oh so many pachyderms have been served up recently. As always, accomplished one bite at a time. One. bite. at. a. time.

    Household litter box duty is assigned to our son, who is technically an adult, but like many in that cohort is still working on many aspects of the assignment. Trash day was yesterday, but our two remaining kitties are just shoving the poopy strata around some more, because someone hasn’t gotten around to it yet…

    Amazon: I have packages delivered to a business address. Yes, I have to retrieve them, and there are the after-hours delivery attempts, but the peace of mind is worth it.

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    1. Ours…. moved out and got married. BOTH OF THEM. And have jobs. And one even has his own cats. Well, one is his wife’s.
      Yeah, I know I wanted them to grow up. I DO. BUT litter boxes.

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          1. Speaking of nightmare fuel…

            🎶One little, two little, three little Indys…..🎶😸😸😸

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  11. 1 cat, 1 litterbox, I clean it out every other day. Which may be a reason why we don’t have multiple cats, as that would require more cleaning. Not that I mind scooping out the turds and putting them in the compost, but when the used litter buckets get full, I have to haul them out 400 feet into the woods where I have a drainage project using the clay. Ooof.

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  12. I can’t even eat until nine o’clock in the morning, morning person, not. I’ve really always been a night owl, something so peaceful about a world where humanity is asleep. It’s generally cooler even in summer. The stars overhead, the cool air, a gentle breeze and humanity quiet for a change. Then dawn on a beach as the sun rises pointing a golden finger at you across the gentle waves. Even better, a cup of Earl grey with honey and thou, whoever thou turns out to be.

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  14. I work the early shift, and this AM a cheery coworker greeted me in Spanish (as she’s won’t to do):

    “Buenos dias!”

    “Buenos días, Maria; como estas?” I said.

    “Bien!”

    “Bien ist gut,” I said.

    Maybe it sounded like “… is good,” because she didn’t react, but it was only after I said it that I caught the codeswitch to German.

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      1. IIRC that would be Devin Nunes’ (of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ fame) ancestral origin-point. At least a smallish world, then (variants of Portuguese milieu).

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        1. So they are more related to me than Southern continental Portuguese, because most of the colonists of Azores were from the North (and a startling number conversos.) BUT culturally? Once they were on the islands, they became very odd. :D
          People keep asking me about dishes, etc. and I keep going “Wha? Never heard of that!”

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  17. Speaking of which, there are multiple channels on the intertubes showing people pumping septic tanks. As a practical matter, it’s interesting, but sometimes a bit much for me. One of the better ones is the guy from Buncombe County, NC (Asheville) who mostly talks about business, employees, customers and oddities connected there unto; tree roots are bad for your drain *field,* for example.

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  19. I’d actually like to read “The Writer And The Forces of Evil” — it sounds like it could be a fun book, along the overall lines of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus or the later, go-to Faust from Goethe, only given the full MHI-like treatment; much more fun, far less tragic, still lots of rancidly insidious evil, with more action and maybe even more magical and/or mundane firepower.

    Am I holding my breath? No, of course not. And I’m not going to write that, at least I’m not getting presently muse-mugged so I’m probably ‘marked safe’ from trying it… it doesn’t sound easy.

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  20. Convincingly off-topic, yet likely of some interest here: Space X’s Starship is now on the schedule for its next test flight in about a week. Daring to roll the dice on a ‘bare’ link,

    https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-10

    We’ll see if this one can avoid the Pick a Failure Mode menu and make it all the way to orbit, then through re-entry. (Due to ‘pushing the envelope’ tests on the booster, no catch attempt is planned.)

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