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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#171

Post by newAccount2025 »

baggy_trough wrote: post #152
mrloopex wrote: post #110

Born in 1968 I missed “duck and cover” but rode the wave of Reagan brinkmanship with my skater friends until 1990, watching all the broadcast TV PSAs and songs and art about nuclear war. It was real. It pervaded daily life: the notion that two old white men were having a pissing contest with every human as disposable bargaining chips. And as always, 25% of the US population cheered for purification of the planet beca…

[flagged]

Is it? There are lots of wonderful US Christians who believe in kindness and compassion and love. There are also lots of US Christians who are deep into end-times insanity, like Christian Zionists. Perhaps the 25% number is high, but this is a very real thing.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#172

Post by inigyou »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #115
WillAdams wrote: post #98

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff. Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for…

https://www.weaverobotics.com/ And Toyota robotics has been trying to solve loading dishwashers for at least 7 years. And that's all the housework required really, vacuuming, mopping, dishwasher un/loading, picking random stuff off the floor, dusting is another minor thing to have done. The vast majority of labor has already been solved with dishwashers and washing machines and dryers, electric ovens and stoves.

Loading dishwashers has been solved. Instead of moving the dishes from the storage place to the cleaning place, you just make them both the same place.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#173

Post by WillAdams »

inigyou wrote: post #165
WillAdams wrote: post #98

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff. Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for…

Amazon Alexa. You're a decade late.

Fair point.

I find the presence of a microphone sufficiently creepy that that was a non-starter for me, and I didn't pay attention after the initial launch.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#174

Post by WillAdams »

inigyou wrote: post #172
throwawayffffas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.weaverobotics.com/ And Toyota robotics has been trying to solve loading dishwashers for at least 7 years. And that's all the housework required really, vacuuming, mopping, dishwasher un/loading, picking random stuff off the floor, dusting is another minor thing to have done. The vast majority of labor has already been solved with dishwashers and washing machines and dryers, electric ovens and stoves.

Loading dishwashers has been solved. Instead of moving the dishes from the storage place to the cleaning place, you just make them both the same place.

I do know at least one couple who have two dishwashers and just alternate which is being used for loading dirty dishes and which is being accessed for clean.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#175

Post by jrsdav »

"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone."

- Sara Teasdale, 1918

Didn't see the inspiration for Bradbury mentioned here. I love this poem. There's also a great song-rendition of it by The Three D's, a folk group popular in the 50's.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#176

Post by baggy_trough »

newAccount2025 wrote: post #171
baggy_trough wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is it? There are lots of wonderful US Christians who believe in kindness and compassion and love. There are also lots of US Christians who are deep into end-times insanity, like Christian Zionists. Perhaps the 25% number is high, but this is a very real thing.

I do not disagree that there are some, but 25% is a massive overstatement, not merely "perhaps" high.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#177

Post by armagon »

The most striking incongruity with our modern era to me is that the family was all outside when the blast occurred. With pervasive screens, we just don't get outside like we used to.

And why on earth was that dad mowing when the house was able to take care of it?

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#178

Post by ben_w »

frmersdog wrote: post #123
briansm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when November 2019 came and went (the date that Blade Runner is set in)

Off the top of my head, events in popular science fiction that have "already occurred": First Laughing Man Incident - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2024) Third Impact - Neon Genesis Evangelion (2015) Fourth Corporate War - Cyberpunk (2022) Geisel Library Walk - Rainbows End (2025) 2020 Tokyo Olympics - Akira (2020)

> Rainbows End

Very good timing, not for walking houses and sharding of consensus reality with ubiquitous AR, but for physical destruction of books to speed up scanning.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#179

Post by the_af »

mbernstein wrote: post #91

Nature won't know or care if humanity erases itself.

> Nature won't know or care if humanity erases itself.

You got downvoted for paraphrasing the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains", from which Bradbury took the title of his story.

I supposed that's to be expected online. Small consolation, but at least some of us understood you :)

  And not one will know of the war, not one
  Will care at last when it is done.

  Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
  If mankind perished utterly;

  And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
  Would scarcely know that we were gone.
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