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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#211

Post by pavel_lishin »

inigyou wrote: post #166
dylan604 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it could show you what's inside before you open the door I've always thought it would be cool to have transparent doors so you could see inside without needing to open the doors. Obviously, most people do not have "neat" fridge interiors and would be considered ugly and not a good look. But having those cool spy room windows that go frosted or mirrored or some other opaque look with the flip of a switch could solve…

It would necessarily let heat leak in

I wonder if you could use two sheets of glass, and have a double-paned system. Maybe even with vacuum or some gas that's an even poorer conductor of heat than air in it.

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

#212

Post by blooalien »

baggy_trough wrote: post #188
BowBun wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His source and claims seem backed up - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth

Where do you see there that 25% of the U.S. population cheered for nuclear annihilation?

> Where do you see there that 25% of the U.S. population cheered for nuclear annihilation?

Anecdotally; Growing up in the NorthWest USA, I knew entirely too many (crazy to my mind yet considered perfectly "normal" by most "average" folk back then) people in the 1980s who genuinely believed that Revelations' "rain fire from the Heavens" in the bible meant "Nuclear War" and Jesus would arrive momentarily thereafter "leading a host of angels" to "rapture the faithful" and/or "smite the wicked" who survived that initial "rain of heavenly fire".

What scares me even more than that kinda craziness bein' way more common back then than it should'a been is that too many (still crazy people IMHO) still believe such madness today and some of those people are in charge of (or at least in positions of significant power) entire nations with huge stockpiles of WMDs at their disposal.

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

#213

Post by 127 »

thrtythreeforty wrote: post #134

I read this story in 4th grade. It felt like the future. Now, it feels like most of the technology is within reach - at least, it could be built. The automated stove being the main exception. But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.

IoT works just fine with Zigbee that can be 100% local.

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

#214

Post by k4816 »

pavlov wrote: post #122
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]

Netanyahu is not white. He's a Jew.

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

#215

Post by mindslight »

armagon wrote: post #177

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?

I've got a neighbor who I'm pretty sure would still be out there.

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

#217

Post by pavel_lishin »

bombcar wrote: post #140
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…

We don't build robots because the "hard/boring part" for the human is often NOT the hard part for the robot. Take the dishwasher, for example, loading it is very hard for a robot, but easy and quick for a human. Washing the dishes is boring for the human, but a robot gets a sort of sick and twisted pleasure from cycling that dirty water around for hours on end. In fact, we've removed some labor-saving features of hou…

> Washing the dishes is boring for the human

I feel like the only person in the world who doesn't mind doing dishes. When we lived in the city, I feel like most of my friends would rather have an in-unit dishwasher than in-unit laundry. For me, doing dishes feels almost meditative.

(But I do hate folding/putting away clothes.)

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

#218

Post by ben_w »

inigyou wrote: post #186
ben_w wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways this could all end, a nuclear war is still on the list. "Wireheaded by social media so hard you're unemployable" is at least as plausible as a city-scale antipersonel drone strike; even Ukraine's strikes against Russia are around 1200-1800/day.

Why don't they strike Vlad with one of them?

I can think of many possible reasons.

I suspect the real answer is that between decoys and Russian intel agencies hiding him, and his grip on power that currently means he's going to be in range of useful air defence and a good bunker even if it's literally the last system Russia has left, they likely literally cannot at the present time.

(Not that it changes what I just wrote, but IIRC most of the Russian personel losses are short-range (20 km) antipersonel drones, the long-range stuff is currently targetting materiel, logistics, and whatever you count oil as, in so doing they only incidentally hit people).

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