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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#401

Post by a96 »

ghaff wrote: post #367
inigyou wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you start a fire with a microwave? Plain old electrical fire, rats eating wire insulation?

Apparently a short circuit in the control panel in the middle of the night. At least that's what the investigator said. I wasn't using it and was asleep. So I didn't start it. Was spontaneous. Didn't seem to be related to any external wiring.

We had a dishwasher let out the smoke recently. No fire, luckily, just literal smoke and melted plastic. The melted part was the mechanical power switch. Yes, dead simple non-IOT holy century old technology. The parts that fail are almost always the moving parts and almost never the smarts.

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

#402

Post by King-Aaron »

paulorlando wrote: post #201

It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon." In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must co…

> It seems quaint now

There was a very real likelihood only a few months back that there would be a nuclear exchange starting in Iran. In fact it seemed as if 'the plane was in the air' at one point. We're astonishingly close to these scenarios but I feel the powers that be (governments, media, etc) aren't prioritising the discussion due to other agendas.

The most powerful people in our society continue to build fallout shelters however.

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

#403

Post by foco_tubi »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #390
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever the "tens of millions killed by communism" number gets trotted out, it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism. Which is fine, but it means you need to go over to the west and count up all the people who died of preventable means (not to mention making per-capita adjustments) as well for a fair point of comparison. Every person who died of preventable ill…

> it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism You mean, those who were forcibly starved by their government, those who were forcibly murdered and displaced by their government, and those who were put into forced labor "re-education" work camps by their government. I'm not talking about the baseline of human problems and suffering that is everywhere -- that's not co…

These gymnastics are very impressive

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

#404

Post by epistasis »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #342
TimTheTinker wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whenever the "tens of millions killed by communism" number gets trotted out, it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism. Which is fine, but it means you need to go over to the west and count up all the people who died of preventable means (not to mention making per-capita adjustments) as well for a fair point of comparison. Every person who died of preventable ill…

When you conflate "armed soldiers steal the grain you grew and the food you have" with "not assigned resources" you are creating a horrifying and dehumanizing reframing that makes me doubt your basic humanity.

Placing people in a cage and not allowing them to grow food or provide for themselves is similarly murder, not "failing to assign resources"

Your language is worthy of HR layoff talk, but used to describe mass human death, the forced control of dictators to prevent people from having the basic freedom to care for themselves.

Further, placing this in the context of "oh it capitalism also resulted in massive deaths thus we shan't be critical of the dictators doing it" is, uh, much much worse.

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

#405

Post by pibaker »

apelapan wrote: post #278
billiam wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quaint? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

Nuclear annihilation on any sort of global scale is further off than ever in the past 60-70 years or so. The doomsday clock is mostly worrying about climate change, conventional war and Facebook boomers spreading and believing fake news. I don't mean that things are fine, just that Nuclear annihilation is less of a concern than some make it out to be.

But now with nukes in major countries arsenals, any of the three new risks you mentioned could have escalated to civilization ending nuclear wars. It's still a miracle that it hasn't happened, but I wouldn't be so optimistic.

Imagine climate change causing a drought in South Asia leading to conflicts between India, China and Pakistan that escalates into a nuclear war. Imagine if the regular wars in Ukraine and the Middle East ends up with Russia or Israel using a nuke. Imagine if Facebook boomers vote someone batshit crazy into office and drops a nuke on a long time hostile state just for TV ratings…

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

#406

Post by 8bitsrule »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #357
paulorlando wrote: post #201

It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon." In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must co…

> " It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. " Quite the reverse. That people say that the fear of war (nuclear or not) is "quaint" means that the wealthy and privileged first world has forgotten about war and that's not a normal state of affairs. The 18th and 19th centuries were wracked by war after war between major powers, cu…

> That people say that the fear of war (nuclear or not) is "quaint" means that the wealthy and privileged first world has forgotten about war...

Apart from perceptions, however real they were ... the hundreds of silos and missiles and thosaunds of bombs, whoever built them (names??) made a shit-ton of money (on both sides). 'Defense' spending relies on the manufacture of fears.

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

#407

Post by yazantapuz »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #217
bombcar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

You are not alone. I find a rare pleasure in doing the dishes. As you say, it's a moment of meditation. It also helps that our kitchen has a view to the wilderness.

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

#409

Post by the_af »

mbernstein wrote: post #351
the_af wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

Thanks. Glad at least a few people understood. I pulled out my copy of Martian Chronicles today (which I'm fortunate to have signed by Bradbury) when I saw this pop up on the main page.

By the strangest of coincidences, I was just re-reading The Martian Chronicles (randomly picking stories) this week, after re-buying it because I lost my copy. So this story and the poem were on my mind.

Awesome that your copy was signed by Bradbury! I only saw him in person once in 1997, from far away, when visited Buenos Aires for a book fair. I would have loved to get his autograph, but it was too crowded.

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

#410

Post by ghaff »

a96 wrote: post #401
ghaff wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently a short circuit in the control panel in the middle of the night. At least that's what the investigator said. I wasn't using it and was asleep. So I didn't start it. Was spontaneous. Didn't seem to be related to any external wiring.

We had a dishwasher let out the smoke recently. No fire, luckily, just literal smoke and melted plastic. The melted part was the mechanical power switch. Yes, dead simple non-IOT holy century old technology. The parts that fail are almost always the moving parts and almost never the smarts.

My washing machine was intermittently staining stuff for a while. The it started smoking one day. Should have replaced it at least a couple years prior. Bet it was a good 50 years old.
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