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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#441

Post by inigyou »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #437
inigyou wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait so you're literally arguing "every death in communism is communism's fault but no death in capitalism is capitalism's fault" like, that's literally the argument you're making. You're not just implying it, you're saying it. seems like a pretty bad faith argument, IMHO.

> every death in communism is communism's fault No. Everyone is going to die sooner or later. I'm talking about wrongful deaths. It is wrong for a government to kill people for any reason other than conviction of murder. The Bolsheviks, Red Giard, and Stasi straight up murdered people because they owned means of production, disagreed with communism, or tried to escape to a different country. That us evil. I know that…

Oh my bad. You're saying every wrongful death in communism is due to communism but no wrongful death in capitalism is due to capitalism.

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

#442

Post by TimTheTinker »

foco_tubi wrote: post #403
TimTheTinker wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I'm astounded that people actually think this is mental gymnastics... would you like the KGB banging on your neighbor's door at 3am and sending them to the gulag for saying something critical of the government?

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

#443

Post by inigyou »

foco_tubi wrote: post #438
TimTheTinker wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every death in communism is communism's fault No. Everyone is going to die sooner or later. I'm talking about wrongful deaths. It is wrong for a government to kill people for any reason other than conviction of murder. The Bolsheviks, Red Giard, and Stasi straight up murdered people because they owned means of production, disagreed with communism, or tried to escape to a different country. That us evil. I know that…

So you’re getting more conservative as you grow older? Wow, how novel!

Conservatism correlates better with wealth than with age FWIW. Older generations got wealthier as they got older, but younger ones get less wealthy.

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

#445

Post by theamk »

jonahx wrote: post #346
XorNot wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that isn't really why it happened: iot being Internet tied is because it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user. And no one has really come up with an alternative: home assistant is good, but it's not for the non-techy. I will squarely blame IPv4 for some of this: NAT has meant that the key applic…

> it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user. No, practicality is not the main reason these unnecessary connections are added. The main reasons are 1. to sell and enforce subscriptions and 2. to collect and sell data. Is it just easier to get your car seat warmers to work when they can connect to the inte…

I have some IoT devices I made for myself. The all connect to the central server (the one I run myself of course).

It is much, much easier to do things when central server is around. This is especially true for embedded devices which have limited resources and cannot be updated easily and safely. Close all the incoming ports and the chances of your device joining the botnet fall dramatically. Keep that port open and you'll see yourself mentioned all over the net in the context of "horrible security, don't buy".

The only hope is multi-vendor systems which connect to central hub - zigbee, matter, etc.. - but sadly they not very popular, as wifi is everywhere, access is cheap (the chip can found for under $1 today), and hub-based are harder to get started with.

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

#446

Post by TimTheTinker »

inigyou wrote: post #441
TimTheTinker wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every death in communism is communism's fault No. Everyone is going to die sooner or later. I'm talking about wrongful deaths. It is wrong for a government to kill people for any reason other than conviction of murder. The Bolsheviks, Red Giard, and Stasi straight up murdered people because they owned means of production, disagreed with communism, or tried to escape to a different country. That us evil. I know that…

Oh my bad. You're saying every wrongful death in communism is due to communism but no wrongful death in capitalism is due to capitalism.

[dead]

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

#447

Post by GlickWick »

worksonmine wrote: post #433
GlickWick wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot, and I think it's sort of naive. Nature itself is doomed due to the way the universe works. It's also far more brutal and arbitrary than we could imagine being. The only way to even have a chance at avoiding the doom that "nature" is facing is for something to evolve that can manipulate and forestall this inevitability. I don't know if humanity is what can do that, and likely nobody knows. But nature…

I don't really understand what point you're trying to make. Yes the planet is doomed sooner or later. But I'm talking about nature as in trees, animals, etc. The natural eco-system. And it existed and evolved and adapted naturally long before humans and will continue long after we're gone. In philosophy there is a debate regarding the meaning of the word nature and if humans should be considered a part of it, and I s…

My point is the whole "nature existed and will continue to exist" thing is honestly trite. Nature created us, we're just another output in the universal system. There's no real point behind the whole statement that nature will exist without us, and it contributes nothing to any discussion besides unnecessary smugness.

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

#448

Post by microtonal »

altmanaltman wrote: post #435
microtonal wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is increasing pressure from inside the regime for Putin to do so: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/07/11/asia-pacific/ch... What if they did it? They would be a paria politically, but countries would still buy their oil/gas because they need it and it's cheap, nobody would start nuking Russia over Ukraine [1], and using tactical nukes against nations that don't have them would become much more acceptable.…

My opnion is that you're underestimating the event where a country uses a nuclear bomb in this way. It signals that they are willing to cross any red lines and become an existential threat. In fact, imagine an alternative scenario where Russia straight up nukes Kiev instead of the gurella warfare and then invasaion/special millitary operation. In that case, there is no way Putin is not done within a week simply due t…

The moment you use them, you lose their value as a deterrance anymore.

If they used nukes in Ukraine, the strategic deterrence against other nations with nukes would still be in place.

They didn't use them against Ukraine because of many other reasons, e.g. because they would have taken Kiev in days, it didn't make sense to make land that you want to conquer radioactive, and the political fallout would be too big.

I think now they won't do it because China is too important to them and China made it clear that using tactical nukes is out of the question.

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

#449

Post by foco_tubi »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #442
foco_tubi wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These gymnastics are very impressive

I'm astounded that people actually think this is mental gymnastics... would you like the KGB banging on your neighbor's door at 3am and sending them to the gulag for saying something critical of the government?

No, but you seem to be conflating an economic model with a particular governmental regime.

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

#450

Post by worksonmine »

GlickWick wrote: post #447
worksonmine wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand what point you're trying to make. Yes the planet is doomed sooner or later. But I'm talking about nature as in trees, animals, etc. The natural eco-system. And it existed and evolved and adapted naturally long before humans and will continue long after we're gone. In philosophy there is a debate regarding the meaning of the word nature and if humans should be considered a part of it, and I s…

My point is the whole "nature existed and will continue to exist" thing is honestly trite. Nature created us, we're just another output in the universal system. There's no real point behind the whole statement that nature will exist without us, and it contributes nothing to any discussion besides unnecessary smugness.

Of course there's reason to discuss if endless parking lots and industrial complexes are necessary. Claiming they're part of nature is like claiming HIV is a natural part of the human body. It exists yes but maybe we're better off without it?

I see humanity as it exists today as a cancer on the planet and it's not out of smugness. The pursuit of infinite growth is ruining everything that's beautiful around us.

We can discuss the semantics of the word nature all you want but it is just shifting the focus from the actual problem, which is how we destroy everything we touch. Which is also what I'm assuming GP means.

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