1mo ago

A glimpse of things to come

80 comments

I think you're underestimating corvids.
- Corvids evolved beyond the need for physical form.
  All that remains are echoes.
  
  Caw.... caw... caw.....
  
  They Jonathon Livingstoned themselves.
- They fuckin peaced like the dolphins in Hitchhiker's Guide.
  
  Great, now I want to watch it.....again. No, really, it's been a bit. Thanks.

Ray Bradbury already did this in "There Will Come Soft Rains".
- Such an incredible story. The nursery scene is my favorite
- I highly recommend all of the Martian Chronicles.
  
  While we're on the subject of Ray Bradbury, most people don't know he wrote things other than science fiction, but he actually wrote one of my favorite mystery novels (which is slightly autobiographical):
  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17972482-a-graveyard-for-lunatics
- That's exactly what I was thinking of.

The octopodes are named Paul and Salome.
- Nice, was looking for a Children reference 😂
  
  Can't wait for the next book. Apparently it's being worked on
  Funnily enough the other parts of the post remind me of "service model", the new book by Tschaikowsky
- What's this a reference to? It's ringing a bell that I can't quite make out
  
  Children of Time

for anyone that wants whis concept as an entire sci-fi story:
this is almost literally the plot of "children of time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky!
excellent trilogy, but the first part can be read as a standalone story!
- Seconded. They are great novels, and quite original!
- I've been meaning to check out their novels. Thanks for the reminder.
- Yikes, 20w wait on my library’s network.
  I do have a hold, but this is why I haven’t been reading much lately
  
  i mean...yeah, it's a really popular book! for good reasons ;)
  
  That's why I just default to using libgen.

Sounds like the scifi short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury. It's about a post-apocalypse, automated house that tries to maintain a daily routine, long after humanity is gone.

Sounds like they do better than us at ruling this world.

Other species will have a really hard time following us, because our own playbook is no longer available.
Extraction of resources out of the ground is getting harder and harder. We've exhausted the easily extracted ore for iron/tin/copper mining, and modern mining of those materials requires much more sophisticated technology. So a Bronze Age and Iron Age can't really come up from the ground up.
And without easily extracted fossil fuels providing cheap and abundant energy, industrialization would be a pretty difficult hurdle to overcome.
The best hopes of a post-human civilization will come from whatever species learns to recycle and reuse human waste.
And maybe the leftovers of human agriculture (any plant species that efficiently produce lots of biomass that don't require active planting/tilling/irrigation/fertilization, whatever domesticated animals can survive as feral colonies) will have lasting effects, too.
- Landfills are the mining boom of the future.
  
  All really good stuff is going to be in China.
- Why would they need to mine ore when we just left all of it laying around?
- We have left a lot of the metal we have mined easily accessible
  Following intelligences would probably have trouble with energy. Our infrastructure will have failed, and we have used all the easy to get coal and oil
  There may be enough left to teach them how to make a spinning generator and synchronous motor. I wonder how long the magnets will stay magnetic in permanent magnet motors

Reminds me of 'Service Model' by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Combo of Service Model and Children of Ruin (also by Adrian Tchaikovsky).
- Reminds me of "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi"

I see Salome and Paul are up to their usual shenanigans under the sea
- Came here for this. Thank you, well-read stranger!
- Bianca never stood a chance

If humanity is extinct what triggered the stupidfridge's message about orange juice? If humans aren't consuming it then who is?
- It was out of orange juice before the extinction.
- Raccoon, duh
- If humanity is extinct who is running the power plants?
- I don’t have a smart fridge, but my thermostat has to remind me over and over to replace the filter. It’ll just keep reminding me weekly until it’s done
- The last human in the house may have nearly finished the juice on their last day in the house. Or the water evaporated away leaving dried out pulp or powder

Someone is overestimating how long a modern appliance will last.
- Nah, they won't be able to do their fucking job but I'd bet every non-essential part will last. That washing machine craves telling it's dumb fuck user "D80" and then proceed to do nothing with the load.
  As long as that control board can get a couple watts it will sing its song to hopefully coax some poor fool into feeding it.
  
  I would wonder how many Terabytes of Data are being sent around in a fully-autonomous world without any human input.
- Given that raccoons baboons and octopus have developed sapiens and civilization in just 1000 years I do not think it's the most egregious part.
  Especially impressive for octopus who somehow had to develop fire, modern smelting processors, electronics, and high energy particle physics while living in an aquatic environment.

I've thought about this a lot, raccoons are 100% taking over after humans. They already dominate north america and almost conquered Germany. Once human control runs out Europe is fucked and they will eventually take over all of Eurasia.
- Oh please, if anyone it’s the dinosaurs coming back for round 2.
  Birds are everywhere, many birds are fucking smart and already using tools and doing maths, all they need is seed, they have prior experience. End of story, dinosaurs are back.
  
  Wouldn't it be like round 4 for dinosaurs?
  
  It goes without saying that the Emus will retake Australia.
  Since they're flightless, the rest of the world will be safe for a while. But when they form a navy or invent air travel, the rest of the world better watch out!
  Edit: LOL, I just noticed your instance. You know what I'm talking about. 😛
- They can cute their way into your house too
  
  My friend has recurring raccoons she feeds. Their little hands are so adorable. There’s a possum that pretends to be a raccoon. She humours him.
- Didn't Japan also import raccoons because of a TV show and they went fucking up ancient architecture
- Really depends on how far the climate spirals out of control. The long term issue is positive feedback loops - when the results of a system produce the conditions that aggravate that same system. So like, arctic permafrost melts and releases methane; methane acts as a greenhouse gas and accelerates global warming; warming makes arctic thaw faster; methane released at higher rate; planet warms faster, more melt, more methane, more heat, and so on.
  These kinds of things are already unleashed, so even if humans all went extinct RIGHT NOW and industry and such all came to a 100% full stop... the climate would still continue to destabalize on its own.
  So... when we reach a point that spells the end for humans, we'll be crossing the threshold for other mammals too... I don't see racoons or baboons surviving.
  Eventually, something will interrupt the feedback loop - i.e., the permafrost thaws completely and there's no more methane to release; but factor in all feedback loops and who knows how much heat we're talking - it could literally end with the Earth becoming molten.
  My money's on bugs. They'll be a ble to survive conditions that animals can't. And if bugs get wiped out too, there's potential stemming from things like tardigrades or other microbes.
  Or... we pump so much heat into our planet that even the most extreme of those die off too, leaving earth as just another completely lifeless rock floating through space.
  Life, uh, finds a way. Until it doesn't.
  
  The fear of feedback loops is reasonable, but may not be inevitable. The reason complex life exists on this planet, in part, is that the biosphere evolved to prevent runaway climate change. As the life forms grew more varied and complex, the tools for maintaining a viable atmosphere also increased. So the Precambrian extinctions are attributed to changes that extremely primitive life forms couldn't adapt to. Once life moved onto land, and trees, grasses, and flowers evolved, the number of ways for life to adapt went way up.
  It should say something that the most recent mass extinction event (I mean, before the anthropocene), was caused by a giant asteroid and a decade(s?)-long winter, rather than a change in solar luminosity or runaway GHG shift.
  With the advent of humans, this planet now has tools available for GHG and solar radiation management (SRM) that were unthinkable by nature. SRM with sulfur dioxide and air capture of CO₂ allow for the rapid reshaping of the climate almost as fast as fossil fuel combustion. As a result, the tools to stabilize the climate are available and their use is inevitable. The longer we wait to use them, the worse the problem gets and the more people are harmed, but given the unheard-of capacities that we've developed to stave off runaway global warming, I do not believe that humanity will choose extinction over GHG management and SRM.
  Most of these thoughts come from Gaian Bottleneck Theory, which you can read more about here. You may be right, but I'm hoping you are wrong (no offense).
- I think it’ll be crows

I demand more information on the Bronze Age raccoons

We can hope.

When will my library have this book?

Get some Werner Herzog for it and I’m in.
Feelgood dystopian sci-fi for misanthropes should be a thing if it isn’t already.
- Well there is that cat game.