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Kurt Vonnegut's House Is Not Haunted
- yawpitch 3y agoInteresting how this title remains perfectly true if you replace “Kurt Vonnegut” with literally any other, potentially less interesting, human’s name.
- mohaine 3y agoEven better, just drop the person name entirely.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoSomething tells me one would have to read the article to understand why the headline is like that, as opposed to take it as a literal statement. But this is HN, and we neither read past the headline nor allow for non-literal interpretation of things, so I will just sit here and nod in agreement.
- klyrs 3y agoAs if I was going to read an entire book about a cradle, whether or not it belonged to a cat... But I kid, of course. I read that, and this rather cute article about an author I adored as a teenager. The house isn't haunted, but... well, I won't spoil it.
- lapetitejort 3y agoI would pity the poor ghost of Kurt Vonnegut as I'm sure he would get absolutely no rest what with all his fans asking to be possessed or to have books dropped on their head.
- sillywalk 3y agoSo it goes.
- gmfawcett 3y agoVonnegutian catch-phrases always get an upvote from me. :)
- EPWN3D 3y agoBut is Kurt Honnegut's house vaunted? Sources say yes.
- jojobas 3y agoSometime jaunted too.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoBut regularly flaunted. Owners say of course.
- poisonarena 3y agoreddit comments..
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago[flagged]
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoOh noes, BAN! Didn't you know it's against this site's policy to compare it to Reddit? And if you point this policy out, you'll get flagged for THAT! Let's see if I'll get flagged for pointing out that you'll get flagged. We have some real insecure infants here.
- Apocryphon 3y agoArticle mentions Player Piano!!! Completely underrated Vonnegut work, it is a great depiction of what a fully-automated dystopia might look like. The unemployed living on a UBI dole, engaging in undignified menial labor "reclaiming" scrap infrastructure. (Though at least they all have free healthcare in the book, something that seems too good to be true in real life.) The creative arts are both strictly licensed and all content must adhere to the calculated tests determined by the machines. Even for the elites, a sort of corrosive credentialism runs amok has taken over, with everyone having multiple secondary degrees. Also he somehow predicts the over-commercialism and optimization of college football.
- slothtrop 3y agoQuite prescient. Realistically I expect the dominant activity to be consumption, and creating/selling useless artisanal crafts to one another. Notwithstanding cheap energy, the red tape could definitely be heavy to build anything of material consequence, particularly if we charge the responsibility of dolling out resources and capital to the government.
- pvh 3y agoOf course not. Kurt is up in Heaven now.
- JALTU 3y agoGuys, it’s not Kurt! It’s Billy, Billy Pilgrim. So it goes.
- jasoneckert 3y agoWhile Kurt Vonnegut's house may not be haunted, I'm certain that if you spent the night there, you'd wake up refreshed and hungry for a Breakfast of Champions.