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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I have had two grandparents die after having Alzheimer's for long periods of time. It's odd because it's like watching someone die in slow motion and when the body does eventually die people often look on it as a relief because the "person" you knew inside had actually faded away a long time ago. It's like a song fading to static versus just stopping.

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"It's like a song fading to static versus just stopping."

Great analogy, yet also one which may eventually be lost to the mists of time. Much like "disk" icons for "save", younger folks today may have no reference point for what 'radio static' is, or may certainly not in a few years. Between internet radio, self tuning radios, spotify/ipods and satellite radio, "radio static" isn't something I've actively heard myself in many years. Haven't seen a tube TV picture fade away in to a glowing dot in decades either. :/

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Is that just a complicated way of saying blue?

No, it's black/white/grey and cloudy. Maybe you're thinking of modern televisions that cut out to a solid color screen, usually blue by default?

Agreed, the static was back in the good old CRT days:

https://www.google.com/search?q=tv+static&tbm=isch

jgramhamc is referencing a William Gibson line from a cyberpunk book. The line is dated because kids think an untuned TV channel is blue. Old people[1] like us recognise the metaphor[2] for what it is. Other perhaps anacronistic bits in the book include people in cabs getting faxes sent to the cab which are printed on cheap paper.

(Although I prefer to think that this is a description of an alternate future, not our own future extrapolated, which neatly does away with worries about fax paper).

This comment is a long way of saying ThatsTheJoke.png

[1] sorry jgrahamc!

[2] or analogy.

>It's like a song fading to static...

Nicely put. These songs always sadden me. :(

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