> Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
- Exodus 7:1-12 (NIV)
Many moons ago I had a girlfriend who worked on an nationally broadcast afternoon show where they often had guest chefs demonstrating dishes, so I would come home from my thankless PhD work to eat Michelin-starred food from a lunchbox. Overall not so bad.
Not sure what the quote has to do with anything here, but it's a as good an opportunity as ever to say that large parts of the "Old Testament" draw most of its inspiration from the code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"), the Epic of Gilgamesh (which gave us, notably, the story of the deluge, and the dark role of the serpent) and Ancient Egypt, to which it owes, among many others, the concept of eternal life and the idea that man was made in God's image.
To be "in God's image" was one of the titles of Pharaoh.
And about the staff: early depictions of Jesus often have him holding a magic wand [0], as he was considered by followers and ennemies alike to be a magician. The "Three Wise Men" or "Three Kings" (?!) that show up at his birth are just "magi" (magicians) in the original text [1].
"Magi" were priests of Zoraster. It is true that our current word for magic is derived from this root but that doesn't mean that the text is saying they were _magicians_.
That's the etymology of the word, but there is no indication in the gospel of Matthew (the only one to even mention this) that it's a reference to Persia.
That would be like saying when anyone who mentions "algorithm" is really talking about Uzbekistan, because al-Ḵwārizmī means 'the man of Ḵwārizm' (now Khiva).
AFAIU, in Ancient Greek culture Magi were often considered like Plato's Philosopher Kings. Greeks didn't have an accurate understanding of Zoroastrianism or the structure of Persian government, but for some reason they saw Persian leaders, and Magi in particular, as possessing a synthesis of political, religious, philosophical and scientific virtues. For example, they thought Persian leaders' grasp of astronomy meant the laws they promulgated were what we might call today, science-based. Magi represented idealized leadership rooted in reason, similar to the way today people of one country like to point at some other country du jour as an exemplar of rational governance, especially when critiquing their own government or society.
Aristotle and others specifically said that the Magi did not practice metaphysical sorcery. They believed the Magi could, for example, divine the future, but doing so through their study of astronomy (i.e. their science-y astrological knowledge).
The biblical account of the Magi and the star they followed perfectly matches the mythos of Persian Magi in Greek culture. The story itself tells the reader not only that those rational leaders over yonder were convinced about the importance of Jesus, but that they knew because "science" revealed it to them.
I don't think there was a distinction between science, magic and religion (or rather, cults, since there were no organized religions in the modern sense).
Well, modern science wasn't a thing, per se; would have been part of natural philosophy and not well delineated. But philosophy, religion, and magic were broadly speaking understood as distinct, similar to today, at least from the perspective of the learned, and notwithstanding some esoteric cults (which also exist today). This is fairly obvious from the works that have survived, from Plato, Lucian (Syrian satirist), and many others, because they distinguish them similar to how we do today. Even atheists likely were also somewhat common, though it definitely wasn't something discussed as heavily as today. Plato specifically and literally mentions atheism--in Laws he says it's a typical phase for young adults, though it may be more fairly understood today as shirking, loose disbelief, or agnosticism. It's a fair deduction that Lucian was an atheist as we understand that term, and the popularity of his work strongly suggests atheism, or at least skepticism of religion and magic, were widespread.
Point being, while our particular categories aren't perfect fits for the ancient and classical worlds, the general human and cultural dynamics were quite similar. They weren't unsophisticated rubes blind to their own ignorance; not much more, if at all, than we are today. What really distinguishes us is our wealth, and how a much larger fraction of our society has the opportunity to study and debate ideas like patricians and philosophers of yore.
I don't know about ancient philosophers, but for ordinary folks there was no distinction between a religious scholar and a scientist (both were learned men who read books). This still happens today, when many people mix history and genetics with religion and politics.
If you have some relevant references that would be helpful.
The two concepts were often one in the same—a "magician" was simply any art that "we" considered to be not in keeping with "our" religious practices. The label was slung about freely for some thousand years.
There are some philosophers who attempted to divide miracles from magic. They tended to classify the latter as esoteric science confined entirely to the natural world with no supernatural elements, and the former as invoking the aid of some confirmed divine being. When one considers souls and demiurges to be part of the natural world, however, even this most imaginative delineation is an inherently blurry one.
These depictions can probably be dismissed, just as any other depiction of Jesus. That painting has been made long after his death. The only clues to his likeness are deductions from biblical texts and historical context. For example, he most likely didn‘t have long hair (1. Corinthians 11), and he also wasn‘t European looking (should be obvious).
> he also wasn‘t European looking (should be obvious).
Spaniards, Egyptians, Greeks and Levantines all look very similar and Jesus was definitely of the Levant. I hope you won’t deny Spaniards and Greeks are European.
In this context, "European" means "white." Jesus probably did not look like the bearded white hippie commonly depicted in Western (primarily American and British) iconography.
Spaniards, Egyptians, Greeks and Levantines may or may not look similar (seems a bit broad, like the geographical definition of "European") but they also don't often look like "white people." Especially not in Egypt or the Levant.
Just because you never heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen. For example, Irish people were heavily discriminated against in the US and were considered at one point to not be "white"
Generally the matter is one of blood purity, as with all racism. Southern Spain, Italy, and Greece were all occupied at one time by Arabs, which contributed certain hair textures, skin tones, and facial features to the local gene pool. Those with no knowledge of history or civilization tend to be terrified of acknowledging the artistic and cultural contributions of al-Andalus and the Ottoman Empire. As you probably know, the northern reaches of Italy are more German than Romance, on account of those pesky invasive Lombards.
Of course the true absurdity of all this comes when two people from the same parents end up with different physiognomical and racial labels; since these traits are rarely as simple as idealized Mendelian characteristics, it is entirely possible for them to be passed on a couple of generations before re-coalescing. (The case of Summer on The Sopranos comes to mind—while her parents both have fairer skin than she does, the result is otherwise not all that unrealistic.)
>As an European, I find the definition of European that excludes Spaniards super weird.
Because you are, as I suspect many people will, intentionally misreading the context of my comment.
I am implying that the use of "European" herein does not literally refer to the geographic region known as "Europe," but rather that in the context of a statement about the likely physical appearance of Jesus it should be understood as a statement about race and ethnicity whereby "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white," as is represented in Western depictions of Jesus, particularly where traits like skin color, eye color and hair color are concerned.
1.) Look, Spaniards are Europeans by any reasonable definition. They are part of Western Europe.
2.) Traditional western depiction of Jesus looking like Spaniards would be no exception. Traditional western depiction of Jesus tend to look sorta kinda like locals do.
3.) Europeans do have wild range of eye colors and hair colors. The eye color and hair being some specific colors even for whites is weird, because even whitey whites have all kind of hair colors and eye colors.
> "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white,
No it is not and to the extend it is, it is absurd whistleblowing attempt - the one that ends up redefine Western Europe as a place that excludes Spaniards.
99.99% of the population of the Mediterranean basin at the time Jesus lived were white, almost certainly more given that the trans-Saharan slave trade was a creature of the camel and post dated the Arab conquest of North Africa.
“White” didn’t exist at that time and the people of the Mediterranean certainly didn’t think of themselves as one homogeneous group. The various peoples had prejudices about each other which only consolidated into a hierarchy when the trans-Atlantic slave trade needed to legally define who couldn’t be property. Prejudices by, for example, the English or American against Greeks or Italians lasted into the 20th century.
There are at least 2 ancient pagan flood stories: The Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrathasis Epic, both originating in ancient Mesopotamia. Because both sources predate the source of Noah's story, many scholars have concluded that Noah's flood story was borrowed from these. However, consider the following objections:
- When a historical event is retold to different audiences over time, the story generally becomes more mythical and embellished, and poetry and exalted language are used. It is the opposite when Noah's and the pagan stories are compared. Noah's story is simpler and told in a straightforward narrative, while the pagan stories are told in a more mythical and embellished style.
- Noah's story is monotheistic, and the characters are ethically moral. The pagan stories are polytheistic, and the characters are ethically capricious. The pagan gods are implied to be selfish, jealous of each other and lie to each other. Moreover, in the Atrathasis Epic the gods discover that due to the flood, they have wiped out their only source of food (people's sacrifices) implying that they depend on humans.
- The shape of the ark in Noah's story is the only one that can be considered seaworthy, being rectangular and in dimensions similar to more modern cargo barges. The pagan stories describe an ark that is round or cubic, which would make an ark less stable for floatation and also more vulnerable to damage/overturning by wave impact.
It is therefore more likely that Noah's story with its later source is faithful to the actual historical event; while the pagan stories are versions modified to suit the polytheistic religion/culture of their audiences. At the same time, it is remarkable that the pagan stories confirm that a history changing flood did occur.
How is it ethical to drown every single human, including children, because you're displeased with what they do?
And how is it ethical to also destroy "the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground" which have nothing whatsoever to do with human wickedness??
This is exactly what a Bond villain would say. Today, Bond villains are usually considered the acme of evil.
While the serpent had a dark role in the Epic of Gilgamesh too, it is extremely sad how the Genesis has twisted completely the beautiful story of how Shamkhat has civilized the wild Enkidu, whom God had made from clay (by showing him the pleasures of a city, as opposed to the harsh life in the wilderness: eating bread, drinking beer, being massaged with oil and making love), into the ugly story of how Eve has committed the unforgivable sin with Adam, of seeking knowledge on par with God, and her descendants shall be for ever punished for it.
I don't know if it's sad; it's a different story, it's a kind of riff on the same themes.
In Genesis III, it's necessary for Adam and Eve to acquire knowledge and leave the garden, because in so doing they have sex and make children. While in the garden, they didn't know they were naked, and presumably didn't have sex or reproduced.
Also, when God finds out, he fist asks the man, who accuses "the woman you gave me". So then God turns to the woman, who says the snake deceived her. But here God stops his inquiry. We know the snake can talk because he talked to the woman, so why didn't God ask the snake why he did what he did?
An interpretation is that the snake ("the most clever of all animals God had made") is in fact God's instrument. He works for the boss.
It is a different story but which is without any doubt derived from the Enkidu story and modified to suit different conceptions about the role of women in society and about what is valuable for mankind.
While in the Enkidu story the role of the woman was positive, because she has taught Enkidu about the advantages of civilized life, making him leave the wilderness where he lived since being created by God, in the Genesis story Eve was despised for the same thing, i.e. for teaching Adam more than his creator did.
I certainly side with the anonymous author of the Old Babylonian story about Enkidu and not with the editor of the Genesis book who has transformed it.
Like Pandora's box, it's a just so story about why women are the source of all mens' problems and why patriarchy is just and necessary. And why women have pain in childbirth. And why people are afraid of snakes. And why we die. But mostly about why women suck (from the point of view of ancient Hebrew culture.)
And that attitude transfers to Christianity in 1 Timothy when Paul says women should not be allowed to teach or have authority over men, but should remain quiet because it was Eve who was deceived by the serpent, and who then deceived Adam.
Yes but in Genesis 3, 20 (at the end of this very story), it is said: "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living." That's not dismissive at all. It can be argued that Paul brought his own prejudices to a text which was much less prejudiced than he was.
If truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive, this is a good thing (that the Old Testament has similarities to other major works). Implies a kind of evolutionary algorithm for truth. Likely implies these stories are more true because they’re more tried and tested. Societies who believed them became strong.
If truth is about repeated experimentation or journalistic records (a very new concept in history of writing - less than 500 years), then perhaps this is of concern.
I accept both definitions, but when they’re in conflict, the former tends to be more end-to-end, while the latter tends to overfit to the moment. Mostly because data is scarce and life is a very complex distributed system. On the other hand, the former changes slowly while the latter perhaps keeps up with the pace of change.
Except the point of life is probably to thrive more than to collect a list of facts. So when in conflict, I lean towards the former. Personal choice tho. I expect most of HN leans the other way.
> If truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive
This is 'metaphorical truth' to be precise.
But it's only a part of the virality of memes, not the whole.
Propagation can occur not just due to usefulness, but to other factors such as simplicity/replicability, human susceptibility / 'key in a lock' etc.
If survival was purely metaphorical truth, then all surviving lifeforms would be 'the most true' (including viruses being 'true' to us). Which can be argued, at a philosophical level - But then we've expanded the definition so much as to lose relevant meaning at the pragmatic level.
Nice comment! I had forgotten about metaphorical truth. Sent me on a nice rabbit hole.
I think 'metaphorical truth' is correct but slightly too narrow. Pragmatic truth includes metaphorical truth but is slightly wider.
And while I agree with your assertion in the short run, I'm inclined to doubt its correctness in the long run. Most things eventually have consequences.
I gave up tablets and pills of all kinds a long time ago now, but, at the time, if god himself had popped up to tell me something, it wouldn't have been a huge surprise.
That’s true, but the article also explains it isn’t nefarious; she had a stalker (after past horrible trauma), and was terrified, so replaced the live audiences with extras. It just happened to work so well it caught on and became a mainstay of sitcoms after that.
The Academy Awards can’t even trust the extras to fill empty seats in the audience, so they use lawyers and accountants who have already signed NDAs with the Academy for their day jobs.
Still happening in 2022, though hopefully the outrage and changes after this incident avoids most future ones. Even the description in the article is really sad.
Wasn't there some horrible story about the number of animals killed in the filming of Homeward Bound or some similar movie? I simply cannot comprehend the callousness of people towards animals back then. I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that. What the heck?
> I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that.
There’s a weird disconnect where people ignore or are wilfully ignorant of cruelty to animals in industrial food production but are sensitive to it in virtually every other context. I saw a woman the other day who was tending to an injured pigeon and had called animal welfare people to come tend to it. Meanwhile, millions of chickens live in appalling conditions and die horrible deaths en masse.
I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from. I was the same for most of my life but a few years ago, I started thinking about the animals I was eating and then I couldn’t eat them any more.
I don’t begrudge people their compassion. A few nights ago I went outside to put some stuff on the barbecue and my wife was in the backyard, concerned for the fate of a female cardinal that had flown into our sunroom window. It was stunned and couldn’t fly. Its mate was worriedly flitting through nearby bushes. “That’s so sad,” my wife said. “Yes,” I agreed, and then I put her skewers of meat on the barbecue.
It is mostly just proximity and framing. A hurt wild animal is alive and right in front of you. Meat from the grocery store is a prepackaged product that isn’t mentally associated with the bloody process behind the scenes required to get it there. The commercial aspect is pretty dependent on this distancing.
Case-in-point: I once stayed in a small town in Morocco for a few weeks. There wasn’t a grocery store nearby, just a market, and if you wanted chicken, they killed it in front of you. Needless to say, being directly confronted with the process…I didn’t eat meat the entire time.
Exactly this. Meat is a huge source of nutrition. Even though in our modern western society, we might not "need" to eat meat, but it's a hearty, plentiful, accessible protein and fat that stores well and can be easily moved and replicated quickly. It's simply much more practical still to keep eating meat in much of the world. I'm not going to go into the arguments about our biology either, but I think it's safe to say that our bodies are also very finely tuned to eat and process organic (from organisms) meat and use it as fuel. Sure, you can feed your cat a vegan diet or whatever and replace all of the vitamins, but there is no denying that the more "natural" way would be to just eat the meat and be done with it.
Many of the arguments for veganism come alongside ideas for better animal welfare, but the two are not mutually exclusive. The only reason we don't eat grandma after she dies is because it's culturally unacceptable. We can apply more respect and reverence to meat production without stopping entirely or pretending that the benefits of eating meat don't exist.
Eating Grandma is actually a really good way to get parasites and prion diseases, so there's more to it than just cultural acceptability. The reason we don't risk parasites from farmed meat is because it's dewormed and treated and inspected and cleaned.
In the developed world and large parts of the developing world, meat is consumed for entirely hedonic reasons (ie. for pleasure). I would not consider this materially different from killing for sports or entertainment.
> if you wanted chicken, they killed it in front of you. Needless to say, being directly confronted with the process…I didn’t eat meat the entire time.
The one time I had opportunity to kill a bird with my own hands and eat it, I ate it with far greater respect and less waste than any meat I'd ever even before or since. I wish there were an efficient way to bring the consumer closer to the animal in everyday Western society. I doubt that we would consume less meat, but we would certainly have more respect for it.
To make it worse: it's not millions of chickens, that live in appaling conditions and die horrible deaths.
We kill around 50 billion chickens every year.
That is 137 million chickens every day. Chickens that are used for eating are alive for around 28 to 42 days. That are 3.8 to 5.7 billion chicken on any day.
The numbers might be slightly off, because chicken raised for eggs are alive longer (around a year).
Chickens bred for eating ("meat birds") often can't live much past when they'd be slaughtered without massive health issues. They've been turned into freaks.
One whale takes much more time and energy than the equivalent food that comes from chicken. Much, much, much more efficient to eat chicken. Whales would entirely disappear if harvested at the same similar rates calories consumed.
Mencius, a thinker from over 300 BC, once said: "A gentleman, in his attitude towards animals, having seen them alive, cannot bear to see them die; having heard their cries, cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore, a gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen."
The background of this statement is as follows: King Xuan of Qi once saw a man leading an ox to be slaughtered. Moved by the ox's sorrowful appearance, he was deeply distressed and ordered the butcher to spare the ox. However, the butcher informed him that the ox was intended for sacrificial rites. It must be noted that in ancient times, the two most important affairs of the state were sacrifices and warfare. Sparing the ox would have violated the moral principles of the time. In desperation, King Xuan came up with the idea: "Why not replace this ox with a sheep?" Later, the more he reflected on it, the more absurd he found his own decision. He then sought advice from Mencius, who uttered this statement in response.
Mencius believed that what distinguishes humans from beasts is humanity, meaning that humans treat all things with kindness, but human goodness is limited. Therefore, a gentleman practices kindness by helping those in front of him, unable to extend it to all.
"Cruelty" is a rhetoric word because its meaning is caught between the classical "deliberate causing of pain" and the new "neglect, indifference towards another's pain" and of course, that discrepancy is fully exploited. What livestock beasts suffer is purely for practical reasons.
>I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from
1. Empathy is a base emotional response triggered by nearby animals, not a rational/moral one.
2. Empathy is also an evolutionary tool that "happened" in (some) humans to help survive situations that require some sort of cooperation, like harsh winters. Anthropomorphization is an associated bug, not a feature.
2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people.
3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important.
4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed.
In essence, I don't disagree with points 1 and 2. But the conclusions that you draw from these could be used to justify things which, hopefully, you would find morally objectionable. It is not because empathy is not a rational response that we should not try to use rationality to shape our decisions. There are pretty of other feelings/behaviours that we choose to consider bad and worthy of punishment, regardless of the fact they are useful evolutionary tool.
Unfortunately this comment is much too short to make the full argument, but the video I linked does a great job. I was wholly convinced by it, and though I'm not vegetarian, I do try to source my meat from places with more humane conditions.
> 2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people.
This is just untrue, hundreds of millions of rural South Asians are vegetarian.
> 3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important.
Everyone has a brain. Both vegetarian and omnivore groups have their share of geniuses and fools. Meat was important as a calorie source but it has many drawbacks in modern society totally unrelated to animal ethics; cancer risk, inefficient land use, methane production, etc.
> 4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed.
This sounds like manifest destiny rhetoric and deserves just as much consideration.
> Meat was important as a calorie source but it has many drawbacks in modern society totally unrelated to animal ethics; cancer risk, inefficient land use, methane production, etc.
I think the most important drawbacks which actually threaten modern society are deforestation and zoonoses. Both can be largely avoided by raising only insects for meat, which reduces water and land use by 80%, and CO2 emissions even more if feed is mostly food waste. It is however a hard sell and has to be hidden in products in order to be accepted by consumers.
In my understanding it is mostly a cultural thing that makes people reject insects. I am unaware of any objective measure by which are insects are terrible foods.
If I heard somewhere that insects are good people food, I certainly wouldn't go repeating that assertion in public without having tried eating insects at least once.
It is unethical profess a belief in public, especially an unusual belief, but neglect to test that belief when a test would be inexpensive and straightforward.
It is also unethical to propose a radical change to society with only very tenuous basis in reality: people should be able to demonstrate knowledge (and not just knowledge about what beliefs will prove popular or fashionable) before they engage in public policy discussions. If the person I'm discussing with hasn't tried eating insects at least once (preferably a lot more often) he is doing us all a disservice in even engaging in a public discussion of the topic unless perhaps he has deep professional-level knowledge of the nutritional value of insects and the effect of nutrients and anti-nutrients on human health (and "insects are high in protein" alone doesn't begin to be enough knowledge).
Trolling is widely believed to be anti-social. It is approximately just as anti-social to try to whip up a public discussion of some radical social or economic change or some radical change in our daily lives with as little grounding in reality as this discussion of insects as food.
> It is also unethical to propose a radical change to society with only very tenuous basis in reality: people should be able to demonstrate knowledge (and not just knowledge about what beliefs will prove popular or fashionable) before they engage in public policy discussions. If the person I'm discussing with hasn't tried eating insects at least once (preferably a lot more often) he is doing us all a disservice in even engaging in a public discussion of the topic unless perhaps he has deep professional-level knowledge of the nutritional value of insects and the effect of nutrients and anti-nutrients on human health (and "insects are high in protein" alone doesn't begin to be enough knowledge).
That is a strange position. The most that I could contribute is anecdotal evidence anyway. The nutrient composition and the safety of insect-derived food has been rigorously studied, for example in: https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2023.8009
I think it would be nice to have socialized healthcare in my country. I have never been covered by socialized healthcare. Am I trolling by expressing that opinion because I have a PPO plan through my employer?
There are no ways[1] to obtain info relevant to public policy discussions about a nationwide healthcare system anywhere near as easy as, "the net is full of misinformation, so I should at least try eating insects to make sure I even can without getting sick".
[1] Or more precisely I havent been able to think of any ways.
If the little bird was tasty it might have gone on the bbq too.
We humans are capable of empathizing with different creatures differently. Some people have their empathy dial set up so high that they anthropomorphize plants. Some have it set so low they're psychopaths. Most functional people are in the middle.
Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you.
What do you mean, in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US.
Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter and where something less severe, but practice is here and not going anywhere.
> " in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US."
Not really the same as systematically bringing into existence a species with behaviors you find objectionable, keeping them in your proximity so you can experience said behaviors, and then slaughtering them with the excuse that they are all assholes is it?
> "Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter"
When you say that roosters cross this line do you mean with respect to their behavior towards you? I'm guessing this can't be that bad since you're much more powerful than they?
Or do you mean towards other chickens? If so, and if it's really that bad, then surely the best thing is to just not bring them into existence in the first place (not systematically breeding them with the intent of slaughtering them)?
Whether you feel empathy to someone/something or not, is really quite different from whether you have moral obligations to it. I do not think I have moral obligations to a chicken, but then again, I think everyone agrees the chicken has no moral obligations to me - jokes about asshole roosters aside, I don't think you really think the rooster has wronged you by being as it is.
Maybe moral obligations can be one-way, but then only temporarily as I see it. Someone who's sleepwalking, or a baby, don't really have moral obligations to me, but they will when they wake up / grow up.
> I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from
Much easier to sympathise with a live animal that looks like an animal than with a brown rectangle covered in sauce. Also much easier to sympathise with the plight of one entity rather than millions: a GoFundMe for a relatable charity case rather than helping the billions of people worldwide who need it
> I simply cannot comprehend the callousness of people towards animals back then.
Just go to rural areas, where livestock farming is a common activity and people are confronted with animals as part of their daily life and you will see that animals are not always treated kindly.
For example, they may treat live chicken like you treat a KFC menu. It is food. When they want to eat chicken, they pick one up in the coop and kill it with the same detachment as you picking up your menu at the counter. Which is ironic because that farmer is probably treating his chicken way better than the ones destined for KFC.
Wild animals are just pests, if they cause damage to the crops and livestock, or game if edible. Dogs, horses, etc... are for work, guarding, herding, etc... they get some love, but they are nothing like pets.
In that context, animals are indeed more like "things". They still get some consideration, but so are things. Most people care for their cars for instance, they want it stay in good shape for as long as possible, same thing for animals.
I think the reason we care more about animals now is because as city dwellers, we don't really live with them, we have pets, we go to zoos or watch cute videos, so we have some unnatural empathy for them. Until they cause problems that is. Empathy for rats tend to go down rather quickly for people with a rat infestation.
Most people think they have developed their principles with reflection and consideration, but in my view most moral principles are post-facto rationalisations used to justify whatever-it-is the person wanted to do. So, excuses to justify the already decided upon action, rather than anything to determine the parameters of action, eg 'the money was too good', 'it smelled so good', etc.
Anyway, in answer to why people were callous back then and are so concerned now, I'd say nothing has changed, except what people view the norm to be. What seemed like 'callousness' was possibly considered 'practical' (or 'unsquemish'). For most moral relativists, whether they project 'practicality' or 'kindly concern' is simply an output of what they understand their social norms to be, rather than anything based in genuinely considered and applied principles.
If you travel around the world a bit, ie more remote parts of south east Asia, you will see this attitude towards animals is often still well and alive.
I remember reading about a man being accused of mistreating his donkey in somewhere like 1835 Brittan. The case went to a court, but I'm fuzzy on the details.
Western YouTubers often say something like this article title whenever they get a large amount of food for a review or something. Rhett and Link say that almost every video.
We also have "No one was harmed in the making of this video" and similar, which has become so prevalent that its absence is sometime used to infer that someone was indeed injured or killed in the clip.
> I've seen clips on Reddit where animals are harmed for engagement. Usually "nature is brutal" type clips, where one animal kills another.
Social media is like TV and cinema before regulations. It is full of cruelty, and all kinds of abuse to animals but also to other people. (Recently there was a death related to this).
Civilization does not happens without effort from citizens and lawmakers.
When Instagram introduced reels, I started to get exposed to these weird and horrible clips of people 'rescuing' sick and abused animals, and begging for donations. I don't know for certain, but there's lots of clues that these accounts are engineering these encounters. Seeing these clips is genuinely distressing, and it's hard to make Instagram stop showing them. Just another way social media is causing real harm to add to the list, I guess.
As noted sometimes the staff can't eat it, heck sometimes you might not want to eat it. That has to happen pretty often.
I worked at a company with a particularly sensitive HR team who would host pizza parties now and then, but they'd only order "weird" pizzas and I guess they liked it, but they were quite miffed when people stopped coming / didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
They were really miffed when my boss ordered our team pizza on their pizza day too, suddenly very concerned about waste...
Many years ago, I was on a training course, all typical engineers, and the guy who had organized it, a foodie, had ordered the day's spread from a very expensive and fancy catering place. Skeptical engineers eyeing the spread, which included such things as "cold orange soup"; one of them said "I should have brought my rabbit".
The message was clearly received. Next day and subsequent ones, an equally high quality spread of actual engineer food was tabled. But with no rabbit to eat it up, I think a lot of the first day's spread was wasted.
This was during the pre-2K tech boom years (this dates me!) Really fancy catering at (my) work is a distant memory now.
Man this might be unfair of me but I find that “rabbit food” attitude intolerably childish. Why the fuck should ‘cold’ or ‘orange’ or ‘soup’ be disqualifying attributes as far as a succulent meal goes - ignorance of toasted carrot ginger soup is the only thing I can think of, and I have so very little patience for ignorance of food.
Stop being a baby and put it in your mouth already for chrissake. You might learn something.
Vegan cheese is an abomination. Even if one is vegan they shouldn't eat that crap, just eat something else instead. You can make much better vegan food if you focus on trying to make vegetables good versus torturing them into a facsimile of animal products.
US cheese-in-tube is an abomination (I’m French ;-) ) and my Italian neighbor thinks the same about pinanle-fat-dough pizzas.
As for every product type there’s good and bad. I love this one[0], it’s made by a bunch of artisan chiefs near my city. Ingredients: soy, cajun nuts, ferments. Probable process: cook, smash, add ferment, wait.
Beside tradition offense there’s no reasons to restrain ourselves torturing-with-ferments lipid products that didn’t came out from udders. Fermented products are delicious and cooking has always co-evolved with technology, product availability and customs, why should someone restrain from experimenting?
I share the ultra processed disdain but to be honest there’s as much UPF in "fascimile" that some of their counterpart. That non-vegan-milk cheese has 16 ingredients in it[1].
The huge majority of cheese consumed in the US isn't any better than vegan cheese. And yes, the US does have good cheese! It's just a tiny sliver of all cheese consumed.
I think the larger reason is that fake cheese is cheaper.
In parts of Europe restaurants are allowed to sell it as cheese. That isn't true for frozen supermarket pizza, where regulations force to either declare it as fake cheese or use real one.
Most restaurants use fake cheese out of price concerns.
They're normal vegetables, but not normal pizza toppings. Just look at the menu offerings of any big US chain pizza place, deviating from that without warning is going to cause disappointment.
I'm from California, can't speak to the rest of the US... To me all except broccoli are perfectly normal pizza toppings. Not toppings I would expect to see on a Dominos pizza, but definitely to be expected on a "veggie" pizza from any independent pizza place.
I guess that counts as "normal," but that's fast food, where picky children's tastes rule. Predictability and therefore high-volume turnover of ingredients is paramount.
Eh, I find vegan cheese very variable. I never seek it out but experience it relatively often. Sometimes it's tasty and chewy. Sometimes it's a bland monstrosity. I don't know why.
If you haven't make shakshuka yet, it's worth a shot. It's one of my favorite places to use lots and lots of feta. It's not normally vegan since it's topped with an egg, but that's easy enough to remove and forget. Eat it with toasted pita.
You don't have to! You can just say it's imported from a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet, so there's no canonically correct way to spell it.
It's probably a lie but it doesn't sound like one!
Though Arabic has quite a few letters you won't find in the Latin alphabet, all the letters in the word shakshukah map perfectly to Latin letters. But put an H on the end, and quarter-pronounce it.
I thought I liked vegan pizzas, having only tasted the restaurant varieties which either don't have cheese or have some sort of savoury dressing instead. Then I tried a vegan frozen pizza, and I found out what people hate about them. Some gray slimy substance which apparently someone, somewhere, thought was similar to melted cheese.
Whole Foods is an offender here. They were selling a slice of fresh vegan pizza, which I assumed just had vegetables on it. Instead it had this obscene goopy “vegan cheese” that had more in common with mochi than cheese. (Yes, you can find pizzas with mochi on it in Japan, but they don’t call it cheese!)
I don’t get the trend of vegan restaurants etc selling fake meat products. If you want vegan food you’re probably better off going to an Indian restaurant where they actually know how to cook without meat.
More places should have compost recycling that includes food waste. That gives food waste somewhere to go that isn't the trash. And it turns yard and food waste into compost so organics stay in the environment.
I don't understand why people will have these stupid preconceptions about food which normally you unlearn during childhood. Complaining about food without tasting it is stupid and childish. Of course if you try something and it doesn't suit your tastes then it's fine to complain, but dismissing something offhand because you aren't familiar with it is rather narrow-minded.
Restaurants (at least in the US) have very strict standards about how long you can keep something at room temperature before you have to throw it away. Those standards are extremely conservative, and lead to a lot of food waste, but if I were on the staff I'd at least want to keep an eye on how long something has been sitting out. Those standards have just been beaten into me.
You also see that on a lot of fictional TV shows with dining scenes. Often nobody actually puts anything in their mouths. It was made hours ago while you were off shooting something else, and still more time while they got costumes, lights, makeup, etc. right (and for several takes). By the time film is rolling it has gotten quite gross.
(Assuming it was even food in the first place. Fake food often looks better and doesn't go off.)
> Related, where they're drinking coffee from a disposable cup, you can almost always tell it's empty by how they handle it.
NCIS has a running gag about that. In the show they invariably drink... some mysterious caffeinated product, I don't know if I'd call it coffee, with a straw. It always makes a slurping sound like the cup is nearly empty. Even when just handed a fresh cup.
That show is often lampooned for the silly "two idiots one keyboard" scene, but I am convinced they are doing dumb stuff like that on purpose.
This is the answer. The food is perfectly fine. It's fresh, there's catering on set, and it can be replaced as needed, unless it's something super unusual.
BUT if you eat the food in one shot you need to eat it in all the shots for continuity, so you can edit it together. Get ready to start barfing after 40 big bites of the same damn thing.
If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
I assumed the drink cups were empty/opaque so there was no continuity problem. If you splice together different shots, but the liquid level bounces around, it could be distracting.
> If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
If I were a prop-master (is that what it is called?) I've always thought that I'd just have a bag of plaster of paris handy. Then 30 minutes before going on set just dump some in the prop-cup with some water.
Sets quickly, density is about the same, physics of the cup should look convincing. Probably best for disposable cups though.
Scott Reeder (who is a prop master and makes short videos on about his craft on various platforms) has weighed down disposable cups a couple different ways. One was dropping a mini water bottle into the cup, and another was dyed food grade silicone (for when the shot required a cup with the lid off).
> If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
Sometimes they are colored water, so you cannot drink but it still looks like a cocktail. Or at least that's how it was on the few movie sets I've been at.
One thing I noticed over and over, from cheap sitcoms to expensive blockbusters - when actors sip, they have liquid, but clearly the movement of glass to mouth is 'dishonest', as in too fast or too low for any liquid to actually make it into mouth. No swallowing movement of throat neither.
I guess its subconscious - they know they are not going to actually drink it, they focus their mind on other aspects of acting, so this part leaves them not faking it well.
If you see it once, you can't stop noticing it elsewhere afterwards, beware.
Quick and very fussy question I'm hoping someone with native-level Japanese could comment on.
My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as "the staff enjoyed it later". It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse "ate", and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ("deliciously"). I would expect plain old "ate" if they used 食べました.
Of course, I'm not a professional translator or native speaker! It’s possible I'm over-indexing on the textbook knowledge I have of the language and in practice, to native Japanese eyes and ears, the things I think I'm seeing aren't really there.
English doesn't have rules as clear cut as Japanese's for politeness—especially nuances! I think it's fine to translate it to "ate".
In turn, I'm not a native English speaker, but in the dictionary I searched in, "enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat", whereas いただく definitely is—albeit a very polite one[1].
It isn't literally, but it takes on this meaning in context. If you "enjoy" ("receive pleasure or satisfaction from; have the use or benefit of" per M-W) food, it's hard to imagine that you did anything else with it (er, let's not explore that here, please).
It's much like how the primary, literal sense of いただく is more like "receive".
“Enjoy” isn’t a synonym for “eat” in English but it definitely does carry the right meaning here. It’s a little poetic, but it’s idiomatic and native speakers will understand it.
English alternatives like “The staff enjoyed it later” or “The staff had the pleasure of eating it later” I would expect come across more euphemistic than normal to the average English-speaking viewer. So the question is whether the original was intentionally trying to come across euphemistic, or whether the original was using formal/polite language solely because of its position as being on TV.
IMO the bottom line is Japanese-English language pair don't translate natural AND verbatim at the same time. Either you're going to paraphrase heavily, e.g. "leftovers were shared with crews", "caution wet floor", or give it up and let it be "staff ate it", "here around is undergoing cleaning", etc. Some amounts of balancing act is always going to be needed.
What you say makes sense for explaining what was meant, but localizers might well simplify this kind of thing (just as they "punch up" other lines) on the basis of the significance of the line in cultural context. Basically, the 美味しく is culturally obligatory here (you'll see similar things in advertising copy), which causes it to lose meaning.
Not Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of "enjoy" in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later.
You're not wrong - "the staff ate it later" is a word-for-word translation, so it's kind of weird to leave out 美味しく. (among other things a meaningful translation would say "crew" instead of staff)
But the nuance of the JP here is that it's using a polite set phrase, not describing whether people enjoyed the food or not. A bit like how "a good time was had by all" is used to wrap up a story, not really to describe what kind of time people had.
tl;dr, 美味しく is there because the JP would sound weirdly flat without it, and you're right that "enjoyed" would probably be a better.
This is why when you buy a book about mottainai in a Japanese bookstore, it comes with a detachable cover page, the bookstore gives you a cardboard cover so people can't see what you're reading, then puts the book in a plastic bag with a nice twist on top and then puts the bag in a branded paper bag.
This is similar to the Japanese concept of Shitsurei (失礼, しつれい). It is of course impossible to comprehend this unique idea that no other world culture has ever conceived of. What a remarkable society!
I did chuckle a bit, but the idea of mottainai is just way more prevalent within Japan, compared to Western countries. I can't speak for other Asian countries, but it's very easy to feel that compared to North America and Europe (places that I've lived in). Funnily, I've felt it in post-soviet countries as well, but that's coming from the feeling of scarcity in the beforetimes.
I’ve also lived in NA Europe and Japan and disagree with this sentiment.
“Don’t waste stuff” is taught by plenty of parents, people talk about using every bit of the buffalo in America. Everyone in my generation has the grandparent who threw nothing away.
There’s maybe more modern examples of cultural thrift in Japan due to the postwar experience compared to the US… but even then.
I feel like I’m talking to aliens when these discussions of “unique Japan” things come up that are, in my experience, plenty present abroad.
I don’t even think Japan is particularly that good about reuse and waste beyond its recycling programs!
Maybe I'm wrong, but from my personal experiences in NA and Europe, even though wasting is "frowned upon", there's no feeling of "guilt" with the action of "waste". Honestly, I'm not sure how to explain it.
To understand "generational" behavior it's helpful to understand the prevailing conditions at the time.
Obviously these become somewhat sweeping generalizations but they largely hold.
A concern either waste directly correlates to abundance. Countries with historical (ie post war) food insecurity treat food like it is precious. Even if it has since become abundant.
People who grow up with financial insecurity spend money very carefully, even if they now earn plenty.
These attitudes span generations. The attitude of parents often gets taught to children. Although in some cases a generation will "flip".
For example, the post war boom in births lead to a generation that had to compete for infrastructure all the time. There were limited school places, jobs, promotions etc. "Winning" became the driving force. Winners got rewarded, losers got left behind.
Their children (x-gen) refused to play the game. They prioritized family over work. They handed out trophies for "participation". They talk about "work / life" balance.
Each of us is a product of our upbringing. Some things we carry forward as important values. Others we actively discard as unwanted mistakes our parents made.
Middle class millennial French here: there's a very real concept of guilt in relation to food at least (somewhat less for electricity and water, but still).
It's considered a normal habit to always finish what's on your plate, even when you're not hungry anymore. But it's true that attitudes have softened a bit in this regard, especially at the restaurant; but when you're in control of the amount you're taking, you're still expected to not have "eyes bigger than your belly".
Did you have grandparents who lived through the Great Depression? Were your great grandparents adults during that? Mine were. My parents also both grew up fairly poor, partly in single-mother homes with multiple siblings. The guilt about wasting things, especially food, can be very real in North America.
Maybe your generation or your family's economic class is just very different from mine.
From my experience, the idea that you shouldn't waste things, and food in particular, is similar in Japan and France. That was even stronger with my grand-parents who lived through food scarcity during WWII in France.
US however seems pretty unique in its not caring about waste. Heck, it's really tough not waste food because all servings in restaurants are for 3 people so unless you bring everything in boxes you'll be wasting things.
Yes, in the same way I chuckle when I hear people (often practicing martial arts) talking about how "a Sensei" would be a word you can't translate, to talk about some kind of magical mentor...
That's exactly why you can't translate it: it has a word that is an exact denotational equivalent but with totally different connotations, because English and US culture lack the reverence for professors and other teachers that is implicit in Japan. Like how "tofu" means "soybean curd staple food" in Japan and "soybean curd effeminate, effete abomination" to rednecks.
Yes, but it's also a common reason for people to use loanwords like sensei, roshi, Schadenfreude, kombu, uni, and okay: they are trying to escape from the connotational trap of their local culture.
Many Boomers may have heard something along the lines of "Many kids in Japan are starving and would love to have that food" even, bringing this somewhat full-circle.
Any waste as long as it's not plastic. Plastic's a free-for-all. There's really nothing you can't individually plastic wrap. An apple? Wrap it in plastic. A cookie? Plastic. A plastic straw? You can wrap that too.
This bugged me for a while but two things came to play for me:
- humidity and the generally mold-friendly conditions of Japan means that not doing wrapping of certain food in small packs means you’re risking food waste. And generally speaking food hygiene issues can be avoided
- if you look up how much plastic is actually needed to wrap something in plastic, it’s not that much material. A single Lego brick is more plastic than a loooooot of Saran wrap.
It’s good to reduce waste when possible, but I do get the health/food waste concerns. And to Japans credit, I’ve found that plastic packaging for like… products tends to be way less than equivalent plastic packaged products abroad in many cases IME. My Sony earbuds came entirely in cardboard packaging! No fancy thick printed box either, just some thin simple paper material.
I think the plastic food displays are due to high uncertainty avoidance, so patrons can see exactly what their meal looks like before ordering. Yes you could use real food but the hassle of periodically filling the display case with freshly cooked dishes would be silly.
We should have more picture menus where every single menu item has a actual picture of the food served, instead of the guest trying to imagine the food based on often deceptive and flowery text descriptions.
We should also have better laws that require those pictures to match what you are actually served instead of the idealized presentations that are e.g. commonly displayed in fast food restaurants.
Some American restaurants have real food displays, too. With a chilled display case and limited airflow (and choosing only meals that keep well - avoiding exhibition of garnishes or salads that wilt in hours), you can put the same dessert on display for days.
At the end, of course, you have to throw it away - it might not be safe for staff to eat by the point it's visibly decomposing from 3 feet away. I find that just knowing the food in the case is destined for the garbage to rankle, especially when I'm simultaneously looking at menu prices and wondering why the meal costs so much; it's interesting to learn that the Japanese make those meal displays out of plastic/wax for the same reason.
How common is this? I have never seen real food used as a display only (as opposed to a buffet or other kind of display where the displayed food is actually served to eat), including in the US.
Sounds like a gimmick that is way too limiting to be a general practice.
It reminds me of the proposal to shake hands at the end of Goldeneye:
> Miyamoto, with a series of suggestions for the game. “One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input. The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”
One of my favorite childhood video games is 8 Eyes for the NES - after beating each boss, the player character sits down with them at a table, and a little skeleton butler walks over and serves them tea. The little scene plays over and over and over, you and the defeated bad guy, sitting at the table, sipping tea, while a skeleton wanders over and offers a periodic refill.
Old people in Japan went through the deprivation of post-war Japan. Not all boomers were raised the same. It is harder for someone who has known famine to accept it is ok to throw food away for fun.
US grandparents think you can buy a house with a part time job, Japanese ones think that you could save a life with a watermelon. Different delusions.
When I was a kid, my dad and I were watching a cooking show together. I asked him "what do they do with all the food they make", and then, as if on cue, the host said, "In case you're wondering, the staff eat all the food we make here." My dad and I looked at each other with a silent look of "whoa".
It's why I have a hard time watching some of the Gordon Ramsey shock cooking shows. He'll take a barely over or under-done filet and toss it in the bin to make a point. That's just not OK
I wish they put this on screen in Germany, too (though in German, maybe, instead of Japanese). In cooking shows, I always fear they throw the food in the gargabe. With that note on the screen, if they do throw it in the garbage, at least they would be evil liars. Which might be less likely, and so I could feel better.
You're engaging in a decadent activity (watching TV) that "wastes" all kinds of resources but are worried about this one in particular (food) even though we have more than enough of it to go around?
Regardless of disclaimer, I’m sure the food cooked on TV going to waste is not the norm - dozens of people are on set when filming any of these shows, and they’re all curious to try the dish.
On French TV shows they state (verbally, not with a standard text shown on screen) that the leftovers are given to the Red Cross (and some to the staff).
And also in Youtube "I ate every dish on the menu at restaurant XYZ". I really like these, but man do I feel bad afterwards. Please tell me nothing went to waste!
this seems to be making its way to western shows as well - when taskmaster has a food based challenge, they often include a reassurance that the food didn't go to waste. and i've seen similar on some youtube shows.
Yeah Taskmaster (which I adore) came to my mind too. I think it's more common when the food in question is an animal product, but still it just seems a bit contrived when behind the scenes the catering company is probably chucking tons of food the talent didn't feel like eating on a given day anyway.
It's entertainment, it has an environmental cost, sometimes a big cost. I don't think you need to signal that it's unacceptable for that cost to be paid solely for entertainment's sake. What's the difference between some food waste and burning fuel to drive a boulder out of town for a laugh.
I hope they don't make the staff finish off stuff, like Marmite and porridge ice cream, which makes all the contestants gag.
A more practical approach in this case, where the concerns are probably slightly different than what we see in the article, is probably a (monetary) donation to a food bank.
Having spent my first couple years right out of college at a production company that shot a lot of ads for a grocery chain I can assure you that I took as much food home with me as possible
The whole “the staff ate it later” routine is really just a symptom of a broader intolerance in Japanese media. After years of getting complaints over the most innocuous things, Japanese TV shows have started slapping disclaimers on everything, even the most trivial situations.
You see it everywhere: statements like “this is just one of many possible hypotheses” to appease people who might disagree, though to be fair, Western media sometimes include similar disclaimers, or “this was filmed with the owner’s permission” even when it is not really necessary. Then there is the excessive blurring—if someone with even a minor scandal appears, they are edited out or blurred, and a message like “this was recorded on MM-DD” pops up, all to avoid viewers asking, “Why is this person on TV?”
Of course, I understand the need for disclaimers in situations that really warrant them, such as scientific experiments that require proper oversight. But the disclaimers added just to dodge silly complaints do nothing but infantilize viewers, and honestly, they are kind of insulting.
Ultimately, this is part of a bigger problem with Japanese TV. It has dumbed itself down to the lowest common denominator, pandering to the most vocal complainers who often lack basic critical thinking skills. This is not unique to TV, either; Japanese businesses in general have long been hypersensitive to the “customer is always right” mindset. Thankfully, there is some pushback against that now. Still, TV is especially vulnerable since broadcasters get access to public airwaves at relatively low cost and are expected to act like a public utility, making them an easy target for complaints.
Ironically, all of this is helping drive younger generations away from TV, not just as a medium, but because the shows themselves feel less and less relevant.
I used to work in an R&D type environment as a mobile developer. Once in a while, people would go into a room nearby to test bread for the stores. Of course, they got whole loaves but only needed to taste a little, so I got free bread. Didn't have a big enough freezer at the time though, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted to.
And I used to live with an Indonesian lady (student housing, but she was in her 40's, I think she worked for the embassy), she had a friend or relative that had a restaurant and would sometimes come home with foodstuffs like a bag of cooked chicken or fish rolls.
I hope the staff didn't eat the food later, as the competitors often had to swim in it or crawl through it. I think it was generally real food, which was occasionally controversial (maybe it would have been more controversial in Japan?).
I wish some of these cooking competition reality shows would declare this kind of thing. One recent competition one "Is It Cake?" constantly trucks out these sort of demonstration items where some true wizard behind the scenes is making a ton of lifelike items that the actual contestants have to guess about just to determine their own order/ranking in the competition. I always wonder what happens to all of the cake from just that portion of the show (and some other segments). The 'Kraft services table' in the back much be epic etc
I read an interview from the British Baking Show which said that all of the crew knew to keep a spoon in their pocket so they could sample the dishes at the end.
I’m Japanese, and in Japan it’s pretty common for TV shows or YouTubers to get called out if they look like they’re wasting food. Japanese people really expect food not to be treated carelessly. Folks would love to see a “No food was wasted” one.
Interesting. Consideration is key; but not above all else. Imagine being one of the staff from the article who felt obligated to finish the food out of some misguided guilt.
we watched a cooking competition show last year where one of the contestants was tasked with breaking down a 100lb fish in order to prepare 4 entree sized portions of which the judges likely only took a bite or two... food waste in this kind of show is a given but this was totally galling.
I see both sides because you don't want staff intentionally making "mistakes" just to get some food but I worked for almost a decade in restaurants and only McDonald's didnt let you eat the food.
This must be a high end/low end thing. When I worked at a family diner, it was a free for all on the buffet leftovers which could not be recycled for the following day.
depends on how close to the bus/dish position you are. i used to eat leftover tiramisu from the bus tub all the time when i washed dishes at an italian restaurant.
...not that i would do that today, but i was poor, and it was good :)
Even if that would be more accurate - if your audience is accustomed to seeing "the staff ate it later", and that is only a feel-good checkbox for them (vs. a metric that anyone cares about optimizing), then it is better to go with what your audience is accustomed to. Otherwise, you're running off into the weeds.
> Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
- Exodus 7:1-12 (NIV)
Many moons ago I had a girlfriend who worked on an nationally broadcast afternoon show where they often had guest chefs demonstrating dishes, so I would come home from my thankless PhD work to eat Michelin-starred food from a lunchbox. Overall not so bad.
Not sure what the quote has to do with anything here, but it's a as good an opportunity as ever to say that large parts of the "Old Testament" draw most of its inspiration from the code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"), the Epic of Gilgamesh (which gave us, notably, the story of the deluge, and the dark role of the serpent) and Ancient Egypt, to which it owes, among many others, the concept of eternal life and the idea that man was made in God's image.
To be "in God's image" was one of the titles of Pharaoh.
And about the staff: early depictions of Jesus often have him holding a magic wand [0], as he was considered by followers and ennemies alike to be a magician. The "Three Wise Men" or "Three Kings" (?!) that show up at his birth are just "magi" (magicians) in the original text [1].
[0] https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi
The staff ate the rest of the staffs.
"Magi" were priests of Zoraster. It is true that our current word for magic is derived from this root but that doesn't mean that the text is saying they were _magicians_.
> "Magi" were priests of Zoraster
That's the etymology of the word, but there is no indication in the gospel of Matthew (the only one to even mention this) that it's a reference to Persia.
That would be like saying when anyone who mentions "algorithm" is really talking about Uzbekistan, because al-Ḵwārizmī means 'the man of Ḵwārizm' (now Khiva).
AFAIU, in Ancient Greek culture Magi were often considered like Plato's Philosopher Kings. Greeks didn't have an accurate understanding of Zoroastrianism or the structure of Persian government, but for some reason they saw Persian leaders, and Magi in particular, as possessing a synthesis of political, religious, philosophical and scientific virtues. For example, they thought Persian leaders' grasp of astronomy meant the laws they promulgated were what we might call today, science-based. Magi represented idealized leadership rooted in reason, similar to the way today people of one country like to point at some other country du jour as an exemplar of rational governance, especially when critiquing their own government or society.
Aristotle and others specifically said that the Magi did not practice metaphysical sorcery. They believed the Magi could, for example, divine the future, but doing so through their study of astronomy (i.e. their science-y astrological knowledge).
The biblical account of the Magi and the star they followed perfectly matches the mythos of Persian Magi in Greek culture. The story itself tells the reader not only that those rational leaders over yonder were convinced about the importance of Jesus, but that they knew because "science" revealed it to them.
I don't think there was a distinction between science, magic and religion (or rather, cults, since there were no organized religions in the modern sense).
Well, modern science wasn't a thing, per se; would have been part of natural philosophy and not well delineated. But philosophy, religion, and magic were broadly speaking understood as distinct, similar to today, at least from the perspective of the learned, and notwithstanding some esoteric cults (which also exist today). This is fairly obvious from the works that have survived, from Plato, Lucian (Syrian satirist), and many others, because they distinguish them similar to how we do today. Even atheists likely were also somewhat common, though it definitely wasn't something discussed as heavily as today. Plato specifically and literally mentions atheism--in Laws he says it's a typical phase for young adults, though it may be more fairly understood today as shirking, loose disbelief, or agnosticism. It's a fair deduction that Lucian was an atheist as we understand that term, and the popularity of his work strongly suggests atheism, or at least skepticism of religion and magic, were widespread.
Point being, while our particular categories aren't perfect fits for the ancient and classical worlds, the general human and cultural dynamics were quite similar. They weren't unsophisticated rubes blind to their own ignorance; not much more, if at all, than we are today. What really distinguishes us is our wealth, and how a much larger fraction of our society has the opportunity to study and debate ideas like patricians and philosophers of yore.
I don't know about ancient philosophers, but for ordinary folks there was no distinction between a religious scholar and a scientist (both were learned men who read books). This still happens today, when many people mix history and genetics with religion and politics.
If you have some relevant references that would be helpful.
The two concepts were often one in the same—a "magician" was simply any art that "we" considered to be not in keeping with "our" religious practices. The label was slung about freely for some thousand years.
There are some philosophers who attempted to divide miracles from magic. They tended to classify the latter as esoteric science confined entirely to the natural world with no supernatural elements, and the former as invoking the aid of some confirmed divine being. When one considers souls and demiurges to be part of the natural world, however, even this most imaginative delineation is an inherently blurry one.
> Not sure what the quote has to do with anything here
It's a pun on the staff ate.
These depictions can probably be dismissed, just as any other depiction of Jesus. That painting has been made long after his death. The only clues to his likeness are deductions from biblical texts and historical context. For example, he most likely didn‘t have long hair (1. Corinthians 11), and he also wasn‘t European looking (should be obvious).
> he also wasn‘t European looking (should be obvious).
Spaniards, Egyptians, Greeks and Levantines all look very similar and Jesus was definitely of the Levant. I hope you won’t deny Spaniards and Greeks are European.
In this context, "European" means "white." Jesus probably did not look like the bearded white hippie commonly depicted in Western (primarily American and British) iconography.
Spaniards, Egyptians, Greeks and Levantines may or may not look similar (seems a bit broad, like the geographical definition of "European") but they also don't often look like "white people." Especially not in Egypt or the Levant.
Never heard of spanish people or greeks not being considered "white".
Just because you never heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen. For example, Irish people were heavily discriminated against in the US and were considered at one point to not be "white"
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/06/negative-st...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment
> Irish people […] were considered at one point to not be "white"
This isn’t true. Naturalisation was limited to white people and no Irish person was ever denied it in account of their race.
Read an American history book.
It's euphemism for "Aryan".
As an European, I find the definition of European that excludes Spaniards super weird.
Likewise, not counting Spaniards into white is weird too, but at least it does not betray complete lack of knowledge about what counts as Europe.
Generally the matter is one of blood purity, as with all racism. Southern Spain, Italy, and Greece were all occupied at one time by Arabs, which contributed certain hair textures, skin tones, and facial features to the local gene pool. Those with no knowledge of history or civilization tend to be terrified of acknowledging the artistic and cultural contributions of al-Andalus and the Ottoman Empire. As you probably know, the northern reaches of Italy are more German than Romance, on account of those pesky invasive Lombards.
Of course the true absurdity of all this comes when two people from the same parents end up with different physiognomical and racial labels; since these traits are rarely as simple as idealized Mendelian characteristics, it is entirely possible for them to be passed on a couple of generations before re-coalescing. (The case of Summer on The Sopranos comes to mind—while her parents both have fairer skin than she does, the result is otherwise not all that unrealistic.)
> Likewise, not counting Spaniards into white is weird too, but at least it does not betray complete lack of knowledge about what counts as Europe.
Not that they should actually be listened to about anything, but the KKK (and others) did not consider Italian (immigrants) to be white.
One of the reasons for Columbus Day was people of that background wanting to show their 'American-ness'.
>As an European, I find the definition of European that excludes Spaniards super weird.
Because you are, as I suspect many people will, intentionally misreading the context of my comment.
I am implying that the use of "European" herein does not literally refer to the geographic region known as "Europe," but rather that in the context of a statement about the likely physical appearance of Jesus it should be understood as a statement about race and ethnicity whereby "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white," as is represented in Western depictions of Jesus, particularly where traits like skin color, eye color and hair color are concerned.
1.) Look, Spaniards are Europeans by any reasonable definition. They are part of Western Europe.
2.) Traditional western depiction of Jesus looking like Spaniards would be no exception. Traditional western depiction of Jesus tend to look sorta kinda like locals do.
3.) Europeans do have wild range of eye colors and hair colors. The eye color and hair being some specific colors even for whites is weird, because even whitey whites have all kind of hair colors and eye colors.
> "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white,
No it is not and to the extend it is, it is absurd whistleblowing attempt - the one that ends up redefine Western Europe as a place that excludes Spaniards.
99.99% of the population of the Mediterranean basin at the time Jesus lived were white, almost certainly more given that the trans-Saharan slave trade was a creature of the camel and post dated the Arab conquest of North Africa.
“White” didn’t exist at that time and the people of the Mediterranean certainly didn’t think of themselves as one homogeneous group. The various peoples had prejudices about each other which only consolidated into a hierarchy when the trans-Atlantic slave trade needed to legally define who couldn’t be property. Prejudices by, for example, the English or American against Greeks or Italians lasted into the 20th century.
Weird which of these two comments was downvoted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus#H...
> in terms of physical appearance, the average Judean of the time would have likely had brown or black hair, honey/olive-brown skin, and brown eyes
This entire digression has been brought to you by someone who didn't understand an obvious pun.
There are at least 2 ancient pagan flood stories: The Gilgamesh Epic and the Atrathasis Epic, both originating in ancient Mesopotamia. Because both sources predate the source of Noah's story, many scholars have concluded that Noah's flood story was borrowed from these. However, consider the following objections:
- When a historical event is retold to different audiences over time, the story generally becomes more mythical and embellished, and poetry and exalted language are used. It is the opposite when Noah's and the pagan stories are compared. Noah's story is simpler and told in a straightforward narrative, while the pagan stories are told in a more mythical and embellished style.
- Noah's story is monotheistic, and the characters are ethically moral. The pagan stories are polytheistic, and the characters are ethically capricious. The pagan gods are implied to be selfish, jealous of each other and lie to each other. Moreover, in the Atrathasis Epic the gods discover that due to the flood, they have wiped out their only source of food (people's sacrifices) implying that they depend on humans.
- The shape of the ark in Noah's story is the only one that can be considered seaworthy, being rectangular and in dimensions similar to more modern cargo barges. The pagan stories describe an ark that is round or cubic, which would make an ark less stable for floatation and also more vulnerable to damage/overturning by wave impact.
It is therefore more likely that Noah's story with its later source is faithful to the actual historical event; while the pagan stories are versions modified to suit the polytheistic religion/culture of their audiences. At the same time, it is remarkable that the pagan stories confirm that a history changing flood did occur.
> the characters are ethically moral
How is it ethical to drown every single human, including children, because you're displeased with what they do?
And how is it ethical to also destroy "the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground" which have nothing whatsoever to do with human wickedness??
This is exactly what a Bond villain would say. Today, Bond villains are usually considered the acme of evil.
Not that great of an opportunity, to be honest
I think it’s just intended as a pun, “staff” == “staff”, and not as a religious statement, but I could be mistaken.
While the serpent had a dark role in the Epic of Gilgamesh too, it is extremely sad how the Genesis has twisted completely the beautiful story of how Shamkhat has civilized the wild Enkidu, whom God had made from clay (by showing him the pleasures of a city, as opposed to the harsh life in the wilderness: eating bread, drinking beer, being massaged with oil and making love), into the ugly story of how Eve has committed the unforgivable sin with Adam, of seeking knowledge on par with God, and her descendants shall be for ever punished for it.
I don't know if it's sad; it's a different story, it's a kind of riff on the same themes.
In Genesis III, it's necessary for Adam and Eve to acquire knowledge and leave the garden, because in so doing they have sex and make children. While in the garden, they didn't know they were naked, and presumably didn't have sex or reproduced.
Also, when God finds out, he fist asks the man, who accuses "the woman you gave me". So then God turns to the woman, who says the snake deceived her. But here God stops his inquiry. We know the snake can talk because he talked to the woman, so why didn't God ask the snake why he did what he did?
An interpretation is that the snake ("the most clever of all animals God had made") is in fact God's instrument. He works for the boss.
It's a rather obvious allegory for the loss of childhood innocence. We all have to leave The Garden at some point. See also Puff the Magic Dragon.
It is a different story but which is without any doubt derived from the Enkidu story and modified to suit different conceptions about the role of women in society and about what is valuable for mankind.
While in the Enkidu story the role of the woman was positive, because she has taught Enkidu about the advantages of civilized life, making him leave the wilderness where he lived since being created by God, in the Genesis story Eve was despised for the same thing, i.e. for teaching Adam more than his creator did.
I certainly side with the anonymous author of the Old Babylonian story about Enkidu and not with the editor of the Genesis book who has transformed it.
Like Pandora's box, it's a just so story about why women are the source of all mens' problems and why patriarchy is just and necessary. And why women have pain in childbirth. And why people are afraid of snakes. And why we die. But mostly about why women suck (from the point of view of ancient Hebrew culture.)
And that attitude transfers to Christianity in 1 Timothy when Paul says women should not be allowed to teach or have authority over men, but should remain quiet because it was Eve who was deceived by the serpent, and who then deceived Adam.
Yes but in Genesis 3, 20 (at the end of this very story), it is said: "Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living." That's not dismissive at all. It can be argued that Paul brought his own prejudices to a text which was much less prejudiced than he was.
If truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive, this is a good thing (that the Old Testament has similarities to other major works). Implies a kind of evolutionary algorithm for truth. Likely implies these stories are more true because they’re more tried and tested. Societies who believed them became strong.
If truth is about repeated experimentation or journalistic records (a very new concept in history of writing - less than 500 years), then perhaps this is of concern.
I accept both definitions, but when they’re in conflict, the former tends to be more end-to-end, while the latter tends to overfit to the moment. Mostly because data is scarce and life is a very complex distributed system. On the other hand, the former changes slowly while the latter perhaps keeps up with the pace of change.
Except the point of life is probably to thrive more than to collect a list of facts. So when in conflict, I lean towards the former. Personal choice tho. I expect most of HN leans the other way.
To expand not refute,
> If truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive
This is 'metaphorical truth' to be precise.
But it's only a part of the virality of memes, not the whole.
Propagation can occur not just due to usefulness, but to other factors such as simplicity/replicability, human susceptibility / 'key in a lock' etc.
If survival was purely metaphorical truth, then all surviving lifeforms would be 'the most true' (including viruses being 'true' to us). Which can be argued, at a philosophical level - But then we've expanded the definition so much as to lose relevant meaning at the pragmatic level.
Porcupine throwing quills, and all that.
Nice comment! I had forgotten about metaphorical truth. Sent me on a nice rabbit hole.
I think 'metaphorical truth' is correct but slightly too narrow. Pragmatic truth includes metaphorical truth but is slightly wider.
And while I agree with your assertion in the short run, I'm inclined to doubt its correctness in the long run. Most things eventually have consequences.
I thought the story was going to end with the swallowing of a staff.
But this was almost as good.
Cool story, I upvoted because the downvotes felt a bit harsh. But what does the first part have to do with the second part?
"staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff
I get it now. More staff engineers than I expected in the Bible.
pretty much everything is in the Bible if you look, even automobiles: "and G-d drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in His Fury"
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plymouth%20fury&ia=images&i...
Joshua 6:27 KJV: "The Lord was with Joshua and his Triumph was heard throughout the land."
https://www.google.com/search?q=trumph+motorcycle
I own a Street Triple, so do not object to his search, but it should also be remembered:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_Motor_Company
The old Chrysler manufacturer had a Plymouth division with a set of Fury models so I was ready chuckling before I clicked through.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Fury
> The one driving the chariot drives like Jehu, the son of Nimshi. He’s driving like a crazy person.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%209&v...
“Jesus and his disciples were all in one Accord”
And don't forget that Moses received the Ten Commandments on tablets, although it doesn't say whether he used iPads or something running Android.
It's rumored that God was wary of humans having apple products.
Perhaps because of the temptations of walled gardens?
Their icon is also an apple with bite out of it, if they wanted to be the prefered OS of the divine they should have chosen better.
And that Revelation 5/6 contain the original doomscroll.
I thought it was warning of poorly chosen file permissions (0666) and the evils of “simulation” —- the evils of userns namespaces and VMware!!!
I gave up tablets and pills of all kinds a long time ago now, but, at the time, if god himself had popped up to tell me something, it wouldn't have been a huge surprise.
Sure, but he wasn't proud of it: "For I do not speak of my own Accord"
And Jesus spake unto his disciples, “Next time I'm getting a Camry.”
Good product placement, but either the numbers of his disciples has been greatly exaggerated, or that was one very cramped Honda!
Was jesus secretly a clown?
Given there were 1+12 of them, you'd think they'd use an Odyssey.
Come for tea, my people.
not related with Bible: a staff engineer's journey with Claude Code
The staff ate the rest of the staffs.
Maybe the food was left out too long and he got a staff infection?
Amazing they made the real food on a now not just "show food" which is only a looks-like model.
In the west we have “No Animals Were Harmed in the making of …”, which I’m only just learning comes from the American Humane Society: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humane_Society#No_A...
I had always thought it were a generic phrase!
And "filmed in front of a live studio audience", which doesn't prevent the addition of laugh tracks.
I read a long time ago that Fran Drescher of The Nanny fame was huge in replacing those audiences with extras instead of random people.
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/flashback/how-fran-...
That’s true, but the article also explains it isn’t nefarious; she had a stalker (after past horrible trauma), and was terrified, so replaced the live audiences with extras. It just happened to work so well it caught on and became a mainstay of sitcoms after that.
The Academy Awards can’t even trust the extras to fill empty seats in the audience, so they use lawyers and accountants who have already signed NDAs with the Academy for their day jobs.
Tripwiring (and thus fatally wounding) horses was quite a thing back in the day.
Still happening in 2022, though hopefully the outrage and changes after this incident avoids most future ones. Even the description in the article is really sad.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/asia/south-korea-horse-death-...
Wasn't there some horrible story about the number of animals killed in the filming of Homeward Bound or some similar movie? I simply cannot comprehend the callousness of people towards animals back then. I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that. What the heck?
> I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that.
There’s a weird disconnect where people ignore or are wilfully ignorant of cruelty to animals in industrial food production but are sensitive to it in virtually every other context. I saw a woman the other day who was tending to an injured pigeon and had called animal welfare people to come tend to it. Meanwhile, millions of chickens live in appalling conditions and die horrible deaths en masse.
I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from. I was the same for most of my life but a few years ago, I started thinking about the animals I was eating and then I couldn’t eat them any more.
I don’t begrudge people their compassion. A few nights ago I went outside to put some stuff on the barbecue and my wife was in the backyard, concerned for the fate of a female cardinal that had flown into our sunroom window. It was stunned and couldn’t fly. Its mate was worriedly flitting through nearby bushes. “That’s so sad,” my wife said. “Yes,” I agreed, and then I put her skewers of meat on the barbecue.
It is mostly just proximity and framing. A hurt wild animal is alive and right in front of you. Meat from the grocery store is a prepackaged product that isn’t mentally associated with the bloody process behind the scenes required to get it there. The commercial aspect is pretty dependent on this distancing.
Case-in-point: I once stayed in a small town in Morocco for a few weeks. There wasn’t a grocery store nearby, just a market, and if you wanted chicken, they killed it in front of you. Needless to say, being directly confronted with the process…I didn’t eat meat the entire time.
Also a matter of purpose, killing animals for food is more acceptable than killing them for sport or entertainment
Exactly this. Meat is a huge source of nutrition. Even though in our modern western society, we might not "need" to eat meat, but it's a hearty, plentiful, accessible protein and fat that stores well and can be easily moved and replicated quickly. It's simply much more practical still to keep eating meat in much of the world. I'm not going to go into the arguments about our biology either, but I think it's safe to say that our bodies are also very finely tuned to eat and process organic (from organisms) meat and use it as fuel. Sure, you can feed your cat a vegan diet or whatever and replace all of the vitamins, but there is no denying that the more "natural" way would be to just eat the meat and be done with it.
Many of the arguments for veganism come alongside ideas for better animal welfare, but the two are not mutually exclusive. The only reason we don't eat grandma after she dies is because it's culturally unacceptable. We can apply more respect and reverence to meat production without stopping entirely or pretending that the benefits of eating meat don't exist.
Eating Grandma is actually a really good way to get parasites and prion diseases, so there's more to it than just cultural acceptability. The reason we don't risk parasites from farmed meat is because it's dewormed and treated and inspected and cleaned.
Free Range Grandma is more humane, but has more parasites.
I mean, sure. But we could do all of those same things to Grandma in 2025 as well.
"Time for your deworming, Granny! I'm hungry!"
Also, culture is shaped by biology, our brains are wired to find meat delicious because it gives us the proteins we need to survive.
In the developed world and large parts of the developing world, meat is consumed for entirely hedonic reasons (ie. for pleasure). I would not consider this materially different from killing for sports or entertainment.
It is different tho, atleast eating meat is nutritionally beneficial while killing for sports is a waste of time.
One could say the same with slaves: slaves for work are more acceptable than for fun.
They would definitely waste less of it, and probably consume less as well.
To make it worse: it's not millions of chickens, that live in appaling conditions and die horrible deaths. We kill around 50 billion chickens every year. That is 137 million chickens every day. Chickens that are used for eating are alive for around 28 to 42 days. That are 3.8 to 5.7 billion chicken on any day.
The numbers might be slightly off, because chicken raised for eggs are alive longer (around a year).
Chickens bred for eating ("meat birds") often can't live much past when they'd be slaughtered without massive health issues. They've been turned into freaks.
Forced molting for egg layers is very cruel. Starvation and thirst to lose feathers and rebate egg laying.
We only buy humane eggs when we can, and I believe organic doesn’t practice it either.
This is why I support whaling. One whale can feed many people, one chicken not so many. All whales harvested are free range.
One whale takes much more time and energy than the equivalent food that comes from chicken. Much, much, much more efficient to eat chicken. Whales would entirely disappear if harvested at the same similar rates calories consumed.
If it takes a little more effort to reduce suffering for animals then I'm okay with that.
However, I do not support unsustainable hunting. Please have some charity and don't imply such.
What is your solution to the problem posed above then?
I wholly support this logic, and want it extended to humans: Soylent Green will be the next food craze
Mencius, a thinker from over 300 BC, once said: "A gentleman, in his attitude towards animals, having seen them alive, cannot bear to see them die; having heard their cries, cannot bear to eat their flesh. Therefore, a gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen."
The background of this statement is as follows: King Xuan of Qi once saw a man leading an ox to be slaughtered. Moved by the ox's sorrowful appearance, he was deeply distressed and ordered the butcher to spare the ox. However, the butcher informed him that the ox was intended for sacrificial rites. It must be noted that in ancient times, the two most important affairs of the state were sacrifices and warfare. Sparing the ox would have violated the moral principles of the time. In desperation, King Xuan came up with the idea: "Why not replace this ox with a sheep?" Later, the more he reflected on it, the more absurd he found his own decision. He then sought advice from Mencius, who uttered this statement in response.
Mencius believed that what distinguishes humans from beasts is humanity, meaning that humans treat all things with kindness, but human goodness is limited. Therefore, a gentleman practices kindness by helping those in front of him, unable to extend it to all.
And then King Xuan declared war on a neighboring kingdom of course, leading to hundreds of thousands of humans dying?
The core nature of humanity is absurdity.
All moral frameworks get suspended in time of war.
"Cruelty" is a rhetoric word because its meaning is caught between the classical "deliberate causing of pain" and the new "neglect, indifference towards another's pain" and of course, that discrepancy is fully exploited. What livestock beasts suffer is purely for practical reasons.
>I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from
1. Empathy is a base emotional response triggered by nearby animals, not a rational/moral one.
2. Empathy is also an evolutionary tool that "happened" in (some) humans to help survive situations that require some sort of cooperation, like harsh winters. Anthropomorphization is an associated bug, not a feature.
2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people.
3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important.
4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed.
Since you are french according to your handle, I will direct you to this video, which I liked very much : https://youtu.be/VlWvnhSiuck?si=dvgQQS1Y4oa3A1yO .
In essence, I don't disagree with points 1 and 2. But the conclusions that you draw from these could be used to justify things which, hopefully, you would find morally objectionable. It is not because empathy is not a rational response that we should not try to use rationality to shape our decisions. There are pretty of other feelings/behaviours that we choose to consider bad and worthy of punishment, regardless of the fact they are useful evolutionary tool.
Unfortunately this comment is much too short to make the full argument, but the video I linked does a great job. I was wholly convinced by it, and though I'm not vegetarian, I do try to source my meat from places with more humane conditions.
> 2b. Being disconnected from nature and reality is the #1 cause for such disorder; you don't see any kind of vegetarianism in rural people.
This is just untrue, hundreds of millions of rural South Asians are vegetarian.
> 3. People with a brain realize that eating meat is important.
Everyone has a brain. Both vegetarian and omnivore groups have their share of geniuses and fools. Meat was important as a calorie source but it has many drawbacks in modern society totally unrelated to animal ethics; cancer risk, inefficient land use, methane production, etc.
> 4. People with a bigger brain also realize that that eating other animals is the prerogative of power: humans have simply won the animal kingdom's oldest game and are enjoying its spoils. Things wouldn't (and shouldn't) be different if positions were reversed.
This sounds like manifest destiny rhetoric and deserves just as much consideration.
> Meat was important as a calorie source but it has many drawbacks in modern society totally unrelated to animal ethics; cancer risk, inefficient land use, methane production, etc.
I think the most important drawbacks which actually threaten modern society are deforestation and zoonoses. Both can be largely avoided by raising only insects for meat, which reduces water and land use by 80%, and CO2 emissions even more if feed is mostly food waste. It is however a hard sell and has to be hidden in products in order to be accepted by consumers.
So, it is marketing and perception problem and not because insects are objectively terrible as food for people?
In my understanding it is mostly a cultural thing that makes people reject insects. I am unaware of any objective measure by which are insects are terrible foods.
And how many of your meals have included insect food?
Here in the EU, insect powder is now an approved food additive.
https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/novel-food/authorisati...
As I don't closely read labels of everything I eat, probably I consumed it inadvertently already. Otherwise, I don't eat meat.
Why ask this question?
If I heard somewhere that insects are good people food, I certainly wouldn't go repeating that assertion in public without having tried eating insects at least once.
It is unethical profess a belief in public, especially an unusual belief, but neglect to test that belief when a test would be inexpensive and straightforward.
It is also unethical to propose a radical change to society with only very tenuous basis in reality: people should be able to demonstrate knowledge (and not just knowledge about what beliefs will prove popular or fashionable) before they engage in public policy discussions. If the person I'm discussing with hasn't tried eating insects at least once (preferably a lot more often) he is doing us all a disservice in even engaging in a public discussion of the topic unless perhaps he has deep professional-level knowledge of the nutritional value of insects and the effect of nutrients and anti-nutrients on human health (and "insects are high in protein" alone doesn't begin to be enough knowledge).
Trolling is widely believed to be anti-social. It is approximately just as anti-social to try to whip up a public discussion of some radical social or economic change or some radical change in our daily lives with as little grounding in reality as this discussion of insects as food.
> It is also unethical to propose a radical change to society with only very tenuous basis in reality: people should be able to demonstrate knowledge (and not just knowledge about what beliefs will prove popular or fashionable) before they engage in public policy discussions. If the person I'm discussing with hasn't tried eating insects at least once (preferably a lot more often) he is doing us all a disservice in even engaging in a public discussion of the topic unless perhaps he has deep professional-level knowledge of the nutritional value of insects and the effect of nutrients and anti-nutrients on human health (and "insects are high in protein" alone doesn't begin to be enough knowledge).
That is a strange position. The most that I could contribute is anecdotal evidence anyway. The nutrient composition and the safety of insect-derived food has been rigorously studied, for example in: https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2023.8009
I linked the EU FAQ on insects in my other reply.
I think it would be nice to have socialized healthcare in my country. I have never been covered by socialized healthcare. Am I trolling by expressing that opinion because I have a PPO plan through my employer?
There are no ways[1] to obtain info relevant to public policy discussions about a nationwide healthcare system anywhere near as easy as, "the net is full of misinformation, so I should at least try eating insects to make sure I even can without getting sick".
[1] Or more precisely I havent been able to think of any ways.
If the little bird was tasty it might have gone on the bbq too.
We humans are capable of empathizing with different creatures differently. Some people have their empathy dial set up so high that they anthropomorphize plants. Some have it set so low they're psychopaths. Most functional people are in the middle.
Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you.
> "Personally, keeping chickens has almost completely put me off empathy with them. Roosters are assholes. Into the pot with you."
What a relief that we don't generally take this policy toward asshole humans.
At any rate, it's one thing to eat one asshole chicken and another to systematically farm asshole chicken to be killed.
What do you mean, in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US.
Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter and where something less severe, but practice is here and not going anywhere.
> " in many places around the world we kill people society or state considers assholes, including US."
Not really the same as systematically bringing into existence a species with behaviors you find objectionable, keeping them in your proximity so you can experience said behaviors, and then slaughtering them with the excuse that they are all assholes is it?
> "Then we can discuss where is the cutoff line for enough assholishness to go for a slaughter"
When you say that roosters cross this line do you mean with respect to their behavior towards you? I'm guessing this can't be that bad since you're much more powerful than they?
Or do you mean towards other chickens? If so, and if it's really that bad, then surely the best thing is to just not bring them into existence in the first place (not systematically breeding them with the intent of slaughtering them)?
Whether you feel empathy to someone/something or not, is really quite different from whether you have moral obligations to it. I do not think I have moral obligations to a chicken, but then again, I think everyone agrees the chicken has no moral obligations to me - jokes about asshole roosters aside, I don't think you really think the rooster has wronged you by being as it is.
Maybe moral obligations can be one-way, but then only temporarily as I see it. Someone who's sleepwalking, or a baby, don't really have moral obligations to me, but they will when they wake up / grow up.
> I am genuinely unsure where this disconnect comes from
Much easier to sympathise with a live animal that looks like an animal than with a brown rectangle covered in sauce. Also much easier to sympathise with the plight of one entity rather than millions: a GoFundMe for a relatable charity case rather than helping the billions of people worldwide who need it
> I simply cannot comprehend the callousness of people towards animals back then.
Just go to rural areas, where livestock farming is a common activity and people are confronted with animals as part of their daily life and you will see that animals are not always treated kindly.
For example, they may treat live chicken like you treat a KFC menu. It is food. When they want to eat chicken, they pick one up in the coop and kill it with the same detachment as you picking up your menu at the counter. Which is ironic because that farmer is probably treating his chicken way better than the ones destined for KFC.
Wild animals are just pests, if they cause damage to the crops and livestock, or game if edible. Dogs, horses, etc... are for work, guarding, herding, etc... they get some love, but they are nothing like pets.
In that context, animals are indeed more like "things". They still get some consideration, but so are things. Most people care for their cars for instance, they want it stay in good shape for as long as possible, same thing for animals.
I think the reason we care more about animals now is because as city dwellers, we don't really live with them, we have pets, we go to zoos or watch cute videos, so we have some unnatural empathy for them. Until they cause problems that is. Empathy for rats tend to go down rather quickly for people with a rat infestation.
You're probably thinking of Milo and Otis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Oti...
That’s the one.
Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980) is usually pointed as the movie that caused the "no animals were harmed" disclaimer to be added to subsequent movies.
You are thinking of Milo and Otis, which incidentally was filmed in Japan.
AFAIK nothing was proven, but it got a reputation.
Most people think they have developed their principles with reflection and consideration, but in my view most moral principles are post-facto rationalisations used to justify whatever-it-is the person wanted to do. So, excuses to justify the already decided upon action, rather than anything to determine the parameters of action, eg 'the money was too good', 'it smelled so good', etc.
Anyway, in answer to why people were callous back then and are so concerned now, I'd say nothing has changed, except what people view the norm to be. What seemed like 'callousness' was possibly considered 'practical' (or 'unsquemish'). For most moral relativists, whether they project 'practicality' or 'kindly concern' is simply an output of what they understand their social norms to be, rather than anything based in genuinely considered and applied principles.
I think Milo and Otis had a lot of controversy too.
If you travel around the world a bit, ie more remote parts of south east Asia, you will see this attitude towards animals is often still well and alive.
I remember reading about a man being accused of mistreating his donkey in somewhere like 1835 Brittan. The case went to a court, but I'm fuzzy on the details.
One comedy (I think State and Main) had something like "Only 2 animals were harmed in the production of this film" as a joke in the credits.
Certified for free for SAG union productions (funded by the union at $1200/day). A perk of unionized production
> funded by the union at $1200/day
Haha WHAT
That's an insane amount of money to come out of union dues
Western YouTubers often say something like this article title whenever they get a large amount of food for a review or something. Rhett and Link say that almost every video.
We also have "No one was harmed in the making of this video" and similar, which has become so prevalent that its absence is sometime used to infer that someone was indeed injured or killed in the clip.
I've seen clips on Reddit where animals are harmed for engagement. Usually "nature is brutal" type clips, where one animal kills another.
I mean nature is brutal, but typing down an animal to be consumed by another isn't natural.
Anyway, I don't think movies and TV are the main source of animal cruelty anymore.
> I've seen clips on Reddit where animals are harmed for engagement. Usually "nature is brutal" type clips, where one animal kills another.
Social media is like TV and cinema before regulations. It is full of cruelty, and all kinds of abuse to animals but also to other people. (Recently there was a death related to this).
Civilization does not happens without effort from citizens and lawmakers.
When Instagram introduced reels, I started to get exposed to these weird and horrible clips of people 'rescuing' sick and abused animals, and begging for donations. I don't know for certain, but there's lots of clues that these accounts are engineering these encounters. Seeing these clips is genuinely distressing, and it's hard to make Instagram stop showing them. Just another way social media is causing real harm to add to the list, I guess.
The growth of youtube has basically undone that. There's lots of very sketchy youtube/shorts/etc videos out there...
I wonder how this plays out.
As noted sometimes the staff can't eat it, heck sometimes you might not want to eat it. That has to happen pretty often.
I worked at a company with a particularly sensitive HR team who would host pizza parties now and then, but they'd only order "weird" pizzas and I guess they liked it, but they were quite miffed when people stopped coming / didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
They were really miffed when my boss ordered our team pizza on their pizza day too, suddenly very concerned about waste...
Many years ago, I was on a training course, all typical engineers, and the guy who had organized it, a foodie, had ordered the day's spread from a very expensive and fancy catering place. Skeptical engineers eyeing the spread, which included such things as "cold orange soup"; one of them said "I should have brought my rabbit".
The message was clearly received. Next day and subsequent ones, an equally high quality spread of actual engineer food was tabled. But with no rabbit to eat it up, I think a lot of the first day's spread was wasted.
This was during the pre-2K tech boom years (this dates me!) Really fancy catering at (my) work is a distant memory now.
Did Detective Boyle organize this meal?
"That's the hoof! That's the best part of the stew! Oh, man, think of it as a marrow nugget wrapped in a thick toenail."
>actual engineer food
Bachelor chew! Now with flavor!
Man this might be unfair of me but I find that “rabbit food” attitude intolerably childish. Why the fuck should ‘cold’ or ‘orange’ or ‘soup’ be disqualifying attributes as far as a succulent meal goes - ignorance of toasted carrot ginger soup is the only thing I can think of, and I have so very little patience for ignorance of food.
Stop being a baby and put it in your mouth already for chrissake. You might learn something.
> didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies.
What I want to know is what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese and what are mystery veggies?
> what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese
Most of them, I imagine, in order to accommodate vegan customers. Some advertise it louder than others.
> what are mystery veggies?
There's quite a variety out there. I've seen broccoli, sundried tomato, artichoke, spinach....
Vegan cheese is an abomination. Even if one is vegan they shouldn't eat that crap, just eat something else instead. You can make much better vegan food if you focus on trying to make vegetables good versus torturing them into a facsimile of animal products.
US cheese-in-tube is an abomination (I’m French ;-) ) and my Italian neighbor thinks the same about pinanle-fat-dough pizzas.
As for every product type there’s good and bad. I love this one[0], it’s made by a bunch of artisan chiefs near my city. Ingredients: soy, cajun nuts, ferments. Probable process: cook, smash, add ferment, wait.
Beside tradition offense there’s no reasons to restrain ourselves torturing-with-ferments lipid products that didn’t came out from udders. Fermented products are delicious and cooking has always co-evolved with technology, product availability and customs, why should someone restrain from experimenting?
I share the ultra processed disdain but to be honest there’s as much UPF in "fascimile" that some of their counterpart. That non-vegan-milk cheese has 16 ingredients in it[1].
0 https://www.vegetalfood.fr/affines/3868-albert-bio-100-gr-ja...
1 https://www.amazon.fr/cfuda-Easy-Cheese-American/dp/B000S5PH...
The huge majority of cheese consumed in the US isn't any better than vegan cheese. And yes, the US does have good cheese! It's just a tiny sliver of all cheese consumed.
Eh, there’s some that are perfectly meh and are useful for texture reasons. I don’t really bother with them, but “abomination” is quite amusing me.
I don't see how any of these could be considered "mystery" veggies in most contexts, let alone on pizza.
I'm pretty sure they weren't unrecognizable or mystery and it's just being used as a pejorative for food they didn't like
I think the larger reason is that fake cheese is cheaper.
In parts of Europe restaurants are allowed to sell it as cheese. That isn't true for frozen supermarket pizza, where regulations force to either declare it as fake cheese or use real one.
Most restaurants use fake cheese out of price concerns.
Those are very normal weggebobbles for anyone outside the US. Big no-no to vegan cheese though.
Are they not normal inside the US?
They're normal vegetables, but not normal pizza toppings. Just look at the menu offerings of any big US chain pizza place, deviating from that without warning is going to cause disappointment.
I'm from California, can't speak to the rest of the US... To me all except broccoli are perfectly normal pizza toppings. Not toppings I would expect to see on a Dominos pizza, but definitely to be expected on a "veggie" pizza from any independent pizza place.
> any big US chain pizza place
I guess that counts as "normal," but that's fast food, where picky children's tastes rule. Predictability and therefore high-volume turnover of ingredients is paramount.
Eh, I find vegan cheese very variable. I never seek it out but experience it relatively often. Sometimes it's tasty and chewy. Sometimes it's a bland monstrosity. I don't know why.
Vegan feta has the best success rate for me. Unfortunately, feta has limited applications.
(I'm not vegan but I like to try vegan products anyway.)
If you haven't make shakshuka yet, it's worth a shot. It's one of my favorite places to use lots and lots of feta. It's not normally vegan since it's topped with an egg, but that's easy enough to remove and forget. Eat it with toasted pita.
Come on, it's 2025, no true HN user hasn't tried to make shakshuka by now. :D
I don't even know how to spell shakshuka.
You don't have to! You can just say it's imported from a language that doesn't use the Latin alphabet, so there's no canonically correct way to spell it.
It's probably a lie but it doesn't sound like one!
Though Arabic has quite a few letters you won't find in the Latin alphabet, all the letters in the word shakshukah map perfectly to Latin letters. But put an H on the end, and quarter-pronounce it.
The spelling still had to be romanized. The Wikipedia page has three different spellings for it, though none match yours.
I stand by my point.
> feta has limited applications.
Politely beg to differ.
It's not particularly sliceable, meltable, or all that edible on its own. That rules out many cheese applications for me.
Then again, I'm French, so our takes on cheese may be very different! :)
Try buying it brined.
Pretty sure I have before but... what'll that change?
I thought I liked vegan pizzas, having only tasted the restaurant varieties which either don't have cheese or have some sort of savoury dressing instead. Then I tried a vegan frozen pizza, and I found out what people hate about them. Some gray slimy substance which apparently someone, somewhere, thought was similar to melted cheese.
Whole Foods is an offender here. They were selling a slice of fresh vegan pizza, which I assumed just had vegetables on it. Instead it had this obscene goopy “vegan cheese” that had more in common with mochi than cheese. (Yes, you can find pizzas with mochi on it in Japan, but they don’t call it cheese!)
I don’t get the trend of vegan restaurants etc selling fake meat products. If you want vegan food you’re probably better off going to an Indian restaurant where they actually know how to cook without meat.
It was from an actually good pizza place that had some wild choices for pizzas.
Inexplicably they didn't order any of the "regular" pizzas from there.
More places should have compost recycling that includes food waste. That gives food waste somewhere to go that isn't the trash. And it turns yard and food waste into compost so organics stay in the environment.
This is normal in the UK
I don't understand why people will have these stupid preconceptions about food which normally you unlearn during childhood. Complaining about food without tasting it is stupid and childish. Of course if you try something and it doesn't suit your tastes then it's fine to complain, but dismissing something offhand because you aren't familiar with it is rather narrow-minded.
Having tasted it, you’re free to decide it’s not for you. And you’re certainly free to decide that it’s not enough to tempt you to an HR… “party.”
I choose to eat what I want. It’s that simple.
Im even less interested in others picking interesting things for me when I am busy working.
Pontificating about a mindset you've never experienced by calling it narrow-minded is the brilliantly subtle satire I come here to see every day.
Putting orange juice in a bowl hardly makes it soup :p
Restaurants (at least in the US) have very strict standards about how long you can keep something at room temperature before you have to throw it away. Those standards are extremely conservative, and lead to a lot of food waste, but if I were on the staff I'd at least want to keep an eye on how long something has been sitting out. Those standards have just been beaten into me.
You also see that on a lot of fictional TV shows with dining scenes. Often nobody actually puts anything in their mouths. It was made hours ago while you were off shooting something else, and still more time while they got costumes, lights, makeup, etc. right (and for several takes). By the time film is rolling it has gotten quite gross.
(Assuming it was even food in the first place. Fake food often looks better and doesn't go off.)
Once you notice characters aren't eating, you'll never not see it again.
Related, where they're drinking coffee from a disposable cup, you can almost always tell it's empty by how they handle it.
> Related, where they're drinking coffee from a disposable cup, you can almost always tell it's empty by how they handle it.
NCIS has a running gag about that. In the show they invariably drink... some mysterious caffeinated product, I don't know if I'd call it coffee, with a straw. It always makes a slurping sound like the cup is nearly empty. Even when just handed a fresh cup.
That show is often lampooned for the silly "two idiots one keyboard" scene, but I am convinced they are doing dumb stuff like that on purpose.
That and nobody wants to eat a meal 40 times to get 40 takes.
This is the answer. The food is perfectly fine. It's fresh, there's catering on set, and it can be replaced as needed, unless it's something super unusual.
BUT if you eat the food in one shot you need to eat it in all the shots for continuity, so you can edit it together. Get ready to start barfing after 40 big bites of the same damn thing.
If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
I assumed the drink cups were empty/opaque so there was no continuity problem. If you splice together different shots, but the liquid level bounces around, it could be distracting.
> If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
If I were a prop-master (is that what it is called?) I've always thought that I'd just have a bag of plaster of paris handy. Then 30 minutes before going on set just dump some in the prop-cup with some water.
Sets quickly, density is about the same, physics of the cup should look convincing. Probably best for disposable cups though.
Scott Reeder (who is a prop master and makes short videos on about his craft on various platforms) has weighed down disposable cups a couple different ways. One was dropping a mini water bottle into the cup, and another was dyed food grade silicone (for when the shot required a cup with the lid off).
This is why everyone eats takeaway noodles in a box in sitcoms.
> unless it's something super unusual
I want to believe the gagh is real.
> If you look closely, you'll also see the coffee/tea cups actors sip from are usually empty. Can't afford the risk of accidentally spilling liquid on the costume and delaying the shoot.
Sometimes they are colored water, so you cannot drink but it still looks like a cocktail. Or at least that's how it was on the few movie sets I've been at.
One thing I noticed over and over, from cheap sitcoms to expensive blockbusters - when actors sip, they have liquid, but clearly the movement of glass to mouth is 'dishonest', as in too fast or too low for any liquid to actually make it into mouth. No swallowing movement of throat neither.
I guess its subconscious - they know they are not going to actually drink it, they focus their mind on other aspects of acting, so this part leaves them not faking it well.
If you see it once, you can't stop noticing it elsewhere afterwards, beware.
> That and nobody wants to eat a meal 40 times to get 40 takes.
Except maybe Brad Pitt (see Ocean's Eleven).
Brad Pitt in everything.
With a notable exception...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvxwf1jxdaM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i7ycxiog40
This can be more obvious in older shows where the original lower broadcast resolution would have hidden the charade.
Quick and very fussy question I'm hoping someone with native-level Japanese could comment on.
My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as "the staff enjoyed it later". It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse "ate", and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ("deliciously"). I would expect plain old "ate" if they used 食べました.
Of course, I'm not a professional translator or native speaker! It’s possible I'm over-indexing on the textbook knowledge I have of the language and in practice, to native Japanese eyes and ears, the things I think I'm seeing aren't really there.
English doesn't have rules as clear cut as Japanese's for politeness—especially nuances! I think it's fine to translate it to "ate".
In turn, I'm not a native English speaker, but in the dictionary I searched in, "enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat", whereas いただく definitely is—albeit a very polite one[1].
[1]: https://jisho.org/word/%E9%A0%82%E3%81%8F
>"enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat"
It isn't literally, but it takes on this meaning in context. If you "enjoy" ("receive pleasure or satisfaction from; have the use or benefit of" per M-W) food, it's hard to imagine that you did anything else with it (er, let's not explore that here, please).
It's much like how the primary, literal sense of いただく is more like "receive".
Itadaku is literally the kenjogo form of taberu (eat). It just happens to have multiple meanings.
The literal meaning is more along "to honor", or as GP explained. No different from people wondering about others in English.
Etymology ≠ meaning
“Enjoy” isn’t a synonym for “eat” in English but it definitely does carry the right meaning here. It’s a little poetic, but it’s idiomatic and native speakers will understand it.
English alternatives like “The staff enjoyed it later” or “The staff had the pleasure of eating it later” I would expect come across more euphemistic than normal to the average English-speaking viewer. So the question is whether the original was intentionally trying to come across euphemistic, or whether the original was using formal/polite language solely because of its position as being on TV.
IMO the bottom line is Japanese-English language pair don't translate natural AND verbatim at the same time. Either you're going to paraphrase heavily, e.g. "leftovers were shared with crews", "caution wet floor", or give it up and let it be "staff ate it", "here around is undergoing cleaning", etc. Some amounts of balancing act is always going to be needed.
What you say makes sense for explaining what was meant, but localizers might well simplify this kind of thing (just as they "punch up" other lines) on the basis of the significance of the line in cultural context. Basically, the 美味しく is culturally obligatory here (you'll see similar things in advertising copy), which causes it to lose meaning.
Not Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of "enjoy" in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later.
You're not wrong - "the staff ate it later" is a word-for-word translation, so it's kind of weird to leave out 美味しく. (among other things a meaningful translation would say "crew" instead of staff)
But the nuance of the JP here is that it's using a polite set phrase, not describing whether people enjoyed the food or not. A bit like how "a good time was had by all" is used to wrap up a story, not really to describe what kind of time people had.
tl;dr, 美味しく is there because the JP would sound weirdly flat without it, and you're right that "enjoyed" would probably be a better.
It's related to the concept of Mottainai (もったいない, 勿体無い) in Japanese culture. Where any waste is considered bad, specially related to food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai
This is why when you buy a book about mottainai in a Japanese bookstore, it comes with a detachable cover page, the bookstore gives you a cardboard cover so people can't see what you're reading, then puts the book in a plastic bag with a nice twist on top and then puts the bag in a branded paper bag.
(I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.)
The people bring the bags home, fold them up carefully, and keep them around for the next time they need a gift bag.
This is similar to the Japanese concept of Shitsurei (失礼, しつれい). It is of course impossible to comprehend this unique idea that no other world culture has ever conceived of. What a remarkable society!
I did chuckle a bit, but the idea of mottainai is just way more prevalent within Japan, compared to Western countries. I can't speak for other Asian countries, but it's very easy to feel that compared to North America and Europe (places that I've lived in). Funnily, I've felt it in post-soviet countries as well, but that's coming from the feeling of scarcity in the beforetimes.
I’ve also lived in NA Europe and Japan and disagree with this sentiment.
“Don’t waste stuff” is taught by plenty of parents, people talk about using every bit of the buffalo in America. Everyone in my generation has the grandparent who threw nothing away.
There’s maybe more modern examples of cultural thrift in Japan due to the postwar experience compared to the US… but even then.
I feel like I’m talking to aliens when these discussions of “unique Japan” things come up that are, in my experience, plenty present abroad.
I don’t even think Japan is particularly that good about reuse and waste beyond its recycling programs!
Maybe I'm wrong, but from my personal experiences in NA and Europe, even though wasting is "frowned upon", there's no feeling of "guilt" with the action of "waste". Honestly, I'm not sure how to explain it.
To understand "generational" behavior it's helpful to understand the prevailing conditions at the time.
Obviously these become somewhat sweeping generalizations but they largely hold.
A concern either waste directly correlates to abundance. Countries with historical (ie post war) food insecurity treat food like it is precious. Even if it has since become abundant.
People who grow up with financial insecurity spend money very carefully, even if they now earn plenty.
These attitudes span generations. The attitude of parents often gets taught to children. Although in some cases a generation will "flip".
For example, the post war boom in births lead to a generation that had to compete for infrastructure all the time. There were limited school places, jobs, promotions etc. "Winning" became the driving force. Winners got rewarded, losers got left behind.
Their children (x-gen) refused to play the game. They prioritized family over work. They handed out trophies for "participation". They talk about "work / life" balance.
Each of us is a product of our upbringing. Some things we carry forward as important values. Others we actively discard as unwanted mistakes our parents made.
On the upside our kids will do the same.
Middle class millennial French here: there's a very real concept of guilt in relation to food at least (somewhat less for electricity and water, but still).
It's considered a normal habit to always finish what's on your plate, even when you're not hungry anymore. But it's true that attitudes have softened a bit in this regard, especially at the restaurant; but when you're in control of the amount you're taking, you're still expected to not have "eyes bigger than your belly".
Did you have grandparents who lived through the Great Depression? Were your great grandparents adults during that? Mine were. My parents also both grew up fairly poor, partly in single-mother homes with multiple siblings. The guilt about wasting things, especially food, can be very real in North America.
Maybe your generation or your family's economic class is just very different from mine.
From my experience, the idea that you shouldn't waste things, and food in particular, is similar in Japan and France. That was even stronger with my grand-parents who lived through food scarcity during WWII in France.
US however seems pretty unique in its not caring about waste. Heck, it's really tough not waste food because all servings in restaurants are for 3 people so unless you bring everything in boxes you'll be wasting things.
Yes, in the same way I chuckle when I hear people (often practicing martial arts) talking about how "a Sensei" would be a word you can't translate, to talk about some kind of magical mentor...
Dude, it just means "teacher" or "professor".
That's exactly why you can't translate it: it has a word that is an exact denotational equivalent but with totally different connotations, because English and US culture lack the reverence for professors and other teachers that is implicit in Japan. Like how "tofu" means "soybean curd staple food" in Japan and "soybean curd effeminate, effete abomination" to rednecks.
But that's also completely unremarkable, given that word for word translation in any two languages is expected to be a lossy conversion.
Yes, but it's also a common reason for people to use loanwords like sensei, roshi, Schadenfreude, kombu, uni, and okay: they are trying to escape from the connotational trap of their local culture.
There is a similar concept in English culture called "waste".
Doesn't sound as strong due to the lack of tv captions
Yes, waste is an English cultural concept, especially in the US.
In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence.
So ironically, the more one wastes the more "conservative" one is considered to be.
Pretty much the opposite of the Japanese concept of mottainai.
The idea of not wasting food as a sort of baseline concept is a thing plenty of parents in the US teach their children.
Many Boomers may have heard something along the lines of "Many kids in Japan are starving and would love to have that food" even, bringing this somewhat full-circle.
Many boomers had parents and grandparents who lived through the Great Depression and war rationing.
> In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence.
Seems pretty dumb. Maybe mostly a US thing?
Any waste as long as it's not plastic. Plastic's a free-for-all. There's really nothing you can't individually plastic wrap. An apple? Wrap it in plastic. A cookie? Plastic. A plastic straw? You can wrap that too.
This bugged me for a while but two things came to play for me:
- humidity and the generally mold-friendly conditions of Japan means that not doing wrapping of certain food in small packs means you’re risking food waste. And generally speaking food hygiene issues can be avoided
- if you look up how much plastic is actually needed to wrap something in plastic, it’s not that much material. A single Lego brick is more plastic than a loooooot of Saran wrap.
It’s good to reduce waste when possible, but I do get the health/food waste concerns. And to Japans credit, I’ve found that plastic packaging for like… products tends to be way less than equivalent plastic packaged products abroad in many cases IME. My Sony earbuds came entirely in cardboard packaging! No fancy thick printed box either, just some thin simple paper material.
My “favourites” have to be food items with a natural covers, such as bananas and eggs, individually wrapped in plastic.
I wonder if this is why they tend to have plastic food displays at restaurant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_model
I think the plastic food displays are due to high uncertainty avoidance, so patrons can see exactly what their meal looks like before ordering. Yes you could use real food but the hassle of periodically filling the display case with freshly cooked dishes would be silly.
We should have more picture menus where every single menu item has a actual picture of the food served, instead of the guest trying to imagine the food based on often deceptive and flowery text descriptions.
We should also have better laws that require those pictures to match what you are actually served instead of the idealized presentations that are e.g. commonly displayed in fast food restaurants.
Some American restaurants have real food displays, too. With a chilled display case and limited airflow (and choosing only meals that keep well - avoiding exhibition of garnishes or salads that wilt in hours), you can put the same dessert on display for days.
At the end, of course, you have to throw it away - it might not be safe for staff to eat by the point it's visibly decomposing from 3 feet away. I find that just knowing the food in the case is destined for the garbage to rankle, especially when I'm simultaneously looking at menu prices and wondering why the meal costs so much; it's interesting to learn that the Japanese make those meal displays out of plastic/wax for the same reason.
How common is this? I have never seen real food used as a display only (as opposed to a buffet or other kind of display where the displayed food is actually served to eat), including in the US.
Sounds like a gimmick that is way too limiting to be a general practice.
It reminds me of the proposal to shake hands at the end of Goldeneye:
> Miyamoto, with a series of suggestions for the game. “One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input. The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/26/goldeneye...
One of my favorite childhood video games is 8 Eyes for the NES - after beating each boss, the player character sits down with them at a table, and a little skeleton butler walks over and serves them tea. The little scene plays over and over and over, you and the defeated bad guy, sitting at the table, sipping tea, while a skeleton wanders over and offers a periodic refill.
I always thought that was nice.
Many people are against throwing away of food because of certain principles.
But the irony is of course that in the West most people eat _far_ more calories than they really need, so they are doing basically the same thing.
I do t see the irony at all. You can consume lots of calories and also not waste food that seems like a completely reasonable thing to do to me.
Old people in Japan went through the deprivation of post-war Japan. Not all boomers were raised the same. It is harder for someone who has known famine to accept it is ok to throw food away for fun.
US grandparents think you can buy a house with a part time job, Japanese ones think that you could save a life with a watermelon. Different delusions.
When I was a kid, my dad and I were watching a cooking show together. I asked him "what do they do with all the food they make", and then, as if on cue, the host said, "In case you're wondering, the staff eat all the food we make here." My dad and I looked at each other with a silent look of "whoa".
It's why I have a hard time watching some of the Gordon Ramsey shock cooking shows. He'll take a barely over or under-done filet and toss it in the bin to make a point. That's just not OK
There's probably more food left to spoil in your average fridge than what gets thrown away in all cooking shows combined.
Citation needed
I wish they put this on screen in Germany, too (though in German, maybe, instead of Japanese). In cooking shows, I always fear they throw the food in the gargabe. With that note on the screen, if they do throw it in the garbage, at least they would be evil liars. Which might be less likely, and so I could feel better.
You're engaging in a decadent activity (watching TV) that "wastes" all kinds of resources but are worried about this one in particular (food) even though we have more than enough of it to go around?
Yes. Ish.
I also think that whataboutism is cheap.
I disagree that it'S 'more than enough' and that 'more than enough' is a good reason to waste resources.
It's not whataboutism if what you are worrying about is a drop in the bucket of overall waste.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
And if you'd read that on a real computer instead of a mobile device with a tiny screen you might actually understand it.
Sharing the mobile link is usually a curtesy to others that _might_ want to read it on a smaller device. I actually did read the desktop version.
Regardless of disclaimer, I’m sure the food cooked on TV going to waste is not the norm - dozens of people are on set when filming any of these shows, and they’re all curious to try the dish.
On French TV shows they state (verbally, not with a standard text shown on screen) that the leftovers are given to the Red Cross (and some to the staff).
Food waste is utterly meaningless to the environmental cost of producing and streaming a TV show.
For instance, streaming anything in 4k takes an enormous amount of water and energy.
And also in Youtube "I ate every dish on the menu at restaurant XYZ". I really like these, but man do I feel bad afterwards. Please tell me nothing went to waste!
this seems to be making its way to western shows as well - when taskmaster has a food based challenge, they often include a reassurance that the food didn't go to waste. and i've seen similar on some youtube shows.
for example: https://youtu.be/_gNZR5IEsAA?si=x5nvoBzC9Xc4fxFs&t=1674
Yeah Taskmaster (which I adore) came to my mind too. I think it's more common when the food in question is an animal product, but still it just seems a bit contrived when behind the scenes the catering company is probably chucking tons of food the talent didn't feel like eating on a given day anyway.
It's entertainment, it has an environmental cost, sometimes a big cost. I don't think you need to signal that it's unacceptable for that cost to be paid solely for entertainment's sake. What's the difference between some food waste and burning fuel to drive a boulder out of town for a laugh.
I hope they don't make the staff finish off stuff, like Marmite and porridge ice cream, which makes all the contestants gag.
A more practical approach in this case, where the concerns are probably slightly different than what we see in the article, is probably a (monetary) donation to a food bank.
i'm fairly sure they're not going to be force-feeding the leftovers to anybody
Having spent my first couple years right out of college at a production company that shot a lot of ads for a grocery chain I can assure you that I took as much food home with me as possible
The whole “the staff ate it later” routine is really just a symptom of a broader intolerance in Japanese media. After years of getting complaints over the most innocuous things, Japanese TV shows have started slapping disclaimers on everything, even the most trivial situations.
You see it everywhere: statements like “this is just one of many possible hypotheses” to appease people who might disagree, though to be fair, Western media sometimes include similar disclaimers, or “this was filmed with the owner’s permission” even when it is not really necessary. Then there is the excessive blurring—if someone with even a minor scandal appears, they are edited out or blurred, and a message like “this was recorded on MM-DD” pops up, all to avoid viewers asking, “Why is this person on TV?”
Of course, I understand the need for disclaimers in situations that really warrant them, such as scientific experiments that require proper oversight. But the disclaimers added just to dodge silly complaints do nothing but infantilize viewers, and honestly, they are kind of insulting.
Ultimately, this is part of a bigger problem with Japanese TV. It has dumbed itself down to the lowest common denominator, pandering to the most vocal complainers who often lack basic critical thinking skills. This is not unique to TV, either; Japanese businesses in general have long been hypersensitive to the “customer is always right” mindset. Thankfully, there is some pushback against that now. Still, TV is especially vulnerable since broadcasters get access to public airwaves at relatively low cost and are expected to act like a public utility, making them an easy target for complaints.
Ironically, all of this is helping drive younger generations away from TV, not just as a medium, but because the shows themselves feel less and less relevant.
I used to work in an R&D type environment as a mobile developer. Once in a while, people would go into a room nearby to test bread for the stores. Of course, they got whole loaves but only needed to taste a little, so I got free bread. Didn't have a big enough freezer at the time though, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted to.
And I used to live with an Indonesian lady (student housing, but she was in her 40's, I think she worked for the embassy), she had a friend or relative that had a restaurant and would sometimes come home with foodstuffs like a bag of cooked chicken or fish rolls.
I'd contrast this with the game show "Double Dare".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dare_(franchise)
I hope the staff didn't eat the food later, as the competitors often had to swim in it or crawl through it. I think it was generally real food, which was occasionally controversial (maybe it would have been more controversial in Japan?).
I wish some of these cooking competition reality shows would declare this kind of thing. One recent competition one "Is It Cake?" constantly trucks out these sort of demonstration items where some true wizard behind the scenes is making a ton of lifelike items that the actual contestants have to guess about just to determine their own order/ranking in the competition. I always wonder what happens to all of the cake from just that portion of the show (and some other segments). The 'Kraft services table' in the back much be epic etc
I read an interview from the British Baking Show which said that all of the crew knew to keep a spoon in their pocket so they could sample the dishes at the end.
Yah, I can’t imagine much of the food from The Great British Bake Off (as we call it) goes to waste!
I’m Japanese, and in Japan it’s pretty common for TV shows or YouTubers to get called out if they look like they’re wasting food. Japanese people really expect food not to be treated carelessly. Folks would love to see a “No food was wasted” one.
I genuinely thought this would be about a temporal dog-ate-my-homework sort of thing. Really.
I’m glad that Japanese society cares this much about food waste. We could use more of that where I am (USA).
I read somewhere that there's more English articles on Japanese topics in wikipedia than the entire japanese wikipedia.
Seems to check out true. HN types really seem to love their Japan.
If you want the ultimate in "The staff ate it later" watch Steven Raichlen's Project Smoke on PBS. The crew of that show eat like Kings.
https://www.pbs.org/show/steven-raichlens-project-smoke/
Interesting. Consideration is key; but not above all else. Imagine being one of the staff from the article who felt obligated to finish the food out of some misguided guilt.
Perhaps they hire special staff members with enormous and undiscriminating appetites.
we watched a cooking competition show last year where one of the contestants was tasked with breaking down a 100lb fish in order to prepare 4 entree sized portions of which the judges likely only took a bite or two... food waste in this kind of show is a given but this was totally galling.
I first thought this was going to be a story about big tech company bureaucracy, where the staff ate all the good ideas.
"What happened to the other plutonium core?"
"The staff ate it."
It's the opposite of restaurants, usually they don't let their staff eat leftovers.
I see both sides because you don't want staff intentionally making "mistakes" just to get some food but I worked for almost a decade in restaurants and only McDonald's didnt let you eat the food.
This must be a high end/low end thing. When I worked at a family diner, it was a free for all on the buffet leftovers which could not be recycled for the following day.
Restaurant staff usually eats before service, no? At least where I'm from.
And it's usually made from leftovers in the kitchen, as I understand it.
Not really, at least where I worked. Just the daily meal as a customer would get.
Instead: a discount for what you unloaded from the frozen truck last week... and just cooked
From what I've seen, it's totally ordinary for "sandwich artists" to prepare lunch for themselves from the ingredients on display.
If anything, the rodent staff will.
Crows will also help themselves.
depends on how close to the bus/dish position you are. i used to eat leftover tiramisu from the bus tub all the time when i washed dishes at an italian restaurant.
...not that i would do that today, but i was poor, and it was good :)
Ok, now if we took a picture of all the food in the world, a more accurate caption would be:
"The staff threw away 30 to 40% of it and ate the rest later."
I would go with "Care has been taken to minimize food waste." or some paraphrasing of it.
Even if that would be more accurate - if your audience is accustomed to seeing "the staff ate it later", and that is only a feel-good checkbox for them (vs. a metric that anyone cares about optimizing), then it is better to go with what your audience is accustomed to. Otherwise, you're running off into the weeds.
TV, Japan
... and they lived happily ever after
Same thing, no?