Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

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Fuck is one of the seven dirty words:

https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/news/the-seven-dirt...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words

(Aside, but I don't think Carlin ever credited Lenny Bruce:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_Bruce#Obscenity_arrests

Lenny Bruce's 1962 "Dirty Words" album is on Spotify and Apple Music; worth a listen if you've never heard it.)

Jackson's use of fuck is typically to add emphasis to a statement, and actually, I think he uses "motherfucker" a lot more than bare fuck[1], but in any case, fuck has different meanings depending upon context. Consider: Oh fuck. Fuck off. Fuck you. I'm fucked. Hey lady, you wanna fuck?[2] This fucking bug. Let's get the fuck outta here.

It's an adaptable word but still bleeped on the air in 2022. At the same time, it's okay to allude to it on primetime TV as in: "Holy mother forking shirt balls!"

[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/06/samuel-l-jackso...

[2]: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Body_Heat

Malcolm Tucker in “The Thick of It” made extensive use of the word “fuck”, my favourite being responding to a door knock with “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” - an impressive 33% fuck content.

Treatises have been written on the sheer utility of "fuck". It's an incredibly versatile word.

I feel “on the air” is a bit misleading and antiquated, and I think that’s quite relevant, because you seem to be using “the air” as some barometer of social acceptance.

Even the “cool” elderly people I know stopped listening to the radio and broadcast TV years ago. Nowadays, everything is Podcasts, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc. and none of them censor “fuck”. Our culture is generally becoming a lot more open and accepting when it comes to the use of words like “fuck” and “shit”, however words like “cunt” are still fairly taboo.

From my perspective, broadcast TV and radio are simply a measure of how many Americans are hanging onto an antiquated culture, and I’m sure there’s significant overlap between “people who listen to broadcast” and “people who still find ‘fuck’ offensive”, and it’s likely no longer just a function of age.

Thanks for sharing the Lenny Bruce but, I had no idea that inspired Carlin!

Literally the only reason i do not use Television or terrestrial radio broadcast is the advertisements. I got sick of the advertisements back in 2001, and i have never had a CATV subscription. I have an aerial now because PBS has a channel aimed specifically at children and as it's publicly funded the advertisements (including product placement) are benign or at least unobtrusive, not loud, and not about medicines. Doctors aren't watching children's programming (generally) so that's the last refuge from the billions pharma spends on marketing every year.

90% of the freemium streaming services are the same, and i'll include SiriusXM as well.

That all being said, I personally consider sectioning off parts of the language (colorful or whatever) a net positive. In my opinion, disallowing words that have "universal meaning" forces children (and people who want to run for office, be an instructor, whatever) to find better and more descriptive ways to express themselves. The alternative, as an extreme, would be two utterances: "Fuck yes!" for good things, and "aw, fuck!" for bad things.

All in favor say fuck yes

I may just be a simple big city technologist, but there's something really vim-like about broadcast that I thoroughly appreciate. I sure hope I'm not the only one who sees value in such things!

God should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is religious and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is old school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.

The other problem is who are these people imposing those rules on us? Is this the thought police who hide behind the anonymity of public outrage and public morals but typically work for media outlets as editors, or legislators or law enforcement and judiciary? Are they an anagram of Non Technical Computer Users?

> God should be added to that list

Not using it in vain is one of the ten commandments:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_take_the_name_o...

The "these people" are us, and I don't believe there's actually a formal list of banned words. Rather, Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast[1].

It's then up to us, the public, to work out whether content falls into one of these categories. NBC could, for example, choose not to bleep fuck during a daytime podcast. That would probably lead to a bunch of complaints to the FCC. The FCC would then fine NBC, and I gather, ultimately could revoke NBC's broadcasting license.

What's offensive changes over time[1]. Maybe fuck won't be seen as offensive some day, and then networks will be free to broadcast it over the air because no one complains to the FCC about it.

[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code

> Not using it in vain is one of the ten commandments:

Religion has only been around for about 2000-3000 years, and if it was banned so we couldnt utter the word god anymore, I wonder how long it would take for the epigenetics to work out of the gene pool.

In todays world, I have a hunch most kids have learnt to swear by the time they start primary school, so why the mental bondage to use a euphemism and to have an excuse to beat a kind mentally and/or physically for saying it?

Would it really bring that much chaos to the world, considering the psychological idea that something banned or illicit is more highly treasured?

> Religion has only been around for about 2000-3000 years.

About 50,000 years at least:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_religion

Consider what happens when I say "the 'n' word" - do you think of a racial slur in your head? If so, because I do in fact mean the slur but I am not allowed to say it regardless of context, should I have just said the word to begin with anyway? Am I free from obscenity because I used a euphemism and you are a racist for thinking of the non-euphemism? The mental burden concept is iffy here.

See also "G-d"

If I was younger under the legal guardianship of my parents the N word would be No. However the news & social media has been very informative and educational at hilighting other peoples vulnerabilities giving would be agent provocateurs new angles of attack, so now I tend to associate the N word with a subsection of society getting angry at the non subsection of society using it. What I see is a subsection of society trying to own a word which can only be used by themselves. I think this happens when a subsection dont have many material possessions to keep them occupied with like toys for kids so like with religion, if you dont have much you start inventing things and laying claim to things that where there is no proof.

As to the cognitive dissonance angle, for having racist thoughts regarding a non euphemism, there is nothing quite like cognitive dissonance to mess people up, but what I find interesting about it is how it affects us as our chemistry changes, ie we age, we get more intelligent, we get wise, so then we start employing innuendo to avoid the legal and societal constraints, and there is another subsection of society which does innuendo brilliantly.

Kale should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is a health nut, and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is new school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.

Wendy's puts kale on one of their chicken sandwiches. Is it really a health nut thing? Seems similar to lettuce.

Yes it was traditionally a pro health fad food - and this is precisely one the reasons Wendy’s is marketing it. That and it still has a little panache as being more “upscale” than iceberg.

In the 00sKFC tried to market their chicken as a pro health Atkins type food with none other than Jason Alexander. That one was so bad that even the fucking ad industry criticized it. Marketing the unhealthiest of fast food as somewhat healthy is not a new thing.

… “traditional” as in 20 years ago.

Before that, it was mostly used as decoration, in the US.

KFC was considered healthy by the uneducated long before that. Growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember my family and my friends' families treating KFC as the healthy fast food option.

It really wasn't until the Double Down era that the absurdity of KFC was apparent to everyone.

Kale is also high in Oxalate. If you have had kidney stones, you care about this.

It's not as high as Spinach or Almonds, but it's still in the top ten.

So, maybe they need to be sued by someone who has had kidney stones, before they reconsider that idea, or at least required to put a huge warning on that item?

The phosphorus in iceberg lettuce will help dissolve kidney stones.

if you have a bunch of lettuce (like iceberg or whatever) and do an extraction - i'm not sure what type other than distillate - the resulting compound is narcotic.

You can go online or to a drug store and buy wild lettuce and/or lettuce extract and take it for pain or inflammation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactucarium

Wild Lettuce is much stronger and you can find it growing around the place because most people only know it as being a weed! LOL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactuca_virosa https://www.erowid.org/plants/lactuca/lactuca.shtml https://www.captain-planet.net/natures-strongest-painkiller-...

Most plants that we class as food have been domesticated to avoid some of the wild experiences that might get documented on Erowid.org but in the past were explained away as religious experiences and documented as such.

I take wild lettuce, and tumeric with black pepper fairly often. in 1998 or so there were "tobacco-less" cigarettes that my partner at the time bought me to try, i think they're probably used as props on movie sets and for people who want to look "smoker cool" without the whole cancer and emphysema aspects - these were 100% wild lettuce, and smelled like what, at the time, i assumed was marijuana. I've since discovered that more people around that area were smoking catnip/wild lettuce than weed, since they're different, and it's not really that subtle.

Plants, and how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of.

> how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of

Well if you want a laugh then, try some L-Tryptophan, a few grams a day but you can do more spread out over the day.

You gut bacteria will turn it into serotonin and you'll know why serotonin is found in the outer shell of seeds. Lets just say it can give you a toilet experience much like having a hot spicy curry, you see serotonin irritates the gut in animals so the seeds get pooped out pretty much in tact so the plants can spread around, but serotonin can cause some tissues to sting enormously which is why curry can also sting.

Pepper has something in it called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperidine which has a mild amnesiac effect https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15878668/ so dont use too much pepper on your meal otherwise you might forget what you had eaten!

About 20 years ago I was also bothered by people bringing in their religion in my face too much. Then I realized that they have the right to speak their mind, same as I have the right to speak my mind, and their view of the world is as good to them as it is mine to me. I had no problem with any religion per se (I grew in places with antagonistic religions and I learned to be neutral), just with their "in your face" attitude, but I realized there is a huge differences between being polite and banning.

I dont think you realise how dangerous some of these people really are, which is why banning is essential. Cognitive dissonance is extremely dangerous and religions have caused a lot of unnecessary deaths.

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