Undying dread: A 400-year-old corpse, locked to its grave
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Locking up corpses to keep them from escaping - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37387878 - Sept 2023 (12 comments)
but since it didn't get significant attention, I suppose it's ok if it...comes back.
They were buried nailed to a plank with a stake driven through their heart, so they couldn't come back and haunt people.
Rumour has it that Bram Stoker, who grew up in the same area, drew inspiration from the Suicide Plot when he wrote Dracula.
Hold on, I’m off to write a screenplay for an artsy indie period piece psychological horror film.
> “A few weeks or months after death, the body was still ‘fresh,’” Dr. Skóra said.
That's the first new NSFL search term I've run across in years.
Bravo, sir!
If that is your initialism then... bravo.
I wouldn't dare to say that weeks or month after death a corpse can still be "fresh", but in some places when/if you open a buried coffin after 5 years or so it is not rare that there has been not enough decomposition to allow the transfer of the body to an ossuary.
There are "aerated" tombs devised to accelerate the decomposition:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sykes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sykes#Exhumation_for_biol...
but it seems like the attempt was not successful, the lead coffin was broken and the body was not as well preserved as it was expected.
Further, what things are we doing now that future generations will ask the same question about us?
I don't think it's a rude question as much as it is an obvious question.
Have you even seriously studied the history of science? Are you seriously referring to the 17th century with a lack of science? The reality is that science was flourishing, and had been extremely popular for centuries, even millennia, before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...
The Renaissance was in full bloom, Leonardo da Vinci was already dead and his legacy was being explored in depth, Galileo lived until 1642, the grand cathedrals and basilicas of Europe were being built. In fact, for millennia before this, great buildings such as the Hagia Sophia, the Pyramids, the ziggurats, the Mayan and Aztec Temples, these are all feats of engineering and science. In Arizona, the Hohokam people had built a network of canals, hand-dug with no machinery or even animals, to irrigate the arid desert land that they then cultivated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokam
If these are not feats of science, if these do not demonstrate a most commonplace culture of science, then I don't know what to tell you.
Having scientists is not the same as everyone going through science as a required subject of education.
The point seems to approach a trope of "ignorant illiterate religious freaks from the 17th century had no idea how the world worked and made up a lot of superstitious garbage that we've all moved past in enlightened, modern times".
Was I off by much there?
Though what some people say doesn’t necessarily represent what most people actually believe. We still have people talking as if the earth was flat etc. Passing along such ideas don’t require actual belief, the desire to mess with others works just as well.
But even modern medicine screws it up. Just this year: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-65886245.amp
And here is a somewhat interesting article about the history of the problem. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/07/final-forms
Of course, for obvious reasons it's impossible to be sure nobody was buried alive, but if anyone was, the air supply in their coffin wouldn't last longer than about an hour.
Lawns seem a good candidate. We take a piece of land that could provide most of the sustenance we need along with a host of positive externalities, then douse it in poison, expend enormous effort to remove natural fertilizers from it, pay to import industrially produced nitrogen to spread over it, and burn fossil fuels to cut it.
How a reasonable culture could view this practice as anything but stupidity or madness is anyone’s guess.
If I did nothing with it, it would naturally be grass, albeit extremely tall grass interspersed with thistles, burrs, and hemlock, which are far more negative than grass.
I don't spray it, remove anything from it, fertilize it, or use any ICE equipment to cut it, so that seems like a bit of a strawman.
And a lawn is extremely utilitarian. If you eliminate them, you eliminate a host of positive externalities: they're very aesthetically pleasing and good for mental health, they provide space to do activities, especially for kids, which promotes a healthy lifestyle, they're good for socializing, they're required for dogs, etc.
At least in America, we have no shortage of space. I don't know what people's problem is with people having a little recreational area.
I think this may be a bit high, my math may be wrong.
an acre of lentils for instance should yield about 5-8 quintals (say 500-800kg) of lentils a year. I imagine if you really care about that one acre, you may get higher yields still.
800kg of lentils would be about 2600 kcal/day for a year.
Rice would yield substantially more (but not everyone lives where rice paddies can thrive)
Corn: 1 acre yields 170 bushes / 5000kg, about 50,000 kcal/day.
Now, you need to eat other stuff as well to avoid malnutrition, but if you don't have meat, 1 acre seems to be more than enough per person. If you have to (zombie apocalypse, not because it would be convenient).
Caveat: IANAF, cannot provide any agricultural advice.
I mean, Nike destroys product to keep prices high and maintain scarcity [1].
I think everyone is aware of how housing prices are kept artificially high by agressive zoning restrictions.
The problem isn’t capitalism per se, the issue is that this is crony capitalism, not real capitalism.
A true free market would actually benefit the masses with more inexpensive goods, better, low cost health care, affordable housing etc, the issue is that there’s arbitrary restrictions put on the free market either by market makers or by groups with disproportionate influence over regulations.
Also it’s worth mentioning social norms, it’s easy to find an education online in lieu of a paying for a full blown college education, but individuals still insist that a compsci degree is necessary.
Anyhow, my point is that humanity has never been closer to a post scarcity society and rather than embracing it, it’s actually being pushed back against by a number of different actors for a variety of selfish reasons.
[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/17/17852294/fashion-bra...
Taxing property as apposed to just land misaligns the economics enough so that land becomes a financially useful hedge asset, like gold.
So the rich, and large funds, all create demand for land beyond its practical use.
This also keeps land prices artificially high.
Cremation is pretty odd as well: we are like 80% water (or whatever), so it's more like boiling someone away and then burning the desiccated results. It's quick energy-intense, and to what end?
I've heard of some recent innovations in mushroom caskets that help decompose the body in short order. I would imagine that silicone prosthetics and what-not are somewhat of an issue...
That can't be answered safely. If it could be answered safely, it would also be true that we weren't doing it.
Question yourself before others.
In a word, fashion. Our fashions will be criticized.
(A small number of reposts is ok if an article hasn't had significant attention yet. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts.)