Death and typos: my six years screening online obituary comments
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's always the case that different people have different amount of "prudence". What is normal and casual for some could be completely outrageous for others.
Think being topless at the beach/pool which is completely normal where I live, but I could imagine doing so in the US would cause havoc. Except these differences also exists between individuals, not just cultures as a whole.
Arguably the problem is with the English language itself. Loose vs lose, and many other examples like they're, their, etc, the spelling and pronunciation don't match at all, intuitively and not logically. So every time brain has to do extra cycles to translate what you hear as your thoughts to special spelling rules.
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1. The New Oxford Dictionary has given up, and offers the common, but technically incorrect definition as its first definition, while the American Heritage Dictionary places that definition at number 2.
2. Here, the dictionaries are holding firm on the correct definition and do not acknowledge the common misapprehension of the word’s meaning.
I legitimately only know one meaning for each of those and from a quick look in a dictionary my understanding of those words seem to stem from the original meaning.
"I was feeling nauseous" is incorrect and should be "I was feeling nauseated", as nauseous is "causing nausea" but that's just pedantry and dictionaries now reflect that and now also list it as "affected by nausea".
It's eugenics for language lol
”Everyone was confused and then bemused when the runner-up, who had written under a pseudonym, turned out to be…Graham Greene.“
I would also like to add “to sanction” being used to meant to punish, although according to the OED, this meaning (in legal contexts) dates to the early 19th century, but every time I encounter it, I always have to stop and puzzle over the context since the verb meaning of “sanction” also means to give approval to.
Also, find meteorites seem to be approaching the "so bad it's good" threshold.
Life ends, typos last.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=f1nHVU1Qe4I
(NSFW language for the uninitiated)
Also of note is that he spent a lot of time keeping the comments "safe and sugarcoated", even deleting comments referencing "family fallouts and estrangement". There's such a strange culture around sanitizing people's images after their death and pretending they were angels. Some people were legitimate pieces of shit in life, and silencing those harmed by them in the interest of being politically correct sounds unfair to me. Caring only about letting their supporters grieve without having to think about the deceased's complexities, while for example, preventing those who were abused by them from voicing their thoughts seems to want to preserve order by sweeping anything unseemly under the rug.
When the crime is still recorded and even announced, it's considered part of the punishment because jail is deemed not enough. It's how we get sexual offender registry.
Americans love to piss and moan about all the freedoms we supposedly have, but are conspicuously unsatisfied with merely removing said freedoms as punishment for crimes.
Maybe they don't think "freedom" is that important or meaningful
In principle I have no trouble just executing Breivik; his guilt is established beyond doubt, he committed an act of exceptional evil, and he more or less declares to want to do it again (well technically he says he wants to be a "non-violent Nazi" or some such, but that's a contradiction in terms: "oh that Holocaust thing was just brilliant, more of that!" is violent rhetoric).
But Breivik-type case are rare. So rare it's not really worth changing the system over it. There's principle of a thing and the practicalities of it: in principle the death penalty is fine, but practically organizing that in a legal system with zero false positives is very difficult, so it's not really worth it.
Aside from the US, you can also look at post-second world war in Europe, which saw some executions that were rather over the top in hindsight.
If you spend some time in the Nordics, you'd find that most don't think "death penalty is fine in principle" as it goes against many of the principles people there try to live by.
Lets see how true this really is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39826176 - "Julian Assange granted permission to appeal against extradition to US" - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/26/julian-assange...
Other than that killing him would be way to kind.
So yeah, this perspective really depends.
Where was this?
Among support for the death penalty in the United States, is the fact that some criminals, particularly the serial killer type, have committed crimes so heinous that there is no chance of parole or rehabilitation to return to normal life. When one is burdened with 60 consecutive life sentences, it effectively requires that the state pay to sustain the criminal's life until it comes to an end. If the death penalty were enacted instead, we could both reduce the cost the state (which, in turn, is the tax payers), and reduce the suffering the criminal must endure for his crimes.
If you'd like to take the afterlife into account, the "sends the person to eternal torment in hell" sounds like a particular theology not backed up by the Bible, the typical standard in American thinking. That verges way too much on passing ultimate judgment, which is itself reserved for God alone. Perhaps some people believe it. I don't (and I am religious).
It is also supported because it can be used as a self-defence mechanism.
We take it for granted that when we lock up 'really' dangerous people they will be safely away from society, but that kind of infrastructure is a fairly recent phenomena in human history. Prison breaks/escapes still happen:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prison_escapes#2022_–_...
Not only from a building-prisoners perspective, but also from an excess-resources point of view: through most of human history, suggesting using society's surplus—which probably wasn't there—to feed someone 'evil' while everyone else had to work away would have seemed very unfair.
If a single individual has the right to self-defence against an attacker, and a ("small") group of individuals have the same right (e.g., a bunch of folks worshipping in a temple, mosque, church), then wouldn't a "large" group of individuals (e.g., society) have a right to protect themselves from an attacker?
With regards to "hell": someone, while waiting on death row, many repent of their actions and try to find redemption, but still be executed from a legal point of view:
I don't think so. Sin is a sin, crime is a crime, no matter person is dead it alive.
Obituaries can complicate that when they purport to be a biographical summary (such as for public figures), rather than a traditional formal announcement of memorial services with some kind words thrown in.
I hope to live long enough to say "Good riddance!" about the passings of multiple people who did bad things, but I'd do it privately, not be a jerk to the grieving.
The bereaved have the right to grieve authentically, even if that means doing justice to a history that involves trauma and conflict. That's part of what collective grieving rituals are for and should be for. There are limits but I don't think there's a universal prescription, or that it's fair to draw a line at, e.g., mere mention of estrangement.
A man goes to a newspaper stand every day, buys a copy of Pravda, glances at the front cover, curses, and throws it away.
After a few weeks of this the seller just has to ask what's going on: "why do you always look at the cover but never inside?"
"I'm looking for an obituary."
"An obituary? But those are in the back!"
"Oh no, the obituary I'm looking for will be on the front page."
They retained a lot of the old advertisers: funeral homes. They sponsored two regularly scheduled readings of funeral notices at 7 and 11:45. Basically, radio obituaries.
One woman didn't like the format, so she'd tune in exactly at 11:45. If we ran them early for some reason, she'd call and demand we read them to her. This happened about twice a month.
Sometimes I got the call, sometimes it was the guy who came in after me. Always the same voice. We called her the funeral lady.
One morning the other guy had enough and I heard him taking to her, "look, lady, is there someone in particular you're hoping is going to die? Just give me a name and we'll call you when they're dead."
I've no beef with the genre but I think it would've been really boring to DJ.
I might be biased - but the tail end of the beautiful music era was probably a high point for FM Broadcast audio quality - it was the last point before the emphasis towards loudness started.
(Sorry)
If the person is universally hatred, nobody would pay for his/her online obituary comment system's moderation
Even in the worst of those situations, some people will pay for the formalities for any of a variety of reasons.
Funeral is the last chance to say 'fuck you' to the haters
For example the experience of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39834260 lower down in this thread.
Appropriate usage.