Comment by kuhaku22 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kuhaku22 | Hacker News Reader

I found it interesting that he wasn't allowed to read the obits themselves, so wouldn't even know if the subject was a human or dog. One might argue some distancing helps for these kinds of moderation jobs, but also sounds dehumanizing to not have any context at all.

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.

There are other times and places for criticizing the dead, either before or a bit after the person's passing. Not immediately after, and not where the grieving will congregate.

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.

There's a lot of space between passing over abuse in silence and being a jerk to others who are grieving. Mere mention of estrangement or complicated relationships is hardly shitting on someone.

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.

Good point. I wasn't thinking of enough scenarios.

There's an old Soviet joke:

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."

:) interesting and funny at the same time

This reminds me of my first job in radio. I worked weekend mornings 6-12. The station had started with a "beautiful music" format, then recently had switched to adult contemporary.

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."

Man, I miss beautiful music being a viable radio format. It makes such great background music.

The Funeral Lady would agree with you. Well, if she's still around. This was 30 years ago, and I would have guessed the owner of the voice on the other side of the phone was already north of 80.

I've no beef with the genre but I think it would've been really boring to DJ.

I'd imagine it was mostly just watching the automation systems run, and waiting to talk.

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.

"The Obituary Show" was probably a big money maker. Sponsored by a funeral home, I expect. Great place to be heard by your future customers.

That guy wasted a lot of money, cos looking at the front page is free!

(Sorry)

There are people who are so manipulative and full of hatred that they actually have nobody who is willing to truly grief about their death. My grandma was such a person. I really remember nobody who was fond of her. To the contrary, most people were content that she was finally gone. So please, don't tell others how they are supposed to deal with their peers.

Let's think it in this way.

If the person is universally hatred, nobody would pay for his/her online obituary comment system's moderation

No.

Even in the worst of those situations, some people will pay for the formalities for any of a variety of reasons.

Wills often include instructions for funerals, and expenses to be put to things like Obits, flowers, and other accruements.

Funeral is the last chance to say 'fuck you' to the haters

You are overlooking that the bulk of those negative comments are probably not true, and are just griefers.

For example the experience of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39834260 lower down in this thread.

> just griefers.

Appropriate usage.

Considering that death penalty is considered a punishment so great that lots of states banned it, I guess people think that death already punished the person so badly that their sins can be considered absolved. So whether or not people sanitize dead people's image correlates to their opinion on death itself.

Mentioning someone's crimes isn't a punishment, especially when they're not around to hear them. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that people can still have criminal records after they've finished serving a prison sentence?

Isn't mentioning it considered bad when someone has served their punishment? It's part of right-to-be-forgotten after all.

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.

Capital punishment is immoral not because death is sufficient to absolve guilt but because we lack sufficient certainty of guilt. Death is just death, it doesn't absolve guilt.

That's an interesting perspective to take. Those countries in Europe who have prohibited capital punishment have done so because we believe it is immoral even in the case of absolute certainty of guilt. Take Anders Breivik for example: there is no doubt whatsoever of his guilt - he is a mass murderer. Nevertheless, according to modern European concepts of morality he should be treated well even in prison, and the Norwegians take that to a level that many other countries would find absurd.

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

When we decline to execute a heinous offender, and decline to treat them as inhuman - even when they have offended inhumanly - it demonstrates the moral difference between us and them.

As Michelle Obama said: "When they go low, we go high"

And seemingly demonstrates our ability to be taken advantage of by said inhuman offenders-

Does Anders truly "win" by being simply in confinement forever, rather than being dead? What does he gain? His life? What life? Playing PS1 games forever, seeing the same four walls forever, acceptable but certainly not impressive meals forever. There is not a single thing anyone can do to him or anyone else to undo what he did, and causing him suffering certainly doesn't bring back any children. More importantly, killing him does not make any of the damage he caused go away.

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

There is continued harm though. Every day he is treated well, every day he gets food and shelter and care is food and shelter and care paid for by you, that could have been spent on others.

Breivik is also a single person; do you really want to change (or even burn down) the entire system just for one person?

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.

> in principle the death penalty is fine

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.

Obviously the "I think that [..]" or "it is my opinion that [..]" is implied.

"Those countries in Europe" is perhaps a bit of an understatement. Any justice system that practices capital punishment is considered so dysfunctional that any plans on joining the European Union is out of the question. This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.

Hardly 'rigged'.

> This is also why the system is rigged as to make it impossible to extradite someone if there is even the slightest possibility of a death penalty.

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...

He's not treated well. Maybe compared other (inhuman) places, but he feels his treatment is so vindictive that he has tried getting the human rights court involved.

Other than that killing him would be way to kind.

His protests as well as the treatment often perceived as "absurdly comfortable" all hinge on one fact: he is kept in permanent solitary confinement. Which is otherwise considered an additional (and harsh) punishment for regular prisoners. And it's the reason why he has his private gym and entertainment facilities, because those would normale be available as shared facilities to regular prisoners.

Is that why? I find it hypocritical to punish murder with state sanctioned murder.

Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them. It’s literally the opposite to what you are claiming

At least where I was taught, death penalty reduces someone's punishment in the afterlife. So in a way capital punishment is a "mercy" because without it they'll be punished even more in hell.

So yeah, this perspective really depends.

Does it matter if the offender believes in tales of hell and heaven? Or is it just important for the people remaining in society how they think the penalty affects the offender?

That’s interesting; I never heard that before.

Where was this?

That's a take I've certainly never heard before.

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).

We, who? The practical reason to support it is that it guarantees there is no chance for them to murder more people, or as a (misguided?) deterrent for others not to murder.

> Death penalty is supported because we think it sends the person to eternal torment in hell, not because we think it purifies them.

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:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man_Walking_(book)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man_Walking_(film)

Following that though is to say dead Nazi's sins are absolved.

I don't think so. Sin is a sin, crime is a crime, no matter person is dead it alive.

Only if you consider it's absolvable with one death. Though it isn't like those are absolvable by any means in this world.

I never understood that stance. To me the death penalty is an easy way out compared to a life without freedom.

How does dying absolve anyone of sin?

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