The staff ate it later
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
- 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.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plymouth%20fury&ia=images&i...
Was jesus secretly a clown?
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings%209&v...
But this was almost as good.
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...
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.
Porcupine throwing quills, and all that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
Which is a bit funny, considering how they asdmired the ancient Greeks and Romans. Why did they consider their culture and statecraft as so ideal, if they considered the people that originated them as so inferior?
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.)
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/10/06/negative-st...
This isn’t true. Naturalisation was limited to white people and no Irish person was ever denied it in account of their race.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
If you have some relevant references that would be helpful.
AFAIU, many historians believe, at least tacitly, that atheism wasn't a thing in the ancient world, and therefore that religious and mystical ideas were unconsciously and hopelessly intertwined and melded with other knowledge and beliefs, at least much more than today (assuming they even admit we still do it today). Probably because they understand atheism, and implicitly agnosticism and religious skepticism, as a modern ideology; which, as an "ideology", it is, but that's skipping ahead a few steps. They look for evidence to refute that assumption, and it's relatively scant (though not non-existent), for all the reasons most of history is lost to us. But if you start from the opposite assumption, that people think and behave similarly, I think the evidence strongly supports that the same intellectual dynamics were at play, certainly among the learned. Emphases and perspectives are different--even today each generation is more interested in certain questions than others. And of course literacy and, presumably, exposure to diverse ideas was less common (that was my point about wealth). But AFAICT and IMHO all the same threads are there, the distribution is just different. If you were teleported to 100 BC, I'm confident you could find people with very modern ideas and perspectives, they'd just might be more difficult to locate. But I think even the general milieu wouldn't be too foreign, depending on time and place. (If you teleported to the US during one of the Great Awakenings, the milieu would be much more religious than at other earlier and later times.)
What definitely stands out in the surviving works is that atheism was generally cast in a negative light. While there's often open derision of magic and aspects of foreign and cult religions, religion was generally understood as an important element of a healthy polity. Though, in Plato's works its arguably (IMO conspicuously) ambiguous whether sincere belief is necessary, or just tacit acceptance and active participation in rituals. But none of that is unlike the situation until 50-100 years ago in the modern Western world.
Anyhow, among the few books that directly speak to this topic are Atheism in Pagan Antiquity (1922), https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28312, and Atheism at the Agora: A History of Unbelief in Ancient Greek Polytheism (2023). They contain lots of references and quotations to classic works. The first book I came across via Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9gtbs6/comme...
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.
It's a pun on the staff ate.
- 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.
What event?
I understand you saying that a flood actually happened, and that Noah's story is based on that. Well that may be, but with a quibble: that flood is prehistorical. We have no records to say when and where it happened. Unless I'm behind on research.
To me, flood stories serve to show how powerful gods are. The stories are likely based on several floods experienced by different people over time.
Imagine you see the Nile flood your general area every year with varying intensity. It's easy to worry that one year it just won't stop rising. To people living in those times, a flood story is gripping in ways we don't follow today.
I had always thought it were a generic phrase!
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
In that context, if I had to kill the animals I eat I would absolutely turn vegetarian because I like animals very much and the minced meat I get at the store does not stare at me.
I put the context first because such a change would require accrss to varied vegetables etc.
The situation wipes be drastically different in a world where you do not have this access or need to fight for food.
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 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.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
The core nature of humanity is absurdity.
The numbers might be slightly off, because chicken raised for eggs are alive longer (around a year).
However, I do not support unsustainable hunting. Please have some charity and don't imply such.
We only buy humane eggs when we can, and I believe organic doesn’t practice it either.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] Or more precisely I havent been able to think of any ways.
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.
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.
AFAIK nothing was proven, but it got a reputation.
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.
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.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/asia/south-korea-horse-death-...
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/flashback/how-fran-...
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.
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.
Haha WHAT
That's an insane amount of money to come out of union dues
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...
What I want to know is what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese and what are mystery veggies?
Inexplicably they didn't order any of the "regular" pizzas from there.
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....
(I'm not vegan but I like to try vegan products anyway.)
It's probably a lie but it doesn't sound like one!
I stand by my point.
Politely beg to differ.
Then again, I'm French, so our takes on cheese may be very different! :)
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.
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...
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.
Curry 5p
Meat Curry 7p
Named Meat Curry 15pThe 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.
Bachelor chew! Now with flavor!
Stop being a baby and put it in your mouth already for chrissake. You might learn something.
Im even less interested in others picking interesting things for me when I am busy working.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I want to believe the gagh is real.
Except maybe Brad Pitt (see Ocean's Eleven).
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Sounds like a gimmick that is way too limiting to be a general practice.
- 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.
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.
Seems pretty dumb. Maybe mostly a US thing?
(I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.)
“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!
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.
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".
Maybe your generation or your family's economic class is just very different from mine.
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.
Dude, it just means "teacher" or "professor".
> 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...
I always thought that was nice.
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.
For instance, streaming anything in 4k takes an enormous amount of water and energy.
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.
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.
If you eat food you don't need to eat, same thing: If it hadn't been made, that would have saved resources, and nobody would be worse off. Exactly the same end result: Food was made for no net beneficial end result; resources were wasted.
What's your definition of "waste", that they can be anything but the same thing?
for example: https://youtu.be/_gNZR5IEsAA?si=x5nvoBzC9Xc4fxFs&t=1674
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’m glad that Japanese society cares this much about food waste. We could use more of that where I am (USA).
Seems to check out true. HN types really seem to love their Japan.
"The staff ate it."
...not that i would do that today, but i was poor, and it was good :)
Crows will also help themselves.
"The staff threw away 30 to 40% of it and ate the rest later."
Same thing, no?