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Comment by whynotmaybe | Hacker News Reader

What does Belgium's capital has to do with this? Do you imply Brussels = European Union?

It is called a metonymy where you substitute a name that is associated to some other thing instead of mentionning that thing.

Some examples: Wall Street = NY Stock Exchange the White House = US president and his cabinet the Pentagon = US Dept of Defense Downing Street = UK prime minister

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy Scotland Yard = Greater London Metropolitan Police Tehran = Government/officials of the islamic republic of Iran

As a person who lived for a long time in a political capital I was so frustrated with news articles titled like this.

"[City] decides [XYZ stupid thing]!!!"

No! We in the city didn't decide it - our responsibility is limited to our political representative. Everyone else voted in idiots and sent them here to decide idiot things!

This is a common literary device in wide use everywhere. No one is saying that YOU PERSONALLY did something just because you live in a place. Chill out.

That works until you are speaking with people who literally ask why our city is deciding so much stupid stuff. Recall average intelligence and how many people are dumber than that.

The media shape perception but they don't help with critical thinking...

When the media say "Pentagon" is attacking Iran, there's just no level of mental acrobatics you can do to ever arrive at the idea that the actual physical Pentagon building is growing arms and legs and traveling to Iran.

If you truly believe this is a real problem then you need to turn off your internet and touch grass.

...that's nothing to do with my comment. Have a good day.

>It is called a metonymy

or called synecdoche (square/rectangle)

Brussels = location of EU headquarters, and in common lingo Brussels thus means "People running the EU and deciding things on everyone's behalf."

"Brussels" is often used to mean the entire blob of EU and related institutions.

Exactly, it's just like people saying Washington to refer to the US government, or Beijing to refer to Chinese government.

This literary device is so common it has a name: synecdoche. e.g. "The pentagon" to refer to the US military.

Now we just need a word for performative dense-ness.

I would not assume denseness -- many/most languages do not have this habit of referring to the capital. So it can easily sound weird if you aren't that immersed in English news and discussions.

I am not assuming denseness, I'm assuming performative denseness. People very often pretend to have stuff go over their head in a sad attempt to make a point.

It's kinda funny because in French, it depends on the situation.

If it's a French decision, you say "Matignon has done x" with Matignon being the home France's President. If it's local, you say "the mayor" , and if its European, you say Brussels.

In Canada, if it's federal, you say Carey's government, if it's provincial the name of the prime minister, or the name of the party and if its local, you use the mayor's name.

But in this situation, the ECB cited in the article is in Germany, not Brussels, with a high independence from the EU, but yes, with the Parliament in Brussels.

So I was downvoted because I asked why OP mentioned Brussels just to be sure that is wasn't the usual "eu bad" post.

Cunningham's law in action I guess.

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