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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • Ehh, Jesus isn’t a super uncommon name.

    When I was a little kid, we got a Christmas card from the newspaper delivery boy (I swear I’m not that old, but that sounds ancient), signed “Jesus.” My mom was a devout Catholic and got offended at what she saw as tip-motivated blasphemy. My dad let her cook for a bit, until she made to call the newspaper, then he delicately suggested that it was probably pronounced with an “h” sound. My mom probably sounds pretty unpleasant from this anecdote so far, but she laughed her ass off at herself for not thinking about that possibility and felt very sheepish about it.


  • 0.5% strongly approve, rounds up to 1%. 39.5% somewhat approve, rounds up to 40%. The proportion of people who, to varying degrees, approve is then listed as 41%, because otherwise people would see it as them saying 1+40=40.

    People are going to say they don’t understand math either way, so they just need to pick a convention and stick to it.


  • To be fair, they’re not entirely equivalent. I wouldn’t bristle at all at being called “an American,” but I would never call someone “a Chinese.” In the plural form with a definite article, it doesn’t feel as bad, but I’d probably prefer to say “Chinese people,” whereas “American people” feels a little clunky, though it’s probably the best option if you want to keep both terms the same.

    I don’t think this is necessarily a racist thing though, because I’d probably be fine saying “the French/ Congolese /Japanese*” and “Guatemalans/ Nigerians/ Tibetans/ Swedes.” Demonyms are definitely a weird area of language that feels biased when you see a direct comparison though.

    *interestingly, I couldn’t think of a “new world” country where I would say “the+singular demonym,” but it does sound right for some tribal nations, like “the Hopi/Navajo.” I don’t think it’s uniform though, because “Pequots/Algonquins” sound much better than “the Pequot/Algonquin” to me and I’m not sure why.








  • Good management is just good people skills. If you don’t have them, intentionally defanging your speech/correspondence helps prevent blowups. Unfortunately for people working under managers with bad people skills, this doesn’t actually make up for and mostly just highlights their managers’ deficits.

    Tl;dr: management speak is intentionally harmless in and of itself, but is an obvious symptom of bad management.






  • This is the relevant section from the wiki:

    Many jurisdictions have enacted regulations relating to the disposal of human bodies. Although it may be entirely legal to bury a deceased family member, the law may restrict the locations in which this activity is allowed, in some cases expressly limiting burials to property controlled by specific, licensed institutions. Furthermore, in many places, failure to properly dispose of a body is a crime. In some places, it is also a crime to fail to report a death, and to fail to report the disposal of the body.[37]

    From your link:

    Having a grave too close to a water source is either not wise or not legal. It also may not be permitted to have a gravesite within a certain distance of a building or your property line. These are called setbacks, and setback laws are different for each state. Often, setback rules make it all but impossible to put a grave in someone’s urban or suburban property without breaking the law.

    I’d be interested in how widespread the legality is practically, because (reasonably) everything I looked at said to check local laws, but I can understand why that’s not included exhaustively. My family tried to in a rural area of a non rural state where the sources say it’s allowed, but the setbacks made it practically impossible- watershed areas are larger than you would expect, even without visible bodies of water nearby.


  • nothing illegal about just getting dropped in a hole as-is on private property most places

    That’s not true for good reason- people who don’t know what they’re doing could contaminate groundwater/runoff very easily.

    It shouldn’t be as expensive as it is, and I’d support dropping unembalmed corpses without certain diseases (an asymptomatic or undiagnosed prion disease could be incredibly dangerous) in a hole, as long as they are adequately buried. That would require an autopsy and either significant refrigeration costs or a rushed job without embalming though.