> "Magi" were priests of Zoraster

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).

The two concepts were often one in the same—a "magician" was simply any art that "we" considered to be not in keeping with "our" religious practices. The label was slung about freely for some thousand years.

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.

> he also wasn‘t European looking (should be obvious).

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.

To expand not refute,

> 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 don't know if it's sad; it's a different story, it's a kind of riff on the same themes.

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.

I get it now. More staff engineers than I expected in the Bible.

That’s true, but the article also explains it isn’t nefarious; she had a stalker (after past horrible trauma), and was terrified, so replaced the live audiences with extras. It just happened to work so well it caught on and became a mainstay of sitcoms after that.

> I guess our cultures are simply too different, but it genuinely seems like people saw all animals as "things" until, like, the 1950s or something like that.

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.

You're probably thinking of Milo and Otis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Oti...

Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980) is usually pointed as the movie that caused the "no animals were harmed" disclaimer to be added to subsequent movies.

You are thinking of Milo and Otis, which incidentally was filmed in Japan.

AFAIK nothing was proven, but it got a reputation.

Most people think they have developed their principles with reflection and consideration, but in my view most moral principles are post-facto rationalisations used to justify whatever-it-is the person wanted to do. So, excuses to justify the already decided upon action, rather than anything to determine the parameters of action, eg 'the money was too good', 'it smelled so good', etc.

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.

I think Milo and Otis had a lot of controversy too.

If you travel around the world a bit, ie more remote parts of south east Asia, you will see this attitude towards animals is often still well and alive.

I remember reading about a man being accused of mistreating his donkey in somewhere like 1835 Brittan. The case went to a court, but I'm fuzzy on the details.

> I've seen clips on Reddit where animals are harmed for engagement. Usually "nature is brutal" type clips, where one animal kills another.

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.

When Instagram introduced reels, I started to get exposed to these weird and horrible clips of people 'rescuing' sick and abused animals, and begging for donations. I don't know for certain, but there's lots of clues that these accounts are engineering these encounters. Seeing these clips is genuinely distressing, and it's hard to make Instagram stop showing them. Just another way social media is causing real harm to add to the list, I guess.

"That's the hoof! That's the best part of the stew! Oh, man, think of it as a marrow nugget wrapped in a thick toenail."

Vegan cheese is an abomination. Even if one is vegan they shouldn't eat that crap, just eat something else instead. You can make much better vegan food if you focus on trying to make vegetables good versus torturing them into a facsimile of animal products.

I think the larger reason is that fake cheese is cheaper.

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.

I don't see how any of these could be considered "mystery" veggies in most contexts, let alone on pizza.

Those are very normal weggebobbles for anyone outside the US. Big no-no to vegan cheese though.

I thought I liked vegan pizzas, having only tasted the restaurant varieties which either don't have cheese or have some sort of savoury dressing instead. Then I tried a vegan frozen pizza, and I found out what people hate about them. Some gray slimy substance which apparently someone, somewhere, thought was similar to melted cheese.

I don’t get the trend of vegan restaurants etc selling fake meat products. If you want vegan food you’re probably better off going to an Indian restaurant where they actually know how to cook without meat.

I assumed the drink cups were empty/opaque so there was no continuity problem. If you splice together different shots, but the liquid level bounces around, it could be distracting.

> 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.

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.

This is why everyone eats takeaway noodles in a box in sitcoms.

> unless it's something super unusual

I want to believe the gagh is real.

> 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.

One thing I noticed over and over, from cheap sitcoms to expensive blockbusters - when actors sip, they have liquid, but clearly the movement of glass to mouth is 'dishonest', as in too fast or too low for any liquid to actually make it into mouth. No swallowing movement of throat neither.

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.

It's not whataboutism if what you are worrying about is a drop in the bucket of overall waste.

I’ve also lived in NA Europe and Japan and disagree with this sentiment.

“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!

From my experience, the idea that you shouldn't waste things, and food in particular, is similar in Japan and France. That was even stronger with my grand-parents who lived through food scarcity during WWII in France.

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.

That's exactly why you can't translate it: it has a word that is an exact denotational equivalent but with totally different connotations, because English and US culture lack the reverence for professors and other teachers that is implicit in Japan. Like how "tofu" means "soybean curd staple food" in Japan and "soybean curd effeminate, effete abomination" to rednecks.

The idea of not wasting food as a sort of baseline concept is a thing plenty of parents in the US teach their children.

> In this concept, waste is viewed as a sign of affluence.

Seems pretty dumb. Maybe mostly a US thing?

We should have more picture menus where every single menu item has a actual picture of the food served, instead of the guest trying to imagine the food based on often deceptive and flowery text descriptions.

Some American restaurants have real food displays, too. With a chilled display case and limited airflow (and choosing only meals that keep well - avoiding exhibition of garnishes or salads that wilt in hours), you can put the same dessert on display for days.

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.

Itadaku is literally the kenjogo form of taberu (eat). It just happens to have multiple meanings.

Citation needed