17 ms·
The staff ate it later
- Y_Y 1y ago> Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. - 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.
- triceratops 1y agoCool story, I upvoted because the downvotes felt a bit harsh. But what does the first part have to do with the second part?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago"staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff
- triceratops 1y agoI get it now. More staff engineers than I expected in the Bible.
- fsckboy 1y agopretty much everything is in the Bible if you look, even automobiles: "and G-d drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in His Fury" https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plymouth%20fury&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plymouth%20fury&ia=images&i...
- titanomachy 1y ago“Jesus and his disciples were all in one Accord”
- LorenDB 1y agoAnd don't forget that Moses received the Ten Commandments on tablets, although it doesn't say whether he used iPads or something running Android.
- schoen 1y agoIt's rumored that God was wary of humans having apple products.
- user_7832 1y agoPerhaps because of the temptations of walled gardens?
- mrbombastic 1y agoTheir icon is also an apple with bite out of it, if they wanted to be the prefered OS of the divine they should have chosen better.
- sho_hn 1y agoAnd that Revelation 5/6 contain the original doomscroll.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoI thought it was warning of poorly chosen file permissions (0666) and the evils of “simulation” —- the evils of userns namespaces and VMware!!!
- tom_ 1y agoI gave up tablets and pills of all kinds a long time ago now, but, at the time, if god himself had popped up to tell me something, it wouldn't have been a huge surprise.
- ies7 1y agonot related with Bible: a staff engineer's journey with Claude Code
- pfdietz 1y agoMaybe the food was left out too long and he got a staff infection?
- jibal 1y agoThe staff ate the rest of the staffs.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoI thought the story was going to end with the swallowing of a staff. But this was almost as good.
- weregiraffe 1y ago[flagged]
- bambax 1y agoNot sure what the quote has to do with anything here, but it's a as good an opportunity as ever to say that large parts of the "Old Testament" draw most of its inspiration from the code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"), the Epic of Gilgamesh (which gave us, notably, the story of the deluge, and the dark role of the serpent) and Ancient Egypt, to which it owes, among many others, the concept of eternal life and the idea that man was made in God's image. 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-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/jesus-holding-a-magic-wand/ https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi
- williamtrask 1y agoIf truth is defined as beliefs which lead one to make decisions that cause you/your society to thrive, this is a good thing (that the Old Testament has similarities to other major works). Implies a kind of evolutionary algorithm for truth. Likely implies these stories are more true because they’re more tried and tested. Societies who believed them became strong. 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.
- chris-orgmenta 1y agoTo 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.
- nick49488171 1y agoAmazing they made the real food on a now not just "show food" which is only a looks-like model.
- VoodooJuJu 1y ago[dead]
- butlike 1y agoInteresting. Consideration is key; but not above all else. Imagine being one of the staff from the article who felt obligated to finish the food out of some misguided guilt.
- shermantanktop 1y agoPerhaps they hire special staff members with enormous and undiscriminating appetites.
- juancn 1y agoIt's related to the concept of Mottainai (もったいない, 勿体無い) in Japanese culture. Where any waste is considered bad, specially related to food. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai
- cwmma 1y agoI wonder if this is why they tend to have plastic food displays at restaurant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_model
- jkhdigital 1y agoI think the plastic food displays are due to high uncertainty avoidance, so patrons can see exactly what their meal looks like before ordering. Yes you could use real food but the hassle of periodically filling the display case with freshly cooked dishes would be silly.
- LeifCarrotson 1y agoSome 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.
- account42 1y agoHow common is this? I have never seen real food used as a display only (as opposed to a buffet or other kind of display where the displayed food is actually served to eat), including in the US. Sounds like a gimmick that is way too limiting to be a general practice.
- stmw 1y agoI first thought this was going to be a story about big tech company bureaucracy, where the staff ate all the good ideas.
- chihuahua 1y ago"What happened to the other plutonium core?" "The staff ate it."
- wk_end 1y agoQuick and very fussy question I'm hoping someone with native-level Japanese could comment on. 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.
- AlienRobot 1y agoNot Japanese, but I feel if you translated it that way you would risk people reading the article into assuming the sentence could be used in ways that match the sense of "enjoy" in English that could never match the sense of the word used in Japanese, e.g. the staff enjoyed a movie later.
- Pooge 1y agoEnglish doesn't have rules as clear cut as Japanese's for politeness—especially nuances! I think it's fine to translate it to "ate". 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]. [1]: https://jisho.org/word/%E9%A0%82%E3%81%8F https://jisho.org/word/%E9%A0%82%E3%81%8F
- zahlman 1y ago>"enjoy" isn't a synonym of "eat" 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".
- klodolph 1y agoItadaku is literally the kenjogo form of taberu (eat). It just happens to have multiple meanings.
- dvh 1y ago... and they lived happily ever after Same thing, no?
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoI wish some of these cooking competition reality shows would declare this kind of thing. One recent competition one "Is It Cake?" constantly trucks out these sort of demonstration items where some true wizard behind the scenes is making a ton of lifelike items that the actual contestants have to guess about just to determine their own order/ranking in the competition. I always wonder what happens to all of the cake from just that portion of the show (and some other segments). The 'Kraft services table' in the back much be epic etc
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI read an interview from the British Baking Show which said that all of the crew knew to keep a spoon in their pocket so they could sample the dishes at the end.
- petesergeant 1y agoYah, I can’t imagine much of the food from The Great British Bake Off (as we call it) goes to waste!
- duxup 1y agoI wonder how this plays out. 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...
- MisterTea 1y ago> didn't want to eat some pizza with some kind of fake cheese and unrecognizable veggies. What I want to know is what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese and what are mystery veggies?
- duxup 1y agoIt was from an actually good pizza place that had some wild choices for pizzas. Inexplicably they didn't order any of the "regular" pizzas from there.
- zahlman 1y ago> what ghastly pizza establishment serves fake cheese 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....
- bondarchuk 1y agoThose are very normal weggebobbles for anyone outside the US. Big no-no to vegan cheese though.
- stevage 1y agoEh, I find vegan cheese very variable. I never seek it out but experience it relatively often. Sometimes it's tasty and chewy. Sometimes it's a bland monstrosity. I don't know why.
- wiradikusuma 1y agoIt's the opposite of restaurants, usually they don't let their staff eat leftovers.
- bravetraveler 1y agoInstead: a discount for what you unloaded from the frozen truck last week... and just cooked
- spookie 1y agoRestaurant staff usually eats before service, no? At least where I'm from.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoThis must be a high end/low end thing. When I worked at a family diner, it was a free for all on the buffet leftovers which could not be recycled for the following day.
- zahlman 1y agoFrom what I've seen, it's totally ordinary for "sandwich artists" to prepare lunch for themselves from the ingredients on display.
- valiant55 1y agoI see both sides because you don't want staff intentionally making "mistakes" just to get some food but I worked for almost a decade in restaurants and only McDonald's didnt let you eat the food.
- notatoad 1y agothis seems to be making its way to western shows as well - when taskmaster has a food based challenge, they often include a reassurance that the food didn't go to waste. and i've seen similar on some youtube shows. for example: https://youtu.be/_gNZR5IEsAA?si=x5nvoBzC9Xc4fxFs&t=1674 https://youtu.be/_gNZR5IEsAA?si=x5nvoBzC9Xc4fxFs&t=1674
- peeters 1y agoYeah Taskmaster (which I adore) came to my mind too. I think it's more common when the food in question is an animal product, but still it just seems a bit contrived when behind the scenes the catering company is probably chucking tons of food the talent didn't feel like eating on a given day anyway. 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.
- dfxm12 1y agoI hope they don't make the staff finish off stuff, like Marmite and porridge ice cream, which makes all the contestants gag. 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.
- notatoad 1y agoi'm fairly sure they're not going to be force-feeding the leftovers to anybody
- operator-name 1y agoIn the west we have “No Animals Were Harmed in the making of …”, which I’m only just learning comes from the American Humane Society: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humane_Society#No_Animals_Were_Harmed_Certification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humane_Society#No_A... I had always thought it were a generic phrase!
- germinalphrase 1y agoTripwiring (and thus fatally wounding) horses was quite a thing back in the day.
- kulahan 1y agoWasn't there some horrible story about the number of animals killed in the filming of Homeward Bound or some similar movie? I simply cannot comprehend the callousness of people towards animals back then. 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. What the heck?
- eurleif 1y agoYou're probably thinking of Milo and Otis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Otis#Animal_welfare_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Oti...
- kulahan 1y agoThat’s the one.
- adriand 1y ago> 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.
- farceSpherule 1y agoIf you want the ultimate in "The staff ate it later" watch Steven Raichlen's Project Smoke on PBS. The crew of that show eat like Kings. https://www.pbs.org/show/steven-raichlens-project-smoke/ https://www.pbs.org/show/steven-raichlens-project-smoke/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- unsignedint 1y agoThe whole “the staff ate it later” routine is really just a symptom of a broader intolerance in Japanese media. After years of getting complaints over the most innocuous things, Japanese TV shows have started slapping disclaimers on everything, even the most trivial situations. 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.
- declan_roberts 1y agoI read somewhere that there's more English articles on Japanese topics in wikipedia than the entire japanese wikipedia. Seems to check out true. HN types really seem to love their Japan.
- mbil 1y agoWhen I was a kid, my dad and I were watching a cooking show together. I asked him "what do they do with all the food they make", and then, as if on cue, the host said, "In case you're wondering, the staff eat all the food we make here." My dad and I looked at each other with a silent look of "whoa".
- foobarian 1y agoIt's why I have a hard time watching some of the Gordon Ramsey shock cooking shows. He'll take a barely over or under-done filet and toss it in the bin to make a point. That's just not OK
- account42 1y agoThere's probably more food left to spoil in your average fridge than what gets thrown away in all cooking shows combined.
- ivanjermakov 1y agoCitation needed
- jfengel 1y agoRestaurants (at least in the US) have very strict standards about how long you can keep something at room temperature before you have to throw it away. Those standards are extremely conservative, and lead to a lot of food waste, but if I were on the staff I'd at least want to keep an eye on how long something has been sitting out. Those standards have just been beaten into me. 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.)
- alpinisme 1y agoThat and nobody wants to eat a meal 40 times to get 40 takes.
- crazygringo 1y agoThis is the answer. The food is perfectly fine. It's fresh, there's catering on set, and it can be replaced as needed, unless it's something super unusual. 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.
- wisty 1y agoThis is why everyone eats takeaway noodles in a box in sitcoms.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoI 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.
- schoen 1y agoI'd contrast this with the game show "Double Dare". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Dare_(franchise) 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?).
- alsetmusic 1y agoI genuinely thought this would be about a temporal dog-ate-my-homework sort of thing. Really. I’m glad that Japanese society cares this much about food waste. We could use more of that where I am (USA).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rosstex 1y agoTV, Japan
- evan_ 1y agoHaving spent my first couple years right out of college at a production company that shot a lot of ads for a grocery chain I can assure you that I took as much food home with me as possible
- snvzz 1y agoI would go with "Care has been taken to minimize food waste." or some paraphrasing of it.
- bell-cot 1y agoEven if that would be more accurate - if your audience is accustomed to seeing "the staff ate it later", and that is only a feel-good checkbox for them (vs. a metric that anyone cares about optimizing), then it is better to go with what your audience is accustomed to. Otherwise, you're running off into the weeds.
- yaur 1y agowe watched a cooking competition show last year where one of the contestants was tasked with breaking down a 100lb fish in order to prepare 4 entree sized portions of which the judges likely only took a bite or two... food waste in this kind of show is a given but this was totally galling.
- beeforpork 1y agoI wish they put this on screen in Germany, too (though in German, maybe, instead of Japanese). In cooking shows, I always fear they throw the food in the gargabe. With that note on the screen, if they do throw it in the garbage, at least they would be evil liars. Which might be less likely, and so I could feel better.
- ileonichwiesz 1y agoRegardless of disclaimer, I’m sure the food cooked on TV going to waste is not the norm - dozens of people are on set when filming any of these shows, and they’re all curious to try the dish.
- beeforpork 1y agoAnd also in Youtube "I ate every dish on the menu at restaurant XYZ". I really like these, but man do I feel bad afterwards. Please tell me nothing went to waste!
- seszett 1y agoOn French TV shows they state (verbally, not with a standard text shown on screen) that the leftovers are given to the Red Cross (and some to the staff).
- account42 1y agoYou're engaging in a decadent activity (watching TV) that "wastes" all kinds of resources but are worried about this one in particular (food) even though we have more than enough of it to go around?
- beeforpork 1y agoYes. Ish. 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.
- account42 1y agoIt's not whataboutism if what you are worrying about is a drop in the bucket of overall waste.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI used to work in an R&D type environment as a mobile developer. Once in a while, people would go into a room nearby to test bread for the stores. Of course, they got whole loaves but only needed to taste a little, so I got free bread. Didn't have a big enough freezer at the time though, so I couldn't get as much as I wanted to. 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.
- blaze33 1y agoOk, now if we took a picture of all the food in the world, a more accurate caption would be: "The staff threw away 30 to 40% of it and ate the rest later."
- amelius 1y agoMany people are against throwing away of food because of certain principles. 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.
- Iv 1y agoOld people in Japan went through the deprivation of post-war Japan. Not all boomers were raised the same. It is harder for someone who has known famine to accept it is ok to throw food away for fun. 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.
- barbazoo 1y agoI do t see the irony at all. You can consume lots of calories and also not waste food that seems like a completely reasonable thing to do to me.
- CRConrad 1y agoI don't get it: How can you not see that eating food you don't need to eat is wasting food? If you throw away food, it has been made for nothing and goes to waste. If it hadn't been made, that would have saved resources, and nobody would be worse off. 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?
- okeuro49 1y agoIt reminds me of the proposal to shake hands at the end of Goldeneye: > 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-james-bond-n64-nintendo-shigeru-miyamoto-gamecity https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/26/goldeneye...
- mock-possum 1y agoOne of my favorite childhood video games is 8 Eyes for the NES - after beating each boss, the player character sits down with them at a table, and a little skeleton butler walks over and serves them tea. The little scene plays over and over and over, you and the defeated bad guy, sitting at the table, sipping tea, while a skeleton wanders over and offers a periodic refill. I always thought that was nice.
- catnose 1y agoI’m Japanese, and in Japan it’s pretty common for TV shows or YouTubers to get called out if they look like they’re wasting food. Japanese people really expect food not to be treated carelessly. Folks would love to see a “No food was wasted” one.