Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

thoughtco.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 429 posts

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#121

Post by ghostpepper »

PierreProstata wrote: post #67
hfuyf65 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but if you watch early Carlin it is the same pattern: 1. initially safe,sanitized corporate friendly jokes 2. some commercial success 3. ? 4. jokes increasingly become a social commentary and are less and less 'friendly'

3. shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits

For anyone wondering, these are the seven words you can’t say on TV (or couldn’t in 1970?) and the actual monologue about them is insightful and eloquent.

This is just the punchline without the setup.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#122

Post by yibg »

plutokras wrote: post #116
selfhoster11 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even if they still ate meat.

> I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even if they still ate meat. Why does animal welfare matter if at the end they will end up as food anyway? Not trolling, I legitimately want to understand. From my point of view, livestock is just food, that happens to be in a temporary living state, before being ultimately eaten. As an end consumer,…

Just because I’m set to be executed doesn’t mean I don’t care about being tortured before hand.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#123

Post by catherd »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #75
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Previously owned automobiles" just got shortened to "pre-owned" and that's all over the place today, and I daresay it's seeped into things other than cars.

Upcycled is the latest, including upcycled food https://www.upcycledfood.org/

If you are advocating for "used food" as the correct term, there's another state that food enters after it's been used that you might want to be careful about disambiguating :).

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#125

Post by dpkirchner »

Jensson wrote: post #111
ethanbond wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them. They’re obviously not the same thing. During those thousands of years where humans personally slaughtered animals, they often built complete philosophies around their relationship to those animals. Those philosophies are way, way more complex and personally…

> The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them Is this really true? People who kill animals for a living doesn't have any emotions about it, watching them do it is like watching them cut a tomato.

You're talking about relatively few people -- I too would bet that most people (those of us not working in slaughterhouses) would find videos from factory farms disturbing.

There's a reason big-ag farmers are afraid people will see videos showing their operations. So afraid that they pay off politicians to ban such video recording.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#126

Post by lebuffon »

PierreProstata wrote: post #67
hfuyf65 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, but if you watch early Carlin it is the same pattern: 1. initially safe,sanitized corporate friendly jokes 2. some commercial success 3. ? 4. jokes increasingly become a social commentary and are less and less 'friendly'

3. shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits

" ...and tits doesn't even sound like a swear word. It sounds like something you should eat.

Try new cheese-tits! Bet you can't eat just one"

R.I.P. George

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#127

Post by raincole »

plutokras wrote: post #116
selfhoster11 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much more people would have been vegans or they would be much more indifferent to violence if every pack of meat had a QR code to a video showing the life and processing of that particular animal. I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even if they still ate meat.

> I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even if they still ate meat. Why does animal welfare matter if at the end they will end up as food anyway? Not trolling, I legitimately want to understand. From my point of view, livestock is just food, that happens to be in a temporary living state, before being ultimately eaten. As an end consumer,…

Why does human welfare matter if at the end we all eventually die?

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#128

Post by tptacek »

Just for fun, from the first example:

* Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language.

* Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up).

* False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case.

* Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a denominalization, at that!). Down with medication!

* Information -> directory assistance --- arguably, this is a hardening, since directory assistance carries more meaning and carries it more precisely.

* The dump -> landfill --- a dump is not a landfill. The word changed because we stopped building open-air unchecked dumps and started building regulated landfills with groundwater protection and load checking.

* Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though he's getting some mileage out of switching "car" to "automobile" (I can hear his voice very clearly in my head dancing over the syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real language is "car accident".

* Partly cloudy -> partly sunny --- I think he made this up.

* Motels -> motor lodges --- This is a softening, but it didn't take; look up "Econo Lodge", and it's a motel, not a motor lodge (Choice Hotels will call it a "hotel" though).

* House trailer -> mobile home --- A softening; by the end of his life, he'd have been able to use "manufactured home" here instead to drive the point further home.

* Used car -> previously owned transportation --- A softening, a good example of one, but again notice that he's smuggled the word "transportation" in to make it more zippy. "Certified pre-owned" is a much funnier term (imagine the shape his eyeballs would take while noting the "certified" here). I miss Carlin!

* Room service -> guest room dining --- A softening, and also: why?

* Constipation -> occasional irregularity --- A softening, if you will, and again he's made it artificially softer with the "occasional".

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#129

Post by Jensson »

dpkirchner wrote: post #125
Jensson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them Is this really true? People who kill animals for a living doesn't have any emotions about it, watching them do it is like watching them cut a tomato.

You're talking about relatively few people -- I too would bet that most people (those of us not working in slaughterhouses) would find videos from factory farms disturbing. There's a reason big-ag farmers are afraid people will see videos showing their operations. So afraid that they pay off politicians to ban such video recording.

> I too would bet that most people (those of us not working in slaughterhouses) would find videos from factory farms disturbing.

But why would they be more disturbing than watching a person slaughtering and cutting up an animal? You didn't answer the question, you just said that one was disturbing, not why one was more disturbing than the other.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#130

Post by frank_nitti »

Jensson wrote: post #111
ethanbond wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them. They’re obviously not the same thing. During those thousands of years where humans personally slaughtered animals, they often built complete philosophies around their relationship to those animals. Those philosophies are way, way more complex and personally…

> The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them Is this really true? People who kill animals for a living doesn't have any emotions about it, watching them do it is like watching them cut a tomato.

Almost certainly, we’re talking about videos where batches of animals are kept suffering in tiny cages and the slaughter is done by machines. Watching a bunch of live hatchlings get sucked into some grinder is not the same as watching a Halal killing or some tribal hunting ritual.

Those videos turned my stomach, and almost everyone I know who has watched them admits the same. My friends and I all still eat meat, but no question that might change if we had to watch those videos on how our mass produced cheap meat products are made.

Post reply on HN