The staff ate it later • Hacker News Board

Re: The staff ate it later

#11

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #8

Y_Y wrote: post #2

> 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 wo…

Cool story, I upvoted because the downvotes felt a bit harsh. But what does the first part have to do with the second part?

Maybe the food was left out too long and he got a staff infection?

Re: The staff ate it later

#12

Post by dvh » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

... and they lived happily ever after

Same thing, no?

Re: The staff ate it later

#13

Post by Hamuko » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

juancn wrote: post #4

It'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

Any waste as long as it's not plastic. Plastic's a free-for-all. There's really nothing you can't individually plastic wrap. An apple? Wrap it in plastic. A cookie? Plastic. A plastic straw? You can wrap that too.

Re: The staff ate it later

#14

Post by ChrisArchitect » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

I 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

Re: The staff ate it later

#15

Post by triceratops » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #10

triceratops wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool story, I upvoted because the downvotes felt a bit harsh. But what does the first part have to do with the second part?

"staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff

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

Re: The staff ate it later

#16

Post by AlienRobot » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

wk_end wrote: post #9

Quick 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…

Not 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.

Re: The staff ate it later

#17

Post by AlienRobot » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

juancn wrote: post #4

It'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

There is a similar concept in English culture called "waste".

Re: The staff ate it later

#18

Post by Pooge » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

wk_end wrote: post #9

Quick 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…

English 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

Re: The staff ate it later

#19

Post by duxup » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 6:03 PM UTC

I 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...

Re: The staff ate it later

#20

Post by fsckboy » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #15

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"staff" meaning either the crew filming a TV show, or meaning a magical staff

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

pretty 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&i...