• flan [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    you know words are just what we call things alright. Berries have berry in their name, not-berries don’t. Simple as.

      • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Genuinely had a coworker who thought eggs were vegan because they came from an eggplant. As the conversation continued I found out she also didn’t know pork came from pigs and beef from cows.

          • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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            8 months ago

            Unironically yes - as she said, she’d only ever encountered them at the store, she’d never actually seen a cow or chicken up close before.

            • PaulSmackage [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              8 months ago

              Being that divorced from the actual world is completely baffling to me. How do they expect things to get to where they are? Do they have to be reminded to breath and put one foot in front of the other to walk?

              • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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                8 months ago

                Honestly it’s not an uncommon state where I live. What relevence does knowing where your food comes from really have, when you’re working a 60 hour week to pay for your rent and childcare? What use does learning animal biology have when you’re never going to have the opportunity to go to university? Most people in my area can expect to flip burgers, become a carer, or if they’re lucky get apprenticed to a tradie. Their lives will largely be confined to all of 10sq miles. Their entire lives have been so heavily propagandised and lacking in opportunities that going to a different city is an extremely rare and novel experience. Not knowing where eggs comes from is really the least of their problems.

                • PaulSmackage [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  8 months ago

                  That’s a totally reasonable answer and was an unfair assumption on my part. I grew up in an area where people hunted and fished because there wasn’t any stores around, and therefore everyone knew where their food came from. Not really living in urban areas means i have had very little chances of meeting someone like that, and so that’s what was so confusing to me. That’s still so wild, though, to not even know what you’re actually eating.

                  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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                    8 months ago

                    Don’t worry, it’s easy to do. I thought similarly at the time and teased her for it, and only really thought more about it a few years later when I was working in a school and it became clear just how many 11 year olds had never done stuff like go to the seaside before. I’m in the UK. The furthest you can get from the sea is only 50 miles.

    • Zezzy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Looks like going back to old English, strawberries were still berries. The botanical meaning was only added in the 1700s.

      So blackberries, raspberries, tomatoes, pineapples, strawberries, and eggplants are all berries

      • Orcocracy [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, much like peanuts not being nuts and Stonehenge not being a henge, it’s all the fault of a small number of assholes a couple of hundred years ago who desperately wanted to redefine things so that they could tell other people that they were wrong.