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Death, especially in the USA, seems to be fraught with propriety pitfalls when speaking about it with strangers.

I'm not so sure why. It could be the general American cultural tendency toward heavy euphemism.

Naturally, any GitHub announcement is going to be run past world-class PR staff abiding by Microsoft corporate policies (that is, burn no bridges, offend no one, take no unnecessary risks with the brand). Microsoft is a US company with primarily US decisionmakers.

a squared plus b squared equals fearful, bland, and circumloquacious.




> I'm not so sure why.

Because a lot of "weird" cultural norms in the US are based on its roots of puritanism.

> At the same time, the Puritans regarded death as God's punishment for human sinfulness and on their deathbeds many New Englanders trembled with fear that they might suffer eternal damnation in Hell.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=72


Imo, the puritanism as root of everything is massively overstated.

In this case in particular, puritans talked about death a lot. They have been kinda obsessed with it.




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