this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
1236 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
85309 readers
4234 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I know the saying is "don't mess with Texas" but Texas seems to fuck itself over all the time. I would be raising hell about this if it was my backyard.
That's kind of but not exactly a mistranslation. The original Chinese is closer to 'do not interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake', but in the american vernacular, you can just say 'don't mess with Texas' and it means the same thing locally. Its one of those very regional sayings.
Pretty sure "Don't mess with Texas" began its life as an anti-littering campaign in the late 80s or early 90s. It has been appropriated to mean all sorts of things, though. The original meaning might be even more relevant to data centers...
No, the EPA just appropriated sun tzu.
I mean... I guess it could mean that now, but that is certainly not what it meant originally or how it was ever used.
Oh, you speak Chinese?
In the most Peggy Hill way possible.
Is "don't mess with Texas" Chinese?
I just said its a translation. Yes. From sun tzu I think. In england they translate it the other way I said here.
Except the actual phrase didn't originate from whatever Chinese saying you're talking about. It was an anti-littering campaign, from Texas, in the 1980s.
No, its from translating 'the art of war' into an american dialect. EPA just appropriated it.
You got evidence to back that up? Especially since the EPA had nothing to do with the ad campaign?
Yes, but it would be very personally identifying.
How is a translation of some ancient public work personally identifying
Are you guys autistic? They are obviously kidding...
There's no such thing as autism, only severe aspergers.
It's in-ism
Any time I think of the art of war, I think of this song:
https://youtu.be/gGYlocT1kOA
That is how Americans do things. A third of angels fell, but that's ok because we have the Illuminati to kerfuffle their feathers.
This has nothing to do with any translation of any language, it's a US English expression.
It is a joke.
They are intimating that texas makes so many mistakes that "Don't mess with texas" may be a blowhard boast to texans, but to everyone else it means "just let the idiots wreck themselves"
Also that 'Texas' is synonymous with 'enemy' for all Americans.
Still has nothing to do with translating anything from any other language.
And since they doubled down on it being the actual origin when pressed on it, I don't think they were joking.
..it was pretty obviously a shitpost, dude.
Absolutely not. You don't double down on a joke.
Thank you for the correct interpretation, I really need to remember that one