Today is the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Stop rolling your eyes, this isn't a patriotic post! You know me better than that.
This is about spilling the tea... about the British East India Company's spilled tea, and what that had to do with Bengal, textile workers, and famine.
See, BEIC was using its private armies to open markets around the world to their trading policies, and to install local rulers who would keep the goods and money flowing. They did this in Bengal, one of the world's biggest producers of textiles in the mid-1700s.
Then, in 1768, drought hit Bengal and crops failed. People began to go hungry, but the BEIC's puppet rulers and agents just continued to collect taxes--and, in some cases, to profiteer off the sale of food. Over the next two years, these practices exacerbated the food shortages, leading to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, in which 7 - 10 million people are estimated to have starved to death. That's at least 25% of the entire Bengali population of the time.
This put a big dent in the profits of the BEIC (oopsie, who knew famine profiteering could have negative economic impacts?), leading to a financial crisis in England. This is also why BEIC was unloading tea for cheap in the American colonies, to get some of those revenues back.
So yeah, "no taxation without representation" was the rallying cry, but isn't it interesting that we (USians, I mean) were never taught that the REASON colonists were worried about this is because they felt they had something in common with starving Bengalis: namely, the vulnerability to a multinational corporation which clearly demonstrated its depraved indifference to human suffering in pursuit of profit.
Couple of little nuggets I left out because I'm trying to be concise (ha), but they're so interesting:
The BEIC was able to unload tea in the American colonies because the English parliament, rather than let the company fail, bailed it out. Part of the bailout conditions were that they got a monopoly over tea sales in the colonies. Same as it ever was, eh?
BEIC agents who wrote letters and contacted the media (such as it was) to spread the word, and the outrage, about the completely unnecessary famine, were possibly the world's first whistleblowers.
Today, I fixed some visual shortcomings. It is now possible to change images during post editing. The rules of the magazine have been included in the description on Fediverse to avoid misunderstandings with Lemmy users. Some changes are already on the instance, and the rest will be pushed by morning....
Forget #turkey and its #tryptophan naps, the personal chef to King Ferdinand I has a dish that (if prepared incorrectly) will make you lose your mind 🤪
🐱 Read more about Roasted Cat in this excerpt from The History Shapes Cookbook:
I'm thinking of myself as a rather experienced and curious knitter. I've learned a long, long time ago, tried out a lot of things over the years, refined my techniques, incorporated new things, and experimented to find out better ways to do things.
But every time I watch one of Roxanne's videos I learn new, nifty ways of doing things. Like kfb in ribbing looks like k1, p1 ... so obvious, if you look closely enough.
#TIL: Young children (up until the age of about 7 - 11) can regenerate their fingertips.
This is from "We Are Electric" by Sally Adee, which is all about the body's bioelectric code. Apparently electrical fields and electrical charges are the software to the hardware that is our DNA.
The fingertip regeneration was discovered by researchers investigating how salamanders regenerate limbs. Of course it's not something you can easily test, but there are enough people who grew up without easy access to medical care that this is a known fact.
I’m a feral desktop Linux user and TIL that /etc isn’t “etcetera” like a sensible person would think, it’s “et-cee” like I’m shopping for a charming handmade scarf, and honestly y’all can keep it. #linux#til
When you get your drivers license redone... what do you put for eye color?
This has plagued me for years-- I've gone back and forth between blue and green (I have one of each, green has a brown spot in it), and at one point they put dichromatic.
#TIL: Eine Art #Klee wird in den Anden und in Neuseeland wie Kartoffeln angebaut und auch ähnlich verwendet. Und als Salat.
Er gedeiht auch in Mitteleuropa, aber hier bauen ihn nur ein paar exzentrische Gärtner:innen an. Vielleicht weil hier kaum jemand weiß, wie man die Knollen nach der Ernte behandeln muss?
Bonus: »Auch die Stängel können wie Rhabarber gegessen werden.«
Wer weiß, wo ich den probieren kann? Ich liebe Klee. Sauer macht lustig!
RTR#22 Further improvements interspersed with code refactoring (kbin.social)
Today, I fixed some visual shortcomings. It is now possible to change images during post editing. The rules of the magazine have been included in the description on Fediverse to avoid misunderstandings with Lemmy users. Some changes are already on the instance, and the rest will be pushed by morning....
old.lemmy.ca: getting 400 error
Today, I keep getting the 400 error when browsing in old.lemmy.ca....
What is something you don't like, that you wish you did like? and why
Could be as trivial as a type of food, a TV show, or something more serious.
german rule (media.discordapp.net)
Makefile: If target name contains colon (:)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/3229278...