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.
Need some last-minute gifts? Books are the greatest. Here is me frolicking in a park with some of my books, which all want to live on your bookshelf. You can get them at your local indie bookstore, or get signed and personalized copies from @foliosf at foliosf.com/annaleenewitz -- plus, you can pre-order my new nonfiction book, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, which I guarantee your future self will be glad to have in June.
I know a LOT of the community absolutely love both Idris and Keanu, but I think one reason why I feel so disconnected to both their characters is that I never cared about either actor all that much.
In short I am one of the few players who do not have an emotional commitment towards either character just by hearing their voices.
@WhyNotZoidberg I'm the same way...Except I respect the work of Idris and Keanu; I don't immediately become committed to the character they play. Unless they show me with great acting that there's a reason for me to care about their characters in game! A flat performance will net absolutely no response at all from me. I ended up liking Johnny Silverhand deeper into my playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 only because Keanu put a lot of work into portraying him. It felt authentic to the point my impression of the chaotic, rocker bad boy who made dumb freaking choices...Made me begin to adore the deeply flawed Johnny. I've yet to experience Idris's character because I haven't bought the DLC. I'm intrigued though based on the marketing material, at least. I love a great mystery thriller!
Everyone looking forward to PS5 Pro is actually a PC gamer in their heart, dreaming of having an option to spend money on a more powerful graphics card.
@sharan I actually agree. I think PC remains what it has always been for people who prefer it that way, but consoles distanced themselves SLIGHTLY from what they used to be. There is now too much emphasis on resolution, framerate, options, etc in console space.
Digital Foundry has a million YT followers talking about console games running at 25 fps in certain scenarios. This kind of content has changed console gamers to be like PC gamers, but it doesn't work. 🤷
@nazokiyoubinbou console game developers used to create game for particular hardware and you would always get fluid gameplay. Nowadays developers fail to optimize their game and hope that more powerful hardware gets released. And users support this way of doing things...
Hi I’m Nika (they/them) and my hobbies are gaming, cooking and baking, knitting and crocheting. I bake my own sourdough bread since 2015. I organise my life with a bullet journal.
I speak German and English.
My posts will be written in English most of the time.
@elonjet So, with this one flight, from Rome to Austin, his jet produced 6 times the carbon footprint that my car has produced in total over the four years I've had it. Granted, I can't drive to Rome, but my car has covered 47,000 miles in that time, or 8 times this distance.
I use 'toot' and 'tut'. Tut works nicer with some servers because of a datetime format bug in 'toot' python library that occasionally crashes it. Tut hasn't crashed on me so far.