I understand wanking off to our founding fathers is a bit of a national religion, but this goes a bit far even for that. All of human history? lol wtf.
Also they were mad at the British for not allowing them to steal Native American land in a disorganized way. You had to go the Crown which would negotiate with the tribe on your behalf etc. Washington (especially) of course had other ideas..
- 1706: Slaves entering England are freed
- 1772: no slaves can be removed from England,remaining slaves emanzipated
- 1779: all slaves fleeing from tha US are freed, regardless of their willingness to fight for the queen
So, yes, the crown had legal precendent and plans to abolish slavery as far back as the early 18th century.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_sla...
The British Crown and the upper classes had no issue at all with African Anerican and Indian slavery in the colonies and were happy to profit from it.
Abolitionism was a fringe view at the time.
Sure, England had a ruling that slavery was illegal in England... but there was no push to interdict slavery elsewhere in the empire (not even Scotland and Ireland, IIRC), especially the colonies. And do recall that some individual Caribbean islands had more slaves than all of British North America.
That's in fact why the British Caribbean didn't revolt during the American Revolution: they were like "what, revolt and risk dealing with a slave revolt without backup from the British Army?"
The comment.
e.g. Washington and his soldiers were promised quite a bit of land in Ohio(?) as a reward for helping fight the french. All of that land ended up being an Indian reserve the Crown decided to establish instead.
> > To be fair they didn’t quite manage to complete it
They had to wait till independence to “complete it”.
When trying to learn more about it I found a Snopes article at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-price-they-paid/ discussing a letter going around titled "The Price They Paid" making the claim "Five [of the 56] signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died."
Snopes comments that while five of the signers were indeed captured, four appear to have been treated as normal prisoners of war after being captured in battle ("they were not tortured, nor is there evidence that they were treated more harshly than other wartime prisoners who were not also signatories to the Declaration") and the fifth - singled out for signing - was sent to prison.
Wikipedia comments that the fifth, Richard Stockton, was "intentionally starved and subjected to freezing cold weather. After nearly five weeks of brutal treatment, Stockton was released on parole with his health ruined." quoting a 1823 biography.
But was that torture? Reading the biography, at https://archive.org/details/biographyofsign03sand/page/100/m... , the issue appears to be that rich Mr. Stockton, used to living the high life, has been placed in the commoner jail rather than the comfy jail for rich people:
> On his removal to New York, he was ignominiously consigned to the common prison, and without the least regard for his rank, age, and delicate health, for some time treated with unusual severity.
As Congress described it, "that he hath been ignominiously thrown into a common gaol, and there detained".
And the common jail had horrible conditions. Quoting https://www.americanwars.org/american-prisoners-revolution/p... :
> "The New Jail was made a Provost Prison, and here officers and men of note were confined. At one time they were so crowded into this building, that when they lay down upon the floor to sleep all in the row were obliged to turn over at the same time at the call, 'Turn over! Left! Right!'
> "The sufferings of these brave men were largely due to the criminal indifference of Loring, Sproat, Lennox, and other Commissaries of the prisoners.
> "Many of the captives were hanged in the gloom of night without trial and without a semblance of justice.
It doesn't seem like any of the founders were tortured during the war.
Appalling and deplorable, yes. But you said they were tortured.
If appalling conditions = torture, then nearly all of the captured revolutionary troops were tortured, yes?
As well as the captured British POWs held by the Americans?
Which would mean both the US and Britain were systemically and institutionally engaged in wholesale torture of white British subjects (or at least people perceived to be British).
Which would seem to diminish the severity of the term "torture".
Also, Stockton wasn't a POW.
The other four - who were POWs - had much better conditions.
For example, three were held in St. Augustine under parole, with food, a quarter pint of rum daily, and considerable freedom of movement about the town.
This is a far cry from being tortured.
> Was that torture?
Yes, that's quite clearly torture.
He was assigned to the commoner prison, not tortured. That's why he was cold and hungry.
If it was torture, why Congress was so interested in the plight of this one man - enough to send General Washington to investigate the report - and not interested in the plight of everyone else in the prison in the same condition?
Why is it okay to torture common people, but not rich "honorable" people?
It's not. That was his point.
The other 4 Declaration signers who were detained by the British were all rich men of high station - were given good treatment and considerable freedom under parole not given to normal prisoners or POWs. They certainly weren't tortured in any sense of the word.
The description in the biography seems to be that because Richard Stockton was also a rich man of high station, he should have received similar treatment, but he was instead treated like a commoner, and his suffering was all the greater because he was used to the good life.
In the biography were are supposed to sympathize with Stockton because of course rich people deserve to be treated better than plebes. That's the natural order of things. A bizjet traveler should never be forced to fly tourist class.
Congress's interest in the case seems to be much more an apprehension that Stockton was being treated like a common prisoner than a concern that commoners are being horribly mistreated. They wanted Stockton treated like a POW, covered under different laws than a prisoner.
If what was going on can be called torture, Congress don't seem to care. My question is, why not?
"intentionally" implies intention somehow.
Wikipedia's source for "intentionally starved" is https://archive.org/details/biographyofsign03sand/page/102/m... :
> He was not only deprived of the comforts, but the necessaries, of life, having been left more than twenty-four hours without food, and afterward afforded a very coarse and limited supply. The inhuman treatment which he received, so repugnant to the principles of civilized warfare, and so intolerable to an individual who had been accustomed to all the comforts and delicacies of life, depressed his spirits and seriously affected his health.
Can you tell me if that was "intentionally starved" or "intentionally forced to eat the same rations as commoners"? Was it really a starvation diet, or was it food that a rich man wasn't used to eating and found unpalatable?
In any case, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36875273 I point out the other four imprisoned signatories to the Declaration of Independence were not treated like this.
They certainly were not tortured.
The source your quoting also calls it "inhuman" and "repugnant to the principles of civilized warfare."
It's got nothing to do with how rich he was, only the fact that he was mistreated as a prisoner.
As best as I can tell, Stockton is the only one who might fit that description, and the cited support for Wikipedia"s "five weeks of brutal treatment" doesn't help me understand how that specifically was torture, unless all "brutal treatment" is considered a form of torture.
He lost his wealth, including his library and animals. That's surely an emotional shock that could easily lead to depression. I can understand how someone from privilege, with a lot to lose, may be more affected than a poor person with little to lose. I can also understand how that depression may make it harder to survive wretched circumstances. But I also don't want to give special dispensation to wealthy people just because they are used to a good life.
All of the resources I've found about the event trace back to the biography I've been quoting. The book "His Sacred Honor, Judge Richard Stockton" surely has more, but I can't find a copy online.
I am unable to answer your question about the book. I believe that if "civilized warfare" is a meaningful phrase in a 1770s US context then it's surely influenced by Vattel.
Should the people involved be prosecuted for torture?
To be clear, I think it is a clear violation of their 8th amendment right.
Here's a lawsuit where the jail wasn't providing enough food. https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Lawsuit-says-jail-s... . The class action lawsuit is settled, at https://dailygazette.com/2020/07/23/montgomery-county-agrees... . The county denies any wrongdoing.
Even if you think it was torture, I wonder if the prisoners did. The complaint at https://clearinghouse-umich-production.s3.amazonaws.com/medi... says "A more abusive and inhumane environment is difficult to imagine" but does not use the word torture.
Or, from https://interrogatingjustice.org/prisons/historic-winter-sto... :
> More than 1,000 women in one medical prison endured days without heat. Temperatures inside FMC Carswell the facility dropped to 50 degrees. The prison is the only medical facility for women in the entire country, and it houses prisoners with severe health problems. To make matters worse, staff failed to properly secure water supplies, leading to a water shortage inside the jail. Ahead of the storm, correctional officers did not repair damaged heating systems or secure a generator to make sure essential medical equipment had power. Though the prison never officially lost power, prisoners struggled in the extreme temperatures.
Were they being tortured?
Or, "The Big Chill - I had never been locked up before. No one told me that prison would be so cold." https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/29/the-big-chill .
Are those prisoners being tortured? Or is this part of the "pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions" the United Nations Convention Against Torture specifically excludes?
I found https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1998/feb/15/cold-cell-v... saying "The court noted that "cold temperatures need not imminently threaten inmates' health to violate the eighth amendment. Thus, Dixon's claim that his cell was so cold he could not write a letter or do legal work, was sufficient, without more, for eighth amendment purposes."
This sounds like a cold cell can be a violation of the 8th amendment, even without involving torture or extreme health problems.
That's why I don't want to say that this short description of the events of 1700s is enough to conclude it was likely also torture.
Torture may not be the correct word, but brutal neglect certainly would.
Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton and Thomas Heyward Jr. were all imprisoned at the PoW camp at Fort St. Mark (aka Castillo de San Marcos), St. Augustine. Not a prison ship.
The Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos links to https://books.google.com/books?id=eCc8BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA126 which describes their captivity and that of others as:
> They lived in the unfinished statehouse and in private houses in town. Since many were paroled, most of them were given considerable freedom of movement. The prisoners' diet was salt fish, occasionally salt beef, vegetables, and potatoes, and one-quarter pint of rum daily. They were permitted to write home for money to purchase items from local vendors. At the statehouse they slept on mattresses on the floor, and stayed the better part of a year.
That is not brutal neglect and certainly not torture.
George Walton, the 5th captured signer, was captured during the Battle of Savannah in 1778. From https://archive.org/details/biographyofsign03sand/page/124/m... :
> Walton received a wound through the thigh, fell from his horse, and was taken prisoner. He was paroled until he recovered from his wound, and then transferred to Sunbury, as a prisoner of war. The high station of colonel Walton as a member of congress, and his signature to the declaration of independence, induced the British government to demand a brigadier general in exchange for him, but the term for which he was elected having expired, he was ultimately exchanged, as a lieutenant colonel, for a captain of the navy, in September, 1779.
Again, not brutal neglect, and not torture.
Just regular good old ancestor / politician worship.
And, yes, the founding fathers (...) were just like any old grandpas. They were men of state at a particular place and time. Just because it happens to be your ancestral place and time, doesn't make it anything more impressive than hundreds of other leaders in history, including near history.
The main reason they get celebrated is because they place they founded got rich, but that was due to factors other than their brilliance.
> And, yes, the founding fathers (...) were just like any old grandpas. They were men of state at a particular place and time. Just because it happens to be your ancestral place and time, doesn't make it anything more impressive than hundreds of other leaders in history, including near history.
This is the definition of edgy contrarianism. They were on the forefront of enacting a new-ish system of thought into a stable and long-lasting democratic republic, the first really liberal and representative version of such. They were exceptional men in a unique time and capitalized on that to the benefit of hundreds of millions or arguably billions of people. They were unique men.
Don’t interrupt that sober-minded Patriotism, now.
Indeed, after deposing the monarchy of your mother country, and setting about to create a republic in the face of thousands of years of bloody noble rivalries over succession to the throne, a tall pint of cider is well in order.
You don't even need to give me positive examples, just examples.
https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/education/benjamin-frankli...
You almost certainly would not have, had you been born in the same period of time.
Let's not pretend that people in the past were monsters simply because they lived during the period of time they lived. Maybe they were all racist monsters by today's standards, but had they been born today they'd be completely different.
People KNEW slavery was wrong, but those in power did not want to admit it. The same way that we KNOW it's wrong to horde massive wealth while children go hungry and people do not have access to basic medical care.
Those people are your neighbors...unlike the billionaires that people harp on about. Monsters are all around you. Just look to your left and right.
Because child services is critically underfunded and poverty is rampaging through our country. The richest one on earth.
> Your neighbors who assault and beat their kids.
Yes, more monsters, but not on the scale of someone who enslaves children and adults en-masse in foreign countries in order to suppress wages in their own country.
> Those people are your neighbors...unlike the billionaires that people harp on about.
Not unlike each other at all. They are the same narcissists and psychopaths, just with less power.
My point is that it's easy to take our 2023 ethics and apply them to people in the 1700s but all that does is prove you don't have a proper context or frame of reference for history. It lets you conveniently ignore things in the most intellectually lazy way. I mean, look at my comment's parent and GP. In reverse order, a perfectly rational and reasonable point about how the framers drank a lot while writing a document that would found a new country (and perhaps the difference between how it affect those people vs. his family). And the knee-jerk, lazy, boring response of "yeah but SLAVES."
Do you think that this response is innovative and thoughtful? Somebody literally said that the framers of the US constitution were collectively some of the "most functional human beings in history" and they were reminded that those people were vile and violent. If you're a black American, you have a reasonable chance of being one of their descendants because they would buy human beings to rape.
They also accomplished many things, and some of them wrote very interesting things. Jefferson was often very insightful, but he also raped slaves. Lots of drunks have written interesting things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Georgia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Whitefield
Of course people knew slavery was wrong, but profits. We may not have slavery today, but the same kind of people are around, for example against minimum wage increases or for non-compete agreements.
> yeah but SLAVES
It's astounding to me that so many people completely missed the point that these two things are related.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that GP's family probably didn't have an army of black people doing all their chores and generating a healthy income stream to live off, for free, so that they could engage full-time in civics.
"As such, it remains unknown whether Washington personally used any teeth purchased from slaves or others"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_teeth
So the usual expectation is indeed, if you share uncommon facts, you share the link to those facts, so others can judge more easily, if your facts are facts at all.
> Records at Mount Vernon show that Washington bought teeth from slaves
is what I said, except that maybe he didn’t put the extracted teeth into his own mouth and used the slave teeth for some other purpose or a different person’s dentures, you’re correct on that and I thank you for sharing that detail.
"For sailors the beer supplied was of the strong kind (10%-15% alcohol) since this was the only kind that preserved itself well in the sea, hence drunk as a sailor."
Would 4.5L of 2% ABV make you drunk? Depends how quickly you can drink it. It's 9 units of alcohol. We commonly assume the body can process 1 unit/hour so if this quantity was consumed over an entire day, I don't think you'd get merry.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to drink like this, just highlighting the impact of ABV on the outcome.
Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol. However apparently it's allowed to use the term "alkoholfrei": take a look at the bottles of "Erdinger alkoholfrei" in UK supermarkets with tiny smallprint explaining that it's not alcohol-free (it's 0.5% and tastes quite good).
The rules may have changed fairly recently. They always used to sell "shandy" with 0.5% alcohol as a soft drink to children but I'm not sure if they still do that.
There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
(I think I read somewhere that they had to create a special exception for soy sauce in Australia because soy sauce can have up to 2% alcohol but obviously nobody's going to quaff it and if they did the 2% alcohol would probably not be their biggest problem.)
From a quick tesco search Punk AF (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304722896) and Lucky Saint (https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/311448058) both contain the terms "alcohol free" prominently on the front but are 0.5%.
There are also a bunch of 0.0% beers, and their fine print is how you say, no more than 0.05%, but at least Brewdog and Lucky Saint are getting away with using the term for 0.5%, and I am sure I've seen more of that kind of thing.
The sources and numbers are getting mixed up here but on the topic of the Founders, the small beer George Washington was brewing was probably in the vicinity of 1%. I think it's pretty safe to say that a guy sipping 1% all day might get a bit of a buzz and not much more, especially considering the tolerance he'd build up.
As with anything the dose makes the poison. I've consumed a lot of alcohol over my life, but as I get older my friends and I have mostly lost our interest in experiencing anything beyond a mild buzz. At a bar we frequently order a lemonade/Sprite along with our beers and make DIY shandies [2] which brings the alcohol content down to like 2.5%. It's pretty hard to get drunk at that level even if you go at it for hours. Throw in a water here and there and it's even lower. I only wish society and the industry was more supportive of this manner of drinking, but the bars undoubtedly make less money off of us than the guy who goes full bore and ends up behind the wheel plastered...
[1] https://goodstuffdrinks.com/blogs/the-good-stuff/how-much-al...
> Er, no! Perhaps in Ireland? In the UK the term "alcohol-free" can only be used if the drink has no more than 0.05% alcohol.
The government says the threshold is 1.2%.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-alcohol-descr...
"Low alcohol" -> 1.2% ABV (the threshold at which beer duty has to be paid)
"De-alcoholised" -> 0.5% ABV
"Alcohol free" -> 0.05% ABV
"Non-alcoholic" -> "should not be used in conjunction with a name commonly associated with an alcoholic drink" except communion wine.
Advertising Standards Authority:
> The alcohol section of the Codes applies to ‘alcoholic drinks’, which are those above 0.5% ABV. Drinks at or below 0.5% are, for the purposes of the Codes, considered to be non-alcoholic.
https://www.asa.org.uk/news/advertising-zero-alcohol-product...
You're right about this though:
> There's another rule that says you can't sell a drink that has the same brand name as an alcoholic drink to children, so children can't buy alcohol-free Heineken (which has 0.05% alcohol), for example.
and it's 'worse' - you can't buy 'no-secco' or 'apple fizz' or whatever they're marketed as, even though they're absolutely nil alcohol, not removed, it was never there. But obviously other cordials and carbonated soft drinks like San Pelligrino, Shloer etc. are fine, just because they're not made to look like a sparkling wine bottle.
"Alcohol free – this should only be applied to a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% abv"
But: "the decision was made to replace the legislation with guidance setting out the four existing descriptors that industry will be expected to follow"
So (1) it's not clear that Brewdog and Lucky Saint (mentioned by SCdF elsewhere in this thread) are breaking an actual law by failing to follow the guidance which Erdinger apparently does claim to follow, and (2) perhaps that rule really does apply only to "a drink from which the alcohol has been extracted", so perhaps it wouldn't apply to a shandy made by diluting alcoholic beer?
which is basically just rules about how you can market (it's fun and cool to drink alcohol kids!) 'alcoholic drinks', i.e. anything under 0.5% can be marketed in ways that says you can't for alcoholic drinks.
But a slightly different page than the one I quoted above goes on to say the same as yours:
> In terms of the official guidance, the descriptor ‘alcohol free’ should only be used on drinks from which the alcohol has been extracted if it contains no more than 0.05% ABV. Where a product has had the alcohol extracted but it remains above 0.05% ABV but at or below 0.5% ABV, the descriptor would be ‘de-alcoholised’.
https://www.asa.org.uk/news/low-and-no-alcohol-drinks.html
So yes, either it tells you something about how they're making it, or they're wrong to be using that 'descriptor'. (Surely the former? Brewdog make 'Punk AF', they'd have to rebrand it completely if they're not allowed to call it 'AF', surely they'd have been on top of that?)
Oh wait though - the page I originally quoted goes on:
> CAP is aware that official government guidance exists on how alcohol content at or below 0.5% should be described, but understands that this guidance is not legally binding. Therefore, the Codes do not require compliance with this guidance.
which explains why I couldn't find anything enacted on legislation.gov.uk. So it is just a matter for them as the regulator, but these two pages on their own site seem to be in contradiction about whether they care about use of the 'descriptor' or not?
Why make this call out?
0.5% is an EU regulation than Ireland specific. And apparently the same level in the US from my (just done now) googling.
Before Austria joined the EU (in 1995) there used to be significant differences in the rules on food labelling between Austria and Germany, to the extent that sometimes a product would have two separate lists of ingredients, one for Austria and one for Germany. The same may now happen with Ireland and the UK, and perhaps the term "alcohol-free" is already being used differently. See https://www.ibec.ie/drinksireland/-/media/documents/drinks-i...
Everyone else is the much lower estimate discussed up thread.
> Manageable over the course of a day, but you’re definitely drinking.
Maybe I'm a lightweight, I would be absolutely trollied if I had to drink eight 13% pints over the course of a day. I have never been anywhere where they'd even sell you an entire pint of 13%, you are in 2/3rd or maybe even 1/3rd territory.
They recently started selling it in 12oz bottles, so it’s no longer a commitment but rather a choice.
I have this pet theory that alcohol is not linear. Like, 5% beer get you way more drunk than the same amount of alcohol in 4.4% beer.
If you're drinking 30-50 units of water for every unit of alcohol, all that alcohol is going to be very diluted and have little effect on your BAC. There's probably a threshold beyond which you'll just piss it all out before the your BAC ever reaches a meaningful number.
Meanwhile, your liver can remove about 10g/12ml of alcohol per hour. In order for you to reach a meaningful BAC, you will need to absorb significantly more than that.
For example, drinking 1 liter of 1% alcohol solution per hour will not result in any significant BAC, because you can remove alcohol from your bloodstream faster than alcohol enters your bloodstream. You've got a well-optimized queue there.
5 liters of 1% alcohol is the same as above, just repeated 5 times. Your queue is still working fine.
1 liter of 5% alcohol, on the other hand, will dump 50ml of alcohol into your bloodstream within an hour. Now you have a backlog, and this backlog is what increases your BAC.
So dilution does matter, even if the absolute amount of alcohol is the same. You're basically diluting alcohol consumption over time.
1. Drank a gallon of liquid (could have been water or sports drink, I don't remember) on that ~3 hour ride.
2. Didn't pee until I got home -- and not much then.
3. Came home with dry clothes, despite (obviously) sweating something like a gallon of liquid. There was no evidence of sweat, ever -- it all evaporated.One stop every 2 hours to chuck 500ml of beer (Bia Hanoi, pretty nice light blond), so about 4 stops a day. It worked fine ! Pee was ok color, enough tipsy to keep my sense but numb the pain of cycling. My clothes had aureola of salt and urea.
The recommended amount depends on who does the recommendation but 1.9L doesn't seem high.
https://www.efsa.europa.eu/fr/efsajournal/pub/1459
"Adequate Intakes (AI) have been defined derived from a combination of observed intakes in population groups with desirable osmolarity values of urine and desirable water volumes per energy unit consumed. The reference values for total water intake include water from drinking water, beverages of all kind, and from food moisture and only apply to conditions of moderate environmental temperature and moderate physical activity levels (PAL 1.6). [...] Available data for adults permit the definition of AIs as 2.0 L/day (P 95 3.1 L) for females and 2.5 L/day (P95 4.0 L) for males."
https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43403
"The minimum water requirement for fluid replacement for a 70kg human in a temperate zone equates to 3L per day, or 42.9mL/kg [according to the Tropical Agriculture Association]. Minimum requirements for an individual the same size but in a tropical zone equates to 4.1 to 6L/day"
"Age and gender specific Adequate Intakes (AI) for water were established in 2004 by the [United States] Food and Nutrition Board (5). The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) for water are [for ages 19 and older] Men 3.7 L/day Women 2.7 L/day"
I also find the amount questionable, as I suspect that our modern expectations of what that means and the details of what they meant when they recorded personal consumption means there's something lost in translation here.
Even when I was outside scouting crops 10-12 hours a day on foot in southwest kansas with peak 110F temps, I'd still not need to drink more than 4 liters of water a day. I could push it up another liter, but it wasn't needed and could actually be harmful if one overhydrates. And that's the extreme of the year, way more what I'd reach for most of the year.
Whereas the daily motto of the fuckers was apparently "I am a machine that turns beer into piss"
Which had me thinking of various pecuniary benefits armies pass and why. Salt -> salary is well documented, on the opposite side slightly less so but still somewhat known was for conquering armies to compensate farmers for essentially pillage as the monetary compensation can't buy much grain nor meat when the army's eaten the village's as well as that of surrounding villages. It also wasn't unusual for state coffers to run dry also, delaying soldiers' salaries, plus graft - several banks still around were founded on the basis of lending to a liquidity starved crown, a modern placation and guarantee of support in the classical baronesque sense perhaps.
And I became curious about all the other money-like tokens, like these beer rations, backed by the promise of a commodity, that floated around in those time, and in ours today. Meandering thoughts, the best kind.
Is it? At least for Roman soldiers there is no evidence at all that was the case. It just seems to be a myth originating in 18-19th centuries (like a lot of things in popular history).
It would only make sense if it was given to be used a store of value, but they had perfectly good coins to pay salaries with.
The Roman Empire towards its end in the west had suffered from a lot of inflation, so coinage was either too expensive for everyday use (i.e. gold-coins, each of which would be a year's salary for a soldier), or worthless (basically just lumps of base-metal).
I think at a certain point taxes were required to be paid in goods rather than coin which really does show that your currency is worthless (when even the state refuses to accept it!)
Paying out salaries in cash (well, coins) so soldiers can buy trade goods like salt certainly makes more sense than handing them sacks of NaCl.
It’s not unlikely that the connection between these were was already merely etymological by that time and made barely any more sense to the Romans as it does to us.
https://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2017/01/salt-and-salary.h...
tl;dr: There is a genuine linguistic connection between "salt" and "salary", but there is no evidence soldiers were ever paid in salt, or given an allowance specifically for buying salt. Possibly "salary" meant "money for salt" with "salt" used metonymically to mean any trade goods, similar to how "fish" was used in Ancient Greek, but even this is pure speculation.
It is somewhat documented, well documented perhaps.
Correctly documented?
I never finished the recent popular book 'Salt'. After a few chapters it became tedious, repetitive, plus the book consistently omitted tying text to sources. A frustrating read.
As I didn't in fact tie Salt to Roman soldiers' salaries, that was your reading, simply salt -> salary, I'm curious what references you could provide for different etymology? I'm genuinely interested, I rarely reply to replies.
Seem like a reasonable analysis:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jfkkmk/when_...
Like a lot of historical things, there's a certain amount of guesswork involved, but it hangs together pretty well. It's unlikely that we'll find the Noah Webster of 100 BC who puts it down on a clay tablet.
> Wine is taken to be 0.12 alcohol, the same number is used in modern estimates of alcohol consumption. The amount of alcohol consumed by drinking historical beer brews is between 0.62 to 0.107, the % of alcohol in “small beer” is taken to be around 0.05 and the % in “strong beer” is taken to be around 0.135,
How did they brew such small beers? Nowadays the non-alcoholic beers (basically 0.5%) are mostly made by removing alcohol after brewing, which greatly affects the taste. I think it's a highly desirable skill to be able to brew good small beers. (Or maybe those beers were just not very good by today's standards.)
There's much less foam in low alcohol beers, so it's not just the alcohol content (unless that affect it directly in some way I don't know about).
But I am more of a Pilsener guy, and there are a few good alcohol free Pils which I am convinced would taste like the "real deal" with the added taste of alcohol.
The thing that makes beer foam stay there is the protein content. Yeast contributes some, but it's also in the grain. The foam should be less different if you compared something filtered like Heineken and Heineken 0.0.
this is not a good expectation. Yeast will consume all available sugar till the alcohol %age gets too high for them (depends on the yeast but even the hardiest cultured strains poop out at around 16%. But they can only consume what sugar is in there, so if you ferment starting with something with little sugar, it will not arrive at a high alcohol level.
Our ancestors did not have access to lots of sugar, even their fruits (therefore juices) were less sweet.
to your point about insanely sweet starter, wine grapes are also insanely sweet, so sweet we don't want to eat them. Table grapes like you buy at the grocery, sweet as they are, are much less sweet than wine grapes. So, starting from the ultra sweet grapejuice, average wine gets to 12% alcohol.
I think it depends on the style. For hoppy ales Athletic Brewing in the US makes really good beers, you can hardly tell there is no alcohol. As far as I heard they don't really remove alcohol, but I don't know how they brew it. (Might be a secret process.)
Regarding German beers, this is also what I find near me now, and they are all decent, but you can definitely tell they don't have alcohol.
- Toast 300g sliced [rye] bread to near burning
- Boil 3 liters of water, turn off, insert/soak bread
- Let sit for 6 hours
- Add 150g sugar, 6g instant yeast
- Let sit for 18 hours
- Remove bread, strain out extra liquid from it. Birds love it, once it dries out.
- Bottle up the liquid (leave headspace for gassing), and occasionally burp it.
- Wait. Longer bottling period = smoother, less carbonated, more alcohol, less sweet. ~12 hours, but this is very subjective.
- Chill + drink. Take the lid off very carefully, aim away from eyes.
In Finland, a home-made small beer (kotikalja) remains a popular drink in the countryside. The alcohol content is around 1%. It’s a sweet brown mush that you can make in one day at home using rye malt sold in every grocery store. Here’s a video:
There's a Tibetan/Bhutanese/north Indian barley version of this too, known as chhang.
It's not up to modern standards for "alcohol free" beecs, but it works if you're just aiming to hydrate while avoiding pathogens in your water supply.
Americans should probably date "stopping being drunk all the time" to Prohibition; the overwhelming national support for it, especially from newly enfranchised women(+), gives an idea as to how big a problem it was.
(+) As a non-American, I had to check this, and Prohibition very slightly pre-dates universal votes for women although both were in 1920 and it may be possible that the franchise differed by state? It's certainly true that women temperance campaigners were very important, given the role of alcohol in domestic violence and budgeting.
edit: I should also note tolerance to alcohol is a warning that much greater problems are imminent. It is a red flag.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013zl8
ps. there's also some fascinating speculation at the end about connections between the temperance movement and early movements for women's rights and how that played out very differently on each side of the Atlantic.
"Take his entry for the night of 16 October 1783. Boswell records that he and six friends consumed 11 bottles of claret, two of other wines, two of Madeira, three of port, and one of rum. The next night, they polished off 11 bottles of claret, three of other wines, three of port and three of rum."
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2004/dec/19/unitedkingdom...
But I often think about the framers of the Constitution drinking vast quantities that fateful, blistering summer of 1787: http://johnjayhomestead.org/wp-content/uploads/In-the-Cups-o...
They were, and remain, literally some of the most functional human beings in history.
Fascinates me to see these two extremes in behavior.