I love Atlas Obscura, but this time I think they dropped the ball.
First of all, that âaverage life expectancyâ includes a lot of infants and children dying â if you made it to 21, you stood a good chance of seeing 60 so long as a plague or war didnât come your way. So the Templars making it to 60 or 70 isnât as miraculous as the article makes it sound. There were, in fact, plenty of âgreybeardsâ around.
The diet⊠they basically ate like medieval Catholics. One of my aunts still observes the âno meat on Fridaysâ rule.
The part about the silent meals and how they were assigned to eat in pairs was interesting. Thereâs an order a few kilometres from where I grew up that had a vow of silence, but they were permitted some sign language to get around the âno talkingâ rule.
Um⊠The article didnât neglect that:
For even wealthy landholding males, average life expectancy was about 31 years, rising to 48 years for those who made it to their twenties.
I think theyâre talking more about the âonly three meals with meat per weekâ bit (Sun, Tue, Thu). It sounds like Mon, Wed, Sat meals were vegetarian.
Or at least pescetarian. âMeatâ doesnât mean the same now it did then. Catholic âmeatlessâ dinners often feature fish as the entrĂ©e, unless someone is being strict for Lent.
I still think they overstated and distorted the age thing to create a mystery where there isnât one. Even today nuns and monks enjoy more longevity than their secular relatives.
The best part was when I went to share this video here, and the ad I was served was for a truly ginormous SUV.
This part really hit home for me:
I take the decision not to vaccinate personally. Iâve tried to have empathy for the other side, Iâve tried to tell myself that itâs none of my business, but I canât and it is. Someone who refuses to vaccinate their children because theyâre afraid of autism has made the decision that people like me are the worst possible thing that can happen to their family, and theyâre putting everyone at risk because of it. Iâve been told by some anti-vaxxers that they donât mean my brand of autism; they mean non-verbal autism, or as they are so fond of calling it, âprofound autism.â Iâm not about to take any solace in the idea that theyâre willing to make exceptions for autistic people who can perform as neurotypical, or at least pose as little annoyance to neurotypicals as possible. That just means that I will cease to be of any value to these people if I am no longer able to pass as one of them, and that they see no value and no humanity in anyone who communicates or behaves differently from them. Tell me again who has the empathy problem?
I havenât been keeping up with this thread, which is a shame.
However, Iâve finally found something that will fit it.
Somewhat stereotypically, in 1942, the UK bought the entire worldâs available supply of tea.
Tea has another benefit: not only do you boil water to make it, but the tannic acid (especially in the cheap tea that was provided) also helps kill anything that might survive the boiling.
Traditionally a large amount of casualties in war were from waterborne diseases. Keeping your soldiers alive by encouraging them to drink something beloved and which wonât leave them intoxicated, and it being a cheap solution⊠This was actually pretty goddam ingenious.
Yes, thereâs a chain of reasoning that holds that almost the entire history of the UK can be explained by tea.
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Tea helped to cause the industrial revolution to happen in the UK byimproving water quality, (it turns out, boiling your water with an antibacterial agent before drinking is a good thing. ) which allowed dense urbanisation necessary for the rise of factory production.
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The replacement of beer with tea as the UKâs national drink further drove an increase in industrial productivity, as a workforce were now ingesting caffeine rather than alcohol.
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The need for ships and the financing of trading missions to the far east to purchase tea also stimulated the development of shipbuilding, banking and insurance in order to facilitate the trade.
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The pattern of colonial conquest and exploitation was also set in part by tea, as suitable lands in India and Kenya were turned over to tea cultivation, alongside areas of the Caribbean used as sugar plantations, the already seemingly insatiable demand for sugar being boosted by the habit of drinking sweetened, milky tea.
Those of you from the US will also know the role that tea played in the end of British colonialism there. -
The British demand for tea was so great that the country essentially took up drug dealing to pay for its tea habit, and fought at least two wars to ensure that the both trades continued.
YES. This. I had a home that actually was perfect in how it was set up.
You walked into a small entry way. At right was a small formal dining room that overlooked the driveway and front lawn. No closing doors but the location of the walls kept it private.
The living room was straight ahead of the entry way, and then to the right of that was the kitchen - but it wasnât totally open concept. There was chest height wall dividing the counter from the living room so you could hide the clutter. There was a small eat-in area in the kitchen. We had 2 french doors on the far wall of the living room that opened onto a huge porch that overlooked a golf course, and the connected kitchen had a giant picture window (the length of 3 normal windows - which I had replaced when we installed new windows).
And the bedrooms were at either end of a hall and it was just such a practical design for entertaining.
But yeah, servants, I have mixed feelings about that. My grandparents had a maid and it was just weird to go there sometimes. I like the maid services that come in and clean and they have their own companies. The women Iâve met who run these kinds of companies seem more in charge and happy than the maids Iâve met who were working for one or two households only.
Loved this. Itâs about bloody time it was pointed out somewhere mainstream.
One of my relatives had a very open plan house, and I used to hate visiting there, because it was like spending the weekend in a panopticon. The centre of the house was a spiral staircase that stretched from basement to second storey. Each âlandingâ was a huge square hall (big enough that part of it on the second floor served as an office), from which all the rooms on that floor branched. Only bedrooms and bathrooms had doors.
All that space created a lot of echo. In my usual guest bedroom, with the door closed, I could hear people speaking in the kitchen easily â and my hearing is not the greatest. You were always very aware of the lack of privacy, even when you had nothing private to say.
Did anyone else see this and instantly wonder if there is already some Lando/Capt. Jack slash fic?
I wouldnt kick him out of bed for eating crackers.
Another interesting article from Maggie K-B: