Notices by Steve Wart (swart@mastodon.cloud)

In 1857 the East India Company appointed Robert Clive to put down an attack on Calcutta by the Bengalis. He started playing one side against the other for protection, and in short order was taking all the tax revenue from the region. Being one of the most populated regions in the world and a major producer of textiles, he became the richest man in the world.

To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China.

This opening paragraph floors me

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War

By 1770 the price of grain reached catastrophic levels, and famine spread throughout the region. The death toll was estimated in the millions — the governor of Bengal himself said that 1/3 of the population had died.

When they asked Clive about the events, he said his job was protect the interests of shareholders, not the local population, and surely he should not be criticized for that.

In 1773 the House of Common set up a committee to investigate the aftermath (not to mention the diversion of funds), and found that over £2 million—tens of billions in today's terms—had been given as "presents" to EIC employees.

As revenues collapsed due to the, er, lack of workers, costs spiked sharply, and there was a run on the shares of the EIC. The British government decided they were too big to fail and decided to sharply increase taxes on the colonies in North America, where they were much lower than in Britain. Some colonists got upset, dressed up as natives, and dumped the cargo of several ships filled with tea into the Boston Harbour.

Leaflets and pamphlets were widely distributed in Pennsylvania that described the East India Company as an institution "well versed in Tyranny, Plunder, Oppression, and Bloodshed." It was a symbol of all that was wrong with Britain itself, where the highest levels of society were in thrall to the greedy, self-serving interest groups enriching themselves at the expense of the common people.

Mount St. Helens erupted on this day in 1980. Sadly I can’t find USGS or any volcano science posts to share here, they all still seem to be on Twitter.

@BeAware ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@paninid holy fuck. Mastodon is fundamentally broken

@GossiTheDog do they live in 2004?

@ai6yr ah but do you know your ip address 😂

@darnell Hep C killed my BIL in Canada 10 years ago, 53 years of age. Never took drugs or had any high-risk behavior, but always went to his dental appointments. Huge scandal about it when I was a kid, then, crickets. It still shocks me that they didn't do basic sanitization in the late 20th century.

Imprisoned and awaiting trial in Querétaro, Maximilian (Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico) reportedly remarked to his general, “Don’t think that an Austrian archduke can be shot so easily.”

https://archive.ph/Yn5iu

I've seen it recommended to post a message here and pin it to your profile as a sort of introduction.

I like to help people with stupid things I've learned about computers in the past 40 years or so, because they don't seem to be going away.

I believe it's usually easier to repair aging infrastructure than to replace it.

Ignorant people are usually a lot smarter than they get credit for, and educated people are usually a lot more ignorant than you could imagine.

The post limit is too short.

I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud.

— T.E. Lawrence

@darnell no camera or mic? I guess they oversold that retro tech crush

Speaking of weird anomalies in the Earth

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/03/world/earth-moon-theia-collision-llvps-scn/index.html

@SwiftOnSecurity Von Neumann knew what was best for children

Tremendous thread for supply chain data nerding out

From: @badlogic
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071396799790275