Live data from Hacker News

Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

aeon.co

71–80 of 102 posts

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. Shootings are very, very rare. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. Gun murders in the U.S. are a very low percentage of deaths (0.39%) and preventable deaths (~1.1%, there's some disagreement about what's "preventable"). That's 0.0036…

>. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. And even then they are basically concentrated around illegal parts of the economy. Drug traffickers, pimps, etc. can't use the courts and the police so when it comes to settling disputes they have to DIY their ow…

Afaik, personal conflict and relationships are most common reasons for murders. It is less likely to be business nowdays and more likely that someone violent with poor impulse control got angry at friend again.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#72
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has some, ah, unique takes scattered throughout: > American forces – well, the French and Spanish forces, along with the sputtering Americans – managed to win the American Revolution in 1783. Make no mistake, the French forces were key, but to lay the victory at the feet of the Spanish ahead of the Americans throws the whole piece into question.

By 1780 it was a matter of when and not if. The American people had been so thoroughly brutalized by the British at that point that there was certainly going to be ongoing violence as long as there were British soldiers around to shoot at. So then the British options are genocide or wash their hands of it. And the Bible says you're not supposed to commit genocide against other Christians let alone people who might be…

Cant treat them like the irish, if the island is to far away..

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#73
post #56
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm increasingly hearing the idea (from Hindu nationalists?) that the caste system was the invention of the British, not anything indigenous. If anyone's in the know, I'd be curious to hear what's broadly accepted among historians nowadays.

The scholarly opinion of this question has been quite dynamic over the last century. Nowadays, the consensus seems to be that Caste was definitely a thing before the Raj took over, but it was more fluid and regional, and was not the centralized, static hierarchy it is today. There were other power structures (feudal, religious, etc) that were not colored by caste, and competed with caste to triangulate people. The Br…

> It’s worth noting that is a common pattern of colonialism: to divide the colonized people against themselves along arbitrary, existing lines and elevate an arbitrary group, aligning the interest of that group with the interests of the colonizers. It’s a timeless and tragic human story.

The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda immediately come to mind.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#74
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. I said "many places" not "all places". Indeed, shootings are concentrated to a few areas with high crime rates. Doesn't mean that people living in those areas don't have to watch out. I replied to an anecdote abou…

> I said "many places" not "all places"... Doesn't mean that people living in those areas don't have to watch out. I agree that there is some non-zero number of people in the U.S. who have to watch out for gun murder. The point I'm trying to make is that they make up a really small proportion of the population. Anecdotes are fun. > As for gun murders being a rare death cause, indeed if you average over all age ranges…

Statistically, for kids, the dominant causes of death are car accidents and drowning. The rest you can pretty much not worry about. Another way to look at it is if you read about it in the paper, it is rare enough you don't need to worry about it.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Remember the British were already under order to raid the towns for supplies ('powder and ball'). In Lexington, the militia had made a show of force, following which gunfire was exchanged, and the British officers authorized a "huzzah" in celebration of the death of several militia members. Quite a stretch to call resisting an army under orders to seize munitions by force "murder" per say, this was a clear act…

Even if you don't side with the militia, by any reasonably modern code of ethics and rules of engagement "resisting a uniformed army by force" is completely and totally fair game. Armies exist to project state violence. Sometimes people take them up on the offer.

I'd be interested to see if anyone applied this argument to Al-Quaeida in Iraq against coalition forces.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting. And even then they are basically concentrated around illegal parts of the economy. Drug traffickers, pimps, etc. can't use the courts and the police so when it comes to settling disputes they have to DIY their ow…

This is an interesting thought. Sounds correct to me. It seems like ending the War on Drugs would be a conceptually simple way of fixing most of this.

It's a big factor; legalizing soft drugs and managing hard drugs (like methadone clinics) will definitely help. Social safety nets to help prevent people going poor. Quality education for everyone. Quality housing for everyone.

There's a lot of things the US can do to massively improve the quality of life for everyone, it just means funneling some of the trillions it puts into the military and "the economy" (like the trillion that vaporized within minutes last march) elsewhere. I mean they can solve a lot of people's problems with a trillion dollars.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it to what? People are going to people. Just because your continent doesn't have the same gun laws as the US doesn't mean there's any less crime - gun related or otherwise. There are quite a few Europeans that wish they had guns so they weren't stabbed, dashed with acid, or beheaded.

acids and beheadings? these happened a few times in the last decade on the entire continent

Stabbing is fairly frequent though, given that you can use basic tools or kitchen utensils for it.

The main point still stands though; guns don't cause violence and death, people do. It's the attitude and circumstances, not the tools.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#78
post #3

i would enjoy a VR game where i could sit in an old tavern while i drink an actual beer

I mean that sounds pretty easy to set up on your own. Just some VRML or VRchat plus one of the "pub" discord servers (with VRchat you wouldn't need the discord part.)

I can confirm that drinking together in VR pub worlds is a very popular activity in VRChat.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is doubting it was an act of violence. The oddity is that they're calling it an act of murder as opposed to an act of war. Murder sounds like a bunch of criminals, which is a really one sided take. The british soldiers were there to destroy colonial military supplies. It may be technically correct, but you don't hear about how the GIs murdered a bunch of Nazis on the beaches of Normandy or whatever other war s…

I'm not a historian but isn't there some ambiguity here? If war hadn't already been declared by the relevant governments, you can't be killing in the name of war.

You don’t want to open up that can of worms. Thousands of war deaths would qualify as murders if you used a declaration as the deciding factor.

Re: Violent, lively and brash, taverns were everywhere in early colonial America

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the other . What, this is a behavior specific to white, powerful men? What went down in and around Lexington and Concord was a more serious crime than murder, it was an act of rebellion. The author appears committed to a particular affect which seems out of context with the history he presents.

It's odd how many people who share this anti-Whitism express this sentiment in the very same breath in which they denigrate, demonise or humiliate Whites. Either they don't actually believe it and are just zealously taking the opportunity to revel in their socially-acceptable racism, or they're supporting this trend I'm seeing of Whites becoming ethnically conscious and collectivising in the face of the hostility the…

Exactly. They denigrate one racial group by point out how they were more apt to denigrate another racial group.

So they are basically doing the same thing they are accusing the group of.

Post reply on HN