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Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

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Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#81

Post by defrost »

zo1 wrote: post #74
rocqua wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ireland was a colony of Britain. The economic system of Britain was much more concerned with extracting value from its colony than it was in caring about the people in its colony.

Sure but how did it benefit them to let their "crop" die of famine? Seems like a stupid thing to do, even if you don't care about the well being of your "stock".

Potatoes were not the crop of the rich British landlords, they cared little for the Catholics who they regarded as breeding out of control.

During the years prior to the famine the landlords pushed more and more people from the best lands for failure to pay rent, grew more grain, raised more sheep, shipped these back home to England and watched the Irish starve more and more as their population tripled(? IIRC - it grew by a lot).

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#82

Post by mellosouls »

saagarjha wrote: post #46
p-e-w wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relevant because if 99.99% of British people had nothing to do with the famine, saying that "the British" were a "pathogen" is somewhere between weapons grade bullshit and outright hate speech.

99.99% of Americans had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib either.

As pointed out, only a small minority of Brits had the vote back then, so not the same at all.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#83

Post by mellosouls »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #72
p-e-w wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who voted for governments that enforced the Corn Law? Not "the British people", if that's what you are implying. Until the Reform Act of 1867, only a tiny fraction of British adult men (and none of British women) had the right to vote. The average Briton during the Great Irish Famine had as much influence on the British government as the average Irish person did. Which is to say, none at all.

Tiny fraction? > Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult men in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number. 1/7th isn't that tiny. 1/14th is a fair tiny fraction if we're including disenfranchised women. Being fair, the Corn Law wasn't intended to hurt the Irish, it was meant to protect British farmers against the cheap grain of the traitor colonies in North America. But…

You can't really #notallbritish this.

You really can. The working class Brits have probably been more screwed over than anybody else in the world by the British ruling classes.

In times when they had no or little electoral input into the policies enacted by their oppressors elsewhere it's perfectly reasonable to call out the flaws in generalisations.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#84

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

jjgreen wrote: post #75
Roark66 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine how much actual calories that is depends on the size of the potatoes. When potatoes fail, they often do so by producing tiny tubers. The smallest I personally ate were less than an inch in diameter. Also,people who don't do any farming don't realise how much effort goes into pest/disease control. Especially with potatoes the main pest around here(central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the c…

... around here (central Europe) is Colorado Potato Beetle (if that is the correct name for it in English) Usually just the "Colorado Beetle" in the UK at least. Little bastards.

I've mostly them called 'potato bugs'

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#85

Post by p-e-w »

saagarjha wrote: post #71
p-e-w wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is a scale, not a binary state. The actually relevant question is "could the average American have prevented Abu Ghraib?" And I believe the answer to be No, so 'Americans' cannot possibly be responsible under any reasonable definition of responsibility.

Well you can also have average Americans who think they have no business taking responsibility after it happens, since it wasn't something that concerned them, and nothing ends up done in response to it happening. Or you can note that some people did horrible things under the banner of your country and accept it as such, vowing to never let it happen again and holding those directly involved in the decision to accoun…

> Or you can note that some people did horrible things under the banner of your country and accept it as such, vowing to never let it happen again

That requires having the power to keep it from happening again. Without that, such "vows" are meaningless moral posturing.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#87

Post by projektfu »

Mistletoe wrote: post #41
creyes12345 wrote: post #2

Requiring calorie-heavy diets to carry out their punishing workloads, [the Irish impoverished tenant farmers] were soon consuming between 40 and 60 potatoes every day.

I wonder how they ate the potatoes? Cooked in what way and with what additions like butter etc.?

It depends a lot on how poor one was. Some had extreme diets of potatoes and milk or buttermilk with rare variations. Others incorporated oats and other vegetables and meat when they could afford it. But the best stuff was taken for sale in Britain.

Imagine 6-12 lbs potatoes and a cup or two of milk, day in, day out!

https://www.dochara.com/the-irish/food-history/food-in-irela...

Colonialism is miserable.

Re: Scientists have identified the potato pathogen that devastated Ireland (2013)

#89

Post by kuhewa »

mrmincent wrote: post #52
ifdefdebug wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. It will eradicate the potatoe bug and then go extinct for lack of prey. This is incredible! It takes two HN nerds just 5 minutes to come up with a good plan a group of scientists would have needed months to develop.

I’d like to think this is the exact same conversation that gave Australia it’s 2nd favourite purse material, the cane toad.

It gave Hawaii no less than thirty-four species of insects introduced as attempted biocontrol of an introduced shrub Lantana. Which still grows freely
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