Outside of history, the Women’s Rugby World Cup is in full swing and has been great to watch, and Helldivers 2 finally came to Xbox and has been very fun.

In a similar vein, I came across a video claiming that modern obesity in Ireland is due to the Great Famine, the papers quoted do indeed back the claim, however searching for additional papers seem to dispute it (noted as a research topic for later).

A recent study by Eoin McLaughlin, Heriot-Watt University and Chris Colvin, Queen's University Belfast showed that in areas hardest hit by the Great Famine that adult heights actually increased while in less affected areas, such as Dublin, they decreased. www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Why does no one ever speak of the Little Dark Age? m.youtube.com/watch?v=rtL5...

Farrell: *names a squad consisting of just Tadgh Beirne covering all positions*

Munster fans:

7/7 None of this excuses the government of the time, I am often scathing of how millions were sacrificed on the altar of economic theory and had earlier attitudes of compassion persisted, instead of giving way to prejudice and laissez-fairs dogma, the outcome may have been very different.

6/7 The history of the famine is often viewed through the lens of nationalism and religion. But revealing my inner socialist, I would argue this obscures a deeper truth; the fate of the millions of poor was determined by the wealthy elite who were indifferent to their suffering.

5/7 They only had to look to the Dutch government for how inaction could result in more deaths. To me, the continued existence and prosperity of Irish Catholics, particularly the middle classes and large acre farmers, raises the question: “What were they trying to accomplish if it were a genocide?”

4/7 The flaw I see with the genocide argument is that if the British wanted to exterminate the Irish, wholly or in part, they did a poor job of it. If they wished for mass death then they didn’t need to respond at all to the blight or to spend what little they did of the treasury.

3/7 While the use of armed guard was to prevent theft, it wasn’t an intent to guarantee starvation, as the government believed their public work programmes could supply the wages necessary to purchase food.

2/7 The distinction however is that they didn’t force exports in order to deliberately starve the poor, rather they didn’t interfere with where farmers and merchants, both Irish and British, wished to sell food in order to obtain the best price.

Something between OG Oblivion and Skyrim apparently

New quests or same as the original?

In general reading about the Dutch government’s response to the crisis I’m shocked how much worse it was than the British. The worst example is that by refusing to alter excise duties, notably on rye exclusively eaten by the poor, the government had a budget surplus in 1846 and grew income by 2%

“When did Disney create a supranational political and economic union?… oh, wrong EU”

OF when?

Should it come to pass I will have to convert our household to a potato monodiet

Early 20th I believe, main appeal of it to me is that I used to love the story of Ernest Shackleton’s voyage