A while back I saw a response to that tweet, it went something like
How many of us would throw up if we had to pluck and gut a chicken? The dorito isn't that impressive.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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I wouldn't throw up, I just wouldn't do it.
“What do you mean you work more hours than us for less in return? Doesn’t your king fear a revolt?”
The amount of stuff even a relatively poor person has in a developed country would be mind blowing for a medieval peasant.
We get less of a percentage of our work, but certainly get more absolute value.
The gains in efficiency over the last hundred years have been insane. Today's crumbs are better than the whole cookie back then.
No more dirt floors, indoor plumbing, electricity, books, etc.
i ... don't really think that "dirt floors" inherently are a problem. sanitation back then sucked but mostly for the cities between 1500 - 1800, because before then big cities weren't much of a thing and after that soap was invented. idk, maybe i am off about this. correct me if i am wrong.
(btw, does anybody know about the sanitary situation in ancient roman cities?)
but i agree with you.
The gains in efficiency over the last hundred years have been insane. Today’s crumbs are better than the whole cookie back then.
Last time i went to the supermarket, i paid 18€ for a whole bag of food. it was more than enough for a whole day. When i thought how much i had to work for it to pay for it all, it's like 1.5 hours in total. That is not much. And the food is top quality. No toxins, rather fresh, very nutritious and very convenient to get everything in one place.
Soap was invented a long time ago - 2800 BC and the Romans made quite a bit of it. However it used lye so you wouldn't want to use it often.
The sanitation of Roman cities should have been pretty good by historical standards. Batthouses were common in the empire and people frequently visited them. Romans also had toilets with running water below them to take the waste away so in that regard they would have done much better than other societies.
The sewer system or lack thereof was the biggest sanitation issue for most historical cities. Back in the day it was difficult to create a sewer system since you need to minimize the slope at which the waste flows or else you have to do too much digging. Until Newton and Leibniz came around in the 1700s we didn't have calculus so you couldn't optimize a function mathematically and instead had to experimentally test it out. But, people didn't test things the way we do today - the scientific method was only formalized relatively recently as well. So this was more difficult to invent that you might think, and the invention has been lost several times over history.
Then once you figure out the minimum angle you have to discover a technique to dig at that angle. The simplest is to take two sticks and insert them into the ground, then tie a string between them that lies right on the ground. Then you can put the sticks this anywhere to see how deep you need to dig.
Since you mentioned 1500-1800, I'll mention that medieval London did NOT have a sewer system so people dumped their waste in the River Thames. Which is also where they got their drinking water. This led to the practice of putting a lemon wedge in your water glass since it helped mask the taste, which is one of my favorite historical trivia. Think on that the next time a restaurant puts lemon in your water.
And yet we stopped building public baths. We need to bring it back.
thanks, this answer deserves an award
yeah, sanitation is really important, and it's easy to understand that once you consider that our shit is literally 25% live bacteria by mass. that's more than a trillion, idk even what the name for numbers that big is. for bacteria, the quantity of bacteria you ingest plays a role (i think) in how dangerous the disease is that you catch, so if you eliminate the biggest source of bacteria, that reduces diseases a lot
The other thing is that we're both using devices that the most powerful people in the world would have absolutely no possibility of using anything close to as recently as 100 years ago. So it's not just efficiency gains, but fundamental gains in what's even available.
There's a point in time where the amount of spices I have in my pantry would be enough to count me amongst the wealthy. Hell, dinner tonight would have made a king blush with how much pepper I used.
we're both using devices that the most powerful people in the world would have absolutely no possibility of using anything close to as recently as 100 years ago.
Hell, even 30 years ago
100 years ago, great grandpa was teaching little Appalachian boys who didn't wear shoes except in the winter.
82 years ago, grandad was a Torpedo Man 3rd class getting asbestos rained on his head every time my wife's ancestors scored a close hit.
45 years ago, at my other great grandpa's place in Louisiana, there were black families down the road living in shacks. However you're picturing a shack, it was worse.
38 years ago, there was a sport called "f** bashing". Hicks or punkers would wait for gays to come out the bar and beat the shit out of 'em.
38 years ago, we Gen X kids casually lived under threat of global thermonuclear war. Meh. No biggie.
Yeah, not only did efficiency go through the roof, everything got better.
I think the big thing is that they can and should be better than this, too. We shouldn't have to settle when we've made enough abundance for everyone.
Personally, I still want people desperate enough to do shitty jobs like dealing with trash and sewage and people. But I think we have enough to pay those people good money, give them good healthcare, an otherwise comfortable financial life, let them work 32 hours a week, and let them retire at 65.
Basically what unions would have given is if they hadn't been gutted.
Basically what unions would have given is if they hadn’t been gutted.
At this time, i wonder, whether "union" is just another term for your local friendly anarchists fighting for your rights? Because that's how people use the term.
You're right, it's the should be better that's important. But I think we can say that about nearly every human culture in history. It's just that now we can see how fucked up inequality is.
And the study that the claim is made from is fairly dubious. It really only applies to specific types of peasants, during a specific period of time, in specific locations, and counts certain types of infrequent religious breaks from work as a common place given.
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The romans figured that shit out a while ago already: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace [...]
Honestly that's a thing today as well. Though funny enough the current US admin is trying it's best to remove the bread part of that and only keep the circus. Hopefully they find out the hard way why both are needed.
I mean, they're definitely not providing the circus.
The phrase literally refers to giving people loaves of bread and a more frequent holding of games and public entertainment to keep people happy, not the notion of just distracted.
The current admin is making it harder for people to meet basic needs, and not doing anything to pump approval ratings.
A more modern sense would be to look for ways to make life easier that doesn't fix anything, and to make life better that doesn't improve anything, but has the perk of being explicitly because of the admin. A check for $500 and a set of movie tickets.
Psh. It’s not like they could fund a bunch of television and radio stations that can broadcast things going on in a government owned center for arts and entertainment. That would never work right?!?
A UFC fight on the White House lawn next year sounds like the definition of a circus. His birthday parade was supposed to be a circus but ended up being a pathetic waste of money. They're doing them, just as tacky and ostentatiously as possible.
that’s a thing today as well
Yeah thats what i was insinuating. We just forgot how to collectively give a fuck, which is crazy considering how much more connected we are with live information about all the horrendous shit that the rich and powerful are doing.
A medieval peasant would lose their mind eating a Dorito. Snacks nowadays are literally engineered to hijack our brains.
They'd honestly probably hate it. Ultra processed foods are disgusting if you're not used to them, there's a gross kinda chemically undertone to the flavor that sticks to your tongue. Normally it's covered up by making your taste buds overload, but new tastes stand out. It helps develop aversions if we get food poisoning from trying new foods
They'd also be going from never tasting spices before to total overload. A lot of them would react like people do to tear gas
Now, if they powered through and kept eating they'd probably get addicted, but it would be an acquired taste
Ultra processed foods are disgusting if you're not used to them
This is why so many kids never even get started eating junk food.
It’s called Bliss Point! I just listened to a Stuff You Should Know podcast episode about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
They're also incredibly bad for you. They're like drinking oil with a little bit of crushed flour and salt mixed in.
oil with a little bit of crushed flour and salt mixed in
don't forget the sugar!
Which is also what makes them super delicious. Fat, crunch, Umami, salt. Most snacks also have sugar added even if they're not "sweet".
If the peasant is from medieval Japan, they may at least understand the umami component
giving a modern microwaved shrimp fried rice bowl to a Japanese medieval peasant
"Yeah, I could believe a shrimp fried this rice."
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