larsga

7 ms·

1.
by larsga 1y ago
> the claim is not against people drinking beer or water, it is against doing so out of some general fear of drinking water. Okay, if that's the claim I would say the state of research at the moment is not 100% clear. It's quit
2.
by larsga 1y ago
Again this is stuff you're just inventing because you don't know better. > Boiling the water first avoided many spoilation problems that, today, we know how to prevent through other means. You have this backwards. Boiling or ne
3.
by larsga 1y ago
Wooden barrels were sealed and could handle high pressure. The trouble is that (long story) it was very difficult to get a precise amount of pressure, so people generally didn't even try. There are videos online of cases where people h
4.
by larsga 1y ago
You're broadly right, but they were popular for most of the period we're discussing. In continental Europe they were popular from roughly ~1000 onwards (see Behre 1999), in England from roughly 1500 onwards. In African and South A
5.
by larsga 1y ago
This was the part I was referring to: "Beer was safer than water because to make bear one must use sterile water." I agree I should have quoted that to be clearer.
6.
by larsga 1y ago
Yes, there is residual sugar, but it's complex sugars that not even yeast that specializes in fermenting sugar can consume. Plus there is alpha acids from hops, as you point out, there is alcohol, pH is low, oxygen is gone, there'
7.
by larsga 1y ago
Yes, it can. But infections by harmful organisms is very difficult to achieve. The common spoilage organisms in beer are all harmless to humans. Here's a good overview http://mmbr.asm.org/content/77/2/1
8.
by larsga 1y ago
> Based on what? You certainly haven't given any indication of having read what historians have to say. I am a historian. This is based on 10 years of reading ethnographic archive documentation of what people used to drink on farms,
9.
by larsga 1y ago
No, it wouldn't. It's very difficult to produce beer where harmful organisms can multiply. Post-fermentation it's an extremely difficult environment for most organisms.
10.
by larsga 1y ago
Sure. Hard to get all the details into a comment that's already too long. In general, however, strong beer keeps much longer than weak beer. However, even if it does sour, that doesn't mean it's harmful to drink.
11.
by larsga 1y ago
> Just like now, you boil water if you are aware of risk. People didn't do that, though. As far as I can tell, water-drinking was not particularly common. People went to surprising lengths to produce other forms of drinks, all of th
12.
by larsga 1y ago
Lots of Africans already do drink a gallon of beer a day. Farmhouse brewing is very widespread in Africa.
13.
by larsga 1y ago
> sailors didn't have access to the safe water of lakes and streams As if the water of lakes and streams was necessarily safe. Imagine drinking Thames water in the era before proper sewers. In 1858 (the Great Stink) the Thames stank
14.
by larsga 1y ago
> "Beer" had like 1% of alcohol content. Beer has had a huge range of alcohol strengths, from Mesopotamia until today, so that statement is nonsensical. > Just enough to keep it without bacteria. 1% is not enough to keep bac
15.
by larsga 1y ago
As a general statement about Europe or the UK that's completely impossible. There wasn't enough cider for it to be more common than beer. We also know beer was the most common (then later grog, at least for the navy). This might b
16.
by larsga 1y ago
First of all, many types of beer were historically not boiled. Quite a few still aren't. The mash, however, pasteurizes the beer. That, however, doesn't last forever. In the conditions of the 18th century or whatever, microorganis
17.
by larsga 1y ago
This is complete and utter nonsense. The water used in beer often had bacteria (and other stuff) but to brew beer you must mash, at 65C for an hour or more, which pasteurizes the beer. Hops protect the beer against bacteria, and the yeast a
18.
by larsga 1y ago
Beer does not cure scurvy. Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C, which is not in beer.
19.
by larsga 1y ago
> The percentage of alcohol required to preserve beer for long periods is too high for sailors to be drinking a gallon of it per day. Reading this thread I think the best thing would be if people were forbidden from comment on the histor
20.
by larsga 1y ago
The thing is that water was not really safe to drink, no matter what these people may tell you. There's a reason there are huge aid campaigns all over the Third World to ensure people have access to safe water. Some water is relatively
21.
by larsga 2y ago
It's not a choice of TBM vs cut-and-cover. You also have drill-and-blast. Which method is better depends on a number of factors, including depth and the state of the soil/rock you're going through. A problem with TBMs is it c
22.
by larsga 2y ago
That was interesting. I just casually clicked on the link and before I knew it I had read 20 pages.
23.
by larsga 2y ago
It says very clearly on the title page it's for the Mark II, and in the text he says the advice is based on experience with the Mark I, so it's definitely for the Mark II.
24.
by larsga 2y ago
That's a weird title. Hops very much do not define beer. Beer was brewed for 12,000 years before hops became common.
25.
by larsga 2y ago
> Europe talks about ramping up production, not sure if that is actually happening. It is happening, all right. There are four large ammunitions companies in Europe -- all are expanding. Pretty much every NATO country is increasing defen
26.
by larsga 2y ago
We've been appeasing Russia since the 1990s, and the only thing we've gotten in return is constant Russian escalation (Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Ukraine 2022, sabotage galore, ...) What we do see is that when Ukraine or anyone e
27.
by larsga 2y ago
Not just what existed before, but also after. The normal toilet on Scandinavian farms into the mid-19th century was basically just a pole suspended between two houses. What people "produced" just dropped on the ground below the po
28.
by larsga 2y ago
What really gave clear performance improvements was generating Java bytecode. In the first attempt I got a 25% speedup, and I'm sure I could have gotten more out of it if I'd spent more time on it.
29.
by larsga 2y ago
That's what we did. Still no luck.
30.
by larsga 2y ago
FWIW, my experience with JSLT https://github.com/schibsted/jslt/ was that I first wrote an AST interpreter. Then I and another person independently wrote bytecode interpreters, but the AST interpreter remains fast

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