• KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 days ago

    Having listened to a podcast highlighting Thiel’s life in great detail, anything he is involved with has to be taken with an oceans’ worth of salt.

    • BlackVenom@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Fwiw…

      If an oceans worth of salt, that means there’s a lot of substance to be considered (seasoned).

      It’s “grain of salt” because there’s not a lot to it (to be seasoned).

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Except that salt negates bitter flavors. So if you have a bitter pill to swallow, you take it with a grain of salt and it isn’t as bad.

        Thiel is involved in shit so bitter that it would take an ocean’s worth of salt to swallow.

          • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            You obviously don’t know how salt works.

            https://www.nature.com/articles/42388

            Besides, the actual origin of “take with a grain of salt” comes from Pliny the Elder, who believed salt to be part of a cure for poison.

            His actual words were “addito salis grano” or add a grain of salt.

            He believed this because salt suppresses bitter flavors and most poisonous things taste fairly bitter.

            The phase “cum grano salis” or with a grain of salt, then entered latin, and eventually a few other languages.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        It seems like the prevailing theory is that it’s a Latin pun where “salis” means both salt and wit/intelligence/sense.

        More “salt” would be more “sense”.