[HN Gopher] Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Proh...
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Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
Author : harambae
Score : 325 points
Date : 2022-02-08 02:23 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vinepair.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vinepair.com)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Reminds me of when a friend ordered some San Pedro cactus over
| the internet "for religious sacrament." It included a note
| indicating that they ran out of the exact variety that he
| ordered, but they thought that he'd be very happy with the one
| they sent because it was stronger when used for religious
| purposes.
|
| (San Pedro cactus contains mescaline. It's perfectly legal to
| grow for ornamental purposes.)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| IIRC mescaline or peyote (maybe they're the same? I don't know)
| is nowadays legally protected under religious laws, but iirc
| there's a lot of caveats around it (region, tribe, etc).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Peyote is the plant, a cactus, and the active chemical it
| contains is mescaline. Peyote is only legal for native
| americans religious ceremonies, afaik.
| cestith wrote:
| AIUI the plant is legal but consuming it, growing it for
| consumption, or preparing it for consumption is only legal
| for religious purposes. I could be misremembering, and
| state laws may vary anyway.
| int_19h wrote:
| And then there's Delta-8 THC which was accidentally legalized
| by the 2018 law that was intended to legalize industrial hemp.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| Mushroom spores are sold online for "microscopy purposes only".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| "bath salts" comes to mind, wasn't that a nickname for some
| wack shit?
|
| Over here, huffing nitrous oxide is a thing, but it's sold as
| pressure gas for whipped cream dispensers and the like.
| celticninja wrote:
| The difference being that they are/were legitimately sold
| for whipped cream dispensers prior to them being used to
| get hight.
|
| Wine bricks were designed to get around a ban.
| mmmpop wrote:
| They don't contain the active ingredient that is specifically
| illegal, which is what I always heard made the "loophole"
| possible. Would be interested to know if that's true (but too
| lazy to alt-tab and search myself.)
| 55555 wrote:
| Not sure why you are being downvoted. Perhaps for laziness.
| Spores indeed do not contain psilocybin.
| mmmpop wrote:
| I wasn't too lazy I was just interested in a conversation
| with people on the orange site instead of a boring Google
| search. Forgive me.
| celticninja wrote:
| Same reason that cannabis seeds tend to be legal but
| germination of them is illegal.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| "brick of concentrated sun-dried pre-milked opium poppy seed
| latex. organic, vegan, fair trade, 100% natural. NOT for
| intravenous consumption"
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I mean, I wouldn't IV the latex either.
| stragies wrote:
| (c) 1895 BAYER, but their lawyers will probably not come
| after you anymore for that ;)
| guerrilla wrote:
| We have something like this in Sweden (where we have an state-run
| alcohol monopoly that makes getting alcohol annoying and
| expensive). It's just a bag of juice with some additives. Never
| tried it myself but I heard it's not great.
| supernova87a wrote:
| How did they make the concentrate without destroying all the
| subtle things I hear that wine is supposed to contain (and the
| yeast)? Did they boil it? Reverse osmosis? Vacuum?
| gwd wrote:
| There's almost certainly wild yeast on the grapes themselves;
| and in any case yeast is more or less omnipresent, so you'll
| have wild yeast all over your own kitchen at home. The usual
| problem is _preventing_ things from fermenting, not causing
| them to ferment.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I doubt those "subtle things" were a priority in this case. Or
| any consideration at all. People didn't drink this stuff for
| its flavor.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Not much has changed if you look at the cheap alcohol
| available.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Even cheap alcohol is much much better than it used to be.
| Mulled wine was so popular back in the day because wine was
| barely drinkable. Cocktails exist for the same reason (and
| that's why classic recipes are so sweet). It's a similar
| thing with classic "ethnic" dishes--they are so rich and
| flavorful because they needed to cover the taste of
| marginal meat.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| In the early 90s the NY post published a similar article about
| how not to smuggle in cigarettes from the Native American
| reservations nearby - including which roads to not take and
| intersections to not be wary of because there were frequently
| "speed traps" in place to stop vehicles that might be smuggling
| tobacco - just an FYI which readers should not be interested in.
|
| In the 2000s the NY state police started searching and seizing
| all UPS trucks exiting the reservations because the practice of
| shipping cigarettes had become so common that the state was
| losing significant tobacco tax revenue. They argued that UPS had
| to be aware of what they were carrying because the shippers were
| tobacco stores and the parcels were exactly cigarette box sized,
| thus they were willing accomplices. After several days the Native
| American governments backed down and agreed to not ship
| cigarettes anymore.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When has NY state ever cared about making their budgetary ends
| meet? They cared that the people had dared to disobey them, not
| about the money.
| dmurray wrote:
| > They argued that UPS had to be aware of what they were
| carrying because the shippers were tobacco stores and the
| parcels were exactly cigarette box sized, thus they were
| willing accomplices
|
| Would that matter? Fully legal duty-paid cigarette boxes would
| presumably be the same size and shape from the same origin.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The legal standard for a search is probable cause, not beyond
| a reasonable doubt. I suspect it'd hold up in court.
| tantalor wrote:
| It satisfies probable cause.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause
| tdeck wrote:
| Wanting to read more I found this other article with a more
| nuanced take and some additional information:
|
| https://grapecollective.com/articles/prohibitions-grape-bric...
|
| > The grape of choice for home winemakers quickly became Alicante
| Bouschet. Thick, tough skins helped the grape survive the cross-
| country journey, and it grew in large quantities
|
| > By the end of Prohibition in 1933, other grape varietals and
| fruits had been ripped up and 40,000 acres of Alicante had been
| planted.
|
| > "Grape bricks had a disastrous effect on the early American
| wine industry," Suttner wrote in an email. Grape bricks' place in
| Prohibition history is largely glossed over, but Suttner was able
| to learn about them through period newspaper articles and Eric
| Burn's book The Spirits of America. "By encouraging the
| production of cheap, fast-growing grapes like Alicante Bouschet
| at the expense of other, slower varieties, American wineries
| limited themselves severely."
| llampx wrote:
| If it helped the wineries and vineyards survive, I guess its
| the lesser of the two evils. Given that the other wine-drinking
| regions probably didn't want to import new world grapes to make
| wine with.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| If you find this interesting, I highly recommend _Last Call_ by
| Daniel Okrent:
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B003JTHVHY/
|
| Some related tidbits from that book:
|
| Like the compressed grape bricks, grape juice was perfectly
| legal. And making your own wine for family consumption was also
| legal.
|
| So in San Francisco, many homes had basement wine cellars, and
| you could arrange a delivery from the grape juice truck down a
| chute into your wine barrel.
|
| If you preferred fresh grapes, you could go to the Drumm Street
| station to pick up boxes of Napa County grapes straight off the
| train. Then go next door to the barrel maker and take it all
| home.
|
| http://santarosahistory.com/wordpress/2019/05/will-wine-coun...
| alkaloid wrote:
| Wherever the Catholic Sun doth shine
|
| There's always laughter and good red wine
|
| At least, I've always found it so
|
| Benedicamis Domino!
|
| ~ Hilaire Belloc
| mmettler wrote:
| This reminds me of how q-tip manufacturers forbid you from using
| q-tips to clean your ears.
| leobg wrote:
| That's a good one!
| thowawaymed50 wrote:
| Don't do this. I learned the hard way because I ended up
| pushing earwax into the canal, eventually forming a blockage. I
| couldn't hear out of my ear and had to go to an ENT, where he
| use vacuum suction to take some of it out (the deepest he could
| go without risking damage to the ear drum), and then I had to
| do two weeks of hyrogen peroxide drops (Debrox) to help liquify
| the earwax. Not being able to hear out of one ear is miserable,
| even if temporary.
|
| Your ears are self-cleaning. They automatically push earwax
| (slowly) to the outside. A Q-tip is only meant for the outer
| rim of your ear. There's a saying ENTs use I found while
| researching my problem: "nothing smaller than your elbow should
| enter your ear". My ENT told me to stop using the Q-tips. If
| you find your ears produce a lot of wax, you can just use a
| tissue on the outside. Or if you're willing to heed the
| warnings, carefully use a Q-tip, but don't insert it into your
| ear canal.
|
| (Throwaway because I don't like mixing personal medical info
| with my regular account)
| mrexroad wrote:
| FWIW, you really shouldn't put them in your ear...
| chrismaeda wrote:
| Ontario has a bunch of make-your-own wine companies that work
| like wine bricks.
|
| 1. you buy 5 gallons of grape juice for ~$20 per gallon.
|
| 2. yeast is dropped into your grape juice
|
| 3. you come to the store to decant your grape juice into wine
| bottles and cork them up.
|
| Since no alcohol is bought or sold, you avoid the (very high)
| taxes on liquor. You end up with ~28 bottles of wine for ~$4 per
| bottle.
|
| It's not the greatest wine, but it's ok for sangria and cooking,
| and it's a good story if you hang out with people who like to
| talk about tax loopholes...
| jerrysievert wrote:
| thankfully, here, we have Trader Joe's and their "3 buck
| chuck". the local Kroger store (Fred Meyer) also has $3 wine,
| but I think of that as "emergency wine" - the 3 buck chuck is
| much, much better.
|
| I have some questions though:
|
| 1. do they teach you about sanitization and airlocks, or is it
| simply "toss some yeast in this bottle"
|
| 2. I'm guessing no aging? it would be awesome if they allowed
| you to pop some in a barrel for aging
|
| 3. (not really a question) but wow, $20/gallon is still kind of
| spendy!
| lebuffon wrote:
| It's only Canadian money. :-) <$16 USD
| vzidex wrote:
| I've done it as well with my parents, who love wine. At the
| shops I've been to, you buy the grape concentrate up front
| and they handle to process of making it up until bottling.
| Once the juice has fermented, you go in and they walk you
| through cleaning and sanitizing the bottles, filling them,
| corking them, and usually shrink-wrapping the tops. They
| provide all the supplies except the bottles themselves -
| customers bring their own, saved from buying wine the
| "normal" way.
|
| Never seen a shop do ageing, so the wine will be noticeably
| "young". My parents like dryer and sharper white wines
| anyways (Pinot Grigio, Riesling, etc.) so it doesn't bother
| them. Also note that due to taxes and such, the cheapest wine
| you'll find commercially is C$11 a bottle, so even at C$20 /
| gallon you're getting a great deal if you like the resulting
| wines.
|
| Personally, I quite like the wines my folks get through these
| shops - properly chilled they make a wonderfully refreshing
| beverage in the summer, and we'll often drink a few bottles
| on the back deck together when I go to see them.
| softfalcon wrote:
| We have this in Western Canada too! Many places in BC do it. I
| would like to share a positive experience I've had. If you go
| up to $5-8 a bottle, there are some really high quality grapes
| you can get.
|
| There is one grape juice supplier called Chateau-Vieux-du-Roi
| which is from a region close to where Chateauneuf-du-Pape is
| produced in France. We have taken Chateauneuf-du-Pape bottles
| and put the Chateau-Vieux-du-Roi wine inside. Blind taste tests
| from folks who have had the real Chateauneuf-du-Pape often fail
| to tell the difference.
|
| We have to age the knock-off Chateau-Vieux-du-Roi for 2-3 years
| to get it to the same quality, but by golly is it ever
| delicious wine. If you're impatient, it's still quite tasty
| after only 6 months to a year of aging in the bottle.
|
| Considering a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape goes for a minimum
| of $30 CAD, it's an incredible savings.
| pantulis wrote:
| Guess that's the kind of wine that goes well with Coke, Pepsi
| or my personal fav Lemon Fanta.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Am I misreading, or are you saying you mix wine with
| soda/pop?
| rozenmd wrote:
| it's a Thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calimocho
| dwringer wrote:
| I always heard a mixture of wine and soda pop called a
| "wine cooler", a use that would have gone back several
| decades, but Wikipedia seems to think that specifically
| means a mix of fruit juice and wine. There is some
| discussion in the talk page about this discrepancy. I
| guess maybe the term was a regional thing.
| pantulis wrote:
| I guess it's not that an original invention so it may
| have different names in different places ;)
| pantulis wrote:
| Yes. Soda, wine and ice. Of course I am not endorsing to do
| the mix with good wine ;)
| tantalor wrote:
| Love the use of passive voice! "yeast is dropped", "taxes were
| evaded"
| peckrob wrote:
| DIY winemaking kits can actually make some pretty decent wines
| if you spend a bit of time and money getting proper equipment.
| Not a lot - $100 will get you a really, really good setup with
| two glass carboys for fermenting, siphons, thief and test jar,
| hydrometer, corker, etc.
|
| I've been making my own wines for years now. Occasionally I'll
| do a full from-scratch wine, but more often I buy a $40 kit
| from Midwest Supplies [0] that has all the components - grape
| juice concentrate, fruit essence, yeasts, kieselsol and
| chitosan, potassium metabisulfite as well as full detailed
| instructions. All you need is four gallons of distilled water.
| 28 days later, ~30 bottles pretty good wine! It won't win
| awards or anything, but it'll make a fantastic table wine and
| great for everyday meals.
|
| The only downside is that you'll spend a bit of time cleaning
| and sterilizing things and you'll remember all the stuff you
| forgot from high school chemistry class. :)
|
| [0] https://www.midwestsupplies.com/
| gsruff wrote:
| I would recommend avoiding glass carboys for fermenting. They
| are heavy, especially when filled, difficult to clean with
| their narrow mouths, and quite dangerous if they shatter when
| you accidentally drop them. (They're easy to drop while
| you're cleaning them and they're wet and slippery.) There are
| numerous accounts on home brewing forums of trips to the
| emergency room because a glass carboy broke and injured
| someone.
|
| PET plastic fermenters (Better Bottle, FermZilla, Fermonster,
| etc.) are much nicer to work with.
| CoryMathews wrote:
| Plastic fermenters are MUCH safer (I am one of the many who
| have gotten minor cuts from shattering glass carboys) but
| just plain terrible for fermenting in. A little scratch in
| the wall and your sanitizing process will miss the wild
| yeast that grows in the scratch making the container
| essentially useless for fermenting with your chosen yeast
| only.
|
| Also they make widemouth glass carboys which are very easy
| to clean. But they shatter all the same.
|
| If your going to avoid glass go 304 stainless (SSBrewtechs
| BrewBucket etc.) plus it basically lasts forever.
| muttled wrote:
| My preferred solution was those Culligan watercooler-style
| empty 5 gallon water jugs they carry at suburban Wal-Marts.
| Just be careful to fit some sort of pressure release. They
| will expand in a scary fashion otherwise.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| A fun glass carboy story. I had just finished an hour-long
| boil of around 5 gallons of beer wort and then poured it
| into my carboy. I then needed to cool it down to a safe
| temperature for the yeast (~70@) as quickly as possible to
| prevent infection. It was the middle of a western NY winter
| and so I though of the obvious solution which was to set
| the whole thing in a snow bank. Perhaps you can see where
| this is going.
|
| As soon as I set this 5-gallon glass container of near-
| boiling liquid in the snow bank I realized my error because
| of the loud, _CRACK_ sound. I lifted it up by the neck, but
| only the top half came away and I was left holding a
| comically large broken-bottle shiv. My roommates at the
| time all came out to properly laugh at me and I resolved to
| cool my wort _before_ putting it in the fermentation vessel
| from then on. And also to stick with plastic fermentation
| vessels!
| jszymborski wrote:
| Using a covered plastic or wicker basket is an easy way to
| transport glass carboys, and should hopefully contain much
| of the shrapnel if you have the bad fortune to drop them.
|
| Cleaning any bottle with a narrow neck is extra work, but
| you can get it done with a pipe cleaner, and it's best not
| to clean at an elevation or to do so in a deep basin.
|
| These are things that come naturally after handling
| significant glassware for a period of time.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I've always avoided wine brewing. Lots of cider ceyser and
| beer. What styles/varietals are ok right out of the secondary
| like that?
|
| Edit: mostly interested in Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet
| Sauvignon, vino verde, and maybe tempranillo. The kits seem
| pretty expensive. Trader joes has very tasty bottles in those
| styles (maybe not the CS) for $5.
| telmo wrote:
| > vino verde
|
| Not wanting to be pedantic or snobbish, but it is "vinho
| verde", because it is a Portuguese type of wine (I am
| Portuguese, and that is why I care about this :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinho_Verde
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Sorry I knew there was an h in there somewhere but I
| didn't take the time to look it up. Only been there for
| about a week and I loved it. The seafood was fantastic
| and I like the weather a lot. We were mostly around
| Lisbon. Really like Cascais.
| peckrob wrote:
| Aging is optional; it will improve the wine, but there's
| nothing stopping you from drinking it immediately and it
| will probably taste pretty decent. Many wines are perfectly
| drinkable after secondary fermentation has finished (and
| you've added the metabisulfite to fully stop it unless
| you're making champagne and you want additional
| carbonation). The longer you age it and the more work you
| put into it, the better the end product, but that's true
| for most things. Many store-bought wines are less than a
| year old.
|
| To me wines are actually _less_ work to homebrew than beer.
| Especially if you 're working from a kit, there's no need
| to cook anything - just dump everything in the fermenter
| and go. Beyond that the process is largely similar. Primary
| fermentation -> secondary fermentation -> bottling ->
| drinking. They're pretty forgiving too.
|
| _In general_ , whites take a bit more work to get a really
| good _looking_ product than reds. For a white, I 'll
| usually rack at least three times over about a week, and
| then filter it so I get a nice, amber-clear end product
| with no sediment. Note that this doesn't really impact the
| taste much, just the appearance. Reds I usually don't
| bother to rack more than once or maybe twice.
|
| When I am done I usually sit my bottles upright in a cool,
| dark area for a few days before putting them in the wine
| rack on their sides.
|
| This one [0] specifically is a family favorite. Has a nice
| light, somewhat fruit taste that's great for a warm summer
| evening. This one is best kept cool (I keep a few of my
| bottles that we're about to drink in a wine refrigerator.)
|
| [0] https://www.midwestsupplies.com/collections/riesling-
| recipe-...
| pstuart wrote:
| I imagine there might be a market for aging wine via
| electricity if it was cheap enough: https://www.bio-
| conferences.org/articles/bioconf/full_html/2....
| rdtsc wrote:
| When someone suggests a clever loophole, the response is usually
| "that would never work, the police and the judge will know
| exactly what you're doing". But somehow, a whole industry
| developed around the "do not do ... detailed prohibited thing".
|
| I guess, because it somehow worked that one time, it became
| memorable as an exception, while in most cases it wouldn't fly in
| court.
| post_break wrote:
| The whole gun industry revolves around this. Can't have
| automatic weapons (unless you buy a preban for
| $10,000-100,000), fine we'll make a trigger that resets after
| every shot and your finger will be primed for the next one.
| Barrel is under 16"? There is this thing called an arm brace
| (legal for now... sigh). Barrel is under 16" and you want a
| suppressor? Well if you weld the suppressor on, pay the tax
| stamp, technically it's over 16" so you're good.
| thrashh wrote:
| It's kind of like a little speeding on the highway. In many
| places, a lot of people are OK with it and the risk of being
| ticketed is very low. Yet in other places, it is not OK.
|
| Something being on paper is basically meaningless. It's all the
| "soft" cues that we use and you pick up those cues through
| experience.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I find it amusing that you compare to traffic.
|
| Traffic is one of the other things that HN "just doesn't get"
| because the rules are fuzzy and the fuzziness is contextual.
| mod50ack wrote:
| The thing you must realize is that despite prohibition public
| attitude soured on it very quickly and many judges and
| politicians were themselves partaking in prohibited alcohol.
| And the situation cannot be compared with marijuana; it was on
| a whole different magnitude.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Back the the defense could ask for Jury nullification. Now
| the defense can't.
| TylerE wrote:
| There are a number of other examples...
|
| Like the companies selling whip cream chargers by the case of
| 600... You know, for the people that need to make whipped cream
| by the gallon at home.
| tcj_phx wrote:
| One of these cream whippers came into my hands recently. It
| came with a box of 10 chargers, where 1 was missing. I
| speculate the owner used their new cream whipper once and
| decided it was too much work to clean. After ~20 years they
| gave it to the non-profit's yard sale, where I found it.
|
| One charger cartridge is good for maybe a pint of whipped
| cream. You'd need 4+ chargers for a gallon of whipped cream.
| A restaurant could easily go through 50 chargers a week.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/iSi-Professional-Whipped-Cream-
| Charge...
| thom wrote:
| awild wrote:
| GP was being facetious. The cartridges are a known way to
| get high of nitrous oxide. e.g.:
| https://youtu.be/q7Xse0E_SzA?t=440
| raverbashing wrote:
| Bakeries do exist and bulk orders do make sense for them.
| mark-r wrote:
| Why would a bakery use nitrous oxide for whipped cream
| instead of the old fashioned way, actual whipping?
| themikesanto wrote:
| Using nitrous to make the whipped cream is instantaneous
| and doesn't wear your arms out.
|
| Most coffee shops use these as well to make whipped cream
| for drinks.
| mark-r wrote:
| Wearing your arms out wouldn't be a problem in a bakery
| that's properly equipped, there are machines for that.
|
| I can definitely see the use case in a coffee shop
| though.
| sphynxie wrote:
| Every Starbucks in the world uses them.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| For everyone thinking of legitimate reasons to purchase this.
| Keep in mind that you would mostly buy this stuff at a smoke
| shop. You're not going to a smoke shop for baking supplies...
| jaywalk wrote:
| > You're not going to a smoke shop for baking supplies
|
| Why not? I've seen people go to a smoke shop to buy weird
| decorative vases before.
| db65edfc7996 wrote:
| For anyone else who was clueless, whip cream chargers are a
| source of nitrous oxide.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Nitrous oxide, is that the same thing as "mad oxygen"?
| capableweb wrote:
| I've heard it being called many things, but not
| specifically "mad oxygen", but commonly "laughing gas".
| https://erowid.org/chemicals/nitrous/nitrous.shtml
| twirlock wrote:
| refurb wrote:
| Prohibition never had widespread support. People were able to
| stock up prior to enactment, there were allowances for
| religious and medicinal use. People made their own alcohol
| before prohibition and did so after enactment. Enforcement was
| mostly the "big busts" but it petered out pretty quickly.
|
| So not surprisingly something being illegal or not isn't the
| critical factor, it's the willingness to enforce the law (e.g.
| marijuana was essentially legal in SF well before the law was
| changed - you could smoke on the street and the cops wouldn't
| do anything).
| rdtsc wrote:
| Yeah that makes sense to me. Wouldn't be surprised if the
| officials were themselves buying those wine bricks by the
| box.
|
| So this could work in general in cases where at a high level
| (federal) the legislation satisfies some puritanical
| ideological goals, but individually, or at the local/state
| level, nobody really buys into it so its enforcement is so
| so.
| gwd wrote:
| The fact is, making home alcohol is super easy. Yeast is
| omnipresent, and are happy to eat basically any sugar. Wild
| yeast won't get you alcohol concentrations in the 15-20% like
| commercial yeasts will, but can easily go up to 8-12%. Apples,
| grape juice, honey + raisins will all easily make you hard
| cider, wine, and mead, respectively. If you have a freezer, you
| can even use freeze distillation to increase the ABV. Banning
| all ingredients that _could be made into alcohol_ is completely
| impractical.
| masklinn wrote:
| Til you can get 20% out of fermentation, I always thought the
| limit was about 16 since that's the top end for beer and
| wine.
|
| Is it because starch yeasts can keep on keeping further than
| glucose ones?
| ginko wrote:
| It's the yeast strains. Some can survive higher alcohol
| concentrations than others.
|
| For instance this[1] one can achieve up to 25% under right
| conditions.
|
| [1] https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-
| single?id=146&type=YEAST&sty...
|
| No yeast can digest starches afaik. It's why you need a
| mashing phase to turn starches into simpler sugars when
| brewing beer.
| sebcat wrote:
| Though there are cultures of yeast and bacteria where the
| bacteria breaks down the starches to sugars which in turn
| gets eaten by the yeast.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%C5%AB
| ginko wrote:
| That's aspergillus oryzae, which is a mold though.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I've heard that can be pretty harsh, though I'd be
| curious to know how it might fair with a little bit of
| aging, say 6-12 months. It requires a bit more
| handholding of the batch as well, but there are turbo
| yeasts that will get to ~14% in 24-48 hours.
|
| I've also come across "triple distilled" turbo yeast
| that's supposed to be less harsh but not as high ABV.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-
| single?id=146&type=YEAST&sty...
|
| I dunno how it works but apparently you can get to 25%
| tptacek wrote:
| _Warning: After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not
| place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days
| because then it would turn into wine._
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| franciscop wrote:
| > the note would continue with a warning instructing you not to
| leave that jug in the cool cupboard for 21 days, or it would turn
| into wine
|
| I read (cannot find the source now though) that's similar to
| today's homemade alcohol/beer in Japan, where there's a limit of
| what % of alcohol you can make at home. So all the official
| instructions include a last step: "mix in water until the alcohol
| percentage is below the legal limit". Of course people just
| ignore this to have stronger alcohol.
| black6 wrote:
| The calculus book my university used was a loose-leaf "custom
| edition" which came in shrink wrap. My cal IV prof told the class
| first day: "I cannot advise you to go down to the copy shop and
| run off copies of the relevant chapters for your friends. That
| would be theft and is illegal. Again, I cannot recommend that you
| go down to the copy shop next to Pizza Hut on Jackson Avenue and
| run off copies of the relevant chapters for your friends. That is
| _illegal_. "
| bruce511 wrote:
| One cool thing about the pandemic is that many countries took the
| opportunity to run large-scale social experiments under the guise
| of Covid Restrictions. I expect social scientists will be digging
| into this data for years to come.
|
| One experiment in South Africa was banning the sale, or
| transportation, of alcohol. (Production and consumption was still
| allowed, just not sale or transportation.) This resulted in a
| marked decrease in hospital admissions, traffic accidents and
| domestic crimes. [1]
|
| The ban would morph during the first year of Covid, alternately
| covering things like trading hours, availability in restaurants
| and so on. Some restrictions were more effective than others, and
| overall effectiveness decreased as the population got smarter
| about stocking up with sufficient quantities to bypass any
| restrictions.
|
| Even the hint of restrictions now (such as was rumored to happen,
| but did not happen, when Omicron was first recognized) resulted
| in huge surges of sales. Generally speaking though more
| restrictions resulted in fewer hospital admissions.
|
| Clearly prohibition taught us that a blanket ban on alcohol just
| incentivizes organized crime. So it's not like a long-term ban is
| useful. But the effects of lowering alcohol consumption are also
| clear. Balancing these two very conflicting points of view is
| going to be a challenge for society as we move forward. [2]
|
| [1] Clearly not all decreases are solely because of this, less
| traffic means fewer accidents for example, but it's considered to
| be a high contributing factor.
|
| [2] https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/547654/what-
| all-t...
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| >One cool thing about the pandemic is that many countries took
| the opportunity to run large-scale social experiments under the
| guise of Covid Restrictions. I expect social scientists will be
| digging into this data for years to come.
|
| So I wonder how much was learnt from the error rates and signal
| strength variations from wifi enabled devices in a phased array
| radar setup in order to track human beings walking around their
| homes. I wonder what patterns were discovered and if it was
| possible to discover when arguments and falling outs showed up.
| What other data was garnered that could predict certain
| behaviours?
|
| I also wonder what would be discovered which will help with the
| isolation of space travel, like limited human contact, small
| human group dynamics, things like that.
| mmmpop wrote:
| "Interesting" perhaps... but our definitions of "cool" vary
| widely.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Cool because data is always cool :)
|
| More seriously,because it would simply be impossible to run
| these social experiments in normal circumstances.
|
| There are other examples; New Zealand and Australia tested a
| "closed border" approach, Sweden adopted a "personal
| responsibility" approach. Some places had curfews. The shere
| variety and scale of the last two years have generated
| enormous amounts of data, and matching data to long-term
| consequences will keep anthropologists busy for years.
|
| And just might inform better choices when the next one
| happens.
| urthor wrote:
| The closed border approach had fascinating consequences.
|
| Little impact on many factors that had previously been put
| down to population growth.
|
| It decisively proved that overcrowded infrastructure and
| inflated house prices were definitively supply side
| problems, rather than demand side problems.
| temp8604 wrote:
| Not sure that was proved at all - at least where I live,
| demand was almost certainly propped up by significant
| numbers of cashed up people in the prime of their working
| life selling up overseas and buying property when moving
| home. borders would need to be closed for longer to allow
| that affect to work out before you could truly see how it
| would be without immigration.
| mmmpop wrote:
| >> Cool because data is always cool :)
|
| Tell that to the families that had loved ones in the Unit
| 731 experiments?
|
| I'm just saying that by prefacing something with "well
| since we're in a state of tyranny it would be neat to [do a
| thing]"... it doesn't always fly and not all data is
| necessary to have when it comes at a cost of human lives.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I feel maybe too much is being read into the word
| "experiment". I meant it in a hypothesis-action-result
| sense.
|
| Every action taken by every govt was in effect an
| experiment since nothing of this sort had occurred in
| living memory, and past instances occurred in a very
| different world.
|
| In SA there was a hypothesis that reducing the burden on
| the health sector was a priority, and that a significant
| contributing factor to hospital load was alcohol, hence
| limiting alcohol consumption (via limiting sales) was
| worth testing.
|
| The experiment upheld the hypothesis, but at the same
| time highlighted negative impacts on the alcohol sector
| as a whole. To determine the best hospital outcome, while
| balancing industry requirements, a number of approaches
| short of an outright ban were tested. These outcomes will
| likely influence policy moving forward and equally
| provide important data for the next time hospitals need
| to be protected in this way.
|
| New Zealand experimented with a sealed border, and
| eradication approach (successful), Australia did the same
| with somewhat less success. Again the impacts of those
| policies can be studied for sometime to come.
|
| The opposite of these experiments was to experiment by
| doing nothing (Sweden for example) - even doing nothing
| was an experiment.
|
| I'm not saying covid was fun, or that the very real human
| cost should be minimised, but clearly some countries
| fared better than others. Being able to understand why
| that is the case will be really important next time.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| For some, data is not needed to figure out that tyranny
| isn't worth investigating.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I think possibly we have different definitions of tyranny
| eggsbenedict wrote:
| >many countries took the opportunity to run large-scale
| social experiments under the guise of Covid Restrictions
|
| Regardless of how you define tyranny, how can you be so
| blithely supportive of rule-by-decree in supposed
| democracies? Especially for the purpose of running
| "social experiments?"
|
| Covid Restrictions gained the grudging mandate of the
| masses, and in many places only by a hair, due to
| legitimate public-health concerns. Even in that context
| the subversion of legislative processes should be
| concerning. Running "experiments" on a non-consenting
| populace is at least the definition of dictatorship or
| oligarchy, if the word tyranny doesn't work for you.
| sdoering wrote:
| > how can you be so blithely supportive of rule-by-decree
| in supposed democracies
|
| Because that is the reason we life in a democracy with
| checks and balances implemented. In Germany some decrees
| were canceled by our (up to the highest) courts, others
| were declared to be in line with the constitution.
|
| We elect officials (setting the policy) every four years
| to rule us in our name. So we hand them the right and the
| power to "rule-by-decree" as long as they do not leave
| the grounds of the constitution (and we have courts to
| check against that).
|
| > for the purpose of running "social experiments?"
|
| I actually think (and believe) that most politicians in
| most countries tried to safe people. As much people as
| possible while also taking other factors like the economy
| and the health sector and stuff into account. And yes:
| They overshot sometimes. Yes, they made massive mistakes.
| Yes, they sometimes filled their own (or buddies')
| pockets. Yes, the more this pandemic progresses the less
| I think our politicians really know what they are doing.
|
| But I never felt, that policies were implemented for the
| purpose of running an experiment. But the different
| implementations now offer the possibility to learn from
| them for the future. Like scientists looking at different
| implementations of daylight savings time and learning
| from that. Or different implementations of regulations
| regarding wearing helmets while driving motorcycles,
| regarding seat belt usage or even regarding the ability
| for contraception and abortion.
|
| The fact that we are allowed to disagree and publicly
| argue against restrictions, to challenge them in court
| imho shows that we are living in a democracy.
|
| But yeah - keep going on arguing about a straw man (that
| nobody but you put in place) like:
|
| > Running "experiments" on a non-consenting populace is
| at least the definition of dictatorship or oligarchy, if
| the word tyranny doesn't work for you.
| eggsbenedict wrote:
| No, I was specifically responding to the person who said
| that it was "cool" that governments used covid
| resstrictions as a pretext for running "social
| experiments." I am specifically quoting an individual,
| not creating a strawman. Read the comment thread I was
| taking part in carefully for evidence.
|
| For what it's worth, I think many of the covid
| restrictions were at the time believed to be necessary
| measures, but that's actually not the debate that's
| taking place here.
| bruce511 wrote:
| They were "experiments" in the sense that the actual
| outcomes were predicted (or not) but in normal times
| would be difficult to achieve at scale.
|
| I'm not suggesting that they were unrelated to the issue
| at hand - and I'm not implying they were unethical.
|
| I believe most govts acted in good faith, with limited
| information, and (quite literally) no experience to draw
| on. Even today we don't really know what the "best
| approach" was, what we can say though is that a future
| pandemic will have better data to work with.
|
| Had all countries had the exact same response we would
| not really know if what we did was best or not. Lockdown,
| travel restrictions, alcohol bans, closure of businesses,
| closure of sport, limited social mobility, police
| enforcement, no enforcement - all these and more were
| tried in one place or another.
|
| They were experiments with forseen, and unforseen
| consequences.
|
| Sure there was over-reach here and there, but for the
| most part it was a best effort response from no known
| experience.
|
| I don't believe it could be called tyrannical.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Not to minimise your experience, but in most countries
| the actions were not politicised as they were in the US,
| and were applied to a very much consenting populace.
|
| It was understood this was a temporary health emergency,
| and the primary goal was to save lives. In most places,
| most people, saw this as a fair trade-off - and least in
| the immediate term.
|
| One interesting analysis in years to come will be the
| effect of politisizing a health emergency as a party-
| political event, as distinct from there being broad
| political consensus to the action taken.
| vmception wrote:
| > This resulted in a marked decrease in hospital admissions,
| traffic accidents and domestic crimes.
|
| That was the same worldwide because nobody was outside.
|
| Holy retcon, Batman!
| bruce511 wrote:
| Yes, so it's not the only cause, but the reductions in SA
| were like 65% compared to the UK at about 25%
| thrashh wrote:
| But your article also says that SA has major issues with
| the regulation of alcohol consumption, issues that do not
| exist in a country like the US (according to the article).
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Traffic accidents actually went up in the US.
| https://www.latimes.com/world-
| nation/story/2021-12-08/traffi...
|
| Generally speaking, emptier roads encourage more speeding and
| reckless driving, increasing the severity of car accidents.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The miles really melt away when your doing 160, love those
| open roads and wide curves in the southwest. Yeh
| Eisenhower! :)
|
| The biggest problem I run into is two lane highways where
| the semi trucks constantly block the left lane going just
| at the speed limit while trying to pass other semis in the
| right lane going just under the speed limit - literally a
| 1mph difference between the two. The speed limit for cars
| is 10mph above the truck limit but your lucky to do the
| truck limit consistently. California was particularly bad
| in that regard.
|
| People from Oaklahoma are also a constant scourge on the
| road, they can not tolerate someone going faster then them,
| so if you try to pass on the left they will pull in front
| of you and bumble along at the speed limit or one mile over
| (def a culture thing, cops in OK have a zero tolerance
| policy for speeding, no margin, regardless of conditions,
| passing, etc.). On an open road you can just pass them on
| the right but in any moderate traffic they cause a lot of
| problems. Check the plates the next time someone does that,
| pattern isn't hard to see.
|
| Roads in West Virginia are basically paved over goat
| trails, I watched some douche in a pickup take a blind 5
| mph turn at about 85mph trying to blow past a small sedan
| he obviously thought was going to slow and wedged himself
| in a stream about forty feet beyond the road. Luckily
| nobody was coming the other way around he turn or it could
| have been really tragic.
| bsza wrote:
| The US isn't the litmus test of everything though. In the
| EU, road deaths dropped sharply in 2020.
| https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/
| llampx wrote:
| The EU had wider scale lockdowns that lasted longer,
| IIRC.
| vmception wrote:
| Guess we should have banned alcohol again.
| pja wrote:
| That's down to US road design I suspect: Wide multi lane
| roads with clear sight lines encourage drivers to think
| it's safe to go very fast. If these roads are normally
| congested with traffic then you don't see this downside,
| but when traffic dropped during the pandemic & it became
| possible to drive far too fast on these roads that's
| exactly what happened, with the inevitable consequences.
| llampx wrote:
| I noticed a bigger increase in
| www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars submissions in the last year
| or so. People are really driving like idiots in traffic,
| let alone what they do on empty roads in the middle of
| nowhere.
|
| Looks to me like there's a general societal breakdown, also
| looking at the proliferation of videos of people walking
| out of stores with stuff they didn't pay for.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not like the Prohibition was the first or the last such
| attempt. The one I'm personally familiar with was Gorbachev's
| anti-alcohol campaign. It was also beneficial on paper, with
| statistically significant improvements in average health etc.
| But it was similarly flouted in practice. My family lived in an
| apartment in panel housing at the time, and if you went out
| onto the balcony and looked around, every balcony around you
| had some kind of glass flask or jar brewing fruit wine.
|
| The question you should be asking wrt South Africa is how
| they're enforcing the ban on sales - because people will sell
| regardless. The general problem with any kind of ban that goes
| against what a significant part of the society enjoys is that
| it either goes most unenforced, weakening the rule of law in
| general; or is mostly enforced, and then you end up ruining
| numerous lives by running them through the law enforcement
| grinder.
| cactusmatt wrote:
| That's interesting. In my state in the US, government took an
| opposite approach due to the pandemic to where now cocktails
| can be ordered "to-go" and curbside. It started as an emergency
| order and was recently passed as law.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| The thing about human psychology is that if you tell someone
| _not_ to do something, especially something that is not
| outright harmful to themselves or others, they will yearn to do
| it.
|
| The answer to alcoholism is to de-glamorize it. Young
| impressionable minds are susceptible to such glamorization.
|
| If governments around the world are seriously committed to
| reduce alcohol consumption, better shun it, rather than putting
| in laws to prohibit or restrict it.
|
| Ultimately, if the people reject it, it will come down. And
| that is the only way it works.
| flatiron wrote:
| I wonder if they simply banned alcohol advertising what the
| effect would be. That was a big thing for tobacco in the 90s.
| I still remember "joe cool" the camel on the back of my
| parents magazines.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| You can see a general non-acceptance of smoking in public.
| There has been a consistent decrease in the number of
| smokers, in absolute terms over time.
| mark-r wrote:
| I still remember the jingle from the Camel ads on TV, which
| were outlawed in 1971.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Haemm0r wrote:
| Similar story: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenklo
|
| Assembly instructions: "And now never ever connect pin x and pin
| y, because then you'd have a working modem, which would be
| illigal...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| An old Heathkit radio set had a red wire that you put a tag on
| that said something like "Do not remove this wire, or this
| radio set could broadcast on HAM radio frequencies which would
| be illegal unless properly licensed!"
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Or cryptography. It used to be illegal as well, right?
| dagw wrote:
| It was illegal to export certain classes of cryptography
| software. It was however never illegal to export books about
| that software. So what they did was publish a hardback book
| about the algorithm [1], which contained the entire source
| code of the software. This book was then freely sold all
| around the world. Now all you had to do was scan and OCR the
| relevant pages, cat together the resulting files and compile.
| All perfectly legal.
|
| I remember there being distributed proof-reading groups on
| Usenet and IRC where you would get 1 page of OCR'd text and
| the corresponding scanned image and you would manually go
| through and verify and correct the source code.
|
| [1] https://books.google.com/books/about/PGP_Source_Code_and_
| Int...
| philjohn wrote:
| The export certainly was - but the 1A provided a loophole -
| they printed the code for PGP into book form, sent THAT
| overseas then scanned and OCRd it.
| cestith wrote:
| I have a tattoo of an encryption routine, partly as a
| protest. Unfortunately I changed it at the last minute to
| make it look cooler and introduced a bug.
|
| Here's the entire proper Perl 5 code: undef
| $/;print<>$<>
|
| The buggy version is slightly shorter but I depended on an
| incorrect reading of some tricky wording in the docs and
| didn't test thoroughly enough. I'm considering turning the
| tattoo into a diff.
|
| I recommend Crypto by Steven Levy as a high-level refresher
| on the events of the time. (https://www.bookfinder.com/search
| /?isbn=9780670859504&st=xl&...)
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'd be afraid that a bug in Perl-- revealed years later--
| might render my arm open to compromises. Some new fuzzing
| method comes around and all of a sudden my arm is
| unencrypted for all the world to access.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I'm always reminded of the bit from The Incredibles:
|
| _BOB PARR: All right, listen closely. I 'd like to help you, but
| I can't. I'd like to tell you to take a copy of your policy to
| Norma Wilcox on... Norma Wilcox. W-I-L-C-O-X. On the third floor.
| But I can't. I also do not advise you to fill out and file a
| WS2475 form with our legal department on the second floor. I
| wouldn't expect someone to get back to you quickly to resolve the
| matter. I'd like to help, but there's nothing I can do._
| detaro wrote:
| as always, tvtropes has a page for more examples from fiction,
| although the above is the lead example:
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CouldSayItBut
| boogies wrote:
| Offtopic, but The Incredibles has one of my favorite movie
| quotes:
|
| _You always say "Be true to yourself", but you never say which
| part of yourself to be true to!_
|
| ... which stuck in my head because so many Disney (and other?)
| movies seem to be all about being "true to yourself," and in my
| experience they conspicuously fail to address the fact (in my
| belief system) that all humans have both good and evil, selfish
| and selfless within (we're born screaming, demanding others'
| attention; but even in the womb we listen to and begin to love
| familiar people, and in many situations we sacrifice much for
| our loved ones and even strangers).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's "just be yourself" all over again. What if my unmasked
| self is an aloof prick? It's just stupid. "Just be
| yourself... no not like that... wait not like that!"
| phasersout wrote:
| That's what I always say... Be yourself? I'm terrible and I
| get nothing done! I spent my whole life trying NOT to be
| myself...
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world;
| they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not
| true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher,
| who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is,
| indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard
| it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing
| in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on;
| he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my
| head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written
| "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are
| who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of
| men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon
| or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty
| and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men.
| The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic
| asylums."_ chesterton
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| A related question, why is voting considered "good"?
|
| Your vote is good if you vote for good people and good
| policies. Yes. But if a person votes for bad people and bad
| policies, then I don't see what's so good about it.
|
| Voting in general however I believe is good because it makes
| people be part of the system, and feel they are part of it.
|
| And so, if voting is good, maybe we should have more voting.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Is there good or bad voting? I think democracy is about
| representing interests, if a number of people have an
| interest that is against the interest of someone else, does
| that make it wrong or bad? yeah I mean bad from your
| interest point of view, but not from a global point of view
|
| I think the woke culture is a bit flawed, because if there
| is something that is objectively bad, and something that is
| objectively good, why even have democracy at all? Let's
| just put there the sun king and move on?
| indigochill wrote:
| > But if a person votes for bad people and bad policies...
|
| The entire point of voting is that you are allowed to vote
| for whoever is running. Of course, the notion of a "bad
| policy" is as old as voting itself, but the noblest
| democracies are those which don't judge people for voting
| as they see fit, or else what's the point of voting at all?
| Just appoint a righteous elite to do all the political
| appointments for you.
|
| However, just as there's been no consistently wise
| electorate, neither has there been a consistently wise
| elite class. In the end, in both cases, the best you can do
| politically is build a bulwark against corruption because
| you can't avoid it, which is why the stablest governments
| are the ones that make the job of the highest political
| seats as difficult as possible to actually do anything and
| put the bulk of the power in the hands of committees that
| have to argue about things to come to a decision.
|
| > And so, if voting is good, maybe we should have more
| voting.
|
| Voting on its own is not inherently good. Plenty of
| dictatorships operate under the guise of voting, where
| either candidates opposing the ruling party are entirely
| absent or voting for them is punishable in various ways
| (which is why the political polarization in the west is
| particularly chilling). There are plenty of "People's
| republics" out there that are neither republics nor
| representative of the people (unless, perhaps, you narrowly
| define "people", as the US originally did).
|
| What is arguably good (at least in the liberal western
| mind) is maintaining a system of political friction (checks
| and balances) that ensure different parts of the government
| are effective limiters on each other's authority to make it
| as difficult as possible for a tyrant to seize control. IMO
| Trump was a pretty solid litmus test of the resilience of
| the American government against tyrannical takeover.
|
| The downside of this, as we're seeing the recent
| competition between east and west, is that tyranny can be
| much more effective at getting stuff done than democracy
| can hope to be, at least in the short term. However, strong
| tyrants still die and eventually a weak tyrant takes their
| place and the country falls apart.
|
| The (theoretical) strength of representative government is
| that it outlives any one or handful of strong rulers. I say
| theoretical because technically ancient Egypt's history
| spans more years than the entirety of human history after
| Christ (so far), but as can be seen in their history, they
| had plenty of royal family squabbles and foreign invasions
| in that time. How they retained national cohesion through
| it all would be an interesting study.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > ancient Egypt's history spans more years than the
| entirety of human history after Christ (so far), but as
| can be seen in their history, they had plenty of royal
| family squabbles and foreign invasions in that time. How
| they retained national cohesion through it all would be
| an interesting study.
|
| Generally attributed to Egypt's relatively high
| population density at the time. They grew a lot of grain.
| They had a lot of people.
| User23 wrote:
| > The entire point of voting is that you are allowed to
| vote for whoever is running.
|
| There's the rub. In the United States we're permitted to
| choose from either one or two candidates, both of whom
| have been sponsored by one of two national private clubs
| or one of their local chapters. You will not see any
| mention of nominations or political parties anywhere in
| the US Constitution, and yet that's the system that
| determines who is eligible to run. In California a single
| club controls who is permitted to run for most local and
| all national offices.
|
| It's so obviously kayfabe that I'm baffled that there are
| rubes out there who think this is a real choice anymore
| than picking "any" card from a magician's deck is.
|
| It also ought to make one wonder who exactly the first
| person plural is in that overworked phrase "our
| democracy."
| Tade0 wrote:
| > Your vote is good if you vote for good people and good
| policies. Yes. But if a person votes for bad people and bad
| policies, then I don't see what's so good about it.
|
| Democracy is a means of securing regular, peaceful power
| transitions. Whether the outcome is particularly good or
| bad is not relevant, because all power is transient.
|
| The alternative is a civil war/revolution every now and
| then.
| vzcx wrote:
| Voting as a simulated war where the armies show up, get
| counted, but don't actually fight makes sense to me as an
| analogy, but doesn't this break down when you add the
| notion of universal suffrage to the equation? That is, if
| you have large fraction of the voting population who
| would be worse than useless in an actual battle, doesn't
| the output of the simulation start to drift from reality?
| yanmaani wrote:
| C.S. Lewis:
|
| > The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one
| impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you
| ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which
| will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute
| guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe,
| but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find
| yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials
| "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end a cruel and
| treacherous man.
| [deleted]
| cgio wrote:
| And the villain quote along the lines of "if we are all
| superheroes then no one is a superhero".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's an accessible entrance into things like entropy, or to
| think about subjects like eugenics (if we're remove genetic
| diversity there will be no racism) or wrongthink (if nobody
| has these bad ideas we would all live in harmony).
|
| DISCLAIMER: this is not an invitation to start debating
| these subjects, these are just crudely picked examples.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Well.. if you post on an internet forum it kind of IS an
| invitation to debate. I have a crazy relative who likes
| to make controversial speeches and then yell "you don't
| have to reply!" as if it insulates him from feedback.
|
| I'm sure most are aware but your description about
| eugenics is a bit off. It seems like you are putting a
| positive slant on it or suggesting thats the goal,
| whether intentional or not. Eugenics is about denying a
| class of humans (however you classify that class) from
| the ability to reproduce. This is highly unethical and
| given our tendency to classify on race, usually
| associated with racist agendas (such as the Nazis). I had
| to look up Wrongthink but it seems to be a term the Alt-
| Right is introducing... possible a play on thoughtcrime
| and newspeak (both Orwell) to defend their controversial
| opinions [0].
|
| 0: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alt-right-has-a-
| word-for-...
| stragies wrote:
| I recall "Wrongthink" having been in use for decades to
| decry ideas you dislike, whatever the cause or position
| on the political spectrum. It saw a remarkable uptick in
| usage after the 2001 movie "minority report", at least in
| my perception.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Syndrome being the villain always kind of struck me as the
| film trying to defend social hierarchies in a sense. You
| have a hereditary caste of pretty volatile magical beings
| upon whom the defence of humanity depends and the person
| trying to remove that dependency in a way that's accessible
| to anyone regardless of what they're born as is the _bad_
| guy? We can debate capitalism until the cows come home but
| anyone being able to buy powers is still a step up from
| either being born into them or not.
|
| He's a total arse don't get me wrong, but baseline humanity
| using nothing but its wits and hard work to make 'heroes'
| who inherited their powers obsolete is a sentiment I don't
| imagine is too alien to the readers of HN.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Marvel touched on this a bit with the recent falcon
| series, with a main part of the plot being that
| superheroes are just conceptually bad because it leads to
| supremacists. I think this is good, and its important to
| do this with a nuance beyond people just going stupid
| evil because they can't be stopped.
|
| The anime Mob Psycho 100 goes into this idea heavily and
| its really great.
| echion wrote:
| > Syndrome being the villain [is a bit of] trying to
| defend social hierarchies
|
| He's a villain because he's trying to _replace_ the
| hereditary caste by violence, and by consuming them. The
| tension is there outside of him -- and Mr. Incredible is
| a bit of an arse to Billy at first -- but it 's his
| means, not his ends, that are the problem.
| easton wrote:
| The movie brings this up by Dash making the same point
| when he's in the car with his mom in the first part of
| the movie.
| bitwize wrote:
| "When everyone is super... no one will be."
|
| The incredible (heh) thing about this is that _My Hero
| Academia_ answers it. In the world of MHA, nearly everyone
| has a superpower, or Quirk, of some sort; but superheroes
| are still a distinct class of professionals who have honed
| their quirks through training and, in general, developed
| courage, self-sacrifice, and inner resolve way beyond even
| the average superhuman. The greatest heroes distinguish
| themselves by exemplifying these values the most (though
| having powerful awesome Quirks helps). It was the perfect
| thing to come along at a point of maximum capeshit
| saturation.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > we're born screaming, demanding others' attention;
|
| I wouldn't say "demanding". During the first weeks you
| actually have to wake up the newborn for feeding, otherwise
| you're running the risk of malnourishment.
|
| They're so utterly helpless, confused and tired that they can
| fall asleep even when hungry.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > They're so utterly helpless, confused and tired that they
| can fall asleep even when hungry.
|
| I never grew out of that, lol
| telesilla wrote:
| Oh boy, not all babies..
| jameslk wrote:
| I'm very curious how this tasted and I wonder why there isn't
| anyone selling them anymore (based on a quick Google search).
|
| If it tasted half decent I'm curious if there could still be a
| market for something like this, given it seems to be able to be
| stored dry?
| dagw wrote:
| You can still buy something like this in Sweden. They sell it
| at my local food store (food stores cannot sell alcohol above
| 3.5% in Sweden). I, uh I mean a friend, might have tried it
| when in high school and it tasted not great, but not so bad you
| couldn't drink it. And honestly, I've had worse 'real' wine in
| my life.
| gwd wrote:
| > I wonder why there isn't anyone selling them anymore
|
| Google "wine kit" instead; they have plastic packages of grape
| juice rather than solidified wine bricks. I've never tried one,
| because there's so many interesting things you can make without
| pre-packaged ingredients. So far I've made ginger wine,
| elderflower wine, cranberry wine, and chocolate mead. It's been
| a really fun hobby.
| istjohn wrote:
| Fermenting alcohol that tastes good is not easy enough to
| justify a mass market product. Furthermore, why buy this when
| you can just buy cheap boxed wine that probably tastes much
| better than whatever you would get from fermenting
| reconstituted dry grape concentrate?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I've often made one gallon batches of mead; it's pretty
| simple, and wine (if you don't get too fancy) is a similar
| level of difficulty.
|
| IME, one gallon batches about two hours of work from start to
| a clean kitchen. Five gallon batches take much longer to cool
| after boiling, so are a much bigger headache.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| Yeah, my late grandpa after he retired used to grow some
| grapes and make wine out of that on his small hobbyist
| gardening parcel[0]. And at least by the time I grew old
| enough to be allowed to drink it, he had become good enough
| at it that it was quite enjoyable and vastly better than
| cheap boxed or bottled wines in my humble opinion.
|
| His output was like 30 bottles of red and another 30 of
| white, so in gallons that would be a little more than 21
| liters each or 5 gallons each.
|
| He gave away most of it to family and his friends - we had
| a lot of his bottles on regular barbecues he hosted - and
| even had my cousin help him design and print funny bottle
| labels.
|
| [0] A "Schrebergarten" with a small almost-a-shed house.
| carlmr wrote:
| >Fermenting alcohol that tastes good is not easy enough to
| justify a mass market product.
|
| Not quite the same, but in Germany they sell Federweisser,
| which is an unfermented wine, but the yeast is already on the
| bottom.
|
| It turns from sweet grape juice (day 0), to sweet wine (day
| 2-3), then slightly sweet more alocoholic wine (day 4-5),
| until it turns into wine fully.
|
| Quite a lot of people enjoy it. It's not a proper competition
| to normal wine, but it tastes good in its own way.
| lisper wrote:
| There used to be a retail store that let you use their
| facilities to make your own wine from concentrate packaged in
| plastic bags. We tried it once. The result was surprisingly
| good. Unfortunately the place only lasted a year or two before
| it went under.
| wumpus wrote:
| Fun that the homebrew limit is still 200 gallons. The more things
| change, ...
| awild wrote:
| In germany beer homebrewing is limited at 200L/year (approx
| 50gallons, which is a respectable but not huge amount if you
| have friends). Anything above you have to pay taxes on. Those
| taxes however are pretty minor for a typical 20L batch, and
| customs are only allowed to investigate a case if they suspect
| a big enough discrepancy (I think 10EUR). So there's a group of
| petty homebrewers who don't make use of their free 200L, but
| instead opt to report every single batch, only paying 0.01EUR.
| The intention is to waste time and annoy as many customs
| employees as possible to create friction and lobby against
| restrictions on homebrewing.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If it's just homebrewing / for personal, family / friends
| consumption, how would they even find out? A lot of laws are
| only there to enforce if they actually uncover a big
| operation.
|
| Like, during the 'rona lockdowns you weren't allowed to have
| more than X visitors, but no policeman would want to go door
| to door to see if people were having visitors.
|
| (actually don't quote me on it, the visitors thing may have
| been advisory)
| awild wrote:
| > If it's just homebrewing / for personal, family / friends
| consumption, how would they even find out? A lot of laws
| are only there to enforce if they actually uncover a big
| operation.
|
| True and that's kind of the joke. They aren't even allowed
| to do visitations without evidence of malpractice. But the
| laws surrounding it are even stranger: The beer produced
| should only be consumed at home, any outside consumption
| would require taxation, therefore homebrew competitions ask
| you to tax your submissions. They've actually went to
| homebrew competitions and busted people on the grounds of
| 10EUR pP at most (But remember if I self report/pay it
| would only be a few ct - so even less). Homebrew meetups
| have never had problems before.
|
| The background of the law (at least in folk telling) is
| that the big guys were worried about malt-extract making
| homebrewing so easy as to make commercial brewing
| superfluous.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| > The background of the law (at least in folk telling) is
| that the big guys were worried about malt-extract making
| homebrewing so easy as to make commercial brewing
| superfluous.
|
| which is funny, since it takes a lot of work to make good
| beer! most of that goes into sanitization, since with
| extract you aren't doing a mash, but it could lead to
| some very bland beers.
| djrogers wrote:
| > but no policeman would want to go door to door to see if
| people were having visitors
|
| And yet there are plenty of countries where this
| happened...
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I was shocked to see the price of strong lager(5% abv) at a
| supermarket in Munich, a 500ml can was 29cents (after
| recycling costs)
|
| they all tasted good as well
| awild wrote:
| Yeah, beer prices in Germany are absurdly low.
| Unfortunately that also means that it's quite hard for
| smaller breweries to compete. The Franken region (densest
| brewery region) is seeing the slow death of the family
| brewery because the clientele is not up for even small
| price hikes. Even the deposit on the crates is an actual
| consideration for these brewers as people won't buy their
| beer at full price 10EUR (they will get the money back on
| return of the crate) instead they usually require just a
| 3EUR deposit. This means that the brewery is staking out
| 6-7EUR per crate sold in hopes it returns functional.
|
| If you're ever in Bavaria again, you should make a visit to
| Bamberg. It has an incredibly rich culture around beer.
| They are famous for smoked beer, though its just two
| breweries of about 20 making it. The others all have
| absurdly high quality beer at fair prices all with a
| certain amount of personality.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's per adult in the household is it not?
| wumpus wrote:
| Yes. And places where pot is legal have similar per-adult
| limits.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| that's about 4 gallons/week, which translates into 32 pints.
| that's a pretty decent haul.
| icanhackit wrote:
| My children need wine!
| xmprt wrote:
| I love the warnings that they put on these things. (paraphrasing)
| "Under no circumstances should you follow these extremely
| specific steps listed below or else you might accidentally make
| an alcoholic beverage which would be illegal"
| asdff wrote:
| Reminds me of the local hydroponic industry being ostensibly for
| "tomatoes" in the years before medical marijuana started getting
| passed.
| richardfey wrote:
| https://github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles
|
| A missed chance to call these "bricks" instead of bottles!
| yohannparis wrote:
| And this is why stupid banning should not exist. Instead,
| introduce reasonable regulations to keep your citizens safe from
| bad business...
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