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Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

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Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#51

Post by eggsbenedict »

sdoering wrote: post #48
eggsbenedict wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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 powe…

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.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#52

Post by temp8604 »

urthor wrote: post #49
bruce511 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#53

Post by pja »

bobthepanda wrote: post #34
vmception wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

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.

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.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#54

Post by awild »

tcj_phx wrote: post #46
TylerE wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 restauran…

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

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#55

Post by awild »

wumpus wrote: post #4

Fun that the homebrew limit is still 200 gallons. The more things change, ...

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 10€). 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 0.01€. The intention is to waste time and annoy as many customs employees as possible to create friction and lobby against restrictions on homebrewing.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#56

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

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.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#57

Post by galaxyLogic »

boogies wrote: post #8
Syonyk wrote: post #3

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…

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 self…

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.

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#58

Post by galaxyLogic »

db65edfc7996 wrote: post #17
TylerE wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For anyone else who was clueless, whip cream chargers are a source of nitrous oxide.

Nitrous oxide, is that the same thing as "mad oxygen"?

Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)

#59

Post by galaxyLogic »

Haemm0r wrote: post #15

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...

Or cryptography. It used to be illegal as well, right?
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