https://github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles
A missed chance to call these "bricks" instead of bottles!
Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
101–110 of 190 posts
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#102Reminds 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.)
And then there's Delta-8 THC which was accidentally legalized by the 2018 law that was intended to legalize industrial hemp.
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And the villain quote along the lines of “if we are all superheroes then no one is a superhero”.
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.
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#104One 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 mark…
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Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#105One 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 mark…
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.
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#106In 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 searchi…
> 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.
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. B…
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?
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.
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#108I'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…
as always, tvtropes has a page for more examples from fiction, although the above is the lead example:
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
Oh boy, not all babies..
Re: Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
#110Ontario 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 great…
Guess that's the kind of wine that goes well with Coke, Pepsi or my personal fav Lemon Fanta.