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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)

#181

Post by bruce511 »

eggsbenedict wrote: post #44
bruce511 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think possibly we have different definitions of tyranny

>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…

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.

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

#182

Post by thowawaymed50 »

mmettler wrote: post #70

This reminds me of how q-tip manufacturers forbid you from using q-tips to clean your ears.

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)

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

#183

Post by vzcx »

Tade0 wrote: post #76
galaxyLogic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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?

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

#184

Post by brimble »

phasersout wrote: post #100
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

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...

In my mind

In a future five years from now

I'm a hundred and twenty pounds

And I never get hung over

Because I will be the picture of discipline

Never minding what state I'm in

And I will be someone I admire

And it's funny how I imagined

That I would be that person now

But it does not seem to have happened

Maybe I've just forgotten how to see

That I am not exactly the person that I thought I'd be

[...]

And in my mind

When I'm old I am beautiful

Planting tulips and vegetables

Which I will mindfully watch over

Not like me now

I'm so busy with everything

That I don't look at anything

But I'm sure I'll look when I am older

And it's funny how I imagined

That I could be that person now

But that's not what I want

But that's what I wanted

And I'd be giving up somehow

How strange to see

That I don't wanna be the person that I want to be

---

Amanda Palmer, "In My Mind"

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

#185

Post by m463 »

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…

Then there's also Lily Tomlin

"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific." - Lily Tomlin

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

#186

Post by m463 »

Tade0 wrote: post #76
galaxyLogic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I wonder about term limits.

I wonder if they should apply to all positions, or would it lead to a somewhat poorly run country because all people in charge are all noobies?

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

#187

Post by bruce511 »

int_19h wrote: post #105
bruce511 wrote: post #13

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 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…

The alcohol ban on sales was temporary and lasted around 3 months. There was minimal enforcement required - shops simply didn't sell it. The time scale was too short to develop home brewing to any significant degree.

Yes, the effect of a permanent prohibition is well known (illegal alcohol production, which given how easy alcohol is to produce at home is unenforceable) but this was not that.

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

#188

Post by BoxOfRain »

echion wrote: post #114
BoxOfRain wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> 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.

In Syndrome's defence, the displacement of feudalism wasn't always a peaceful affair either but it's a change we can all agree was necessary. Violence doesn't change its inherent nature just because one puts a respectable face on it, the hereditary category of 'hero' can only exist at all in an otherwise democratic society because of the implied threat of 'I'm going to use my magical powers to take down anyone who opposes my interests', which is unacceptable because they don't have a legitimate claim to the use of force stemming from democratic consent of the people in the way say the military of a modern Western country does.

We see this at the start of the film where Mr Incredible and his friend get tangled up in a rescue operation in a burning building despite having been pretty firmly rejected by baseline humans they're attempting to help, if I remember right one of them literally gets frozen alive by Mr Incredible's friend as they escape which is rather violent. We also see it when he throws his insufferable boss through several walls in a fit of anger, which is a display of his ingrained violent nature and lack of control over his superhuman powers which presents a threat to innocent bystanders. It's might-makes-right with a veneer of heroic respectability over the top, their true nature is very different from the nature they present to the public.

Either that or I'm reading way too much into a film that's mostly aimed at kids!

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

#189

Post by mmmpop »

bruce511 wrote: post #181
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…

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 p…

>> a very much consenting populace.

My WW2 knowledge isn't deep but I seem to recall this being a big problem back then. But I guess it's all good now.

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

#190

Post by bobthepanda »

bsza wrote: post #61
bobthepanda wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US isn't the litmus test of everything though. In the EU, road deaths dropped sharply in 2020. https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/

sure, but the claim was "worldwide"

even in your link some EU countries reported increases.

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