Anecdotal: Even with Web Browsing enabled in the Options menu, it continues to report that the feature doesn't exist and cites the September 21 cut off. Odd!
> To put it in Bill Burr's words,"It's a big CLUB. And YOU AIN'T IN IT."
Pretty sure that's actually a George Carlin line, from a relatively famous routine of his. Many, many clips, but here's a random one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU
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It's a Paul Smith store and it wasn't intentional (though it has since been embraced for what it is by the brand), per a similar piece last month in the Ringer "Can Real Life Compete With an Instagram Playground?":
> Late one Wednesday morning in July, a crowd of tourists began to form on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Their location of interest was the Paul Smith store, but not what was in it. The large modernist building, with its sunny corner location, single rectangular window, and striking bubblegum-pink painted wall, happens to make an excellent portrait backdrop.
> Though the menswear designer has never commented on the phenomenon, it’s safe to say that he did not imagine his California-pink shoebox would one day function as the site for thousands of amateur photo shoots. (Especially since it does not appear to have improved sales at his store.) Nevertheless, the Paul Smith brand appears to have recognized its power as a free marketing opportunity.
Want to be clear I am not criticizing this article as derivative of The Ringer piece. There are a lot of articles about purposefully Instagramable places, especially the 'museum' of Ice Cream.
I've been a happy paying sub of Stratechery since October 2015, and would be glad to discover that subs have 'almost surely grown exponentially since [November 2014].' Just wondering what your basis for that assertion is? Looking at (admittedly poor) proxies like Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and estimate domain visits from various sources I don't see any sort of exponential growth...though to be fair the sources I am looking at go back to mid-2015. Again, poor proxies and would be happy to know Ben is doing this well.
Agree that using marketing descriptions provided by the winery isn't the best approach. It would be much more useful if the data used stuck to just the reviews (though _which_ reviewers are used is its own issue):
> A Quid network shows 3,380 nodes, where each node represents a description and review of a single bottle of Bordeaux-style red wine from Wine.com.
FWIW, this is a topic we've explored in a few ways at VinePair:
Using user review are not very helpful as well. Each taster use different vocabulary and there are even different way to analyse wine: some people describe the flavours (this wine is strawberries, apple, lime) some, including me, are more of a structural tester (comparing "length" of a wine, width and character of the taste and after taste).
Second problem is (and there is even statistical proof) that after wine pass some threshold of kinda good wine, the resulting score is random. This is caused by few things: your mood, what you drink before it, anticipation, the meal and even music.
Scoring (and recommending) wine and selecting what you like is very complicated subject and probably best way is still ask some good wine buyer, describe what you like and he might recommend wines he likes that loosely fits your description.
Agree user reviews do prevent their own issues. One of those linked articles is about the confusion over the meaning of 'dry' in the contexts of sweetness and tannins.
> ...probably best way is still ask some good wine buyer, describe what you like and he might recommend wines he likes that loosely fits your description.
Best advice I've gotten/give is find an importer/distributor (eg Kermit Lynch) and rely on their selections.
Moreover, the "kinda good" level is not at a very high price point. I've never had an undrinkable bottle that cost over $15 (unless it was "corked"). A majority of wines I've tried over $10/bottle are very drinkable. I think it has to do with the amount of money it takes to literally put the wine in the bottle.
I'm very curious. When you say "undrinkable", what do you mean? I've heard a lot of wine fans say this and I've never really gotten a straight answer. Do you instantly pour out your glass and throw out the bottle? Do you finish your glass but throw away the bottle? Or maybe finish your glass but save the rest of the bottle for cooking?
I'm also curious about what wines you're getting over $10/bottle that are not drinkable. Here in the Netherlands we have fairly cheap wine, but not outrageously cheap by any measure, and the majority of what I drink is 6-10 euros/bottle. I don't think I've ever gotten an "undrinkable" bottle over 6 euros. The only "undrinkable" bottle I can remember buying in recent memory was part of a sale - some "fancier" wine at 5 euros a bottle if I remember - and though I don't think it was corked the taste was off enough that I decided to toss the bottle.
For me undrinkable = faulty wine, but those are very rare these days. I just throw those wines away.
Bigger problem with wines in region of 5 - 15 euros is that they are boring. They taste like generic wines and nothing more. I put aside those wines and use them for cooking.
BrewDog is an increasingly bizarre case study in the microbrewery/crowdfunding space. Their 'Equity For Punks' money- raising efforts received a wide range of legal opinions in different jurisdictions.
Pretty sure no one expected -- given their very loud anti-'sell-out' rhetoric -- that they would sell a 22% stake for £100M to a private equity firm (TSG Consumer Partners) and actually deliver a serious return to said 'punks.'
Oh wow! I am only mildly familiar with them (mostly been hearing about how they have been trying to enter the US market). I didn't realize they crowdfunded. But yeah, this is a really good example of why microbreweries could be a good niche for crowdfunding. Operating your own brewpubs is a really good business because of the markup, but the challenge is in the expansion phase.
Also, looks like they are offering another round of equity in the US[1]. I was under the impression that crowdfunding was limited to $1M, but looks like they are raising $50M under 'Regulation A+'. Not sure what that is.
> When the solution of providing astronauts with a ballpoint pen that would work under weightless conditions and extreme temperatures came about, though, it wasn’t because NASA had thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars (inflated to $12 billion in the latest iterations of this tale) in research and development money at the problem. The “space pen” that has since become famous through its use by astronauts was developed independently by Paul C. Fisher of the Fisher Pen Co., who spent his own money on the project and, once he perfected his AG-7 “Anti-Gravity” Space Pen, offered it to NASA.
