One of the strangest elements of this story is that the Village People and Rufus Wainwright are on the Trump campaign playlist.

I know Bruichladdich has said they do this for the Laddie Classic (a bottling I really love). Source: just trust me bro. I don’t recall when or where I heard that. Possibly they do it with other bottlings, and surely other distilleries are doing the same thing. Bruichladdich didn’t invent the process. But it’s not a well studied, documented, or promoted element of whisky ageing, because, I think, it’s not as sexy as infusion and evaporation. Among other reasons. If you’re curious, I could spin a yarn.

Any distillery that chooses to do this, certainly does it for a reason. Disgorging and re-casking a batch is a massive pain in the ass, and holds up warehouse space & production timelines - two things a bean counter with no sensitivities to flavour would be happy to cut out.

Could be! From my experience, high strength Bourbon is better a couple weeks after being opened. From a flavour standpoint, gin also benefits greatly from resting for a few weeks after distillation.

In fact, one of my favourite Scotch Whisky distilleries will blend a production batch, and then re-barrel the blended volume in casks and let it rest for 6 months to allow the flavours to harmonize.

There is definitely some magic that happens after spirits are blended/bottled, and it’s not very well understood, but the changes are detectable, and in general, they’re positive.

What we know as whisky maturation is a dance between 4 interrelated processes - infusion, evaporation, oxidation, and other chemical reactions. These all happen together, and very nicely, when whisky sits in oak barrels for an extended period of time.

Colour, and oak flavour are infused into the whisky simply by sitting in the barrel. The whisky will slowly evaporate while inside the barrel as well. Volatile compounds evaporate, making the whisky smoother, deeper, and more complex with age. Fascinating chemical reactions happen between compounds in the wood, and in the whisky. As ethanol degrades lignin, for example, it creates new compounds, which themselves interact with other molecules and compounds in solution.

The age statement on a bottle of whisky refers to the time it spent in a barrel, doing those lovely things.

Common wisdom is that the whisky is done changing when it goes into glass. Certainly, infusion and evaporation are finished. But! Oxidation, and reactions between compounds in the whisky itself will continue, even in a sealed glass bottle. Usually this happens too slowly to notice, or the bottle gets drank before a change can be observed, but change certainly happens.

Long story short - whisky won’t go bad. In fact, sometimes it even goes ‘good’! I had the chance to try a young single malt, that was bottled in the 1970s. It was wonderful, and had signature aroma and flavour characteristics of a very old whisky. This is due to slow oxidation, and the glacial interaction between esters and congeners over time, which will happen no matter what vessel the whisky is in.

Whisky that has been exposed to too much oxygen, like if the bottle sits nearly empty for a long time, or has a bad seal, will often end up tasting flat and bland. But ‘good’ or ‘bad’ at this point, is a subjective matter. Only one way to find out!

Also, I can see from the NDP perspective, the view that the Liberals weren’t holding up their part of the deal to advance NDP policy. In this circumstance, it’s not like quitting a job. Trudeau wasn’t Singh’s boss. They had an agreement that the NDP said was mutable from the start based on their discretion. For Trudeau to bellyache about it all now is, I think, a bit silly, considering the essentially cost-free benefit his party gained from the agreement for years.

You’re making personal assumptions about me, and the internal mental states of others that I think are unfair.

I don’t want to see overdoses in the street, nobody should. Not because I want it to happen in private, but because I don’t want it to happen. For the record, and not that you asked, but, I’ve also never said that I’m an advocate for mandatory rehab, or that it’s some kind of magical cure-all. I’m not here carrying water for these initiatives. All I’m saying is that there’s a serious problem, and a need for solutions and sincere discussion. I don’t think anything is gained for any position by browbeating others and fabulating their inner thoughts.

This was course material to a post grad university course on the subject of addiction and recovery taught THIS MONTH. It discusses the entire history of opiods.

Interesting. Can you link the course? I’d be curious to see the syllabus and learn more.

I understand the view that in rehabilitation from addiction, drugs are not the only factor to consider. But they are absolutely a factor that needs to be considered. Ask anyone who has tried to quit smoking, drinking, or using any drug.

If someone overdoses and almost dies, or harms someone else, I think the state has a responsibility to get that person help that they may not have the ability, knowledge, or desire to seek, as opposed to turning them back out onto the street and waiting for it to happen again. The situation right now where I live is that businesses and homes are stocked with naloxone kits, and citizens are administering lifesaving healthcare to people on death’s door, on the sidewalk. Everyone I know who lives downtown has seen a dead body on the street in the past year. That’s not good, and practical solutions are needed immediately. I’m not convinced that a Swiss bulletin from 1999 which tents its argument on examples from the Vietnam War and the American Civil War really gets to the heart of the current issue and set of circumstances.

The cause of addiction is not drugs.

This is a very strange take.

What evidence do you have for this?

At this point, PR would significantly help the Greens and NDP, and harm the BQ and Liberals badly. The LPC has no interest in doing this. They’re not altruistic. Remember, they forced an election in the heat of the pandemic in order to consolidate power.

They have also proven to be totally uncommitted to top line promises. I don’t really see how they’re a party worth voting for.

Robert Tanguay, an addictions psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Calgary, supports involuntary care under certain conditions but also stressed more voluntary treatment options are needed.

Tanguay was a member of Alberta’s Recovery Expert Advisory Panel that helped shape government policy on addiction and mental health care, and said opinions about the efficacy of involuntary care varied.

“The one thing that was all agreed upon is it has to be done compassionately and in the healthcare system, not in the penal system,” Tanguay said. “We can’t just incarcerate people using drugs.”

This makes sense to me.

There’s a risk that police will weaponize an ability to commit someone to involuntary rehab. There’s a risk that overdoses might go unreported because people want to avoid being committed to a facility. The question is if these risks will be outweighed by any benefits. I think it’s unfortunate that these programs aren’t being discussed by political parties in practical terms. There’s just a lot of handwaving about whether or not it will ‘work’, and no real discussion of the objectives and expected outcomes.

As a user, ‘privacy preserving attribution’ is unappealing for a few reasons.

1. It seems it would overwhelmingly benefit a type of website that I think is toxic for the internet as a whole - AI generated pages SEO’d to the gills that are designed exclusively as advertisement delivery instruments.

2. It’s a tool that quantitatively aids in the refinement of clickbait, which I believe is an unethical abuse of human psychology.

3. Those issues notwithstanding, it’s unrealistic to assume that PPA will make the kind of difference that Mozilla thinks it might. I believe it’s naive to imagine that any advertiser would prefer PPA to the more invasive industry standard methods of tracking. It would be nice if that wasn’t the case, but, I don’t see how PPA would be preferable for advertisers, who want more data, not less.

As a user, having more of my online activity available and distributed doesn’t help or benefit me in any way.

One outcome of the possibility that Poilievre finds success in a federal election, is that rhyming and nickname politics will become the norm. Among other things, a CPC government will be tiring and annoying.

I think we’ll have to do some soul searching as a nation if the CPC gains any ground in this election. Like you, I struggle to understand how people don’t see Poilievre as comically idiotic, both from a policy and rhetorical standpoint. He’s such an insincere goof. Though I guess, maybe we’ve been conditioned to insincerity from Ottawa over the past decade.

Great, a provincial special interest party now holds the balance of power in the nation’s Parliament. A crappy day for Canadian democracy.

Much as I dislike the BQ, it has to be said, Blanchet has cajones

“I am happily assuming that if and when the Bloc will bring down the Liberals, Mr. Legault will support the Bloc Québécois”

This isn’t getting called out as the crisis that it really is. Imagine the narrative if any other single province had the influence that the BQ is right now exercising. News outlets would be spinning up the sirens.