The word 'algorithm' today has the sense of some mathematical operator (symbol denoting a transformation) in a volumetric or let's say calculus equation.
However, its original source, and from which the word itself comes - namely from the 9th century Arabic Polymath al-Khawarizmi - is to do with finding ways to defraud gold and silver buyers by placing one's thumb down on the scales in a certain prescribed way that always effected the outcome favorably as long as you knew the mechanism of the balance system involved.
In other words, what it means - what its implication is - is how to cheat.
Nakedly, the general online worldwide media that falls under 'branded outlets' as such, declares that it selects the stories to publish as determined by 'algorithms.'
And usually these are so-called 'proprietary algorithms.'
The luxury wine experience. |
But a thumb is a thumb is a thumb, and what it is actively and deliberately doing on one side of a balance scales is the opposite of 'telling the truth.'
The unfortunate thing about information versus lack of information, is that even if you could decode the thumb pressing, it would not thereby give you access to critical information because in fact, that was missing altogether in the first place.
All that happened was that a certain 'story' or a line of stories was overly-pushed, heavily marketed, in other words sold to the reader and the viewer - while any work that really is necessary to finding out information especially hard to get information, simply didn't happen at all.
In other words it would be one thing if on the other side of the scales there were actual news and new information available at all - but in fact there was nothing on the other side of the scales.
It takes work to find information that is hidden by politics or by special interests or by someone's guilt. Nobody in the modern kinds of large-scale media pays for that work.
Arguably, it is no wonder that French wine-makers insist on claiming there is some major importance to terroir, on account they cannot factually claim there is significance to actual grape varieties they take the names of and stick on their wines - because there are no such varieties any more; not since the Great Phylloxera Plague of the late 19th century there.
They are all, except maybe for the Bollinger Estates alone (which are in the Grande Champagne region) American root-stock grafted varietals.
A hundred years into the future... |
Additionally, the massive overuse of pesticides and the industrial-scale continuous inserting of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, means the grapes produced are anything but coming from something intrinsically unique or naturally spectacular to do with the soils, the climate, or the timing and craft of the harvesting and the purity of the fruit and of the agriculture involved.
Do these massively over-industrialized and super-high volume wines taste any good?
I'm sure I cannot say.
I mean for example, how do cognac producers expect not to have the pesticide residues negatively affect cognacs that are kept in casks or bottles for many many decades?
Are they extracting those traces by some technically clandestine or obscure scientific process using chemistry and machines during the wine-making phases?
Our 'friends' - yes, those ones you know about that we talk about - let's just say 'speculatively' and maybe just using the Monroe Institute 'targeted viewing' methodology, have been to the future and they know what the Louis XIII cognac is like a hundred years from now.
And yes, it is very good (@ then).
Same as it is very good right now.
The Remy Martin Estates make their wines (cognacs) also from the Grande Champagne and Petite Champagne regions and it is conceivable that at least in their case, most of the vineyards even those in the Petite Champagne areas from which they get their best grapes are all intact varieties from pre- the Phylloxera problems era.
Time... |
Not all French classic wines are all that good or great, but then not all of them are not great - because some of them are very great indeed.
Nobody is cheating at Remy Martin, or at Bollinger. And there are some others too, where the standards (Bollinger instituted a formal 'Charter of Ethics and Quality' in 1992) are very high.
If you want to invest in wine - or in cognac - definitely start where the standards are very high and the ethics are genuinely held as completely important to the makers.
Because you certainly will not be told by the general media anything about people's real ethics and standards.
The fact that they employ algorithms already tells you enough.
Waiting some time into this track, is rewarding... (For the impatient, from around 3 mins., in):