It's probably worth mentioning that his drug use has led to some pretty abhorrent behavior. That said I'm a believer that people should be judged on the sum of all their actions not reduced to their worst moments.
If you listed universities, it seems like you'd have to list churches as well, and then they would dominate the list. They're not really "companies", more like organizations.
The page even says "excluding associations and educational, government, or religious organizations."
You must be United Statian who thinks that every organization must exist for profit and othervise it is evil communist, including garbage collectors, social security, police and military, educatiın, ambulance etc
It makes United Statians question and compare their policies with other developed nations. Now, the USA has really big issue like social security, university education and militarized police etc
Weihenstephan is still one of my fav breweries. Would be nice to see articles regarding how some of these companies managed to keep going for this long.
I once went there without knowing the fact, and it amazed me. It feels so different to sit between those old walls, trying to imagine how the place used to be before or during WWII, or in the 13th century...
I grew up in Waterloo, Belgium. There's a museum there where one half is dedicated to the Battle of Waterloo, and the other side is a museum of the town history. There's a photo of the road right outside the building taken during German occupation with swastika banners lining either side ... and then you look out the window and see the current scene, it's eerie.
It's really incredible to see something like this. I was disheartened to see that Kongō Gumi was acquired in 2006 after 1,400+ years in business. It's just hard to wrap your mind around. But to see hotels and wineries that have existed for over a millennia is really quite amazing.
The history says that restaurant was established in 1850s when the owners hired a chef from the original Bianyifang, and that the name was common amongst several restaurants. Sounds like a separate business to me.
When you are successful and have stood the test of time, who needs a website? In 100 years or so, there probably won't be such a thing as html in popular use any longer.
You apparently haven't tried looking for a web design house to work with lately. Maybe not that dated, but often 10 to 15 years behind the present times.
I don't know what kind of websites you were using in 2006, but most small companies in Europe were literally just getting online, and their owners' ideas of design were vastly different than what the designers would recommend.
Those kind of simple HTML websites were going for over 1500 Euros, which is insane, since Wordpress and Drupal existed and had way better themes and functionality.
People just weren't interested or seeing the possibilities of the Web, even in 2006 (and even today!), they just got a website because it was a "new fad" or someone said they can get more customers.
Tell you honestly, I prefer these kind of informative websites rather than nowadays Bootstrap blobs, where you need to full-page scroll several times trying to get some idea but all you get is 3 large icons in a row and sometimes a big green button if you're lucky.
I do share your appreciation for simple, static pages that get the job done, but the layout on this site is totally messed up for me, totally unaware of dpi I assume.
It does actually have a fluid grid, so it is responsive down to about tablet width. It does not display correctly on phones however, which I suppose is a fatal flaw for a hotel site.
Yea, same here on Vivaldi. It probably looks correct in Netscape Navigator.
Sites like this are pretty cool to stumble upon though. They are a snapshot in time. It's not even /that/ old. It takes you back to a simpler era where pages loaded on dialup.
I think it's hard to argue it's the same company in some cases. The breweries in particular used to be a brewery in said city (the city had right to have a brewery). Different owners, different locations, later different legal companies, periods of inactivity, etc.. The continuity is lost beyond "there was a brewery in this town 600 year ago".
I'll just throw in here that faking contracts and certificates has been a huge business in the last ~1200 years or so in Europe. Many cities who claimed to have been founded a thousand years ago (or whatever) had to cede those claims since the historical papers were faked (usually hundreds of years ago).
The oldest name on this list that stood out to me is Weihenstephan brewery, founded in 1040 in Bavaria, Germany. They have some of the finest lagers I have ever tried. If you enjoy crisp, refreshing lager beers, I highly recommend their beers. My favorite one is probably the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, followed by the Hefeweissbier Dunkel.
Note: I am not affiliated in any way with the company, I just highly enjoy their beers.
Amazing beer, agreed. Another recommendation: My favorite Munich-style weiss beer is from Franziskaner (founded in 1363). It's in my top 3 beers of all time.
Franziskaner weissbier is also one of my favorites, right up there with Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier. Both are top 5 German beers in my book for sure. They are both extremely easy to find in California (SF Bay Area) as well, which is great!
Funnily enough, my all-time favourite weissbier is the Kumulus from Airbrau, the only beer brewed in an airport terminal! It sounds like a gimmick, but it's actually really good.
I’m unimpressed with the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen beer.
That said, there is a company in Austin, TX - Live Oak - who makes an incredible Hefeweizen. Every time I go back to Austin, I hunt down this beer and enjoy it with a “Detroiter” pizza from the Via 313 food truck at a bar called Craft Pride.
Now that I live in San Diego, I have an incredible selection of local brew to choose from, but I have yet to find anything that tops that hef.
Live Oak Hefe is my No. 1 here (right in front of 512 Pecan Porter), and one of the finest beer I've had period. If you haven't been to the Live Oak tasting room across from the airport, it has a variety of rarer German styles as well. German immigrants settled in this part of Texas, which means there's a lot of craft breweries that give someone who drinks marzens and weisens year-round (me) great alternatives to Weihenstephaner and Spaten.
Via 313 is good, but man, nothing on the Neapolitan that Pieous makes. To bring us back onto the topic, water-barley-yeast-hops and water-flour-yeast-salt recipes say that there's longevity in simplicity. Makes one want to give up making technology, or focus on distilling it down to the essential.
Just as an alternative point of view, they're debasing and ridiculing the term, whereas you're helping to inflate its importance by trying to keep it a taboo.
Taking offense at "beer Nazi" could lead someone to infer that you believe the term Nazi must only be used in a dignified context. Who is normalizing what is in the eye of the beholder, as people have been belittling Nazis since the 1930s.
Whatever we've done lately obviously hasn't worked. Seinfeld has been sent again and again and yet we see nazis marching proudly in Charlotteville and elsewhere.
The world should not forget what nazism caused, what communism caused, what nationalism caused, what racism caused etc.
I'd be tempted to say: learn kids to hate those things but I'm not a fan of big words.
But I certainly think more focus on history lessons would be a good thing.
A bit of an orthogonal argument: the problem isn't Nazis per se, it's what Nazis believed. Treating the idea of Nazis as too serious to make fun of and treating the idea of making fun of Nazis as a noble goal both have the fallacy that the thing we're saying "Never again" to is people with swastikas and straight-arm salutes. Now, yes, there were a few of those people at Charlottesville. But there are a lot more people who have the same ideology as Nazis - that ethnic minorities are the cause of the ethnic majority's economic anxiety, that a special police force to put ethnic minorities in concentration camps is totally fine as long as there are valid laws supporting that, that local opposition to this police force is illegitimate and treasonous, that the sexually "deviant" are ruining the integrity of our culture, that we have more of a duty to the well-being of our own race than to the survival of other races, etc. - without having any of the visible trappings of Nazis. The more that we say that the thing we object to (either by avoidance or reappropriation) is "Nazis," the more we make room for people with the same beliefs to prosper under different names.
(Side argument: putting the focus on "Nazis" also seems to invent distance between the man on the street in 1930s Germany, who just wanted a good life for his family, a prosperous economy for his country, and success for his nation's troops, and us in our own countries today, because that man lived in Nazi Germany and voted for the Nazi Party. It explains away the fact that an entire country like any other Western country suddenly went along with the Nazi agenda because that country was, somehow, full of Nazis, who are, somehow, different from us.)
I have seen lots of people make the argument that "Nazi" is a bad descriptor for anti-Muslim beliefs/policies that closely resemble historic Nazi anti-Jewish policies, because they're anti-Muslim and not anti-Jewish. (Usually this comes with some sort of argument about "Judeo-Christian values," or about how Islam is different, or something - and when I point out that the same sorts of attitudes were prevalent at the time against Jews and Judaism, they seem to think it's an answer that those people were wrong and they're right.) I think that's a sign that we've failed badly to teach "Never again" in a meaningful way, in a way that realizes that the problem is not to make sure it's never 1930s Germany again - of course it never will be. It will be somewhere else, someplace else, and some other people.
I have the impression that there's also a cultural aspect. People from different parts of the world have noticeably different responses to such jokes. Lots of them are on HN and, not realizing who's who or what the gap is between them, each tends to think the other obviously wrong and/or an asshole.
Well, might be geographical/context sensitive, then. They could well be better known for lagers in the US, which being overall better known for weissbier.
There's nothing nazi, nor anything really to apologise for, in that. A weissbier, especially a dark variant, is really quite different from crisp lagers. Crisp is not really a word I'd use to describe weissbier at all.
That said, they do make excellent weissbier, and if that style is unfamiliar to you, you're in for a treat.
My mistake. I've always incorrectly grouped them with lagers in my mind, but it does indeed look like they are top-fermented beers.
I'm actually surprised, there are quite a few beer variants that I assumed were lagers that are actually ales, including Berliner weisse, kölsch, and gose [0].
Kölsch is actually a weird one. It's true that Kölsch is an ale and Kölsch yeast is a top-fermenting ale yeast, however the style also calls for lagering the beer at cooler temperatures at the end of fermentation, which is the same process that all true lagers undergo. This is why Kölsch has a clean lager-like taste, and is often mistaken or debated as a lager.
See also: California Common / Steam Beer, which is sort of the opposite case (lager yeast fermented at ale temps)
Also the reason as to why so many new microbreweries tend to brew ales rather than lagers. Ales are much more temperamental and can be fermented at around room temperature thereby making homebrewing much more accessible.
For those here into German wheat / Hefeweizen beers: Schneider Weisse offer a range of excellent regular Hefeweizen beers as well as an annual special limited edition (named TAPX).
While the regular TAP7 (a Hefeweizen Dunkel) and TAP5 (a hoppy, fruity Hefeweizen reminiscent of an IPA) are fantastic already and stand out among wheat beers the TAPX edition is a very unique treat. The Tap X Cuvée Barrique for example is a creamy and dry wheat beer that tastes like wild berries, figs, and vanilla.
Quite hard to get hold of unfortunately, especially as for the past limited editions.
Fully agree, Schneider Weisse is excellent. Other great Bavarian Weißbier breweries are Hopf and Unertl, but they're probably even harder to get outside of Bavaria.
Lots of breweries. Belgian Abbeys; Grimbergen, Affligem... Can anyone opine on how similar today's beers might taste to how they did "back in the day?" I'm sure some of the beers are based on the original recipes, and with the Reinheitsgebot, it's fairly plausible that all of the ingredients in the German beers in particular are very similar. But I'm not sure how the process might have changed over the years, or how the ingredients might taste different now than they did a century ago.
Beers today taste nothing like they did back then. Microbiology aside (today's beer is made with pure-bred yeast, back then it was a wild mix of microbes), pale malt was not produced until the 17th or 18th centre, and the pale lager beers we nowadays associate with traditional German beer were developed as late as the 19th century.
Everything swerner wrote, with a minor interjection: part of a brewery's identity is based on their water source (nuances in chemical composition have a certain influence on the brewing process), so a brewery that stood out due to their well or spring 500 years ago might still do so today. Or not at all, since the interaction between ground water and geology can change a lot in that timeframe.
I did a beer tour of Belgium and apparently all of their beers are very modern (at most ~100 years old), and the dates refer to either the first brewery in the area, or the abbey itself.
So, no, the beers back then did not taste similar to today's beer. I would say that lambics might be the closest reflection to a style that is close to "back in the day". (http://lostbeers.com/lambic-the-real-story/) Even then, the link between today's lambic and the past only goes to the 1700s at best, and it's not clear how representative it is (at least what I can see from skimming the linked blog with Google Translate's help -- https://lambik1801.wordpress.com/).
There are also plenty of technical differences between brewing now and brewing then that would make for a different taste. It was probably a bit sweeter (less attenuation), possibly spiced different before the 1600s, possibly smoky until coal drying came into the norm, probably dark until pale malt was developed in the 19th century, probably had more room for sour notes (before pure yeast cultures were developed in the late 19th-early 20th century), etc.
Doesn't make a sense to include Grimbergen and Affligem there, these are both owned by the same multinational (Heineken) and neither is still being brewed on site in the abbey.
Yeah, I marvelled a bit when I first saw that they were licensed in 1040. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is excellent.
They seem pretty bizarre as modern breweries go. Originally operated as part of the abbey, they are now somewhat joined with TU München. Hard for me to even say if they are really the successors to a continuous organization from 1040.
I felt quite sad to read the fate of the top of that list
> Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組 Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi) is a Japanese construction company which was the world's oldest continuously ongoing independent company, operating for over 1,400 years until it was absorbed as a subsidiary of Takamatsu in 2006.
StoraEnso is marked as Finland, but that is due to a recent merger and the location of the HQ of the current company. The company Stora Kopparberg operated a mine in Falun, Sweden from which company shares exist from 1288.
Nintendo is also pretty darn old. Founded in 1889 and has been making games since the start. Talk about reinventing yourself with the market, or in recent history, inventing the market.
I've had the amazing opportunity to stay at Hoshi Inn (4th oldest on the list)! I keep the card on my desk (https://i.imgur.com/AyWUGhg.png :-)
The courtyard garden the inn is built around is absolutely stunning, and the hot springs were the best out of all the ryokans we stayed at in Japan. The best part though is the hotel is actively managed and operated by the family - these wonderful people will meet you at the door.
There is concern about the future of the hotel, as the son who was assumed to take on ownership of the inn passed away suddenly, leaving the responsibility to the adult daughter. She's seems exceptionally capable (not to mention is incredibly pleasant), but she is unmarried/childless and seems unsure of her desire to marry or assume ownership of the inn. Clearly it would not be the same if the business continued on operated by someone outside the family.
This list looks like it includes for-profit only. Also, with the church, it's "company" status is relegated on a per-country basis, usually to gain non-profit taxation benefits. So it's a little murky there.
That list doesn't include states, which are pretty wealthy. And I'd say you should include states as much as churches in the comparison, because the Catholic Church, at least, is historically much more akin to a state or empire than to a business. (I think your argument could apply to the more recently formed churches.)
As for your video link, that's about televangelism, which is extremely recent. Even Tetzel wasn't really in it for his own personal profit.
I was thinking there would be a very good case for the Vatican to occupy the number one spot.
Whether seen solely as the papal organisation , or as a kind of continuation of the (Western) Roman Empire, these guys have been in day to day business for at least close to two thousand years. And have the archives to prove it. Wanna check up on some royal correspondance from the year 500? They may well have the actual letters stashed away somewhere.
Also: I don't really think the for-profit filter disqualifies them here.
Another interesting tidbit to add here: one of the official titles of the pope, pontifex maximux (high priest), has its origins in the kingdom of Rome, well before the Republic was established (509 BC). Though written records don't exist of that time period, its inception is traditionally accounted to the second king of Rome, Numa (rulership ~715 – ~673 BC). This makes it one of the oldest titles, if not the oldest official title still in use.
2700 Years is nothing. At my synagogue in Southern California we have a couple dozen Kohens, a title in continuous use (with varying and evolving responsibilities to be sure) for at least 4000 years.
How so? Regardless of crises, schisms, decampings for Avignon, low points, and more crises, the Pope residing in Rome today is in a very real sense the successor of the guys who set up shop in the first century CE.
Well the oldest company on that list was bought and now only exists as a subsidiary. Imagine being the person behind that decision. To end a 1500 year old dynasty with the stroke of a pen.
I suspect that's because pretty much every country/civilization in the past 2,000 years at some point or another has banned prostitution as a matter of law/force.
Even if there were a continuous prostitution enterprise operating over a sufficient timeline (which is not entirely implausible) legal and social acceptance issues would make it unlikely to be a continuous fixed location (brothel) or even a continuous overt business organization.
Well, religious institutions are expressly excluded, so, no, neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the (dominant) subset thereof known as the Latin Rite (either of which might be want is intended by “Latin Catholic Church”) would qualify.
There sure is alot of pub and accommodation entries, but then that is one area that technology and indeed, industrialization and the other progressive phases in society have not impacted as much as other industries.
On a positive and encourage note - not one single manufacturer of weapons listed at all.
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[ 1375 ms ] story [ 6064 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption#Econom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_George#Conviction
The page even says "excluding associations and educational, government, or religious organizations."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Most are hospitality or alcohol production, it looks like.
I once went there without knowing the fact, and it amazed me. It feels so different to sit between those old walls, trying to imagine how the place used to be before or during WWII, or in the 13th century...
Oh, and I just noticed that if you change the language to German, there is a link to a photo gallery:
http://www.luebeckaltstadthotel.de/tischbein.htm
Those kind of simple HTML websites were going for over 1500 Euros, which is insane, since Wordpress and Drupal existed and had way better themes and functionality.
People just weren't interested or seeing the possibilities of the Web, even in 2006 (and even today!), they just got a website because it was a "new fad" or someone said they can get more customers.
* Provides all relevant information at a glance
Needs more Javascript?
Sites like this are pretty cool to stumble upon though. They are a snapshot in time. It's not even /that/ old. It takes you back to a simpler era where pages loaded on dialup.
* Ugly as heck
Can't be, internet wasn't created until the 17th century.
On the other hand, all the relevant info is there. Maybe looking "old" is by design, being a very old hotel and all?
Oh, and:
Nice :)It's very easy to get dates wrong.
It's not like we are talking about dates which have been certified by experts at auction houses for personal property.
Note: I am not affiliated in any way with the company, I just highly enjoy their beers.
[0] https://www.molkerei-weihenstephan.de
That said, there is a company in Austin, TX - Live Oak - who makes an incredible Hefeweizen. Every time I go back to Austin, I hunt down this beer and enjoy it with a “Detroiter” pizza from the Via 313 food truck at a bar called Craft Pride.
Now that I live in San Diego, I have an incredible selection of local brew to choose from, but I have yet to find anything that tops that hef.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1062/
Via 313 is good, but man, nothing on the Neapolitan that Pieous makes. To bring us back onto the topic, water-barley-yeast-hops and water-flour-yeast-salt recipes say that there's longevity in simplicity. Makes one want to give up making technology, or focus on distilling it down to the essential.
Bonus ancient beer knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappir
You may want to reconsider this phrasing.
As much as I support freedom of speech I also think it's unwise to normalize nazism.
Reminding people not to normalize nazism isn't something one should be downvoted for in my book.
As an aside, here's an interview with the Jewish actor who played the Soup Nazi: http://uproxx.com/tv/soup-nazi-interview-seinfeld-apartment/
Good answer but I don't agree.
Whatever we've done lately obviously hasn't worked. Seinfeld has been sent again and again and yet we see nazis marching proudly in Charlotteville and elsewhere.
The world should not forget what nazism caused, what communism caused, what nationalism caused, what racism caused etc.
I'd be tempted to say: learn kids to hate those things but I'm not a fan of big words.
But I certainly think more focus on history lessons would be a good thing.
Or maybe we need something similar to this, only for thoughts: https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of...
(Side argument: putting the focus on "Nazis" also seems to invent distance between the man on the street in 1930s Germany, who just wanted a good life for his family, a prosperous economy for his country, and success for his nation's troops, and us in our own countries today, because that man lived in Nazi Germany and voted for the Nazi Party. It explains away the fact that an entire country like any other Western country suddenly went along with the Nazi agenda because that country was, somehow, full of Nazis, who are, somehow, different from us.)
I have seen lots of people make the argument that "Nazi" is a bad descriptor for anti-Muslim beliefs/policies that closely resemble historic Nazi anti-Jewish policies, because they're anti-Muslim and not anti-Jewish. (Usually this comes with some sort of argument about "Judeo-Christian values," or about how Islam is different, or something - and when I point out that the same sorts of attitudes were prevalent at the time against Jews and Judaism, they seem to think it's an answer that those people were wrong and they're right.) I think that's a sign that we've failed badly to teach "Never again" in a meaningful way, in a way that realizes that the problem is not to make sure it's never 1930s Germany again - of course it never will be. It will be somewhere else, someplace else, and some other people.
I'm just arguing that downvoting someone for pointing this out is counterproductive.
That said, they do make excellent weissbier, and if that style is unfamiliar to you, you're in for a treat.
I'm actually surprised, there are quite a few beer variants that I assumed were lagers that are actually ales, including Berliner weisse, kölsch, and gose [0].
[0] https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/
See also: California Common / Steam Beer, which is sort of the opposite case (lager yeast fermented at ale temps)
While the regular TAP7 (a Hefeweizen Dunkel) and TAP5 (a hoppy, fruity Hefeweizen reminiscent of an IPA) are fantastic already and stand out among wheat beers the TAPX edition is a very unique treat. The Tap X Cuvée Barrique for example is a creamy and dry wheat beer that tastes like wild berries, figs, and vanilla.
Quite hard to get hold of unfortunately, especially as for the past limited editions.
[1]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-beer-tasted-like-s...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit
Not specific to Belgian/German beers, but I found this interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vo36v/durin...
So, no, the beers back then did not taste similar to today's beer. I would say that lambics might be the closest reflection to a style that is close to "back in the day". (http://lostbeers.com/lambic-the-real-story/) Even then, the link between today's lambic and the past only goes to the 1700s at best, and it's not clear how representative it is (at least what I can see from skimming the linked blog with Google Translate's help -- https://lambik1801.wordpress.com/).
There are also plenty of technical differences between brewing now and brewing then that would make for a different taste. It was probably a bit sweeter (less attenuation), possibly spiced different before the 1600s, possibly smoky until coal drying came into the norm, probably dark until pale malt was developed in the 19th century, probably had more room for sour notes (before pure yeast cultures were developed in the late 19th-early 20th century), etc.
They seem pretty bizarre as modern breweries go. Originally operated as part of the abbey, they are now somewhat joined with TU München. Hard for me to even say if they are really the successors to a continuous organization from 1040.
> Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組 Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi) is a Japanese construction company which was the world's oldest continuously ongoing independent company, operating for over 1,400 years until it was absorbed as a subsidiary of Takamatsu in 2006.
The courtyard garden the inn is built around is absolutely stunning, and the hot springs were the best out of all the ryokans we stayed at in Japan. The best part though is the hotel is actively managed and operated by the family - these wonderful people will meet you at the door.
There is concern about the future of the hotel, as the son who was assumed to take on ownership of the inn passed away suddenly, leaving the responsibility to the adult daughter. She's seems exceptionally capable (not to mention is incredibly pleasant), but she is unmarried/childless and seems unsure of her desire to marry or assume ownership of the inn. Clearly it would not be the same if the business continued on operated by someone outside the family.
I highly recommend watching this short film about the situation: https://vimeo.com/114879061
edit: replaced "bloodline" with "family" as I've been told Japanese culture resolves bloodline continuity issues via adult adoption.
eg see http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-adoption-ra...
interesting similarity between Japan and ancient Rome, there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_organizatio...
And let's get serious, some "church" related activities are hardly not-for-profits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg
As for your video link, that's about televangelism, which is extremely recent. Even Tetzel wasn't really in it for his own personal profit.
Whether seen solely as the papal organisation , or as a kind of continuation of the (Western) Roman Empire, these guys have been in day to day business for at least close to two thousand years. And have the archives to prove it. Wanna check up on some royal correspondance from the year 500? They may well have the actual letters stashed away somewhere.
Also: I don't really think the for-profit filter disqualifies them here.
Imagine being the last person to run a 1000 year old company.
And yet it lists "government owned institution" Monnaie de Paris, "government-owned" Royal Mint, et cetera...
Ignoring those rule-breakers, 7 of Europe's top 10 are alcohol-related, while Japan holds the top 5 with primarily Hotel and Construction companies.
On the other hand, the same forces that make for high turnover in the software industry also make it more fertile for new startups.
(Oh, wait, is that the joke? Sorry.)
On a positive and encourage note - not one single manufacturer of weapons listed at all.
Nonetheless, Colt was founded in 1855 and is doing fine. Unless laser handguns become a thing I don't see them going down for the foreseeable future.
1526 Beretta Italy Firearms
1578 Klett Germany Firearms
1674 Sabatti Italy Firearms