Alex Mennie
@menniedrinks.com
He / Him.
🥃✍🏻 Whisky and cocktail writer
🤖⚖️ Digital marketing lawyer
⛵️📸 Sometime sailor and film photographer
menniedrinks.substack.com
🥃✍🏻 Whisky and cocktail writer
🤖⚖️ Digital marketing lawyer
⛵️📸 Sometime sailor and film photographer
menniedrinks.substack.com
Pinned
Alex Mennie
@menniedrinks.com
· Nov 14
Another month, another social media platform…
I’m Alex Mennie. I write about whisky and cocktails (and whisky cocktails).
I also advise drinks brands on legal compliance in the digital world. 🤖🍸
Bar reviews & short stories:
menniedrinks.substack.com
Features:
www.menniedrinks.com
I’m Alex Mennie. I write about whisky and cocktails (and whisky cocktails).
I also advise drinks brands on legal compliance in the digital world. 🤖🍸
Bar reviews & short stories:
menniedrinks.substack.com
Features:
www.menniedrinks.com
The first Bar Tab zine is here.
Three Bars & A Pool Table.
Monty's | Satan's Whiskers | All My Gods.
Fifty numbered copies. Once they're gone, they're gone.
menniedrinks.bigcartel.com/product/thre...
Three Bars & A Pool Table.
Monty's | Satan's Whiskers | All My Gods.
Fifty numbered copies. Once they're gone, they're gone.
menniedrinks.bigcartel.com/product/thre...
Three Bars & A Pool Table Zine
The first Bar Tab Mini — a zine about where we drink and the people we meet there. Featuring three London institutions (Monty’s, Satan’s Whiskers,...
menniedrinks.bigcartel.com
September 19, 2025 at 10:10 AM
The first Bar Tab zine is here.
Three Bars & A Pool Table.
Monty's | Satan's Whiskers | All My Gods.
Fifty numbered copies. Once they're gone, they're gone.
menniedrinks.bigcartel.com/product/thre...
Three Bars & A Pool Table.
Monty's | Satan's Whiskers | All My Gods.
Fifty numbered copies. Once they're gone, they're gone.
menniedrinks.bigcartel.com/product/thre...
My first Bar Tab zine - Three Bars & A Pool Table - is released tomorrow. It's a literary-led look at three 'dive adjacent' bars in London, and the first in a series looking at where we drink and the people we meet there. Visit menniedrinks.substack.com to learn more!
Mennie Drinks | Substack
A slow publishing platform dedicated to the stories, spaces, and people that shape global drinking culture. Offering a literary, narrative-led take on bars, whisky and cocktails for those who prioriti...
menniedrinks.substack.com
September 18, 2025 at 3:09 PM
My first Bar Tab zine - Three Bars & A Pool Table - is released tomorrow. It's a literary-led look at three 'dive adjacent' bars in London, and the first in a series looking at where we drink and the people we meet there. Visit menniedrinks.substack.com to learn more!
Reposted by Alex Mennie
Shameful that you have published this glaze for the LLM industry. AI doesn't exist, and the products that have been branded as such are little more than clever parlour tricks.
Can my graphics card feel pain? Does my printer yearn for the steppes? No. Stop being fatuous and stop gassing up "AI"
Can my graphics card feel pain? Does my printer yearn for the steppes? No. Stop being fatuous and stop gassing up "AI"
August 26, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Shameful that you have published this glaze for the LLM industry. AI doesn't exist, and the products that have been branded as such are little more than clever parlour tricks.
Can my graphics card feel pain? Does my printer yearn for the steppes? No. Stop being fatuous and stop gassing up "AI"
Can my graphics card feel pain? Does my printer yearn for the steppes? No. Stop being fatuous and stop gassing up "AI"
Absolute nonsense in The Guardian on generative AI having feelings, which suggests that no one at The Guardian understands anything about how LLMs work...
Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times
Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times
As first AI-led rights advocacy group is founded, industry is divided on whether models are, or can be, sentient
www.theguardian.com
August 26, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Absolute nonsense in The Guardian on generative AI having feelings, which suggests that no one at The Guardian understands anything about how LLMs work...
Reposted by Alex Mennie
Good news everyone, they’ve finally built a machine to make good writing bad for you.
You need never be moved, startled, challenged or changed by prose emanating from the human imagination ever again.
You need never be moved, startled, challenged or changed by prose emanating from the human imagination ever again.
This article is going to turn me into the Joker. Literary style is not a puzzle you solve to get a little information treat 😩😩😩
June 22, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Good news everyone, they’ve finally built a machine to make good writing bad for you.
You need never be moved, startled, challenged or changed by prose emanating from the human imagination ever again.
You need never be moved, startled, challenged or changed by prose emanating from the human imagination ever again.
Nicely dystopian top three there...
Therapy/companionship as the main use case: 😱
April 22, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Nicely dystopian top three there...
Another example to file under 'why can't AI just do more of the boring stuff that keeps me from connecting with my relatives rather than...'
www.404media.co/i-tested-the...
www.404media.co/i-tested-the...
I Tested The AI That Calls Your Elderly Parents If You Can't Be Bothered
inTouch says on its website "Busy life? You can’t call your parent every day—but we can." My own mum said she would feel terrible if her child used it.
www.404media.co
April 14, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Another example to file under 'why can't AI just do more of the boring stuff that keeps me from connecting with my relatives rather than...'
www.404media.co/i-tested-the...
www.404media.co/i-tested-the...
"Humans discovered fermentation and started making alcohol...sometime between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago. Several thousand years later, the first civic governments were formed. The first efforts at restricting alcohol consumption probably followed not long after."
reason.com/2025/04/05/t...
reason.com/2025/04/05/t...
The new prohibitionists are hijacking federal dietary guidelines
The campaign to make America dry is as dubious as the campaign for the food pyramid.
reason.com
April 7, 2025 at 9:31 AM
"Humans discovered fermentation and started making alcohol...sometime between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago. Several thousand years later, the first civic governments were formed. The first efforts at restricting alcohol consumption probably followed not long after."
reason.com/2025/04/05/t...
reason.com/2025/04/05/t...
Reposted by Alex Mennie
Hopefully the BBC specials on whisky scammers will lead to meaningful change in the industry.
If you want to understand how they work and do their dirty business I wrote about it here on Forbes:
www.forbes.com/sites/felipe...
If you want to understand how they work and do their dirty business I wrote about it here on Forbes:
www.forbes.com/sites/felipe...
Is This The Beginning Of The End For Whisky Cask Scammers?
A story from the BBC reveals how Scotch whisky cask investment scammers do their dirty business. It also marks the first time victims have come forward to warn others.
www.forbes.com
March 28, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Hopefully the BBC specials on whisky scammers will lead to meaningful change in the industry.
If you want to understand how they work and do their dirty business I wrote about it here on Forbes:
www.forbes.com/sites/felipe...
If you want to understand how they work and do their dirty business I wrote about it here on Forbes:
www.forbes.com/sites/felipe...
Hi @shannonvallor.bsky.social - very interesting to hear from you at the Edinburgh University event this evening and delighted to find out I was already following you here! Must have been an AI/tech/Edinburgh starter pack. I look forward to hearing about more of your work.
March 17, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Hi @shannonvallor.bsky.social - very interesting to hear from you at the Edinburgh University event this evening and delighted to find out I was already following you here! Must have been an AI/tech/Edinburgh starter pack. I look forward to hearing about more of your work.
Reposted by Alex Mennie
are you doing your part to generate novel training data today?
March 17, 2025 at 4:26 PM
are you doing your part to generate novel training data today?
Finally a Brexit benefit for the Scotch whisky industry?!
March 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Finally a Brexit benefit for the Scotch whisky industry?!
Oh thank goodness. Now I can concentrate on being a good value-creating node and leave an AI tool to all my creating, dreaming and reflecting on the human experience. About time.
ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’
ChatGPT firm reveals AI model that is ‘good at creative writing’
As tech firms battle creative industries over copyright, OpenAI chief Sam Altman says he was ‘really struck’ by product’s output
The company behind ChatGPT has revealed it has developed an artificial intelligence model that is “good at creative writing”,…
www.theguardian.com
March 12, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Oh thank goodness. Now I can concentrate on being a good value-creating node and leave an AI tool to all my creating, dreaming and reflecting on the human experience. About time.
This whole 'spat' has been reported terribly from day one. This is just the latest example...
BREAKING: UK Government rejects bid to change single malt whisky definition
March 4, 2025 at 2:52 PM
This whole 'spat' has been reported terribly from day one. This is just the latest example...
Reposted by Alex Mennie
New report published today says the unregulated use of Generative AI in the UK economy will not necessarily lead to economic growth & risks damaging the UK's creative sector.
www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/ai-ip/
www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/ai-ip/
February 20, 2025 at 8:30 AM
New report published today says the unregulated use of Generative AI in the UK economy will not necessarily lead to economic growth & risks damaging the UK's creative sector.
www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/ai-ip/
www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/ai-ip/
Ack, he’s not wrong…
Newsletter: Our digital lives are unregulated growth-hacked ecological disasters. The modern tech ecosystem's growth-at-all-costs mindset is actively harming billions of people, pushing them toward authoritarianism for profit. We must fight back.
www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
Never Forgive Them
In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting wor...
www.wheresyoured.at
December 17, 2024 at 1:23 PM
Ack, he’s not wrong…
Reposted by Alex Mennie
When you're on the same judging table as two of the best master blenders of the whisky industry, you better keep up!
Claire, @menniedrinks.com and I did our best to match the expert noses and palates of the superb Craig Wallace and Maureen Robinson.
Claire, @menniedrinks.com and I did our best to match the expert noses and palates of the superb Craig Wallace and Maureen Robinson.
December 5, 2024 at 5:34 PM
When you're on the same judging table as two of the best master blenders of the whisky industry, you better keep up!
Claire, @menniedrinks.com and I did our best to match the expert noses and palates of the superb Craig Wallace and Maureen Robinson.
Claire, @menniedrinks.com and I did our best to match the expert noses and palates of the superb Craig Wallace and Maureen Robinson.
Ok. It’s time.
A host of festive recipes created, or at least collated, by yours truly are available at:
Christmas.foxandbeagle.com.
You’re welcome.
#christmas #cocktails #party #christmasisforcocktails
A host of festive recipes created, or at least collated, by yours truly are available at:
Christmas.foxandbeagle.com.
You’re welcome.
#christmas #cocktails #party #christmasisforcocktails
Christmas with Fox & Beagle – Fox & Beagle
Christmas.foxandbeagle.com
December 1, 2024 at 10:31 AM
Ok. It’s time.
A host of festive recipes created, or at least collated, by yours truly are available at:
Christmas.foxandbeagle.com.
You’re welcome.
#christmas #cocktails #party #christmasisforcocktails
A host of festive recipes created, or at least collated, by yours truly are available at:
Christmas.foxandbeagle.com.
You’re welcome.
#christmas #cocktails #party #christmasisforcocktails
I reckon he could find a way to come back from that.
November 30, 2024 at 8:59 AM
I reckon he could find a way to come back from that.
Resharing this #bartab post to celebrate the first birthday of #Mayfair’s Scales.
menniedrinks.substack.com/p/scales-may...
menniedrinks.substack.com/p/scales-may...
November 27, 2024 at 9:05 PM
Resharing this #bartab post to celebrate the first birthday of #Mayfair’s Scales.
menniedrinks.substack.com/p/scales-may...
menniedrinks.substack.com/p/scales-may...
Agreed. Horrible timing.
November 27, 2024 at 8:35 PM
Agreed. Horrible timing.
This is pretty wild. And a new front opening up in the 2024 copyright wars?!
New from me: Two influencers make very similar content promoting Amazon products. They dress the same. They buy the same stuff. They even have a similar tattoo.
Now one is suing the other, claiming her rival won't stop copying her. But who influenced whom? www.theverge.com/2024/11/26/2...
Now one is suing the other, claiming her rival won't stop copying her. But who influenced whom? www.theverge.com/2024/11/26/2...
The influencer lawsuit that could change the industry
Behind the scenes of a court battle for the “clean girl” look.
www.theverge.com
November 26, 2024 at 4:23 PM
This is pretty wild. And a new front opening up in the 2024 copyright wars?!
Surprised it’s only 6/10 that do no fact checking. Although I suppose it’s highly likely it’s a bias of self-reporting.
Online influencers need ‘urgent’ fact-checking training, warns Unesco
Online influencers need ‘urgent’ fact-checking training, warns Unesco
Research shows six in 10 social media content creators do not verify accuracy of information before posting it
Social media influencers need “urgent” help to check their facts before they broadcast to their followers, in order to reduce the spread of…
www.theguardian.com
November 26, 2024 at 3:28 PM
Surprised it’s only 6/10 that do no fact checking. Although I suppose it’s highly likely it’s a bias of self-reporting.
Well. It’s not coffee. It’s not whisky. But it is tasty. So where does Woven x Assembly fit in?
November 21, 2024 at 10:22 PM
Well. It’s not coffee. It’s not whisky. But it is tasty. So where does Woven x Assembly fit in?