4 ms·

I worked at a rehab, and every 'career' drug dealer I've ever met would say the author is more into writing about drugs than knowing about them. No one makes a

I worked at a rehab, and every 'career' drug dealer I've ever met would say the author is more into writing about drugs than knowing about them. No one makes a living selling drugs by being fussy about their customers and their hours (just as no one in this story is a "serious" drug dealer.)

sumthinprofound 5y ago
Especially considering prime business hours are late nights and weekends.
nextaccountic 5y ago
How is this particular author famous among drug dealers?
- bschne 5y ago
  I think the point was that anyone familiar with the scene/business would readily infer that from the text, not that they knew the specific author.
np_tedious 5y ago
I think there's a disconnect her between retail and the dealers who sell to dealers
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Tenoke 5y ago
>No one makes a living selling drugs by being fussy about their customers and their hours Not true. There are many operations - most obviously tg group based ones - with specific hours and customer requirements (at minimum a solid reference by a current customer). It's perhaps still more common to not be too picky but definitely not by all.
- herbst 5y ago
  A few years ago this was the exact situation I had with my cannabis dealer. - he had fixed opening hours, 3 days per week. - changing but legally rented locations - only access was trough recommendations and only every 3 months or so It was an exceptional well done operation. However it was cannabis exclusive and Switzerland is not too strict about these things in general. The reason it stopped was not even related to the illegal activiy
bogota 5y ago
Just yet another reason i dropped the economist. Over the last year i noticed articles getting continuously worse. And every time it was an article I had deep background in such as politics in latam or crypto currency’s the articles were easily to prove factually false. If the articles i did have deep understanding of are wrong i can no longer trust the publication. It seems to me they are more interested in propaganda than publishing news now.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Any newspaper or magazine article will be deficient if you have deep background knowledge about the topic at hand. You mustn't compare a newspaper article to the Platonic ideal of articles, but to the existing alternatives. What paper do you recommend with the breadth and wit of The Economist?
  - Aditya_Garg 5y ago
    It’s okay for an article to be slightly vague or not in depth. It’s not okay for it to be factually wrong. It’s better to not read it at all at that point
    - FabHK 5y ago
      But that is not true. When learning a field, you must first learn the terminology. Then the big picture and general rules of thumb. Then the details and exceptions. If an article can convey some of the former, you're smarter than before. Not as smart as an expert, of course! But how can one short article turn you into an expert? That is an unreasonable goal. Every summary of a complex topic will contain and gloss over some factual errors. Take, for example, an article explaining big-O notation and conveying that sorting can't be faster than O(n log n). Now, you, as an expert, say, "Well, that's not true, that only applies to algorithms with pairwise comparison; we can do better if the domain is very restricted and known a priori, etc. etc.". Fair enough. But still better than not having read the article. In fact, I think that The Economist does exceptionally well on that front. It will introduce a topic to you, outline the major questions/developments/points of contention, summarised from talking to several experts, and then often (quite opinionated) give a verdict. You should not take it as gospel, obviously, but it would often reflect the consensus of the experts (of a certain school, sure), but also give you enough background and opposing positions that you can do your own research to dive deeper if you so wish.

sumthinprofound 5y ago

Especially considering prime business hours are late nights and weekends.

nextaccountic 5y ago

How is this particular author famous among drug dealers?

bschne 5y ago
I think the point was that anyone familiar with the scene/business would readily infer that from the text, not that they knew the specific author.

np_tedious 5y ago

I think there's a disconnect her between retail and the dealers who sell to dealers

deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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Tenoke 5y ago

>No one makes a living selling drugs by being fussy about their customers and their hours Not true. There are many operations - most obviously tg group based ones - with specific hours and customer requirements (at minimum a solid reference by a current customer). It's perhaps still more common to not be too picky but definitely not by all.

herbst 5y ago
A few years ago this was the exact situation I had with my cannabis dealer. - he had fixed opening hours, 3 days per week. - changing but legally rented locations - only access was trough recommendations and only every 3 months or so It was an exceptional well done operation. However it was cannabis exclusive and Switzerland is not too strict about these things in general. The reason it stopped was not even related to the illegal activiy

bogota 5y ago

Just yet another reason i dropped the economist. Over the last year i noticed articles getting continuously worse. And every time it was an article I had deep background in such as politics in latam or crypto currency’s the articles were easily to prove factually false. If the articles i did have deep understanding of are wrong i can no longer trust the publication. It seems to me they are more interested in propaganda than publishing news now.

FabHK 5y ago
Any newspaper or magazine article will be deficient if you have deep background knowledge about the topic at hand. You mustn't compare a newspaper article to the Platonic ideal of articles, but to the existing alternatives. What paper do you recommend with the breadth and wit of The Economist?
- Aditya_Garg 5y ago
  It’s okay for an article to be slightly vague or not in depth. It’s not okay for it to be factually wrong. It’s better to not read it at all at that point
  - FabHK 5y ago
    But that is not true. When learning a field, you must first learn the terminology. Then the big picture and general rules of thumb. Then the details and exceptions. If an article can convey some of the former, you're smarter than before. Not as smart as an expert, of course! But how can one short article turn you into an expert? That is an unreasonable goal. Every summary of a complex topic will contain and gloss over some factual errors. Take, for example, an article explaining big-O notation and conveying that sorting can't be faster than O(n log n). Now, you, as an expert, say, "Well, that's not true, that only applies to algorithms with pairwise comparison; we can do better if the domain is very restricted and known a priori, etc. etc.". Fair enough. But still better than not having read the article. In fact, I think that The Economist does exceptionally well on that front. It will introduce a topic to you, outline the major questions/developments/points of contention, summarised from talking to several experts, and then often (quite opinionated) give a verdict. You should not take it as gospel, obviously, but it would often reflect the consensus of the experts (of a certain school, sure), but also give you enough background and opposing positions that you can do your own research to dive deeper if you so wish.