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What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#22

What's the point of posting a link to an article that a significant fraction of the public will not be able to read? Wouldn't it be better to create a précis and post that instead?

Or you could spend the money to read it. I'm starting to feel like the people who complain about the poor quality of media and aggressive advertising are part of the problem by refusing to pay for content when it is offered to them in an up-front way. As if the entire world is entitled to open access to journalism. Or that paying for news hasn't been how publishers operated for hundreds of years.

Making snotty, leading assumptions about people complaining about bait-and-switch links is a poor way to make one's point. Perhaps you actually do subscribe to literally every site with links posted here; I'm going to guess that most regulars here don't.

I actually do not mind links I can't hit being posted here, where it shows the domain the link goes to. That's as good as a '[paywalled]' indicator.

I do really hate it elsewhere where you can't tell before hovering the link, and think they should be optionally excludable from search engine searches, or at the very least tagged as such - I'm did not search for "media subscription pages".

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#23

What's the point of posting a link to an article that a significant fraction of the public will not be able to read? Wouldn't it be better to create a précis and post that instead?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#25
post #9

Quick answer: They sell them at around 10% value on the black market, or use them as bargaining chips if they're arrested for other crimes. Clickbait titles leading to long fluffy non-answer pieces can do one.

Would this be a better title? "Art Thieves Usually Sell Stolen Art on the Black Market for ~10% of Market Value" edit: I think I'd be more inclined to click this title than the original.

Honestly it doesn't even need to be that. In the ideal world they'd write the title in a way that makes it look like an interesting read, don't try to trick me into clicking. It doesn't neccesarily have to have the info in the title, I know they've got folks to pay and that.

A question title? I'll always try to answer it in the comments if I've got the time. I find it funny to do so, and it helps others.

Question titles are just lazy journalism, then to go on to ask for money to read the article. Haha. No.

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#26
post #17
post #7

A lot of big ticket stolen art is used as collateral for other illegal transactions. Everyone knows it's worthless because you can't unload it. But it shows you are a really good criminal.

Wouldn't that be more of a proof of concept than collateral?

A resume I would say ;)

Re: What Do You Do with a Stolen van Gogh?

#28
post #19

You make a style transfer on a photo of 1880. Use the paint of the original van Gogh to paint the styletransfer result. Bring it to the Van Gogh museum and let them authenticate it as the real deal.

You know that paint dries right? How do you plan on rehydrating it?
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