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A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

bloomberg.com

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Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#12

Post by vmurthy »

From the story: "It gets to the point that it’s not about being high, it’s about not being sick". That's scary!

Of course,I don't see the point of using Boeing in the headline. Robberies notwithstanding, the problems of addiction would have been the same for any one else, too.

Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#14

Post by archi42 »

xfitm3 wrote: post #9

if(headline =~ " Boeing ") sensationalize++;

tbh, I think that "engineer at a big company" is not that unimportant: That guy started to fall from a high point, he had already achieved something and, if it wasn't for his addiction, this story wouldn't have happened; it's not like he had no future to begin with.

Maybe s/Boing/huge tech company/, but then it would be quite cumbersome, wouldn't it?

Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#15

Post by Angostura »

vmurthy wrote: post #12

From the story: "It gets to the point that it’s not about being high, it’s about not being sick". That's scary! Of course,I don't see the point of using Boeing in the headline. Robberies notwithstanding, the problems of addiction would have been the same for any one else, too.

Boeing engineer = "he was smart, he had achieved things with his life, he was a professional" - and yet it happened to him.

Economical headline writing.

Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#16

Post by waltwalther »

mapcars wrote: post #3

What a story!

I second that. I would buy this man's book. Too bad it was all lost. I hope he rewrites it. I bought Clay Tumey's book after reading about him on reddit. He's another non-violent bank robber. Good story there also, except his wasnt a heroin addiction.

Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#18

Post by tomhoward »

david-s wrote: post #6
Aardwolf wrote: post #4

"A heroin addiction fueled a former Boeing engineer’s, 30-bank robbery spree" Off topic, but I don't understand why the comma is there? Is there some English language rule dictating this one?

the original title has "yearlong, 30-bank" there. "yearlong" has been removed for some reason, but the comma remains

It'd be because the original title exceeded the 80-char limit, so the submitter tried to condense it.

Re: A heroin addiction fueled a former engineer’s bank robbery spree

#19

Post by daniel-cussen »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #17

Opiates sound hellish and indiscriminatory. My question is are the drugs themselves to blame, or BigPharma who uses them with/without the knowledge of their pharmacological effects in the short and long term?

It leads me to use "addict" as a transitive verb.

As in, "Purdue Pharma knowingly addicted millions of Americans to opioids."

(As an aside, in Spanish at least "suicide" is also a transitive verb in some cases, as in "The Roman emperor suicided the senator." This was because in Rome emperors would knowingly and deliberately create circumstances (credible threats for instance) that would leave the victim with effectively no choice but to do what many others in the same situation would do).

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