291–300 of 567 posts
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"No cut" is reasonable, but also "Some cut" is reasonable. However while arguing that "no cut" should be mandatory is reasonable, given that "no cut" would itself be reasonable, it is probably not pragmatic. Therefore in order to best support this kind of thing one should determine exactly how much "some cut" should be.
Isn't this largely just a one off situation that happened to work out? I doubt there will be legions of prisoners working remotely. If that future did come to be, it would be rather dystopian imo.
Somewhat relieved to see that this is the drugs prison guy, and not one of the two pedo prison guys who sometimes post on HN with their fake sob stories pretending to be hard done to while concealing their depravity. In contrast I'm glad to see this guy has been open and honest, owning up to his mistakes and starting to turn his life around and make amends for the harm he's caused others. Well done. Edit: Please disr…
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Sorry, but this is a disgusting take. Addiction is well established as an illness. It's outright shameful to suggest that someone who is going through recovery is purely doing it as a grift. What you're suggesting is that we can't trust that rehabilitation is possible or reasonable, which is a deeply cruel prospect.
Theyre in prison as a punishment for crimes
Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit. For those who don't want to hit Google, the conviction was for possessing 30g of a synthetic opioid "U-47700". A normal dose is ~1mg, 10mg can be deadly (so this was 30000 trips or killing 3000). The drug became illegal across the US on November 14, 2016. "Police said they found the drug in Thorpe’s apartment in Manchester in December 201…
Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. Even if the amount implied dealing, that still seems really high. Don't people typically get less than that for sexual assault or armed robbery?
The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute.
High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses.
It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.
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The vast vast majority of DV complaints are unsubstantiated, so speaking to the wife is generally a poor predictor of whether the presumption of innocence will be overcome.
DV is a very complex legal minefield. I have years of working with defendants. I would say that a majority of DV complaints are valid in some way, and that many times the DV goes both ways (but it's rarer for the woman to get charged, even if the instigator). The biggest issue is that once the perpetrator is removed and/or charged the victim often petitions the prosecutor and police to drop the charges. The prosecuto…
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I'd like to see him get life in prison with no chance at parole. He's responsible for at least three deaths (probably more) but because he's proficient at social engineering and feeding people lines he's weaseled his way into the tech industry (from prison!). Over 78k people died in 2023 of fentanyl alone and this twerp was trafficking a substance far more lethal, he literally left a trail of bodies in his wake. http…
While tragic, those people (or at least the vast majority) weren't forced to use drugs. They made that decision and faced the consequences. Shifting the blame for their poor decisions onto the drug dealer is unwarranted imo.
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I don't know. If you are in posession of enough of a controlled substance to kill 300 people I'm kind of okay with a drastic response. For every Preston Thorpe who turns their life around there 100s of others who will just go out and keep endangering lives like this. I think this is a nuanced topic and 10-30 years is too much for drug possession is entirely lacking the necessary nuance to evaluate. Comparison to othe…
"enough of a controlled substance to kill" is an absurd, inflammatory metric. They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone. He shouldn't be in prison, period.
In general, high-potency opioids are cut (diluted) with other powders and then sold as a different product to unsuspecting buyers.
Most fentanyl overdoses are from people who thought they were consuming a different, more familiar opioid. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like this one are preferred by drug dealers because it's much easier to smuggle a tiny amount of powder and cut it 1000X than to smuggle the real product.
It's nearly impossible for amateurs to properly dilute a powder like this, so the end product has a lot of "hot spots" that lead to overdose.
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One of the most baffling elements of the justice system is how little the victim is involved in the justice. 'Society' should not lord the lion's share of the justice decisions over the victims. Quite often the victim would prefer compensation and release over getting fuck all while the perpetrator languages in prison at the tax dollar of the victim. Much of 'justice' has been usurped from the victim into a jobs camp…
There are (institutional, complicated, well-ordered) civil and criminal systems elsewhere in the world where victims are much more directly involved in sentencing and punishment, and you probably wouldn't want to live in one.