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My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

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Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#81

Post by probablyfiction »

Zikes wrote: post #35
karl_gluck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference really necessary?

Can't a person make a point that just happens to involve Nazis without someone invoking "Godwin's Law"? It's like just because someone slapped a label on a thing we're not allowed to do the thing anymore. We need an "Anti-Godwin's Law" that states no mention of Nazis or Hitler can be made on the internet without someone inevitably invoking Godwin's Law.

Apparently we've reached peak Godwin, everyone. Knock it off.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#82

Post by bduerst »

untog wrote: post #52
rottencupcakes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an absurd statement by the author. These people were interviewing for an apartment in a notoriously tough housing market - they were probably just "posturing" (mentioning their good jobs and money) because they thought it would help them get the apartment. He sounds like an outlier of a landlord who prefers a sketchy semi-employed roommate to one with a guaranteed salary.

He's not really a landlord if he's looking for a roommate. I mean, technically he is, obviously, but it's not a traditional landlord - tenant relationship when you're living in the apartment together. And I'm not sure in what world talking up how much money you make or the vacations you take would endear you to a potential roommate - it'll just make you sound pompous.

SF is one of those worlds. The rental market is intense, and people look for many ways to stand out. It looks like it worked for this case, just that it's not what they wanted in a roommate.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#83

Post by dhimes »

forgottenpass wrote: post #41
karl_gluck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference really necessary?

Godwin's law is rubbish. The Nazis are a strongly and consistently disavowed extreme group. They're a perfect tool when you need to cut across cultures and remove any chance of ambiguity. Their actions so despicable that comparing X performing Y1 to the Nazis performing Y2 is a good tool for reasoning about Y itself and the difference between Y1 and Y2.

That's why Godwin's law is pretty much not rubbish. Compare to, say, Himes' law:

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Corvairs approaches 1"

This law, as best as I can determine, is rubbish.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#84

Post by dublinben »

andrewpi wrote: post #63
dublinben wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were probably angling for the conviction to be overturned on appeal. There was almost no chance of getting a "not guilty" verdict in this situation.

Ineffective assistance of counsel is a very difficult appeal to win.

I doubt that would be the question of law the appeal hinged on, but some of the procedural issues with the case. The government never fully explained how the evidence abroad was legally located or acquired, which could unravel the entire case.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#85

Post by hapless »

calbear81 wrote: post #74
untog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not really a landlord if he's looking for a roommate. I mean, technically he is, obviously, but it's not a traditional landlord - tenant relationship when you're living in the apartment together. And I'm not sure in what world talking up how much money you make or the vacations you take would endear you to a potential roommate - it'll just make you sound pompous.

In a world where roommates don't always pay their rent on time and in turn screw you because now you have to cover since they're not on the lease. Vetting a roommates's ability to pay rent is not unreasonable.

Ross Ulbricht did skip out on the rent, after all.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#86

Post by Lawtonfogle »

lectrick wrote: post #80
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really victimless? I'll admit that for something like pot, that is responsibly grown and used, there is no victims (well maybe with second hand smoke, but you get that just as much from cigarettes). But many drugs being sold do not come responsible producers. Instead, they come from groups that cause a lot of harm in order to acquire the money from selling those drugs. Yes, legalizing responsible production wou…

> Instead, they come from groups that cause a lot of harm in order to acquire the money from selling those drugs. Yes, legalizing responsible production would largely fix this problem, but a current purchase still funds a horrible group. So basically, to rephrase, the existence of the law is what makes the law necessary. It's almost tautological. IF it were treated as a public health problem (Portugal apparently did…

>So basically, to rephrase, the existence of the law is what makes the law necessary. It's almost tautological.

Not quite. The law against production is what makes the law against buying and selling more relevant. What makes the law against production and sales relevant is different reasoning (I am neither defending nor attacking that reasoning as that would be a long discussion either way). I wouldn't consider it tautological nor circular reasoning, but it is stacked, and if you were to legalize production, that reason for the ban on selling and buying would no longer apply. The stacked reasons, now without their base, would no longer be supported.

Are there other reasons, especially for certain drugs that are more dangerous? Maybe (once again, it would be a long discussion if they are justified or not).

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#87

Post by cgag »

karl_gluck wrote: post #30
runjake wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually every niche of society considers others of their kind as eloquent, optimistic, and down-to-earth. This is a common perception in a group of people with shared passions. From artists, techies, to politicians and even Nazi Germany.

Wow, Godwin's law struck hard and fast. Was that reference really necessary?

Pointless thought-terminating cliches brought in hard and fast, was invoking that "law" really necessary?

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#88

Post by msandford »

Retra wrote: post #69
msandford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's kind-of the point though. The government guy could have said "Hey look I think this guy is going to go to the feds and we're all going to go to jail! Give me the money and I'll take care of this problem. If you don't, I'm going to come after you because I'm not going to go to jail for this." At that point, a person might not feel that they have any choice. And the government gets to claim that "he ordere…

That's a terrible argument. Imagine you just made that threat to me. I will say "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds." And now you're almost assuredly going to jail, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place. This is a quick way to stick yourself in an impossible-to-win situation and violate everyone's trust. Anyway, the 'government guy' happened to keep records of what w…

> "No. And if you come after me, I will just turn you in to the feds."

Ok so you're going to turn the other guy in to the feds for what exactly? How do you know this other guy? Why would him turning you in to the feds be a problem, unless you're doing something illegal?

DPR: He this guy is doing something bad, arrest him!

Feds: How do you know he's doing something bad?

DPR: Well I run the Silk Road and he told me that if we didn't do something about this other guy, that HE was going to turn us in to you!

Feds: Oh, okay well now you're definitely going to jail.

So your clever arrangement whereby you're going to use the feds to get the guy threatening you to go to jail has now fallen flat on its face, because now you're both going to jail. Which is the thing that you were both trying to avoid in the first place.

Why is the drug trade so violent? Because it exists outside the law and thus there's no one to arbitrate disputes (legally) and so people have to find their own resolution. Hence killing.

Re: My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord

#89

Post by hkmurakami »

api wrote: post #21

"I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy." As an aside, that's a sad little bit of commentary on the tech sce…

Modern day Silicon Valley is Wall Street's younger brother. The exact manifestations may differ, but the underlying psychology is analogous.

This isn't even necessarily "bad" objectively (though it could be bad subjectively depending on who you are). It's just how it is now.

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