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WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
shakahislop said:
open air drugs markets are something I don't think I've ever seen in England, or even heard of ever exisiting, maybe others will correct me. Don't think they exist in NYC anymore, but I saw one very obviously in Baltimore. and then I think we've covered what california is like on here before.
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would you appreciate a tour?

I use appreciate because you’ve fully assimilated into the US without seeing your own country fully beforehand
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
WashYourHands said:
would you appreciate a tour?

I use appreciate because you’ve fully assimilated into the US without seeing your own country fully beforehand
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i've honestly never seen it anywhere i've lived in the uk, and i've never heard anyone refer to it. totally believe you if you say its a thing though, i know you know.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
There are at least two places in Lisbon where you can roll up and buy hard drugs... a system with look-outs and then the man with the thing a bit like The Wire - is that what you mean?
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Somone on, er, Twitter made the point that what we're watching at the moment is actually the testing-to-destruction of the idea that the ultra-rich are as rich as they are because they're uniquely brilliant business visionaries and not just because they're gamblers who got lucky that one time. And currently it doesn't seem to be going well for team billionaire.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
the one i saw in baltimore was - quite unsurprisingly - exactly like what they show in the wire (not hamsterdam, all the other bits). probably shouldn't have bee in that part of town but in my defense it was 11am. the thing i found surprising is that it was so blatant. its not like it was some random estate on the edge of town, it was just out of the city center.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
shakahislop said:
the one i saw in baltimore was - quite unsurprisingly - exactly like what they show in the wire (not hamsterdam, all the other bits). probably shouldn't have bee in that part of town but in my defense it was 11am. the thing i found surprising is that it was so blatant. its not like it was some random estate on the edge of town, it was just out of the city center.
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Well in Lisbon, like i say, there are two, probably more in fact, but two that I know of. One of them is right near Martim Moniz which is one of the major central squares. It's just round the corner from one of Lisbon's biggest police stations which is kind of amazing. The way it works is the actual seller is up a narrow alley amongst a warren of alleys and they have look-outs at all the entrances to that bit who can see quite far, like they will be able to give a warning when the police are minutes away I imagine, if they shout then the guy can escape into this maze of alleys, and, I reckon, into several of the houses there. I dunno how much they have on them but presumably there is some thought there about carrying below the limit for certain categories of crimes - though it does always look to me as though they have an awful lot so maybe they are so confident they can't be caught they can ignore that. I find it quite interesting to think about how they do this and why it is so difficult for the police to stop them. There are loads of airbnbs and stuff nearby, I wouldn't be surprised if that ends up being a bigger problem and that spot gets gentrified out of existence eventually. Or at least has to move to a new location.

The other one is out of town on an estate, that is a bit more... ghetto, it's kind of the bottom of a tower block and (I've heard) that they sort of place makeshift barricades and screens on the stairs up to the doorway to hide things from prying eyes and just to slow down anyone who might approach. As far as I can tell the whole tower block (even group of towers) act as look-outs and the guy who is selling waits at the bottom of one of the blocks in the entrance bit out of sight from the street. If the police come then they get ample warning and just melt away before they get anywhere near, I guess they only have a small amount on them at any time (sometimes they even have nothing and they go fetch the order) and they can hide in any flat in the tower - I wonder if it's even possible for police to get a search warrant for every flat. There are a lot of police who go there, but as far as I've seen they don't try and get the dealers, they just grab anyone walking out of the estate and search them, and there is a sort of side road which is parallel to the main road but under the tower blocks and sometimes they just park at the end of the road and stop anyone driving down it and search them.

Again it's fascinating to think how they make it work. Sort of like an intellectual exercise to think about how you might do it.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Musk now looks like a man playing whack-a-mole really badly, desperately hitting out at random and always too late.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Zoë Schiffer reports that "Twitter just alerted employees that effective immediately, all office buildings are temporarily closed and badge access is suspended." The reason, she says, is because "Elon Musk and his team are terrified employees are going to sabotage the company."
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Would anyone notice?
 
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