the amanda show 3.9

AMERICAN KINGPIN #6

After finishing the book there is still one big question that’s on my mind, is Ross good or bad? Everyone he’s encountered, from his family and friends to a lady at a flower shop, say he was always wholesome and nice. The kind of person to help an old lady cross the street or rescue animals in his free time. His whole purpose for starting the website was to make an impact on society, like any other start up technology company. His website gave people freedom of what they put in their bodies, with no rules, regulations, or limits to what you could and couldn’t sell on the site. But this came at a price. The range of products on the site ranged from weed and mushrooms to guns, human body parts, hardcore drugs like heroine that could ruin someone’s life. He trafficked drugs, ordered for murder hits, and went against the basis of the United States government (giving him his 2 life sentences without the option of parole). I think what sums it up best, is what Judge Forest said before delivering Ross’ sentence, “There is good in you, Mr. Ulbricht, I have no doubt, but there is also bad, and what you did in connection with the Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”

#aplang19book #aplang19reading #aplang19secondary

I agree with you that the judges words do sum up how some people can have a good heart but also do things that are illegal and wrong.

Although, I still wonder ~why~ his soul mission in life was to undermine the government and try to prevail by establishing an illegal network that encouraged dangerous behavior?

#aplang19reading

Nickel and Dimed

Secondary Source #3

This ted talk talks about and debunks the popular belief that poor people are poor because of their below average work ethic. In contrast, the reason that people live in poverty is due to a lack of resources and money. This disparity makes it look like they are putting in less effort when in reality they are putting in the most.

Nickel and Dimed

Primary Source #5

In these couple pages, Barbara developed a parallel between sex trafficking and the minimum wage workforce. At first, I was confused as to how these two things could ever be related. Although, as I thought about it more it became clear to me how in this cleaning industry the person who ran the business and was in charge of all the maids had a significant amount of power over them and if they ever wanted to leave or quit they would have to go a week without pay to find another job (which would be very hard because most of them don’t have any money saved up) and they have been promised hours that would allow them to take care of their children (which was never really delivered because half the time they work over the time that they were told they would have to work). In addition, the maids yearn for the bosses approval and praise because he is the one that can give them a raise or basically make their job easier or hard.

This is similar to sex trafficking because the pimp holds things over the victims heads and manipulates them to make them want to stay. (despite the fact that even if they did want to leave they wouldn’t be allowed to.)

This cycle for people in the low-wage workforce is similar because they can rarely ever get out of it, they’re stuck living a horrible life in poverty.

#aplang19book #aplang19reading

Nickel and Dimed

Primary source #4

A repetitive injury of the spirit. I don’t know how that sounds to you, but that sounds like it came straight from the depths of depression to me. Unfortunately, I have seen people who work jobs (earning way above minimum-wage) struggle with a repetitive injury to their spirit. This feeling of numbness and helplessness is horrible in itself, just imagine also having to carry the burden of only making minimum wage and everything that comes along with that.

The second picture at the bottom talks about how when Barbara was cleaning a home she accidentally spilled dirty toilet water all over her shoes but had to work through it because she didn’t own any other pair of shoes. We can relate that back to the first picture where tunnel vision is mentioned. The only goal of many people who work for minimum-wage to support themselves (and sometimes their family) is to get the job done because that’s what’s engrained in their brains to do. It’s almost like they are drones who see that the goal is just to get to the end of the day, emotionless and oblivious to the hell that they are living in. All they know is that they have to do this to survive no matter how they feel or what the effects are.

#aplang19book #aplang19reading

Nickel and Dimed

Primary Source #3

Truly baffling. This woman who is getting paid minimum wage goes long periods of time without eating because she simply doesn’t have money. Rosalie lives with her significant other and an elderly relative and she tells Barbara that she spends $30-$50 a week on food for the three of them. Barbara admits that she spends just slightly under that just for herself for a week. The disparity between the cleaning ladies and the people who own the lavish houses that they clean is dramatic. Not to mention how shitty the maids are treated. Being malnourished basically fucks up every single aspect of your life because your energy levels are extremely low which means you are chronically tired, unproductive and probably severely depressed. The cycle of not having enough money to pay for basic necessities (like eating food) has a domino effect on a person‘s entire life.

SECONDARY SOURCE #5

I chose Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes as a secondary source, not because I’m comparing Ross to Ted Bundy, but because of the similarities I see in the law enforcement and the investigations. In the tv documentary, it shows how Bundy kept escaping law enforcement because he was constantly moving from Seattle to Utah to Colorado and Florida. And because of this, the officers weren’t communicating with one another to put the clues together and catch their common suspect. When I was watching, it definitely showed that this happened because of the lack of technology and organization in the 70s. But I noticed the same thing happening with the Silk Road case in 2013! All the different government agencies (FBI, IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency), had vital clues to catching Ross Ulbricht, including his personal email, IP address, and even some cops that interviewed him, but they wouldn’t communicate with each other to piece it together! Each agency wanted to be responsible for finding the biggest drug lord in America that they selfishly kept their information from each other. I found myself having the frustration of law enforcement messing with the investigation both while reading the book and watching this documentary.

#aplang19book #aplang19reading #aplang19secondary

Wow, you’d think that they would learn after 40 years that communication is key. While it is somewhat understandable that they would want to be the ones who busted the criminal, it’s immature and actually crazy that they wouldn’t of collaborated. Wouldn’t it be the law that they would collaborate? Like how were they able to just keep their information to themselves?

#aplang19secondary

Nickel and Dimed secondary source #2

These two graphs show the causes and affects of poverty and how hard it is to get out of its vicious cycle.

Nickel and Dimed secondary source #1

While raising her young daughter, Stephanie Land cleaned houses to scrape by. It was back-aching work and the pay — $8.55 an hour to start

In this podcast by Terry Gross on fresh air, he interviews Stephanie Land who wrote a memoir about her life living in poverty. The 35 minute podcast goes over her trials and tribulations that she had to endure post leaving her abusive boyfriend who she had a child with. She never went to college before getting pregnant so the only jobs that she could get paid very low wages she lived in homeless shelters and used, at one time, seven different government supplements. She was struggling tremendously working as a maid who got paid very little for laborous work. A point that stood out to me was that some of the government assistance made it so that there was less of an incentive to make more money, because if you made even just a little bit more money, then the amount of assistance that the government would give you could decrease. Something that I wish they talked more about would be how she eventually did go to college and how when she was in college did she have money to support her children?

#aplang19book #aplang19reading #aplang19secondary

AMERICAN KINGPIN #5

Chapter 44 particularly stood out to me. The chapter changes perspectives between Ross’s weekend camping and a 16 year old dying in Australia. These two events are totally unrelated but ironically linked together by The Silk Road. This was the first weekend that Ross got away from his job as the CEO of The Silk Road. His time away from the website being surrounded by nature rejuvenated him. But on the other side of the world, an Australian teenager tested out drugs from The Silk Road after his prom. Because of this, he ended up jumping off his hotel balcony and dying.

This was a direct result of Ross’s libertarian no rule policy on the website, which included no age limit or regulations on drug quality. The most eye opening thing to me was that when Ross got home and logged back onto the Silk Road, his employees informed him that everything went smoothly during his absence. No talk about the tragic death of a 16 year old and the blood on their hands. The only discussions were of sales and potential hacking threats. This made me realize that Ross and his employees didn’t see or care about the unseen effects of their billion dollar business.

While this does sound really bad, inconsiderate, and just plain malicious, what are you proposing that they could’ve done? Wouldn’t regulating the drugs at some coordinated site be too dangerous because of detection risks? They probably think that if the people are going to buy the drugs, then they know that they’re taking the risk that they could be laced with Fentanyl or another substance that could kill them.

#aplang19reading

Nickel and Dimed Primary Source #2

This passage from my book stood out to me because I think that it relates to my life or at least the social class that I think I reside in. The highlighted portion is what I feel is true about many middle-class Americans like me. Barbara Ehrenreich talks about how when living a low-wage life, anxiety levels heightened for her because she has been used to stability since she was very young. This experience is opening her eyes to the fact that people in poverty or who are struggling to make ends meet can have significant mental health problems and struggle with great amounts of stress because of all the different unknown variables in their life. Unknowns such as: where they will find shelter, have food, where their life will take them, or if they will ever truly be happy or satisfied with their life of constant uncertainty.

Nickel and Dimed

Primary Source #1

In case you’re wondering, it’s pink and orange bc I like it that way. The reason that I picked this book was initially because of a conversation that I had with someone who told me that if anyone works hard enough they will be able to make it out of low-wage America. They told me that minimum wage should not be increased because the main purpose of minimum-wage jobs is to supply teenagers with some extra money during high school and the rest of the people are just people who didn’t work hard enough to not have to work those jobs. I responded with we (both me and the person that I am having this conversation with) have been born into a situation where we never have to worry where our food or clothing or shelter will come from because of the security (money) that has been passed down from generation to generation. Our starting conditions, as stated above, are everything. While it has been proven that people can rise up from the deepest depths of poverty and still be successful, it is unfathomable how taxing and difficult it is to get yourself out of a place of hardship and insecurity to a place of prosperity and safety when there is no assistance granted to you. Like Barbara talks about above, she started this experiment with $1,300. That amount of money is something that some people can only dream of being able to save. Even for some people who relentlessly work their asses off with two part-time jobs, taking care of children, etc., with the hope that their efforts wont be in vain, that sum is still so far out of reach that they will never be able to make it out.

AMERICAN KINGPIN #2

This passage reveals Ross’ purpose behind The Silk Road. Ross didn’t care about the large generation of wealth he was acquiring and he didn’t need easy access to some hard drug he was addicted too. He created The Silk Road to make a point to the United States government, further his libertarian views, and make his family proud (although in an unusual and definitely illegal way). The driving forces behind his website surprised me because it isn’t exactly normal to create the largest drug smuggling website just to laugh at the government. But in my mind, his reasons for starting the website kind of justified his illegal behavior. It just expresses the idea that he isn’t some crazy, murdering drug lord, but a normal guy who knows how to code.

Did Ross have any relation to drug problems or addictions in his family history or anything like that? While I applaud him for his hard work and obvious intelligence, I’m confused as to what his motive was to initiate something that could have potentially ruined his life if he would’ve gotten caught. Why was he so invested in trying to further his libertarian views? Why did he want drugs to be legalized completely in all of America? What benefit would that have given him or, in his opinion, done for the country?

Making small talk with your pot dealer sucks. Buying cocaine can get you shot. What if you could buy and sell drugs online like books or lig

SECONDARY #1

This was the 1st article written about the Silk Road after its creation in 2011. It’s about the ease of buying drugs that the website provides. This article was mentioned numerous times in American KingPin because it brought the website to the public and this is how it got onto the radar of not only major media sites, but the governments.

#aplang19book #aplang19reading

2011, dang this boi is old. The author of this article must have some kind of superhuman nerve to actually post this. He must of known the kind of attention it would draw and then everyone would know that he was the dumbass that publicized it. I would be scared that some scary thug of a prominent drug lord would kill me in my sleep. People should know that you don’t mess with Mexicans. Lol, maybe I just watch too much Ozark on Netflix! In reality though, do we know what happened to this guy? Is he still alive??

AMERICAN KINGPIN #1

As I read the first couple chapters of American Kingpin, I was surprised by the layout that Nick Bilton chose. The book is about the making of The Silk Road (not the ancient trade route, the drug website), the rise of the website, and the government hunt to find the curator behind it all. I assumed it would be in chronological order, but the author made another choice.

Some books are set up in chronological order, switching the POV each chapter, or the occasional flashback. This book has all 3. At the start of the book, the author tells you what happens in the end, who gets caught, and the effect of it all. Some chapters are from the POV of Ross, the mastermind behind the website, and others are from the POV of government officials and TSA agents gaining knowledge of the website. And each chapter varies in when it took place. I’ve found that this chapter layout has really pulled me in as a reader. As soon as Ross’ story about struggling to find a job gets boring, it will switch to a TSA agent discovering drugs. Also since the reader already knows what is going to happen in the end, the anticipation of how the story will play out grows.

This book sounds very compelling!!! I definitely wouldn’t have guessed that it is non-fiction. The layout that you described reminds me of a trilogy with the fist book being “Legend,” it also switches perspectives from chapter to chapter. (This is one of my favorite books ever - it’s science fiction- definitely read it if you’re looking for a new book!) I’m glad that you’re enjoying it and am excited to see what you learn about the ~secret~ drug industry while you read American Kingpin!