I enjoyed the Cracked article from way, way back when. (#5 at [1]).
> Eventually the rivets shot out of the tank, unleashing a 15-foot tall tidal wave that covered Boston, providing residents with a valuable look at what a melted Stay-Puft would have really done to New York at the end of Ghostbusters.
"The bankruptcy judge acknowledged that the Sacklers had moved money to offshore accounts to protect it from claims, and he said he wished the settlement had been higher."
Wished... Indeed... Only an act of God could have stopped them surely.
> Instead of paying billions of dollars to opioid victims and states, Purdue will stay in limbo and pay hundreds of millions of dollars to lawyers.
> [...]
> The problem is ... well, one problem is that fairness is sometimes the enemy of pragmatism; letting the Sacklers keep billions and avoid litigation might be the only way to get them to pay billions
That quote sounds like the opinion of someone who wants to be bought off, rather than someone who wants the same kind of accountability that the rest of us are expected to have.
That’s what I heard. They have billions therefore they can pay billions. Purposefully complicating that logic so that they somehow end up keeping more money is an instant red flag.
My late father told me the story of how he was coming home from school in Detroit during prohibition. Agents had just busted a warehouse full of kegs of beer.
As was the practice at the time they'd use an axe to chop into the barrel to empty the contents. He said the entire street was a river full of beer!
If you have ever been to London you will know the vicinity of the incident and appreciate how much the city has changed.
It was at the end of Oxford Street where it meets Tottenham Court Road. Considerable investment in the Thameslink underground station has gone on there recently. There is also the Centrepoint Tower. The streetscape is a world away from having breweries with product left to mature for a year in vast vats. Also having slums. If you had one of those original slum houses in that spot today, you could sell it and never work again.
In this story there is good and bad in terms of how our inner cities have changed. Actual industry in the city centre is quaint but I imagine the air quality - that area is nowadays some of the worst in the UK - was no better.