2023, book 4: Heart of dankness: underground botanists, outlaw farmers, and the race for the cannabis cup, Mark Haskell Smith

It's your typical "I'm gonna write a semi-journalistic memoir about something I know little about" thing. There's some vague thread of trying to understand the meaning of the word "dank" in the context of weed, but that idea seems largely forgotten two chapters in and only gets brought up again once or twice, when the author's mind appears to wander off for no good reason, other than, hey, this guy was probably high three quarters of the time he "researched" and wrote this crap. Enjoy some of the more ridiculous bits with my sarcastic commentary.

[...] 125 million hectoliters of beer a year. I don't really know what that means, because I suck at ciphering and other mathematical endeavors, so I asked world-renowned mathematician Dr. Steven Wegmann to break it down for me.

There then follows a paragraph explaining the goddamn' metric system. I'm not sure what's more galling here: He doesn't understand the metric system. He can't be assed to look it up himself. He has to ask a professor of mathematics at Berkeley, of all people, like this is some purported proof to the Riemann Hypothesis. He proudly proclaims he is terrified by arithmetic. I can't even. What college and high school graduated this clown? Seventy pages later this idiot writes "Just the mention of mathematics made my eyes glaze over." Why are you so proud of this? Do you think this makes you more relatable? You just sound like an ignorant moron, which, it strikes me, is exactly the opposite of the image you want if you want to have your book about weed taken even a little bit seriously.

From my experience at the Cup I can honestly say I didn't see any vote rigging.

Wow, really? You were high off your ass all the time, and even if you'd been sober the Cannabis Cup as you've described it is a big ol' disorganized mess going on all over the inner city of Amsterdam. How exactly did your keen detective senses allow you to supervise the event?

"Marijuana in California is [...] likely the largest value crop (by far) in the state's lineup, and it is perhaps the single largest commodity produced in California, including tourism."

Admittedly, Mark didn't write this bullshit himself. He's quoting Peter Goin's Field Guide to California Agriculture. However, does that statistic sound right? And how can something be "likely" and "by far" at the same time? Thirty seconds of research reveals that, no, of course it's not the largest crop. Even in 2021 (ten years after this book was published) weed accounted for around 5 billion dollars (the most generous estimate—other sources have it as low as 1 billion), trailing dairy and grapes, and being just about tied with almonds. Tourism, meanwhile, is sitting pretty at around 130 billion.

[Silvio Berlusconi] is apparently no stranger to weed, wine, and teenage hookers. I may not like his politics, but, let's face it, the dude knows how to party.

Really, Mark? That's the thing you thought to say about him? That a guy who sleeps with teenage prostitutes "knows how to party"? How high were you when you wrote this?

In order to graduate from Oaksterdam, students are required to take an SAT-like exam.

In what particular way this exam was "SAT-like" is left unspecified. It makes you wonder whether Mark has ever actually taken an exam. Or a class of any kind. Or gone to school. He seems genuinely upset that "the questions were specific and annoyingly technical"—though I suppose for Mark that would mean that one of them contained an Arabic numeral or something. If it's not clear by now: I would have hated Mark in college. He was undoubtedly the kind of student that whined about his physics for poets or rocks for jocks classes. Scratch that: I hate this idiot right now.

[...] the differences between Plto and Aristotle and current theories circulating in the psychiatric world about pain and pleasure. The gist of the former was over my head, [...]

Of for fuck's sake. Even here he's apparently proud of his ignorance.

Round up of some other idiocies: a "broodje" is not a toastie; "muisjes" are not "hagelslag"; the botany bits are embarrassingly bad (and, no, some bro without a degree growing weed is not a "geneticist"—though, who knows, maybe they're all geniuses who, like, understand the metric system!), the landstrain bullshit is the kind of new-age crap you'd expect but is still inexcusable; the bit where he wanders around downtown Toronto and is too stupid to understand that seeing a bunch of people in Rush T-shirts means there's probably a concert nearby ("I was on the verge of a panic attack. What did these people want? Where were they going?" Jesus. Fucking. Christ.); Aaron sounds like a fucking asshole and Mark fails to call him out on it and quotes the guy extensively (including "bro"s at the end of all his sentences) for some reason.

Anyway. Should you read this? No, of course not. Is it amusing at times? Sure. Does that outweigh the frustration brought on by the sheer idiocy? No, it doesn't. It's a bloody miracle I finished this.