Open Thread - Thurs 05 Feb 2026 - Things are Getting So Weird!
Things are Getting So Weird
Maybe this is 'just' me getting old, but it seems to me that things are changing and getting weirder every day. Even simple things, like avoiding online/email/internet scams. I was around, and using computers, big huge mainframe computers, when the internet started to develop from Darpanet. I was the first student in my graduate department to use a computer, I was one of the first to have a desktop computer (it was like, 1981, I think. Dad got it for me for fun). I was one of the first to use Linux, in fact I started with something like Redhat 1.0 and Gnome 0.3. Point is I've got a pretty good background in computers, internet, detecting phishing, scams, and all kinds of other things. I've never been scammed, and because I've used Linux for so long, I'm not really aware of all the scams happening.
The Basics, I think we all know them. (From rmonnetworks.com)
Early last month I ordered about $3k worth of sheets and bedding from a reputable store - a store I've ordered from via catalog, phone, and online shopping for 20 - 30 years. I ordered online. The order was processed, my credit card info was taken, I was given a receipt and an order number and a link to a webpage with all that info, just like had happened many times before. Good. My order was going to be delivered a week or so after I made it, according to that webpage and receipt. But nothing happened, at all. I thought, well, part of the order is due in 14 days (later than the rest) so I'll wait to see if it's all going to come in one huge package. That date passed, nothing happened. No changes on the webpage, no email contact, nothing. I figured I would call the store about it early this week.
Late last week I got an email supposedly from a large well-known entirely trustworthy company (not my store) with a subject that said 'Big Company USA, INC DBA smaller Store Sales Order #' and it gave my sales order number. The actual email address that the email was sent from had apparently nothing to do with either the large company or the smaller store. Supposedly the store hadn't been able to charge my credit card in time (because of their delays) so they needed me to give them my credit card number again. Via a phone number given in the email. Ohh and it had a copy of the original receipt, as a pdf, attached to the email.
Immediately warnings and caution filled my head. Everything about this email seemed like a scam. So, I thought to explore everything very carefully, and do nothing online with the store and emailing person. First I checked my credit card. Surprisingly, the store had not charged it. Then I checked both the store and large company via duckduckgo search and found, also very surprisingly, that the store had recently been bought by the large company. Hmmm. So then I got the store's phone number from their own catalog - not from the email, and called. And yes, the store and company have joined, yes, the weird email address was legit as it was from the people helping join the two systems and yes, they needed my credit card number to finish the order. Sheez!!! They upped my shipment type and my told me my order would be here in a day or two, and it WAS!!.
How can we know how to keep our financial stuff, our online presence, and everything else safe if this kind of thing happens legitimately? No wonder people get scammed if legit institutions do this!
And yea, that ended up being a good story, for once, I'm glad of that 
.
Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!
Comments
Happy Thursday!
Hope everything is good with everyone. Have you ever had trouble with spam emails? Whatcha do about them?
And whatcha doing today? We are getting more dry weather, so we might work outside. Woo Hoo! Hope your upcoming weekend is good! Let us know what's up!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Well, good morning
.
$3k for sheets? Unimaginable. I must be missing something. I can see
spending $30 for sheets and pillow cases, although it would be way down
the list necessities. Glad you were not scammed. My default has become
a distrust in just about everything. Call me jaded, but do not understand the
moral fiber of
hustlersthieves.Thanks for the OT.
Zionism is a social disease
Yep $3K
But this includes bedding too, as in down comforters and down bed-tops. Very European, but I fell in love with the European style of bedding back when I was about 14 and went to Europe. So, we got new comforters and bed-tops. Our old ones are over 25 years old! We are in the process of redoing all our beds in the house, most of them have big holes in the mattress where we've slept for the past 25 years. So, we are gonna get new mattresses and box springs as well.
I too, distrust most everything and have become jaded. That's why receiving that email was so weird... every alarm that I have about emails went off.
Thanks for stopping by!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
It's like Glenn Diesen said:
The "news" that Russia is behind the Epstein files is being brought to you by the same people who brought you Russiagate.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10161900488206035&set=a.101540731404...
"Trump is doing everything he can to make America the highest-cost economy in the world, and he’s succeeded." -- Michael Hudson
Cue Rachel Maddow!
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
And if Maddow can get you to hate those Russians a lot
-- you can fight them on the battlefields!
"Trump is doing everything he can to make America the highest-cost economy in the world, and he’s succeeded." -- Michael Hudson
This is how things work.
THAT was a funny cartoon...
In a very 'oh f&ck that's true' sort of way...
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Oh that's good...
Or maybe it's good in this sense:
"Trump is doing everything he can to make America the highest-cost economy in the world, and he’s succeeded." -- Michael Hudson
I can't even...
how can Russia be behind the Epstein files? How can anyone believe that? Sheez!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
More cold water for the nice liberals with big egos
Here's some costs, tallied by Alastair Crooke, for that glorious capitalist-on-capitalist violence they all love.
"Trump is doing everything he can to make America the highest-cost economy in the world, and he’s succeeded." -- Michael Hudson
Weird Ain't the half of it
My wife and I are both retired after long careers that saw us move our residence a dozen or so times from the late 80s until now. We have always rented -- duplexes, condos, apartments, and since 2018, a quadraplex unit built over 100 years ago. It is falling apart, literally, and we are trying to find a new place to dwell.
We thought we knew the "ropes" of moving to a new rental property, but we did not expect to find a totally different process. Now in Los Angeles, you have prove you are you and you have to prove you can afford the rent. You do this by going to the landlord's real estate agency website, and "uploading" a picture of yourself, s picture of your drivers licence, and pictures of your check stubs.
I have no fricking idea how to do that. At the first place we liked, I could not get past the registration step on the corporate website. I called the property management person who showed us the place for help in dealing with the website. They never replied.
So we found another place we like, and the same sort of thing has us roadblocked. I have had a tiny bit better luck getting a response from a human being and supposedly today, I'll be hearing back from the corporate troll I was able to tell my story to. I am not optimistic.
Yesterday, I sent an email to the corporate troll with this Baby Boomer offer -- my wife and I would show up at any location they chose in Los Angeles County with our drivers licences and our 1099s in hand. I got a response saying that the pics MUST be uploaded -- nothing in person.
I also offered to pay one year of rent in advance. No, they must get the stuff they want -- not money -- to come through the internet.
Now I get it. No humans involved. This new regime is about putting people out of work.
I have never been more pissed off.
I suspect that every landlord in the region has this new policy.
I assume I will die in this broken down old building which will occur a lot sooner due to this frustration. I further assume that a computer geek would zip right through this "uploading" chore.
It is my own fault for hating the internet for the last 30 years.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Why is it, doing basic business
.
in daily affairs, entails jumping thru hoops for some
algorithmic filtration system? I do not get it. Another
useless layer of info gathering mechanisms one could
surmise. Not exactly user friendly. Wish you luck finding
a better roosting place. It ain't easy.
Zionism is a social disease
Worse yet
are the places that a) require pictures be uploaded, and b) will not allow you to use existing pictures (e.g., from a photo library): they require that a brand new picture be taken right now, during that web session, presumably using the phone that they clearly assume that you must be using to fill out the massive volumes of data that they also require.
Unfortunately, if you aren't using a phone, and your desktop or laptop doesn't have a camera attached, you are SOL.
It gets even worse if the photo has to be of your driver's license, passport, or other document. Even in the best case, it is an inordinate pain in the ass to hover your laptop upside-down over the required seamless white background while making sure that this a' la minute activity casts no shadows and has no glare (also a requirement), all while attempting to press a key that you can't see in order to make the exposure- inevitably leaving half of the document out of the frame because you can't see the screen while taking it.
The people who set these things up are clearly, as a group, utterly incapable of imagining the realities of their actual use.
Earlier this year, the place that we are renting required us to take out a Bilt credit card with which to make our payments. Any other form of payment is now subject to a 10% surcharge for reasons. Further, if the payment is to be made by check, it must be in certified funds, in addition to the non-Bilt-fee adder. And, after Bilt fired Wells Fargo as their provider a couple months ago, they raised their interest rate to a minimum of 27.25%, and a max penalty rate of 37.25%, should you miss a card-account payment date. And once there, that rate applies for the life of any balance. Oh, and apparently they no longer observe the usual-and-customary 30-day grace period for a new transaction. It looks to me like interest accrues immediately from the date of any transaction.
We always pay our cards off every month these days, and it really pisses me off to see interest accrue. So now I have to make sure that I prepay the card prior to them posting the rent transaction. Annoying, since our water bill is part of the payment, and as a result the payment varies every month, so I end up overpaying them, and they get free money from me for the next month. But hey, they say, they've done all this for the convenience of the tenants...
Some convenience, huh? Total racket. Not a fan.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
yup
This one wants all this stuff-- uploaded, not handed over. The data gathering function may be involved, but they can have all the data from me that they want. All they have to do is ask, which they refuse to do for some reason, maybe just part of the deep state data mining project. But my guess is that it is simply not allowing their sales force to cut corners to close a deal.
By the way, I got an email from my new pal, Jacob, the drone who works for the apartment company. He says his boss will get in touch with me.
I can't claim this to be exactly correct, but my ego attributes this gesture to the success of my lawyer/union negotiator shtick in offering to pay a year in advance. That was an implicit threat to sue them.
Maybe not. Who cares? I just want a frickin roof over my head without cracks in it.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
There is good reason to believe that many if not most of them
are in this together, building a database or databases and sharing mucho information while acting as a syndicate or cartel with at least one goal being price fixing.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning Sima, et. al. Thanks for the OT, Sima.
Our old landline, now a cellphone with the same number rings off the hook all day long. It is maybe, at most, 1% real calls. Of the rest as much as 50% is commercial spams and the rest attempted frauds. That is very annoying, but at least one cannot accidently click on something one shouldn't. Very little e-mail spam gets past my spam filter. I have become negligent in that I forget for weeks and sometimes months to check and make sure there aren't any real e-mails caught in the spam folder. Only if I expect something which isn't showing up do I remember to check it. I should nake a routine of this and check it once weekly, like maybe Friday or some such.
Today my wife has an errand to run out in the industrial zone of Livermore, so we will soon roll out there for that official purpose. Afterward we will run out past the rad lab to a place called Garre' (perhaps Le Garre') which makes pretty good wine including a Cab Franc, which is one of our favorite varietals. They have an attached restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating in a nice environment, so we shall have lunch, maybe taste a bit (beyond whatever we have with lunch) and wander back sometime this afternoon.
Harvested the last of my carrots yesterday, bright orange and really tasty. I do have to weeek that bed, which is getting overgrown, maybe this afternoon, maybe not. My week to cook starts Sunday, so I have menus to plan in addition to all the normal routine.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thankfully, I live in my own house, F and C
(Free and Clear in Real Estate jargon). I keep my social media presence extremely small. I make very few on-line purchases as I have all the 'stuff' I need. My hubster is a retired hi-tech wizard. I have degrees in English linguistical analysis along with the literature. I'll get on comment threads (which I love), and try to figure out which is AI and which is human. I'm getting better at it, and my physical brain loves the exercise.
I can spot spam, scams, and ID thieves. Half of them are semi-literate, and the rest do not know American English. High-tech is turning into a high headache. If you can't operate a cell phone, you are up sh##'s creek. Good luck, everyone. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Good afternoon, sima!
Sounds like you got lucky. While my email accounts have good systems for spotting and collecting scams, occasionally one gets thru. I get one frequently that for all the world looks like it is coming from my email provider.
What goes into the spam box lately is an average of 15 emails daily, up from 3 daily. The reason is one online purchase, and that store sold my email address. 24 hrs after the purchase, my spam box had 33 emails in it. Of all things, I am getting emails seeking contributions from numerous campaigns for local elections from other states.
We must be careful nowadays, especially since AI has made spamming easy peasy.
I hope all is well with you,your family, and your critters, chica!
Thanks for the OT!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I keep
a folder of all the "breech notices" I get, so should I ever get ripped off I will sue all of them in the folder.
Their offers of a year of free third party credit monitoring only opens you up to further abuse with the third party having all your personal info.
Who knows who their third party is?
H
I have a basic online policy that says; If I'm given the choice of saying no, I always punch no..
Thanks for the OT.
GO HAWKS!
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
update on move
The regional manager of the apartment company ambiguously authorized an exception for us. We can email our documents, which ran me into a new geek problem -- my iphone camera function refused to unfreeze after taking pics of my drivers license and our 1099s. I had no clue on how to proceed from there. I figured we could use my wife's iphone camera camera to finish the job. But once she got out of bed at about 8am Pacific time she told me her iphone did not have email.
You can imagine how this Neo-Luddite reacted to this news.
I sent an early morning email to the apartment company, apologizing for giving up on their property. About 15 minutes later, I discovered that my iphone had somehow unfrozen. I took the last of the pics and sent them on with a sheepish nevermind about my withdrawal from consideration that I had sent about an hour earlier.
Luddites of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your aggravation!
There are still several hoops to jump through before we can get out of this relic of a residence.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Remember a time
.
when it a was a face to face interview
so we could both size - up the situation
come to terms in an agreement and seal it
with a hand shake. Guess that no longer applies.
Good luck with the legal aspects.
Zionism is a social disease
Better and better
After finally getting all the information and photography to them via email this morning, the next shoe dropped:
After clicking on, the scumbags brazenly asked for our bank account numbers and passwords, also promising to comply with Industry Security Standards.
The text suggests that all renters must do this nowadays.
I'd rather live the rest of my life in a car than trust a real estate company with our nest egg. That is our Ace in the hole as civilization collapses --said collapse typified by this insane scheme of giving out access to your life savings while being instructed to trust "industry security standards."
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.