I almost fell for a phone scam today. The moral of this story is that it doesn't matter how smart you are, there is a scam out there that could very well GET YOU in the right circumstances.
For me today, those circumstances were: Several days of being underslept. Over-stressed. Forgot to take my ADHD meds this morning. Already dealing with the harried mental state of day-before-travel stress. A personal panic trigger of missing appointments because I forgot about them.
We all know by now that the IRS will not call you on the phone. The jury duty people also will not call you on the phone, and this was the crucial piece of information that I did not have cold hard confirmation of today. Here is what happened, so that you can be equipped in case these fuckers call you:
Man with an American accent tells me he's from my city's courthouse. He tells me I missed jury duty summons yesterday and that now I'm in Trouble for contempt of court and failure to appear for jury duty. I protested that I hadn't gotten a notification for jury duty, he talked over me and said scary things about getting law enforcement involved unless I went to pay some fines and talk to the judge Right Now Today. He told me that I legally wasn't allowed to hang up the phone or put it on mute. He told me that I was under a "gag order" and I couldn't tell anyone about this except law enforcement or immediate family members. He already knew my address. He had official-sounding case numbers which he made me write down and repeat back to him. He had official addresses of where I needed to go and what I needed to do: Take the cash for my "fines" to a kiosk where I would pay them and receive a "voucher" that i would then take to the courthouse where I would supposedly speak to a judge. He told me again that if I hung up the phone before I got to the courthouse, it would be taken as obstruction or failure to comply or intent to flee and he would notify the police. He told me that if I went to sort it out with the judge, it might be waived and my money would be refunded.
I have not gotten jury duty summons for a WHILE -- since before the pandemic -- and I had been idly thinking recently that maybe I was due for one. So I heard all this and my panic button about Forgetting/Missing An Appointment got hit dead-on.
I panicked, I was upset and frantic, I was not thinking clearly. This is how they fucking get you.
Honestly, thank god he wanted me to take cash to a different location instead of giving him any financial information over the phone. Thank GOD for that, because it gave my nervous system 30 minutes or so to calm down and my higher brain functions to come back online so that I could notice that there were simply too many red flags in one interaction. I did go to my bank, I did withdraw quite a lot of money in cash.
The address he gave me to go to next was for a gas station. When I expressed confusion, the scammer had smooth explanations, and before I'd even parked, he'd texted me some glossy "official" looking infographics on how to use the kiosk and why the """government""" had started doing payments this way (supposedly a COVID measure, and because the funds were 'safer' or something). The kiosk, these infographic images said, was run by a company called BTC Tech, which they claimed was "Bailing Institute & Technologies". You will notice that that does not match the acronym. The infographic was full of grammatical errors, and thank god he had me sit there in my car and read the whole thing out loud "to make sure i understood it" so that I could hear myself vocally trip over every single one of those grammatical errors and think "Wow, this is weird, it wasn't proofread?"
He sent me a QR code for the ""kiosk"" which had a familiar logo on it. He had persistently asked me for my ETA to the next location, and he was pressuring me to get out of the car and go inside to the kiosk, and it was at this point that I started lying and said, "Sure, hang on one second, i have a pebble in my shoe or something I need to fix first" while I was googling "Bitcoin logo" to verify.
Didn't really need to verify because when I went inside, the only "kiosk" looking thing was an ATM looking thing that had "BITCOIN" written on it in very loud letters. Which brings us to one of two admittedly hilarious interactions, wherein i was standing there in front of the fucking bitcoin machine with my eyes narrowed going, "This is for Bitcoin" several times while he said "No no no no it's not, it's not bitcoin, it's BTC tech" and I kept saying "Well but it says Bitcoin on it in big letters." "No no, it's just a multi-currency system, it's for the courthouse, you have to get the voucher." "Ok but it's fucking BITCOIN, this feels like a scam, I don't think the government uses BITCOIN."
I walked out. I went back to my car. I told him that I wasn't comfortable, and that I needed to call the courthouse to verify with them what the charges were, or I needed to go in person to the courthouse to check what was up. He told me if I hung up, I'd be arrested, and if I stepped foot on government property, I'd be arrested.
It was at this point that I utilized a weapon which in many cases is very dangerous and unethical to use but hey, it's perfect for situations like this: White Lady* Tears. This is exactly the situation they're MEANT for -- buying yourself time to think when a man is strongarming you into meek obedience and fear. (* I am nonbinary but he didn't need to know that.)
Anyway I pretended to cry and told him i felt nauseous and that i was going to be sick and i was just uwu so fwightened and upset and uwu uwu uwu sob sob i felt like he was getting mad at me and it was so scawy oh woe oh no -- while this happened he texted me an arrest warrant that had one of my old roommates' names on it instead of mine, but that EPIC FUMBLE didn't even matter because the whole time I am frantically googling on my phone "jury duty scam" and finding a Reddit page from a guy who posted about the exact same thing happening to him.
I hung up. I called the courthouse, got patched through to the jury pool department, and as soon as the guy picked up, I said, "Hi, my name is Alex, I just got a call saying that I missed jury duty--" and before I could even finish the sentence, the guy said, "That was a scam, we will NEVER call you." I said thank god thank god oh fuck thank god, which brings me to the second hilarious moment of this escapade, where the jury duty guy cheerfully said, "But if you have a couple thousand dollars on you, you can come over and give them to me if you want!" which did make me burst out laughing. Thank you, jury duty guy, for that much-needed moment of levity. I hope you're having a good day.
You are not immune to social engineering. I am 36 years old, highly intelligent, educated, and VERY tech-savvy, and those fuckers STILL caught me at just the right moment and with just the right hook that it triggered panic and desperation and shame and guilt and overrode my critical thinking skills for a solid 30 minutes. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. BE FUCKING VIGILANT. THE IRS WILL NEVER CALL YOU, AND JURY DUTY WILL NEVER CALL YOU.
In hindsight, I'm actually glad that it played out the way it did. For one thing, as a life lesson, that was a pretty cheap one -- all that it cost me was about an hour of my life (including the time it took to go back to the bank and deposit the money I'd withdrawn, gossip extensively to the bank teller about what happened, and get home) and some grey hairs.
For another thing, that fucker spent all that time on the phone with me and didn't get my money. I snatched his smug asshole victory right out of his mouth at the last second and wasted his time -- time that he otherwise ould have spent scamming someone who might not have gotten over their panic in time.
I actually wish that I'd kept him on the phone longer, tbh. If I'd been less rattled, I bet I could have strung him along for another hour or two. Better he spend it with me than with someone else.
JURY DUTY WILL NOT CALL YOU ON THE PHONE.
i feel like men got too comfortable directing 3 hr movies. like that's manspreading on a cultural level. go back to 90 min movies. i have other things to do this evening. wrap it up charles dickens, you aren't being paid by the word
Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey (Windows 3.1/Windows/Classic Mac, Human Code, 1996)
You can download it as Wishbone.iso_.zip here or here, and run it on modern systems by following the instructions below the images.
- Open this in-browser emulator.
- Extract the .iso from the .zip and drag it onto the emulated desktop.
- Open the installer in the window that will have automatically opened. Install it (Infinte HD is preferable), then choose 'No' when asked to register online.
- A new window will appear where you can run the game. The menu icon can be found in the lower left during gameplay. A walkthrough video can be found here.
did you have to use that photo for that
i mean good on them...? still paired with that image thats uh. interesting
I respect the fuck out of this. The whole site is trying its hardest to go against every selling point the dog robots have as its selling points.
The dog robots are supposed to be autonomous, threehalves is explicitly only for being piloted by a human. The giant horns make it difficult for this machine to enter through doorways, and that is the point. Coupled with the built-in weak points, it is very easy to disable this thing, so it can't be used by the police or the military effectively.
OP alluded to how unsettling the machine looks, and I believe that it was a concious decision; the robot dogs have garnered sympathy due to their apperance, which makes it easier for the police to morally justify their use. This thing? You're not gonna get many people to sympathise with it. The only people who would are monster and-or robot fuckers, and I believe these circles generally understand that a machine cannot be trusted (though of course many would willingly approach it for pervert reasons (positive) knowing full well it's a bad idea).
oh yeah i saw everyone on tiktok freaking out about "if it can't harm humans why does it come with instructions to kill it" it's a safety feature in case of an emergency or malfunction where it needs to be quickly deactivated. "why is it so big and demonic why does it look like that" it's a safety feature so it can do dangerous labor and so you don't feel bad about killing it. "it was designed not to be able to follow you through doors?? why the fuck would it do that that's scary" it's a safety feature so you can't get cornered or have the person piloting it misuse it. "it doesn't have hands but it can attach CHAINSAWS to its limbs???" it's MADE TO WITHSTAND WILDFIRES IT'S NOT GONNA USE IT ON YOU "this thing gives me such bad vibes i do not trust it" GOOD!!! IT'S A ROBOT!!! IT IS A TOOL!!! IT'S A REALLY BIG AND COMPLICATED MACHINE THAT IS DESIGNED TO GO IN DANGEROUS ENVIRONMENTS WHICH WOULD MEAN IT COULD POTENTIALLY MALFUNCTION! USE YOUR BRAIN!!!
admittedly i do think that picture of it standing in the doorway with glowing white eyes is like comically frightening but it's SUPPOSED to be so you don't feel bad for it or approach it
going ape shit hooligan crazy searching the word Key on metmuseum dot org
egypt, 4th-1st century bce. the angle here is startling and charming to me and appears to have been standard at the time. at first i had difficulty imagining the lock it would fit into. looks like a guy clenching his big hand at you 🫴. A+
north china, 3rd century bce. hey everyone SHUT up. everyone SHUT UP for a fucking second and have some RESPECT while i tune my ZITHER with my beautiful little BEAR KEY. i said SHUT UP!! i am KISSING HIM. A+
Oh jesus, I thought this person was exaggerating until I dared try this out of morbid curiosity. I hate the state of society 🤮
girl dinner. fattest fucking plate of pasta you've ever seen in your life
It’s so crazy that someone you love dying just turns into one humiliation ritual after another. Constantly explaining to people that they died. Filling out endless paperwork for years after. Phone call after phone call to organize what to do with the body and funeral arrangements. God forbid they died suddenly or didn’t have an ironclad will or it turns into even more of a bureaucratic nightmare. On top of it all, everything associated with dying is the most expensive things on planet earth. And through it all, if the grief doesn’t feel constantly suffocating, it creeps up on you at the worst moments until you’re pulled over on the side of the road, crying. And you’re expected to be back to normal a week later.
Do the AI people know that the rest of us who never got on the bandwagon are still doing everything the same way we always have
The AI boom has changed literally nothing about my day to day life except I now have to work harder to get access to reliable information, all the important admin work is being done wrong, and I keep getting DMs letting me know the perfectly ordinary and plausible photo I liked was actually a fake image generated by a fascist to generate views and churn out ad money for the purpose of funding their tree-powered puppy-flushing toilet
"But how are you living life WITHOUT Doctor Leroy's Magically Invigorating Nerve Tonic? I can't imagine getting anything done without it!" <- old-timey 1800s guy who has been drinking crank and goat piss daily for the price of a shiny nickel
