J. R. Sponge-“Bob” Dobbs
Monthly Archives: October 2018
bleh 11
#drumpf. 🖕 the less said about him, the better.
🍄 one mushroom yesterday. i went out for a walk and had pretty much the entire “trip” while i was out, which wasn’t very much. depression sneaking back in, but not in unmanagable amounts… yet… fewer mushrooms every time this happens, and eventually i’ll run out. hopefully i will have either wildcrafted, or obtained some more by then, but who knows… they are illegal, after all, even though my doctor counsellor recommended them… 😒
trolloween on wednesday. i’m doing sound effects, which means bullroarer “pre-show” and thunder for the first part of the show. nothing else, which means that i’ll be able to actually haunt fremont, for the first time ever… i’ve been a part of the show at the troll, and the dance afterwards many, many times, but i’ve never gotten to go on the haunt… mushrooms? it’s possible… but i think i’d have to find a place to crash in town, if so. i’ll ask macque…
so, in the realm of the computer, i’ve decided that, if i tiptoe around this version of kubuntu, it works 95% of the time. i have, literally, changed the way i interact with the computer interface, in order to prevent it from crashing on a more regular basis: kontact/kmail/akregator — which used to be a relatively stable part of the distribution — has become something which works if i DON’T do things like try to open links in akregator using the middle mouse button (right click and choose “open in external browser” works, though, which is annoying), or forward a message, about half of the time (which is something i do on a regular basis when i’m reporting spam). and kubuntu, itself, has got some annoying bugs which i don’t know to whom to report… which, in itself, is annoying… when i boot the computer, the desktop wallpaper appears to be set to “blur” around the background, even though when i look at the configure panel, it’s set to “solid color”, and when i set it to “blur”, nothing happens, but if i, then, set it back to “solid color”, lo-and-behold, it suddenly displays with a solid colour background. and, because of the fact that it’s part of the system settings, i don’t have the first clue who should get the bug report.
and i’ve, basically, given up on amarok. i love the interface, but the fact is, my music is on a disk that isn’t mounted at startup — because it is a NAS, mounted via WIFI — and amarok refuses to see it. i haven’t figured out how to get it to mount at startup, and it appears that the amarok user list is, for all intents and purposes, dead… which is really annoying.
on the other hand, i’ve figured out a way to play the music on my NAS from my phone, my tablet, and from the linux box, at the same time, using the same application, which is VLC media player. i don’t love the interface, but it’s definitely better than nothing, and the fact that i can play my music, basically, anywhere, without having to make copies of it, should make the copyright drones happy.
and i found the disks containing approximately 10,000 fonts, left over from when i worked in a print shop… and i can get around 90% to 95% of them to work on both my mac and my linux box, also from my NAS, which makes sharing documents a lot more reliable.
🍄
181024 one, today. twelve, total.
also, this happened… BEFORE i decided to take the mushroom! 😉
mushroom 🍄 adventures
🍄 so far, i have taken eleven mushrooms… yep, only eleven: 🍄 🍄 two on 181007, 🍄 one 🍄 each on 181008 and 09, 🍄 two 🍄 on 181011, 🍄 three🍄 🍄 on 181015 and two 🍄 🍄 today.
which is pretty phenomenal, considering that the average dose for me during my 20s was anywhere from 100 to 500, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
well, it was actually in bellingham, but that’s another story…
and that’s not to say that the thought of taking that many isn’t appealing, because it is — very much so, in fact — but i don’t need that many… one or two at a time is more than enough. 🍄
gniksub
busking at the pike place market(!) today. in two hours of playing, i made $55… in ones, fives and quarters. it was a fairly good couple of hours, considering that i only knew three or four of the songs that we played, and was improvising/faking it for the rest of them. i gave my phone number to three “band leaders”, so there’s a pretty good chance i’ll get called again some time soon.
before today, i have never busked with my tuba at the pike place market, because their official policy is “No devices for electronic amplification of any sound are allowed. No horns, brass instruments, or drums are permitted…” which pretty much makes it impossible for me to even think about busking there… but, apparently, they’re “trying out” tubas, because there are a lot of tuba players who objected to their policy. i was one of two tuba players at the market today, and the other guy (conn 15J, 3-valve, B♭, i think his name is jim) was, according to one of the other buskers (he played soprano sax, tap-danced and sang) looking at my tuba like it was a woman… damn right he was looking at my tuba with lust. it’s an instrument to be lusted after, and i’m glad that someone else recognised it for what it is. 😉
and, by the way, soprano sax is not only a “horn” but it is also made of “brass”, and it has been allowed all along. it’s only “horns with cup mouthpieces” that are banned, and it’s ACTUALLY “horns that are played “inconsiderately”, and make problems for the neighbours”… which has come to mean anything that anybody THINKS is too loud, regardless of what the instrument actually sounds like… although, these days, strings and “woodwind” instruments get a pass, and brass instruments (with the exception of tubas, as noted before) are completely banned.
the last time i was permitted to busk at the market was 1982, which was before the current market manager (the one who sold me my current permit) was born. back then, you didn’t have to buy the permit, and there was only one market manager. now there are a bunch of them, and talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing… 🤦 i’m glad i got my permit, but i’m going to leave dealing with the authorities (meaning the market manager(s)) to someone else, because i already don’t like it at all…
if it’s not already obvious…
fecesbook
i’m SO glad i got out of there…
Trump’s Attack on Medicare for All Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It
Trump’s Attack on Medicare for All Has Industry Fingerprints All Over It
By Wendell Potter
19 October, 2018
Recently, the president decided to take a break from tweeting conspiracy theories to write an op-ed attacking supporters of Medicare for All. While engaging in what psychologists would probably call “projection,” he accused the Medicare for All movement of putting seniors at risk, rationing health care and trying to destroy the Medicare system.
I’m a former executive at two of the country’s largest insurance companies. I spent 20 years working in PR for Humana and then Cigna, rising to the level of vice president before I had a crisis of conscience. As a result, I know exactly how this op-ed came to be. The process doesn’t start at the White House. It didn’t include a careful review of policy, and it wasn’t an idea his staff came up with.
I can see the industry’s fingerprints on this op-ed from a mile away, because I was the ghost writer for many pieces just like it. During my two-decade tenure in the industry, every time an idea that would threaten shareholder profits started gaining momentum, my employer would decide we’d need to find a friendly and influential politician to carry water for the industry. I’d sit down with my communications team, create talking points, or even write a complete op-ed or speech, and then make sure our well-connected lobbyists got it to the right people.
And the industry won’t just go to Republicans. For instance, Ed Rendell, a Democrat who was formerly a governor of my home state of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, recently wrote an op-ed promoting several half-measures he claimed would be stronger reforms than single-payer health care, none of which posed a serious threat to private insurance. Currently, Rendell is affiliated with the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has regularly hosted organizations like America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Meanwhile, so-called think tanks like the Pacific Research Institute regularly write Medicare for All hit pieces for Forbes and other outlets.
The purpose of these op-eds was always to mislead and scare people, because when the facts aren’t on your side, you have to find a politician who’s willing to obfuscate, misdirect and outright lie. It’s no surprise that the industry went right to the White House.
Many people were quick to challenge the president’s claims. Medicare for All would actually expand coverage for seniors currently on Medicare by covering dental and vision care and lowering drug prices. And contrary to Trump’s claim about rationing, the truth is that real rationing occurs in the US when people don’t seek treatment due to cost. It happens every day because millions of Americans are either uninsured or have such high deductibles they can’t afford to actually get the care they need. Medicare for All would eliminate that barrier.
Others have pointed out the hypocrisy. Since taking control of Congress and the White House, President Trump and his party have been engaged in a non-stop assault on Medicare, threatened patients with pre-existing conditions and tried to force through a plan that would have kicked tens of millions of people off their insurance.
Here’s the thing: I’m fairly confident that the president and his staff don’t actually believe that Medicare for All would threaten seniors. I can tell because Trump doesn’t use the national platform as an opportunity to lay out a vision to expand coverage, or protect people with pre-existing conditions, or manage drug prices or lower health care costs.
What the president does know is that a Medicare for All system is the worst nightmare of insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Right now, they have a virtually limitless ability to charge American patients, families, workers and businesses exorbitant prices, and they want to keep it that way. That’s why they have spent decades abusing our campaign finance system, pumping money into campaigns, hiring armies of lobbyists, and using a combination of political incentives and threats to push through legislation they like, making sure that any legislation that threatens to limit their profits never sees the light of day.
Now that the American people are starting to wake up to their scam, the entrenched special interests have decided to cash in their favors. And so, the president decided to parrot the talking points of his donors and their shareholders, no matter how much harm it will cause the American people.
Trump Tower board seeks nearly $90,000 from estate of art collector who died in 50th-floor fire
Trump Tower board seeks nearly $90,000 from estate of art collector who died in 50th-floor fire
By Meagan Flynn
18 October 2018
Six months after a fire in Trump Tower killed 50th-floor resident Todd Brassner, the building’s residential board is coming after Brassner’s estate for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid common charges stemming from a lien on his apartment, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the Supreme Court in New York County.
Brassner, a longtime Trump Tower resident who lived alone with hundreds of vintage instruments and an elaborate multimillion-dollar art collection, died April 7 after an electrical fire engulfed his apartment, which had no working smoke alarms. He was 67.
Now, with backing from a Trump Organization attorney, the Residential Board of Trump Tower Condominium is suing Brassner’s estate for more than $64,600 in unpaid common charges, an amount that includes fees accrued in the months after Brassner died. The residential board is also seeking a judgment of at least $25,000, bringing the total amount sought to nearly $90,000. Common charges are condo fees that typically include maintenance, utilities or other services. Brassner defaulted on common charge payments in June 2015, according to the complaint.
Brassner’s family members and executors of his estate, Heather and Aaron Brassner, could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could the attorney representing the board.
The fire at Trump Tower, where the president’s penthouse and the Trump Organization headquarters are located, captured wide attention in April both for Trump’s silence on Brassner’s death and for the lack of sprinklers in the building, a feature that Trump had lobbied against installing in the condos in the late 1990s.
Brassner moved into Trump Tower in 1996, according to property records. The son of a wealthy New York art collector, Brassner was described by friends as an “utter expert on Pop Art” who was “constantly swapping, buying and selling” and at the center of the action in the art world, as his friend, Stuart Pivar, told the Art Newspaper. Brassner ran with Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd in the 1970s as he built his impressive art collection, including a 1975 portrait Warhol made of Brassner, which the Trump Tower resident valued at $850,000 in 2015.
He kept the portrait in his Trump Tower condo, along with a collection of more than 100 vintage guitars, $25,000 worth of banjos, about 150 ukuleles from the early 20th century, an organ, a Robert Indiana sculpture and artwork by Jack Kerouac — just to name a few items.
But over the years, he appeared to have trouble keeping up with the condo payments. Trump Tower’s residential board filed multiple liens against him between 2003 and 2013 for unpaid common charges, New York court records show. And in 2015 he filed for bankruptcy, which included listing all of the assets kept in his apartment. The condo was valued at $2.5 million.
At the time of Brassner’s death, friends told the New York Times he was in declining health and that he had been trying unsuccessfully to sell the apartment. Once Trump became president, resulting in omnipresent armed security outside Trump Tower, Brassner couldn’t seem to find a buyer, one friend told the Times.
“It haunts me,” Brassner’s friend Stephen Dwire, a musician and producer, told the paper. “He said, ‘This is getting untenable.’ It was like living in an armed camp. But when people heard it was a Trump building, he couldn’t give it away.”
Trump built the tower in 1983, when installing sprinklers was not required. In 1998, when two tragic New York City high-rise fires left several people dead, the city moved to begin requiring sprinklers in high-rises. But Trump opposed retrofitting his building with the sprinklers and lobbied to persuade city officials to drop a proposal that would have required them in older apartment buildings, as The Washington Post previously reported.
Some speculated that the April fire could have been mitigated had they been installed.
The New York City Fire Department ultimately found that the fire was caused by an overloaded electrical board. The Times reported that the building was equipped with smoke sensors, which is what alerted firefighters to the blaze.
In a statement on Twitter in April, Trump did not offer condolences for Brassner’s family but did brag about the construction of the building.
“Fire at Trump Tower is out,” he tweeted, before the fire had been put out. “Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”
A month after Brassner died, a Trump Organization attorney filed a lien against the deceased man on behalf of the Residential Board of the Trump Tower Condominium, seeking at that time $52,000 in unpaid common charges since July 2016, according to New York City Department of Finance records.
this is scary dangerous!
i got a very alarming email today, from lara trump. it said:
President Trump will keep cutting through the fake news filter, and deliver our message straight to YOU — the American people. Now he wants to be sure that you’re all signed up to get REAL NEWS UPDATES straight to your phone.
SIGN UP NOW
The more we can bypass the fake news media, the less power they have to manipulate the news, distort our message, and unleash a flurry of attacks aimed at distracting us from our agenda.It’s time to take power into our own hands. So please, sign up for texts today to get REAL NEWS straight to your phone.
Lara Trump
Senior Advisor
Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
so, drumpf is encouraging people to get the news straight from him, so they won’t be “distracted” by the truth…
and she’s the senior advisor for "donald j. drumpf for president, INCORPORATED"…
i sure won’t be signing up for it, but i get the distinct impression that a whole bunch of american citizens will. 😒😓
is it that obvious???
181015 — 4:20 pm: sitting next to 5 mile lake, high on mushrooms. (i could get to like this… 😉)
an early-20-ish, young female jogger approaches.
YFJ: excuse me, sir… do you know what is in this lake?
ME: um… water?
YFJ: i mean, is it, like, safe to swim in? there’s no sharks?
ME: (trying hard not to laugh), no, there are no sharks in this fresh-water lake…
YFJ: thanks! 😃
ME: 😕😕😕😕😕⁇⁇🤯
bullroarer!
finished, working prototype bullroarer.
it “cycles” the way it’s supposed to: it spins as far as it can one direction, and then spins back the other direction automatically, while i spin the whole thing one direction all the time, thus making the characteristic “bull roar” noise. i made it out of plywood, to test the theory. i’ve got a chunk of really dense hardwood that should make a better, louder noise.
SUCCESS! 👍😎
okay, so…
moe and i went to see VOLTA yesterday, and it was AWESOME!!! i haven’t enjoyed a show that much in a LONG time! it was colourful and exciting and funny and outrageous and awe-inspiring and inspiring in general… the guy who was sitting to my left shouting “woo!” over and over again didn’t even distract me from how amazing it was.
but i didn’t take mushrooms yesterday, because i had to drive to volta, and because i was still feeling pretty good from the day before.
when i woke up this morning, however, something was different. moe is going to boston (for one night, she’ll be back tomorrow, which is bizarre enough, by itself), and i had to drive her and ross to the airport at 7:30, which is earlier than i like to get up. after i had got up and dressed, i noticed that i felt REALLY depressed. i mentioned to moe that i said i didn’t know what it was like to feel depressed any longer, a few days ago, but i felt depressed now. she said that it’s not too surprising, when you understand the brain chemistry. i don’t completely understand the meaning of her comment, but after i dropped them off at the airport, i went for a long drive, which made me feel a lot better. i’ve been really cold the past couple of days, so i turned the seat-warmer on high, and when i got home i didn’t do much except sit at my computer all day, and i feel significantly better. smoking pot helped a lot more than it usually does, too, which is encouraging. i thought i would try another mushroom, earlier, but going for a long drive helped so much that, by the time i got home, i had decided to see what else happened first.
i’m sure this is what kate was talking about, expecting more of a change in perception, but not so much actual lack of depression, as one might expect from a truly antidepressive drug… very much like what i experienced when i started taking 5HTP: i didn’t notice a lack of depression, what i noticed was a new awareness of when i was depressed, and more motivation to do stuff in spite of it.
weird
i took two mushrooms on sunday, and determined that two is too many if i’m “microdosing”. i took one on monday, and didn’t feel anything… but, to be honest, the relaxed “okay with whatever happens” attitude that i experienced on sunday was having an extended effect, so it didn’t really matter that much. i took one on tuesday and had almost as high a trip as i had on sunday, with two… plus i got all domestic, and went out grocery shopping, which turned into me being as efficient as i could be and getting out of the costco crowds… and having to drive while “altered” — even a little bit — was a little more stress that i could do without. so i decided that i’d only take mushrooms on days when i don’t have anything else on the schedule.
which was a good thing, because wednesday (yesterday) started with my circus class — in which the instructor, amber, said that i “looked different” — and then finished up with a snake suspenderz gig in the skyview observatory in the columbia tower in downtown seattle, which started, for me, at 2:30, when i left to pick up hobbit at 3:30 to be at the columbia tower at 5:00, play for 2 hours and 45 minutes…
and being told that i was not allowed to drink alcohol in the bar, by the bartender, despite having been told specifically by the guy that hired us that it was okay for us to eat food and drink beverages on our breaks… 🤨
pack up and finally leave the building — after being abandoned by the guy who hired us, who took a “secret” elevator that was different from the one we got on, and when the elevator we got on finally arrived, it was inhabited by a hispanic guy who didn’t speak that much english, and took us from the 78th floor (or the 84th, or whatever floor we were on) to the 4th floor, then to the loading dock, then to the 3rd floor, then to the 4th floor, then to the 3rd floor again, while assiduously AVOIDING pressing the button that would take us to the 1st floor, which is WHERE WE SAID — REPEATEDLY — THAT WE WANTED TO GO… (damn it)… and having been paid $15 extra, specifically to cover parking, only to discover that parking for 5 hours and 47 minutes at the columbia tower costs $31… and then i had to take hobbit to lynnwood, and i didn’t get home until after midnight, because of three lanes of the freeway being closed through downtown seattle.
🤦
so i decided that i would start over again today. at first i was going to throw caution to the wind, and take five, but i chickened out at the last moment, and only took two. it’s a good thing i didn’t have anything else scheduled for today, although it isn’t as profound as sunday’s trip.
i’ve also got to conserve, until i have a better supply lined up. probably not going to do any more until next week… although, at this point, i would say that, overall, it has been a success, because, quite honestly, i don’t even remember what it was like to feel depressed any longer.
i wonder how long it will last?
then, today, i went out for a walk, like i usually do. while i was out, five random people waved at me, from their cars, from their front yards, from their lawn mowers… one of them said “how ya’ doin’?”… plus, the mail delivery lady, who i know, also waved at me. what is it about me that is, all of a sudden, causing people to acknowledge my existence? what is it about me — that isn’t a direct result of consuming a socially inappropriate substance — is different from the guy who wears a burnous and freaks people out? it makes me feel like i’ve gained some sort of notariety that i haven’t found out about yet.
also, this whole thing of being recommended to take psychedelic mushrooms by my counsellor goes right along with the unreal-ness of being able to walk into a local dispensary and walk out with an ounce of medical-grade weed without being busted… and the unreal-ness of #drumpf in the white house, and his unrelenting battle against plain ordinary folks who didn’t do harm to anybody… i’ve fallen through the cracks and ended up in bizarro-world, for sure. 😕
Can’t Hit the Snooze Button No More
my impression is that the democratic malaise goes back at least as far as George McGovern, in 1972, but you’ve got to start somewhere…
Can’t Hit the Snooze Button No More
October 9, 2018
by Marc Salomon
In 1980, when I turned 18 and first voted, John Anderson sounded the alarm about the duopoly rot. The Democrats hit the snooze button and Reagan won.
In 1984, Gary Hart sounded the alarm and the Democrats slapped him down, again in 1988, and hit the snooze button, nominated the execrable Mondale and Reagan won.
In 1988, Jesse Jackson sounded the rainbow alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button, nominated the hapless Dukakis who ran with the odious Bentsen and Bush I won.
In 1992, Jerry Brown v1.5 sounded the alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and nominated Bill “Rapey Bubba” Clinton who won but rammed NAFTA through and forfeited the Congress to the Republicans.
In 1996, Nader sounded the alarm. the Democrats hit the snooze button. The Republicans impeached Rapey Bubba. As a parting shot of gratitude, Clinton I deregulated Wall Street.
In 2000, Ralph Nader sounded the alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and lost to Bush II (the previous Hitler on the Potomac) and instead of taking stock of their failure, raged at Nader.
In 2004, Howard Dean sounded a weak alarm, the Democrats hit the snooze button and nominated the patrician Kerry who lost to Bush II, blaming the Greens again.
In 2008, Obama sounded the alarm as a trojan horse, got in running center-left and governed center-right, throwing away historic strong majorities in the Congress to the Republicans.
In 2016, Bernie Sanders sounded the alarm and the Democrats hit the snooze button so hard that they broke the alarm clock and nominated a neoliberal warmonger candidate who was as unpopular with the electorate as she held them in contempt ushering in Obama’s true legacy: Donald Trump. And here we are.
Do you want to know why there is a Justice Kavanaugh? That’s why.
These Democrats are not stupid. They claim that they represent the meritocracy. Yet in what meritocracy do losers like this rise to the top and stay there after losing election after election?
This “meritocracy” selects for those able to appeal to and manipulate the elites into being allowed to be temporary custodians of power on their behalf.
Their reward is a lifetime of sinecure and wealth.
The only way that these Republicans can win is when these Democrats willfully and maliciously manipulate the electorate into acting against their best interests.
None of those Democrats who sounded the alarm had any real intention of making the kind of structural change needed to put us on a different course, they were playing the angle.
Nader who would have followed through, Sanders, less so, were the exceptions.
But they all did tap into an increasing resentment amongst the voters as to the failure of the duopoly to be responsive to popular sentiment.
When Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party arose, the Republicans welcomed the Tea Party into their midst while the Democrat big city mayors, coordinated by the Obama Department of Justice brutally and violently repressed the encampments.
Politics in this model is not symmetric.
If politics is warfare by other means, the Republicans have torn up any treaties that might have been in place and adopted a policy of total war.
These Democrats still do not know what hit them and they have proven themselves strategically incompetent of ever getting out from behind the eight ball.
The only way to work our way out from under this mess is by creating independent grassroots democratic organizations that can mobilize mass movements to make the elites offers they cannot refuse.
If people with access to many fewer resources than we, facing death squad governments and apartheid, can organize to win, then we have no excuses.
Our primary impediment in this task has been the Democrat Party which views its base, not the Republicans, as its opponent, and leverages its patronage network against independent popular organizing.
The veil of delusion is strong with the Democrat base, they are at a point where they have been made as impervious by MSNBC to logical arguments as any Fox [sic] News addict.
We are going to need to pierce that veil to shake some sense into them and more importantly organize outside of our usual comfort zones where the Democrat spell is weak, where people are wise to their bait and switch and have voted with their feet by staying home.
None of this will be easy, but it is not rocket science, others who have come before us have made these heavy lifts.
We have no excuses.
anti-spam, anti-fraud information
the past couple of months i have been getting an inordinate amount of spam that goes something like this:
Hello!
I’m a member of an international hacker group.As you could probably have guessed, your account X was hacked, because I sent message you from it.
Now I have access to you accounts!
For example, your password for X is XWithin a period from July 17, 2018 to October 3, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited.
So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers.
Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data.We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..
But the key thing is that sometimes we recorded you with your webcam, syncing the recordings with what you watched!
I think you are not interested show this video to your friends, relatives, and your intimate one…Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w
If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.I guarantee that after that, we’ll erase all your “data” ?
A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.
Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.You should always think about your security.
We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets.
Take care of yourself.
please note: THIS IS FAKE NEWS!
whoever it is that sent it DOES NOT have access to my, or anyone else’s email account, despite what they may want you to think.
how do i know this? i have received at least 10 messages which are almost exactly identical to this one, down to the inconsistent english, carriage returns, and even the supposedly unique bitcoin wallet ID. the only significant difference in all of these messages is in the headers, which most people never see.
i want to go through this message, statement by statement, and show you exactly WHY it is fake news, and you shouldn’t buy into their scam.
first,
I’m a member of an international hacker group.
no you are not a member of an international hacker group. if you were, you wouldn’t have to tell me so. you are, in fact, a skript-kiddie who thinks he can make money by using other peoples’ code to mess up my internet: you are a vandal and a criminal, and i WILL track you down and turn you in, because it’s easy-peasy. 😠
As you could probably have guessed, your account X was hacked, because I sent message you from it.
any real hacker can tell you that you don’t actually have to have access to the account that’s on the “FROM:” line in your email, in order to make it look like you have access to that account. the fact is, i can send email to anybody i like, put whatever email address i like on the “FROM:” line, and 98% of the time, it will go through to the recipient without any difficulty. this is because the “FROM:” line is one of the easiest parts of the email to spoof. i have sent email that looks like it was coming from Bill Gates, and, if you didn’t know that i was sending it, and you have no way of looking at the email headers, you would think it was Bill Gates, and not me.
but you would be wrong.
then:
Now I have access to you accounts!
For example, your password for X is X
this password (which i have “X”ed out) is an authentic password from me, but because i have kept a list of every password i used, and where i used it, i KNOW that it is AT LEAST five years old, and has been superceded many times by more potent passwords. nevertheless, i also KNOW EXACTLY where i used this password last, so the first thing on my list is to write to the administrators of that place, and let them know that they’ve experienced a security breach.
then, just to make sure, i CHANGE MY PASSWORD AGAIN!!! just because they don’t really know anything is no reason not to be cautious times five… 👍
once again:
Within a period from July 17, 2018 to October 3, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited. So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers. Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data.
surprise! i KNOW that this is fake news, because i KNOW that i have not visited adult web sites. EVER! this may be a little more difficult for some other people, but for me, it’s a no-brainer: you are much less likely to be infected with a virus if you don’t visit adult web sites. the “full damps” of these data are imaginary.
not only that, but starting on 10 july — which is before the alleged “infection” — i was not even near my computer, much less using it, for at least a week, and i haven’t even had any social media accounts or messengers since about a week later. FAIL!
and, just as an aside… what are “full damps” anyway? i would have called them “downloads”… i have never heard the word “damps” used to mean “downloads”… do these people even speak english???
if you actually do visit adult web sites, you may be taken aback by this claim, but keep in mind the first part of the message, where they claimed to have access to my email account: they were wrong then, so the probability is quite high that they are wrong now, as well.
We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..
i admit that my tastes are quite weird, but the fact that you “saw and recorded” me doing those things is a lie: i don’t even have a webcam, or any kind of device that could record me doing stuff that i don’t even do in front of my computer anyway.
once again, if you have a webcam on your computer, it may be a good idea to cover it with a piece of tape when you’re not using it, but the fact is, people who write you out of the blue and claim to have access to your computer, are lying, more likely than not.
now we come to the real reason people send out spam like this:
Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w
If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.
yeah, bitcoin is really easy to hide your transactions and make them more anonymous, but if the person who is asking you to send them bitcoin for stuff that they have been lying about, then it is also harder for you to get your money back when you figure out that you have been lied to… which is why it’s always a good idea to make sure that the information you have been given is NOT a lie before you make your transaction.
in this case, they’re lying about the virus, the adult web site, the visual and audio recording, and the amount of data they claim to have collected, so i am confident that, if i were to look up their bitcoin wallet address, there’s a good chance that it, too, will have been shut down for fraudulent activity. yes, it is possible for that to happen, and in cases like this, it is fairly frequent.
ETA: i’m wrong about this one. the bitcoin wallet at 14bXUoPwruptLamUfKTuMW39Qy1q4ohX9w is active, showing 17 transactions (at this time) worth 1.95616527 BTC, or, $12,949.81 USD at this time… all the more reason to realise that THIS IS A SCAM!!! if you’re interested in reporting scam bitcoin wallets, you can do so here, as i have.
A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.
this “timer” is more impetus for you to act immediately, without checking any of the above mentioned information for inconsistencies. i know that it’s not true because i have received several messages like this, over the past two months, and nothing has ever happened to me, my “data” has not been mailed to my contacts (as will be seen in the next statement), simply because 1) they don’t have any of my contact information, and 2) they don’t have any data.
they’re just trying to scare me, and it’s not working.
Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.
see? they’re threatening to send “all your messages and videos” — which they don’t have — “to all your contacts” — which they also don’t have — unless you send $800 to a bitcoin wallet which no longer exists.
by this time, you are EITHER freaking out and reading up on converting regular money to bitcoin, or you, like me, are laughing out loud, and wondering why other people are so stupid.
because, if you think about it, $800 is a fairly small amount of money to extort from someone who is willing to give it to you without doing their homework… so what is preventing them from saying your data has been erased, but, actually has been put into a separate category of data that can be used to extort more money from you, at a later time?
of course, if they don’t have any of that data (as in my case) i have nothing to worry about, but for people who might have data like that, who knows what they may do, even if everything else is a lie?
finally, a LEEEETLE TINY BIT of common sense, to finish things up:
You should always think about your security. We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets. Take care of yourself.
basically, if it’s on internet, it’s not a secret. if your computer is on internet, there’s a remote chance that something like this really may happen to you at some point, if you also keep your secrets on your computer. thus, the logical conclusion is that if you keep your secrets somewhere other than on your computer (or your tablet, or your cell phone), you won’t have any problems deleting the message when you get spam like this.
for those of you who may remember the screed i wrote about how to report spam: if you receive a message like this, that would be a good place to start. 😉
mushroom adventure has started
i have started my investigation of mushrooms as an antidepressant.
so far it appears to be working:
2 smallish baeocystis at 5:00 pm 181007
5:30 two mushrooms is above conscious awareness: they have kicked in. i am relaxed, life is better than it has been in a long time, and it doesn’t even matter that i am out on a walk and it’s starting to rain.
7:00 after peak – it’s not an astonishingly high trip, but considering that i only took two smallish mushrooms, i think that “microdosing” may involved fractions of one. i wonder how long it will last.
8:15 one shot of single-grain malt whiskey and one beer.
ETA 181008: these mushrooms are DEFINITELY more potent than semilanceata or pelliculosa. i was still high at 10:30, when we went to sleep. i feel better today than i have for months.