Scam City

Old Sofa

When I was selling my truck last summer I got several text messages from 'people' offering to send me a certified check. When I got the first message, I thought cool, someone wants to buy the truck, but after I got a couple more I got suspicious. When one of these asked for my best price I quoted a price a thousand dollars higher. When they agreed, that clinched it. They're all bullshit.

Craigs List lets you choose what forms of contact you will allow: phone calls, text messages and / or email. When I place the ad, I thought the more, the better. Um, no. Text messages are just for scammers, so don't check that box.

Of course, if your phone number is in the ad, they can still text you, and that is just what some sleazeball did when I placed an ad for an old sleeper sofa:

Ok good..I’m out of town at the moment..i will mail you a cashiers check and schedule pickup when it clears, i will add $50 to the sale for the hold.

Are you kidding me? Who buys a used sofa sight unseen? Well, yes, this whatever-it-is, person, bot, or agent of criminal enterprise is kidding. They have no intention of actually forking out any actual money, and are not even interested in the sofa. I am not sure how they expect to extract any money out of this deal, other than to back out and then ask for their money back. Since the cashier's check will bounce, any refund will have to come out of your pocket.

I am thinking that whoever is running this scam is using text messages because they can run a computer program to scan the Craig's List ads and send a text message response to every single ad. If anyone bites, they'll know they have a potential mark.

I did eventually sell the truck. One (one!) person called. It took at least a week to get together and close the deal, but he did actually buy. Paid with a cashier's check, which is different than a certified check.

When I asked Google for the difference between a certified check and a cashier's check, the answers I got back seemed to imply that a cashier's check was more reliable than a certified check. I imagine the reason there is a problem is that scammer's have learned to produce good looking, fake checks.

Casa Diablo

Casa Diablo

I spotted this sign this morning while driving up US 30 on my way to St. Johns. I got a chuckle. A Vegan strip club. Who'd a thunk it?

Yes, We Have No Bananas

Muppet Songs: Marvin Suggs - We Have No Bananas
Muppet Songs

Stolen entire from According to Hoyt. 

The Banana Index by Sarah A. Hoyt

Ladies and gentlemen, by the one index that has proven reliable over my lifetime, socialism in the United States is receding. Not on the way out, precisely, but promising to go down instead of up. The index is a little forward-looking, you see.

What is this magical indicator? Well, the abundance and price of bananas.

No, wait, I haven’t completely lost my mind, and I do understand that it makes absolutely no sense, but–

The origin of this is a joke. Not a particularly wonderful joke but somewhat funny at least.

Back in 1978 there was a joke about a place in West Germany where East Germany was so close that two kids could see each other through their bedroom windows. And the West German kid regularly taunted the Eastern kid with what he had, toys, and games, and one day bananas.

Well, the Eastern kid’s father had given him the ultimate answer. “I don’t have bananas, but I have socialism.”

To which the Western kid answered, “Socialism drives out bananas.”

Well….

In Portugal through the variations of politics, we found out that for some reason when a more leftwing government was in power bananas became rarer and those that showed up were smaller, spotty, and went up in price.

Take in account that there are things that can’t possibly be linked that seem to be linked in statistical occurrence. For instance, people who eat cheese have lower all-cause mortality. This makes no sense whatsoever. And yet it occurs. There’s a whole boatload of these so called spurious correlations.

Well…. For some reason socialism goes up and banana availability and affordability goes down.

I noticed the week after the election that bananas which in my area had been trifling with 80c a pound were back down at 40c. Since then they’ve bounced between 40c and 50c, which is what they were in the eighties. And the quality is pretty good.

Of course, bananas are a forward looking index, but the prognosis for falling socialism and rising availability and affordability of bananas is good.

Have yourself a banana split and hope for the best.

Druzhba Pipeline

Druzhba Pipeline Map

Story on RT today:

Hungary and Serbia to speed up construction of new pipeline for Russian oil – Budapest

The two countries are building a connector to plug into the Druzhba energy network

Funny how Serbia and Hungary are more concerned about the price of oil than whatever comes out of Washington D. C.

So I gotta look up the Druzhba energy network. Wikipedia has a page that opens with this:

The Druzhba pipeline, also referred to as the Friendship Pipeline and the Comecon Pipeline, is one of the world's longest oil pipelines and one of the largest oil pipeline networks in the world. It began operation in 1964 and remains in operation today. It carries oil some 2,500 miles from the eastern part of European Russia to points in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany. The network also branches out into numerous smaller pipelines to deliver its product throughout Eastern Europe and beyond.

The name "Druzhba" means "friendship", alluding to the fact that the pipeline established friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the reliable supply of oil. Today, it is the largest principal artery for the transportation of Russian and Kazakh oil across Europe.

While I am sure Eastern Europe welcomed the oil, 'friendly relations' might be overstating the case a bit.

Territory - Netflix Series

Territory | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Set on a modern day cattle station in northern Australia, it's like a return to the old west. It's an entertaining show. We've got plenty of panoramic shots of the expansive landscape, and lots of scenes of modern day cattle ranching. There are several competing cattle stations (ranches) in the area, and their competition often involves what some people might call unfair methods and sometimes includes outright stealing of cattle. 

The show opens with a man riding on his horse when the horse unexpectedly rears up, dumping the man off. He suffers a compound fracture of his leg. Out in the bush, no gun or radio or water. The smell of blood attracts dingos (wild dogs) and they pile on and kill him. This has got to be the very worst way to die. Much later we find that another character shot the horse, which is what started this catastrophe. Even worse, that person didn't lift a finger to save this guy. They must have hated him something awful.

So yeah, we have a completely disfunctional family run by an old bear. None of the other ranch bosses are any better. A complete collection of slimeballs. Some of the kids seem to be all right, but most of the old hands are real shitheads.

Wikipedia page. The old bear is played by Robert Taylor who also played Agent Jones in The Matrix. The old bear's grandson, Marshall Lawson, is played by Sam Corlett who we saw as Leif Erikson in Vikings: Valhalla

L. A. Fires

A Chatsworth neighborhood is destroyed in the Clampitt Fire, which started Sept. 25, 1970

I didn't find any science fiction that appealed to me while I was at Powell's on Saturday, so I went across the aisle to the Mystery & Thriller section where I found three books by MacDonald:

• The Underground Man a 1971 novel by Ross Macdonald
• The Rasp from 1979 by Philip MacDonald
• A Flash of Green from 1962 by John D. MacDonald

I picked up all three. I've heard of Ross and John D. before, but Philip is new to me. We shall see how they pan out. No, they are not related. Ross is a pen name.

I started reading The Underground Man and like many of Ross MacDonald's books, is a story about Lew Archer, a private investigator in Los Angeles. And guess what's happening? The city is on fire. Huh.

Trump Trump Trump Trump

Trump

Via The Village Hemorrhoid.