April, 2021 archive
News You Should Lose 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Bobby Hoffman offers some techniques for avoiding falling into the sewer of falsehoods that masquerades as news, particularly on “social” media and propaganda websites. In the course of his exposition, he makes this point, which we see played out many times a day:
The refutation problem is typically addressed in two ways by those who harbor irrefutable beliefs. Too much evidence means a conspiracy theory is being advanced. Too little evidence means there is a cover-up. The conspiracy supporter can never be wrong!
I commend his article to your attention.
And Now for a Musical Interlude 0
You may remember Ken Curtis as Festus in the television show, Gunsmoke.
H/T to my brother for letting me know about Curtis’s singing talent.
I Get Mail Spam
0
This one was from
no rep Iy @ amazo n.co m
Following that was this string:
auto.confirm-[nonsense sequence of letters and numbers]@webmails-service.com/
It claimed that my account with a retail establishment was on hold because reasons.
I logged into said account, going to it directly on a whole nother computer. The account was not on hold.
Note the spaces in the sender address and the “I” instead of an “l” in “no rep Iy.”
An inspection of the headers showed that the message was sent from a NAT address and therefore, for all practical purpose, untraceable. I used whois and dig to track down webmails-service.com and the results were most interesting. Needless to say, they had nothing to do with said retail establishment.
You might want to give that a whirl, just to find out how dig and whois work. They are useful tools.
This has got to be one of the clumsiest phishing attempts I’ve ever seen.
Chess 0
Many years ago, I played chess. Then I discovered contract bridge, and my days of chess playing ended.
Recently, as I realized that the likelihood that I will ever again sit around a card table with three other persons had become remote, I decided to take up chess again. Plus chess is something that you don’t need an opponent to enjoy; there are puzzles and collections of classic games that you can work through on your own.
I found a couple of books on chess at Project Gutenberg (one by Lasker and one one by Capablanca, two legendary Master), got purchased a boot of simple puzzles, and started to try to get my hand in again. In fact, I’m even playing a game with someone on another continent via DMs at a geeky forum that I frequent.
That’s all in the way of a rambling lead in to this: we found the chess set in a Crusades style in house and neither of us knows where it came from. It is quite eye-catching.
(Yet Another) Wall-Eyed Piker 0
E. J. Montini writes of local Arizona officials who called out Arizona Governor Ducey for grandstanding at the southwestern border. A snippet (emphasis added):
Sheriff David Hathaway of Santa Cruz County and Sheriff Chris Nanos of Pima County told the governor thanks, but no thanks.
Hathaway said, “We both responded saying, ‘We don’t have a migrant crisis on the border. We do not need to militarize our counties and have troops come to the border.’”
Follow the link for the rest.
(Missplet wrod fixked.)
History Matters 0
At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dan Simpson tries to draw some lessons from America’s war in Afghanistan. A snippet; follow the link for the full piece:
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Expose your progeny to politeness.
He also told police his father has played with guns before and pointed them at him and his brother. The victim’s sister said Sibley called the police after the victim was shot and said his son had shot himself.
The child is expected to survive.
A Tune for the Times 0
(Warning: Language)
