Ya boi just took some asshole for a ride. Some schmuck called me from a (spoofed) DC number with some cockamamie story about how he’s with the Federal Government and they’ve randomly selected me to receive a $7000 grant, oh and I’ll have to go pick it up at any of several chain grocery stores. Keeps using these “check-in” phrases that are meant to prompt you to say yes.
But see, joke’s on him: I’ve heard of this scam, and I don’t talk like most people. When I answer the phone and someone asks for me by name, I say “Speaking,” not “Yes.” So every single time this assclown tried to get me to say “Yes” I’d say something like “Understood” or “Go on.”
You see, the scam is, they trick you into saying “Yes,” and bonus if they can get you to repeat numbers (esp. 0-9) and/or “I agree.” What these low-lives do is record your voice and then use the sound bytes to make fraudulent charges in your name.
So fuck this guy right off the bat.
The more I dicked him around, the more frequently he started trying to goad me into saying the y-word. The funniest part came when he was going to “give me a confirmation number.”
Him: The confirmation is seven, one, three…
And he just STOPS. The “three” was pitched up to indicate there’d be more. I wait. He waits. I say, “Go on.”
And this bitch goes, “Yes, the confirmation number is seven, one, three…”
And he STOPS AGAIN. I wait. He waits. I say, “Go on,” again.
And he STARTS! OVER! AGAIN! He did this TWO MORE TIMES before giving me the “full confirmation number” and a “number to call,” which together JUST HAPPEN to include all ten digits, 0 through 9.
This entire time I haven’t said a single word that could be construed as agreement. So he asks me to repeat the numbers back to him. I decide I’ve had enough at that point. I tell him to get a better job, hang up, and block the number.
Another “DC” number immediately calls me. I reject & block it.
And then I filed a report with the Federal Trade Commission. :3
BE WARY. Get yourself on the National Do Not Call Registry. If a number you don’t recognize calls you, DON’T REPLY “YES” OR ANY OTHER GENERIC AFFIRMATIVE TO ANYTHING THEY SAY OR ASK.
The original scam is a robocall that starts off with “Can you hear me?” The most correct response is to hang up and report it to the FTC. The second best is “I can hear you,” if you’re not sure or if you forget. But get into the habit of using responses other than “Yes” on the phone. These fuckers are everywhere.
It gets worse, OP. Your voice can be spliced to sound like you agreed to something. You may have given them enough to do that with. Like those Microsoft Windows people that call and want your ‘important numbers off your computer’ I talked to them for far too long and only found out after the fact that they could make fraudulent charges just by splicing some of your words together. They were after something different, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. Also there’s the common ‘press 1′ people as well. It’s best to just hang up. The Attorney General says to get an answering machine and they can’t really do anything about them because they’re constantly spoofing numbers. Neither can the phone company, and they Charge You Money for reporting them!
Oof. Reblogging for additional warnings. I’ve already made my report to the FTC, so I’ll just be keeping a close eye on my finances for a while. (Like I’m not already given my situation.)
Thousands of cartons of Vanilla Almond Breeze are under recall for containing undeclared milk. I don’t care what you think about vegans, nondairy milk, whatever…
This could kill people if word doesn’t get out fast enough.
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin
Please share this. Dairy allergies can be fatal and many people with them choose to drink almond milk.
recall is dated august 2, this is current. pass it along for your lactose intolerant friendos.
Recall is dated August 2, 2018, specifically – I note the year so this doesn’t accidentally get picked up and go around again in a year. The almond milk in question may be contaminated with dairy milk, which is not listed as an allergen on the packaging, and may therefore trigger dairy allergies. As of the date of the FDA release, there had been one report of an allergic reaction with no hospitalisations so far.
The recall only pertains to refrigerated Blue Diamond Vanilla Almond Breeze almond milk with a use-by date of September 2, 2018. Consumers of almond milk can dentify affected product via the following information stamped on it:
It will also have a Universal Product Code (UPC barcode) of 41570 05621 printed on the side panel with the nutritional information. The FDA also has provided example images of this information to help consumers identify affected product:
Product can be returned for a full refund or exchange at the retail location it was purchased from, or visit Blue Diamond’s web-site to complete a form. The FDA also notes that any consumers with questions for Blue Diamond may contact them at 1-800-400-1522, which is distinct phone number provided by the FDA that is not simply the company’s general inquiries phone number, suggesting that it is either a number specific to questions regarding this particular recall or a number specific to a given department within Blue Diamond that is familiar with the situation.
There are now more than 90 people dead. You can bitch and whine that’s it’s hotter where you are, but you have to understand that it’s the elderly, homeless and small children who don’t have air conditioning and are susceptible to health problems. How fucking despicable can you be to just laugh at people dying because temperatures are hotter where you are. Our infrastructure was built to withstand -30 C°, not the heat. It’s not about how Canadians are “weak”, it’s literally just shitty circumstances.
Not to mention that people who are accustomed to cold climates have a physically more difficult time coping with temperatures that their bodies aren’t used to. Also a lot of people who have never had to cope with hotter temperatures aren’t as familiar with heat exhaustion or heat stroke, don’t know how to manage the heat safely , etc!
That last point.
Denmark is currently in its hottest summer ever recorded, and the number of people I’ve talked to who have only now discovered what a heat stroke is amazes me, because I grew up in the South of France where summers are hot as fuck every year – my brother-in-law went out for a bike ride without a hat and with a half a liter of water for three hours and came back and was sick because of it.
The idea that he’d get sick because of the sun didn’t even OCCUR to him, because in his 30+ years on this green ball swirling through space, it’s never been an issue for him.
In the South of France, most cafés have mist sprayers and all shops / malls are air-conditioned. In Denmark, most cafés do NOT have mist sprayers (but heat lights!) and the shops are not always air-conditioned.
Most of the warehouses have been out of portable air-conditioners and fans on an off since May because people are hot and have no air-condition installed. The buildings are built to keep heat IN. Not out.
No air con, buildings designed to keep heat in, not even ceiling fans, no drinking fountains, windows that don’t open in buildings, and we expect people to work in those buildings, in their full uniform which has no ‘hot weather’ option – I mean what employer is going to provide short sleeves and shorts for that one week every three years where it gets above 25/80 degrees? – windows that don’t open on public transport, and often no shade while waiting for said public transport, we have heaters and insulation and draft excluders, we buy black cars and dark clothes, we buy sunscreen for our holidays in Spain, then forget where we put it, when we find it and apply it we sweat it off again because we’re not used to the heat, we walk places rather than drive and even if we drove, our cars don’t have proper air con and we don’t have covered parking, school playgrounds and public parks have no shade, people don’t have pools so kids play out all summer in the heat. We don’t have ‘American style’ large fridges or freezers with ice makers and they break down when competing with hotter than usual ambient temperature, most of us don’t even own cool boxes – or if we do it’s at the back of the shed full of spiders.
So yes, we have to be told it’s going to be hot. And we have to be warned to check our elderly neighbours and to help them take the blankets off their bed or to swap to a summer duvet, to suggest they have a cold drink instead of a pot of tea and take off their cardigan.
Because we only know people who got sunstroke on their holidays abroad.
And we have never in our lives known anyone who died from the heat.
To anybody who thinks it’s funny when people die, you can go fuck off a tall bridge.
I live in Phoenix. It’s going to be 115F/46C degrees today. This is nothing unusual for this time of year. And yet every year we lose people to the heat. I can’t imagine what super temps must be like when you are not used to it. England, Quebec, and most of Europe’s home were designed to keep heat in. Not let it out. So instead of giggling like evil children over someone else’s horror, try being a little more understanding at the very least of what they are going through.
Standard Finnish summer is usually around 20Celsius. 25C is considered hot weather! This summer has been over 30Celsius.
We’ve had rain maybe three times in two months where I’m at and I’ve had my first sunstroke, the whole country is under forest fire warnings, fish are dying in the lakes and many lakes grow poisonous algae that makes it dangerous to swim in. Oh and pretty much every store has far long ago ran out of fans so we’re stuck in boiling apartments that’re built to keep heat in. (If the immediate effects aren’t bad enough, as a gardner I’m super worried for long term. The wells are drying, water table is being drained faster than it can recover, and if the winters don’t match up, we’re going to see pests we’ve never dealt with before. A good portion of agriculture relies on cold winters to kill most pests, but now they’ve been creeping north fast. If things aren’t dealt with in time we’ll be facing a pretty steep drop in food by next year when we get shitty crop and south is burning so bad we can’t even import food.)
This is a global problem that needs to be addressed fast, not giggled and sneered at.
Also worth noting that in many areas, it isn’t JUST hot, but it’s also EXTREMELY humid. Where I live in Southern Ontario, we’ve had a number of days where it’s been over 40C with the humidity factored in. People who experience this will tell you – it isn’t the HEAT that gets you so much as the HUMIDITY (like heat is bad but the humidity makes it so much worse). If you live in a desert sort of climate, you might be used to high temps, but it’s a dry heat. Bodies deal with that better. But when it’s humid, the body’s natural cooling mechanisms DON’T WORK. If it’s humid, your sweat will not evaporate to cool you, you just sweat and sweat and it goes nowhere and doesn’t cool you off particularly effectively.
And this works in the reverse too – all you people scoffing at how you can deal with high temperatures? Come here in winter, I’m sure you’ll be literally out of your element. I had a roommate this past year who was on exchange from Hong Kong where it can get extremely hot, and she couldn’t tolerate the cold at all. By early October she’d already pulled out her warmest clothes. The coldest weather she was used to experiencing was around 5-10C, she couldn’t even fathom anything below zero. We adapt to what we’re accustomed to. Heat disproportionately affects the elderly, ill/disabled, and small children. Our infrastructure is not designed for heat and a good chunk of housing has no AC – we have minimum temperatures that housing can be in the winter but no maximum temperatures for housing in the summer, AC is seen as a luxury in many cases if you’re renting. Humidity can also make the heat far worse, since the body can’t effectively cool itself in high heat high humidity climates. This is serious. This is killing people.
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 