and the truth of the matter is, I never let you go

Into the Tolkien legendarium, musicals, Star Wars, and Assassin's Creed (new hyperfixation alert). Taking fic commissions! Header by @phobso. Studyblr: @your-local-historian

[arya-durin-51]

I would like to say here that 1. Sometimes I get my asks much later than you send them to me, and 2. I will not check if a fundraiser from Gaza has been vetted. It is an inhumane practice from my part, especially since I cannot donate. If you can donate, make sure the fundraiser is legit.

[only-cat-memes]

[frankenmouse]

It is so ridiculously easy to gain a reputation for being competent by just reading signs.

This is not metaphorical. I mean actual, literal pieces of paper/plastic/metal/whatever explicitly erected to inform the public.

“How did you know this was the right trail?” I read the sign.

“Wow, how did you know what that flower is?” There’s a SIGN.

“How did you know we needed to use the side door?” THERE IS A SIGN POSTED ON THE FRONT DOOR.

Just…why are we having such different experiences of the world? People can read. I KNOW they can read. There’s nothing wrong with their vision.

Just. READ. THE. GOD. DAMN. SIGN.

This also applies to:

Syllabi

Instructions

[headspace-hotel]

After working in a place where people often asked questions answered by signs, I find it to be the case that when a person is in a new place, there is a lot of stimuli to take in, so the sign has to be of a certain size, obviousness, and recognizability to be quickly separated out from the other visual noise.

[natalia-lady-targaryen]

The Elven King and his Little Leaf

[ariaste]

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.

[april]

cats are really good at looking at things. very useful

[april]

having two cats essentially means you have a bug and rodent triangulation system. if they are both looking somewhere you know for damn sure there is some unauthorised fucking thing there.

[tridentandtales]

Egyptian toy in the shape of a rider and two horses on wheels

4th century CE

J. Paul Getty 82.AI.76.22

[devinellekurtz]

My very first tiger drawing and my latest

[formaldehydedoesstuff]

Your skill level is unquestionable but listen.

I love him.

[partywithponies]

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

[partywithponies]

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

[the-morose-musings-of-mewaddlee]

Wishing the absolute worst on Joe Biden.

[thecookiesewingtin]

[palestinians-world]

[musashi]

Hey can you guys reblog Cheeseburger so he can take a sunbeam nap on lots of blogs. No other reason I just want you guys to see him.

[anxietyproblem]

[oak23]

We forgot about it

[dickheaddutch]

[valilihapiirakka]

I once signed up to participate in a study on how depression affects memory, forgot I was meant to go do it, and when I emailed to apologise to the PhD student running it she basically told me that a) she was very used to this happening and b) the weird irony of her theories’ correctness making it very difficult to arrange proving them had by now gone from infuriating to hysterical

[plain-flavoured-english]

I went to the Grand Canyon when I was depressed and I literally forgot the whole thing. Like, the only reason I even know I was there is that I have photographs of myself standing in front of the Grand Canyon with dead eyes but i have absolutely no memory of it

People talk about depression like it’s just being sad all the time but straight up your brain stops working and sadness is just one of the many, many consequences of that

[liberalsarecool]

Also, Conor McGregor blew out his knee in like nine seconds last night and Drake lost a million dollars betting on him.

So even better

[daysleftofsecondterm]

And don’t forget Christina Noleen or whatever his name is got absolutely got by Emily Wilson when he dared invoke her name in his bad canon noncompliant fanfiction

[hiderfromthesad]

He what?

[daysleftofsecondterm]

He had the audacity to pretend she was to blame for involved in his little fanfiction. She responded severely.

MSN

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

[hiderfromthesad]

Ahhh... mhhh... yes. Damn. Nothing to add to all that then.

How meny more days?

[daysleftofsecondterm]

idk its past my bedtime

[hiderfromthesad]

Then on the morrow once rested

[daysleftofsecondterm]

897 days left!

[orphetoon]

sometimes on the tumblr app you click on an image to see it fullscreen and it will give you a completely different image it has sourced from the fucking aether. i hope they never fix this because i got flashbanged with an image of scooby doo calling me a ‘raggot’

[untiloblivions]

thinking about “you haven’t met all the people who will love you” and like!!! you also haven’t found all the things that will make you happy!!!! there will always be new authors and musicians and artists whose work you will one day discover and love!!!! there will always be new hobbies and skills for you to learn and feel fulfilled by!!! there will always be new things around the corner that will bring sudden and unexpected happiness!!!!!!!!!!!