Wrapped in Iron

not female, but a girlboss nonetheless

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

*strikes you with a spell that gives you bigger tits*

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hey don't worry? completely unrelated giant dump of heartwarming PHM doodles ok??

do not get IR blocking fabric or thick wool to cover your nose and mouth

do not get IR blocking sunglasses since facial recognition has moved up to targeting and identifying the upper face

do not avoid having your phone or any bluetooth devices around these cameras as they can detect and track those signals

do not buy cheap green lasers 1 milliwatt or above from etsy or walmart or amazon (i will not try and find a link if you ask)

do not use them to fry those fuckers from a distance damage the delicate inner sensors by pointing the beam in the lenses

AND unless you want to cost Flock more money in repairs, do not buy a small circle saw or a reciprocating saw and cut down the pole

OR do not climb said poles, spray paint on the solar panels, cover the lens with paint or a sticker, then use bolt cutters to sever the wires

when doing all these things, DO NOT avoid using latex gloves as fingerprints can leak through

DO NOT USE DEFLOCK TO FIND FLOCK SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS NEAR YOU

remember, flock is for YOUR safety :) even though crime rates have not gone down since they were implemented, they're being abused to track down exes and s/os, and many face pools or houses or schools or gymnasiums! Where there are no liscence plates to be found!

DO NOT DO THESE THINGS and enjoy a life under surveillance!

enjoy living in the country where 87,000 of these cameras were used to track down a woman who got an abortion!

enjoy living in the country where there's no consequences for a flock exec to watch a inside of a gymnastics place without their knowledge!

Remember, this is their American Dream.

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.

The scammers even had a setup where they "transferred" the call around. It was impressive, and they were prepared for questions about badge numbers, supervisor names, etc.

In hindsight, so much about the call was absurd -- that we were under surveillance, an arrest would automatically happen if we set foot in the police department, the need to go to a "self-serve bail kiosk", the refusal to allow anyone else on the line (the scammers did NOT want my partner to tell me anything).

I have read about this scam a million times.

But in the moment, it was incredibly intense. I only got a taste of it, too, when my partner passed me the phone. Even if you sense a red flag, you are not given a moment to examine it. So many scammer tactics are straight out of the abuser handbook: high urgency, authoritative voice, a barrage of instructions to follow. They want you scared and confused.

Even if you know, "the cops don't call", resisting this sort of thing takes practice!

I used to talk to a lot of cops in my old job, which is what helped me push back -- the minute I chastised the "officer" for being so jargon-heavy and not talking like a real person (something I did often at that old job), I was able to snap out of the scammer's spell and do a sanity check.

But if I had been a little poorer, a little more depressed, or things timed closer to my old legal troubles w/forgotten citations, I may have fallen for it.

I am with OP: You are not immune to social engineering. In fact, the more you think you are immune, the more you are likely suspectible.

Don’t constantly shift your food around in the pan if you want to form a crust on it, the less you move it the better.

Don’t be afraid to add water if youre frying up food and the food/sauce looks a bit dry.

Don’t fry up your garlic early on in the cooking process (unless youre making a quick garlic oil) as the garlic flavour can straight up disappear if overcooked for too long and/or the garlic can become bitter if burnt

Don’t overcook your vegetables. Look up recommended cook times for them. Your distaste for vegetables stems from them being overcooked and being poorly seasoned.

Don’t microwave stuff for more than 2 minutes at a time unless you know what you’re doing. Reheating stuff tends to fare better when you mix food between microwaving times since microwaves develop hotspots if you microwave it uninterrupted for too long.

I’m currently in culinary school so I hope you don’t mind if I add a couple tips myself:

Salt and pepper are your bffs, salt especially. Even a little bit of salt can have such an impact on a dish and it helps bring out and amplify all the other flavors in a dish

When you’re cooking green veggies, never EVER cover them. You may have grown up hating broccoli, green beans and brussel sprouts that were limp and that horrid shade of olive puke green. It’s because if you cook or steam green veggies in a covered pot the enzymes and parts of the plant that make it green will break down and turn that nasty shade

Speaking of cooking vegetables, I’m begging you to please please look up and try roasting veggies if you’ve never done it before!! It’s so so easy, it works beautifully with practically any vegetable you can imagine and you can season them however you wish!

My last tip is if you’re going to invest in any sort of kitchenware, have it be a good sharp knife and good quality pots/pans. And if you do end up getting these items, make sure you take good care of them! Most metal kitchenware will last longer if you hand wash them, as opposed to always running them through the dishwasher which will rust them so much faster. So make sure to look up proper care if you’re unsure

The Kingmaker Histories, steampunk fantasy adventure where three petty criminals get swept up into a magical international power struggle

The Goblet Wire, surreal microfiction where you listen along as people play a mysterious rpg on the phone

Small Victories, drama; Marisol is a young woman fresh out of rehab, trying to figure out sobriety and herself

SINKHOLE, slow-burn sci-fi with cyberpunk elements with themes of disability, ableism, isolation, and a mystery coiling in the background

The Sterling Girl, a standalone steampunk-horror-fairytale audio drama

the Dead Letter Office of Somewhere, Ohio, a Weird Midwestern horror that starts off feeling like an anthology then turns into something else. The kind of story where the less you know going in, the better imo

Eeler's Choice, maritime ecological horror fantasy about a small coastal town whose economy has been based on the hunting of the Great Eels for generations