almost always improvising

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.

I hadn't gone into a panic though and was googling on my work computer everything the guy was saying and it all lined up as true and plausible (like how missing jury duty is a civil infraction, and so on). Anyways, they have me go to my car and start giving me instructions about picking up the funds to bring to the courthouse (which they do instead of trying to get your info over the phone because if you do a payment over the phone it typically needs to go directly to an account or to a business where the scammers will have an account the business could then give to law enforcement - not to say that scammers WON'T do these over the phone, they totally will, but knowing why they have you go to your financial institution helps with putting up more mental hurdles for these fuckers to have to navigate and helps you protect yourself from their bullshit). I let them know my nearest financial institution is a 2 hour drive away (which it is) and he pivots to giving me instructions to go to Walmart to do a paid money service to transfer funds into a certificate in my name, which was where my brain was like "WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE SHEN, THAT'S A HUGE RED FLAG THIS GUY JUST SAID." and I calmly explained to the guy how that made no sense and is an INCREDIBLY common scam technique.

He kept trying to talk over me and said I needed to stay calm (which was hilarious at this point because I was calm which isblikely the only reason this didn't work) and that he wanted to work with me since "We could just arrest you" and how he's helping me avoid that by working with me to get this taken care of "Which we don't need to do."

I kept explaining it to him and even spelled out how fraudsters ALWAYS TRY TO GET PEOPLE TO PANIC BECAUSE THEN THEY DON'T THINK AS CRITICALLY AND ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO JUST DOING WHAT PEOPLE TELL THEM TO and this fucker just kept going, and being more calm, but still insisting "That's how it is" and that he doesn't make the rules. Meanwhile, I look up the Police department and Walmart addresses so I can give the guy a time estimate "For Walmart" that matches the time it would take to get to the Police Department- my brain was already in the "If this guy is saying "We can just arrest you" anyways, then let's call his fucking bluff" and so I instead drive to the police station since I'm already 99.9999999% sure this is a scammer. Admittedly, I don't think I should have done this since driving to the police while a guy told me not to do that first since they'd just arrest me was making me finally actually start panicking, but I kept telling myself it was a scam and that I knew it was. Anyways, I arrive, tell him I'm there and he gives me BS about what to say to Walmart, not knowing I'm at the police station, and I get in, explain that I'm on the phone with someone claiming to be with the courthouse/police and that he says I missed jury duty and have a warrant for my- and THE POLICE (yes, even though ACAB) were just like "That's a scam - if you're still on the phone with them, you can hang up." And before I did, I put imy phone back to my ear and say "Hello? Sir, are you still there?" And this idiot starts shouting "You are VIOLATING your gag order! THIS IS A-" and I cut him off with "Yeah, okay, bye~"

The Police then let me know how common this is, how these incidents come in waves (and can range from obvious as hell to incredibly convincing), and asked if I had gotten money (no one joked though - that would have been nice), or been to somewhere to "Send funds to an account in [my] name that they provided" and after getting some info, taking a few minutes to calm down (because I DID NOT want to be arrested and as previously stated, was starting to panic EVEN THOUGH I WAS SURE IT WAS A SCAM) and was getting up to leave, the lady officer at the front reminded me of something that anyone getting one of these calls needs to hear, remember, and NEVER forget:

"If you ever get a call from anyone claiming to be part of any position of authority or law enforcement and they're claiming to have a warrant out on you, just remember: we won't call you to warn you, we'll just arrest you instead. We would never call to warn you. WHY WOULD WE?"

And my brain was like "Oh yeah. That doesn't make sense - if I really was bad, and they were actually calling me about something bad I had done, I could just run away. WHY WOULD THEY RISK THAT?"

All this to say: if it can happen to me, someone who HELPED OTHER PEOPLE who were mid-scam avoid this shit, it can happen to anyone - they just need to sound convincing enough that your brain goes "That sounds like it could be true, I better listen to this person."

SO! As a final summation of things to remember:

Scammers will always try to get you to panic: if you're panicking, you're likely not thinking as critically and are not asking questions out of fear of repercussions.

Scammers will try to cutoff your communication with others (there's a gag order so you cannot discuss this with [insert people]) so that people in your life who ARE able to think rationally can't do the thinking about the situation for you.

Scammers will use pieces of truthful information to reinforce the lies they feed you - and may even recruit you in doing the research (make you look up your local/nearest police station or courthouse and read the address or phone number and have you confirm that with something they've sent you with that information on it)

Scammers will push that this needs to be addressed now, OR ELSE.

Scammers will not let you take time and will tell you to stay on the phone - if you ask if you can call them back/if they can call you back or say you're busy working and ask them to call you later they'll get mad and state you cannot and will be arrested (or whatever other bullshit to scare you) and if you're working they may even tell you to tell you boss you need to go, but not to state anything about why other than that an emergency came up and you need to go (which is stupid as fuck).

Scammers will KEEP YOU PANICKED. Even if you are cooperating with them (or pretending to) they will keep talking to you in ways to keep you panicked because if you start to calm down and think about things rationally, you might start to ask questions and if you ask questions, you might figure them out.

This is the control room, and if you look closely, you'll see a dark stripe in the carpet running the perimeter of the room. This was referred to as the "velvet rope," and absolutely NO ONE was allowed to cross it without authorization. It was under constant observation from an adjacent office, and I was told that if someone did set foot inside without permission, things got VERY serious VERY quickly.

This is one of the computer stations, and to me, it's such a gorgeous encapsulation of its period of technology, the sort of aesthetic that shows like Lost will bend over backwards to recreate.

As I was scouting, I noticed the day calendar had last been torn off about when the plant closed for good...

Then we went into the nuclear reactor, and the whole damn thing was just so spooky.

Looking back, I think it came from an overwhelming feeling of utter insignificance in the face of the sheer power this colossus was designed to produce.

The scale was just so out of proportion to every day reality, the sort of place where a weight of "46000 LBS" is just casually noted on the side of a part.

Peering into where the core would've been, all I could think is that I'd never want the job where you have to climb down that ladder on the left while this thing was in operation.

If you're interested in seeing more, you can find my full tour here!

https://nickcarr.com/scouting-a-decommissioned-nuclear-power-plant/

every once in a while you will come across a designer who really runs with it, makes it their mission to showcase exactly what one can do with knitting

Scalindra

Sun King

Fairly Squarely

Thrills with Frills

Da Vinci Wings

Tassel Dazzle

Helix Felicis

Batman & Robin

Wizard Lizard

Lindworm

That's not even all of them. I'm not a huge fan of the term fibre art but this really is it. Wearable art. Look at the geometry of it all! The structure, the chaos, the whimsy! God I love modular knitting