There is magic in the mundane

for some people their wheelchair made their world lot smaller

for some people it feel both at same time. or neither.

The dog robots are supposed to be autonomous, threehalves is explicitly only for being piloted by a human. The giant horns make it difficult for this machine to enter through doorways, and that is the point. Coupled with the built-in weak points, it is very easy to disable this thing, so it can't be used by the police or the military effectively.

I tried to pirate a game and did so wrong.

The thing about hackers, scammers, fraudsters-- is that they cast a very wide net knowing they'll get a few suckers caught in it. Let's say 10,000 people get an email saying "YOÜVE W0N!🤩 CLiCK N⁰W!?!" 9,997 of them delete it. For the three people who get sucked in, it's life ruining.

They rely on the fact that, at some point, they are going to get you while you're not thinking clearly. Maybe you're sick. Or tired. Or work is stressful. Or you just had a fight with someone and you're mad. Your kid is going through something, your dog is at the vet, your car broke down, you got fired. Or you're in the middle of planning a big event, or you're so super excited for a convention-- and something comes across your desk. Maybe it's an email, or a phone call, a link, a text, a file. But for whatever reason you're not thinking 100% clearly and you don't question it, you trust for a minute and that's all that they need. You are now one of those three caught in the net.

And now you're actually on their list of suckers! They will return to you over and over and over and over again for more, because hey! You fell for it once. They're counting on that your grandma who answered a scam call and provided her credit card number once WILL be scammable again. Maybe not right away, maybe not the same way, but they'll get her. (And more often than not, they're right.)

I think most people are inclined to want to trust one another. Or sometimes we're curious. Or we think, "Wow, I didn't know it would be this easy!" not stopping to ask WHY it's so easy to get something good for free.

I work at a financial institution and I help people all the time who have been hacked and lost hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are always terrified- will I get my money back? Am I safe?- but they are also consistently ashamed and embarrassed. They feel guilty for having trusted and for not having stopped to think for a second longer. They verbally berate themselves. "I'm so stupid. How could I have fallen for it?"

Currently I'm only out about $300, which I'm being told I'll get back. That number could go up-- I'm still working on securing everything. Do you know how many passwords I had stored in my browser? 192. I have no idea how many of those had a valid card attached, but so far one account was plenty to steal a couple hundred bucks from me. And I do feel stupid, and embarrassed, ashamed, humiliated. Scared. The hacker messaged everyone I had recently messaged on discord as well as every channel in every server to @/everyone with instructions to download their Spyware. Every single person I talk to knows I fell for something dumb.

It's embarrassing, it's upsetting, and I dont even know the full scope of what more is going to happen. I had tax documents on my computer-- how much of my identity is now in their hands? I've locked my credit and placed fraud alerts everywhere, but how safe am I? Who else is at risk now because of me? What other files do they have from me?

In this case, I happen to know that a number of people did what I did. I've seen a number of threads from others who ALSO tried to download tomodachi life from github. (For the record, this was not the floralith link.) I was excited, I was in a hurry. I thought, "this is so quick and easy and now I can play!" I didnt question why in the hell it would EVER be so easy. I haven't had a virus on my computer since I was a young teen, and then I went and installed a bunch of Trojans whilst going "la la la." Incredibly stupid stuff.

i almost did this exact same thing in january of this year. i'd just applied for SSA disability and a day or two after i got an legitimate looking email saying they needed additional documents. i check my email first thing in the morning so i was physically tired and stressed in every way possible and in pain from still being post-surgical and i was scared of screwing up this process.

i downloaded the attached file. the only thing that saved me was my computer asking if i was sure i wanted to run this program.

what program? i thought this was a pdf?

no. turns out the icon was a pdf but the file type was something i wasn't familiar with.

i went back to the email and sure enough the sender was some stupid gibberish.

i dodged a bullet by an unspeakably slim margin. it terrifies me how legit the email had looked, it was properly formatted with correct spelling and grammar and had all the right logos and headers and it went to my focused inbox. this was not designed to filter people out. it terrifies me how they even knew i'd just applied and to try this.

i've had friends who've lost thousands to scams that got them at the wrong time.

If you non-black, reblog this when you see it and if you only see one or two additions on the stack, check comments to see if you can reblog a longer version. Pretty much all my shit is free to read/listen to, so send your money to other Black folks in the reblogs instead and help boost their art.

Writing:

Weaving the Stories, poetry compilation

Chasing Uncertainty, poetry compilation/Transfeminist Womanism theory

General longer-form theory can be found at my site, anons.ee

Audio:

AngelicDirt on Ao3

I was too lazy to go refill her water bowl at the sink and so I poured some of my spring water into her bowl and she lapped it up in like two seconds. From then on she won't drink tap water! I tried giving her only tap water yesterday and she didn't drink for a whole day so I relented and gave her bottled water this morning and she drank it perfectly 🤦‍♀️ It's Fiji water too- the most expensive kind. She won't even drink Dasani (although I do agree that Dasani water tastes like it's been inside a water gun all day LOL)

/end ID]

[ID: a reddit comment and two replies. The original comment is by u/danzainfinata and says,

Put tap water in the Fiji bottle and let her watch you refill the bowl with the "Fiji" water - worth a shot

the first reply is by u/HeyT00ts11 and says,

Do this OP, but let it sit overnight after you pour it into the bottle. Also if your Fiji water was refrigerated, then refrigerate the fake Fiji water. Letting it sit overnight will remove some of the chlorine smell.

and the 2nd is by u/coolerburner (marked as the OP) saying,

Omg it worked. Thank you so much. Now I know she's just brand obsessed and not actually a water connoisseur

This one is fun because I have an easier time putting them on correctly now that I have a visual guide painted on them lol. I also stitched them tighter so that they work a little better, since I need braces that actually fit me (dwarfism)

But I wore these throughout my 5 day catering trip (very labor intensive) and they helped IMMENSELY now that they're tighter. And they look even cuter now 💚 compression wear, my beloved. Elbow/ankle braces next probably

*****