alissa-cat

[alissa-cat]

i don't care if monday's bleak

tuesday matches wednesday's freak

thursday mispronouncing steak

it's friday, i'm in love

[alissa-cat]

[alissa-cat]

Hack for if you're struggling with ADHD paralysis and you can't get started on a task:

Step 1: Add some silly rule to the task to make it more interesting and whimsical.

Step 2: Pretend Sam Reich just told you to do it.

Here are a few examples that have worked for me recently.

(Bonus points if you can hear @samreich in your head. "Alright, players, for your next challenge" 🎶ding🎶)

[alissa-cat]

WHY DOES THE LOBSTER HAVE NIPPLES, SAM????

[alissa-cat]

things you DO NOT need to be a man

a dick

he/him pronouns

XY chromosomes

things you DO need to be a man

the swiftness of a coursing river

the force of a great typhoon

the strength of a raging fire

the mysteriousness of the dark side of the moon

^this post was brought to you by LGBT^

Let's

Get down to

Business

To defeat the huns

[alissa-cat]

owl house was right.planet earth turns slowly and i do feel like an insomniac

[alissa-cat]

The worst thing I ever did at a D&D table was when our DM ran out of place name ideas and told us the name of the port town we needed to go to was "Bar Harbor".

So I tricked him into roleplaying the slightly-too-helpful town guard into giving us directions to- Well you see, the party has been out in the wilderness for like a MONTH, we're all a mess, the dwarf's beard is out of control, so can you tell us- Where can we find the Bar Harbor Barber?

But we were not done. We each took turns, like a pack of velociraptors.

We also had Dryad in the party and a few of her branches got broken in a fight and now her whole canopy is unbalanced and it looks awful, but she really needs to see a specialist, is there a Bar Harbor Arbor Barber?

The Paladin also wanted to look in on a small church he'd heard of, that the city had a patron saint, who was boiled alive in a cauldron of ale, so where is the temple of the Bar Harbor Larger Martyr?

It was around this point that Chris started to tire of this nonsense.

The bard, naturally, wanted to go carousing, and he'd heard this town had some of the most attentive and welcoming Ladies of the Night on the continent, known by thier brightly colored stocking bands, so had he seen any of the Bar harbor Ardor Parlor Farber Garters?

Chris immediately escalated to threats of a Total Party Kill.

Unfortunately, I'd had time to prepare and-

"What do you want?"

"I just wanted to know if you'd seen my cousin."

"...Your cousin?"

"Yeah, I know it's a long shot, but he's got a pretty distinctive appearence and you might have seen him around town."

"Oh No-"

"Okay so he's Welsh and the whole family used to be in the wagon-making business but he got into clothes manufacture until there was an accident with a lamp black dye and now he's permanently stained a sooty color and that really turns heads, so now he's got a job drawing in crowds for the city funded swap meet- no, not the Drow that also works there, I mean like the inside of a fireplace- anyway, he got tired of people mixing the two of them up so he started wearing this fancy armor with a magical +1 charisma bonus-"

"Gallus I swear to God I *WILL* Summon the Tarraqsue-"

"-So have you seen my cousin, Arthur Carter, former Sartor but now he's the Darker Harker for the Charter Barter of Bar Harbor, the one with the Charmer Armor?"

Amazingly, we survived the Tarrasque.

[alissa-cat]

OMG SAM SAID THE THING

[alissa-cat]

PSA: Credit Card Phone Scam

(Or, how Tumblr just saved my ass)

I saw a PSA recently about a scam going around with spoofed official numbers calling and asking for information, and how you should hang up and call back using the correct number rather than just go along with what the caller is telling you. But this is Tumblr, so I'll never be able to find the post again.

I decided to make my own, because this literally just happened to me an hour ago. Hopefully my story can spread some more awareness and save other asses the way mine was saved.

Around 7:30pm tonight (Friday), I got a phone call from a 1-800 number. I almost didn't answer it, then I saw it was 1-800-465-4___, and I recognized that as the start of the CIBC phone number, so I picked up.

Me: Hello?

Guy: Hi, is this [MrsD]?"

Me: Yes.

Guy: Hi, [MrsD], this is _____ from CIBC, how are you tonight?

I thought, okay, this is a sales call. Right before I'm about to sit down for dinner. Typical. Mentally, I'm already putting together an exit strategy, preparing to say no to everything and get off the phone ASAP. But then—

Guy: We've just flagged suspicious activity on your CIBC Visa card. It was an online BestBuy transaction for $980.00. Was that your transaction?

Me, flustered: Uh. What? Sorry, how much?

Guy: $980.00 at BestBuy, was that you?

Me: Oh. At BestBuy?

Guy: Yes, your card was used at a BestBuy in [town nearby]. Was that you? Did you go to [town nearby] today? You don't live in [town nearby], right?

Me: Uh. No?

Guy: Okay, so I need some information to verify this transaction.

By this point, my brain had caught on that something about this was hinky. First of all, I thought he said it was an online purchase, then he said it was in person. But maybe I'd misheard, he was talking fast. My second thought was that every other time there was a suspicious transaction, I got an automated phone call and a text message with instructions to call back. I've never had a person call me directly.

My third thought was, well, the phone number on the caller ID was right....

THEN! I remembered a Tumblr post I saw recently, and I remembered what it told me to do.

Me: I'm skeptical about this call. I'm going to call CIBC myself and look into this.

Guy: What? Ma'am, you can just tell me, I can verify—

Me: No. Thank you, but I'll call the number on the back of my card.

Guy, getting more agitated: Ma'am, if you look at the number on your card, you'll see it's the same number.

Me: You know that can spoofed, right?

Guy: Uh— but ma'am—

Me: Sorry, but I need to make sure. I'm going to call CIBC directly.

The guy kept sputtering, but I hung up on him. In that moment, I really didn't think that he was a scammer. In fact, I thought I was being paranoid and was maybe kinda rude to the guy. I wondered if I was being overcautious, and I felt a bit guilty.

I called the number on the back of my credit card, waited 15 minutes for an agent, and told him what just happened.

IMMEDIATELY—

Agent: You didn't tell him anything, did you?

Me: No. I said I wasn't in [town nearby] today, but that's it.

Agent: Good. You did the right thing by calling us, let me look into the transaction for you.

Then, a minute later:

Agent: I'm not seeing any transaction like that. There's no flags on your card, nothing suspicious at all.

Me: So it was a scam?

Agent: Yep. Entirely fake.

I was honestly surprised. I really thought that there was some kind of mix-up and that I would be apologizing to this guy for being rude to his colleague.

Looking back on it now, I can see all the telltale signs of it being a scam call:

Time of day. Early evening on a Friday, chances are people are either sitting down for dinner or in a hurry to get somewhere. In this situation, a lot people probably wouldn't think twice about giving "the bank" some information just to get off the phone. (Joke's on them, I have no life!) But the way that I reacted to his introduction did evoke the desired reaction of Ugh, what now? Leave me alone! that the scammer was banking on (pun intended).

Sense of urgency. The scammer spoke fast, threw details at me quickly, and made sure I knew that I had to give him my information right away. This honestly threw me off. It was overwhelming, and I felt concerned and a bit frantic for a few seconds until I thought about what I know about scams and what I'd just read in that Tumblr PSA.

Complete lack of empathy or understanding about my skepticism/anti-fraud precautions. The last time I had to get a new credit card number due to fraud, the agent I spoke to said things like "I know this is frustrating", "I'm sorry this is a hassle", etc. And of course the CIBC agent I spoke to tonight was immediately grateful that I'd called them directly and reassured me that CIBC would never ask for information. By contrast, the scammer was outright dismissive of my concerns and got agitated when I wouldn't just trust him right off the bat.

Emotional provocation. Similar to #2 & #3 above, the scammer was very good at making me feel things. Worried and fearful at first, then guilty about being suspicious, to the point where I actually apologized to the guy. (Granted, I am Canadian, but still!)

And finally, I cannot stress enough: the spoofed phone number. I am a pretty well-informed person. I keep up with news about scams and whatnot. I know that phone numbers can be spoofed. I've been in front of my phone when it just starts to ring and I can see the auto-dialler number appear briefly before it gets replaced with a number that has my area code. But tonight—early evening on a Friday—I was cooking dinner and my phone was across the room. It had rung several times by the time I got to it. I only picked it up because I recognized the CIBC number. And when the scammer started his spiel, the fact that the number was the same was enough for me to give him just a tiny moment of trust. Had he actually gotten past that first barrier and started requesting my information, I think I would have caught on, because people asking for sensitive information over the phone is a huge obvious red flag. I like to think I would have caught on, anyway. But maybe not! That fake number almost had me.

TL;DR: No matter what the number on your caller ID says—that it's your bank, your energy company, your internet provider, whatever!—if the person on the other end is requesting sensitive information urgently, don't panic. Stop. Think. Then tell them nothing, hang up the phone, and call your service provider yourself using a verified phone number.

[alissa-cat]

Look. The links between the Jews being attacked and Palestine/Israel are going to become more and more tenuous. The attack on the embassy workers was justified in the pro-Palestine crowd because they directly worked for Israel. The attack in Boulder was justified because they were walking for the current hostages still held by Hamas. Not walking for Israel, not walking for Zionism… but people are assuming they’re “Zios” anyway. Because they have to, to justify their deaths.

And because the left has been using Zionist as a slur (just like Nazis do), they now have an out for any violence against Jews.

And we TOLD you this was going to happen. We told you to stop using Zionist as a slur, we told you to stop using “Zio”, that it was literally a slur invented by a white supremacist. We told you that Nazis and the far right have been using Zionist to mean Jew for decades, and you ignored us.

Slurs are verbal violence, and they encourage and justify physical violence. And now that violence is murder. If you ever used Zionist in a derogatory way online or irl, you are personally responsible for these murders. You used violence with your words, and you enabled physical violence. You have given people permission to enact physical violence against any Jew they dislike as long as they call them a Zionist.

American Jews will die, and the attacker will yell “free Palestine” even though the Jews in question have nothing to do with Palestine. And you will shrug and go “well, they must have been Zionists”. And you’ll justify the deaths of innocent Americans because you’re a leftist, and you can’t possibly be antisemitic.

[alissa-cat]

In a normal circumstance, I hate Netflix. However, they struck a deal to produce new episodes of Sesame Street and will ensure that the episodes remain free and accessible on PBS for all kids and for that, they deserve gratitude.

Additionally, unlike the deal previous struck with HBO, this one with Netflix also makes its so new episodes are simultaneously available via Netflix, PBS, and the PBS Kids app.

Please continue to support Sesame Street and all the other PBS programming via donations to ensure everyone, kids and adults alike, continue to have access to educational viewing.

[alissa-cat]

Above image is a pride flag with every color band represented by a NASA image. White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites, orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength.

[alissa-cat]

Already know I wanna send this to people on June 1

[alissa-cat]

Has this been done yet?

[alissa-cat]

I was trying to find out if Kermit was eligible to be pope and I found a blog that says he's the perfect example of a catholic priest

[alissa-cat]

The thing with statistics - via

[alissa-cat]