#i had to go to the bank today man and the rep that was supposed to talk to me was away so nothing got done

[sugarrushsato]

In God's hand was a scalpel

[matthewtkachuk]

aviophobia - rafe cameron

a rough flight provokes your fear of flying, luckily your cute seat mate is willing to hold your hand and help you through it

warnings: mentions of anxiety, fluuuuff

pairing: rafe cameron x reader

word count: 1.6k

a/n: wrote this on the plane this afternoon, lowkey inspired by own anxiety today (sans the rafe cameron comfort) - planes aren’t supposed to be quiet!! i didn’t proofread so sorry in advance hehe

Flying wasn’t your favorite thing in the world. In all honesty, you might have a little airplane phobia. You could keep it together when everything went according to plan: when checking into your flight went smoothly, TSA was a breeze and you had an hour extra to spare as you sat at your gate.

Of course, this was not one of those times. There had been a mixup with your uber, causing you to lose half of your relax buffer time. then, there had been an issue checking in and you briefly thought you wouldn’t be allowed on the plane, but the nice customer service rep behind the desk was kind enough to explain they had accidentally let you choose a seat already occupied and simply moved your seat assignment. The real bummer was losing out on the window seat - one of the ways you were able to get over (well not quite over but through for sure) your fear was to face it, quite literally forcing yourself to look out the window as the plane took off and landed. For some reason watching the position of the airplane relative to the ground was grounding for you.

Even going through TSA had gone wrong, you’d forgotten to take your novelty bottle opener off your key ring and ended up getting pulled to the side and patted down. (It was a joke gift from your dad in the shape of a spent shotgun shell - something about a warning to any boys who might want to approach you? Who knows, you just liked it because you always had a bottle opener on you, getting you to a beer quickly when the occasion called for it).

You didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse when you arrived at your newly assigned seat to find a tall and handsome twenty-something man in the window seat. You gulped, briefly wondering if you could pretend like you had a different assigned seat but you knew the plane was full and didn’t want that embarrassment. He must have took this as you needing help, as he stood up, mumbled a respectful ‘ma’am’ and lifted your very heavy carryon like it wasn’t full of your makeup and toiletries, a weeks worth of clothes and three pairs of shoes.

“Thanks,” you replied quietly, cheeks warming with embarrassment. He just smiled in response before sitting back down.

“Sorry if I encroach in your space a little,” he preemptively apologized, knowing his six foot three frame would likely brush against yours at the very least if not press against you directly.

“Don’t worry about it!” you smiled before putting in your headphones and putting on your relaxing playlist. You were able to close your eyes and grip the outside armrest to get through the takeoff, and the beginning of the flight passed by as you focused on the smooth rhythm of what was playing through your headphones.

Based on the way the today was going you shouldn’t have been as surprised as you were when the plane hit a patch of rough turbulence. You softly gasped and gripped both your armrest and the arm of the poor, hot stranger beside you. Your hands stayed locked in place for approximately two minutes, as the plane rocked and waved, before he gently pried your fingers from his arm. You were about to apologize when another shake of the aircraft had you gasping, he grabbed your hand, letting your fingers connect. you rode out the turbulence, comforted by the strangers warm hand as you tried to steady your breathing.

Cheeks warm with embarrassment again, you let go of his hand and carefully clasped your hands together in your lap. You avoided looking at him for the rest of the flight, embarrassed and honestly a little turned on which embarrassed you more. Clearly you needed to get laid if a little hand holding was getting you all hot and bothered. Though if you thought about it, it was more about the gentle and sweet way he held your hand without hesitation more than the actual physical contact.

When you neared your destination, you had another moment of pure panic as the plane quieted around you. You’d never experienced that level of quiet while traveling in a metal death trap before and so you frantically turned to your handsome seat mate for reassurance. Relaxing the slightest bit at his soft smile before he placed his hand on your knee, palm facing up. You gladly clutched his hand with both of yours, fingers laced together. It helped calm your racing thoughts and heartbeat. You noticed he was exaggerating the way he breathed - in and out, in and out - and realized he wanted you to mimic him. Focusing on the way his chest rose and fell, you found yourself calming down as your breathing evened.

“We’re just taxi-ing, waiting for the okay to start our descent and land,” he told you softly, trying to reassure you further. Your mouth felt dry and you didn’t trust yourself to find the words so you simply nodded.

“If you hate flying so much why torture yourself?” he asked a minute later, unable to stop himself from asking, curious about the beautiful girl so full of anxiety beside him.

“Well, driving across the country to head home doesn’t really appeal to me. I’m not usually this bad,” you admitted shyly, moving to unlace your fingers, embarrassed at yourself for clinging to a stranger like a life line but your stomach dropped as you felt the plane begin its descent and gripped him more tightly.

“How do you usually get through a flight?” he asked curiously.

“Well it helps to look out the window... I don’t know why but it does. I had booked a window seat but there was a mix up and they double booked it so I ended up here.” you shrugged as you spoke, chewing nervously on your bottom lip.

Upon your words he leant back as far as he could and gestured for you to look out the window. Still holding his hand, you leant over his lap and watched the descent feeling a lot calmer than you had before. Your shoulder and arm were pressed against his chest and you felt relaxed with the heat of his body. Rocking with the movement of the plane, your teeth clenched as the plane hit the runway. His other hand lifted up to steady you against the momentum.

Finally landing, you relaxed and sat back in your seat, dramatically dropping your head against the headrest. You looked down at your linked hands and then back up into your saviors eyes, smiling a little awkwardly at him. “You know, i don’t even know your name,” you giggled, “or do you prefer ‘my hero’?”

He laughed, somehow deep and whiny at the same time, as he threw his head back. “I don’t know the name of the damsel in distress either,” his eyes twinkled as he spoke.

“Y/n,” you smiled.

“Rafe,” he answered and you decided it fit him.

“Well Rafe, I sincerely thank you, I think I would have had a heart attack if you hadn’t been there,” you told him truthfully.

“Anytime,” he answered with a small grin, the corner of his mouth upturned. The way he said the word it was more like a promise than a platitude and it sent shockwaves through your system.

“Y’know I think you should give me your number. Just in case I need help flying from California to North Carolina again,” you boldly stated, preening a little as he laughed and pulled out his phone.

“Well I can’t argue with that logic,” he laughed and you swapped phones, inputting your name with several princess emojis after it. A laugh escaped your lips when he handed your phone back with a contact titled ‘rafe aka airplane hero’. You briefly chatted a little longer as you waited for your turn to get off the plane that had given you such trouble, learning that he worked for his dad's company in the outer banks, only an hour from your parents’ house on the mainland. The two of you walked together to baggage claim, and you giggled while he waited with you for your bright pink suitcase to come around the carousel, lifting it by the handle with the only indication it weighed anything - the slight flex of his bicep.

Finally reaching the passenger pick up zone, it was time to separate. It felt strange to feel such a connection with someone you hadn’t known this morning, but leaving didn’t feel right. “Well this is it I guess,” you sighed, knowing your sister was likely waiting right outside.

He pulled you into his arms, “for now.”

“Goodbye, Rafe,” you smiled, pulling away from him and walking towards your sister’s familiar white suv.

“Wait!” he called out your name and you spun around confused to see him making his way to you before his hands were on your face and his lips were on your own. The kiss was sweet and brief and when you pulled apart there was a smile on your face. “Goodbye, y/n”

Crawling into your sisters vehicle, face hot and mouth spread wide in a smile she looked at you in shock, “what was that about?”

“Just a little airplane anxiety,” you giggled, hand on your lips, as your phone lit up with a text from your ‘airplane hero’.

taglist bbs: @velyssaraptor​ @danicarosaline​@copper-boom​ @x-lulu​ @prejudic3​ @rekrappeter​ @downbytheouterbanks​ @ilovejjmaybank​ @bricksatanakinswindow​ @jellyfishbeansontoast​ @sunwardsss @rudyypankow​ @im-a-stranger-thing​ @alexa-playafricabytoto​ @hoodpankow​ @girlsru1eboysdroo1​ @sortagaysortahigh​ @socialwriter @euphoricheyward​@anxietyandtacos​ @diverrdown​ @stargazingstarkey​ @rae131415​ @rafej-cambanks​ @stfukie​ @obxmermaid​

[arce-elliot]

Magnus Archives - First Impressions (101-125)

Back on my bullshit. Starting to get into the nitty-gritty of it now. Had 75% of the series spilled blah blah blah you know the drill!

EP 101 (Another Twist): - oh thank GOD some normalcy, hello Nikola - Nikola: Elias ur son is annoying - Michael: i'm going to kill you Jon: get in line lmao - poor little michael shelley he never stood a chance - bye bye michael EP 102 (Nesting Instinct): - BEETLE WIFE BEETLE WIFE - HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT BEETLE WIFE - also the boys are communicating kind of a bit maybe EP 103 (Cruelty Free): - this dude is so strange i love it - m o n s t e r  p i g - awwww rest in peace toby - LMAOOOOO JON finally using his powers for evil EP 104 (Sneak Preview): - hoo boy time to cry it's Timothy Time - my baby Tim :c EP 105 (Total War): - wheeee another war one - I feel like this woman knows more than she's saying - "i'm lucky i suppose" are u sure buddy - "how long would it be that i would have to wait for death" dude just die sounds like it'd be easy in this hellscape - "gerard keay after he faked his death?" nah u wish it were that simple jonny boy EP 106 (A Matter of Perspective): - M E L A N I E - yo space boy does not shut the FUCK up - AYYYY THERE'S MY ACE REP - Elias: I'm gonna have to dock points for the murder attempts - lmao Elias is gettin' tired of his employees asking him to kill them EP 107 (Third Degree): - time for the American leg of the tour - Gertrude what the actual fuck ma'am - Elias said "here's some eldritch tylenol" - ah yes, back to your regularly scheduled kidnapping - TREVOR'S JUST IN THE T R U N K EP 108 (Monologue): - as a theatre person this person sounds D R E A D F U L - this was an odd one but i like it EP 109 (Nightfall): - i love these two so much holy shit - listen I KNOW i’m gay but like,,,,,found family makes brain go brrrr EP 110 (Creature Feature): - TRANS STATEMENT GIVER AYYYY - lmao spider time EP 111 (Family Business): - GERARD TIME GERARD TIME - my poor darling boy - Mary Keay’s A+ Parenting way to go lady EP 112 (Thrill of the Chase): - "welcome to buzzfeed unsolved today we're going to kill a man" - JON'S BACK THANK FUCK - a w w daisy misses basira :C EP 113 (Breathing Room): - Jon's trying to stop the apocalypse but Martin just wants a travel diary - MARTIN STOP TOUCHING IT - oh ew wtf brain kebab - jon: wow. interesting. what the fuck did i just read. EP 114 (Cracked Foundation): - If y'all don't leave Hill Top Road ALONE - poor lady she's just trying to do her job right - oh wait she's not...real? the web confuses me but i guess that's kinda the point - Tim ouchie my feelings - What a right little investigator, you go Timmy EP 115 (Taking Stock): - FINALLY a Salesa statement it's about time - m e a t g r i n d e r - HELEN!!! - aww poor Helen :c she's being nice Jon don't be rude EP 116 (The Show Must Go On): - lmao love this Archival Staff Meeting - Elias trauma bonding is not the same as team building - GERTRUDE VOICE HELL YES - Chess Robot - what in the Spiral statement EP 117 (Testament): - aw hell yeah mini doomsday diaries - okay martin is actually really funny lmao - JON BURN THE FUCKING PAGE YOU SHITLORD - oh okay thank u EP 118 (The Masquerade): - SHOWTIME MOTHERFUCKERS - Martin deserves a little light arson - Elias can't you just behold the door opening what an eldritch loser - oooooh i love this Martin and Elias face-off this dialogue is superb - Tim: Jon needs to learn how to sacrifice people also Jon we have to save all these randos EP 119 (Stranger and Stranger): - I'm two minutes in and I'm already stressed - Daisy: level up - Gertrude and Leitner yelling at Jon is just a Sims Family Discussion - aaaand there goes my boy :C EP 120 (Eye Contact): - Again, I lose another precious character and I gotta listen to ELIAS - Time for the Season 1-3 recap - Peter said "lmao nice" - "be seeing you" okay elias that was funny - "i'll do my best to keep the place afloat" okay peter that was also funny EP 121 (Far Away): - season 4 baybeeee here we go - Oliver Banks Time - me, eatin my chef boyardee: alright Oliver gimme a good monologue - "i've learned to live with it" i dont think you LIVE with anything mr. banks - i love his voice it's nice - did he just...manifest a gun - A FUCKING SATELLITE LMAOOOOOOO - georgie: sir your vibes are rancid I'm going to have to ask you to leave - wakey wakey jonny boy! EP 122 (Zombie): - Basira Georgie no don't fight - poor Jon y'all lay off the poor man - this statement is too relatable bye - JON'S SO WORRIED ABOUT MARTIN PFFFF EP 123 (Web Development): - CAN'T ANYONE BE HAPPY FOR JON LMAOOO - Basira: "wehhh you're not human also Melanie being a whirlwind with a knife is 100% normal" - GOD imagine if Peter never existed and it had just been Martin lying his ass off trying to save face - wooooosh - Jon: at least Tim and Daisy have the good sense to be dead damn - "play dead" G O D - spoooooooky website EP 124 (Left Hanging): - oh what's good sky grandpa - MARTIN WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUUUU EP 125 (Civilian Casualities): - baaaah - the 16th fear is Scotland - we love a good DIY surgery - god Melanie's VA is brilliant

[thedaveandkimmershow]

We woke up this morning, for the second time this trip, in the back of a rented Nissan Armada SUV. It was a pretty good night’s sleep, too, because of the cushions and mattress topper Kimmer found a coupla nights ago at Home Depot and Walmart. :-)

For posterity, the winning prescription goes like this: on the bottom, yoga mats we picked up at the Medford GoodWill; on top of those, the two sets of seat cushion pairs from Home Depot; on top of those, the thick foam mattress topper from Walmart and then one of our sleeping bags inside up, then us, then a wool blanket, then our other sleeping bag inside down, and finally... our duvet cover from home. Icing on a pretty layered cake, as it were.

It was all super comfy.

And warm.

A good night sleep was definitely had by us both.

By morning, the clouds and wind that rolled in last night were finally gone... well, at least the clouds cleared away.

Eventually.

Which made for a sun that was definitely cookiin’... at the same time the continued breezes cooled it all down.

It was a heckuva balancing act of temperature control. :-)

So sun, wind, waves. Yeah.

We’re off to a lazy morning start.

By the way, I legitimately forgot what day it is today. Both the day and the date. That’s how far off our normal life schedule we’ve wandered.

Now earlier we talked a little about the solar panel set-up Kimmer’s cousin employs. He actually uses two: a larger one powering his teardrop trailer and a smaller one that’s mobile.

So far, though, Kimmer’s used the power, WiFi, and plentiful outdoor tables ‘n benches under quite lovely palm trees at the local shopping center for her Zoom meetings. Today, though, she’s thinking about using the domed tent her cousin set up along the west end of camp.

So I set up table, chair, and equipment in there... she takes a seat to make sure she’ll be comfortable in there (which she is)... and thus the plan’s set.

Except.

A coupla minutes before her first meeting she discovers to her horror that her laptop’s nearly out of juice. Jumping to her rescue, her cousin does this:

He grabs his smaller, mobile solar panel set up, moves it to the west side of the tent, snakes a cord into the tent and into a power bank he places at the foot of her desk into which I plug her laptop.

This was Kimmer’s aha! moment, by the way. Proof of concept. The one in which she realizes how working on the road could work. Could actually work.

She’s also sold on the idea of buying a WiFi hot spot while we’re down here because she’s well aware of how completely dependent we are on everyone else’s WiFi: Fred Meyer, Lowe’s, Moro Campground. In fact, our first attempt to do what we usually do on these trips, Starbucks, was a complete failure this time because what we usually do is snag a table for an hour or two for WiFi and recharging. So taking care of some of the business that followed us on this road trip has been, to say the least, a brain teasing, logistical challenge.

So it’s settled. Tomorrow, we’ll be passing by the Spectrum Center in Irvine where there’s a T-Mobile store. T-Mobile’s our cellular service provider... so we figure that’s where we’ll start.

By the way, I called Oregon Light Truck & RV to see if it’d be okay for us to leave the Rialta with them one more day than planned... and here’s what the rep said:

“No problem. It’s only costing you $284 per day.”

That was a little joke, by the way. We’re totally good for another day. Plus, we ended the call wishing each other a Happy Easter.

Wow.

Tomorrow’s actually Easter.

Okay so the story so far’s that Kimmer’s completely set with her Zoom meetings in her cousin’s tent with her laptop powered by the California sun.

In the morning, I while away the hours writing about our adventures thus far. Man, those first few days were brutal.

After lunch, I head out into the Laguna/Newport wilds gathering the different supplies and groceries here ‘n there of which we’re in need. Trader Joe’s, less than a mile from camp, was first on my route, of course. Picked up some lunch here and I swear if boy scout camping was more convenient like this I woulda totally been more into it.

Later I was at a nearby Starbucks sitting outside in the shade, partaking of both an iced chai tea latte and a little bit of peace.

Remember that?

Peace?

Seriously. It’s the best.

I highly recommend it.

In my case, the critical ingredients were a disconnect from my usual daily routine... and the time to experience what’s actually there when I’m not being a perpetual motion machine.

After Kimmer’s last meeting of the day, we’re out for a walk again on the beach. These walks, by the way, are substituting for the ones we take along South Lake Union only way, way better.

I guess you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

Today’s walk was our longest walk while we were here, with the sun dropping ever lower and the tide creeping higher this time around.

We walked all the way to the other end below the Shake Shack high on the cliffs above. Also to the very end of those beach cottages that’re either being torn down or remodeled.

This end of the beach, especially, was hoppin’ with teens and families and couples and boogie boarders enjoying every last moment of the day.

On our return walk, I became fascinating by these four little birds with long necks and super narrow beaks. They seemed to be playing in the surf as well. Because as the surf receded, they chased after it. As it came back in again, they ran away from it. As in

Run away! Run away!

I’m guessing they were feeding on something right there at the leading edge of the moving surf. Tiny things that their beaks could snatch even with the surf racing away. But not when that surf was coming after them. In fact, whenever the surf raced too quickly for these birds, they’d take to the air... then set down immediately nearby.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Most of the time the four birds acted in sync. One time, though, three took to the air going left while the other broke right. Immediately realizing its predicament, the last one did a mid-air pivot... and throttled up until rejoining the rest.

And I suppose the reason I’m telling you about this tiny scene is that it really did feel like young friends hanging out. Doing stuff together. Joining and rejoining. All while being very young.

Back at camp, it was full blown night as we joined the camp fire with family, enjoying each other’s company in conversation, joking around, and laughing.

It was a reminder how there are different ways for Peace to manifest in our lives. And for Joy to enter in.

Sitting alone at Starbucks. Walking a sunset beach together. Experiencing it even around a campfire.

We ended our day, once again, in the back of our SUV rental, this time partaking of a streaming episode of “Hot In Cleveland” on ParamountPlus.

Because, you know...

Camping.

[reallygoodbuddy]

My honest to god thoughts on Strathcona Spirits

Today was my last day at Strathcona Spirits! Now that I’m no longer on the payroll and have nothing to lose or gain, I feel like I can speak honestly to what it is Strathcona Spirits produce in that tiny little pink shoebox. Speaking as a man with a decent palate, a lot of (maybe too much?) experience tasting spirits of all kinds, and having started Canada’s Best New Bar 2018 (woot woot!), let me give you my however-educated hot take on the sauce cooked up at Strathcona Spirits. 

In my travels around the province as a sales rep, I have tasted many (if not all) of the now 28 craft distilleries in our fair province (and those that have gone the sad way of the dodo as well). Some of them are bad. Some are mediocre. Some are good. Very good. In fact it leans towards very good, and I think this is owing to the small scale of production. I suppose that’s no eureka moment, but some people still don’t get this. When you work in such small batches with a molecular attention to detail, and when you are committed to cutting no corners in sourcing your raw material or hurrying the process of fermentation or buying cheap old worn out barrels or cheaping out on bitter / boring juniper from this cheap region or that (not naming names), the spirits dripping out the other end of the still simply have a much better chance of being excellent. Doesn’t mean they will be, but the odds are much better.

I think what some people do not understand is the utterly gargantuan scale at which some of their favourite international spirits are made. They think “how could something made in my backyard for only three years possibly be as good or better than this much longer-lived product that’s fame has brought it half way across the world to my local liquor store, that has achieved so much fame that they are now an international standard, and yet selling for $10-$20 less a bottle!” Oh boy… it is not that these international products cannot be good. Some of them are great (and some of them deserve a total moratorium... and some of them are the very products some of my favourite bartenders shill for every year as the competition rounds start, booooo!, just kiddingggg I love you guys and who wouldn’t love to go on a big fancy all inclusive trip somewhere and be recognized for transforming at-best-mediocre spirits into something that tastes palatable, you are champions in my eyes no matter what). The fact is that most of the world’s best spirits, wines, beers, ciders, cheeses, etc etc etc, are not made in large enough quantities to be widely exported, if at all. The insane scale at which those other bottles were made guarantees that the attention to detail is lost (would you rather be served a dish made for you or a dish made for an army and scooped into your bowl? would you rather have a wound stitched with a needle or a chopstick?) and this means the bad batches are just blended in with the good batches and the base spirit itself is almost always bland at best or rubbing alcohol at worst. There are great spirits made on massive scale, absolutely!, but the chances get worse, NOT BETTER, as the scale increases. For some reason, however, there are still craft bartenders who see this scenario the opposite way, thinking the larger brands are more likely to be good and the smaller distilleries are just learning and pawning off their learning process to the public at twice the price while hiding behind the good faith of being locally produced. This does happen, yes, in all things, but not nearly as often as you might think, and what is the all-too-common reverse? Huge multi-nationals pawning off their shill onto us and putting the marketing mega budget lipstick on the proverbial pig. We all know how many of the best marketed brands make bland boring weak tasteless garbage. But if you think that big brands have the benefit of the doubt and small distillers don’t, I can’t help but think that the marketing worked on you, fellow bartender. If this is your default setting, I strongly encourage you to reconsider. Yes, your craft distillery cannot fly you to the distillery and comp your first two cases when the new cocktail menu drops or give you branded umbrellas for your patio, but I can guarantee you there is a lot more heart and soul in that bottle. Anyone who appreciates wine knows that scale matters (and we celebrate the difference between vintages and vineyards, vive la différence!). Do you want an estate wine? Or one that is blended from a hundred vineyards so that your last bottle of Apothic tastes just like your next one? 

With all that said, I will be the first to acknowledge that there is a huge discrepancy in quality among craft spirits, just as surely as there is for internationally marketed spirits, and nothing out there is automatically good just because it is produced in Alberta, or anywhere else for that matter. But I have now begun to ramble and get off track. I really bring all this to the fore for the simple reason of testifying, now that I have nothing to gain from it, that it is my honest to God opinion that Strathcona Spirits are making the best damn juice in the province. I have tried the different distilleries’ products. Some are well made but boring. Some are interesting but not well made. Some are both (kudos!) and some are neither (but maybe they will be eventually!). But at the end of the day, I think that what Strathcona is distilling is always creative without being eye-rolling and yet still coming out wildly delicious, which is the true challenge. It’s like trying to make music no one has ever heard before (easy) or trying to make music that sounds good (easy): the true challenge is making music that no one has every heard before that also sounds amazing.

How do I love thee, you Strathcona Spirits, let me count the ways: Eschewing all flavoured vodka yet making an exceedingly flavourful vodka, easily one of the best vodkas I’ve ever tasted, anywhere and from anywhere. Big bodied. Bold. Expressive of our central albertan wheat and the terroir it flourishes in. A bread basket of a vodka for the bread basket of North America. And then making a big bold low-toned robust gin that can put some hair on your chest, a gin equivalent of left-bank Bordeaux while nearly everyone else out there these last ten-gin-renaissance-years seems enamoured of delicate light floral gins that one might liken to champagne, if I can torture the metaphor. I like those floral gins too, but I strongly believe that Strathcona makes a bartender’s gin, one that performs outstandingly well with amaro and vermouth, and at the end of the day, those are the only gin drinks I will ever order. I mean sure, shake with it all you want. Such a waste. I will avert my eyes. And then aging that gin in virgin oak quarter casks, it’s nuts, I can’t believe Adam was bold enough to try this, I can’t believe how well it worked. A very expensive experiment, and it paid. The BAG is what won me over to Strat, because every other barrel aged gin I had tasted before this one was gross. (I’ve had some other good ones since, but still, most are gross). I will say that, in my own personal opinion, the barrel aged gin is the most finicky of the bunch and requires a true bartender to wield it well. Some of the most fascinating drinks I’ve tried by bartenders using our spirits have been ones with the barrel aged gin. But that’s because it doesn’t behave like gin, it doesn’t taste great in tonic, it doesn’t go well with dry vermouth, so it takes someone who knows how to work intuitively with the oak aspect and carve new paths forward (or just subs it into whisky classics!). I maintain that it makes the best Sazerac riff out there. First virgin oaked quarter casked gin in the world, and a gin suitably big and with a low enough profile to actually benefit from barrelling, none of these herbs or flowers or vegetables that just clash with the natural flavours American oak imparts. And then there is that ruby queen, the Pinot Gin, a lucky stroke of genius. It is easily my favourite of the whole line. Finishing gin in ex-BC Pinot Noir casks means pulling out all the old sticky oxidative pinot living in the staves of the oak, and damn! The way it just melts into the gin as it sits, the gentle toasted french oak nuttiness sneaking in there, the dried cherry and forest floor and cola notes from the wine, all combining with the low baking spice and bitter orange peel profile of the gin, the result is this uncanny sarsaparilla and orange marmalade and cherry dr. pepper aspect that’s as delicious as a sipper as it is beautiful in every cocktail I’ve tried it with. 

And then there are the whiskies. I have been enjoying little samples from the barrel at full strength over the time I’ve worked here and I am always stunned. The belgian yeast was a stroke of genius, seeing as we’re using witbier/hefeweizen hard red spring brewer’s wheat to begin with. I am pretty sure these are the first virgin oaked wheat whiskies, at least from what I have ever been able to find online or asking the various whisky nerds and store owners I encounter in my travels, and a virgin oaked wheat whisky is well overdue. It is a brilliant new category that Strathcona is pioneering, and one that Edmonton is authentically positioned to spearhead, seeing as our Fort Edmonton pioneers were making wheat whisky and topping it with just a splash of rye while our neighbours to the south were drinking straight rye. Wheat is the last of the four major grains to be reevaluated and elevated (so move over malt, corn, and rye) and these Strathcona whiskies are going to be such big bold burly unrepentant whiskies, just the way I prefer. I wish I could have still been around to sell them when they dropped. 

In writing fiction and poetry we have a simple rule: show don’t tell. Any talented salesperson, knowing it or not, has absorbed this rule in sales as well. As the rep for Strathcona Spirits, it would be extremely suspect for me to walk into a place and say: honestly, in my opinion, our distillery is making the best spirits in the province. Even if I cushion that by talking about the other Alberta distilleries I love, it would still ring hollow. Now that I am gone and stand nothing to gain (I have been waiting so long for this), I just want to step up to the microphone and say that I have tasted more Alberta craft spirits than most, and in my honest opinion, Strathcona Spirits are the best, and that is my honest personal opinion. They are full bodied. They are strong in flavour while smooth on the palate. They are inventive. They are interesting. They are dynamic. They are hand made. They are purposeful. And as someone who started championing these spirits long before I worked for them, I maintain that they are patently superb spirits for cocktailing. I would even go so far as to say that they are better as cocktail ingredients than as stand alone spirits, and that is their great advantage. Don’t get me wrong, they are wonderful sipped, but their flavour design is so conducive to playing and marrying well with other bottles and ingredients. I love them. I hold about six other Alberta distilleries in high esteem, sometimes it is all of their line, sometimes just some of it (and may I take a moment to shout out some of the more interesting products: Wildlife Amaro, Burwood Honey distillate, and the Eau Claire Equineox). I still feel like more distilleries need to take more risks and try to invent their way forward. Not in kitschy ways but in fundamental and elemental ways. I will not list the many ways I feel Strathcona does this because this is getting way too long. And I should also mention that I would never speak ill of other craft distilleries because we are not each others’ competition, we are all in this together. Bombay is our competition. Crown Royal is our competition. Grey Goose is our competition. If we can peel even a portion of their drinkers over to Alberta craft, we will all win together. 

I don’t know how much spirit drinking I’ll be doing now that I am moving onto my newest adventure but I know I’ll still be ordering Strathcona drinks off the menu and anxiously waiting for the whisky releases. 

What is your newest path, Joe, you might ask? Well, kind soul still reading this beefy prose in our age of declining attention spans, your old boy Joey Gurba is taking a partnership role in Garneau Block, a fledgling natural wine importing agency! If you know me well, you know I’m obsessed with wine. Gabriella has been kind enough to invite me on board to grow this thing into a juggernaut for wines that are alive and fascinating, and we have five new wineries coming to you over the next eight weeks. Wineries from Mount Gambier (Australia), Maryland (USA), Puglia (Italy), Castilla y León (Spain), and Châteauneuf-du-Pape / Côtes-du-Rhône (France). If you follow me on instagram, rest assured, you’ll see no shortage of coverage. And do follow @garneaublock if you haven’t yet. And, of course, if you don’t follow @strathconaspirits yet, thou must check thyself lest thou wreck thyself. They’re good folks, good good folks, and even in this trying time of layoffs and all, they have been converting the still over to making hand sanitizer and giving it away for free (for as long as they can afford to). If you’re not quarantined, drop by and grab some (inevitable) quarantini supplies and a bottle of free hand sani ASAP (or order from your favourite liquor store, most of them are delivering now). Quick, go, before we are all forced into our houses indefinitely.  

Thanks for reading all this. I’m embarrassed by it on some level, something about it feels a little uncouth, but I have always been a little uncouth and unconventional, right? And since I am not trying to sell any Strathcona to anyone anymore, I’m pressing send and speaking my heart for these guys. Gooooooo Strathcona.

[svartalfhild]

The Knight Stars - Session 19 - Hot Topic(s)

A summary of our latest DnD shenanigans.  (Previous shenanigans found here.)

We began with everyone getting a shitty night’s rest after the messed up shit we did to those corrupt Flaming Fist guards.  Heliodoro had to roll a wisdom save in his sleep. 👀

The next morning, Heliodoro nipped downstairs to grab breakfast for everyone.  Cael ate a huge ass pile of pancakes, after which, he got Helio to go out clothes shopping with him.

Mornath and Rue went out to the Counting House, Baldur’s Gate’s big bank, to seek the contact Lander had pointed us to in his latest letter.

The crowds were heavy in that part of town, so Mornath let Rue sit on her shoulders to see better and told her that Lander had said we’d know the man just by looking at him.

Rue spotted a finely dressed dwarf with all kinds of ornamentation braided up in his beard, set up in a booth, trying, and very well succeeding, in getting people to invest in pyramid schemes.  He had a big, sharp af gold canine tooth, which I strongly suspect was not originally meant for him.

We approached him and Mornath casually asked him in Thieves’ Cant if he was “in the business”, as per Lander’s instructions.  The dwarf gave an affirmative and Mornath told him that they have a mutual friend while visibly rolling a Harper coin back and forth across her knuckles.

This very much caught the man’s attention and he introduced himself as Hardren Goldtooth.  Mornath told him they need to discuss something privately, and at first, he brushed it off, saying that sometimes a crowd can be more private than you’d think, but she insisted that this was very important and not to be idly overheard, so he closed up shop (which involved geared mechanisms folding up his stand, making Mornath nerd out, because omg gnome tech) and he led us to a private back room within the Counting House.

After a little questioning, we learned quite a bit about Hardren.  He’s an information broker with his fingers in a lot of different pies.  Connections for days.  Apparently he’s worked with Lander a few times and has come out owing Lander.  We also got the impression that Hardren has quite a healthy fear of Lander, which is impressive, considering how powerful this dwarf clearly is.  I don’t think anything has made me go “holy shit, Lander is probably several levels higher than us” as much as that moment.

Anyway, Hardren made it clear that he has good intentions where the city is concerned and would be willing to help any friend of Lander’s, so we told him what we were up to with the Faceless Court and the Witchfinders.  He said he’d been avoiding rooting around in the pies he’s in because of the Witchfinders, but now that he’s got people to back him up, he agreed to start digging for us to see if he can find out any key names of people who are either friend or foe to our cause.

We called it a deal and Hardren told us he knew how to find us if he needs to.  Mornath told him that if he crosses us, he should remember who sent us, and as she shook his hand, she gave him a small static shock to make it clear Lander wouldn’t be the only person he’d have to worry about.

Hardren just smiled without flinching and said he wouldn’t dream of it; he knows what side his bread is buttered on, and we’re all friends here.  Mornath returned his smile, and said she knew that, but it was always good to make the terms of a contract completely clear, to which he heartily agreed.

Leaving Hardren with the names Morning Glory and Rue and the knowledge that he could see us perform at Virlen Sarmaris’ next gala (of fucking course Hardren knows about Virlen and is amused), we parted ways and headed back to the inn.

On their way back, Mornath and Rue had a very wholesome and revealing conversation about Lander and their friendships with him.

Mornath said it was nice to feel connected to Lander and his work a little through meeting Hardren, to which Rue agreed.  They talked about how it had been a while since seeing him in person, the last time being back in Waterdeep for only a brief amount of time.  Mornath explained that she only saw him recently once before that near the beginning of the year and that, beyond that, she hadn’t seen him in 8 years.  Lander has changed a great deal since they were teenagers, becoming a much more charismatic, wise, and focused man than the broody little edgelord she used to know.

Rue talked about how when she was good friends with Lander in college, she got to watch him transition into the man he is today.  He evidently helped another friend find purpose and would get up to hijinks with Rue.

Mornath said she used to get up to hijinks with him too and told the story of how she met Lander when she was a naive little teen, sneaking out at night and nearly getting robbed by a pack of urchins called the Hunters’ Lane Gang, but they decided to induct her into the group instead when she offered to mend their clothes with magic.  Lander was the best of that lot, she felt.

She went on to say that Lander talked about Mornath a lot, which Mornath of course found kind of baffling.  He apparently spoke highly and fondly of her, which had Mornath a little Error 404, so she moved on to say that he has said in his letters that he cares deeply for us, believes in our troupe, and our ability to handle the situation in Baldur’s Gate, which Mornath has found rather uplifting.  She offered to send a letter from Rue on a crow with her next communiqué, since Lander would certainly loved to hear from another dear friend in these dark times.

Rue happily agreed and expressed the hope that they’ll see Lander again soon.  Mornath replied that she didn’t think that’d be at least until after this whole business is over, since it seems that Lander can’t come and help in person, probably heavily tied up in his own demon fighting.  Even then, they really had no way of knowing when they’d see him or for how long if they did.  He has a habit of only sticking around for a few hours at a time, about a day at most.  Mornath wished that she could spend some proper time with him to really get to know who he is these days.  Rue felt similarly.

Back at the inn, Mornath and Rue came into the party’s room to see that Cael had purchased an alarmingly big pile of fashionable, goth-y clothes, including a set of matching crop tops for the lot of us. 

Cinder and Rue were quite pleased, but Heliodoro was holding up his with a look of “what do” in his eyes, which quickly became a blushy “help me, Mornath” when Cael tried to convince him to try it on.  At first, Mornath tried to pretend this wasn’t happening, blankly asking Cael how he planned to fit all those clothes in our wagon later, but eventually she met Heliodoro’s gaze, shortly after having her own crop top pressed into her hands.  She gave him an “I can’t help you; I’m just as confused” look.

Eventually, everyone had their crop tops on.  As per Cael’s design, they were all just a bit too small, making them tight.  This didn’t effect Rue too much, being a halfling, but Helio’s tattoos and rippling muscles where very much on display (Cael approves +10).  Some small, thin scars were visible on Mornath’s lower back, as was a bit of skin discolouration on Cael’s. (oooooooh backstory hints, guys)

Everyone but Cael changed back out of their crop tops for our meeting with the Idle Hands that evening.  Cinder and Mornath played lookout while Heliodoro, Rue, and Cael met with the Idle Hands rep in a secluded corner of the tavern.  The Idle Hands apparently have something that allows them to have a Blur effect on their faces, which is intriguing~.  This one also had the Idle Hands symbol on his palm.

The rep explained that their organization is aware of who we are and what we’re up to, and they want to help, since their goals are pretty much the same.  They want to find out who among the nobility of the city has fallen under the influence of the Faceless Court and to do that, they want us to be their eyes and ears at Virlen Sarmaris’ gala, which will be attended by many nobles.  As the hired performs, we’re supposed to be there, so the Idle Hands won’t have to risk subterfuge to get in this way.

After a bit of questioning to make clear what they wanted us to do and to make sure we could trust these people, we agreed to help, Helio, Rue, and Cael all shaking the rep’s hand.

Cael was exuding a surprising amount of presence this whole time in his crop top, which made the wink he gave the rep as they shook hands (or tWink as it was henceforth dubbed) a weirdly intimidating shade of saucy.

[sugarrushsato]

In God's hand was a scalpel

[celticnoise]

Today, like clockwork, out went the tweets, the first out of Celtic since Tuesday night.

An advertisement. Or, rather, a reminder … a reminder that if you’re on the Home Cup Ticket Scheme your bank account is set to be lighter by £20 so you may have the pleasure, the privilage, of watching us in UEFA’s second tier competition on a Thursday night.

Between the CEO and the manager Celtic has grossly mismanaged our summer, with the consequences clear.

And instead of an apology, or explanation, or any kind of vision being outlined their first communication is the equivalent of a hand in your wallet.

An offer that normally might be easy to refuse … except you can’t, unless you withdraw.

And if you withdraw the club will punish you for that in the event we get to Hampden this season.

This is their level, this is the respect they have for the supporters.

Yesterday, a frequent poster on CQN tweeted the Supporter Liaison Officer John Paul Taylor and asked him who fans are supposed to contact if they have issues with the club. The SLO said that if they pass their concerns to him he will funnel them to the board.

Don’t be bothering that guy overmuch.

Nobody should be flooding the SLO’s inbox with complaints. It’s not that guy’s job to take the flak on behalf of those in the boardroom. Lawwell and his people pay more attention to social media than they let on, and they know how many of the fans are feeling today.

But I try to think of this as a politician would. Here’s a fact; the Prime Minister has a member of staff whose job is to give him a no-holds barred accounting of what’s in the media every single day. At times that must be a truly hellish job.

Am I saying Lawwell has such an employee monitoring social media?

He’d be daft if he didn’t, and it might well be that it’s John Paul himself. Tuesday night’s “press” was ghastly. Wednesday’s was worse. Yesterday topped them both, with only one blog suggesting that we get past this. Few of the replies to that piece were in any mood to do it.

This is as close to unanimity as I’ve ever seen this support. Lennon is bearing the brunt of enormous fury and he is under serious, deadly, pressure already, the sort that many managers do not survive. That’s how bad that defeat was the other night.

Those who are defending him on the grounds that it’s one game had better readjust their thinking because the rest of us understand what they apparently don’t; this was a game of huge consequence against a relatively weak opponent. The stakes were enormous and it should have presented no significant difficulty to navigate.

Yet his tactical decisions were ridiculous. His approach to substitutions was amateurish. These were not just small errors harshly punished, they were gigantic, obvious, mistakes of the sort which just beg to be exploited, and they were.

He didn’t even put things right when the writing was on the wall in 20 foot letters. His failure on the night to do even basic stuff does not simply call into his question his abilities as a manager at that level, but it brings even his professionalism into question.

Cluj are placed 227 on UEFA’s rankings. They scored four times at Celtic Park. The financial effects of that are going to hurt him and the team, although I’ll bet the CEO’s bonus is just fine. The reputational hit we’ll take is far worse.

It is a staggering result with huge implications for everyone at the club.

Lennon is not alone in the hot-seat here though.

Everything about his performance on the night is under scrutiny, yes, and he’s used up all the goodwill that had built up over the summer, but the feelings on the man who hired him are, if possible, even more negative. There is barely a single Celtic supporter who I have spoken to or who’s opinion I have read – and I do read all the blogs, and as many of the comments as I can – who wants him at Parkhead for one more minute.

But does it affect him? Does he care?

Some politicians get awfully animated by what’s in the papers and others don’t.

Some run the country by focus group and change their opinions and policies every time the opinion polls blip – early years Blair was notorious for this – and some simply don’t give a damn, and motor on regardless. Late years Blair was exactly like that.

The calculation Blair was making by then was that he was on his way out of office and there was no more need to fear the electorate. Theresa May knew she was sinking from the moment, on 8 June 2017, when the BBC released the findings of their exit poll and she knew that her “strong and stable” gamble had spectacularly failed. If it seemed at times that she couldn’t give a monkeys how the world saw her or what the public thought, it’s because she didn’t.

I’ll tell you this much; come election time, all politicians fear what’s in those papers. Come election time they are paying attention in full.

The Celtic support does not have elections. Our AGM, which could fulfil that function if the bulk of the shares weren’t in the hands of a small group of men who can block anything they don’t like, should be a place for holding people to account. It isn’t. We have no shareholder group who’s objective is to do what Club 1872’s started out; to acquire the requisite number of shares as to put control back in the hands of the fans.

Of course, we know how that turned out, but I like to think we’re a lot smarter than the average bear, if you’ll pardon the pun. Our fans should have made that commitment years ago. Whilst not convinced that fan ownership is necessarily a desirable objective – I am ready to be convinced though – I know the current way certainly isn’t working.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways that a PLC club’s fans can hold it to account. They can make their voices heard in the stands or they can vote with their feet and make sure those stands are empty, as testament to their anger and frustration.

If our supporters want to hold Peter Lawwell to account here, we need to get this head of steam up to full.

Fans are not going to boycott.

I have never understood the reluctance to do so, because it brought down a previous board and it can certainly rid of us of an interfering, over mighty CEO who should have taken his marbles home a half dozen years ago.

What I should say is that there will be no organised boycott, but then when the upper tiers were closed during Deila’s second season there was no grand sweeping plan behind that, and there didn’t have to be … fans had just had enough.

And that was one of the catalysts for the appointment of Brendan Rodgers.

Celtic’s average attendance has held up strongly, as you might expect during this period of domestic dominance. But I think it’s a soft number. The Home Cup Ticket Scheme – because it creates a two-tier fan-base by offering members preference for Hampden tickets – literally guarantees a captive audience, with captive being the appropriate word. Looking at it now, it’s so obvious that this is a tool to blunt one of the fan’s two key weapons of dissent.

As such, this is the first domino that has to fall.

But for that scheme being in place, the fans would be able to protest Tuesday night’s calamity by staying at home for the AIK game. I reckon it would be played in front of a half empty house if fans weren’t automatically charged and sent tickets for it just so as to stay in contention for Hampden games.

Think of an unofficial boycott as our version of a negative opinion poll. It is a message that this board would understand fully, and which they would find it very hard to ignore.

Look, the Celtic support is not a rabble behaving irrationally. There are a number of very specific grievances here. None are unrealistic or unreasonable. Nobody expects us to behave like the club across the city, with their ten signings this summer in spite of having a fraction of our resources and already running on debt. It is lunacy and nobody is advocating that we follow that all the way to the asylum and then, inevitably, the boneyard.

But this club has no ambition to speak of and those running it have no idea how to do it better or smarter. We still have a bloated squad, much of which is not good enough. Our squad should be smaller, and better, and those in it well compensated.

Our best players are on modest salaries which make the interest of richer clubs harder to resist and turn down … never think that having Callum McGregor on a poor contract is not, in some way, purposely designed to make him think of what he could earn elsewhere.

We may not have pushed Kieran Tierney out the door, but we did not offer him the kind of incentives which may have convinced him to stay. That is not an accident. It is the policy. Having Lawwell as the highest paid person at the club is not mere happenstance. It is quite deliberate.

So the Home Cup Ticket Scheme has to go, and that’s going to require a little bit of work. It’s going to require the fans coming together and that’s harder to do than making cats walk in formation. But there is a mechanism, and it’s called the Celtic Supporters Association.

Every supporters bus has representatives, and all are allowed to propose motions for discussion.

It will only take one to call for an emergency meeting on this issue … and to put it to a vote. If the CSA recommends that its members withdraw, then the chances are that the scheme will collapse. It might not even come to a vote; the CSA executive does have an open line of communication with the club and if they say the membership is on the brink of this I do believe that it would be enough to get the club’s attention in a big way.

If you’re one of those people who doubts that our supporter’s reps have the stomach for a fight like this, well don’t worry about that. Because this is a simple matter of democracy; if enough people vote for it then it’s policy and they will have to enact it whether they want to or not.

Don’t trouble yourself with concerns over their willpower, it’s not a factor here.

Concern yourself only with your own.

Do you have the stomach for a fight? If the Home Cup Ticket Scheme falls, then the fans have the weapon of boycott – organised or not – back in their hands.

And you know what? I wonder much stomach Lawwell has for the fight, and I wonder how much hassle the rest of the board really thinks this guy is worth.

In other words, just the idea that the fans do have such a weapon might negate the need ever to use it.

The biggest obstacle to Celtic’s completion of ten in a row and at the same time our progress in Europe is the club’s own chief executive. He is the single biggest threat to our continued dominance of the game here and any hope we have of making forward strides on the continental side. I’ve got an article in mind which will explore his entire tenure, but I don’t have to write it to convince most people; on this we’re all sort of agreed.

Seventeen years is far too long. It’s time for him to move on, for the good of the club. If he gave the slightest, tiniest, damn about that which he claims to love he’d know this and take the appropriate action. But he either doesn’t get it or doesn’t care.

It’s time he was put on notice in a way he can’t ignore.

https://ift.tt/2Z6G0hG

[lindortech]

a year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been ruinous if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to strive to salvage everything I could before more havoc occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Trust No Carrier

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “bluff and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a gagdet the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his money in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other services do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto possessor, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t aid you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

Now Zu’bi is facing a dissimilar issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot respondly from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to aid with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my genuine account and then created a brand-new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase aid can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating drive.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the marketplace leaders who just supposedly launched institutional rank custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over bluff,” Zu’bi said.

How do you preserve yourself?

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another area. I have very tiny crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

Set a passcode/PIN on your account

Make sure it applies to ALL account changes

Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account

question them what happens if you forget the passcode

question them what happens if you lose that too

Institute a port freeze

Institute a sim lock

Add a high-risk flag

Close your online web-based management account

Block future registration to online management system

Hack yo’ self

See what information they will leak

See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your constant accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite arduous. Further, carriers don’t make it uncomplicated. In May a 27-year-old man called Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a sim-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. a rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a distinctive three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is uncomplicated: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far good for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail moment for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline a year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval…

[an-ephemeral-blog]

Linkspam #6

Top Links

It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico by José de Córdoba at the Wall Street Journal:

In Huitzuco, a town in the lawless state of Guerrero, Mario Vergara, a slightly built, voluble man nicknamed the Atomic Ant, pores over medical books, training himself to recognize bones of the human skeleton. In six years of searching for his brother, a taxi driver kidnapped in 2012, Mr. Vergara and his crew have dug up some 60 clandestine graves and found the remains of some 200 people, he said.

Mr. Vergara believes he too will be disappeared by criminals who don’t want their sins unearthed. He has made a cast of his teeth so searchers will find it easier to identify him when he’s gone. 

How Did Larry Nasser Deceive So Many for So Long? by Kerry Howley at The Cut

Although, much later, the only story line American media would be able to process was one of a “survivor” who had “found her voice” and was ready to “take on” her abuser in open court, it did not appear to be a woman at all who had persuaded those closest to this story, including most of the “survivors,” to come forward. It was, rather, a set of external hard drives — tossed to the curb in the trash in the days after Denhollander went public, on a day when the garbage crew was behind schedule, and recovered by a police officer. Had the crew been on time, had the officer been late, had the warrant come through a day after Nassar decided to dump his digital history on the street, he might still have the support of most of the people he abused.

Framed Up by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:

Here's a little thought experiment, inspired by Dahl's reflections. Imagine, if you can, that African-Americans were represented "fairly" in the Senate. They would then have twelve senators instead of, at present, zero, since black folk make up twelve per cent of the population. Now imagine that the descendants of slaves were afforded the compensatory treatment to which the Constitution entitles the residents of small states. Suppose, in other words, that African-Americans had as many senators to represent them as the Constitution allots to the twelve per cent of Americans who live in the least populous states. There would be forty-four black senators. How's that for affirmative action?

“I Don’t Want To Shoot You, Brother” by Joe Sexton at ProPublica:

“It’s the Blue Lives Matter More theory of policing,” he said. “When in doubt, shoot. If you can shoot, you should shoot. If you have the choice of waiting that one second to see if you could protect the citizen’s life and put your own life at risk, you must take the citizen’s life.”

The Fallout by Lacy M Johnson at Guernica:

We are all connected. The rivers and streams and tiny creeks wind through the city and go on winding. They twist and bend and run backward on themselves, changing course and direction a thousand times over the ages. The water swells and leaves its banks with the seasons, swells into the streets we build, and our backyards and gardens, into the places we never think of because we do not want to see them: our landfills, our factories, our toxic dumps, all of the remote places we send our worst creations. There is no fence to keep it all out. The disaster that approaches is ourselves.

Other Favorites

Science

Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? by Rowan Jacobsen at Outside Online - from the lede: “Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist. How did we get it so wrong?”

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber by Alston Chase at the Atlantic - how the weaponization of psychology helped create a terrorist

Open Letter to Psychology Today by Margena Carter at PitchEngine - Psychology Today has been around for over 50 years, and they’ve only ever had three people of color on their cover.

Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science by Ava Kofman at the New York Times Magazine

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial by Yeh et al in BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal)

Technology

The Digital Maginot Line by Renee DiResta at RibbonFarm 

The Disinformation Report by New Knowledge 

The Data Scientist Tracking America’s White Supremacists by Matthew Gault at MotherBoard 

Free as in … ? by Luis Villa at their personal blog - how the capability approach to freedom might apply to free software

Supporting Int 1696-2017 for Source Code Transparency in New York City by Sumana Harihareswara

Why Pinterest is Better Than Facebook at Stopping Fake News by Rebecca Watson at Skepchick

Mutmut by Ned Batchelder at his personal blog - Ned reviews a mutation testing library written in Python

Protecting Basecamp from breached passwords by Jeremy Daer at Signal v Noise

History

How ‘Strange Fruit’ Killed Billie Holiday by Brandon Weber at The Progressive

How the Willie Horton Ad Played on Racism and Fear by Erin Blakemore at History.com

The Homer We Want by Bill Beck at Eidolon - a history of misquotation

Carrie Ann Lucas Dies At Age 47. You Probably Haven't Heard Of Her And That's A Problem by Sarah Kim at Forbes 

Politics

The Unsatisfying Truth About Hateful Online Rhetoric And Violence by Joseph Bernstein at BuzzFeed News

‘I Get Called a Russian Bot 50 Times a Day’ by Shawn Musgrave at Politico

Progressive prosecutors are not 'cops.' They are needed to enact criminal justice reform by Denise Oliver Velez at DailyKos

Affordable Housing Is Disappearing. These Mobile Home Residents Are Fighting to Protect Theirs by Emma Whitford at Time

Rep. Rashida Tlaib cursing got 5 times more coverage on cable news than Rep. Steve King embracing white supremacy by Lis Power, Rob Savillo and Steve Morris at Media Matters for America 

The Most Sobering Thing about the Racial Dot Map by Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism

is “toxic femininity” a thing? by Katie Anthony at their personal blog

The Justice System Runs On Testimonial, ‘He-Said She-Said’ Evidence by Michele Sharpe at the Establishment

The Class Ceiling: The ‘Hidden Mechanisms’ That Help Those Born Rich to Excel in Elite Jobs by Joe Pinsker at The Atlantic

Arts & Pop Culture

You Probably Owe "Jennifer's Body" An Apology by Louis Peitzman at Buzzfeed News

What White, Western Audiences Don’t Understand About Marie Kondo’s ‘Tidying Up’ by Margaret Dilloway at HuffPost

Depression and Duty in Captain America: The Winter Soldier by Ryan Roch at Lewton Bus 

Is ‘Captain Marvel’ military propaganda? by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw at the Daily Dot  (if you can’t tell, I’m going through a Marvel phase)

Fan Fiction vs Fanfiction by Flourish Klink at Medium

Misc

Quiet Hands by Julia Bascom at Just Stimming

Big Charity as Big Capital by Phil at All That Is Solid

Having Sex When Your Partner Is The Same Gender, But A Different Size by Lauren Strapagiel at BuzzFeed News

I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It. by Kevin Alexander at Thrillist

She Thought She Was In Bed With Her Boyfriend, Until She Saw His Face by David Mack at BuzzFeed News

On Consensus and Humming in the IETF by P. Resnick

After Two White Colorado Women Unearthed The History Of Their Slave-Owning Ancestors, They Turned To Reparations by Ann Marie Awad at Colorado Public Radio

The Philosopher Redefining Equality by Nathan Heller at the New Yorker - a profile of Elizabeth Anderson (”one of the two greatest living philosophers” according to my philosophy professor friend)

The numbers behind workplace discrimination by Maryam Jameel, Leslie Shapiro and Joe Yerardi at the Washington Post

Rent and reputation by Siderea at their personal blog

[jeroldlockettus]

Freakonomics Radio Live: “Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon.”

Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner test a memory athlete’s skills. (Photo: Lucy Sutton)

Our co-host is Grit author Angela Duckworth, and we learn fascinating, Freakonomical facts from a parade of guests. For instance: what we all get wrong about Darwin; what an iPod has in common with the “hell ant”; and how a “memory athlete” memorizes a deck of cards. Mike Maughan is our real-time fact-checker.

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is an edited transcript of the episode. 

*      *      *

As you know, Freakonomics Radio is primarily an interview show, based on extensive research, in which we explore various issues, often quite complicated ones, in some depth. But we need a break from that now and again. Don’t you need a break from that now and again? Of course you do. And so, may we present the following episode of Freakonomics Radio Live — not recorded in some somber radio studio, but in a pub, in front of a live audience. It’s a little game show we like to play, called Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. It’s got the same D.N.A. as Freakonomics Radio, but in reverse.

If you’d like to attend a future show or be on a future show, get tickets here. We’ll be in New York on March 8th and 9th, at City Winery; and in May, we’re coming to California: in San Francisco on May 16th at the Nourse Theater, in partnership with KQED; and in Los Angeles on May 18th at the Ace Hotel Theater, in partnership with KCRW.

*      *      *

Stephen J. DUBNER: Good evening. I’m Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio Live. Tonight we’re at Joe’s Pub in New York City. And joining me as co-host is the University of Pennsylvania psychologist and author of Grit, our good friend, Angela Duckworth.

Angela DUCKWORTH: Hi, Stephen. Hi, everyone.

DUBNER: Hey, Angela. So happy to have you back. Angela, here’s what we know about you so far. We know that you are founder and C.E.O. of the Character Lab.

DUCKWORTH: Correct.

DUBNER: That you are a MacArthur Genius Fellow who has advised the White House, the World Bank, N.F.L. teams, and more.

DUCKWORTH: Previous White House, but yes.

DUBNER: Previous White House. That was the — Truman?

DUCKWORTH: After Truman, before Trump.

DUBNER: Anyway, great to have you back on the show. Please tell us something we don’t yet know about you.

DUCKWORTH: I was born in Cherry Hill, N.J., home to the very first real mall in America.

DUBNER: Were you a mall kid?

DUCKWORTH: I was a total mall kid. Every time I go to a mall with a food court, I feel like I’m home again.

DUBNER: I have always had a theory — I’ve never been able to substantiate it — the secret to success in life is massive consumption of Orange Julius during teenage years.

DUCKWORTH: That is correct.

DUBNER: What did you do at the mall?

DUCKWORTH: Wandered around and around and around until my parents picked me up.

DUBNER: Because you had grit!

DUCKWORTH: Maybe that was the seed of the idea.

DUBNER: Angela, it is so nice to have you here to play Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Here’s how it’s going to work: Guests will come onstage to tell us some interesting fact or idea, or maybe just a story. You and I can then ask them anything we want. And at the end of the show our live audience will pick a winner. The vote will be based on three simple criteria. No. 1, did the guest tell us something we truly did not know? No. 2, was it worth knowing? And No. 3, was it demonstrably true?

To help with that demonstrably true part, would you please welcome our real-time fact checker, Mike Maughan. Mike is Head of Global Insights at Qualtrics, and he’s a co-founder of 5 for the Fight, a campaign to eradicate cancer. Mike, we know Qualtrics calls itself an “experience-management company” and that you’re always doing interesting research there. What have you learned lately?

Mike MAUGHAN: So we’ve done a series of pain indexes looking at different industries and the experiences that people want. I think the most interesting one is a hotel pain index where we found that a third of guests who frequently stay at five-star hotels have cried because of a bad hotel experience. I think that probably says a lot more about the demanding, fragile, unresilient, non-gritty state of spoiled people than it does about anything else.

DUBNER: All right, then, Mike, it is time to play Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Would you please welcome our first guest, Colin Jerolmack. So Colin, I understand you are a professor of sociology and environmental studies at N.Y.U., which sounds like an interesting combination. I’m ready, as are Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan. What do you know, sir, that’s worth knowing, that you think we don’t know.

Colin JEROLMACK: I would like to ask you: what animal is most responsible for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution?

DUCKWORTH: Finches.

DUBNER: Well, we’re supposed to say the finches, and you’re going to tell us the finches were not —

JEROLMACK: Everybody thinks it’s the finches. And the thing is, the finches of course were — they have these different beaks. Some are short, some are long, some are curled, some are straight, depending on which island they were on, and they evolved these different beaks to be able to eat the seeds and the fruits that vary by islands. But Darwin didn’t figure that out when he was on the H.M.S. Beagle — he didn’t figure that out till decades later. He thought that these were different birds that were somehow related, but he didn’t think that they were the same species.

DUBNER: So you’re here to tell us that Darwin wasn’t so bright.

JEROLMACK: Well, it took him a couple decades to figure it out.

DUCKWORTH: But there is an animal that did inspire him, right?

JEROLMACK: Yes.

DUCKWORTH: And it is not the big turtle-like things that are not turtles but they look like turtles?

JEROLMACK: No we’ve gotten further away.

DUBNER: Is it a fast animal?

JEROLMACK: I would say medium.

DUBNER: Is it a delicious animal?

JEROLMACK: I’m vegan, so I’d say no.

DUCKWORTH: Is it a bigger-than-a-breadbox animal?

JEROLMACK: No.

DUCKWORTH: Smaller than a breadbox.

DUBNER: Is it a breadbox?

JEROLMACK: No.

DUBNER: Alright, tell us what the animal is.

JEROLMACK: The pigeon. The humble, lowly rock pigeon that we see outside this very studio. So, Darwin kept pigeons for 12 years or more, and he was fascinated by them, because you could breed them. And there were so many different breeds. In Victorian England there was hundreds of different breeds of pigeons. But the idea at the time was that all these different breeds came from multiple species. So he bred them and wanted to figure out how plastic they were, and over generations he discovered that if you mix them all together, you get the same pigeon that was walking around on the street. He thought these must have all come from the same species, not multiple species.

If some of you may remember, if you actually read The Origin of Species, this is why he spends the first 70-plus pages on pigeons. And he gently guides you through all the variation, all the different breeds, how tall you can make them, how fat or small you can make them. And then he hits you with the bombshell and he says, “If I can do this breeding pigeons in just a couple of years, imagine what Mother Nature could do over millions or hundreds of millions of years.” And he says Mother Nature is the selecting hand, right? So first he says, “I’m the artificial hand of breeding,” but Mother Nature is the selecting hand.

DUCKWORTH: So why is this amazing fact so unknown? Like, what — finches are just too — they’re sexier than pigeons?

JEROLMACK: Pigeons got a bad rep. Pigeons are — I think if I were to ask people what they think of pigeons, many people say, “I think they’re rats with wings,” or, “I call them rats with wings,” as if they thought of that themselves. But to be honest, I’m not totally sure because I ask my class, “Who’s read The Origin of Species?” and they all put their hands up, and I say, “What are the first 50-70 pages about?” and nobody—

DUCKWORTH: That’s because they didn’t read it

JEROLMACK: I think the real answer to your question is that nobody’s actually read The Origin of Species.

DUCKWORTH: I think that’s probably the answer.

DUBNER: So can you tell us more about how popular pigeons were in Darwin’s day, and to what end? They were used in obviously messengering, but were they used in warfare, and all this kind of stuff?

JEROLMACK: Definitely. So yeah, during the time that Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, there was something of a pigeon craze in Victorian England. People were breeding hundreds of varieties — they had shows like the Westminster Dog Show. And they still have these today actually, they’re just not as popular. The Queen of England kept pigeons, still has a racing pigeon loft today. So everybody had pigeons and was breeding pigeons and making fancy pigeons as ridiculous as the clothes that people were wearing. And actually, when Darwin wrote The Origin of Species and gave it to his editor, the editor said, “Man, this stuff about pigeons is amazing,” and people loved pigeons so much—

DUBNER: “Let’s just make a pigeon book.”

JEROLMACK: That’s what he said. Just get rid of speculative stuff about evolution, and if you make this just about pigeons, it will be a coffee table book. Everybody in England will buy it and it will be a bestseller.

DUBNER: So what you’re really here to tell us is that the publishing industry is exactly the same today as it was then.

JEROLMACK: It hasn’t changed much. That’s right.

DUBNER: When was peak pigeon?

JEROLMACK: Probably around that time, late 1800’s, early 1900’s. So what happened after that is, we used to actually love pigeon crap. We domesticated pigeons 5,000 years ago because their feces was such valuable fertilizer. And then we also realized you can eat them — so squab, if you’ve ever eaten squab, that’s pigeon.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, that’s pigeon. God!

JEROLMACK: And then, as Stephen alluded to, they served as messengers. Genghis Khan sent pigeons throughout his empire to send messages. Also, Reuters was launched on the back of pigeons, on messenger pigeons. But then after the turn of the century, nitrogen fertilizer replaced pigeon feces, chickens replaced pigeons, you could breed them much fatter, much quicker. And obviously we don’t need them for messages anymore, either. So they’ve kind of become, from society’s terms, useless.

DUBNER: If they can do all that stuff — carry messages by having a homing instinct, if nothing else — are we to assume that they’re relatively smart, especially for birds?

JEROLMACK: Yeah, they’re not bird-brained. You’d be surprised. Pigeons pass the mirror test. There’s very few animals that pass the mirror test.

DUCKWORTH: What’s the mirror test?

JEROLMACK: Looking at oneself in a mirror and understanding that they’re looking at themselves.

DUCKWORTH: So walk me through — a pigeon is in front of a mirror. How do you know that the pigeon knows that it is itself?

JEROLMACK: You put the animal to sleep, and you put a red dot on its forehead, and then you notice if it does things to try to get rid of the red dot. Like pecking at it — so the pigeon will peck at the mirror and kind of shuffle about and do things that indicate that—

DUCKWORTH: To get the red dot off of its mirrored image.

JEROLMACK: Yeah. I could tell you some other things that make them rather intelligent. So they can be trained to tell the difference not only between cubist and impressionist paintings, but between a Monet and a Picasso, or if you’re giving them some other Cubist or Impressionist painting, but that is not a Monet or a Picasso.

DUBNER: So, would you call yourself a pigeon advocate?

JEROLMACK: Yes. They got me tenure.

DUCKWORTH: It’s not bad.

DUBNER: Alright. So I don’t expect an honest answer from you on the following question, but: how do you know that the pigeon is actually so smart — as opposed to being the bird that was popular and therefore was trained a lot? Could I take a seagull, could I take a dove, etc.?

JEROLMACK: And do what?

DUBNER: Train it to carry messages.

JEROLMACK: Oh gosh, no. Come on. Are you serious? No way.

DUCKWORTH: Wait, a dove? Isn’t a dove — it’s like a pigeon.

JEROLMACK: So, I’m glad you brought that up, because this actually gets the Stephen’s question about the bad rap that pigeons have.

DUBNER: So a dove is all peace and purity, and a pigeon is a garbage eater.

JEROLMACK: That’s right. And there’s many languages that don’t even have a different word for pigeon and dove, and a lot of — if you’ve ever gone to a wedding or to the Olympics and they release doves, these are white homing pigeons that will leave and fly away and go back to the owner who’s bred them and trained them to fly. I argue that a lot of religious iconography of Jesus as the spirit descending — Jesus could have been a pigeon. We don’t actually know whether that was a pigeon or a dove.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, fire up your Google. We’re going to need to know if Jesus was indeed a pigeon. Let me ask you this: Why are they the one bird that I know of at least that walk among us in cities?

JEROLMACK: Yes. So first of all, in terms of literally walking, they’re ground feeders. That’s why they walk and they don’t hop — birds that hop mean they feed in bushes or flowers or trees. Pigeons are ground feeders. So pigeons were the first bird to be domesticated, over 5,000 years ago. And as I mentioned, we domesticated them for agriculture, for the fertilizer, and to eat them. But they’ve actually co-evolved with humans — when we moved to cities, we brought pigeons with us. They, at this point, have been living in cities since cities were around.

Today, unfortunately with climate change and urbanization, species basically have two routes: they go extinct or they survive, and the survival route usually means adapting to living amongst people and actually changing your evolutionary trajectory, and pigeons have done that. They are generalist eaters, so they — we leave a lot of garbage around, tons of garbage around for them to eat, and they can pretty much eat almost all of it. And we feed them as well, and because their natural habitat is actually cliffs and rocky ledges, even in terms of walking amongst us — I like to call them pedestrian animals — they literally walk on the sidewalks and sit on benches and ledges because they prefer them to grass, shrubs, or trees. It’s more like their native habitat.

DUBNER: Has anyone ever seen a baby pigeon?

DUCKWORTH: Yes, I have. I saw one growing up on a window ledge in a hotel a few months ago. Why do you ask that question?

DUBNER: Because I’ve never seen a baby pigeon. Tell us a little bit about pigeon family life. Do they — are they monogamous-ish? Honestly here’s what I thought, when I first moved to New York years ago: I would see pigeons all over, but never babies or even adolescents. But I somehow imagined that pigeons would be a couple. I don’t know if they are. And they would — when they were with child, they would go to the ‘burbs and have the kids there and then the adults would come back when they wanted to go to the theater.

DUCKWORTH: Send them to good schools, and they can ride their bikes.

JEROLMACK: That’s an interesting hypothesis. You’re not entirely wrong in terms of they actually do what I think at least many humans aspire to: they mate for life and they’re monogamous. And they’re also pretty good on gender equality. They both sit on the eggs, and they both feed the young. If you’ve ever seen pigeons that appear to be kissing, the male is actually throwing up into the female’s mouth to demonstrate that he can produce the crop milk to feed the babies.

DUBNER: That is sweet.

JEROLMACK: That seals the deal. She’s like, oh yeah.

DUBNER: But what about from birth to adulthood? Where are — why don’t we see the young?

JEROLMACK: It’s kind of hilarious if you get to see it. The mother and the father will sit on the baby until it’s fully grown. So they don’t fledge the nest.

DUBNER: They are like people, actually.

JEROLMACK: Yeah, they don’t fledge until they have gone to college and come back home. I’ll give you a tip if you would really like to find baby pigeons: any time you’re walking pretty much anywhere, but say particularly under an awning, listen for these really high-pitched squeaks, and that’s a baby pigeon. And if you listen and look around, you’ll find them.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Colin Jerolmack has been telling us much more about pigeons than I ever thought any of us would want to know, and I personally found much of it fascinating. I believe him because he—

DUCKWORTH: He’s a tenured professor at N.Y.U. He’s like a professor of pigeons.

DUBNER: And also, he’s got khakis and a braided belt, and I there’s something about that that just says verity.

JEROLMACK: I got to thank my wife for that.

DUBNER: So I find no reason to distrust anything he said. But you’re the man with the Google over there.

MAUGHAN: So, a few things — you don’t have your wife to thank for a braided belt. You should be mad at her. No. 2, you said that pigeons were like humans because they’re monogamous and mate for life. That’s not true. Humans don’t do that.

JEROLMACK: Oh I see. I said humans aspire to that.

MAUGHAN: Next, you and Angela were debating which animals are the sexiest. Just a quick warning: don’t Google that on your work computer. So a few things. It’s not very helpful, but a publication called City Lab New York City said that this city is believed to have between 1 and 7 million pigeons. Really great range there, so thank you.

It’s interesting to know that in the past 20 years in China, there’s been an amazing boom in young money, and this self-made billionaire crowd has chosen pigeon racing as their sport of choice. The most expensive champion racing pigeon sold for almost half a million dollars.

Lastly, I just want to say you all know Crocs, the little rubber shoe. So I think it’s important to recognize that pigeons are a lot like Crocs, they’re more functional than they appear, but still super weird to have with you in any situation.

DUBNER: Thank you, Mike, and thank you Colin Jerolmack. Would you please welcome our next guest, Ben Orlin. Hi there, Ben. It says here that you are a math teacher and author of the new book, Math With Bad Drawings, so I’ll assume you’ve got something a little math-y to tell us tonight. The floor is yours.

Ben ORLIN: Yeah, that’s right. My question for you is: who’s likeliest to buy lottery tickets?

DUBNER: Is this another finch-pigeon — we’re supposed to say, “Low-income people who squander too much money on this ridiculous, state-supported racket where they skim 40 percent off the top and then leave you with your shallow winnings to weep in your latte that you’re also buying and shouldn’t be.”

MAUGHAN: Stephen, how do you really feel?

DUCKWORTH: I think the lotteries are evil. Don’t they prey upon people’s lack of numeracy, effectively, right?

DUBNER: The other thing that I don’t like about lotteries, just since we’re getting it out there—

DUCKWORTH: Yeah, do it. Go for it.

DUBNER: —is that if you play the slots, what’s the rake on a slot machine? You’re a math guy.

DUCKWORTH: It’s very small.

DUBNER: Seven percent, maybe?

ORLIN: Yeah, I think it’s in that range.

DUBNER: A parimutuel — you go to a horse track, the track is maybe taking 12, 14 percent.

ORLIN: Yeah, maybe closer to 20, but yeah, in that range.

DUBNER: But the state — what’s the average for state lotteries?

ORLIN: Close to 50 percent — 40 percent or so.

DUBNER: So you’re here to tell us something, however, within this —

DUCKWORTH: Diabolical system —

ORLIN: Yes, so I’m a math teacher, so it’s not my place to decide how the state should cheat people out of their money. But who are they cheating out of their money? It turns out, actually, so the state where the most lottery tickets are bought is Massachusetts, my home state — a lot of very educated, wealthy people in Massachusetts. And it turns out, Gallup did a poll, 2016, so not that long ago, and people making more than $90,000 a year are actually likelier to buy lottery tickets than people making below $36,000 a year.

DUBNER: Do we call 90 and above high income, or we call that middle-high? What do you want to call that?

ORLIN: I’m impressed, I think 90 is pretty good.

DUBNER: You are a math teacher. But you would call 36 pretty good too as a math teacher, would you not?

ORLIN: 36 is below national median.

DUBNER: Okay. So you’re saying more people in that bracket were —

ORLIN: Yeah, that’s right, people who are higher income are actually likelier to play than people who are low income, and similarly, people with bachelor’s degrees are actually likelier to play the lottery than people with no college education.

DUBNER: So you’re saying that this general idea that the lottery is disproportionately popular among lower income is not quite right.

DUCKWORTH: So how many lottery tickets are they buying?

ORLIN: Yeah, that’s a good question. So Gallup doesn’t have data on that. In the same sense also that if someone making $36,000 a year buys a lottery ticket, and someone making $100,000 a year buys a lottery ticket, the person making less has just spent a much larger percentage of their income on lottery tickets. So even if they’re buying the same number, we can still call it a regressive tax.

DUCKWORTH: So wait, let me just make sure I understand. You’re saying that people who make a lot of money buy more tickets per person on average.

ORLIN: They’re more likely to participate, yes. Per person, I’m not sure. But more likely to buy a ticket, at least.

DUCKWORTH: More likely to buy a ticket.

DUBNER: And what share is that? Let’s say 90 and above. Are we talking 30, 60 percent? Where are we?

ORLIN: It is basically about 50 percent, across pretty much every income group.

DUBNER: And then $36,000 and below —

ORLIN: So yeah, we’re looking at 46 percent or so. So it’s not a huge difference. When it comes down to it, about half of people play the lottery.

DUCKWORTH: That itself is — half of people play the lottery?

DUBNER: But play the lottery means what, one ticket in the past 12 months?

ORLIN: Yeah, it’s played in the last year. Although, if you look at Massachusetts, that’s the state where we have sort of the highest spending, it’s about $800 per person per year. So the average person is buying two lottery tickets a day — that’s probably not evenly distributed. I don’t think — I mean I don’t know, unless my wife has been sneaking off and buying way more lottery tickets than I think.

DUCKWORTH: Wait. The average Massachusetts citizen is buying $800 of tickets per year, or the average person who is buying a ticket —

ORLIN: So the total amount spent, if you divide by the number of people in Massachusetts, you get $800 per year. Yeah.

DUCKWORTH: $800 per year!

ORLIN: Yeah.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this. Let’s just pretend that Angela and I have decided that we think playing the lottery is a bad idea.

DUCKWORTH: Let’s pretend.

DUBNER: Let’s just pretend that. But then, let me introduce — let me just say well, let’s say the expected value is very low, relative to what I can do with a dollar, $10, elsewhere. But what about the entertainment utility? Has anyone ever measured that? Do we have any idea?

ORLIN: I mean, the measure of entertainment utility is that people keep doing it and they seem to do it very gladly and in great quantity.

DUCKWORTH: It could be — people could be buying tickets because it’s fun, or they could be buying tickets because they are legit thinking that they are going to win the lottery and that they’re gonna be lucky.

DUBNER: Let’s say this, Mr. Math Teacher. Let’s say that Angela I change our mind. We think, “Hey, we’re going to play the lottery because we think we can win because we know a smart guy named Ben Orlin, who’s a math teacher who’s interested in the lottery, and he can help us not cheat, but cheat.” So what are some things that we could do to increase our chances of winning? For instance, I’ve read that — let’s say you have a pick of numbers that go from zero to 100, that if you pick numbers above 31, let’s say, that at least if you do win, that you’ll have a bigger payout because so many people play their birthdates, for instance. Does that work?

ORLIN: Yeah, this is true. So there are certain numbers, numbers that show up on fortune cookies, or numbers that are birthdates. It’s not a good idea to pick those. Because if you win on that number, you’re going to be sharing with all the other people who had that fortune cookie.

Stephen, you mentioned expected value, which I think — someone who’s taken a probability class or a math class, I think the assumption is, expected value is sort of what you should be looking at. So right now, for example, the Mega Millions just went up to the highest it’s ever been, $1.6 billion right now. Expected value is basically just the long run average — if you are to buy tons and tons and tons of tickets, how much would the average one be worth? So for Mega Millions, there’s only about 300 million possible tickets. It’s worth $1.6 billion. So the average ticket should be worth more than $5, and they only cost $2. So in theory, it sounds like a good idea. The problem is, if you go out and buy a ticket you’re going to just lose your $2.

DUCKWORTH: Why don’t you just buy every possible combination?

ORLIN: Right. So this is very hard to do with Mega Millions. It’s actually happened in 1993, the early days of state lotteries. Virginia — the prize went up all the way to $28 million because no one had won it for a while. There were only 7 million tickets for $1 each. There was actually a syndicate, a group of people in Australia, who said, “Okay, we’ll just buy them all, that’s the easy money right there.” Which sounds like easy money but it’s not that easy to go and buy seven million lottery tickets.

DUCKWORTH: Oh that’s right, because you have to go to so many delis.

ORLIN: So what they did — this team in 1993 placed a lot of big orders with grocery store chains and convenience store chains. But even that didn’t work out that well for them — there’s actually one chain that had to return $600,000 to them for tickets they weren’t able to print. By the time of the drawing, 7 million tickets out there, they had actually purchased 5 million of them. So there was a two-in-seven chance they were going to wind up losing all that money.

DUCKWORTH: Okay, well then what happened?

ORLIN: What happened was, two weeks went by, and the state knew that they’d sold the winning ticket, but no one could find it, because they had 5 million tickets they needed to look through. And then about two weeks later they surfaced and they did win the money. The state lottery commissioner was furious and issued this sort of — like a villain at the end of a heist movie as though he knew he’d been beat but he swore he would never get beat that way again. And actually since then it’s become much harder to do those kind of bulk purchases. Most states have passed laws against that. And if you wanted to try it on Mega Millions right now — if you could do it it’d be great to get all 300 million tickets, but there’s just no feasible way to do it.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Ben Orlin is telling us that pretty much a lot of people love to play the lottery, and it’s not what we expect in terms of income. What more can you tell us about that?

MAUGHAN: So, here are a few things that are more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery: giving birth to identical quadruplets. Getting killed by a falling coconut or having a vending machine fall on you. And the kicker, you’re more likely to be elected president of the United States. But we’ve already shown that anyone can do that.

DUBNER: Thank you, Mike, and Ben Orlin, thank you for playing. Would you please welcome to the stage Kate Sicchio. Kate is an assistant professor of dance and kinetic imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University. Kate, why don’t you tell us something we don’t know please.

Kate SICCHIO: Sure. I can tell someone’s emotional state when they’re using their smartphone just by looking at them without seeing what’s on their screen or what they’re reading. How?

DUBNER: By how hard they’re weeping?

SICCHIO: No.

DUCKWORTH: Without looking at their face, and without seeing what’s on their phone?

SICCHIO: Correct.

DUCKWORTH: From their body posture, is it from that?

SICCHIO: Getting there. Yeah.

DUBNER: Does this have to do with what you do professionally?

SICCHIO: Yes.

DUBNER: You are a professor of dance and kinetic imaging — what is kinetic imaging? We’ll start there.

SICCHIO: So kinetic imaging is like media arts

DUBNER: That is a way more impressive word for it. Cause I’ve always thought, media arts, ugh, but kinetic imaging—

SICCHIO: Right, it’s exciting.

DUBNER: So you observe their movements, and because you’re a dance professor you can tell how they’re feeling?

SICCHIO: Yeah.

DUBNER: Oh, okay. Bingo.

SICCHIO: So in choreography, we have different tools of analysis. And in particular there’s this thing called the Laban Effort Graph. And what it does is, it allows you to look at movement in three different categories. One is time: is the movement sudden or sustained? One is space: is the movement direct or indirect? And another is force: is it strong or light? And when you combine these three things you start to get gestures — so a strong, sudden, direct movement is a punch. Right?

DUBNER: So when I punch my phone, you know I’m feeling —

SICCHIO: I know you’re angry.

DUBNER: I wouldn’t have figured that out without my kinetic imaging degree.

DUCKWORTH: But that’s the thing. Like with the phone, I mean, how much range is there when people are on their phone?

SICCHIO: Right. So one of the things we do a lot on our phone is, we do things like mindless surfing. Well, that gesture is what we call a flick. So it’s indirect and light and sudden, right? And that means that yeah, you’re not really being conscientious, you’re not paying that much attention, you might be bored.

DUCKWORTH: So what does sadness look like on an iPhone, in terms of my using it?

SICCHIO: Usually sadness is like, light, but it’s usually more sustained. Right? And it’s usually indirect.

DUCKWORTH: So not quite a flick.

SICCHIO: Right. Not quite a flick. One of my favorite ones is Tinder. So when we’re using Tinder, we’re doing this really careless gesture. And of course that’s where you meet people to hook up, not someone you’re going to care about in the future.

DUBNER: So do that gesture again, because that’s good for radio. And give me something that’s the opposite of that.

SICCHIO: Right. So another app that I use is one called a Hotel Tonight, and in order to book your hotel —

DUBNER: That sounds not that unlike Tinder to me.

DUCKWORTH: They go together.

SICCHIO: But to book your hotel you have to do a very direct, sustained movement. It’s much more of a commitment to get your hotel room than to find a date. You have to actually trace the shape of a bed on the phone. So it’s this really direct movement that you have to do in order to purchase.

DUBNER: Are there practical applications of this observation?

SICCHIO: Yeah, I think that you could make things more direct and more sustained so people would think about it more. Maybe we want news apps to be more like that, so people are actually careful about what they’re reading and thinking about what they’re digesting in terms of the content.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Kate Sicchio is saying that you can tell how people are feeling by looking at how they interact with their phones — true?

MAUGHAN: Yes. So we hear that Tinder is this hookup app, right, because it takes so little effort, and you’re just swiping left and right. Now, that may be true at the beginning of a relationship, but it doesn’t tell us a ton about what it takes to get into a relationship. Because by the time people are able to actually meet and hookup, they will have had to have engaged in some more committed behavior like texting, phone calls, et cetera.

What appears is that it’s not necessarily the results of how much effort someone takes throughout the time to get together, physical or otherwise, but rather it’s how the relationship starts. Something that may indicate what that means for us, The Atlantic has reported that couples who cohabitate before marriage tend to be less satisfied and are more likely to divorce. So the issue with Tinder may not be the human movement overall, but rather what the human movement says about the desire for commitment from the very beginning of the relationship.

DUBNER: Angela, does that make sense to you?

DUCKWORTH: I mean I think that when you say that people who live — maybe I’m taking this personally. But anyway, why would someone who lives together with another person be more likely to — is it divorce, is that the fact?

MAUGHAN: Yes. As a certified non-marriage counselor — I think the idea is that if things start out without a deep level of commitment, then the research shows that we’re less likely to stick to it. You’re the person that studies grit, passion, and perseverance, so I’m not going to fact check you on whether people stick with things or not.

DUCKWORTH: So I’ll just say this: whenever you find a correlation, like people who drink Diet Coke live — like, you have to worry as a scientist that like, lots of things are correlated with the decision to live together, and those may be the things that are driving the marriage statistics also. So what we really need is an experiment where half the people get assigned to live together before they get married —

DUBNER: Let’s do this half of the room.

DUCKWORTH: Right. And then we’ll know.

MAUGHAN: Speaking of spurious correlation, though, I do think it’s important to note that the number of people who die becoming tangled in bedsheets almost perfectly correlates with per capita cheese consumption.

DUBNER: Mike, thank you so much for that, and Kate, thank you for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.

*      *      *

DUBNER: Before we get back to the game, we have got some FREAK-quently asked questions for Angela Duckworth. You ready to go?

DUCKWORTH: I’m ready to go.

DUBNER: You are best known for having written the book Grit. The Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League have a new mascot called Gritty. Was that your doing?

DUCKWORTH: Okay, that was 100 percent not my idea. It’s awful. Have you seen it?

DUBNER: It’s like an orange alien.

DUCKWORTH: No, I had nothing to do with it.

DUBNER: Do you know if the people who invented and named Gritty are fans of yours?

DUCKWORTH: I do not. They have not been in touch.

DUBNER: Do you think it’s a dereliction-of-royalty issue for which they have not been in touch?

DUCKWORTH: I am not suing the Philadelphia Flyers for their use of the word gritty because I don’t think I — can you own a word? I don’t think you can own a word, can you? Do you own Freakonomics?

DUBNER: I do own Freakonomics. Angela, I know you’re working on a new podcast about the work of the Character Lab, which advances the science and practice of character development. Why a podcast?

DUCKWORTH: So I think it’s the case that people like these things that they’re listening to where they get to actually talk to people like Stephen Dubner, and I thought, maybe there are a lot of parents out there and teachers who would like to talk to me about the science of how kids grow up to thrive.

DUBNER: And lastly, a family grit question: Can you give an example of something particularly un-gritty that someone in your family has done?

DUCKWORTH: Well, okay, a certain person would like throw themselves into various projects like metal detecting and then like stamp collecting, and then vending machines, and weight lifting, and like one thing after the other. And when you do that, then you’re not being gritty.

DUBNER: I didn’t know vending machine was a hobby.

DUCKWORTH: It can be. Short lived, it turns out, in this case.

DUBNER: Angela Duckworth, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much. It is time now to get back to our game. Would you please welcome our next guest, Philip Barden. Philip is a professor of evolutionary biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, as well as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. So that sounds very promising. What do you have for us, Philip?

Philip BARDEN: So, what does a hell ant and an iPod have in common?

DUBNER: May we in turn ask you what the hell is a hell ant?

BARDEN: Yeah, well, that’s a whole — okay, so that’s a decent question. So I work on fossil ants. That’s my niche. This is about as myopic as you might think you could get. Turns out there are as many fossil ant species as there are fossil dinosaur species.

DUCKWORTH: If that helps.

BARDEN: And among the oldest fossils that we know about, about 100 million years old, trapped in amber, are these ants called hell ants. And they have all these bizarre adaptations that we don’t see in any modern ants and in fact no modern insect. So what we see is these big scythe-like mandibles that jut out of the face and come up towards the forehead.

DUBNER: A mandible is a jaw?

BARDEN: The jaw, yeah, exactly, the jaw, the mouthparts. Modern ants have mouthparts that articulate horizontally. So if you take your arms and you kind of go to hug somebody, it’s sort of like that. This would be if you took and put your elbows together and you kind of went to jut yourself in the forehead with the tips of your fingers. Those are hell ants, right? Hell ants, it turns out, Dlussky, who’s this Russian paleo entomologist, named the genus for the first time in the 90’s, Haidomyrmex — haido meaning Hades, and myrmex, which is Greek for ant. And the common name is hell ants.

DUCKWORTH: Why hell ants? Other than, it was good branding.

BARDEN: It was just real spooky cool, just badass thing to name an ant.

DUCKWORTH: Oh, it was branding. It was just a badass name for a species of ant.

BARDEN: Exactly. Yeah, hado-myrmex, it just sounds — really truly, I mean, there are 13,000 species of modern ants, and this is the — it sort of breaks the mold.

DUBNER: And your question was what do a hell ant and an iPod—

BARDEN: —have in common. I should say one other thing, which is that there are some hell ants that also have horns that come out of their forehead. We named one last year — we named it after Vlad the Impaler. And the reason is this: we C.T. scanned it, we looked through X-ray imaging, and found that these ants actually looked like they sequester metals into the middle of this paddle. What we think is happening is to prevent themselves from running themselves through their own forehead, they’re actually capturing prey and puncturing them and drinking their hemolymph, which is insect blood. So that’s why we named it after Vlad the Impaler.

DUBNER: Were they the size roughly of modern ants?

BARDEN: They were about a centimeter — so like your pinky.

DUBNER: So how is it possible that an ant that tough didn’t make it?

BARDEN: Well this gets into the thing — I’ll just give it to you.

DUBNER: Give it to me.

BARDEN: So, one of the reasons why we think that hell ants went extinct is potentially because — and they are extinct, and all their close relatives are extinct — because they are too specialized. They effectively painted themselves into a corner. some of the evidence that we have strongly suggests that they specialized on prey that also went extinct. This is an interesting thing in evolution, right, where we get into these scenarios where your adaptations work really, really well until all of a sudden the bottom drops out and they don’t. And they actually persisted for about 21 million years. We know about them from amber in Myanmar, France, and Canada.

DUBNER: So what they have in common with the iPod is, they were too specialized and we don’t need them anymore.

BARDEN: Perfect, nobody buys iPods anymore.

DUBNER: Okay, so they’re a species that went extinct because, you’re arguing, of overspecialization, they were tough. There were certain prey that they could beat up, but otherwise they weren’t whatever, good enough to go on. But what about — aren’t there like — what good is the platypus for? Is that not a specialized thing and why is it still around?

BARDEN: Well, so anything that is around today, it’s working, right? We always think about evolution as being this sort of game of winners and being the best or whatever, and it’s really just the best in that moment in time, in that particular slice. Right? So everything, including humans today. Right? If you put two humans two billion years ago, there is no oxygen in the atmosphere, game over, it’s hard. And in fact something like oxygen turns out to be another thing that sort of changed the game. So the earliest life on our planet — oxygen was catastrophic for it. There was no oxygen in the atmosphere. And then we start to get photosynthesis. All of a sudden having that adaptation of being anaerobic, that is, surviving without oxygen, becomes really terrible. And now we have this big massive extinction event because of something like oxygen. Now of course we all love oxygen. But it turns out that wasn’t really the case in the beginning.

DUCKWORTH: So let me ask you a human-centric question.

BARDEN: I don’t think about humans.

DUCKWORTH: So are we over-specialized or are humans the opposite? Because we can learn anything.

BARDEN: Humans are incredible generalists. This is one of the reasons why we are highly, highly successful. And in fact — I’m just gonna bring it back to ants. And the reason why I bring it back to ants is because they are —

DUCKWORTH: Because you study ants.

BARDEN: Because I study ants, and they are my comfort zone. But really, they are tremendously successful, and in many places they outweigh the biomass of all vertebrates, including humans, in some environments. And the most successful ants are also generalists, right, so they can capitalize all kinds of resources. They don’t rely just on one particular food source. And humans are very much the same way, although we have some other kind of funny things going on, this culture thing. And the ability to rapidly pivot.

DUBNER: Aren’t modern ants said to be quite social?

BARDEN: They are, they’re all eusocial, exactly. Yes.

DUBNER: And do you think that part of the hell ant’s problem was a lack of some kind of socialization?

BARDEN: This is a great question. So, we thought about this. We really thought that maybe it was that the earliest ants really weren’t social, and they were actually out-competed by their highly communistic counterparts who are alive today. And in fact, what we’ve found is that that’s not the case — the earliest ants, including hell ants, are highly social. There’s no such thing as a solitary ant. All 13,000 species today and all 700 fossil species so far as we know all were social. So, for example, if you look at all the different amber deposits in Earth history, starting at 100 million years ago, ants never make up more than one percent of all insects in amber, and yet we find many aggregations of them together. We calculated on the back of a napkin — we’re not mathematicians — but we figure that it’s something like one in a trillion. The idea of finding 20 worker ants in one piece, when you have less than one percent abundance.

DUBNER: Are high or low income ants more likely to buy lottery tickets?

BARDEN: There should be an ant lotto.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this. Will science and technology allow you to bring back the hell ant? And if so, whose picnic would you send it to?

BARDEN: Oh, this is a great question. So, not biologically, no. But, in fact, where I am now, we have some great industrial design students — we have C.T. scanned these and we’re now modeling them, we’re digitally bringing them back to life to figure out how the mechanics of these would work.

DUCKWORTH: That is cool.

BARDEN: Yeah, this is a great tee-up, by the way, for N.J.I.T., where I work now, and I do not have tenure, and I’d like to have tenure. And we’re also printing and constructing giant molds that are motorized, so we can use these for outreach, we’re taking them to schools and museums, potentially for museum exhibits also, because we really don’t think about insects as part of the fossil record, but they are. Today, 75 percent of all species that exist are insects.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Philip Barden has been telling us about the extinct hell ant. What do you have to add?

MAUGHAN: So I think a lot of people here misunderstood — when you say hell ant, we all think about our aunt from hell who is always trying to set us up.

DUCKWORTH: That’s just your aunt from hell.

MAUGHAN: So ants have lost a lot of things over the years — they lost the Impaler. They don’t have lungs, they don’t have ears, they can’t swim. They do have two stomachs. It’s interesting to see though that ants have lost a number of things, we as a culture of lost many things, some good, some bad, we’ve lost answering machines, pagers, Velcro wallets. We no longer have decent politicians. We’ve lost MySpace, which was a terrible tragedy. And if you haven’t yet lost Nickelback, do yourself a favor.

DUBNER: Thank you Mike. And Philip Barden, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. Would you please welcome our final guest of the evening, Livan Grijalva. Livan works in data analytics here in New York. He is a memory athlete, and currently holds the title of fifth best memory in the United States. I would like to apologize to our audience that we could only get the fifth-best memory athlete in America. But Livan, that sounds awesome and I can’t wait to hear what you have to tell us, so the floor is yours.

GRIJALVA: So, have you ever been sitting in your living room on the couch and you remember that you need to get something from the kitchen? You get up, you walk to the kitchen, and as soon as you get there, you just completely forget what it is. So my question is, why does walking from one room to another cause you to forget?

DUCKWORTH: Because you are — like place memory, right? You are activating the memory representation in one place and that has all these cues, and then you go to another place and those cues are absent?

GRIJALVA: That’s basically it. So it’s something called the doorway effect.

DUCKWORTH: Sorry, I’m a psychology professor.

DUBNER: No, that’s really good.

GRIJALVA: What happens is, when you’re sitting on your couch, you are thinking of something and you inadvertently, maybe you’re looking at the T.V. or you’re looking at the shelf and that idea somehow gets tethered to that location. So as soon as you walk to the next room, when you’re no longer looking at that, you seem to have forgotten what that is. And what happens is, as soon as you sit back down on your couch, it just comes right back to you, which is actually what memory athletes do in a way. We use a technique called the Memory Palace, where we place information that we want to memorize in specific locations in different rooms, and then we’re able to recall them later on like that.

DUBNER: And you said it’s called the doorway effect?

GRIJALVA: The doorway effect.

DUBNER: Meaning you pass through and you lose it. Hey, can I just ask you, my thought before Angela figured it right out was, I thought of something I think it was Arthur Conan Doyle once said about how the memory is like an attic, and if you fill it up with junk, then when you have something valuable to put in it, you don’t have room. And what it made me think of is, if you walk into another room, you’re just hit with all the new stimuli there, and they somehow hurt your being able to summon the memory because there’s only so much RAM that we all have going on. That’s not an issue?

GRIJALVA: Actually, I love Sherlock Holmes, so I know that quote really well, and what I thought was really interesting was that he’s saying that your brain has a limited amount of space, which believe it or not, I mean, as far as these memory athletes are concerned, we can pretty much memorize large, large amounts of information. I don’t think anybody — if there’s any scientific studies that show that there is a limit — like, this person has hit the limit of it all they can memorize. So, while it’s sort of true, I don’t know if that’s exactly it.

DUBNER: Just a side observation: you say the phrase “memory athlete” as if we think that is athletic.

DUCKWORTH: Takes training, right? Takes practice.

DUBNER: I’m not saying it’s not, but I’m curious, was that said originally in jest and it got real?

GRIJALVA: No, that’s a very good question. Mnemonist is another name for it, but I guess, yeah, we just call ourselves memory athletes or mental athletes.

DUCKWORTH: So I want to know more about this thing that you do — so can you give me some examples of things that you’ve memorized or competitions that you’ve been in?

GRIJALVA: Sure. So there’s lots of competitions all over the world every year. And basically people like myself get together and they try to memorize as much information in the shortest amount of time possible. So some of the events are, let’s say, memorizing hundreds of random digits, binary digits, names and faces, abstract images, lines of poetry. And one of my particularly favorite events is basically memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards in under five minutes if possible. So it’s basically after all these events, scores are tallied up and then you get a champion.

DUBNER: So you’re obviously very good at this. I’m curious, do your fellow competitors — do you all pretty much use the same methods?

GRIJALVA: They pretty much do. As I was mentioning before, the memory palace is the main technique that we use, which is an ancient Greek technique where you basically construct places in your mind. So at a smaller level, you might imagine your apartment as a memory palace. You might imagine your front door as a location No. 1, and you walk through and your living room would be location No. 2. Your kitchen could be location No. 3, the bathroom No. 4, and finally your bedroom, No. 5. So what you’ve done is, you’ve created a mini journey that you can close your eyes and walk through it. So on a much larger scale, this is what memory athletes do. We just have hundreds and hundreds of palaces and different ones, yeah.

DUCKWORTH: Are they real, or are they imagined palaces?

GRIJALVA: So they can be either one. I tend to like to use real locations. I just came back from Ecuador. So on my trip, I tried to stop in a few different museums and stuff like that and try to build memory palaces along the way. But I also used to play a lot of video games, first-person shooters, so I would actually take the environments in the game and also turn those into memory palaces. Basically anything that you can imagine yourself in. It’s so much easier though if it’s real places — like humans are really good at navigation. So it’s pretty easy to build palaces wherever you go.

DUBNER: So you actually go to new places in order to create memory palaces from them afterwards, yes?

GRIJALVA: Yeah. And usually I will take notes or take photographs of different places. It makes it so much fun too, because you could actually close your eyes and be in these places. A lot of times when I’m memorizing in competitions, it’s so strange but also really relaxing to be able to walk through all these places in your mind.

DUCKWORTH: So why do you do this? I actually admire this. Very gritty. But what do you get out of it? And do you think you’ll still be doing this 10 or 20 years from now?

GRIJALVA: So I originally was a magician, so I would do a lot of stuff with cards. And obviously as magicians we pretend to memorize a deck of cards to do tricks, but then I found out people were actually memorizing them, and I thought to myself, “Well, as a magician, as somebody who loves cards, I have to be able to do this.” So I started training myself to just do that. But it turned out it was so much fun to actually be able to do this. Just being able to achieve faster speeds. The first time I ever memorized a deck of cards for a magic trick, it took me three hours. Now it takes me 32 seconds. I mean, the sheer amount that you can cut down is just so interesting. And even four years into competing, I’m still finding that there’s things about the brain and how memory works that I didn’t know before.

DUBNER: Can you just give us an example of, let’s say, a deck of cards memorizing. And obviously you don’t have them — or do you have a deck of cards on you, by chance?

GRIJALVA: I do. So I can give an example, because unfortunately, seeing a memory competition is not that exciting. It’s just a bunch of people sitting there with headphones and dead silence as they run through.

DUBNER: So just imagine how exciting it will be to listen to people seeing a memory competition.

GRIJALVA: So basically what it is is, the technique — I already mentioned the memory palace. In my mind I have a location that I’m set to go when I want to memorize. Cards are abstract. It’s hard for you to remember them because they have no real meaning. So what we do is, we turn every card into somebody or into something that’s more meaningful. So in the technique that I use, I’ve turned every card into a person and an action associated with it. So let’s say the 10 of hearts is Homer Simpson.

DUBNER: Because why?

GRIJALVA: So originally — this is the hard part. Building the system requires things — you have to sort of make it up. Like here’s an easy one. So the six of hearts is Michael Jordan, and that one makes sense because Michael Jordan won six championships, and I say he’s got a lot of heart. So it’s very easy for me to memorize that. The ace of spades is James Bond, and I think of the highest card in the deck as being James Bond when he plays poker. So, some of them are easy to associate.

DUBNER: Okay, so each memory athlete creates their own mnemonic for each card. Correct?

GRIJALVA: Yeah. There is a slight variation. So my system, like I was saying, uses two cards. So let’s imagine that — I mentioned that the ace of spades is James Bond and the 10 of hearts is Homer Simpson. So if I was memorizing — if the cards were in that sequence, let’s say ace of spades, 10 of hearts, I would take my first location. Let’s imagine the front door. And I would take the first card, the ace of spades, and imagine James Bond standing at the front door. But the second card is the 10 of hearts, Homer Simpson. But it also gets confusing because later on, when I’m remembering it, I’m like wait a minute. Was it James Bond and Homer Simpson, or Homer Simpson and James Bond? So what we do is, we modify the technique to create a hierarchy. So the first card is the person. The second card would be an action. So it would be James Bond drooling, which is an action that Homer Simpson does. So if it was the other way around, if was 10 of hearts, ace of spades, it would be Homer Simpson drinking a martini.

DUBNER: And you do all that for 52 cards in how many seconds?

GRIJALVA: So my current competition best is 34 seconds. My personal best is 32 seconds.

DUBNER: What do you think you can do right now?

GRIJALVA: I’m not sure, I’m a little bit out of practice.

DUBNER: Do we shuffle them?

DUCKWORTH: I feel like we should shuffle them.

GRIJALVA: So we’ll do about half the deck, only because regurgitating 52 cards might be a little boring. I’m going to try to go through a few of them and see what we get.

DUBNER: Angela, should we narrate a little bit? It’s very dramatic. There’s a man on stage looking at cards.

MAUGHAN: You’re making this so hard for him.

GRIJALVA: So you can verify that I got them right. So first, I’ll say the cards and I’ll say what I’m looking at. So the first card should be the nine of spades, which would be a girl that I know named Lily. The second card should be the seven of spades, which would be a samurai sword. Then it’s the ace of hearts, which is Johann Sebastian Bach, with a nine of diamonds drinking tea, the next card would be the six of diamonds, which is a friend of mine called Six, who is freezing, so it should be the five of hearts. Then it’s Old Boy from the film Old Boys, so it should be the seven of diamonds, followed by the ace of clubs, which is hanging upside down. Then it should be the four of diamonds followed by the six of spades, I believe, then the queen of spades, six of clubs, nine of hearts, five of clubs, eight of hearts, two of hearts, 10 of — Homer Simpson, so it should be the 10 of hearts, doing yoga, which is Queen of Diamonds, followed by Clint Eastwood spray painting, so it should be ace of diamonds, four of hearts, followed by Sharon with sheep. So it’s three of spades, jack of hearts, followed by — this is Reggie Miller doing — so it’s the king of spades. Is he eating spinach? Five of spades? Jack of spades, five of spades. Is that all?

DUBNER: So, that was remarkable. I’ve read about people who do exactly this, and it’s impressive, obviously, when you read it. But that was absolutely remarkable. Thanks for doing it for us.

GRIJALVA: Thank you.

DUCKWORTH: Can I ask you this: which is more important to you, beating the four memory athletes who are ranked higher than you, or beating yourself?

GRIJALVA: I’ve actually — when I first started I didn’t know any of the memory athletes. So I thought to myself, I’m going to come in and I’m going to try to beat everybody. Because at the time, the U.S. wasn’t very well ranked among the world. Like the top countries were, I think, China and Germany. But by coincidence, the same time that I started competing, two other friends of mine — now they’re friends, but two other athletes started competing as well, and they were so, so great that right now the No. 1 guy in the U.S. is also the No. 1 guy in the world. So the U.S. now holds the record for being the best country with a memory athlete as it were.

DUCKWORTH: America is great again.

DUBNER: I have a question for you, Livan. What does this phenomenon, the original phenomenon we were talking about, the doorway effect, or just the way you’ve learned to control memory or to build memory — what does this suggest for people with memory loss? Is there anything clinical-ish, therapeutic-ish that it suggests?

GRIJALVA: Well, that’s kind of interesting because at the same time people make the joke a lot of times that I should never forget anything. And if anybody who knows me, knows that I have a pretty average memory when I don’t pay attention to things. The reality of it is that these techniques are so specialized that this is what I use for a deck of cards. I could practice this for hours and be really, really fast at a deck of cards. It won’t translate to being fast at numbers. I would have to specialize and train just at numbers. I teach a class, and what I try to tell people is basically, you practice these things and when you understand them, you’re able to use them in your day-to-day life. So it’s a really great way to kind of stay in shape, but unfortunately these techniques are very, very specialized for what it is that you want use. There’s no magic key that if you practice this it will improve your general memory.

DUBNER: Mike Maughan, Livan Grijalva has not only showed us how to memorize part of a deck of cards, but told us a lot about memory and memory athletes. Care to tell us if everything checks out?

MAUGHAN: So for years, golfers and cheerleaders have been mocked mercilessly for calling themselves athletes. You’ve just handed them an amazing gift. A couple of substantive things: we learned from Colin Camerer on this podcast a while back that one of the keys to memory is curiosity, because it enhances the encoding process, which is one of the three stages of memory, which are encoding, storage, and recall. So this idea that we’ve talked about of the Doorway Effect happens when we change locations, and therefore remove triggers that help us in the recall stage. So it’s encouraging to know that we’re not crazy when we walk out of a room and forget what we were doing. Interestingly, like all things in life, it turns out that to increase your memory function, you’re supposed to get sleep, exercise, and eat a healthy diet. So in other words, it’s probably not worth doing what it takes to improve your memory.

DUBNER: Mike, thank you. And Livan, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. And can we give one more hand to all our guests tonight? I thought they were fantastic. Thank you. It is time now for our live audience to pick a winner. Tough one, so good tonight. Would you please take out your phones and follow the texting instructions on the screen. So who will it be?

Colin Jerolmack, with “In Praise of Pigeons.”

Ben Orlin, who told us about lottery misperceptions.

Kate Sicchio, using choreography training to spy on people.

Philip Barden, the unfortunately over-specialized hell ant.

Or Livan Grijalva, with memory and the Doorway Effect.

DUBNER: And our grand prize winner tonight — thank you so much for telling us all about pigeons, Colin Jerolmack. To commemorate your victory, we’d like to present you with this Certificate of Impressive Knowledge. It reads, “I, Stephen Dubner, in consultation with Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan, do hereby vow that Colin Jerolmack told us something that we did not know, for which we are eternally grateful.” That’s our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you didn’t know. Huge thanks to Mike and Angela, to our guests, and thanks especially to you for coming to play “Tell Me Something …

AUDIENCE: I Don’t Know!”

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know and Freakonomics Radio are produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Alison Craiglow, Harry Huggins, Zack Lapinski, Morgan Levey, Emma Morgenstern, Dan Dzula, and David Herman, who also composed our theme music. The Freakonomics Radio staff also includes Greg Rippin and Alvin Melathe. Thanks to our good friends at Qualtrics, whose online survey software is so helpful in putting on this show, and to Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater for hosting us.

The post Freakonomics Radio Live: “Jesus Could Have Been a Pigeon.” appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/tmsidk-duckworth-2018/

[judeblenews-blog]

What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damage occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again. Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline. Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “fraud and gross negligence.” From Krebs: Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies. While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other services do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin? Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account. “When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said. Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email. “I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said. It has been a frustrating ride. “As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said. I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now. When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today: Call your telco and: Set a passcode/PIN on your account Make sure it applies to ALL account changes Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode Ask them what happens if you lose that too Institute a port freeze Institute a SIM lock Add a high-risk flag Close your online web-based management account Block future registration to online management system Hack yo’ self See what information they will leak See what account changes you can make They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts. Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account. Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest. Via: TechCrunch Read the full article

[sheminecrafts]

What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damage occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Trust No Carrier

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “fraud and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other services do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

[gallery ids="1695834,1695835"]

Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating ride.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said.

How do you protect yourself?

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

Set a passcode/PIN on your account

Make sure it applies to ALL account changes

Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account

Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode

Ask them what happens if you lose that too

Institute a port freeze

Institute a SIM lock

Add a high-risk flag

Close your online web-based management account

Block future registration to online management system

Hack yo’ self

See what information they will leak

See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2N2RT35 via IFTTT

[christopherross7601]

Google Analytics Certification Exam: Get Certified in 2 Days

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damage occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Trust No Carrier

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “fraud and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other services do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating ride.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said.

How do you protect yourself?

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

Set a passcode/PIN on your account

Make sure it applies to ALL account changes

Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account

Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode

Ask them what happens if you lose that too

Institute a port freeze

Institute a SIM lock

Add a high-risk flag

Close your online web-based management account

Block future registration to online management system

Hack yo’ self

See what information they will leak

See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

Master Google Adwords like a boss

from Chriss H Feed https://ift.tt/2wgxssf via IFTTT

What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline Google Analytics Certification Exam: Get Certified in 2 Days A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today.

[technicalsolutions88]

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damaged occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Trust No Carrier

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “of fraud and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other servicse do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

[gallery ids="1695834,1695835"]

Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating ride.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said.

How do you protect yourself?

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

Set a passcode/PIN on your account

Make sure it applies to ALL account changes

Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account

Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode

Ask them what happens if you lose that too

Institute a port freeze

Institute a SIM lock

Add a high-risk flag

Close your online web-based management account

Block future registration to online management system

Hack yo’ self

See what information they will leak

See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2N2RT35 ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

[cryptosuk-blog]

A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto. Their social engineering tactics, to be clear, were laughable but they could have been catastrophic if my friends were less savvy.

Flash forward a year and the same thing happened to me again – my LTE coverage winked out at about 9pm and it appeared that my phone was disconnected from the network. Panicked, I rushed to my computer to try to salvage everything I could before more damage occurred. It was a false alarm but my pulse went up and I broke out in a cold sweat. I had dealt with this once before and didn’t want to deal with it again.

Sadly, I probably will. And you will, too. The SIM card swap hack is still alive and well and points to one and only one solution: keeping your crypto (and almost your entire life) offline.

Stories about massive SIM-based hacks are all over. Most recently a crypto PR rep and investor, Michael Terpin, lost $24 million to hackers who swapped his AT&T SIM. Terpin is suing the carrier for $224 million. This move, which could set a frightening precedent for carriers, accuses AT&T of “fraud and gross negligence.”

From Krebs:

Terpin alleges that on January 7, 2018, someone requested an unauthorized SIM swap on his AT&T account, causing his phone to go dead and sending all incoming texts and phone calls to a device the attackers controlled. Armed with that access, the intruders were able to reset credentials tied to his cryptocurrency accounts and siphon nearly $24 million worth of digital currencies.

While we can wonder in disbelief at a crypto investor who keeps his cash in an online wallet secured by text message, how many other services do we use that depend on emails or text messages, two vectors easily hackable by SIM spoofing attacks? How many of us would be resistant to the techniques that nabbed Terpin?

Another crypto owner, Namek Zu’bi, lost access to his Coinbase account after hackers swapped his SIM, logged into his account, and changed his email while attempting direct debits to his bank account.

“When the hackers took over my account they attempted direct debits into the account. But because I blocked my bank accounts before they could it seems there are bank chargebacks on that account. So Coinbase is essentially telling me sorry you can’t recover your account and we can’t help you but if you do want to use the account you owe $3K in bank chargebacks,” he said.

Now Zu’bi is facing a different issue: Coinbase is accusing him of being $3,000 in arrears and will not give him access to his account because he cannot reply from the hacker’s email.

“I tried to work with coinbase hotline who is supposed to help with this but they were clueless even after I told them that the hackerchanged email address on my original account and then created a new account with my email address. Since then I’ve been waiting for a ‘specialist’ to email me (was supposed to be 4 business days it’s been 8 days) and I’m still locked out of my account because Coinbase support can’t verify me,” he said.

It has been a frustrating ride.

“As an avid supporter and investor in crypto it baffles me how one of the market leaders who just supposedly launched institutional grade custody solutions can barely deal with a basic account take-over fraud,” Zu’bi said.

I’ve been using Trezor hardware wallets for a while, storing them in safe places outside of my home and maintaining a separate record of the seeds in another location. I have very little crypto but even for a fraction of a few BTC it just makes sense to practice safe storage. Ultimately, if you own crypto you are now your own bank. That you would trust anyone – including a fiat bank – to keep your digital currency safe is deeply delusional. Heck, I barely trust Trezor and they seem like the only solution for safe storage right now.

When I was first hacked I posted recommendations by crypto exchange Kraken. They are still applicable today:

Call your telco and:

Set a passcode/PIN on your account

Make sure it applies to ALL account changes

Make sure it applies to all numbers on the account

Ask them what happens if you forget the passcode

Ask them what happens if you lose that too

Institute a port freeze

Institute a SIM lock

Add a high-risk flag

Close your online web-based management account

Block future registration to online management system

Hack yo’ self

See what information they will leak

See what account changes you can make

They also recommend changing your telco email to something wildly inappropriate and using a burner phone or Google Voice number that is completely disconnected from your regular accounts as a sort of blind for your two factor texts and alerts.

Sadly, doing all of these things is quite difficult. Further, carriers don’t make it easy. In May a 27-year-old man named Paul Rosenzweig fell victim to a SIM-swapping hack even though he had SIM lock installed on his account. A rogue T-Mobile employee bypassed the security, resulting in the loss of a unique three character Twitter and Snapchat account.

Ultimately nothing is secure. The bottom line is simple: if you’re in crypto expect to be hacked and expect it to be painful and frustrating. What you do now – setting up real two-factory security, offloading your crypto onto physical hardware, making diligent backups, and protecting your keys – will make things far better for you in the long run. Ultimately, you don’t want to wake up one morning with your phone off and all of your crypto siphoned off into the pocket of a college kid like Joel Ortiz, a hacker who is now facing jail time for “13 counts of identity theft, 13 counts of hacking, and two counts of grand theft.” Sadly, none of the crypto he stole has surfaced after his arrest.

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What happens when hackers steal your SIM? You learn to keep your crypto offline A year ago I felt a panic that still reverberates in me today. Hackers swapped my T-Mobile SIM card without my approval and methodically shut down access to most of my accounts and began reaching out to my Facebook friends asking to borrow crypto.