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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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Chapter One of “Picks and Shovels” (Part 1)

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

My next novel is Picks and Shovels, out next month. It's tells the origin story of Martin Hench, my hard-charging, scambusting, high-tech forensic accountant, in a 1980s battle over the soul of a PC company:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

I'm currently running a Kickstarter to pre-sell the book in every format: hardcover, DRM-free ebook, and an independently produced, fabulous DRM-free audiobook read by Wil Wheaton, who just nailed the delivery:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

Picks and Shovels opens with a long prologue that recounts Marty's misadventures as a failing computer science student at MIT, his love-affair with computers, and his first disastrous startup venture. It ends with him decamping to Silicon Valley with his roommate Art, a brilliant programmer, to seek their fortune.

Chapter one opens with Marty's first job, working for a weird PC company (there were so many weird PC companies back then!). I've posted Wil's audio reading of chapter one as a teaser for the Kickstarter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGXz1mkAd2Q

(Here it is as an MP3 at the Internet Archive:)

https://ia600607.us.archive.org/5/items/picks-and-shovels-promo/audio.mp3

The audio is great, but I thought I'd also serialize the text of Chapter One here, in five or six chunks. If you enjoy this and want to pre-order the book, please consider backing the Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

Chapter One

Fidelity Computing was the most colorful PC company in Silicon Valley.

A Catholic priest, a Mormon bishop, and an Orthodox rabbi walk into a technology gold rush and start a computer company. The fact that it sounded like the setup for a nerdy joke about the mid-1980s was fantastic for their bottom line. Everyone who heard their story loved it.

As juicy as the story of Fidelity Computing was, they flew under most people’s radar for years, even as they built a wildly profitable technology empire through direct sales through faith groups. The first time most of us heard of them was in 1983, when Byte ran its cover story on Fidelity Computing, unearthing a parallel universe of technology that had grown up while no one was looking.

At first, I thought maybe they were doing something similar to Apple’s new Macintosh: like Apple, they made PCs (the Wise PC), an operating system (Wise DOS), and a whole line of monitors, disk drives, printers, and software.

Like the Mac, none of these things worked with anything else—you needed to buy everything from floppy disks to printer cables specially from them, because nothing anyone else made would work with their system.

And like the Mac, they sold mostly through word of mouth. The big difference was that Mac users were proud to call themselves a cult, while Fidelity Computing’s customers were literally a religion.

Long after Fidelity had been called to the Great Beyond, its most loyal customers gave it an afterlife, nursing their computers along, until the parts and supplies ran out. They’d have kept going even then, if there’d been any way to unlock their machines and use the same stuff the rest of the computing world relied on. But that wasn’t something Fidelity Computing would permit, even from beyond the grave.

I was summoned to Fidelity headquarters—in unfashionable Colma, far from the white-hot start-ups of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and, of course, Cupertino—by a friend of Art’s. Art had a lot more friends than me. I was a skipping stone, working as the part-time bookkeeper/accountant/CFO for half a dozen companies and never spending more than one or two days in the same office.

Art was hardly more stable than me—he switched start-ups all the time, working for as little as two months (and never for more than a year) before moving on. His bosses knew what they were getting: you hired Art Hellman to blaze into your company, take stock of your product plan, root out and correct all of its weak points, build core code libraries, and then move on. He was good enough and sufficiently in demand to command the right to behave this way, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. My view was, it was an extended celebration of his liberation from the legal villainy of Nick Cassidy III: having narrowly escaped a cage, he was determined never to be locked up again.

Art’s “engagements”—as he called them—earned him the respect and camaraderie of half the programmers and hardware engineers in the Valley. This, in spite of the fact that he was a public and ardent member of the Lavender Panthers, wore the badge on his lapel, went to the marches, and brought his boyfriend to all the places where his straight colleagues brought their girlfriends.

He’d come out to me less than a week after I arrived by the simple expedient of introducing the guy he was watching TV with in our living room as Lewis, his boyfriend. Lewis was a Chinese guy about our age, and his wardrobe—plain white tee, tight blue jeans, loafers—matched the new look Art had adopted since leaving Boston. Lewis had a neat, short haircut that matched Art’s new haircut, too.

To call the Art I’d known in Cambridge a slob would be an insult to the natty, fashion-conscious modern slob. He’d favored old band T-shirts with fraying armpit seams, too-big jeans that were either always sliding off his skinny hips or pulled up halfway to his nipples. In the summer, his sneakers had holes in the toes. In the winter, his boots were road-salt-crusted crystalline eruptions. His red curls were too chaotic for a white-boy ’fro and were more of a heap, and he often went days without shaving.

There were members of the Newbury Street Irregulars who were bigger slobs than Art, but they smelled. Art washed, but otherwise, he looked like a homeless person (or a hacker). His transformation to a neatly dressed, clean-shaven fellow with a twenty-five-dollar haircut that he actually used some sort of hairspray on was remarkable. I’d assumed it was about his new life as a grown-up living far from home and doing a real job. It turned out that wasn’t the reason at all.

“Oh,” I said. “That makes a lot of sense.” I shook Lewis’s hand. He laughed. I checked Art. He was playing it cool, but I could tell he was nervous. I remembered Lucille and how she listened, and what it felt like to be heard. I thought about Art, and the things he’d never been able to tell me.

There’d been a woman in the Irregulars who there were rumors about, and there were a pair of guys one floor down in Art’s building who held hands in the elevator, but as far as I knew up until that moment, I hadn’t really ever been introduced to a homosexual person. I didn’t know how I felt about it, but I did know how I wanted to feel about it.

So Art didn’t just get to know all kinds of geeks from his whistle-stop tour of Silicon Valley’s hottest new tech ventures. He was also plugged into this other network of people from the Lavender Panthers, and their boyfriends and girlfriends, and the people he knew from bars and clubs. He and Lewis lasted for a couple of months, and then there were a string of weekends where there was a new guy at the breakfast table, and then he settled down again for a while with Artemis, and then he hit a long dry spell.

I commiserated. I’d been having a dry spell for nearly the whole two years I’d been in California. The closest I came to romance was exchanging a letter with Lucille every couple of weeks—she was a fine pen pal, but that wasn’t really a substitute for a living, breathing woman in my life.

Art threw himself into his volunteer work, and he was only half joking when he said he did it to meet a better class of boys than you got at a club. Sometimes, there’d be a committee meeting in our living room and I’d hear about the congressional committee hearing on the “gay plague” and the new wave of especially vicious attacks. It was pretty much the only time I heard about that stuff—no one I worked with ever brought it up, unless it was to make a terrible joke.

It was Murf, one of the guys from those meetings, who told me that Fidelity Computing was looking for an accountant for a special project. He had stayed after the meeting and he and Art made a pot of coffee and sat down in front of Art’s Apple clone, a Franklin Ace 1200 that he’d scored six months ahead of its official release. After opening the lid to show Murf the interior, Art fired it up and put it through its paces.

I hovered over his shoulder, watching. I’d had a couple of chances to play with the 1200, and I wanted one more than anything in the world except for a girlfriend.

“Marty,” Art said, “Murf was telling me about a job I thought you might be good for.”

The Ace 1200 would have a list price of $2,200. I pulled up a chair.

Fidelity Computing’s business offices were attached to their warehouse, right next to their factory. It took up half of a business park in Colma, and I had to circle it twice to find a parking spot. I was five minutes late and flustered when I presented myself to the receptionist, a blond woman with a ten – years – out – of – date haircut and a modest cardigan over a sensible white shirt buttoned to the collar, ring on her finger.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Marty Hench. I—uh—I’ve got a meeting with the Reverend Sirs.” That was what the executive assistant I’d spoken to on the phone had called them. It sounded weird when he said it. It sounded weirder when I said it.

The receptionist gave me a smile that only went as far as her lips. “Please have a seat,” she said. There were only three chairs in the little reception area, vinyl office chairs with worn wooden armrests. There weren’t any magazines, just glossy catalogs featuring the latest Fidelity Computing systems, accessories, consumables, and software. I browsed one, marveling at the parallel universe of computers in the strange, mauve color that denoted all Fidelity equipment, including the boxes, packaging, and, now that I was attuned to it, the accents and carpet in the small lobby. A side door opened and a young, efficient man in a kippah and wire-rim glasses called for me: “Mr. Hench?” I closed the catalog and returned it to the pile and stood. As I went to shake his hand, I realized that something had been nagging me about the catalog��there were no prices.

“I’m Shlomo,” the man said. “We spoke on the phone. Thank you for coming down. The Reverend Sirs are ready to see you now.”

He wore plain black slacks, hard black shiny shoes, and a white shirt with prayer-shawl tassels poking out of its tails. I followed him through a vast room filled with chest-high Steelcase cubicles finished in yellowing, chipped wood veneer, every scratch pitilessly lit by harsh overhead fluorescents. Most of the workers at the cubicles were women with headsets, speaking in hushed tones. The tops of their heads marked the interfaith delineators: a block of Orthodox headscarves, then a block of nuns’ black and white scarves (I learned to call them “veils” later), then the Mormons’ carefully coiffed, mostly blond dos.

“This way,” Shlomo said, passing through another door and into executive row. The mauve carpets were newer, the nap all swept in one direction. The walls were lined with framed certificates of appreciation, letters from religious and public officials (apparently, the church and state were not separate within the walls of Fidelity Computing), photos of groups of progressively larger groups of people ranked before progressively larger offices—the company history.

We walked all the way to the end of the hall, past closed doors with nameplates, to a corner conference room with a glass wall down one side, showing a partial view of a truck-loading dock behind half-closed vertical blinds. Seated at intervals around a large conference table were the Reverend Sirs themselves, each with his own yellow pad, pencil, and coffee cup.

Shlomo announced me: “Reverend Sirs, this is Marty Hench. Mr. Hench, these are Rabbi Yisrael Finkel, Bishop Leonard Clarke, and Father Marek Tarnowski.” He backed out of the door, leaving me standing, unsure if I should circle the table shaking hands, or take a seat, or—

“Please, sit,” Rabbi Finkel said. He was fiftyish, round-faced and bear-shaped with graying sidelocks and beard and a black suit and tie. His eyes were sharp behind horn-rimmed glasses. He gestured to a chair at the foot of the table.

I sat, then rose a little to undo the button of my sport coat. I hadn’t worn it since my second job interview, when I realized it was making the interviewers uncomfortable. It certainly made me uncomfortable. I fished out the little steno pad and stick pen I’d brought with me.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Hench.” The rabbi had an orator’s voice, that big chest of his serving as a resonating chamber like a double bass.

“Of course,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me. It’s a fascinating company you have here.”

Bishop Clarke smiled at that. He was the best dressed of the three, in a well-cut business suit, his hair short, neat, side-parted. His smile was very white, and very wide. He was the youngest of the three—in his late thirties, I’d guess. “Thank you,” he said. “We know we’re very different from the other computer companies, and we like it that way. We like to think that we see something in computers—a potential—that other people have missed.”

Father Tarnowski scowled. He was cadaverously tall and thin, with the usual dog collar and jacket, and a heavy gold class ring. His half-rim glasses flashed. He was the oldest, maybe sixty, and had a sour look that I took for habitual. “He doesn’t want the press packet, Leonard,” he said. “Let’s get to the point.” He had a broad Chicago accent like a tough-guy gangster in The Untouchables.

Bishop Clarke’s smile blinked off and on for an instant and I was overcome with the sudden knowledge that these two men did not like each other at all, and that there was some kind of long-running argument simmering beneath the surface. “Thank you, Marek, of course. Mr. Hench’s time is valuable.” Father Tarnowski snorted softly at that and the bishop pretended he didn’t hear it, but I saw Rabbi Finkel grimace at his yellow pad.

“What can I help you Reverend Sirs with today?” Reverend Sirs came more easily now, didn’t feel ridiculous at all. The three of them gave the impression of being a quarter inch away from going for each other’s throats, and the formality was a way to keep tensions at a distance.

“We need a certain kind of accountant,” the rabbi said. He’d dated the top of his yellow pad and then circled the date. “A kind of accountant who understands the computer business. Who understands computers, on a technical level. It’s hard to find an accountant like that, believe it or not, even in Silicon Valley.” I didn’t point out that Colma wasn’t in Silicon Valley.

“Well,” I said, carefully. “I think I fit that bill. I’ve only got an associate’s degree in accounting, but I’m a kind of floating CFO for half a dozen companies and I’ve been doing night classes at UCSF Extension to get my bachelor’s. I did a year at MIT and built my own computer a few years back. I program pretty well in BASIC and Pascal and I’ve got a little C, and I’m a pretty darned good debugger, if I do say so myself.”

Bishop Clarke gave a small but audible sigh of relief. “You do indeed sound perfect, and I’m told that Shlomo spoke to your references and they were very enthusiastic about your diligence and . . . discretion.”

I’d given Shlomo a list of four clients I’d done extensive work with, but I hadn’t had “discretion” in mind when I selected them. It’s true that doing a company’s accounts made me privy to some sensitive information—like when two employees with the same job were getting paid very different salaries—but I got the feeling that wasn’t the kind of “discretion” the bishop had in mind.

“I’m pretty good at minding my own business,” I said, and then, “even when I’m being paid to mind someone else’s.” I liked that line, and made a mental note about it. Maybe someday I’d put it on my letterhead. Martin Hench: Confidential CPA.

The bishop favored me with a chuckle. The rabbi nodded thoughtfully. The priest scowled.

“That’s very good,” the bishop said. “What we’d like to discuss today is of a very sensitive nature, and I’m sure you’ll understand if we would like more than your good word to rely on.” He lifted his yellow pad, revealing a single page, grainily photocopied, and slid it over the table to me. “That’s our standard nondisclosure agreement,” he said. He slid a pen along to go with it.

I didn’t say anything. I’d signed a few NDAs, but only after I’d taken a contract. This was something different. I squinted at the page, which was a second- or third-generation copy and blurry in places. I started to read it. The bishop made a disgusted noise. I pretended I didn’t hear him.

I crossed out a few clauses and carefully lettered in an amendment. I initialed the changes and slid the paper back across the table to the bishop, and found the smile was gone from his face. All three of them were now giving me stern looks, wrath-of-God looks, the kind of looks that would make a twenty-one-year-old kid like me very nervous indeed. I felt the nerves rise and firmly pushed them down.

“Mr. Hench,” the bishop said, his tone low and serious, “is there some kind of problem?”

It pissed me off. I’d driven all the way to for-chrissakes Colma and these three weirdo God-botherers had ambushed me with their everything – and – the – kitchen – sink contract. I had plenty of work, and I didn’t need theirs, especially not if this was the way they wanted to deal. This had suddenly become a negotiation, and my old man had always told me the best negotiating position was a willingness to get up from the table. I was going to win this negotiation, one way or another.

“No problem,” I said.

“And yet you appear to have made alterations to our standard agreement.”

“I did,” I said. That’s not a problem for me, I didn’t say.

He gave me more of that stern eyeball-ray stuff. I let my negotiating leverage repel it. “Mr. Hench, our standard agreement can only be altered after review by our general counsel.”

“That sounds like a prudent policy,” I said, and met his stare.

He clucked his tongue. “I can get a fresh one,” he said. “This one is no good.”

I cocked my head. “I think it’d be better to get your general counsel, wouldn’t it?”

The three of them glared at me. I found I was enjoying myself. What’s more, I thought Rabbi Finkel might be suppressing a little smile, though the beard made it hard to tell.

“Let me see it,” he said, holding his hand out.

Bishop Clarke gave a minute shake of his head. The rabbi half rose, reached across the table, and slid it over to himself, holding it at arm’s length and adjusting his glasses. He picked up his pen and initialed next to my changes.

“Those should be fine,” he said, and slid it back to me. “Sign, please.”

“Yisrael,” Bishop Clarke said, an edge in his voice, “changes to the standard agreements need to be reviewed—”

“By our general counsel,” the rabbi finished, waving a dismissive gesture at him. “I know, I know. But these are fine. We should probably make the same changes to all our agreements. Meanwhile, we’ve all now had a demonstration that Mr. Hench is the kind of person who takes his promises seriously. Would you rather have someone who doesn’t read and signs his life away, or someone who makes sure he knows what he’s signing and agrees with it?”

Bishop Clarke’s smile came back, strained at the corners. “That’s an excellent point, Rabbi. Thank you for helping me understand your reasoning.” He collected the now-signed contract from me and tucked it back under his yellow pad.

“Now,” he said, “we can get down to the reason we asked you here today.”

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/09/the-reverend-sirs/#fidelity-computing/

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badolmen · 2 months ago

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God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers. And friends, I am going through my near daily ‘was the ask actually sent by a scammer or are you making an assumption because you aren’t putting in the effort to check for verification; which you don’t have to do, but also disqualifies you from making uninformed statements about an ask being sent by a scammer’ struggle.

#ra speaks #perosnal #you can block them! you can even block anons! you can just delete asks you don’t want to answer!#you CANNOT call every ask you get a scam without putting in the effort of checking its veracity #scambusters and verifiers are working their asses off staying on top of these things. USE THE RESOURCES THEYVE MADE PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE #IF YOU WANT TO CHECK IF SOMETHING IS A SCAM!!!#and if you don’t want to check don’t! just delete the ask block the sender and move on! no one is making you do otherwise!!!#don’t say shit if you can’t support it

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fiore-region-appreciation · 6 months ago

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Kate once remotely hacked the security ring lights on Altru Tower, from the comfort of the Union HQ staff room. She did this

To prove a point to Kellyn that her status as a Top Ranger is justified as, had she been around during Operation Brighton, the Union would've had no need to send four Rangers and three Staraptors up Altru Tower to disable the security lights as she could've done it all herself without leaving HQ,

To prove to Isaac he really needs to find a new password, and

To turn them off an on again to the tune of Megalovania.

#Shadows is kellyns story imho i like to have kate as a hacker extraordinaire hired for her tech and scambusting skills #Pokemon ranger #Shadows of almia #Top rangers #Protagonists

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goblinbugthing · 10 months ago

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Hello my dears! My name is Mahmoud Abed, I ask you to support my campaign to help me reach my goal. I am now in dire need of your support to help my family save them from the besieged and destroyed Gaza Strip. Gaza is a very dangerous place. I need your financial support to enable me to obtain the basic needs of my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help the family survive their ordeal through your small donations or by sharing my campaign with your friends and others. Thank you very much for standing by those in need.

(note: i am not 100% sure if this fundraiser is real or not, since they only have one post on their blog and it is their pinned, and i didnt see any evidence of it being vetted, but ive reblogged their pinned before (likely from my best friend) and i trust their convictions.)

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #important #fundraiser #gofundme #ask #asks #buggie’s answers #scambuster PLEASE correct me if im wrong #it’s 4:30 am rn and my brain isn’t working entirely right so im. struggling a bit

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callcentermaschen · 2 years ago

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Als YouTuber gibt es verschiedene Programme und Tools, die nützlich sein können, um Ihre Videoproduktion zu verbessern, Ihr Publikum zu erreichen und Ihre Inhalte zu optimieren. Aber hey, wenn du auf der Suche nach etwas Besonderem bist, dann besuch meinem Kanal "CallcenterMaschen" auf YouTube wirklich aus der Masse hervorstechen lässt, dann bist du hier genau richtig!

In meinem Kanal dreht sich alles darum, Telefonbetrüger auf die Schippe zu nehmen und ihnen die Zeit zu stehlen. Kein Telefonbetrüger ist sicher vor mir und meiner einzigartigen Herangehensweise. Aber um die bestmöglichen Ergebnisse zu erzielen, braucht man natürlich die richtigen Werkzeuge. Deshalb habe ich für dich eine Liste mit Programmen zusammengestellt, die dir dabei helfen werden, die Scammer in die Flucht zu schlagen und gleichzeitig professionell und lustig zu bleiben.

1. Videobearbeitungssoftware: Um deine Videos auf das nächste Level zu bringen, empfehle ich Programme wie Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro oder DaVinci Resolve. Damit kannst du Schnitte machen, Effekte hinzufügen, die Farbkorrektur verbessern und vieles mehr. Lass deiner Kreativität freien Lauf und verpasse deinen Videos den perfekten Schliff.

2. Grafikdesign-Tools: Ein ansprechendes Thumbnail und ein einladendes Kanalbanner sind entscheidend, um Zuschauer anzulocken. Nutze Programme wie Adobe Photoshop oder Canva, um professionelle Grafiken zu erstellen, die deine Videos zum Klicken verleiten.

3. Keyword-Recherche-Tools: Damit deine Videos von potenziellen Zuschauern gefunden werden, solltest du relevante Keywords in deine Titel, Beschreibungen und Tags einbauen. Nutze Tools wie den Google Keyword Planner, VidIQ oder TubeBuddy, um die besten Keywords für deine Videos zu finden und deine Sichtbarkeit zu verbessern.

4. Analytics-Plattformen: Erfolg auf YouTube erfordert ein tiefes Verständnis deiner Zuschauer, Aufrufe und Engagement-Raten. Nutze YouTube Analytics, um Einblicke in deine Daten zu erhalten. Zusätzlich kannst du externe Tools wie Social Blade nutzen, um Statistiken und Trends im Zusammenhang mit deinem Kanal zu verfolgen.

5. Musik- und Soundeffekt-Bibliotheken: Die richtige Musik und passende Soundeffekte können einem Video das gewisse Etwas verleihen. Durchsuche Plattformen wie Epidemic Sound oder Artlist nach lizenzierter Musik, die deine Videos aufwerten und ihnen den perfekten Klang verleihen.

6. Livestreaming-Software: Wenn du Live-Streams auf YouTube durchführen möchtest, empfehle ich Plattformen wie OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS oder XSplit. Damit kannst du deine Streams professionell gestalten und eine interaktive Erfahrung für dein Publikum schaffen.

Mit diesen Tools bist du bestens ausgerüstet, um deine YouTube-Inhalte zu verbessern, deine Produktionsqualität zu steigern und das Wachstum deines Kanals zu fördern. Denke jedoch daran, dass die Wahl der richtigen Programme von deinen individuellen Bedürfnissen und deinem Budget abhängt.

#ScamBusters #CallcenterComedy #NotoriousScamSlayer

Also schnapp dir deine Tastatur, lass deiner Kreativität freien Lauf und mach dich bereit, die Telefonbetrügerwelt zu rocken!

#ScamBusters #CallcenterComedy #NotoriousScamSlayer #CallcenterMaschen

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my-silly-poker · 1 year ago

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gaza scam warning

I'm locking this post because it was about the original wave of gaza-scams and is now outdated when it comes to recent real fundraisers that have been appearing on Tumblr. Please don't pass up people in need because you're afraid of scams. Identifying scams from the real fundraisers is easy.

@el-shab-hussein does a lot of vetting on Tumblr. @nabulsi is another reliable user who has done vetting (but as of this time is not vetting new posts). @90-ghost is a real palestinian person but they don't do a lot of in-depth vetting.

el-shab-hussein and nabulsi have a vetted fundraiser google sheet. el-shab-hussein has a list of direct contacts in gaza/yemen who are certifiably real people. operation olive branch is a coordinated effort to gather certified crowdfunding campaigns both for families and humanitarian provisions.

When you receive an ask, check any of the above resources to see if they're there. Some also have pre-existing social media accounts, such as Instagram, that they certify as theirs and prove that they are a real person in Palestine. Scroll down their blog, look at the notes in their post, and look for confirmation that they are verified anywhere (do not trust their claims until you see the confirmation yourself).

Then if you see confirmation that they are a real person in Palestine who needs help, reblog their post and maybe donate $5.

Feel free to message me about anyone who sends you an ask that seems suspicious and I'll tell you if they resemble any scam archetypes I've seen.

Original post:

Hey gamers, recently there have been a number of scam blogs on tumblr claiming to be Gazan victims. They've been making a number of iterations of the exact same blog and story but with different names and sometimes different PayPal links.

Thus far, the content of these scams are being stolen from 2 real fundraisers. Please lend your aid to these people who need help instead of the disgusting scam farm

Help Haya Orouq's family escape Gaza

Help Rawan AbuMahady's family escape Gaza

These are examples within the past month which have been deleted.

Ma22ya

Khalilhan

jovialsuitdonutai

miniaturepostkingjaiur

Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. You have likely encountered them before and not realized it. They throw together a brand new blog with a story of needing aid, then use bots to go through follow lists and post notes to send messages to random users. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.

Scam Spotting Tips

They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.

They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating

They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.

It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc. Pay attention to and trust the suspicion of details that stand out as odd.

Like many of the above examples, they often use an automatically generated username consisting of random words

Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it entirely - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles or alter the images so that people don't find the source. An image not having a source should also be suspicious, as you should wonder why this person's social media presence is exclusively a 3 day old tumblr blog

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

In name of the situation, here are great verified resources to support real people who need help:

Many organizations and gofundmes for Gaza

Verified fundraisers for individuals in Gaza put together by @palestineasdiqa on Instagram and Twitter

Click to donate for free using ad revenue

Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada

USPCR's toolkit

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lakesbian · 11 months ago

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the thing about people accusing el-shab-hussein and nabulsi and other palestinian bloggers of running a scam ring that's really bizarre to me is that it's just so completely thoughtless. and i don't mean that in the sense of "inconsiderate," it's far too dangerous to be called just "inconsiderate," i mean in the sense that it demonstrates that literally not a single second of meaningful thought was put into the purported "scambusting." the bloggers vetting have been openly palestinian and openly talking about palestinian politics and culture for an extended amount of time--you could literally go to, e.g., nabulsi's blog right now, open up the archive, and scroll to see posts about palestinian politics, muslim character headcanons, etc., from as far back as 2021. the idea that any of these people would be...what, successfully pretending to be palestinians for years online? prior to launching their scam ring is so ridiculous it beggars belief. and the fact that the people making the scam accusations started with implying that the palestinian bloggers responsible for the vetting spreadsheets were running a scam ring, and only later backpedaled to "well, i guess they're real people, but they're probably still bad at vetting and verifying scammers" (which is still, to be clear, a deeply uninformed and dangerous accusation to make) is extremely indicative of how little thought or care was put into the accusations. if the people making the accusations couldn't even take thirty seconds to check that the people they're accusing of being scam ring leaders have been openly palestinian for years online prior to insinuating they've been lying about literally everything, there's 0 reason any other 'investigation' they post about doing should be taken as intelligent or useful. completely callous and negligent behavior

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shrinkthisviolet · 8 months ago

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Hi! In the past few minutes I've received DMs from 3 different blogs asking for rather sizable donations in Gaza. Since they happen one right after the other I can't help but think I'm being scammed or that they are all connected. They all seem to be legit but asking me one right the after the other is a red flag in my mind

Well anon, a little skepticism is normal (there's money at stake, after all), but ultimately, it comes down to this:

The vetters (90-ghost, el-shab-hussein, nabulsi, gaza-evacuation-funds/gazavetters, etc) are Palestinian and have proven themselves reliable, so if other blogs are verified by one of those sources, they're legit. This post (the top part of it) talks more about them. El-shab-hussein and nabulsi in particular have extensive vetting processes and run both gaza-evacuation funds (along with a joint spreadsheet), and gazavetters (which has its own spreadsheet)

If blogs are verified by someone who has been verified by one of those vetters ("vetted by association"), they're likely legit and safe to donate to. This is very common since the vetters get a ton of requests, so they can't always vet every blog, and vetting by association is a good buffer until that can happen

If blogs are not verified but have a clean RIS and donation protection (the latter is usually true for GoFundMes, which make them more reliable), then they could be legit. I tag them "unverified but seems legit", and it's up to personal preference whether you feel comfortable donation to those. Definitely at least spread them though, so that they can be vetted officially

If you're ever worried about a scam, type out the handle in the Tumblr search! Chances are a scambusting blog (like kyra45) has or will post about it

As for your specific question...in terms of the timing, those 3 different blogs are presumably 3 different families. Internet in Gaza is pretty spotty, so families are likely sending whatever asks they can whenever they can get Internet, and the timing of those asks being sent so close together is likely a coincidence.

Sidenote: I've also seen people skeptical of blogs sending multiple identical asks, but again, they have limited Internet access in Gaza - there's a reason that there exists a concerted effort to send e-Sims there. Someone in the midst of a genocide spamming asks out of desperation to get any funds possible (for food, for water, for evacuation, for medical care, etc) is hardly unreasonable

Ultimately, no one can tell you what to do with your money, but hopefully this gives you some direction anon! Along with anyone else who might be skeptical.

#palestine #free palestine

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lesbosisle · 1 year ago

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Swagprincessfire is a scammer

@swagprincessfire is a scammer this is their 'donation' post. They are profiting off of Israeli occupation and genocide. DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY

They do not tell you their name, they only have a PayPal which the name is "Sharon Opioyo," they have not been vetted by anyone, I dmed them to ask them questions and they blocked me, their blog is two days old and they have been sending the same asks to people.

If you have reblogged their post please delete it from your blog so their scam doesn't spread. Additionally please report their account on Tumblr so it can get taken down.

Please share this post to spread awareness about them and these types of scams

#swagprincessfire #Sharon Opioyo #scam #vee's scamlist #scambusting #palestinian aid scam

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 2)

This week, I'm serializing the first chapter of my next novel, Picks and Shovels, a standalone Martin Hench novel that drops on Feb 15:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

The book is up for presale on a Kickstarter that features the whole series as print books (with the option of personalized inscriptions), DRM-free ebooks, and a DRM-free audiobook read by Wil Wheaton:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

It's a story of how the first seeds of enshittification were planted in Silicon Valley, just as the first PCs were being born.

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/09/the-reverend-sirs/#fidelity-computing

And now, onto part two!

Rivka Goldman was the only woman in Sales Group One, this being the group that serviced and supported synagogues and their worshippers. She’d traveled all around the country, sitting down with men who owned garment factories, grocery stores, jewelry stores, delis, and other small businesses, training their “girls” in the use of the Fidelity system. It could handle business correspondence, company books, payroll, and other functions that used to be handled by four or five “girls”—who could all be replaced with just one.

Rivka was the only woman, and often it wasn’t she who made the sale, because the men who owned these businesses talked to other men. It was her male colleagues in Sales Group One who closed those sales and pocketed the commissions, but Rivka never complained.

“She was very good at it,” the rabbi told me. “She had a knack for computers, and for explaining them. The girls she trained, they learned. When they had troubles, they wanted to talk to her.”

Sister Maria-Eva Fernandez led a very large, all-woman team that ran mostly autonomously within Sales Group Two, a group that exclusively serviced parochial schools across the U.S., with a few customers in Central America. She was a product of these schools—she’d graduated from Christ the King in Denver and gone straight from there into the order, doing some student teaching before finding her way to Fidelity Computing via an internal talent search that filtered down to the convent from the archdiocese.

Like Rivka, Sister Maria-Eva was a natural: she could patiently train school administrators, their secretaries, department heads, and even individual teachers on the use of the Fidelity system. A couple of schools—fat with money from wealthy patrons—had bought entire classrooms’ worth of machines, creating programming labs for ambitious high-schoolers, and they were universally a success.

“We valued her, we praised her, we sent her to the national sales conference to lead workshops and share her expertise,” Father Marek said. “She was a star.” He spat the word.

Elizabeth Amelia Shepard Taylor didn’t have to go on a mission, but there was never any question but that she would. Her family had been prominent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a century, and, as the eldest of eleven kids, she had a familial duty to set an example.

She had hoped for a posting in Asia—she’d studied Cantonese and Japanese in high school—but instead she drew San Jose, California. She staffed the Mission House, helping the boys who knocked on doors all day, serving as den mother, big sister, and the object of innumerable crushes.

She’d found a women’s computing club via a notice at the local library and had taken turns with four other women—two her age, and two retirees—prodding at a pair of Commodore PET computers, learning BASIC. Her letters home to her family were filled with the excitement of discovery and mastery, the esoteric world of assembly language that she’d dived into with the help of books and magazines from the library.

When her father heard that Fidelity was recruiting, he wrote her a letter. The same day she’d received it, she’d written a letter to Fidelity Computing Ltd., typing it up on the used ZX80 she’d bought at a swap meet (“for the Mission House”). It arrived at Fidelity in a #10 envelope, three neatly printed pages with the rough edges of fanfold paper that had had its perforations separated. The last page was all code examples.

She was promised a job by return post, starting the day she finished her mission, and she never ended up going back to Salt Lake City—just got a Caltrain train to the Daly City station and met with a Bishop Clarke’s personal assistant, a young man named John Garn who had done his mission in Taipei and chatted with her the whole way to the office in Taiwanese, which she laboriously parsed into Cantonese.

“She whipped Sales Group Three into a powerhouse,” Bishop Clarke said, with a sad shake of his head. “We went from last to first in under a year. Outsold the other two divisions combined, and we were on track to doubling this year.”

The three women had met at the annual sales conference, a huge event that took over the Fort Mason Center for a long weekend. Most of the event was segregated by sales group, but there were plenary sessions, mixers, and keynote addresses from leading sales staff that helped diffuse the winningest tactics across the whole business.

“We think they met in a women’s interfaith prayer circle,” Rabbi Finkel said. Father Marek made another of his disgusted grunts, which were his principal contributions to the conversation. Rabbi Finkel inclined his head a little in the priest’s direction and said, “Not everyone agreed that they were a good idea at first, but the girls loved them, and they created bonds of comity that served them well.”

“We don’t have a lot of turnover,” Rabbi Finkel said. “People like working here. They do well, and they do good. People from our faith communities sometimes feel like the future is passing them by, like their religion is an anchor around their necks, keeping them stuck in the past. A job here is a way to be faithful and modern, without sacrificing your faith.”

The bishop nodded. “When they turned in their resignation notices, of course we took notice. As Rabbi Finkel says, we just don’t get a lot of turnover. And of course, these three girls were special to us. So we took notice. I met with Elizabeth myself and asked her if there was anything wrong, and she refused to discuss it. I asked her what she did want to discuss and she went off on these wild tangents, not making any sense. I wrote a letter to her father, but I never heard back.”

“Rivka is a good girl,” the rabbi said. “She told me that she still loved God and wanted to live a pious, modest life, but that she had ‘differences’ with the teachings. I asked her about these ‘differences,’ but that was all she could say: ‘differences, differences.’ What’s a difference? She wants to uncover her hair? Eat a cheeseburger? Pray with men? She wouldn’t say.”

Father Marek cleared his throat, made a face, glared. “When Sister Maria-Eva ignored my memo asking her to come see me, I called her Mother Superior and that’s when I discovered that she’d left the order. Left the order! Of course, I assumed there was a man involved, but that wasn’t it, not according to her Mother Superior. She had taken new orders with a . . . fringe sect. It seemed she was lost to us.”

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#computing-freedom

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kyra45 · 2 months ago

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I'm a Scambaiter not so much a Scambuster like you but there's some overlap. Anyway I have to say that claim people made about Palestine never getting cold is about as ridiculous as claiming it never rains in Bangladesh because it's near the equator. A simple Google search could easily debunk the idea that you are unable to get cold in a dessert climate.

It’s like how they say it never snows in my state but under the right circumstances it can and will! Which isn’t technically desert related but it’s something of my own regarding cold. Deserts get cold but some will google weather and be like “see it doesn’t get cold in this place” and ignore common sense you’d learn from nature documentaries or even newscasts about people freezing in the desert because they wasn’t prepared or couldn’t prepare.

#kyra45 speaks #answer

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neechees · 7 months ago

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Since we already have us scambusters plus the Palestinian vetters (so one team to handle & call out scams, & the other to document the genuine fundraisers), maybe we ought to have an official adopt-a-fundraiser program where people volunteer to take on helping gain traction for various Palestinian fundraiser campaigns

#hmm #like your job would essentially be to be in contact with a vetted Palestinian & then be their official hype man #and advertise their campaign as well as potentially set up things like raffles for them

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eldohda-blog · 12 days ago

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yes, emilysarah8 is also a scammer, as well as beckydonald11. it is safe to assume that anyone who randomly approaches you on tumblr asking you to message them so they can give you money is a scammer. you can read about these scams here:

https://www.tumblr.com/scam-alerts/767691067068907520/scam-examination

https://www.tumblr.com/kyra45/782172701328588800/commission-scams-v2

https://www.tumblr.com/p0tat0-g0ddess/771056818850004992/hey-guys-let-me-tell-you-about-advance-fee-scams

if you're questioning whether or not something is a scam, you can use the tumblr search bar to search the username or text used by someone acting fishy. you can also message kyra45, she's a tumblr scambuster

thank you so much😭😭😭😭

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ttteconfessionsrevived · 9 months ago

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*~Disclaimer: I’m only an aggregate, so I post things that I may or not agree with. I do not agree with EVERYTHING I POST. I will provide commentary, though! ~*

Basic rules are as follows:

NSFW confessions are allowed. However, no porn that concerns anyone else. If you want to submit an image to go with your confession, no prob - but no human or anthropomorphic animal nudity. I have to look at this shite, you know.

**** Safe for work/Innovent posts are tagged sfw.

**** Not safe for work/naughtier posts are tagged nsfw.

Choose your poison (or enjoy the full insanity - your choice), lol

Nothing racist, sexist, homophobic, aphobic, etc.

Nothing political, unless there’s a good reasoning for it.

No bashing other users. This is not about us or them. Or you even.

I WILL MAKE A PUBLIC SPECTACLE OUT OF ANYONE WHO IS ABUSIVE.

Let’s keep crossovers to a minimum. This is about Thomas/railway series only. Unless the crossover could really make sense logically (transformers r machines, n could be related. Nothing against my little pony, SpongeBob, or some characters I’ve never heard of (I’m an old fart, ok?) , but some folks put two things they like together n call it a day. We ain’t got time for that. Save that for ur own blog.

Do NOT spam the ask box. I WILL report u if u do. So no charity scams, no sex bots, etc. we r not that gullible here.

IF YOU ARE ASKING ME FOR MONEY - ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A PALESTINIAN OR OTHER TYPE OF TUMBLR SCAM, BE AWARE:

أنا امرأة فقيرة. ليس لدي بيت خاص بي. لدي مشاكل صحية. تمنعني من الاحتفاظ بوظيفة. أنت لا تخجل. تتوسل من الفقراء والأطفال، لأنك تعتقد أن الجميع متشابهون.

أنت تهتم فقط بمشاكلك. توقف عن مطالبتي بإعطائك المال. أعلم أنك محتال. أعطني المال بدلاً من ذلك. أعلم أنك لا تشعر بالأسف على نفسك، وهذا أمر سيئ للغاية. لن

أعطيك

.أي شيء. سأبلغ عنك وأحظرك

أقف إلى جانب أي طرف في الحرب, لا تجبروني

'ana amra'at fagiratun. lays ladaya bit khasun bi. ladaya mashakil sihiyatun. tamnaeuni min aliahtifaz biwazifata. 'ant la takhjali. tatawasal min alfugara' wal'atfali, li'anak taetaqid 'ana aljamie mutashabihuna. 'ant tahtamu fagat bimashakilika. tawaqif ean mutalabati bi'lietayik almali. 'aelam 'anak muhtali. 'aetini almal bdlaan min dhalika. 'aelam 'anak la tasheur bial'asaf ealaa nafsika, wahadha 'amr sayiy lilghayati. lan 'uetiak 'aya shay'in. sa'abligh eank wa'ahzaraka.

I AM DISABLED AND EXTREMELY LOW INCOME.

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE BEGGING FOR MONEY FROM MINORS OR THOSE WHO ARE MENTALLY/EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED - CHILDREN ESSENTIALLY - AND MAY BE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THEIR VULNERABLE/IMPRESSIONABLE/EASILY INFLUENCED/GULLIBLE NATURES. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

INSTEAD OF BEGGING ME ARSE, YOU PAY ME, YOU GREEDY CUNT.

UNDERSTAND THAT OTHERS ARE ALSO

SUFFERING, N NOT ALL OF US ARE AS GULLIBLE AS YOU HOPE!

I WILL REPORT YOU

ANYTIME I COME ACROSS YOU, OR IF YOU CONTACT ME.

https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-hamas-israel-misinformation-ai-gaza-a1bb303b637ffbbb9cbc3aa1e000db47

https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news/fbi-warning-charity-scams-may-exploit-public-generosity-during-israel--hamas-conflict

https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1bprbxq/am_i_being_scammed_from_a_fake_palestinian_account/?rdt=56490

https://www.tumblr.com/shadowfoxsilver/748402505145303040/scammers-pretending-to-be-palestinian-v6

https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1ff0faq/are_tumblr_palestinian_gofundmes_legit/?rdt=35344

Scam Spotting Tips

• They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before.

Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.

• They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating

• They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/ hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.

• It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc. Pay attention to and trust the suspicion of details that stand out as odd.

Like many of the above examples, they often use an automatically generated username consisting of random words

• Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it entirely - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/ profiles or alter the images so that people don't find the source. An image not having a source should also be suspicious, as you should wonder why this person's social media presence is exclusively a 3 day old tumblr blog

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

As I have stated before, it is NOT that I don't have sympathy. Please understand that though it may be a different and more extreme situation, not all of us are well off. Some us are also fighting to simply exist as well. You don't know who that might be when you come knocking on our virtual doors, sort to speak, canvassing for money. Some us deserve the same generousity you are seeking, and when we are hurting, it feels selfish.

However, if there's a way I can volunteer (creating artwork, videos, contacting shelters, etc) I'm happy to help.

I will also state that i respectfully decline to take sides on the Palestine/isreal debate. Both sides have issues, neither is perfect. I am not a politician, I am not a diplomat, there is no productive reason for me to be involved, and to have an opinion in either direction would not help either side. I do feel bad for everyone involved, but I am also helpless in the matter. I am struggling as well.

Not everyone is wealthy

These people are grifting from folks who need that money to survive themselves, and don't have sympathy for that.

Not everyone is an adult

These people are grifting to people who still go to grade school n live under their mum n dads roofs.

Many people are gullible enough to at least think they'll get good karma by spreading these around.

If we look at this from a logical angle, we can deduce several things:

If u are THAT broke and in crisis, if your electronics are in good enough condition to hock, you will most likely try to sell those first to make extra money. You have a better chance of a return.

Secondly - say for sake of argument that you DO donate....or ur mates donate. Whatever. Ok...where does that money REALLY go? You might ASSUME it goes to help the person named. You don't actually have any proof. The heart bleeding images they post are often stolen from elsewhere online, and they pose as someone genuine to SCAM you. These bots could also steal your personal information and do horrible stuff with it.

They capitalise off of the suffering of actual people, then they pretend to make you feel guilty by pleading why won't u help me? Why was I blocked? Did I do anything wrong? Do I deserve this? Boohoohohoho

The answer is STOP UR BULLSHITE, YES U FO DESERVE IT. UR A SCAM. UR A FRAUD TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE.

And it makes it more annoying then, when genuine users follow this formula, n think they can do this as well.

Always an agenda, and a 'please help me!' Attitude.

They don't give a flying feck who ur or if ur suffering.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT IF U HAVE A FEW EXTRA BUCKS AND WANT TO HELP OUT, THEN GIVE IT TO ACTUAL CHARITIES. DO YOUR RESEARCH FIRST.

ALSO, THOSE WHO POST STUFF SUPPORTING WHATEVER IS TRENDING JUST SO THEY VAN FIT IN IS FOOLISH AND SHALLOW. DONT GET INVOLVED IN SHITE UNLESS U CAN REALLY HELP OUT IN A PRODUCTIVE WAY.

This insanity is brought to you by:

#thomasallgrownup #thomas and friends #thomas the tank engine #ttte confessions #revived

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