It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there, it is a part of us. I have noticed that many people make a note of the day, month, and year that they read a book; they build up a secret calendar. Others, before lending one, write their names on the flyleaf, note whom they lent it to in an address book, and add the date. I have known some book owners who stamp them or slip a card between their pages the way they do in public libraries. Nobody wants to mislay a book. We prefer to lose a ring, a watch, our umbrella, rather than a book whose pages we will never read again, but which retains, just in the sound of its title, a remote and perhaps long-lost emotion.
What regret can teach you about living a good life
The internet is turning us all into cranks: obsessive writers of letters to the editor and avid collectors of fine and rare grudges
SALENA ZITO: When Politics Replaces Heroes.
Averted tragedies, ideally, make us feel better about who we are, rather than causing us to reach for the quickest way to divide people. But Wolf opted for the latter in his social media thread. He praised fellow Democrats Joe Biden and Bob Casey, who were both coincidentally in Pittsburgh that day for an event, for supporting the infrastructure bill and then made a scant four-word “first responders arrived quickly” mention for those who deserved the real praise.
If we had better leadership, those “first responders who arrived quickly” would have probably been the only thing Wolf mentioned; he would have spoken with civic pride about the five officers who arrived on the scene in the pitch black, the hiss of a ruptured natural gas line, and the smell that goes with it surrounding them. They did what they were trained to do by sliding down the ice-covered ravine to rescue those who were trapped on the collapsed bridge in their vehicles.
He would have sung the praises of Pittsburgh paramedic Jon Atkinson, who helped first responders who were having trouble getting victims out of the ravine by offering up the bed of his four-wheel-drive pickup truck when the other rescue vehicles could not get out of the steep gully.
Instead, the day became one of politics for politicians. Yet the people I spoke to that day didn’t want to talk politics. The people who used that bridge every day to take their children back and forth to school understandably had different priorities. They must have also been rattled. They may have been spared a terrifying fate only because of a two-hour snow delay.
They had only two things on their mind. They praised the work of the first responders, whose quick actions likely saved lives, and they groused about how the government had once again failed to do what it promised — to keep them safe.
Scamadviser reports results of worldwide survey of online daters about romance scams
- 25% responding said they lost money to scammers
- Men reported losing three times as much as women
- 27% said they had seen fake profiles
BBB Studies. Here are links to the study topics of my studies: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud, tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards, job scams, and online shopping fraud.
Virus ScamsFraud News Around the world
- Pennsylvania: Man charged with selling counterfeit air bags from China
- Young people in Latvia increasingly used as money mules
- UK arrests five for scam calls impersonating police supposedly investigating fraud and needing victim funds to help
- Ireland arrests man, apparently Romanian, at Dublin airport over sale of second hand websites and money mule fraud
- Dark Patterns is just a catchy term for deceptive practices
- Darknet markets for illegal activity continue to flourish
- Survey finds that 51% of those with subscriptions have found unexpected charges on their credit card
- FBI saw massive increase in SIM swapping in 2021; losses of $68 million
- Police in Hamilton, Ontario arrest Quebec man for grandparent scam
- SUV slides into Michigan river when man gets out to relieve himself
- Man arrested after stolen car gets hit by train and car flies into nearby home
- Florida man dressed like Caption Jack Sparrow sought for Amazon package theft
- Senate panel grills FTC consumer chief on fraud enforcement issues
- FTC sends full refunds to victims who bought fish oil supplement
- DOJ files case, representing the FTC, against burger chain for deceptive claims to franchisees
- FTC sues Florida-based “extended auto warranty” company for fraud, violations of the Telemarketing Sales Rule
- Supreme Court agrees to hear FTC case about administrative cases: analysis
- Florida: Man gets two years prison for PPP fraud; got $400,000
- Florida: Two get prison for PPP fraud; woman gets 44 months, got $3. million; man gets two years
- Kentucky: Woman pleads guilty to PPP/EIDL fraud; got $230,000
- US Virgin Islands: Woman gets 33 months prison for PPP fraud; got $400,000
- West Virginia: Man gets 33 months prison for PPP fraud; got $1.5 million
- California woman sentenced to prison for PPP fraud disappears when she was supposed to report to prison
- Georgia arrests man who acted as money mule for BEC scam on Georgia city
- Georgia arrests Nigerian man for $1 million BEC fraud
- Attack on chain of gas stations in Germany
- Hits British food producer KP Snacks
- Attack on airport services company Swissport
- Company that provides services to Fortune 500 companies attacked; loses SSN’s of 500,000 people
- US FBI, UK, and Australia issue report on 2021 trends in ransomware
- Video: Jamaica arrests woman for lottery fraud
- Couple in Mississippi indicted for acting as money mules for Jamaican lottery scammers
- Female Jamaican police constable arrested in the US for lottery fraud
- US federal agencies announce joint efforts to educate about romance fraud:USPIS, CFPB, ICE, FTC, CFTC, FinCEN; new website here
- Free support group for romance fraud victims
- AARP tips to avoid romance fraud
- FBI PSA interviews romance fraud victim who became a money mule