Recent news round-up, Part 1

Good News

• 2 years in prison for man who sent spam to Facebook users
• Bill Gates endorses genetically modified mosquitoes to combat malaria
• Apple cites Trump as it turns its back on GOP convention, says report

Bad News

• Obama says climate change already damaging national parks
• Egyptian court sentences 2 Al-Jazeera employees to death
• Radiohead fans attacked at Istanbul record shop

Semi-random thoughts

• I sign few of the online petitions that I am presented with, because most of them are addressed to people who couldn't care less what the general public thinks about what they are doing. Almost all the ones that I do sign are addressed to businesses. But even some of those fail to gain my support. For instance, I got one addressed to a bank which asks that it absolve a co-signer of a loan from his responsibility to pay it, because the primary debtor died. No. Not even though this was a student loan, and the student was his daughter. He was not just "helping his daughter" take out the loan--he promised to pay off the loan if she didn't, for whatever reason. It makes no difference that federal student loans are forgiven in such circumstances. He made a deal, he has to stick to it. 
• It's amazing how many of my entertainer friends had pictures with Joan Rivers to post. 
• I got some spam titled, "Would you sleep with a Married Woman?" Of course I would. I sleep with my wife every night.
• I'm flabbergasted by the recent jump in readers of my glob from Japan and New Zealand. I haven't written anything about either country. 

Recent news round-up

I'm going to start posting links to good news and bad news articles, and maybe some that are mixed, that might have escaped people's notice.  I might add a brief comment. Here's the first:

Good News

• Internet gets Burger King employee fired for sharing a disgusting photo Bad headline. He was fired for contaminating the food.
• New Jersey Court Issues Guidance for Juries About Reliability of Eyewitnesses Other states should follow New Jersey's example.
• Paris Wants Smokers to Kick a Bad Habit: Tossing Butts in the Street
• Judge: Kleiner must fight lawsuit in open court I think compulsory arbitration clauses in contracts between employers and employees, or consumers and vendors, should be illegal.
• Possible source of half of all web spam meets its end I think I've noticed less spam today.

Bad News

• Dad Denies Disney Trip For Daughter Who Battled Leukemia
• Russian punk band Pussy Riot to remain in custody

Spam of the day

Oprah Winfrey's No.1 SuperFood, Natural _LoseWeight! only $19.95 FREE TRIAL geg uc9k

Considering the fact the Oprah has recently topped 200 lbs., this spam-o-gram is particularly untimely.

Spam of the day

Michelle Obama nude

Spam of the day

Become a psychologist online

I don't get much spam any more, but this one just rang a bell with me--it reminded me of that old joke about the book: "Brain Surgery Self-Taught."

Semi-random thoughts

● I wonder if my post last August had anything to do with Dell's change of marketing strategy. I noted that I would not buy another printer from them, because I could buy ink cartridges only directly from them. Now I can buy them at Staples (along with other Dell products).

● Someone from Bahrain Googled something and found my blog. I did the search also, and noticed they would translate my site into Arabic. I wondered what that would look like, so I clicked on it. What was interesting was they couldn't translate any form of the words "crossdress," or "transgender." And they had nothing for "misogynistic." Why am I not surprised.

● My brother saw my little post about the recent disappearance of spam e-mails. He has noticed the same thing. But he said he kind of missed them. He called them "sort of an electronic Walmart for the perverse."

Semi-random thoughts

● Honduran cantaloupes have been identified as the source of an outbreak of salmonella poisoning. So it's very nice that the FreshDirect customer service could immediately assure me that the cantaloupes we got from them yesterday were from Costa Rica.

● Where has all the spam gone? The last couple days I've only been getting a handful of spam e-mails. Usually it's dozens. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

● Wisconsin is quietly making its way through the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Already it has surpassed the number 2 seed in its region, which has been eliminated. The selection committee's making the Badgers number three was clearly wrong. Next up, Davidson on Friday. (I notice that all three teams that beat Wisconsin this year are already out of the tournament.)

Weird websearch of the day

Somebody found my blog doing a websearch for "the awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology." Somebody in Korea.

How in the world is that going to get someone to this blog, I wondered. It turns out that it was the title of some spam that I made my Spam of the Day a couple years ago.

BTW, it was a quote by the British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer.

Spam of the day (well, yesterday)

Obtain degrees from Prestigious non-accerdited Universities

I'd call it an oxymoron, except I'm not absolutely sure what "non-accerdited" means.

Spam of the day

Israel Just Have Started World War III

Spam onslaught over?

I'm probably tempting fate by saying this, but the spam deluge that started last month seems to be over. It's been under 50 every day for the last week.

EDIT: Even more interestingly, the spams that have been going out with forged sending addresses in the CDI domain have ended--not a single one got returned to the "sender" today.

Yet more spam

Wednesday I got 139 spam messages. But things are slowing down. They may not even break 100 for yesterday.

More spam

The spammers did not rest on their laurels. Yesterday the count was 119. Only one was not caught by my spam filter.

A record day for the spammers

Yesterday I received 105 spam e-mails in my main e-mail account--the first time it went over 100 in a day. But not one of them made it past my home-made spam filter into my inbox. They've gotten extremely predictable.

Spam: NOT back to normal

I thought my spam count was getting back to normal. I shouldn't have opened my big mouth. Yesterday I got 88--the most for any day in the last two weeks.

Spam back to normal?

After another week of high spam count (average: 68/day), with 82 two days ago, suddenly the count went back down to 45 yesterday--little more than normal. So far today it still seems to be continuing at a normal level.

Spam, spam, spam

The spammers have really been working overtime lately. For quite a while I was averaging about 40 a day on my main e-mail address. Suddenly this has jumped up to the high 60's. The most curious ones are the messages that seem to be using random phrases from the Bible as the subject. I have no idea what they actually say, though, because I never open them.

I'm back in NY

I'm back in New York City. I actually got back early Tuesday evening--the plane was delayed only slightly. I've been slogging through dozens of e-mails since then--and that doesn't count the hundreds in my spam folder, which I had to check for false positives. There were two.

I'm very tired. Last night I didn't sleep much, for some reason, and I had to get up early to go and see the lawyer with my siblings. Tomorrow I'll start on the big pile of snail-mail.

Variations on a (spam) theme IX

Babes to get you gratified?
Babes to get you satiated
Babes to get you satiated?
Explicit Babes to get you satisfied!
Explicit Girls for you satisfaction
Explicit Ladies to get your-person sated!
Far beyond the norm Babes to get yourself sated?
Far beyond the norm Girls for you repletion
Gals to get you happy?
Girls to get you gratified
Girls to get you satiated
Girls to get you satisfied
Hard Girls to get you satiated!
Hardcore Gals for yourself atonement!
Hardcore Girls to get yourself satisfied!
Intense Babes to get you gratified
Intense Babes to get you satiated
Intense Babes to get you satiated!
Intense Girls to get you happy?
Intense Girls to get you satiated!
Intense Ladies for you satiation?
Ladies to get you satisfied?
Ladies to get your-person happy?
Women to get you happy!
Women to get you satiated?
Women to get your-person satiated?

If you like this sort of, er, inventiveness see my previous installments, starting with this one. I update them (and this one) continually, as more examples arrive.

These actually have gotten kind of quiet lately--and the spam volume I have been receiving is down a fair amount, also.