Interesting Links for 19-06-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The horrifying toll of Sweden's lax pandemic policy

(tags:Sweden Pandemic Death OhForFucksSake )

2. Ursula Vernon has cancer

(tags:Cancer )

3. Possibly the finest money-making scheme of all time

(tags:business funny geology )

4. Read here about chickenpox parties, and consider that this is what the NHS still wants today in the UK

(tags:UK NHS vaccination OhForFucksSake history )

5. California restaurant had fake priest hear workers' confessions

(tags:catholicism fraud work USA wtf OhForFucksSake )

6. Rishi Sunak mocks trans women in leaked video footage

(tags:conservatives bigotry LGBT transgender )

7. Schopenhauer's 38 ways to unfairly win an argument

(tags:argument )

8. Apple wants to own pictures of apples. All of them

(tags:apple apples intellectual_property OhForFucksSake )

9. Companies in Japan opting for selected offices to work in English

(tags:Japan English business )

10. No matter how else you might feel about the internet, the opportunity it provides for people to educate themselves is *amazing*

(tags:Education internet )

Comments

[simont]

#5: when people attempt these jaw-droppingly audacious acts of deception, why do they never seem to have the slightest sense of subtlety?

“I found the conversation to be strange and unlike normal confessions,” [...] “He asked if I ever got pulled over for speeding, if I drank alcohol, or if I had stolen anything,” [...] “The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange.”

If they'd played the long game, substituting a fake priest and having them behave believably like a priest so that the fraud was not immediately detected, I could respect their competence even if not in any way their ethics. This way I can't even admire them as a worthy antagonist.

It's understandable in some contexts. Spam, in particular: I remember reading an analysis once that suggested that spammers deliberately make their pitches unsubtle in their dishonesty, on the basis that that way anyone short of 100% gullible will hit delete immediately and only the most likely of suckers will waste the spammer's time by actually responding. But the difference is that spammers are very hard to catch and shut down, so recipients don't generally have any stronger response than the delete key, and that doesn't stop the spammer trying other victims independently. Here, just one victim spotting the scam can blow the whole thing wide open for everyone, as in fact happened.

[andrewducker]

Spend *money* on hiring a competent fake priest to get my employees to confess to not working hard enough? That's not how I got rich!

[simont]

Neither is getting found out immediately and (surely) fined!

[calimac]

Ah, but that requires thinking ahead. What affects the immediate bottom line is all they care about. "Penny wise and pound foolish" I believe the phrase used to be.