My mom (boomer) has been scammed twice, and it’s not been a simple issue of naivety or even stupidity…it’s been that, and a bit of greed, thinking more about what she’d get out of the deal, than how much sense the whole thing made, in each case. The underlying thing that attracted the scammers in each case, were her Facebook posts about going on multiple vacations and cruises.

The first one was the scam about an inheritance in probate, in Nigeria. She just had to send the money for the courts to get past probate, and then she’d be able to claim the inheritance left by her mysterious relative. Now, the maternal side of my family is Polish and Romanian, and the paternal side is British and German. I just don’t know who she may have thought bounced over to Nigeria and keeled over.

The second scam was the Exxon executive, who woke up in a hospital bed after a car accident, missing his wallet. The hospital was holding him captive in his hospital room until he could pay his bill, which somehow she could help with, by sending Amazon gift cards. The greed part comes in with him apparently having his phone, and being able to send her pics of his cars, properties, and bank statements. The stupid part comes in from about a thousand different directions and 4 dimensions…I mean, she even met his “daughter” in a video call, and adoption was discussed (the mother was apparently long dead). My mom spent a full career as a RN - in hospitals (in the US) - where they don’t incarcerate people until the bills are paid. Additionally, one would think that since any Tom, Dick, or Harry, missing their wallet, but with their phone, would be able to get ahold of someone - anyone, who might be able to contact a financial institution or work colleague, to secure proof of funds availability, replacement credit cards, or access to their finances. An executive with Exxon should definitely be able to show at least enough bling to pop themselves out of “hospital jail,” one would think. Finally, Amazon gift cards?

With my sister going through their correspondence, we found the name he gave my mom to be one letter off the correct spelling of the Exxon executive in the photo of himself that he sent her. The location of his grand home, on Google Earth anyway, appears to be the pool maintenance shed at a motel in TX.

Me: “Mom! It’s a scam.”

Mom: “No! I love him, and he loves me! I’m flying out to meet him, and help him out of the hospital. His daughter is picking me up from the airport.”

Me: “Wait. You said you were thinking about adopting his daughter when you got married - to this guy you’ve never met in person. The daughter is an adult?!”

Mom: “No. She’s 16 and has her driver’s license.”

Me: “So wait…she lives in his house with no adult supervision, since her father is hospital-bound. She has access to the car, but somehow can’t help with transportation, banking access, or the replacement credit card/replacement ID situation?”

Mom: “You’re so negative. You just don’t want to understand.”

Me: 🙄😒🫤

Wow! We have 5 vehicles in our household, a camper, and we used to have 2 motorcycles. 1 vehicle was inherited after a death on the family, 1 vehicle was found in a sales-paper/magazine called “The Trading Post.” The camper was bought new from a dealership via eBay, and we saved $13.5k buying the 5th wheel version of the same camper that we walked through locally in VA, in its tag-along version - I just had to drive to IA to get it. The 3 other vehicles and 2 motorcycles were bought through eBay, and they’ve all been good experiences.

Oh, reading your reply made me feel a bit hypercritical, LOL! While I’ve never heard of the “juicero,” I do own a “Bartesian.” It’s a cocktail-making machine, where you supply the alcohol, and the various cocktail mixers come in a Keruig-like packet. You insert the packet, select the strength of beverage you want, between non-alcoholic (who does that?) to strong, place the appropriate cocktail stemware (or Soho cup) underneath, then drink away.

I’m not too hypercritical though…it works really well, and is a party hit.

Well, many industries seem very interested in dragging us “happy with being manual people,” kicking and screaming, into all this tech crap.

IMO, only 3 things hold social order together…Laws, Consequences, and Prosperity. The loss of any one of those things will result in some pretty nasty stuff. We’re not going to go the way of Germany - at least not as fast…there are simply too many guns in this nation, too much communications capacity, too much ability for quick travel, etc.

Through trump 45, all the lawsuits, hearings, censures, lawsuits, protests, and impeachments were simply seen as “liberal tears.” When thenorange voters are directly, and negatively impacted by what they voted for, those liberal tears will a protest of government that will mean something. We’re still in the shocked-look, “I thought the other people were the problem” phase of things.

Orange voters are starting to lose their jobs. Orange farmers are starting to have distressed farms, or fields with rotting product waiting for harvest. Stress fractures are beginning to appear with Medicare/Medicaid and SS. Wait until the Farmbill is canceled.

Republican town hall meetings will reach a point where they’ll be canceled entirely. They’re starting to crack down on the ever-growing population of homeless and people living in their cars. They’re starting to crack down on social media negativity towards government. Just wait until conservatives come after the guns.

Our allies are doing their best to help us out by economic means, but they can only do so much, as the threat to our nation is coming from within our nation. Canada is rocking it with their tariffs, being focused squarely on red states.

Things will likely get uglier, but that might just be the way it has to be, before things can improve, and it’ll be scary for everyone. The US has been on a downward/rightward spiral since the early 1970s, and we’ve let it slowly happen to ourselves. Setting things right Will be difficult, and will certainly take more than a few 4-8 year presidential cycles, and people need to understand that.

Oh, you can set up a dual boot system, so you don’t have to completely jump ship. They also have setups that run entirely on a thumb drive now.

I did dual boot for a little bit when I want into business 14 years ago. While I liked Linux, I wasn’t sure I could run a business without Windows, but soon discovered that everything would be just fine without Windows, and got rid of it.

I’m in my mid-50s. I play Warzone 2100 and BOS wars on my computer. I’ve has Steam for several years, and have a game there…I think it’s “World of Goo.” I like to stick to games that serve as stress relievers, and take no more than about an hour. Between owning a business, 2 teens, 3 schools, 4 sports, a wife, a house that would love to fall apart if I’d only let it, a lawn to mow, and 2 antique cars I love to keep driving, I don’t have much more time to let myself be sucked in to some of the really cool stuff I see.

I recently bought a replacement PS2 though…the old one broke, and I’m still in love with GTA Vice City. I usually just steal a cop car and do vigilante mode until I’m killed though.

Oh, I don’t discourage them from using/learning Microsoft products at all - they just don’t happen to be in our home, because as consumers, my wife and I don’t spend our money in Microsofts direction. While I can’t say it with accuracy anymore, because it’s been 20 years since my switch, one of the selling points with the Linux distributions was that some of them looked and felt like either Mac or Windows. My Ubuntu distribution looks pretty similar to my wife’s Mac, and the initial installation of Linux Mint, several years ago was made to look and feel like Windows XP. Honestly, the last time I touched Windows was before retiring from the US Navy, where the Submarine LAN was run on Windown NT - but I retired in 2009.

If my kids came home with a Windows PC, or the cheaper option, wanted to turn one of my laptops into a dual-boot machine, I wouldn’t care…more exposure to (that bad word) diversity in operating systems. I don’t think they’re missing out on not having Microsoft in our home though. Microsoft Word in the Tux world is Open Office, Microsofts Excel is Calc, etc…if you know one, you’ll be able to work on the other.

First you break government. Once broken, privatize everything on the justification of government not working.

Use propaganda to make people hateful and violent towards election workers. Use to loss of election workers to either have the incumbent administration run elections with “impartiality” or cancel elections altogether.

Cut government funding and make everything unpredictable, causing farmers and business owners to go bankrupt. Have oligarchs buy up everything at rock-bottom pricing, and turn the citizens back into serfs, who will be poor enough to shut up and do as they’re told.

So, shortly after checking aboard the first fast-attack submarine I served on, in April 1991, the boat was locked down one evening, when the engineer couldn’t find his Zenith SuperSport 286e computer. Suspecting someone stole it, the boat was locked down and searched - for 3 hours. Everyone was really angry… It’s 2025 and I remember it well.

Anyway, after 3 hours or so, at the Captains insistence, the ENG, doing paperwork in his stateroom, let someone else in, to look for his computer. There it was, sitting plain as day, on his bunk, where his pillow should have been. The ENG said he didn’t notice it, as he thought it was his pillow…gross, considering everyone else’s pillowcase was white.

The Captain immediately lifted the lockdown, and all the off-duty people went home. The anger lingered though, and the Engineer seemed to have a dark cloud over his head. He was fired a few months later, and I’ve always wondered if it had something to do with that computer - I was just too new to know anything about the guy, and I didn’t work in engineering.

LOL! I had the Timex Sinclair 1000. It connected to a B&W TV, and a cassette tape player for a drive. My dad won it from our local bowling alley.

I didn’t get too far with it.

Boomer: What?! Just walk into the building, go up to the receptionist or bossman, and demand to be interviewed for a job, and fill out an application form. Refuse to leave without a job offer. They’ll be so impressed by your dedication, they can’t do anything else, but to hire you! What are you waiting for?

My 1st desktop had Windows 95 on it. It worked OK. A few years later, I bought a laptop pc with WindowsME (Millennium Edition), and it became the last Windows product I’ve owned. A work colleague installed Windows 2000 on that laptop, and it worked for a couple months, until I got my “blue screen of death.”

At that time, they started selling the ePC notebooks, available with WindowsXP or Linux (the XanderOS) I stepped out of my comfort zone, and got the XanderOS variant, and have had Linux computers since. I’m currently using Mint on an old Panasonic CF-30, and Ubuntu on 2 laptops built by System 76.

My wife likes Mac, but I’m not a fan. My kids get a pretty rounded experience, between using their moms Mac, their dads 2 variants of Linux, and their Chromebooks at school.

The predicted Allied casualties for a mainland invasion of Japan were so high, especially with regard to the civilian fanaticism witnessed throughout the Island-hopping Campaign, the right choice was using the Atomic Bomb. After use of the first atomic bomb, when Japan failed to yield and refused to surrender, the return to consideration to a homeland invasion, along with running the numbers of anticipated Allied casualties, made using the second Atomic Bomb the correct choice. The best choice was made, with regard to the information on hand at the time.