On this side of the pond I’m using truecaller to give me a headsup on who’s calling me.
Because we’re just getting a shit ton of cold calls trying to sell you inn-sewer-ants, cellphones etc etc etc, and it is just getting too much.
Already I have blocked most of the repeating numbers, the rest just get ignored.
I’m planning on a second SIM for business purposes, but that will be later.
More on the toll scams. From the Wall Street Journal video below, the scammers are upping the fear factor by saying you might be deported if you don’t pay.
I can see that working in the U.S. The promise of “We’re only going to go after the really bad criminals” was broken almost immediately. A notorious example is ICE went looking for 3 or 4 people at a Hyundai plant being built in Georgia and they arrested between 300 and 400, most of which were the technicians from South Korea with the specialized knowledge needed to construct it. The government of South Korea is reconsidering how much they want to be involved in the U.S. because of it.
This scam is very profitable for groups in China and they’re smart enough to know that when they get the info to connect your bank account to one of their phones, they don’t use it themselves. They transmit the info to the phone of a person in your area they’ve recruited, and that person does the damage to your account.
I remember reading about the Koreans arrested at the Hyundai plant. It really didn’t hit the mainstream news, it seems, but it could have some serious repercussions on our economy.
I heard about that fustercluck over in NZ, how on earth was it not major news in the US?
Because Trump goes around calling a lot of the reporters “terrible reporters who work for fake news.” He actually said, “Quiet, Piggy” to a reporter asking about the Epstein files. He’s done a lot to repress news that is critical of him.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/business/media/trump-leavitt-reporter-piggy.html
There WERE articles about the Hundai fiasco, but it seems that I heard more about it from Korean sources than American.
We don’t have a lot of toll roads in SoCal. So I’m aware when I’ve used one.
Were you wondering whatever happened with the Oklahoma schools Bible bid?
I tend to call that a Charlie Foxtrot… 
So I’m allergic to unknown numbers, and installed a caller identify app.
One such number pops up as “Authroized Source (legal)”. I block it. Another one, same name, also pops up. It get blocked as well.
Many other numbers with the same name also call, and they all get blocked.
I do a bit of digging, and apparently it is somebody trying to sell legal services. Which I don’t need, and cannot afford.
Then we have my cellular phone provider trying to get me to upgrade one or two of my contracts, and I’m just not interested. These also get blocked as well.
I’m gatvol (fed-up) with allsorts of cold callers phoning you and trying to sell you some $service which you won’t use… and it’s not only me, a lot of people’s feeling the same.
Yet the grabbamint does nothing to stop this scourge of cold callers.
Until something get done, I’ll just keep on blocking unknown numbers.
No, I’m not selling my house.
No, I’m not planning on doing any renovation or upgrades on it.
No, I do not have any other property I want to sell or renovate.
No, I do not know of anyone else I can refer you to that might be doing any of the above.
Here’s a PSA that involves companies that offer a cheaper version of a product and companies that are running scams with that product. It concerns the ubiquitous type 18650 Lithium-Ion battery.
Adam Savage posted a video earlier this week about the “Surprising Flaws” in them. It has Alex Hao and Andreas Bastain of Lumafield, showing the results from testing they did. They have a CT scanner and software that turns the scans into 3D images. They decided to scan Lithium-Ion batteries.
What they found is a wide range of construction quality for the batteries in how the anode and cathode layers line up, from evenly-spaced and aligned side by side, to both being wavy. There’s also differences in how the area of the positive contact point is constructed. Some have safety features, such as to prevent over-charging issues. Others have nothing.
Lithium-Ion batteries can be tetchy, to put it mildly. They’re a wet cell with a liquid electrolyte that can leak when damaged or turn into vapor when exposed to heat. In addition to unevenness in layer alignment, poorly-constructed batteries can have the cathodes extending past the anodes, when it’s the anodes that need to overhang the cathodes. That can make them unsafe, either now or into the future when the battery approaches its end of life.
This is an item where you want to stick with a well-known name brand. The extra you pay makes it more likely you’re getting a safer product.
The scam side of this makes it more likely you’re getting an unsafe product. Typical output of this type of battery is 3000mAh. There’s batteries that say they have a little higher rating like 3300 or 3500mAh. There’s plenty of others that have a much higher capacity prominently printed on the label like “5500mAh” or “9900mAh” in a size you’d normally see for the brand name (and the actual brand name, if you can find it, is much smaller), and they’re sold at the same or a lower price as other brands.
The inflated capacity makes it more likely it’s nowhere near to being accurate, and if that’s not correct, do you put the same trust in how the battery is made and how safe it is?