Dose of Paranoia - 2025-03-02
It gets worse before it gets worse
Another week in America’s Golden Age - who needed to be the leader of the free world anyway? And that was just the highest profile thing to be ashamed of. There are just too many specific things to list this week. Like last week. And probably next week. But Friday’s meeting in the Oval Office marked the death of America’s standing as a beacon of freedom and democracy. Icing on the cake now that we vote with Russia and North Korea at the UN.
Important Stuff
Hope you enjoy the flu - Every year, the CDC has a meeting to determine the formulation of flu vaccines for the upcoming flu season. Experts sit down, look at the statistics and science and determine which flu strains need to be considered when formulating the jab. Except not this year - the meeting, which was supposed to be held this week, was cancelled without comment by the Musk administration. If the right decision on this is not made soon, more people are going to die this flu season. (And to be clear, this is about regular old flu, not bird flu. Although the government is considering removing funding for that vaccine as well.). Good work, Trump voters. Make Americans Dead Again.
Infosec/Scam Stuff
We can breathe easy now - Apparently, Russia is no longer a cybersecurity threat to the US Government, critical infrastructure, businesses and individuals. At least according to the US Government. This will have far reaching negative effects on the cybersecurity environment in the US as the feds are, I mean were, key players in efforts to protect our nation and people from all sorts of cyber threats, ranging from attacks on military/government/private sector computers, ransomware, and scams targeting private citizens. Again, thank you Trump voters for making America great again.
And consumer fraud is no longer a problem - At least according to President Musk and his First Lady, Donald. The Consumer Finance Protection Board (CFPB) is one of the few things standing between large scale looting of your bank accounts by fraudsters large and small. You can see the work they do via their enforcement actions page (while it is still available). Even “reputable” financial services companies are in the business of making money for themselves and without regulations to stop them, they are going to stack the deck against consumers every time. I know. I was in that industry for over 20 years. Regulators like the CFPB protect regular Americans (including slack jawed idiots who voted for Trump) from their worst excesses. Well, we don’t need that any more.
And memecoins are a-ok - The SEC has decided that memecoins (aka shitcoins) don’t need any regulation either. I am sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with the recent issuance of the $TRUMP coin. I have sort of mixed feelings on this one as I hate scams but anyone stupid enough to buy any memecoin at this point deserves to lose their “investment.” They also should be prevented from using grown up scissors. However, these types of coins are also a great way to disguise bribes to the President of the United States. Here is a good explainer on this from Rolling Stone Magazine of all places.
And over in India - We here in the US don’t have a monopoly on wacky scams though - over in India, did you know that if you are a (horny) guy in need of cash, all you need to do is impregnate a woman who thinks that the best way to have a child is to advertise for some rando on Facebook? Yes, and you will receive 15 lakh rupees (about $17,150) for this service! Shockingly, there is a bit more to this story than meets the eye and a number of poor, horny young men in India have lost their life’s savings to this scam. These scammers clearly have a future in US politics.
Fun Stuff
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this week’s newsletter was an especially angry rant, so here are some fun things to take your mind off the ongoing transformation of America into a scam and disease ridden authoritarian dictatorship bent on extracting maximum value from you and me and transferring it to corrupt politicians and oligarchs:
You can always hope that Citibank makes a mistake by depositing $81 trillion dollars into your bank account and not noticing as fast as they did this time. Then you can out oligarch even the most oligarchy of the oligarchs!
While you are thinking about places you can move to escape the madness, you can play City Guesser, a free online game that shows you videos of places and challenges you to guess where they are based on surroundings, signs and sounds. Your score is based on how close you can drop a pin on a map to the video’s location. It is a bit addictive and it looks like there is an option for multi player competition.
Sometimes, visiting a park can be tiring… all that walking! Well, not at this park…
That’s all for this week - if I have angried up your blood and you want to take action and tell our apparently useless legislators that unless they even try and look like they are opposing the criminals who have taken over the government, we are going to primary their asses (if there are elections in the future), here is a good tool to help you do so.