Potter's Weal

Greetings!

I have to share bad news with you.
Approximately few months ago I have gained access to your devices, which you use for internet browsing. After that, I have started tracking your internet activities.

Here is the sequence of events:
Some time ago I have purchased access to email accounts from hackers (nowadays, it is quite simple to purchase such thing online).
Obviously, I have easily managed to log in to your email account ().

One week later, I have already installed Trojan virus to Operating Systems of all the devices that you use to access your email.
In fact, it was not really hard at all (since you were following the links from your inbox emails). All ingenious is simple. 😉

This software provides me with access to all the controllers of your devices (e.g., your microphone, video camera and keyboard).
I have downloaded all your information, data, photos, web browsing history to my servers.
I have access to all your messengers, social networks, emails, chat history and contacts list.
My virus continuously refreshes the signatures (it is driver-based), and hence remains invisible for antivirus software.

Likewise, I guess by now you understand why I have stayed undetected until this letter…

While gathering information about you, I have discovered that you are a big fan of adult websites.
You really love visiting porn websites and watching exciting videos, while enduring an enormous amount of pleasure.
Well, I have managed to record a number of your dirty scenes and montaged a few videos, which show the way you masturbate and reach orgasms.

If you have doubts, I can make a few clicks of my mouse and all your videos will be shared to your friends, colleagues and relatives. I have also no issue at all to make them available for public access.
I guess, you really don’t want that to happen, considering the specificity of the videos you like to watch, (you perfectly know what I mean) it will cause a true catastrophe for you.

Let’s settle it this way:
You transfer $1650 USD to me (in bitcoin equivalent according to the exchange rate at the moment of funds transfer), and once the transfer is received, I will delete all this dirty stuff right away.
After that we will forget about each other. I also promise to deactivate and delete all the harmful software from your devices. Trust me, I keep my word.

This is a fair deal and the price is quite low, considering that I have been checking out your profile and traffic for some time by now.
In case, if you don’t know how to purchase and transfer the bitcoins – you can use any modern search engine.

Here is my bitcoin wallet:1LCvRgYda4NjVwJfhmT3eeeu1a9qWsCHit

You have less than 48 hours from the moment you opened this email (precisely 2 days).

Things you need to avoid from doing:
*Do not reply me (I have created this email inside your inbox and generated the return address).
*Do not try to contact police and other security services. In addition, forget about telling this to you friends. If I discover that (as you can see, it is really not so hard, considering that I control all your systems) – your video will be shared to public right away.
*Don’t try to find me – it is absolutely pointless. All the cryptocurrency transactions are anonymous.
*Don’t try to reinstall the OS on your devices or throw them away. It is pointless as well, since all the videos have already been saved at remote servers.

Things you don’t need to worry about:
*That I won’t be able to receive your funds transfer.
– Don’t worry, I will see it right away, once you complete the transfer, since I continuously track all your activities (my trojan virus has got a remote-control feature, something like TeamViewer). *That I will share your videos anyway after you complete the funds transfer.
– Trust me, I have no point to continue creating troubles in your life. If I really wanted that, I would do it long time ago!

Everything will be done in a fair manner!

One more thing… Don’t get caught in similar kind of situations anymore in future! My advice – keep changing all your passwords on a frequent basis

Dear qixu024vafa,

Your colleague shared this revised invoices with us and it’s well received with thanks.
Apologies for the delay in making payment but can we proceed with payment using your new details as shown on the invoice?
Kindly confirm details so that our account department will initiate payment.

Thanks and Best Regards,
Sales Department-Wahyu Mozamel
PT. PRIMAINDO JAYA LOGISTIK (PJL LOGISTICS)
Head Office
Jl. Danau Duta Utara, Blok J-1 No.9
Bekasi Utara, Kota Bekasi
Jawa Barat 17123
Telp/Fax : 021 88864728
HP : 081266929590
Email : Wahyu.mujamil

Bu e-posta mesajinin icinde belirtilen dusunce veya ifadeler Karsan Otomotiv Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S.nin veya onun istirak ve bagli sirketlerinin benimsedigi dusunce ve ifadeleri yansitmayabilir. Bu e-postanin kullanimi onu alan kisinin sorumlulugundadir ve sisteminizde yaratabilecegi olasi zararlardan, herhangi bir kayip veya olumsuz durumdan Karsan Otomotiv Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. veya onun istirak ve bagli sirketleri mustereken veya munferiden sorumlu tutulamaz.

Any comments or statements made herein do not necessarily reflect those of Karsan Otomotiv Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., its subsidiaries and affiliates. It is the responsibility of the recipient to use this e-mail and attachments and no responsibility is accepted by Karsan Otomotiv Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. or its subsidiaries or affiliates either jointly or severally, for any loss or damage arising in any way from its use.

Hello pervert,

I want to inform you about a very bad situation for you. However, you can benefit from it, if you will act wisely.

Have you heard of Pegasus?
This is a spyware program that installs on computers and smartphones and allows hackers to monitor the activity of device owners.
It provides access to your webcam, messengers, emails, call records, etc. It works well on Android, iOS, and Windows. I guess, you already figured out where I’m getting at.

It’s been a few months since I installed it on all your devices because you were not quite choosy about what links to click on the internet.
During this period, I’ve learned about all aspects of your private life, but one is of special significance to me.
I’ve recorded many videos of you jerking off to highly controversial porn videos.
Given that the “questionable” genre is almost always the same, I can conclude that you have sick perversion.

I doubt you’d want your friends, family and co-workers to know about it. However, I can do it in a few clicks.
Every number in your contact book will suddenly receive these videos – on WhatsApp, on Telegram, on Skype, on email – everywhere.
It is going to be a tsunami that will sweep away everything in its path, and first of all, your former life.
Don’t think of yourself as an innocent victim. No one knows where your perversion might lead in the future, so consider this a kind of deserved punishment to stop you.

Better late than never.
I’m some kind of God who sees everything.
However, don’t panic. As we know, God is merciful and forgiving, and so do I. But my mercy is not free.

Transfer $1490 USD to my bitcoin wallet: 1E3mVbLSLLUgdmrp8GV5RRu1Qz5FkWs4rJ

Once I receive confirmation of the transaction, I will permanently delete all videos compromising you,
uninstall Pegasus from all of your devices, and disappear from your life. You can be sure – my benefit is only money.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing to you, but destroy your life without a word in a second.

I’ll be notified when you open my email, and from that moment you have exactly 48 hours to send the money.
If cryptocurrencies are unchartered waters for you, don’t worry, it’s very simple.
Just google “crypto exchange” and then it will be no harder than buying some useless stuff on Amazon.

I strongly warn you against the following:
) Do not reply to this email. I sent it from a temp email so I am untraceable.
) Do not contact the police. I have access to all your devices, and as soon as I find out you ran to the cops, videos will be published. ) Don’t try to reset or destroy your devices.

As I mentioned above: I’m monitoring all your activity, so you either agree to my terms or the videos are published.

Also, don’t forget that cryptocurrencies are anonymous, so it’s impossible to identify me using the provided address.
Good luck, my perverted friend. I hope this is the last time we hear from each other.

And some friendly advice: from now on, don’t be so careless about your online security.

From a tour of the wonderful Frogmore Plantation (the original plantation name) now owned by the Tanner family, several miles west from Natchez in the Louisiana flatlands. It’s both a large, operational cotton plantation and regional cotton gin (an entire modern factory that processes cotton from the picked boll thru carding, cleaning, grading, and bundling into 500-pound bails) and a nicely preserved museum of historic cotton cultivation and processing practices from the late 19th and early 20th century.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

PS — I will be inviting many of the addressees of this note to join the MEANDERS.groups.io email group, in order to save typing (and too often, forgetting to type your email address every time I think you’d be interested). Just accept the invite — it’s a 15 year old group that has existed on two major platforms — it won’t bite.

Bruce Potter443-454-9044 (Text, Voice, no Voicemail)

FYI

Fantastic – must read it!
Jennifer

Get Outlook for iOS

The island of Redonda in the Caribbean is the setting of the myth of the “Kingdom of Redonda.”

This giant rock is actually a literary Neverland, complete with a king Redonda, as Michael Hingston explains in his new book, ‘Try Not to Be Strange,’ has inspired a whimsical kingdom of writers and other royal wannabes.

Review by Michael Dirda
October 6, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Since the death in September of King Xavier I — more widely known as Javier Marías, the leading Spanish novelist of his generation — considerable speculation has arisen about who might be his successor to the throne of Redonda. Whether King Xavier had anyone in mind seems as yet unknown. But, doubtless, sometime in the coming months, a new king will be proclaimed, almost certainly followed by the appearance of rival claimants and various pretenders. This is, in fact, a recurrent phenomenon in the modern history of Redonda, that fabled Caribbean island nation.

Just what, you may wonder, am I talking about? The answer can be found in Michael Hingston’s “Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda.” It’s a wonderfully entertaining book, an account of how its Canadian author grew fascinated with a literary jape, a kind of role-playing game or shared-world fantasy involving some of the most eccentric and some of the most famous writers of modern times.
(Biblioasis)

Located in the Lesser Antilles, not far from Montserrat, Redonda is an actual place, geographically speaking. Essentially a really big rock, one mile long and a third of a mile wide, it was named by Christopher Columbus and, for centuries, was mainly viewed as an obstacle to sail around, being largely uninhabitable. In the 19th century, however, the island’s superabundance of guano and phosphate led to the establishment of a small mining operation. One day in 1880, a citizen of Montserrat traveled to the island to celebrate the 15th birthday of his son Matthew Phipps Shiell. As a special surprise, he crowned the boy Felipe I, king of Redonda. No one much noticed or cared.
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A few years later, the island’s youthful “monarch” traveled to England — his father’s parting words were “Try not to be strange” — intending to make his fortune as a writer. In 1895, M.P. Shiel (spelled with only one “l”) brought out his first book, “Prince Zaleski,” whose eponymous protagonist resembles an ultra-decadent Sherlock Holmes (and is, after Holmes himself, my favorite Victorian amateur detective). In retelling three exceptionally eerie mysteries solved by Zaleski, Shiel employed a mannered, bejeweled prose that would grow even more over-the-top in the almost surreal, supernatural short stories assembled in “Shapes in the Fire” (1896). Of these stories, especially “Vaila,” later rewritten as “The House of Sounds,” H.P. Lovecraft once wrote, “Shiel has done so much better than my best that I am left breathless and inarticulate.”

Shiel’s literary career would peak in 1901 with his baroque science fiction masterpiece, “The Purple Cloud,” in which a character named Adam Jeffson finds himself the last man alive on Earth. That novel cemented my own fascination with this unusual writer, and I began to collect Shiel’s books and learn more about the man himself.
Fantasy author M.P. Shiel was crowned king of Redonda by his father, Matthew Dowdy Shiell. From “Try Not to Be Strange,” by Michael Hingston. (Courtesy of author’s collection)

As Hingston notes, Shiel’s personal life wasn’t just bohemian and maritally irresponsible: He served time in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing a young stepdaughter, a charge he denied. In his later years, though, he made one truly devoted disciple, an up-and-coming man of letters named Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, who wrote poetry and edited anthologies as John Gawsworth. Just before Shiel died in 1947, he named Gawsworth as his successor to the joke throne of Redonda.
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Perhaps surprisingly, King Juan I took up his royal duties with resolute, if tongue-in-cheek seriousness. He quickly came to see Redonda, to quote Hingston, as “an exotic symbol. . . of wonder and wish-fulfillment” and “an intricate fantasy realm that was insulated from the multiple harshnesses of reality.” Before long, the island’s new sovereign began to issue proclamations, investing his favorite bookmen and women with titles and high offices in the Redondan court. Hingston’s appendix reproduces some of these documents: Arthur Machen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Lawrence Durrell, Alfred Knopf and Dylan Thomas are among those listed under the rubric “Duchies of the Realm.”

If you love heroic fantasy a la George R.R. Martin, you’ll love ‘The Last Viking’

In short order, there was also a Redondan national anthem and the first of the island’s several different flags. Sometimes King Juan — who kept King Felipe’s cremated remains in a tea caddie — would sprinkle a few royal ashes into a special guest’s food. A short film, made near the end of Gawsworth’s life, features a scene in which Durrell meets his old friend with the salutation, “Hail, O king!”
A “coronation” on Redonda. (Frances Howorth)

By that time, however, Gawsworth had descended into poverty, homelessness and severe alcoholism. The once proud monarch began to award Redondan titles to anyone who would lend him money or buy him a drink. He also named different people as his chosen heir to the throne. Consequently, after Gawsworth’s death in 1970, nearly a dozen people — including his bartender, as well as a self-proclaimed King Guillermo I who lived in Skagway, Alaska — declared themselves to be the new and rightful ruler of the fantasy realm. Still, a writer and vegetarian activist named Jon Wynne-Tyson emerged as the most widely recognized claimant, partly because he had actually traveled to Redonda to be crowned.

Book World began on Watergate’s heels: A look back at the early days

In his later years, King Juan II grew tired of the burdens of power and resolved to abdicate after reading Javier Marías’s novel, “All Souls,” in which the autobiographical protagonist collects Gawsworth’s poetry. After some negotiation, in 1997, Marías accepted the crown as King Xavier, promising to keep alive the work of Shiel and Gawsworth as well as maintain Redonda’s literary culture. The novelist A.S. Byatt, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and cultural scholar Marina Warner soon appeared on the kingdom’s honors list. For a long time, I quietly — but alas vainly — hoped that my enthusiastic review of one of Marías’s books would lead to seeing my own name among the latest Knights Grand Commander in the Order of the Star of Redonda. Even now, I stand ready to pledge my fealty to King Xavier’s successor, whoever it may turn out to be.
Author Michael Hingston (Kate Gutteridge)

In “Try Not to Be Strange,” Hingston relates all this whimsy, with abundant anecdotes, in the manner of A.J.A. Symons’s 1934 classic, “The Quest for Corvo,” which transformed writing a biography into an intensely personal adventure. Thus, Hingston recounts how he learned of Redonda from Marías’s novels, slowly began to collect books relating to the kingdom, then grew increasingly obsessed until one exciting day he bid “more money that I’d ever spent on anything that I couldn’t drive or live inside” to acquire, at auction, a trove of Gawsworth’s papers. Afterward, he started to communicate with living Redondan notables and to research the micro-nation’s various rival monarchs, including a raffish ship’s captain known as King Bob the Bald.
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Hingston’s quest reaches its inevitable climax when he travels to the actual Redonda on a mini-expedition that devolves into frivolity, confusion, exhaustion and near-disaster. How could it be otherwise? What really matters isn’t the island itself, but the idea of this literary Neverland, this magic kingdom of the imagination.

Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book,” the Edgar Award-winning “On Conan Doyle” and five collections of essays: “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book,” “Classics for Pleasure” and “Browsings.”

Try Not to Be Strange
The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda
By Michael Hingston
Biblioasis. 302 pp. Paperback, $18.95

Finally re-found this:

Tech in Your Life
Parental Tech Support:
Everything you should fix on a senior’s phone
Clean up and optimize your parent’s smartphone
with 20 minutes and this checklist.

[I find that “20 minutes” to be wildly optimistic, but you have to start somewhere . . . ]

By Heather Kelly
October 10, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Adult children who do family tech support know the drill. Your parents call about a problem with their smartphone, maybe spam texts or something wrong with Facebook. You try to talk them through fixing it remotely with mixed results and mutual frustration.

Next time you see your parents in person (and really, you should visit more often) do everyone a favor. Take 30 minutes (see! the time needed has already gone up 50%) to borrow their phone and clean house. A little maintenance now can prevent future problems with security, scams, confusion or misinformation. You are going to clear out old junk, fix any small problems and customize it so everything is a little easier for them to see and understand.

This is advice for adult children whose parents or other older relatives use a smartphone, but anyone can attempt these maintenance tasks on their own devices.

Update everything

“The first thing I do is check for what I call check engine lights,” says Abbie Richie, the founder and CEO of tech-support company Senior Savvy. “I look for red notification badges, especially in the Settings app.”

Apple and Google release regular small updates and annual big updates to their smartphone operating systems, iOS and Android. Don’t avoid them, even if you’re worried about adding confusing new features. They often include key security patches and bug fixes. If you do a major operating system update, set aside time to walk them through the new look and options.

Set the phone to run software updates automatically in the future.

Delete and reorganize apps

Go through page by page and ask your parent what they use and what they don’t use — you’ll be surprised how many of us have apps installed we don’t remember. Delete anything that looks suspect, scammy or confusing.

Move the apps they use most to the first screen on their device. Richie recommends putting their four most used apps in the dock at the bottom of the screen and putting any other biggies in the top left or right corner. Move any apps they don’t use often but that are useful to have into clearly labeled folders, then store those folders on the last page of the home screen.

Ask them if there’s anything they want to do on their phone but can’t, like online banking. Install new apps if they need them, but keep it simple and walk them through setting up anything that needs a log-in. Write down any new passwords!

Make the screen easier to see

Our eyesight deteriorates as we age and even the largest phone can be tricky to read. Smartphones are packed with accessibility settings that you can dive into, but to start let’s just make everything a little bigger and brighter.

In Settings, bump up the text size and make it bold. You can turn on a setting like iOS’s Display Zoom, which makes everything a bit larger across the board. Finally, turn the brightness all the way up and show them how to control it themselves. Experiment with toggling between light and dark modes and see if one is easier for them to see.

Richie also suggests giving your parents more time before their phones lock. Instead of 30 seconds or one minute, bump the auto-lock up between 3 and 5 minutes.

Turn on emergency and health settings

Add any medical conditions and allergies to the phone’s built-in emergency settings. On an iPhone, go to Medical ID in the Health settings. On an Android device, you can go to the Safety & Emergency settings. Add emergency contacts, including people who live close as well as immediate relatives. Make it so this information can be viewed in an emergency, even if the phone is locked.

Many smartphones have health monitoring options built in. On the iPhone for example, you can turn on notification for walking steadiness, which might come in handy to avoid future falls. If they want you or someone else to be more involved with their health, you can set up sharing for health information.

Cut down on misinformation

If you’re worried about your parents falling for disinformation or being radicalized online, you can make a few minor changes to make things better. Pick a reputable news outlet or app and move it to a prominent place on their home screen. Apple News and Google News both do a decent job of including a wide range of trustworthy news sites. Put a shortcut to a fact-checking site like Snopes on their home screen so they can quickly gut check any stories or social media posts they come across. Walk through their social media accounts with them, if they’ll let you. Ask if you can unfollow any pages or influencers who traffic in disinformation or propaganda.

Minimize scamming attempts

Seniors are a popular target for scammers. You can tweak a few settings to cut down on attempts. We walk you through all of them here, but start with sending unknown calls directly to voice mail (Settings → Phone → Silence Unknown Callers on an iPhone), filtering texts from unknown senders and turning on any spam filters or detection offered by their phone or cell carrier.
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Go through their friend lists on Facebook and Instagram and weed out any fake seeming accounts, including people they don’t know and accounts imitating other people. You can find more settings to change on their smartphone and messaging apps here.

Check their subscriptions

Make sure they’re not paying for anything by accident, like an app they subscribed to or a scammy “tech support” service. Go through their Android or iOS subscriptions first, then ask if they want to review their recent bank account statement.

Set up cloud backups

Turn on automated backups, especially for photos. If they have a full phone, you can set it to delete photos or videos from the device to clear up space. If their device is ever lost, stolen or broken, they’ll still have all their data and memories ready to go. You can find more storage instructions for Google Drive here and Apple’s iCloud here.

Introduce them to Siri

Navigating around a smartphone screen can be more difficult as people lose dexterity and their eyesight worsens. Android and iPhones have a great built-in shortcuts that can help seniors: voice assistants. Walk them through how to activate Siri or Google Assistant, writing down a list of starter commands for them to get used to, like dictating a text.

Let your parents show you what they need

“I always ask my clients, ‘show me what you mean,’ ” says Richie. Something that may be hard to explain to you over the phone could be clearer by having them walk you through the process. For example, Richie had one client who struggled to send text messages. It turned out they were holding a finger on the send arrow too long, accidentally bringing up the special effects option in Messages.

Use parental controls

If your parent is dealing with any type of cognitive decline, you can discuss using stronger controls on their devices so you can access or block things remotely. You can also ask them to share log-ins and passwords, or store them somewhere easy to access. This should be done with their consent and full understanding of what you’ll be able to access.

Keep checking in

Write down everything new you’re telling your parents so they have something to reference. If you live too far away to give constant tech support, find a trusted local computer shop that does house calls or deputize another tech savvy relative. Richie says to be ready for more phone calls and questions, and that’s okay.

“Be completely prepared that they may need you to show them how to do this again and again and again, with love.”

October Group — please note the flesh eating bacteria are not just in your Chesapeake Bay swimming areas.

Bruce Potter443-454-9044 (Text, Voice, no Voicemail)

bp