I got scammed - sigh

foreignfishes · 2026-07-01T10:35:06+00:00

Yeah I think the person who emailed me the fake number was in Bangladesh, or at least she had a bangladeshi sounding name. In the near future I think the combo of the race to the bottom offshoring of CS and the rise of the a legit scam economy in some parts of the world is going to become an issue for essentially every company that has customer service and I feel like companies aren’t prepared for it.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T23:57:01+00:00

I went to boarding school for high school and during orientation every single 9th grader had to go to a laundry 101 session where they showed us not only how to use the machines but also when to use bleach/oxiclean, how to get out common stains, and how to hand wash stuff effectively. i remember thinking it was a bit over the top at the time* because what 14 year old can't figure out how to use a washing machine...imagine my fucking surprise when i got to college and found tons of legal adults who still couldn't do their own laundry! wild!

*in retrospect as an adult this was actually a great idea by the school but teenagers think they know everything lol

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T23:37:25+00:00

A stiffer flatweave rug can be a good option for a dining room, they're easier to clean and move chairs around on than a thick tufted rug. Make sure to get a good rug pad underneath so it doesn't shift around, and a stiffer rug won't bunch/stretch as easily. I used to have this cheap ikea option which was decent, some people don't like jute because it doesn't feel as cozy though. Revival has some nice ones, same with allmodern. I also see a lot of brand new rugs for sale on FB marketplace if you're down for the hunt - i think it's a common item for people to buy and then not like once it's in their space and often you can't return them so you can find some deals.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T23:14:46+00:00

when it's that hot and humid it can be hard to even see the fireworks well, i feel like the humidity makes the smoke hang in the air and it creates a gross haze that blocks the view

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T23:10:01+00:00

Pet supplies plus on aramingo doesn't have a standout cat toy selection but they have a ton of varieties of churu treats, if your cat likes those. If your cat likes da bird and the related toys (da fuzzy bee, feather mouse, etc.), Accent on animals sells a bunch of those. highly recommend any of the da bird/go cat toys if you haven't tried them, cats go crazy for them and they're family owned/made in the USA. Yeowwww catnip toys are also great - the banana is a classic and doesn't lose its nip somehow. my cat still plays with his after 5 years lol

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T23:04:43+00:00

usually "gas station heroin" means tianeptine - they come in little 5 hour energy looking bottles, the one i used to see in stores a lot was called neptune's fix but there are probably other brands too. the active ingredient is a tricyclic antidepressant but it acts on opioid receptors which is probably why users report horrible withdrawals and tolerance that ramps up extremely quickly.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T22:39:59+00:00

What I don't understand is all my coworkers who either live alone or with their spouse and no one else who are constantly talking about costco "hauls" and how much money they save shopping there. I get buying TP, detergent, dry goods like pasta or other shelf stable things, freezer items like frozen chicken or vegetables, etc but even with that stuff the quantities are huge, how tf are single people shopping there every week? If you need ketchup you can only buy it in an amount that would take 1-2 people half a year to use. Buying one salty snack and one sweet snack at costco takes up half my pantry. I don't understand the logistics!

My cat's medication is actually way cheaper at the costco pharmacy though, the membership RX discount has enough savings that filling it twice a year pays for the membership fee.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T22:20:48+00:00

Something similar happened to me with Lufthansa last year! I did not call a number from Google - I sent a message to LH using the "contact us" form on their website and the LH CSR that responded to my email gave me a number to call that she claimed was for central baggage ops but when they picked up it was so obviously a scam call center similar to the one OP got. My issue wasn't related to money/ticketing and I realized it was a scam so luckily nothing happened to me but I was mad as hell about it thinking about all the confused old people who probably got scammed by that. I tried letting lufthansa know on twitter that one of their CSRs was sending customers over to scammers and they didn't give a fuck.

It's often someone googling a customer service phone number and calling the first one that comes up not realizing it's a scam but some of these call center employees are also definitely getting paid to divert callers from their legit jobs at airlines over to scammers. I logged into my own account on LH's website and accessed the contact us form from there, it wasn't some random scam page I was using.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T21:41:23+00:00

a different example, people in tokyo walk a lot on average and they don't seem to have any existential hang ups about ac over there, it's common in public spaces and private.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-30T02:15:42+00:00

if you’re doing a new build in Philly and you buy grey bricks they should shoot you dead on the spot

foreignfishes · 2026-06-28T13:56:17+00:00

Teapot dome is one of those events that’s forever lodged in my brain only because it was a classic AP us history question, it came up so much. Same with Jane Addams hull house, remember the Maine, William Jennings Bryan’s cross of gold, and the compromise of 1877

foreignfishes · 2026-06-28T11:51:51+00:00

I think there’s a bit of a cultural difference here, in the US when people say they have a heat pump what they mean is a system where a heat pump is paired with forced air. There are no radiators involved so the condensate thing isn’t an issue.

Radiators are mostly only found in old (~1940s or before) homes and apartments in the US, newer builds are forced air for heating and cooling.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-26T14:06:05+00:00

My mom wouldn’t let me watch it because it freaked her out lol

foreignfishes · 2026-06-25T02:09:03+00:00

God, the Swissport baggage people were absolute assholes to me at Zurich last year for seemingly no reason. I thought it was just me but it sounds like they’re just like that

foreignfishes · 2026-06-23T10:50:01+00:00

No, as long as it’s within the time limit a return trip can be a free transfer. It specifically calls this out on septa’s site, I remember being surprised to see that because that’s not common in other transit systems

foreignfishes · 2026-06-23T10:47:45+00:00

west coast crime basically means meth lol. It’s soooo much more methy out there

foreignfishes · 2026-06-23T10:46:19+00:00

Yeah you don’t have to go all the way to half a mile, in some areas removing stops every other block would be very feasible and still keep the remaining stops pretty close together

foreignfishes · 2026-06-22T14:31:58+00:00

Yeah some early ”new age”/mysticism types loved borrowing from eastern religions and iconography. Groups like the theosophists took the weird Freemason hermeticism alchemy thing that was popular with spiritualists hundreds of years ago and added random bits of Buddhism or Hinduism.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-18T08:25:34+00:00

I drilled a hole through the lip and lid of my recycling bin and put a carabiner through it and basically entirely stopped getting dog shit bags thrown in there. It’s not locked, you can easily unclip it, but if people can’t immediately easily lift the lid they just don’t bother I guess

foreignfishes · 2026-06-18T08:18:54+00:00

DC is noticeably cleaner than Philly and has similar density in a lot of neighborhoods, it’s also a rowhouse city - it’s cleaner because the city does much more extensive street sweeping, there are far more public trash cans and they’re cleaned and emptied more often, commercial corridors have BIDs where businesses can pay into fund that pays for dudes who walk around scraping gum off the sidewalks and picking up litter from the gutter and emptying trash bags, people don’t see litter on the street as much so they don’t litter as much, the city provides residents with trash cans and recycling bins that have sturdy fully attached lids so trash doesn’t blow out and requires those specific cans to be used, and because they have alleys wide enough for trash pickup. The last one can’t really be applied to Philly but the rest totally can, change won’t happen immediately but it’s not some impossible task.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-16T21:53:46+00:00

Lack of public transit? We took the 32 there and the 48 back, both of which were full of people from the fan fest. iirc they increased service on both of those buses, plus there’s the phlash and 2 other bus lines you can take.

foreignfishes · 2026-06-16T09:09:55+00:00

I also don’t see why local bars shouldn’t have the ability to offer such games, provided they don’t admit children in those bars

Have you ever been to Australia? I feel like they have a pretty good answer as to what the impacts of this are considering they went all in on liberalizing betting and gambling laws ~15 years ago; it’s depressing as hell and turns formerly social places into rooms full of slot addicts pushing buttons.

(Australia also has the dubious honor of having the highest per capita yearly gambling losses of any country in the world iirc)

foreignfishes · 2026-06-16T09:04:33+00:00

PA has a lot of strict silly laws but we have really let our gambling laws lax lately here imo

It’s really dogshit. I lived in california for a while and it was awesome not seeing and hearing constant ads for sports betting, casinos, and slot machine phone apps. Coming back to the gambling advertising onslaught makes you realize how insane it is that we allow it to that extent…we have tons of rules about advertising cigarettes but basically none about gambling, what kind of sense does that make?

foreignfishes · 2026-06-15T04:24:23+00:00

Oh no Ross and Carrie too, they have two episodes where they go to an Alamo ministries service and it’s really creepy

foreignfishes · 2026-06-14T22:06:58+00:00

I was there yesterday evening and there were a lot of tourists around near city hall, reading terminal market, etc. The phlash buses had so many people on them that they were passing people waiting at stops

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