Twosda’s Wandering Thoughts
A new scam is out there. “Scattered Spider” is behind it, according to the FBI, and they’re targeting airlines and airline passengers.
The FBI said the hackers, known as Scattered Spider, use “social engineering techniques” like impersonating employees or contractors to convince the target company’s IT help desks to grant them access to internal systems. “These techniques frequently involve methods to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), such as convincing help desk services to add unauthorized MFA devices to compromised accounts,” the FBI said. “They target large corporations and their third-party IT providers, which means anyone in the airline ecosystem, including trusted vendors and contractors, could be at risk.”
I first learned about it a few weeks ago. Friends reported they’d been scammed. After struggling to get airline tickets, they called the airline. On the phone for about forty-five minutes, they finally were able to purchase their tickets.
None of it sat right with them. They called the number back and got air, so they decided to go to our local airport in Medford and address it at the ticket counter. There, they were told, “You have seats but no tickets.” That confused the agent as much as my friends. Further research was pursued with phone calls at the airport, and then the agents leaned in to my friends across the counter and said, “I’m afraid it appears that you’ve been scammed.”
Since that first time, two other people were scammed in similiar ways. All thought they were dealing with the airlines; but they’d been redirected without their awareness. People pretending to be the airline helped them out. The end, except it wasn’t.
Credit card companies were contacted. As their credit card numbers were now out there in con artists’ hands, new cards were needed.
All of this may or may not have been the ‘Scattered Spider’ group. Could be copycats or just others acting in parallel. It’s a messy, ugly world. It doesn’t look like it’s getting any better.
Twosda’s Theme Music
Twosda, July 8, 2025, has squatted down on us. It’s a cool morning after a quiet night. 75 F now, 95 F later, part of a ‘cooling trend’. We saw 99 at our Ashlandia house yesterday. My wife and I were at to get a few items at its hottest, about 4 PM. Checking the eastern sky, I said, “I think we’re going to get thunderstorms.”
My wife scanned the sky. “No, that doesn’t look like thunderstorms to me.”
A few hours later, the sky darkened. Thunder washed across the sky like an old man clearing his throat and coughing. A few raindrops applauded on the ground. At 7:46 PM, the power went out. An alert telling us about that came at 7:57 PM. They said the power would be back in one and a half hours. They were wrong.
Meanwhile, another emergency text arrived: fire off Pompadour Road. Bottom line of all this, fire crews worked through the night to line and contain the Pompadour Fire, and the electricity came back on a little after 2 AM. I know because things beeped and chirped back to life.
The good part of this is that we updated our power outage equipment last winter and it all proved to work. One purchase was a pair of inexpensive rechargeable light bulbs. Installed over the breakfast bar between the kitchen and dining room, they work great as regular bulbs, giving soft daylight illumination. When the power went out, they were charged and ready to go, giving us needed light at the throw of a switch. Now, with power returned, they’re recharging for the next time they’re needed.
Augmenting those were two simple round little lights. Working off three AA batteries, they’re extremely lightweight but powerful, and were perfect for using to read books. As we both had library books at hand, we picked up our books and lights and read till bed.
BTW, my book was “Hollow Kingdom” by Kira Jane Buxton. Released in 2019, I found this science fiction book about an unfolding human apocalypse, as told by a crow and other birds and animals to be engaging, warm, clever, and moving. I wholly recommend it.
Meantime, we’re talking about the Trump Regime’s heavy-handed military presence at MacAuthur Park in LA.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is condemning federal agents and National Guard troops for descending on a city park on Monday, July 7.
Armored vehicles, mounted officers and armed troops briefly swarmed the city’s MacArthur Park Monday morning before leaving. Bass said 20 children were playing at the park before the troops surged through and shared footage of federal officers running through the park.
According to an X post from the Department of Defense, troops were present at the park to “ensure the safety of federal agents.”
Sorry, I know, writing ‘heavy-handed’ while addressing Trump Regime actions is redundant; everything done by that loathsome, hate-fueled regime is heavy handed. This is especially true when it’s Dog-killer Noem calling the shots. ICE and the military showed up at park, disrupting a children’s day care outing. Now what did that accomplish other than a show of force to intimidate others and blow another wad of Federal funding? Bet some part of the MAGA crowd let out a full-throated cheer but the rest of us simply lowered our expectations of TACO and his chips yet again, just, as they say, you didn’t think they could go lower.
During the power outage, The Neurons plugged a 1983 song by Dio, “Holy Diver”, into the morning mental music stream. “What’s that about?” I inquired of the little gray dude. Shrugging in unison, they chorus-muttered, “I don’t know.” Now tell me, how am I supposed to know why things happen in my mind when The Neurons in charge keep presenting themselves as clueless? And people wonder why I act strange. Well, it’s The Neurons, isn’t it? Anyway, that’s the theme music for Twosda, just to get it out of my friggin’ head.
Right now, I’m fasting. No coffee, water, food, etc., until after my 12:15 ultrasound on my gall bladder. Have the best day you can, okay? I’ll do the same. Cheers
Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
If you have a brain, and some thinking skills, the full Trumpasy is all revealed. Just check out the Trump Regime’s actions. Look at the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Read again Project 2025.
- Redistribute wealth to the wealthy. They need it to ‘build the economy’. This is called trickle down economics. It has been decisively proven not to work.
- Start shredding the welfare net. Cut Medicaid. Force people to work more.
- Cut all assistance contributed by the Federal government to the states and local communities. Downtrodden existences lead to downtrodden morale. A sick people is a desperate people, and are more easily manipulated.
- De-construct the education system. An uneducatd population is more guillible. Indoctrinate young people into right wing values via vouchers and private schools.
- Manufacture and reinforce negative stereotypes of other citizens, people who ‘are different’, i.e., people who are not heterosexual and white. This is useful for blame games and distraction, and helps neuter political will.
- Weaponize ICE into a paramilitary force. While laws limit what the US military is authorized to do to citizens, it’s a more wide-open field with ICE. Under the guise of rounding up ‘illegal immigrants’, the Trump Regime are also undermining due process and the concepts of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. People are being disappeared as the right-wing social media machine provides cover by declaring that the Constitution isn’t meant to be applied to ‘non-citizens’.
- Establish concentration camps. The first one has been built in Florida, of course. Don’t be surprised if Texas eagerly builds one in the race to be patriotic by refusing others equality, rights, and freedom. Disappearing people and creating concentration camps stoke fears and can be used to threaten political opposition.
- Build a right-wing Supreme Court bias that’s willing to overlook history and precedence, one which will used flawed interpretations of the U.S. Constitution to empower the Executive Branch and wipe out the checks and balance system provided by three equal branches.
- Weaponize trade. Try to force manufacturing back to the United States, even though the raw materials are obtained elsewhere, and even though the capital investments needed for new factories are astronomical. This provides a false hope of new jobs; there will be new jobs but they won’t pay wages needed to live in this ever expensive land, forcing people to work more, no matter their health or situation. This will also increase people’s desperation to work and make money to pay for basic goods and services such as food and housing, as prices see tariff-based inflation bound upward.
- But — also cut limitations on child labor laws. Encourage poor poeple to have more children to provide a larger and cheaper work force.
- Cut or waive environmental laws and regulations to reduce the cost of building new manufacturing facilities.
- Nurture confusion among facts and distrust of the news media. Confusion helps the Regime maintain control by undermining grass root organizations’ ability to effectively organize and protest. It also allows the Regime to turn citizen against citizen in a cold war that favors the Trump Regime’s heavy hand.
- Distract, distract, distract. In this endeavor, natural disasters are your friend; they pull focus from the political arena. Reduce the Federal government’s effectiveness in predicting disasters and helping states and communities. Again, chaos, confusion, and low morale are useful for controlling and manipulating the population. As a bonus, when a natural disaster levels a region, it opens up land and opportunity to rebuild. People with next to nothing can be more easily induced to take less pay for bad jobs.
- Attack other nations; encourage aggression among other nations. Make the world a scarier place.
Yes, this is cynical. It’s not my thinking, but my interpretation of what the Trump Regime and the Republican-filled Greedy Ol’ Trump Party, also known as the GOTP, is doing. Show me I’m wrong. Point to Trump’s actions and demonstrate otherwise. Parse that OBBB for clues that this is not what the Trump Regime pursues.
Time will tell. It’s already told us a great deal in the first six months of 2025.
Munda’s Theme Music
Munda, July 7, 2025, has broken clear and relatively cool, hosting blue sky and 76 F temperature. Expectations for th afternoon heat have been lowered; some say we’ll kiss 100 F, others claim we’ll peak in the mid 90s.
Keeping a weather eye on the global fire situations. With so many large fires going at it on multiple continents, smoke and air pollution becomes a problem for us. Of course, the Texas flash floods disaster remains the headline story. Among the headlines are reminders of shortsighted decisions, like, Officials Feared Flood Risk to Youth Camps but Rejected Warning System. Costs were cited as the reason why an improved system wasn’t installed; they lost out on a million dollar grant a few years ago. Meanwhile, Texas spent $2,300,000,000 on their ‘border wall’ and several more billion on border security. Speaks well for a ‘pro-life’ state where fear and racism won again over practical matters. Those are Texans’ choices, a reflection of their political worries and priorities. It’s a sad state and it’s questionable, with the cuts to the National Weather Service under Trump, whether appropriate alarm would have been given.
In unrelated news, U.S. measles cases reach 33-year record high as outbreaks spread.
The United States has reached its highest annual measles case tally in 33 years, hitting at least 1,277 confirmed cases across 38 states and the District of Columbia.
The milestone marks a public health reversal in defeating a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease as the anti-vaccine movement gains strength.
Way to go, Trump, way to go.
I’ve been calling our local healthcare providing, Asante, to establish arrangements for the needed gallbladder ultrasound. The net: 5 calls, 25 minutes on hold, and never spoke with a human. That doesn’t do much to reassure me that the system is working.
Today’s music is a 1985 hit for Eric Clapton, “Forever Man”. The Neurons didn’t establish a concrete reason for its use in the morning mental music stream.
Breakfast has been consumed. Off to get involved with the day. Have a better one. Cheers
Sunda’s Theme Music
Sorry that I’m late with posting. Hope all were still able to carry on.
Today is Sunda, July 6, 2025. Temp right now, at 6:30 PM, is 94 F. Sunshine floods the valley and clouds have are absent, giving us an endless blue vision.
Slept the day away after requesting wife drive me to ER at 2:20 AM. Spent three hours there. Paralyzing and mounting abdominal plague began haunting me at 10:30 PM. Despite a pain killer, some antacids, and a couple glasses of water, it kept ratcheting up, and nausea began a background chorus. So, with deep and persistent mutterings about intercourse and life, we went to our local ER. The pain began in my back against my spine but soon became a traveller, going all over my upper abdominal area. I joked that an alien was in there trying to break out. BP was way up, temperature was normal. A couple rounds of morphine were IV’d into me. Blood was drawn. EKG was completed: looked great. Everything came back normal. With kidneys working, a CT scan was done: all normal among my organs. They finally said: looks like gas.
WHAT? WHAAAT? WHAAATTT?
Oh, wait. There might be something going on with your gall bladder. A follow-up course was established to investigate it.
The doctor said, avoid fatty foods and fried foods, and hydrate. Still moaning and groaning with pain and ab tenderness, my wife transported me home. I went in and violently puked for a couple minutes. With the tv on for company and a hot compress on my abs, I played with sleep. Pain subsided enough for a few hours and sleep was brokered. At 9:30, I consumed painkillers and anti-nausea meds they’d sent home with me. I returned to the idea of sleeping and fitfully did a Z dance for the next few hours before finally getting pain free at noonish. A bowl of buckwheat mash with blueberries and a couple chucks of papaya were cautiously consumed. Deep sleep came in for a four hour shift. And, BTW, my wife did a great job of taking care of me, as she always does
After being morphine’d while I was at ER, The Neurons ordered a dose of “King of Pain” by The Police for the early morning mental music stream. I laughed at the little skunks and their humor but the 1983 hit song is today’s theme music.
It’s been a no-coffee day. Dinner was a sweet potatoe with steamed veggies. Triple digits are playing for the area tomorrow. Time will tell with what comes next. Cheers
Sunda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
Southwest Nebraska medical center announces plans to close, blames uncertainty over funding
The uncertainty over federal Medicaid funding appears to have claimed its first victim in Nebraska.
Community Hospital in McCook announced Wednesday that it will close Curtis Medical Center in Curtis, winding down its services over the next several months.
“Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Troy Bruntz, President and CEO of Community Hospital, said in a news release.
The budget reconciliation bill that the House of Representatives voted to approve on Thursday contains several provisions that experts say will slash Medicaid, which rural hospitals are more dependent on than their urban counterpart
Mauna Loa Observatory captured the reality of climate change. The US plans to shut it down
The greenhouse effect was discovered more than 150 years ago and the first scientific paper linking carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere with climate change was published in 1896.
But it wasn’t until the 1950s that scientists could definitively detect the effect of human activities on the Earth’s atmosphere.
In 1956, United States scientist Charles Keeling chose Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano for the site of a new atmospheric measuring station. It was ideal, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and at high altitude away from the confounding influence of population centres.
Data collected by Mauna Loa from 1958 onward let us clearly see the evidence of climate change for the first time. The station samples the air and measures global CO₂ levels. Charles Keeling and his successors used this data to produce the famous Keeling curve – a graph showing carbon dioxide levels increasing year after year.
But this precious record is in peril. US President Donald Trump has decided to defund the observatory recording the data, as well as the widespread US greenhouse gas monitoring network and other climate measuring sites.
| The Dilemma of the Fourth of July |
| As we finish out this holiday weekend, it’s a good moment to reflect on how the Fourth of July is a complicated holiday for many of those living in the United States. At Native News Online, author Mark Charles looks at the contradictions in the experience of July 4th for many Native communities. “The other day I was eating dinner with my wife in a restaurant located in Gallup, New Mexico, a border town to the Navajo reservation. Gallup was recently named “Most Patriotic Small Town” in a nationwide contest. Soon after sitting down I noticed that we were seated at a table directly facing a framed poster of the Declaration of Independence. The irony almost made me laugh. When our server, who was also Native, came to the table, I asked if I could show him something. I then stood up and pointed out that 30 lines below the famous quote “All men are created equal” the Declaration of Independence refers to Natives as “merciless Indian savages.” The irony was that the restaurant was filled with Native Americans customers and employees and there in plain sight, a poster hanging on the wall was literally calling all of us “savages.” |
