Posts made by Ghost

@silverfox said in The Weirdest Thing I Ever Purposefully Did on the Internet:

This was literally last night.

I googled bear fur underwear.

For reasons.

Is that a thing? For real?

Asking for a friend.

Technically, if one were homeless and looking to pull oneself out of poverty, a cell phone might be crucial.

The ability to use the internet to move money around and receive callbacks from job interviews might arguably be more important than a regular roof to sleep under.

@Darren said in RL Anger:

For the record, he wouldn't have gotten a cent out of me even if he had not
had a brand new iPhone because I don't tolerate panhandlers.
Every time you give money to a beggar, you make the lives of everyone that
lives, works or otherwise frequents the area, a little bit worse by
validating their behavior.

@surreality Lots of "experts" out there. By this I mean it's pretty common (and dumb) for people to assume all that stuff is simple.

I should also take this moment to say (since this came up in relation to surr) that craft/trade show merchants with Square are relatively safe. They often have cards, email, and want to be tied to the transaction and able to be contacted for follow-up sales. If a craft show-type person got a rep for skimming cards or fraudulent sales, their ability to partake in shows would be in jeopardy.

But also, Square and some other services can take around 2-3% of the transaction so if you have cash it never hurts to ask for their preference (cash doesn't have processing fees, but they have to manually track cash for tax purposes).

@wahoo Agreed. I'm not into the whole "if they can afford a cell phone, they can't have food stamps" type rhetoric. People are people and no one understands a total stranger's life situation enough to be able to make that call. Plenty of people wearing suits are looking for jobs and ending the night at homeless shelters.

VenMo, Cash App, PayPal, Patreon are all safer because the SERVICE encrypts the transaction and the receiver of the money doesn't have access to your card, the magstripe data, nor do they have any right to confidential information on the app's servers. There's lesser risks of fraud or skimming using those services as a means to donate to anyone.

But as someone in the card industry? Cards are like sexual organs: best to not stick them in strange devices of people you don't know or can't track down later if needed. If an ATM card slot looks weird? Don't do it. If a panhandler asks for VenMo? It's relatively safe but they may be able to bug you later or Facebook you if your VenMo account has details they can follow up on, but doesn't involve card swipes.

Sorry to derail about card industry stuff, but 99% of the time it's lawyer stuff and I got to go Ooo! Ooo! I get to be a subject matter expert!

Re: Square

There's very little underwriting involved in Square, and Square takes a lot of risk on transactions, so their requirements are punched up quite a bit. Generally speaking you can't use Square as a business without an EID or Tax ID. There's also Square Cash, but these services generally require some form of bank account to wire the money to after the card is swiped.

1. It's very unlikely that someone with access to Square plus a compatible cell phone with internet plus a bank account are so needful that they can take their panhandling game to the cyber-networked level. Once bank accounts and tech get involved the upkeep and fees go up.

2. BEWARE OF CARD SKIMMERS. What you SHOULD be asking yourself is this: "Do you really want a panhandler on the street (who would be difficult to find or contact if a decimal were misplaced in the transaction I.e. 200.00 instead of 20.00) use a device to magnetically scan and record the content on your debit/credit card's magstripe?"

Card transactions are about trust. Trust that the consumer has in the person processing their card transaction to not steal information or misuse the transaction, and trust the merchant has in the consumer that the card isnt a forgery or other form of identity theft.

There is no way in Hell I'd let some rando panhandler on the street swipe my credit/debit card into a device that isn't easily attached to a known business entity that I could easily get the law involved in the event of fraud/ID theft. Card skimmers are devices used to record the data on the magnetic strip with the intention of later selling them or using them in fraudulent online MOTO (Mail Order Telephone Order) transactions where the merchant cannot easily confirm the cardholders identity.

@Lotherio Psssh.

Just add "Asking for a friend" to every search.

What is the best way to dispose of a body? Asking for a friend.

Ooo. Or prefix every search with On friend's computer...

I forever stand by concept of typing the following into YouTube's search engine. Just fill in the blank with anything that comes to mind.

THE ____________ THING ON YOUTUBE

Funniest. Dumbest. Scariest. Meanest. Coolest. Whitest. Blackest. Gayest. Weirdest. Craziest. Sweetest. Hottest. Etc etc etc

Never fails to entertain.

Okay, first of all...

NO, THIS TOPIC ISN'T ABOUT THE KINKIEST THING OR THAT HOOKER YOU ORDERED OR ABOUT THE TIME YOU WENT ON TOR TO CHECK OUT RED ROOMS AND BROWSE PERSONAL HITMAN FEES USING BITCOIN.

No. This is about those moments where you actually Google'd something, YouTube'd something, or actually used Bing and then realized it was either for something really stupid or somewhat bizarre. I'm talking stuff you actually looked for that would be worthy of Tosh.O

I'll give examples of my own:

• YouTube deep dive resulted in searching for videos of Venus Flytrap from WKRP teaching a gang member about the Atom
• The Heinz Automato
• Glenn Danzig IMPERSONATOR crooning a shopping list
• What ever happened to Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years?
• Researching Atreyu from The Neverending Story's MMA record
• Deep Dive into the cast of 21 Jump Street to later learn that Dustin Nguyen was married to the lady disabled in a car accident by the actress who played the yellow Power Ranger
• Former member of Menudo is a seriously out muscleman now who recorded a He-Man cosplay video

@Lotherio I love BabyYoda's "WTF is going on? I don't know what's going on but I'm not comfortable" faces.

(Btw this is not a spoiler. No one knows what Baby Yoda is, but no one knows the name of Yoda's species so by default it's just Baby Yoda)

@mietze said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

Almost all of my chosen family locally ate people I met because of mushing

The only MU'ers I ever truly hung out with in person involved a hotel party where it was a ton of rum and coke, cards against humanity, and then my SO and I hooked up in our room, which the MU person littered with rose petals and a dreamy picture of Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Figured 1 and done. No more. Never again. I'll call it ending on a high note.

I'm a rum and coke guy, but not am expensive alcohol guy so Bacardi Oakheart has been my go-to

I still can't get over just how good The Mandalorian is.

So glad that Rogue One style Star Wars storytelling didn't die with that one movie.

Because I was dared.

And because we also need a place to talk about and share intel on quality booze like Pepsi and bourbon.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Austin has no magic shop that I can find.
And I don't mean M:tG. I mean 'place I can go to buy silly magic trick gimmicks because I'm a dork who likes them sometimes.'

This reads like a Mage character's background.

"She loved magic, but after looking high and low for a store that sold tricks and tools of prestidigitation to no avail, she noticed a door that she couldn't quite remember having ever been there before..."

@Cupcake

(This will shock nobody. Thank you Cupcake)

Run D.M.C. - Run's House

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

or (3) tailpipes

Can we unpack this? I kinda feel like it might be okay to fuck your car's tailpipe but you're crossing the line when you fuck my car's tailpipe.

@Alamias Yeah, hindsight 20/20 I later realized that those people then knew where I lived because we were hosting game night at our place. Sure, on game night's our resident cop with 4 black-belts, a 9mm and a backup .45 is excellent security, but he doesnt live with us SoOOoOoo.

We had trusted our buddy to vet these people. Nothing bad happened afterwards, so I guess he didn't vet them enough to not be creepy but trusted them enough to not do a home invasion?

The random game store LFG approach is a crapshoot. Most of the best, sane RPers already have go-to groups consisting of other same, mature adults. There are a looooooot of fucking mutants.

Best to err on the side of caution with wife and kid. I got lucky.

@Cobaltasaurus A long while ago we (my SO and I) ran into this constant bump of creepers. We needed more people for a tabletop RPG game, and this one guy kept suggesting these players (Who had cars and could give him a ride to game night) that were just...entirely creepy towards my SO. For clarification, everyone knew my SO and I were a couple.

1. One night at the end of a Street Fighter RPG game, new guy handed my SO a folded piece of paper that said "Sucks we had to end there, my character was going to invite yours to the hot tub." UNINVITED

2. Guy who would never look my SO in the eyes while talking to her (would look to the wall or floor) but constantly looked at her boobs while doing everything else. UNINVITED

3. After game, with no context: "...hey if you ever want someone to run an RPG for you while <GhostRLName> is at work, I can..." UNINVITED

4. Walks up behind SO, hugs her by grabbing boobs from behind. "It's okay because I'm not straight" UNINVITED