Cough, cough. Hack, hack.

     Fair warning before reading: this post will be all over the map, a zig-zag mystery worthy of Tod Goldberg (who?), so mentioned because I've somehow found myself temporarily captured by the world of short mysteries.  The world of today is vastly long, too much and too long at times...the news, the amount of infomation, the drawn-out TV series, the terribly long lines everywhere.  And so I happened to pick up a batch of Best American Mystery & Suspense.  As one editor wrote of the series: Short stories can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values.  In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.  But alas, just as with those stories, this post has little to do with any of those writings* but more about a few real-life mysteries: remote work, penetrating identity and financial accounts (yours), and the new world of professional hacking (North Korea alone has nearly 9000 sponsored, highly trained hackers, many stationed throughout the world, wrote WIRED) and the advances are testing even the most sophisticated tech companies.  Wrote the story: ...many HR representatives now ask new employees to hold their ID up to the camera for closer inspection. “But the fraudsters have a neat trick there,” says Donal Greene, a biometrics expert at the online background check provider Certn.  They take a green-colored card the exact shape and size of an identity card—a mini green screen—and, using deepfake technology, project the image of an ID onto it. “They can actually move it and show the reflection,” says Greene. “It’s very sophisticated.”  North Korean agents have even been known to send look-alikes to pick up a physical ID card from an office or to take a drug test required by prospective employers.

     So you've likely heard that old joke of war prisoners being forced to stand in the sun for hours, swaying back and forth uttering the tick-tock of a clock; but when one prisoner leans in only one direction, going "tick, tick, tick," the irate guard walks up to his face and screams, "we have ways to make you tock!"  Wait, where am I going with that?  Seems that the recent hacking I've read about targets TikTok users.*  Wrote  Cointelegraph about the hard wallet scam: The global hardware wallet market was valued at over $460 million in 2024, and it is predicted to grow to over $3 billion by 2033.  This makes hardware wallets, which users trust heavily, a prime target for crypto theft...The first half of the year has seen over $2.1 billion in crypto losses across infrastructure-level attacks.  And it's also rather sophisticated, even to the point of accessing crypto accounts.  As the report stated, crypto scams are proving more lucrative than ransomware for some countries, with some $12 million disappearing from investors in August alone (North Korea is far from alone is state-sponsored hackers).  As many of you likely already know, crypto losses are not federally insured (although independent insurance can be purchased, but this is another area such as hard wallets...know who you're buying from).  Several things may change as both Trump and many in his cabinet (esp. RFK, Jr.) are large holders of crypto...should crypto crash, there appears to be a likelihood that a presidential order could go out for taxpayers to bail out the industry, say some economic institutions.  As a rule, jail sentences for crypto and financial theft digitally, are minimal compared to physically doing so (the JP Morgan fraud of $175 million netted Charlie Javice only a 7-year sentence AND JP Morgan had to pay an additional $115 million to her lawyers...what??).  And here I should note that I don't own any crypto...

     So why would I be writing about such topics when I have "no skin in the game?"  My defense is to fall back to the old school mantra of do your homework.  Remote work and AI have opened the world to scammers who have realized that the old days of placing "skimmers" that rob your credit card info, and pretending to be a lost grandson needing money overseas has not only jumped up a level, but is now far easier, as if it online scammers are finding it more lucrative to target the young instead of the old.  Cloning your phone and "juice" or choicejacking are now far easier for cyber thieves than phishing, as are the newly sophisticated work emails.  And scam "farms" are now termed industrial-scale, sometimes generating more each year than the GFP of an entire country, said the show 1A.  Keeping ahead of the game is now worthy of a chess match (as but one example, the popular antivirus software maker, Norton, offers this guide to 19 of the more common scams of 2025).  Fortunately, sites such as that at Kiplinger's, will offer good advice on ways to protect yourself --antivirus and malware software, double-authentication when logging in, not clicking random links in emails or texts, strong passwords-- but I would add a few more: 1) have your bank or credit union call or text you if a withdrawal over a set amount occurs; 2) only use an ATM that is attached to a building; 3) freeze your credit; and the most difficult, 4) check your accounts regularly.  All of the above has happened to either myself or to friends recently --debit card PINs captured, small amounts taken our regularly to avoid detection, stray text calls (no name or number, just a series of letters with a message along the lines of "sorry we missed each other at dinner" or "we still on for that meeting?") -- but luckily, no money was lost (my friend caught the debit transaction quickly and was able to get her money back, but is now taking the additional steps above).  My own credit union told me of a customer who had used Door Dash for a month then dropped it, but continued to see small billings happening each month, usually less than $20; but while the delivery company assured him that all was taken care of, the transactions kept appearing.  He grew frustrated and more or less gave up, that is until some three deductions later the withdrawal was for $50,000.  The credit union told me that this was a common practice, for online thieves to take just small amounts monthly, often for as long as a year, and when left unquestioned or unmonitored, to then withdraw a large sum.  Often by the time it's discovered, the money is gone (as a rule, credit card theft liability on your part is limited, but debit card liability is not and has a much shorter deadline to recover funds, often just a few days, writes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  And about that "consumer protection bureau," Senator Ted Cruz and the Republicans have worked tirelessly to defund and completely eliminate the CFPB, your protection agency; wrote Forbes, with oral arguments now being heard in the Supreme Court.  Wait, wasn't that a federal entity designed to protect us everyday consumers?  Uh, yes.  But one should also note that even with federal workers not being paid due to the government shutdown, Congressional salaries are not affected and continue as if nothing is happening.  Hmm...

     And the cough, cough part of this?  Another topic dear to me as our "great" Salt Lake (the actual lake) continues to dry up (now less than 35% of its normal size) as runoff water from snowmelt and rain continue to be diverted to agriculture, the majority of whose crops head overseas (although tariffs may force a bit of change here).  Mercury, arsenic, aluminum and more swirl in the resulting dust storms, now tampered a bit by recent rains.  But the overall outlook is bleak (our area was ranked the 25th worst for air pollution --out of 225 cities-- by the American Lung Association).  And now Trump wants to revive coal by opening up federal lands to coal mining companies wanting to restart operations now that emission restrictions have been vastly lowered, reported NPR (I should note that Salt Lake depends on coal and natural gas for nearly 85% of its energy, according to data from PEW).  And another large pollution project destined for overseas, wood pellets, was recently defeated in California, wrote the NRDC (wood pellets emit far more pollution than coal).  And still, one has to wonder if such production is perhaps unknowingly being funded by pension funds, asked High Country News.  But hey, this post wasn't meant for that topic either (what??).  

The honey badger survives even this.  Photo: Nat'l Geographic

    We recently put down a cat, another one.  My wife traps feral cats (she feeds 6 colonies and has pretty much caught, fixed and released all of the various cats back to their colonies), and often if one of the cats is badly matted or looks ill, she captures it and has it seen to (sometimes, the low-cost clinics have openings, but if not, she does try to work with other organizations or vets to keep down her costs, which are still rather high).  In this case, the cat was quite thin and had been evaluated 4 years earlier with similar conditions: trouble breathing, bad teeth, a bit of a thyroid problem.  But this time it was much worse.  The thyroid was acting up, the remaining teeth needed pulling, and the breathing was still quite labored.  Treatment would be extremely expensive and with no guarantee of a good outcome.  Blood panels were reviewed and discussed and my wife and I somehow still bounced back and forth...to treat this cat would require a lot of time (thyroid meds would be needed daily), it was used to being outdoors, winter was approaching (a cat needs to grow its winter coat so you can't keep it for a few weeks or months and then put it out in the cold).  A second vet recommended euthanizing the cat.  But this feral, which my wife had been feeding daily for 4 years and likely much longer, just tugged at our hearts.  Did we really need to put it down?  If we kept it and took care of it then it would indeed have to become "our" cat, and was that fair to our other cats?  Or to this cat, which would now have to remain indoors.  Everything pointed to no.  Even the vet at the clinic that did euthanasia said that the outlook was grim...left untreated (if we just released the cat back to the colony), the thyroid would continue to strain the heart and eventually affect the kidneys.  It would not be a pleasant death, especially with winter fast approaching (the recent rains have already brought snow to the mountains).  The sedating injections went ahead and just like that, the cat was gone.  Yrt its death somehow continued to bother us, and we had to ask ourselves, why?  We could justify that this was a more humane judge/jury/executioner decision, one that would spare the cat a difficult ending later, and we could justify that what money we likely would have spent on the cat (which the vets all felt would probably have a difficult uphill battle) could be better used for other equally-needy cats or people, and that this cat would have probably taken a long time to accept our other cats (and vice versa)...but something still tugged away, even days later.  It was almost as if the cat, a cat we both barely knew, was pleading with us to give it a chance.  It was the unlucky fish caught in the net, the one now about to be removed from the life it knew and now faced an unplanned end, all wondering what it did wrong and why now?  And the answer may have come from National Geographic...

Photo of spotted shrimp: FreePix

     Their series is called Underdogs and along with outstanding (and amazing) photography, it is an entirely new look at our adaptive world.  Hosted by the Deadpool star himself, Ryan Reynolds, the humorous look at this side of life spares you the typical brutality of nature and instead shows you that every bit of life wants to survive, from bugs to vultures to shrimp.  So let's take the spotted shrimp, one which burrows under an anemone for protection, still feeling the sting of the anemone's tenacles but trading the pain for the safety...until the seaworm arrives (which feeds on anemones).  But (and this is just one of the many interesting tales of the series), the tiny shrimp has a defense.  First, this is indeed a tiny shrimp against something nearly the size of a large trout, so you wonder how on earth can the shrimp DO anything, especially since the worm wants the anemone.  But the shrimp snaps its claws, as in snaps it so quickly (one 15th of a millionth of a second) that it generates a superheated water bubble --yes, a tiny bubble-- but one heated to the temperature of the SUN (and here, narrator Reynolds emphasizes that again...the SUN), which hits the worm, sends the heat and shockwave through its entire body, and kills it.  A few more tidbits came from the magazine about the underdogs of the animal world.  The wasp (in general) is solitary and pollinates over 960 plants (the ones that sting you are part of just 3 species of wasp that live in colonies and sting to defend their nests); the vulture "not only prevents the spread of pathogens that cause bubonic plague, anthrax, and other diseases, [but] they even stop carrion from emitting tens of millions of metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year."  And the honey badger, that saggy deflated football of skin that can gobble down venomous snakes like the king cobra, can even survive a pack of wild African dogs tugging away at it for a meal.

     There's a young man at my local library, one who is pretty much always there and generally asleep.  The librarians I've talked with said that the library is a designated "safe place," and anyone is welcome there as long as they are quiet and abide by the general rules of the place by not bothering anyone else.  People seemed to leave him alone, never touching his torn bags or commenting about his slight odor.  But once he awoke, I began to talk with him, giving him a small assortment of things I carry in my car for homeless people I may run into while driving: a bag with a washcloth, soap, nail clippers, razors, a toothbrush, that sort of thing.  Then I began bringing him gift cards for food (the library doesn't allow food or drink inside), then an offer to pay for his laundry and to get him a few bits of quick-drying clothes (many summer "tech" clothes were being closed out to make way for winter gear).  His name is Cameron and I now know his shoe and waist size (he did his laundry the next day, and I got him a new pair of comfortable Adidas shoes).  At the laundromat, the workers couldn't have been nicer, one telling me that she did the same sort of thing recently for a woman needing help but having no money.  She worked with me to set up an account for Cameron and he is now has an regular outlet to clean up his clothes, and to grab a bite to eat (I'm working on other help as I talk with him, trying to walk that fine line of preserving one's dignity while asking what those who are homeless most need at the moment).  Cameron, like so many others these days, was also an underdog, a survivor fighting his way back up, but unnoticed (someone did recently drive up and give him a coffee as he waited for the library to open).  Wrote another article in the same magazine: Today we have forgotten the importance of the hidden, the unseen, the underground.

     In a final tip of the hat to author Tim O'Brien, he wrote: I'm an old man now [he's 78], and when I put the period on this sentence I will be a minute or two older.  How many more sentences can there be?...I write so slowly -- how can I tell my kids all I want to tell them?  Each of the scraps of paper on my desk seems to whisper, "Tell about me, put me in, don't forget me," and yet this is only a maybe book, and I am only a maybe-writer, just as every writer was once a maybe-writer.  Things intervene between maybe and is.  Words fail, energy flags, imagination runs dry, influenza rages, lungs collapse, insanity intrudes, the second hand held to a stop, and what had been a maybe book sails off into the oblivion of a never book...who knows?  If I don't lose heart, if I keep whacking away, maybe I will reach the end of this maybe book before the end reaches me.  And of course I'm not alone.  We are all writing our maybe books full of maybe-tomorrows, and each maybe tomorrow brings another maybe tomorrow, and then another, until the last line of the last page receives its period.

     What I've found as I grow ever nearer to that "last line of the last page" is that I now look at people and things differently, perhaps with a bit more detail or introspection.  One slight change here or there and what could have been either has been, or never will be.  On top or an underdog.  A full bank account or one wiped out in an instant.  A vibrant healthy life, or relationship, or job, or memory now vanished into the haze.  As the song said, easy come, easy go.  And so it would seem with life...it's here and then, almost as if you weren't paying attention, it isn't.  Easy come, easy go.  But still, I see more good in the world happening as if the harder times get, the more people step up to help.  Maybe it's a simple smile, or the handing out of a cup of coffee, or just saying hello to someone.  Often it's more, the realization that no matter what you have now, all or it --health, wealth, your mind, even life itself-- is defined by the universe as easy come, easy go.  As easy as that last, perhaps unfinished page, that last breath, that last gasp.  Cough, cough...

*As mentioned before, I don't have accounts or use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, ChathGPT, WhatsApp, or any of the other "popular" messaging/chat services so I am far from an "expert" on this, passing on only what I've been reading.  And speaking of reading, I have written about that "best" series before, me generally reading the "Science & Nature" collections, but rarely the "essays" or "travel" set (much less the "sports," which ceased publication a few years ago).  But there sat the books of short mysteries at the library sale.  So think about this.  In order to be placed into such a collection, a story or article has to have been published the year before (anything older or newer can't be considered).  Then from that batch of 300-500 submissions, the field is narrowed down to just 50 by the main editor, who then passes the batch down to a guest editor (who changes each year) who then if faced with having to pick just the 20 "best" pieces...which is what you read in each series.  Goldberg's story was Steven KIng worthy, but condensed into just a dozen or so pages and, as with many writers of novels (Goldberg is considered one of the kings of "gangster" writing and has won award after award for his books and stories), he admits that sometimes a short story is more difficult to write than a novel.  His story first appeared in Palm Springs Noir.  And if you're still in the reading mode, an offbeat but fun read (if you can call a story about an elderly female serial killer "fun" -- think little sweet granny with a claw hammer) is the book Too Old for This by Samantha Downing.  A senior serial killer feeling her age?  Boy, I guess that I am looking at things a bit differently...