Popping in to intro and say hi- thanks for adding me.

Welcome. This is Rule one btw.

The rules: https://www.ioplist.org/showthread.php?tid=1

I got this scam today. When he asked for my social security medicare info, in a very Indian scammer voice, I asked was he dropped on his head when a baby? He was taken aback and said he did not know. Because, I said, only someone with major brain damage would think an attorney would fall for this buggery bollocks scam.

I said the only curse word i learned in that language. Cuz they would use it against me. And sure enough here it came to my email today.

Does the scammer get notified of scams as well? Mighty coincidental that he used the very scam of the day on me. Hmmmm.
But i see there are two dates for this notification, with one of them being back in June or such. So he was not right on top of the scam heap after all.



Site logo image Scamicide
Scam of the day – July 23, 2023 – Medicare Card Verification Scam

Steven Weisman, Esq.

Jul 22

For many years Medicare used a person's Social Security number as his or her Medicare number which put Medicare recipients in serious danger of identity theft. Medicare resisted changing the Medicare number to a safer random number for many years. Finally, in April 2018, new random numbered cards began being sent by regular mail to all 60 million Americans enrolled in Medicare and in 2020 the switch over to new more secure Medicare card numbers was complete.

But this has not stopped identity thieves. Many older Americans are receiving emails or phone calls purporting to be from Medicare either offering various health services or new Medicare cards with microchips. All the targeted victim has to do is merely verify their Medicare number. And while your Medicare number is no longer your Social Security number, giving it to an identity thief can cause you substantial problems when you try to access Medicare as well as cost the American taxpayers millions of dollars.

TIPS

It is easy to determine when you receive a phone call, email or text message from Medicare if it is legitimate. They don't contact you by email, text message or by phone so anytime you are contacted in this manner, you can be confident it is a scam. As for phone calls purporting to be from Medicare, you should never provide your Medicare number, Social Security number, credit card number or any other personal information to anyone who calls you on the phone because you can never be sure they are legitimate. Even if your Caller ID indicates the call is from Medicare, the IRS or some other legitimate organization, through a technique called "spoofing" your Caller ID can be tricked into making it appear that the call is legitimate.

The real Medicare also will not contact you and ask you to verify your Medicare number and there are no new Medicare cards with microchips. If you get a call asking for personal information that appears legitimate, merely hang up and call the company or agency at a number that you independently know is legitimate to find out the truth.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of hxxp://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states "Sign up for this blog."

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please.

Reader's Digest
What Is an “Irish Exit”—and Is It Considered Rude?
Story by Alexandra Kelly • 12h ago

What Is an “Irish Exit”—and Is It Considered Rude?
What Is an “Irish Exit”—and Is It Considered Rude?
© Maskot/Getty Images
We've all been there: You're mingling at a party and making small talk when fatigue sets in and the itch to leave grows stronger. The host is busy chatting, and there's a small crowd gathering to start saying their goodbyes. It would be so much easier just to scoot out, unnoticed, you think. It feels like a breach of proper etiquette, but it would save you an awkward farewell and get you home that much faster. There's even a name for it: the Irish exit (or Irish goodbye). But what is an Irish exit, exactly, and is it a party etiquette mistake?

Each type of social situation generally comes with its own set of rules: business etiquette, wedding etiquette and funeral etiquette all come to mind. But how does an Irish exit fit in? We spoke with Irish author Judith McLoughlin to fully understand this social norm and its origin.

Get Reader’s Digest’s Read Up newsletter for etiquette tips, humor, cleaning, travel, tech and fun facts all week long.

What is an Irish exit?
An Irish exit is when you leave a social situation (a party or larger gathering, for example) without saying goodbye to your host or to other guests.

I've been on the receiving end of the Irish exit, and it looks a little something like this. After my husband and I purchased our first home a few years ago, we hosted a large backyard housewarming party. People streamed in and out of my backyard all day, bearing delicious potluck dishes and housewarming gifts. Some people stopped by for an hour while others stayed for several—and I would be lying if I said that I said goodbye to each and every person who came by that day. Several people just seemed to disappear as the afternoon went on, having Irish exited out of my party and onto the rest of their day.

How did the Irish exit get its name?
Also known as an Irish goodbye, it seems to have several origin stories, although one thing is certain: "It's a term we wouldn't use in Ireland, so it's purely an American term," notes McLoughlin.

McLoughlin points to the 19th-century Irish Potato Famine and the exodus of Irish people, though, as a possible basis for the term blossoming stateside. "It was a very sad time, and the Irish goodbye could have come from that: the sadness of departing and leaving Ireland and never being able to see your loved ones again," she says.

Of course, there's another theory. There might be some truth to the term originating with hard-partying Irish Americans. "The Irish have a reputation of drinking a lot—which is true!—but this is more of an Irish American twist." The idea here is that a person would have had so much to drink that they just needed a quick escape from the party to avoid any embarrassment over how much they had consumed.

What's the difference between an Irish exit and a French exit?
To be honest, there isn't much of one besides the country in which the phrase is used. You'll come across the term "Irish exit" if you're in the United States. But for our friends across the pond in Great Britain, you'll hear the term "French leave" or "French exit" to mean the exact same thing: leaving a gathering without relaying your farewells. And in other parts of the world, the phrase is "leaving the English way" (in France, Russia or Poland) or the "Polish exit" (in Germany).

Is an Irish exit rude?
McLoughlin notes that the Irish are mainly known for their exuberantly welcoming nature—and that extends to goodbyes too. So, in Ireland, it would be seen as rude to simply leave without saying goodbye. "The Irish are famous for, if anything, the long goodbye," she says.

But here in the States, quietly exiting a large party might not be as rude as you think, depending on the situation. Formal gatherings, like weddings or intimate dinner parties where you bring a hostess gift, should prompt you to say goodbye to your host. But larger, informal gatherings (or those that don't require an RSVP) like a big backyard BBQ? Read the room: If your host is busy with a crowd of people around them or has a line of people queued up to say their goodbyes, quietly slipping out might actually be the more polite way to make your exit.

About the expert
Judith McLoughlin is an Irish chef and cookbook author based in Atlanta. She is the author of two cookbooks, A Return to Ireland and The Shamrock and Peach.
Sources:

Irish Central: "What Does the Phrase an Irish Goodbye Mean?"
Dictionary.com: "Irish Goodbye"
Quartz: "Is it the Irish goodbye, the French exit, or to leave 'the English way'? Depends where you live"

How to Change Your Life
written by
MARK MANSON
filed under
HAPPINESSLIFE PURPOSEPERSONAL VALUES
So you want to change your life, eh? You want to turn it all around and ooze silky smooth confidence while you kill it in a new career with a new car and a new spouse and a new dog because the old one smells like a dead rat?

When most people set out to change their lives, they often focus on all the external stuff, like a new job or a new location or new friends or a new romantic prospect and on and on.

The reality is that changing your life starts with changing the way you see everything in your life. So below are some specific ways you can start to change your life right now.

7 WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE
1. DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
A lot of people get stuck when they try to change their lives because they don’t know “where to start” or “what to do.” The simple answer is: to do something—anything, really.

The motivation to do anything—like change your entire life around—doesn’t just come from some magical, mystical place within you. Action is both the effect of motivation and the cause of it. You’ll figure out whether or not it’s right or not in good time (trust me), but only if you stop procrastinating and start engaging with the world.

I call this The “Do Something” Principle. And I developed it by accident back in my years as a consultant, helping people who were otherwise immobilized by fears, rationalizations, and apathy to take action.

It began out of simple pragmatism: you paid me to be here so you might as well do something. I don’t care, do anything!

What I found is that often once they did something, even the smallest of actions, it would soon give them the inspiration and motivation to do something else. They had sent a signal to themselves, “OK, I did that, I guess I can do more.” And slowly we could take it from there.

If you want to change your life, don’t set out to accomplish all you’ve ever dreamed of. That is daunting and demotivating. Just do a small action that nudges you in the right direction, anything.

Have to redesign an entire website? Sit down and design the header. About to tackle a large project? Start on the outline. Want to make friends in a foreign country? Go out for a beer and see what happens.

These small actions will spur you on to do more, and before you know it you’ll have accomplished the goals that initially seemed so daunting. You’ve changed your life for the better.

2. RECOGNIZE THAT EVERYTHING YOU DO HAS A COST—BE WILLING TO PAY IT
A lot of life ultimately amounts to a series of tradeoffs. Everything has an opportunity cost, and the big things we want in life—like happiness and healthy relationships and wealth—they all have big opportunity costs. You don’t get to have the dream career at the top without putting in your time at the bottom, then taking a risk or twelve and breaking a few hearts along the way.

So the most important question you can ask yourself isn’t about what you want, it’s about what you’re willing suffer for. As I’ve previously said, doing what you love is not always loving what you do. So what kind of shit sandwich can you stomach? And—importantly—do you even really want your dream in first place?

For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up onstage playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling.

This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued through college, even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously.

But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money. Then, I needed to find the time. Then… nothing.

Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came. And it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.

I was in love with the result—the image of me onstage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I’m playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.

The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car.

It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what took me a long time to discover was that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the top.

If you want to change your life, don’t ask yourself what you want. Ask what you’re willing to suffer for. That’s the answer that will make a difference.

3. EMBRACE THE FACT THAT NO ONE GIVES A SHIT
Look, I know you were told that you’re a special little snowflake in a sea of otherwise normal people, but I have some bad news for you: very few people actually give a shit about you because you’re actually not all that special (that, and people are too concerned with themselves to begin with).

But before you hit the back button on your browser, I want you to consider just how liberating that is: No one gives a shit. You are free to do whatever the hell you want and no one will care if you fail spectacularly. If anything, they’ll respect you more (for like, 5 seconds and then they’ll go back to posting selfies on Instagram).



So instead of basing all your life decisions on what others think of you or what you do or how attractive you’ll appear in your new car, figure out exactly what it is you value most in your life and cut all the other bullshit out.

Ask yourself: What does a successful and meaningful life look like to you? Did you grow up wanting to be a pilot? Do you dream of having a family with five kids? When you close your eyes, do you see yourself waltzing down the red carpet in your designer gown, your path lit by a hundred camera flashes?

Once you’re clear on the life you genuinely want for yourself, ask yourself: What is it that I want from this life?

Do you want to be a pilot because it’s cool? Or because you want to be rich? To make the ladies go weak at the sight of your sexy captain’s uniform? Or are you simply fascinated by the marvel of human technology and want to master the skill of flying an aircraft?

Asking yourself why you want what you want will help you uncover the values that underlie the life you’ve imagined for yourself. Yes, you want the life of a pilot. But is the value you’re really after appearances, money, sexual prowess, or mastery of skill?

Not all values are created equal. Some are better than others. If you find that your values hurt rather than help, you can work to update them into better values—values that are evidence-based, constructive, and controllable rather than emotion-based, destructive, and uncontrollable.

Once you know what you value (and have replaced bad values with better ones), you are free to build the life you want knowing no one gives a shit if you fail.

4. FOCUS MORE ON HABITS, LESS ON GOALS
A lot of books and self-development advice focuses on goals and “systems” of developing, like, S.M.A.R.T. goals and creating an unrelenting focus on ACCOMPLISHING EVERY SINGLE GOAL YOU EVER SET NO MATTER WHAT OR YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER.

The truth is, in and of themselves, goals are pretty overrated. There’s nothing wrong with having goals, but obsessing over them is often counterproductive because, in reality, achieving a goal isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Instead, I like to focus on creating a system of healthy habits that focus on the most important, highest impact areas of my life. My goals pretty much take care of themselves at that point.

In a nutshell, habits comprise three main parts:

An environmental cue
A behavioral response
A reward (or the removal of an unpleasant stimulus)
The more often the cue, behavior, and reward occur in close time and proximity to one another, the stronger a habit becomes.

To create a new, healthy habit—or to break a bad habit—you’ll want to be as intentional as possible with all three parts. You can manipulate your environment to introduce cues that you can then intentionally start to associate with a desired behavior and reinforce it all with a reward.

Let’s say you want to start working out on a regular basis. Instead of just focusing on developing the habit of “working out,” focus on developing a routine around initiating a workout. This may seem like a subtle difference, but it’s actually huge.

An easy way to do this is to choose a cue that already occurs regularly in your daily life, such as getting home from work. Then, during the early stages of developing your workout habit, focus your effort on going straight to your room after you get home and changing into your workout clothes. Then go fill up your water bottle and head straight to the gym or hit the running trail or whatever.

You want to develop the habit of putting yourself in the position to work out regularly, which makes it more likely that you’ll work out regularly.

After a while, you’ll start to notice that when you get home from work (environmental cue/trigger), it takes little to no effort to go to your room, throw on your workout clothes, and head to the gym (habitual response).

You’ll even start to look forward to it, and maybe even feel like something in your life is off when you don’t work out. And that’s the power of habit.

To reinforce the habit, use the “reward” component of the habit equation. With our exercise example, you might get done working out and treat yourself to a (healthy) snack or maybe schedule a post-workout rest session by watching an episode of your favorite TV show.

Some people derive enough reward from the exercise itself (e.g., “runner’s high”), which acts as a powerful reinforcement for their habit. Whatever you do, be sure to incorporate a healthy reward into your habit routine.

If you’re not sure which habits will change your life, I recommend focusing on building one single compounding habit. Compounding habits—like exercise, healthy eating, and sleep—have a multiplication effect across several or even all areas of our lives.

For example, exercise helps you maintain a healthy body weight, but it can also give you more energy and focus throughout your day, it improves your mood, helps you sleep, and so on. All of these benefits have their own ripple effects across your life: you’re more productive at work/school, you’re more pleasant to be around when you’re with friends, family, and significant others, you look and feel healthier.

Pick a compounding habit and develop a routine around it. Then your goals will take care of themselves. This is how you change your life, one habit at a time.

5. FIGURE OUT WHO YOU ARE
Simple question: do you really know who you are? I mean do you know what drives you, what terrifies you, why you do the things you do, and do you know how others perceive you too? Self-awareness is, somewhat paradoxically, in short supply these days (self-delusion, on the other hand, is not). But there’s really no way to change your life if you don’t know what you’re changing about yourself in the first place.

I think of self-awareness as having three levels. The first level is being aware of what you’re doing. Life sucks, and we respond to this suckage by distracting ourselves. We transport our minds to some other time or place or world where it can be safe and insulated from the pain of day-to-day life.

We stare at our phones, we obsess about the past or our potential futures, make plans we’ll never keep, or simply try to forget. We eat, drink, and fuck ourselves into numbness to dull the reality of our problems. We use books, movies, games, and music to carry us to another world where no pain exists, and everything always feels easy and good and right.

There’s nothing wrong with distraction. We all need some sort of diversion to keep us sane and happy. The key is that we need to be aware of our distractions. We need to make sure we’re choosing them, not the other way around.

This is the first level of self-awareness, a simple understanding of where your mind goes and when. You must be aware of the paths your mind likes to take before you can begin to question why it takes those paths and whether those paths are helping or hurting you.

The second level is asking yourself what you are feeling. This is where you really start finding out “who you are.” I hate using that phrase because it doesn’t really mean anything, but this is the level that people talk about when they say they are “finding themselves”—they are discovering how they actually feel about the shit going on in their life, and often they have been hiding these feelings from themselves for years.

Level 2 is an uncomfortable place to go. People often spend years in therapy navigating Level 2. It takes time to become comfortable with all of your emotions. Going back through those emotions and allowing them to take place is something that requires a lot of focus and a lot of effort.

And the more you become aware of your own emotions and your own desires, the more you discover something terrifying: you are full of shit.

We realize that a large percentage of our thoughts, arguments, and actions are merely reflections of whatever we are feeling in that moment. Level 3 is then to discover your blind spots: when are you reacting to your emotions, rather than acting based on conscious thought?

Once you’ve reached Level 3, then you’re set. You know who you are, and you know what you should be changing about yourself.

6. FOCUS ON FEWER THINGS (AND GET REALLY, REALLY GOOD AT THEM)
In our modern-day culture of make more, buy more, fuck more, be more, I’m guessing that some jackass on the internet telling you that “more” is not actually always “more” in life is sure to be drowned out pretty quickly with all the “life hacking” and “lifestyle optimization” podcasts and blog articles and blah blah blah out there.

One of the consequences of living in a time with seemingly endless opportunities is that you have to choose which opportunities to pursue (everything has a cost, remember?). And I hate to break it to you, but you can’t have it all. And so, for the vast, vast majority of things you do, you will simply be average. That’s OK. You don’t have to be a superstar at everything you do to live a meaningful life.

But if you can do one or a few things really, really well, you’ll be ahead of almost everyone else who’s distracted by their smartphones and arguing about things they have no influence over on Facebook.

(That reminds me: like me on Facebook so we can argue about things.)

7. STOP TRYING SO HARD
As counterintuitive and counterproductive as it sounds, a strange thing happens when you try too hard to do just about anything. Trying too hard to make friends or meet someone who’s willing to see you naked every now and then often has the opposite effect of chasing them away. Trying too hard to be cool often makes you look desperate and uncool. Trying to be happy often makes you miserable.

But there’s a simple fix, and no, it doesn’t involve lowering your standards. It only requires that you look at things a little differently than you have been. As hokey as it sounds, be grateful for what you have while you’re working towards what you want. Everything you need to be happy is likely right in front of you. Start taking the time to appreciate the simple pleasures in life, like having a beer with a friend, taking a walk in nature, calling your grandma and telling her you love her, going to a game with your buddies.

These things might seem mundane, but if you can’t enjoy the simple joys in life, you won’t enjoy much if and when you actually do change your life either.


hxxps://markmanson.net/how-to-change-your-life

i found this volunteer site. It will deliver locally cooked lasagna to those without food.

hxxps://lasagnalove.org/nominate/


It began during covid struggles. And whereas I don't think too many of us on here are in dire need, I felt I should share.

It seems to be a great idea. During the worst of all, my nieces would order me food and send it.

God bless those involved in helping others.

As the title styles , I have been working with a trusted vendor for years, recommended the contacts from here, however, now as I’m waiting for my zines , one of my other subscribers to the same magazine, informed me that there may possibly be audiobooks sent instead, in the form of a C.D.

Now a am a little uneasy. 

With admin’s permission, are we allowed to explore this particular topic or leave it be?

All blessed and all well 

Mystical Raven

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6 Things No Strong Woman Will EVER Tolerate In A Relationship
Jade Small
Freelance Writer
Posted: May 5, 2023
With the rise of the feminine movement, women have found their voice in society. It has paved the way for strong women to make decisions for themselves, and to determine what they want in a relationship. there are various things that women once put up with, that they will not stand for today. Here is a list of six things a strong woman will not tolerate from their partner.

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1. Strong Women Cannot Stand Being Dominated


For far too long, women have been pushed into the shadows. Their words were diminished, and the men of the world deemed them not strong enough to accomplish certain things. In the modern world, strong women have decided they are entirely capable of anything, and they will not be overpowered or dominated by their partners. They need to be allowed to carry out various activities, even if it seems challenging at first. Men need to resist taking the reins away from a strong woman as it will only cause frustration.

2. A Strong Woman’s Words Needs to Be Valued
Undervaluing your female partner’s words can be seriously damaging to your relationship. A strong woman has a voice, and a great desire to not only speak up but to be heard as well. If you disrespect your partner by undermining their opinion, they will not tolerate you for much longer. You might be pleasantly surprised by what they have to say when you allow yourself to listen appropriately.



3. A Strong Woman Will Not Tolerate a Lack of Emotional Communication
Strong women thrive off an emotional connection. Not only that, but they revel in a romantic connection that has an open-air for communicating each other’s emotional needs. Without efficient communication, misunderstanding will undoubtedly arise, causing a rift between the two of you. When this happens, a strong woman will not hesitate to walk away from the relationship. Additionally, emotional communication can help women to get through challenging situations. In other words, by expressing their emotions and seeking support from their partners, women can gain a better understanding of the situation and how to face it.



4. Do Not Disrespect a Strong Woman


At any point, disrespecting any woman is a complete no-go. But, some women, especially those who are victims of abuse, might not speak up when they feel they have been disrespected. A strong woman, however, will make it known that they do not appreciate your behavior toward them. So, make sure you listen appropriately and respect their words.




5. Strong Women Will Not be Manipulated
Furthermore, a strong woman has a strong sense of independence and autonomy. In other words, they have their own ideas for what is right for them, and they will not stand for any manipulation from their partners. Moreover, they are highly perceptive of the art of manipulation, and they are aware of how damaging any form of manipulation can be. So, if your female partner is walking away from your relationship, you might want to stop controlling them.



6. A Strong Woman’s Ambitions Need to Be Supported
A strong woman’s ambitions are a reflection of their true potential. This means that they are showing you just how much they believe in themselves for striving towards a certain goal. Furthermore, they have ideals for their future, which they are determined to fulfill. You, as their partner, need to support them in any way possible. So, if you have been doubting your female partner’s abilities, you might want to take a step back and admire their efforts instead.


hxxps://mysticalraven.com/relationships/24166/things-strong-women-dont-tolerate

This sounds much nicer and understanding than some of the things people usually say to stronger women.