On Thursday, April 30, 2026 09:55:36 AM [email protected] wrote:
> Sorry, changing the focus, I feel the need to rant and mention something
> that happened to me once. (I have some documentation on it, I made a
> police report, and I have a log of telephone activity on Google which
> proves it.
Darn, in the sentence below, the train left the station and got lost -- still
missing. :-(
> (And I don't think (I'm getting younger over time ;-), and as I
> do, my memory gets worse. ;-(
>
> On Tuesday, April 28, 2026 03:40:40 PM Andy Smith wrote:
> > A Google employee on the "mailop" mailing list once said that there is
> > absolutely no intentional way for gmail to silently discard an email,
> > unless a user with a Workspaces account has added filtering rules to do
> > that.
>
> I once made a voice call to one of my financial institutions, and got a
> scammer instead of the financial institution.
>
> I made two subsequent calls to the same number, documented by the Google
> voice telephone log. The log showed that I dialed the same number all 3
> times -- one went to a scammer / spammer, the next two got to the
> financial institution.
>
> I made a police report and I tried to investigate how that could happen,
> and in the course of doing so, posted something on one of the google
> support forums (right word?) about what happened.
>
> Someone on the list, whom I later realized was somehow a Google employee
> (maybe someone paid somehow to monitor the forums (and maybe provide help
> in some cases?), replied to say that was *absolutely impossible*,
> absolutely could not happen.
>
> Shortly thereafter, my post to the list disappeared.
>
> _uckers!
--
rhk
| Sorry about the sig -- some people think it is too long -- it is my soapbox.
(sig revised 20240703 -- new first paragraph (above))
(sig revised 20241111 -- new penultimate paragraph)
No entity has permission to use this email to train an AI.
If you reply: snip, snip, and snip again; leave attributions; avoid HTML;
avoid top posting; and keep it "on list". (Oxford comma (and semi-colon)
included at no charge.) If you revise the topic, change the Subject: line.
If you change the topic, start a new thread.
Writing is often meant for others to read and understand (legal documents
excepted?). Make it easier for your reader by various means, including
liberal use of whitespace (short paragraphs, separated by whitespace / blank
lines) and minimal use of (obscure?) jargon, abbreviations, acronyms, and
references.
If someone has already responded to a question, decide whether any response
you add will be helpful or not ...
A picture is worth a thousand words. A video (or "audio"): not so much --
divide by 10 for each minute of video (or audio) or create a transcript and
edit it to 10% of the original. (Remember Cicero who did not have enough time
to write a short missive.)
A speaker who uses ahhs, ums, or such may have a real physical or mental
disability, or may be showing disrespect for his listeners by not properly
preparing in advance and thinking before speaking. (That speaker might have
been "trained" to do this by being interrupted often if he pauses.)
A radio (or TV) station which broadcasts speakers with high pitched voices (or
very low pitched / gravelly voices) (which older people might not be able to
hear properly) disrespects its listeners. Likewise if it broadcasts
extraneous or disturbing sounds (like gunfire or crying), or broadcasts
speakers using their native language (with or without an overdubbed
translation).
| A news broadcast or snippet thereof which ends with the correspondent's name
instead of a recap of at least some key point(s) of the story does a
disservice to its (casual) listeners.
A person who writes a sig this long probably has issues and disrespects (and
offends) a large number of readers. ;-)
