Mitch's Blog

Laura Cole writes at Wired about fake dating sites that employ hundreds of freelancers around the world “to animate fake profiles and chat with people who have signed up for dating and hookup sites…. Often recruited into ‘customer support’ or content moderation roles, they found themselves playing roles in sophisticated operations set up to tease subscription money from lonely hearts looking for connections online.”

These reps, who often work for pennies from developing countries, roleplay as women with incredibly detailed—and fictional—biographies and profiles, messaging men on online dating sites. The reps rapidly toggle through many characters in each work shift, and each operator might roleplay as hundreds of women, all while sitting at laptops in their homes.

As with many sophisticated criminal operations, I am both appalled and amazed at the sophistication.

This morning, a little after 8, I was on my way home from walking the dog, one street over from the house, and I saw a coyote loping down the street. One of the neighbors, still in her red pajamas and slippers, stood in the street and watched. We chatted about the coyote and where it might live. That coyote has been around lately; I recognize it.

I’m pretty sure that a coyote won’t attack a full-sized adult person. And while coyotes will kill and eat small and even medium-sized dogs if the dog is unattended, I’m pretty sure a coyote won’t attack a dog on a leash accompanied by a full-sized adult person. I need to look into that.

Here are tips for keeping a dog safe from coyotes. I used to have a whistle on a keychain, but the keychain fastener broke a few months ago, and I stopped carrying it with me. I should replace that.

This was only the latest in a series of nature encounters this morning.

When policing the backyard for canine by-product at about 6:30, I heard ducks grumbling in a corner of the garden where we do not usually get ducks. It’s a little fenced-off triangle at the corner of the yard, up against the house, where there are a lot of potted plants. Later, Julie said that’s probably a good place for ducks to nest.

Two minutes later, back inside the house, I saw one of our garden squirrels scuttling around on a big palm tree immediately outside the window.

Two minutes after that, bringing the dog through the garden gate, I saw a skeletal-looking dragonfly hanging still next to the gatepost, about five feet off the ground. The dragonfly was dead and caught in a spiderweb. Somebody had a good breakfast this morning.

And twenty minutes after that, I was at the park and saw two adult Canada geese and about eight goslings, almost on the footpath, much closer than usual. The goslings are half-grown now, with their adult colors. The female and goslings were pecking at the ground. The gander stood by the path and ordered me and the dog to fuck off.