Comments

Episode-2095- Listener Feedback for 10-9-17 — 22 Comments

  1. Jack, you’re an audio/video guy, at least a lot more than most, I saw a vid from a guy that claims that two weapons were used at the same time, a beltfed and a burst auto rifle. His video analysis is very compelling but I have no way of knowing if he is altering it to sensationalize this tragedy.

    P.S. This would be going very, very deep down the rabbit hole, so I don’t blame you if you completely dismiss this post or delete it.

    https://youtu.be/nG2oQ65zi-Q

    • This is the ignoring of reality likely by a guy that has never heard a single round of gun fire in the field. Shit echos, reverberates, etc.

      It is frankly a bunch of nonsense!

      EVERY SINGLE MASS SHOOTING people say there is more than one shooter, if you ever get your ass shot at you will know why.

      Consider all the videos of “muzzle flashes” from other floors. Oh okay so was that Chris Angel or David Copperfield firing though the other windows with NO HOLES IN THEM.

      If you think about this rationally there is nothing amazing about a guy firing spray and pray at this range with bump stock modified rifles letting loose that much ammo in about 11 minutes. Since he used more than one weapon there would be different sounds, since people move when shot at and FILMING shit at the same time sound will change.

      Shoot one angel you get one sound on the echo, shoot another it sounds totally different.

      This all stems from saying, “this makes no sense” then the mind tries to rationalize it.

      I still feel something stinks here, but most of the theories are just nonsense. The focus should be on the guy, was he a LEO asset, was he being worked, coerced in some way, etc.

      Plainly if you gave me a hammer and a few guns, I could have done what this guy did without it even being hard.

  2. Regarding telemarketers, Jack- there’s an app for that! Kind of. You’re going to love this from an automation standpoint. Get ready to really laugh your socks off when you hear some of the samples this genius has had occur- it’s the hardest I had laughed in a year. Worth a listen even if you’re not a telecom engineer like me (though you kinda are too, Jack). And likely worth a subscription. I’ve been getting a lot more daily random domestic calls like you described, and they can be handled with a simple transfer to this brilliant service. It’s all about wasting their time indeed! But letting a trained bot do it.

    http://www.jollyrogertelco.com

    • I second this option. Best part is you can opt to have them send you an email of the recording between the bot and phone scammer.

      $6/year and works as long as you have call forwarding.

  3. As an accountant I often get calls at work from collection agencies offering to collect our outstanding receivables. When I worked in NY I used to tell them that I already had a collection agency. His name was Vinny, and he lived in The Bronx. They would laugh and say “that’s pretty funny” until I said to them in a dead serious voice, “Dude, do you think I’m joking?” Then they would start stammering and apologizing and hang up. LOL

    Another trick I used on someone trying to give me a “free” vacation was to ask a million questions, get them to explain the whole deal to me, tell them I am really interested, but need to know if I’m allowed to sign up since I’m only 16 years old…

  4. Jack I really appreciate you commenting on Vin’s podcast and views. I listened to his theory on Area 51 drones and wasn’t sure what happened to reality.

    Still really like Vin but that was some deep end stuff.

    Thanks

  5. Just wanted to share my story of a cop that really seemed to want me for some reason, but to spoil the ending, I wound up not getting pulled over.

    I was just graduated, on my way home from work. It was the main US Route through a pretty rural area, so two lanes each way and stoplights maybe every 5 to 10 miles, but not a ton of traffic.

    Anyways, I’m sitting at a red light when a state cops pulls up behind me. Not an unusual event, but given the area, not an every day occurance either. Light turns green, I go and mindful of who’s behind me, I stop accelerating at 5 under the posted limit. The cop follows… at about 5 feet from my rear bumper.

    It’s a 4-lane road, I’m in the driving lane, and there’s no traffic stopping him from going around. After about a mile, I, like Jack, set the cruise and continue to be careful of the lines. At about the two mile mark, he pulls over and into my blind spot and processes to ride there for another two miles.

    At around the 4 mile mark, about the time I’m considered taking the next turnoff just to try and get out of this situation, I hear him gun his engine and come flying past me, no lights, no siren. Based on some back of an envelope math later, he must have been going at least 30 to 35 miles over the limit, and that’s probability a low end estimate.

    Anyways, since I traveled the route fairly regularly, I knew there was a speed trap about a mile ahead at the crest of a hill where the speed limited dropped 20 mph for a short section to due a quirk in regulations about sight lines for emergency vehicles and there being a hospital directly off that exit. Amusing side note: The state cops ran that speed trap into the ground to the point that the DOT actually removed the speed limit signs from that section of the road for several years.

    Anyways, I had a gut feeling that’s exactly here he was heading and planned accordingly. Sure enough, as soon as I crested the hill, still 5 mph under the posted limit, he was there, radar gun in hand. The look on his face as I passed him I can best describe as a mix of fury and disgust.

    Before I had reached the bottom of the hill, maybe half a mile further, I saw in my mirror he already had a car that was behind me pulled over, lights and siren going. I don’t know why he had such a hard on to try and pull me over, but I can say for certain, I wouldn’t have wanted to been in the car he took as a consolation prize.

  6. I remember (many) years ago when my mother was still alive, we got a phone call from a phone company to sell us a “cheaper” landline. They’d called a number of times but repeatedly ignored my mother’s request not to call.

    That day I answered the phone, listened to the spiel and said that while it was my mother’s phone, I “recognized” it as being a great deal. I said that she was in the bathroom and could they wait a couple of minutes and I’d get her to come to the phone.

    I put the phone down and did a few things for 5 minutes and came back to the phone. The guy was still on the line, so I told him that Mum was still indisposed but she shouldn’t be too long. I’d told her through the door that he was on the line and reiterated what a good deal he was giving us. Asked him to hold again.

    Managed to repeated this for about 20-30 minutes before I finally put my mother on the line where she simply said “I’m not interested” and hung up.

    After weeks of getting calls once every couple of days, they suddenly didn’t call anymore.

  7. Thanks for answering my question related to Vin Armani Jack. I wish I had heard this weeks show before I sent it because this weeks segment really gave me a much different perspective than I had after his claim last week. He basically threw out the theory last week with nothing to back it up at all. At least this week I feel like he did some in depth analysis but I suspect it was done with more than a pinch of confirmation bias. I am much less likely to trust his analysis in the future though given what appears to be his willingness to reach a conclusion and then go looking for the evidence rather than letting the evidence take him where it will. I am not sure if that is fair since I have never seen that from him before but I now will probably always wonder a bit if he had reached his conclusion before doing his research.

    All that being said I do think he raises some interesting inconsistencies and oddities in the story. I also think the change in timeline this week raises a lot of questions.

    I still think his claim is batshit crazy and I say that as someone with military background and experience with high level clearances. This seems to be something people who espouse most of these conspiracy theories never wrap their heads around; something being highly classified does not somehow make it magic or remove the ability of those involved to think for themselves. In reality most of these people are truly mission oriented folks whose real goal is to protect our country even if they might be misguided in how they do so at times. They can often be persuaded to do things maybe they shouldn’t if you show a benefit to “national security” but at the end of the day the idea that they would be willing to test their weapons on unwitting citizens is preposterous. You might get some of them to go along with testing them on “the enemy” who they have dehumanized but I have yet to meet anyone at any level with any security clearance that I think you could convince to go along with testing on US citizens in the US and it would take way more than one to be willing to pull off a test like Vin is suggesting.

    • Scott, I wish I shared your optimism with regards to anyone working for the government firing on it’s own citizens. I’m not saying Armani is right, but I am saying that all evidence points to our government of being capable of just about anything. Putting black sites and torture aside, there’s internment of Japanese Americans into prison camps, the Kent State shooting, gun confiscation after Katrina, The Bonus Army incident, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Prohibition poisoning program, Operation Northwoods, etc., etc., And their criminal record gives no indication they’ve changed.

      As the Stanford prison experiment demonstrated, even nice, well-meaning people can be turned into monsters under the right conditions.

      • I think there is a large difference between the examples you give and running a weapons test on a crowd of completely unwitting Americans. Internment camps were not about killing the Japanese citizens although I can see where maybe it could have gotten to that point because you could lump them in with the other which you dehumanize. Thankfully we didn’t get that far. Kent Sate is more akin to police shootings in my mind where you put someone in a situation where all it takes is a spark to light the powder keg off, that is not at all what this is about. Katrina was not about killing those citizens either. I am not saying you can’t get people in the government to do things they should not but it requires the establishment of an other and their dehumanization to get a group to do that and that is not something you could even begin to make a case for in the Vegas shooting.

    • Fair points and I think we pretty much agree but maybe differ on what we think is possible and probable. Probably just a reflection of personality. And of what goes on in my dark little head, lol.

    • I didn’t think much of Vin’s theory either. But given he has a natural bias against and contempt for gov’t and hasn’t been in the military or worked in a clearance position (at least that I’m aware of), I can sort of understand why he might leap to that hypothesis.

      Sure anything is a POSSIBILITY, but given the difficulties in keeping such a project secret beyond a very small group, knowing the way the people and structures within military and/or intelligence community think and operate (again, which isn’t necessarily obvious to those who haven’t been exposed to it), and the lack of any tangible benefit beyond a real-world weapons test, it all makes it very highly improbable.

      As you say, most people working in those areas are not bad people… many of them can be myopic, close-minded, and conditioned to think certain ways (in my experience anyway), but are still generally decent folks. To Chad’s point, I have no doubt there are SOME people in gov’t who could push for or at least go along with such an atrocity if the gain was sufficient… but from a completely cold-blooded perspective I just don’t see any gain outweighing the risk of discovery.

      Plus I figure if such people REALLY wanted to do such a test, it would be more logical to do it in some war-torn and/or inconsequential country where you’d get the same results with much less scrutiny.

      All that said, while I don’t think much of this theory of Vin’s, I don’t see it as invalidating any other positions/opinions. I like to examine and muse over what seems sensible and is close to his wheelhouse, and discard or disregard the rest. James Kunstler is another example of someone I feel the same way about (well probably more so actually)… valuable insights about some things, but other things are often based too much on bias or a personal belief system to give much consideration.

      • It is usually those who have never served and specifically never held a clearance of any kind that believe the State could do something like this an keep it hidden (no leaks). You are right though, when you’ve been on the inside you feel like this about such claims. http://e.lvme.me/pzv5j7l.jpg

        My bigger reason is IT MAKES NO SENSE.

        One reason conspiracy theories get traction is they make more sense and/or answer questions the main stream narrative doesn’t. Vin’s makes less sense than the mainstream narrative and creates more questions.

        What is the goal?

        Testing a drone. Sorry we have much better tests than spraying and praying a crowd at a concert.

        Getting gun control. So you do this with a republican congress and president when it is never going to happen?

        If the state did it, someone had to order it, so who ordered it?

        The president. Well it in no way benefits him, so that seems unlikely. The head of the CIA? Really, the guy Trump appointed this year who has never been in such a position before just did this, etc. There is no one with authority to do this, that it would make sense for them to do it.

        I could keep going but my buddy’s theory simply makes no sense and more importantly there is zero supporting evidence of it being reality.

  8. Hey playing with telemarketers can be fun but your number is put on better “lists” because you stayed on the phone longer than just hearing from a robot and hanging up. The algorithm looks at you as a good candidate for others to call and you number is sold at a higher cost. Like I said fun but your asking for a lot more calls.
    Also as far as the Do Not Call list no one polices these complaints. I worked for Verizon, before John Spirko 😉 help me get a better job homesteading, and even there we payed no attention to the DNC lists

    • Please stop saying this, this is the same shit that went on for 10 years that if you unsubed from an email list you got more spam.

      Do you know how these systems work? Well I will tell you how, they are automated, they just take a an area code say 214 and a prefix say 462 and start dialing 214-462-0001, 214-462-0002, 214-462-0003, 214-462-0004, 214-462-0005, etc.

      You also can’t lock the incoming numbers because they all spoof the DIDs now, which is easy to do.

  9. Yes I do know how various different type of automated dialers work and not just the one style you’ve mentioned. I worked for years in a corporate Verizon wireless sales call center managing about 150 people. Please stop saying that that’s the only dialing systems out there. Automated dialing random numbers is an cheap way to spam people. Phone numbers are sold on lists. Lists of phone numbers that engage (stay on the line) are reissued and sold for more money.
    You know marketing you have a number that tracks longer engagement times and it’s worth more $.
    Email is different and email providers spend millions on ways to filter emails, no one give 2 shits about the do not call lists.
    Phone numbers are bought and sold every day and to think there isn’t a better way then just going down the list in numerical order is kinda close minded. What would jack say? Lol jk

    • Any issued number is a known, this ship sailed log ago. Bluntly at this point saying that if you answer one telemarketer you are going to got on other “lists” is the propagation of total bullshit, just like the don’t unsubscribe from an email list myth that finally died a merciful death some time about 2010.

      • Maybe you’re right but in my VZW days we tracked what kind of a customer they were by the type of calls into any channel of the company. With sales it was valuable for us to know what numbers/customers did what during our interactions. All that Verizon doesn’t do is sell this information.

        I’m sure you in marketing would love to be able to distinguish between numbers that just disconnect when they hear a marketing call or other numbers of suckers, I mean customers, who engage these spammers. Your close rate would be much higher. Especially if you keep getting calls from the same dam call center, you’d be a fool to not understand that if their sales reps can keep you on the phone for 4 minutes that’s someone we want to try again on.

        Also we would never rely on our underpaid college graduates to determine whether or not a customer was a good lead. They look at the large overall numbers. Metadata baby! Remember these big call centers handle many different scams.

        Never heard of the email thing you keep referring to but there are reports on click rates on email marketing and that’s what I’d compare my point to.

        I’m also not saying if you put yourself on the don’t call list you will get more calls. Also sequential dialers are not really used because you can filter numbers to types of customers you’re looking for. What were the 3 questions you should ask in the previous episode again? I’m going to look them up and apply them here…

        • You can ask all the questions you want, those are a good place to start but in something like this evidence is a lot more important.

          Claim – Answering the phone and fucking with telemarketers makes more telemarketers call.

          You have made a claim but provided zero evidence to prove it. Companies sell data, no shit, FWIW carriers like Verizon are forbidden by Federal law to share or sell data. Well except with the federal government of course for spying on the American people.

  10. Hi Jack, did I miss the link to the shade meter you mentioned in the podcast? We just bought 7 acres in Southampton, NJ (45 minutes from the ocean, 50 min from Philly, 90 min south of NYC) We have lots of trees (oak, maple, and pine). Only grass is over the septic system. We want to garden, have chickens, and see what else our time and property can support. I guess I should call or write in with ALL my other questions, but for now, just info on the shade meter would be great. Love the work you do. Marjorie Wildcraft mentioned you at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs PA 9/2016 (couldn’t go this year, in the middle of moving) and so glad I looked you up.