Mat Lehnhoff

Weekend read(s): I'll use an easy trick and direct you to someone else's compiled weekend reads. Longreads and Open Thread, by Byrne Hobart, is a free, weekly link with 4-6 longreads and short book review. I enjoy reading usually at least one of the longer stories linked.
 
 Excerpt:
 
 "Jobs vary in how salesy they are, and, unfortunately, the purest sales job, where success is all about the pitch and gross margins are 100%, is running elaborate scams. Charlotte Cowles writes at length about how she was tricked into withdrawing $50,000 in cash, putting it in a shoebox, and handing it to a stranger. Feel free to read this one as a train wreck, but keep in mind that scammers would choose a different line of business if people reasonable enough to accumulate savings weren't also occasionally unreasonable enough to part with them based on a lie. As with many movies where the entire plot could be solved with a simple phone call, the story would have been a tweet and the $50,000 still would have been there if, the first time the author spoke to the fake CIA agent, she took down his name and number and then promptly hung up, Googled the CIA's phone number, called, and asked to be connected. Emails and incoming phone numbers can be spoofed, but if calling a government agency (or your bank, or the cops) still gets you redirected to scammers, then the problem is much bigger than somebody getting robbed."
 
 https://lnkd.in/ecZrgYE9