The digital surveillance and the social credit scores in China. It’s easy to ridicule the Chinese but how many people right over here can’t wait until everybody is assigned a scorecard with a list of transgressions against speech codes and “murderous thoughts”? How many people think it’s a brilliant idea to exclude folks from employment on the basis of such transgressions?

Very many.

“I’ll just take a break today,” I said to myself. “Stay in bed reading, take a long bath. Let me just answer a couple of student emails, and I’ll begin to rest.” I even didn’t make the bed (which is truly exceptional for me. I hate unmade beds) to make it look more inviting.

That was at 8 am. Now it’s noon and I just finished grading/moderating/doing the association stuff/answering emails/registering for conferences, etc. And now I have to leave for my Global Entry appointment.

That’s it for rest this week.

My hotel in Germany is the bomb. It is in a very old, historic building and it faces the town’s huge Gothic cathedral. It’s been a long time since I was awakened by church bells. It’s a whole different feeling, folks.

The MLA is now offering to place your “Twitter handle” on your convention badge. That badge costs $190, by the way.

There are a number of techniques scammers use to get people to pick up the phone, but the most popular method is known as “Neighborhood Spoofing,” which happens when a scammer disguises their phone number and displays it as a local number on a user’s caller ID. For example, a scammer may spoof their phone number to match the area code and 3-digit prefix of the person they are targeting and ultimately increase the likelihood of someone answering.

I love it when scammers use neighborhood spoofing. My phone has a New York area code because that’s where I lived when I got my first smartphone. I don’t know anybody there any longer because this was over a decade ago. So when I get these calls, I immediately know it’s a scam.