Venting thread

[malloc]

Thanks for the suggestions, but given the sheer size and grotesquery of this scar, I fear that skin cream may not suffice. It would probably take completely novel technology to fix something like this. Biologically speaking, scars mean the complete the loss of many key skin features like hair follicles and sweat glands. Nothing you can buy off the shelf can make normal skin grow back. It would probably require stem cells or CRISPR or something.

Adding insult to literal injury, the only vegan restaurant in town has shuttered. The one respite in this horrible town gone forever with nothing to take its place. Perhaps the time has come to change my username to "Miseries Georg".

It might seem an overdramatic reaction, but I honestly feel nothing left to keep me going. I am thoroughly convinced that I will never experience another good day.

[doctor shark]

Start date in Luxembourg got delayed to 15 August due to the slugs at the HR not getting me the documents I need to apply for the residence authorization! [insert snarling noises]

[Raphael]

Start date in Luxembourg got delayed to 15 August due to the slugs at the HR not getting me the documents I need to apply for the residence authorization! [insert snarling noises]

That's messed up. [joins in the snarling]

[Travis B.]

Start date in Luxembourg got delayed to 15 August due to the slugs at the HR not getting me the documents I need to apply for the residence authorization! [insert snarling noises]

That's messed up. [joins in the snarling]

Don'tcha love HR? [forms a snarling chorus with those already snarling]

[doctor shark]

Start date in Luxembourg got delayed to 15 August due to the slugs at the HR not getting me the documents I need to apply for the residence authorization! [insert snarling noises]

That's messed up. [joins in the snarling]

Don'tcha love HR? [forms a snarling chorus with those already snarling]

I know! Though it looks like it's a bit of a blessing that my move is a bit delayed, because it turns out the apartment I put a lot of money down as a deposit to rent was faker than my one ex-coworker's toupée. Never thought I'd fall victim to a housing scam, but, alas, I thought everything seemed fine... until my bank sent me a fraud alert, and then I took a closer look at the photos.

Now I get the "fun" and "exciting" experience of making a police report tomorrow. Whee!

[Travis B.]

That's messed up. [joins in the snarling]

Don'tcha love HR? [forms a snarling chorus with those already snarling]

I know! Though it looks like it's a bit of a blessing that my move is a bit delayed, because it turns out the apartment I put a lot of money down as a deposit to rent was faker than my one ex-coworker's toupée. Never thought I'd fall victim to a housing scam, but, alas, I thought everything seemed fine... until my bank sent me a fraud alert, and then I took a closer look at the photos.

Now I get the "fun" and "exciting" experience of making a police report tomorrow. Whee!

Ugh.

[doctor shark]

The "landlord" claims that she's going to explain everything tomorrow, so I'll hold off on the police report until I hear from her, but, to be honest, when you break my trust like that (and in such a flagrant way), I'm not sure how much more I'm willing to trust you. I've signed the lease, but I'm very seriously tempted to just ask to cancel the lease (since it's yet to go into effect, and it's at least now two months before I'm supposed to move; whee!).

More: show

As for the red flags that I didn't notice until today:

• She cancelled the visit my friend was supposed to make to the place with very short notice (granted, with a plausible explanation). No worry; I thought the photos were fine enough, and I knew where the location is. So everything seemed above the board...
• On the other hand, I checked the Luxembourgish cadastral registry today because that's a recommendation that's made anymore for renters. Funnily, it doesn't list the place I'm supposed to rent as an apartment, but an office. That's an issue, and that could also lead to serious issues down the road for the mandatory residence registration...
• Bank transfers that I'd made (or that they send to me, ostensibly) went missing, despite the fact it's the SEPA zone where the transfers should be close to instantaneous! And, of course, there were some transfers to accounts that were her husband's and hers, but, looking back the fact that I sent transfers between four different bank accounts, seemingly unable to communicate with each other, should have raised concerns. (Granted, I know how problematic dealing with banks can be; mine here in the Netherlands is quite special, but still...)
• The pièce de la résistance: the photos she sent "of the place" weren't even of a residence in Europe, but they were of an apartment in Québec. I can't believe I didn't notice the American plugs in the images, though they were really quite small and difficult to notice unless you knew what to look for. And I discovered it was Québec with a simple reverse image search.

I feel a bit like a fool for not noticing these things earlier...

[bradrn]

I feel a bit like a fool for not noticing these things earlier...

In fairness to you, ‘this listing is an elaborate scam’ is not necessarily a possibility you’re considering. If anything, I commend you on picking it up before anything bad happened!

[zompist]

The "landlord" claims that she's going to explain everything tomorrow

[...] [*]The pièce de la résistance: the photos she sent "of the place" weren't even of a residence in Europe, but they were of an apartment in Québec. I can't believe I didn't notice the American plugs in the images, though they were really quite small and difficult to notice unless you knew what to look for.

There's no "explanation" for something like that! My worry would be that she disappears with your money... can your bank get involved in reversing the transfers?

Last time we were looking for a rental we found (but didn't fall for) two scams that sound very similar to this one. An apartment was listed at a great rate, and the pitch was that the owner was out of the country and we should "look at the property" from outside, and send a deposit without seeing it. That's a huge red flag: never rent a place unseen. With a little Googling we found that the place had been on the market earlier, for a much higher price... the scammer just re-used the photos.

[doctor shark]

The "landlord" claims that she's going to explain everything tomorrow

[...] [*]The pièce de la résistance: the photos she sent "of the place" weren't even of a residence in Europe, but they were of an apartment in Québec. I can't believe I didn't notice the American plugs in the images, though they were really quite small and difficult to notice unless you knew what to look for.

There's no "explanation" for something like that! My worry would be that she disappears with your money... can your bank get involved in reversing the transfers?

Last time we were looking for a rental we found (but didn't fall for) two scams that sound very similar to this one. An apartment was listed at a great rate, and the pitch was that the owner was out of the country and we should "look at the property" from outside, and send a deposit without seeing it. That's a huge red flag: never rent a place unseen. With a little Googling we found that the place had been on the market earlier, for a much higher price... the scammer just re-used the photos.

I just called the bank this past afternoon to alert them! The less bad news is that everything was done by traceable wire transfers, so we have names and we have numbers.

But, yeah, the thing is that I've rented a few places sight unseen for various reasons (when I moved to Tulipland, for example, in the middle of Covid-related emotional distancing and border closures, though I rented through an agency...) just based on photographs and videos (in some cases), so there was nothing that concerned me until my bank called me and mentioned their concerns about the transfers. Neither of the three times I've rented without seeing the place gave me any problems: everything was fine and the apartments were as promised. The price also didn't seem to be too low to be believable: I know the Luxembourg rental market is competitive, but the offer was €1300 for 41 sq.m. (and I previously paid €1150 for 33 sq.m. not too far away), so that seemed fine!

Lesson learned; the explanation more is to see whether or not I involve the police.

UPDATE: And it gets a bit more interesting! She had originally offered me a place that I turned down due to uncertainty about my moving date. I looked online and the photos of that place were for a rental apartment near Paris. It was a bit more subtle to detect, but after having been scammed for this, I decided to look to see if she did it a second time through a simple reverse image search. Lo and behold, she did!

[Raphael]

Oh my. Sorry to hear that, doctor shark.

[doctor shark]

Update: after I told her I wanted to cancel the contract, she offered to immediately refund me all the money that I've sent no later than Tuesday. She also came up with the "omg somebody stole my pictures" excuse, but I half wanted to say "bitch, those were not pictures of an apartment in Luxembourg; look at the plugs". And she came up with all these other excuses which I don't buy. (The cadastral registry does not lie, and there were no other apartments in that building.) Quite frankly, if I get the money back, all is fine. Even so, I still want to report the fraud to the police, because it appears to be all too common...

[Ahzoh]

I don't know what to do, I think my mom is slowly becoming anti-trans. Cuz she thinks there "a few people with power making legislation that will effectively eras womanhood" and that she thinks if she expresses her feelings on thw matter then she would be labelled a transphobe. She really thinks the trans movement is just full of crazies that want to deny her experience as a woman.

And because I push back on some of this attitude she accuse me of caring more about trans people than her and her experience as a woman and women.

[Raphael]

Observing horrible attitudes in someone you care about a lot must be really tough. Commiserations.

[Ahzoh]

Observing horrible attitudes in someone you care about a lot must be really tough. Commiserations.

She thinks activists for trans women are trying to tell her and other cis women how they should feel about what they think is an infringement on their spaces.
And she cites specific examples of this infringement.

Also says that lesbians are only lesbians if they are attracted to cis women.

[Ahzoh]

My mom now accuses me of being a misogynist because she thinks I disregard her "and other women's lived experience of being a woman".
And she thinks I do that because I defend trans people who want to be included under the banner of "woman" and included in woman spaces.

She doesn't see trans people as women or men but as a third (or fourth) gender and therefore have no right to be in women's spaces. Because only women who are both biologically women (gonads, hormone distribution, and chromosomes) AND who grew up as a cis girl/woman deserve to be called women. Her line drawn for "grow up as a woman" is very strange and arbitrary. For example, she cites one person who was raised as a girl and has the parts of a girl, but she still would not consider her a "true woman" because she was still chromosomally a male, just one whose sex was not expressed normally. Even someone who is for all intents and purposes a biological woman and who grew up as a woman, is not a woman to her because "they'll dig up her remains and see that they're an XY male".

So while she claims to acknowledge their identity and will refer to them by their pronouns, all she sees are a bunch of ex-men who, characteristic of men raised as men, just want to shove their way into the few bastions of womanspace that women have fought tooth and nail to establish.

Like she saying "the trans activists" are trying to pass laws to more and more infringe on women's spaces and she's like "I'm not allowed as a woman to express how I feel on the topic or allowed to be uncomfortable around transwomen with their erections out or determine and gatekeep who belongs in woman's spaces without getting labelled a transphobe, even though I was one of the many who fought in support of trans people"

[xxx]

we could talk about cultural appropriation,
if that weren't such a ridiculous concept...

the idea of other genders seems self-evident,
but is difficult to manage in practice...

however, it seems that the multiplication of castes,
whether racial (races don't exist)
or sexual (sex is nobody's business)
or religious (turned into political weapons)
or cultural (if we can speak of culture in the wind bubbles generated by social networks),
is a constant in our Western societies of social reengineering,
which place its members in a state of maximum insecurity
and constant aggression under the guise of freedom sold as happiness...

[rotting bones]

Fever.

[Raphael]

Fever.

Get better!

[Raphael]

I seem to have mislaid some fairly important documents.