Fwd: TRUE 1639: Rocky Mountain High
Padmanabha Vyasamoorthy
From: This is True <ar...@thisistrue.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2025 at 08:47
Subject: TRUE 1639: Rocky Mountain High
To: <vyasam...@gmail.com>
Since 1994, this is the 1639th issue of Randy Cassingham’s...
| 9 November 2025: Rocky Mountain High | Copyright ©2025 https://thisistrue.com |
Dirty Money: An investigation by the Reuters news agency uncovered internal documents by Meta Inc., the parent company of Facebook, revealing that last year, Meta made about $16 billion running ads for scams and banned goods. Worse, the company has failed to address that ethical lapse for at least three years, and shows its users about 15 billion “higher
risk” scam ads every day, plus around 22 billion “organic scam attempts” such as private messages from scammers to victims. The company has internal systems to ban such ads, but takes action only when the systems are “at least 95% certain” the ads are fraudulent; meanwhile, it rejected or ignored 96 percent of users’ complaints about scammers. Before that trigger, the company simply charges the advertisers extra, boosting its own profits from the scam operations. And when users do click
on such ads, its algorithms automatically show those users more of the scammy ad inventory. Last year a British regulator found that Meta was involved in 54 percent of all financial losses due to scams — more than double than all of its competitors combined. Meta’s documents estimate that the company is involved in promoting about a third of all successful scams being perpetuated in the United States, making it “a pillar of the global fraud economy.” (RC/Reuters) ...Fraud: a global industry.
Meta: its leading logistics partner.
Lay Lie: WHY the Florida Man started shooting at the people he met in the bar is the key, and even police could hardly believe it. [Premium Only]
What’s Love Got to Do With It: Palimony is still a thing, even in other countries. [Premium Only]
Et Tu, Norway? An ethical forehead-slapper. [Premium Only]
Treat and Trick: An interesting twist on freaking out children about adulterated candy. [Premium Only]
Not a Creature Was Stirring: An interesting twist on unlikely wildlife spotting. [Premium Only]
Get Out the Vote: Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said his office was getting an influx of calls on election day this year, asking why the polls were closed. “They are closed because we do not have elections today,” he explained in a social media post. “Kentucky votes next year.” While many states did have elections, there were no national elections. And, as Adams went on to explain, “You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry.” He also added a follow-up post: “Have I mentioned my repeated call for civic education?” The famous former-Republican lawyer, George Conway, replied, “There is a distinct possibility that some people are too stupid to participate in a democracy.” (MS/WAVE Louisville, Newsweek) ...One human, one vote. Brain cells optional.
Last Call: The unluckiest building in (former) commerce. [Premium Only]
Take a Chance: Driver dries to get of a ticket with a Get Out of Jail Free “Chance” card from a Monopoly game. Of course it didn’t work: that’s the wrong card! [Premium Only]
Week 9 of No Ads: You got that ads are a lousy way to support independent content — that you really need to step up to help keep things running. Well, except that this week, everyone depended on someone else to do that support. With recent “extras” we only needed 3 to remove ads for this week, but not even one of you upgraded. So unless there are TEN by next week, ads start again next Friday. I was really hoping we would get to 10 straight weeks. :-( Please do step up: I’d much rather readers support True than ads: upgrade here. To see the missing stories from this week, ask for your upgrade to start with Issue 1639.
Extra Thrills on the Thrill Ride: Saving a life on a roller coaster. [Premium Only]
Double Play: An amusing World Series side story. [Premium Only]
A Little Matter: A mother was waiting in line at iPlay America in Freehold, N.J., when she was told she wasn’t tall enough for a Go-Kart ride. She was. Indeed, the 55-year-old explained to a manager, she’d actually been allowed to go before. “Children waiting in line behind her became upset and began to shout at her because of the delay,” the woman (or her lawyer) told a court. The kids called her a “Karen” and a white ...uh... female dog. She was “terribly embarrassed and humiliated,” especially because her children were there. Her lawsuit against iPlay was thrown out last year, and now a higher court has confirmed that decision, saying that “verbal insults that occur spontaneously cannot be reasonably prevented” and the venue is not required to prevent them. Nevertheless, the court made clear that it did not endorse the “derogatory and pejorative comments.” (AC/Trenton Times) ...Because filing a lawsuit over being called a Karen does not legally prove you are one.
May As Well: “Rod” is the owner of a little yellow house in Maysville, Colo., and says he knew about the
tradition before he bought the house 7 years ago. It’s known to locals — and Maysville is tiny enough that “locals” are spread fairly widely — as the Honk House, as it’s tradition to honk at the house when driving by. It’s along a two-lane portion of U.S. Highway 50 in the Rockies between Denver and the more-rural western part of the state, and it’s been going on for around 80 years. Most of the people driving by therefore have no idea as to why they’re supposed to beep their horn, they just
remember their parents did it. It goes back to Harry Miller, who built the house for his wife. She would sit in the window and wave at cars when they went by. When she died, Harry took over the job of waving: drivers considered it “good luck” as they headed up to the 11,312-ft (3,448m) Monarch Pass, which marks the Continental Divide, or as thanks for good passage on the way down. Harry died in 1976. The honking has never stopped. Rod says he recently spent 2 months in the hospital, and the
energy he’s received from the honkers helped him heal. He still waves back. (RC/KMGH Denver) ...You know it’s OK since he uses all of his fingers.
Pucker Factor
Man Pulls Knife on Victim in Miami Publix Bathroom Because He ‘Really Needed to Use’ Stall
WPLG Miami (Fla.) headline
Did You Find an Error? Check the Errata Page for updates.
This Week’s Contributors: MS-Mike Straw, AC-Alexander Cohen, RC-Randy Cassingham.
Stories This Week were Written/Edited in Cairns, Qld., Australia. Locals would like you to know that the city is pronounced “cans” — no R sound sneaks in.
Kit and I Drove back and forth between “the front range” (Denver-Boulder area) and “the western slope” many, many times over 25 years, and Kit could never not point out “the little yellow house in Maysville” when we went by. Yet she never knew of the “Honk House” legend until I read her the story Sunday night before I sent the package to the editors.
Kit knew it as a Bed & Breakfast; she was a B&B consultant for many years, and an inspector for the Colorado B&B Association, but she never did get into that property. She was simply charmed by the architecture and the attention-getting yellow paintjob. The current owner bought the house from the B&B owner. We certainly noticed when the B&B’s sign came down — I of course became well acquainted with the house as we zoomed back and forth at 50 mph countless times.
And now it’s forever enshrined in the This is True archives.
Premium Subscriber Bill writes, “I’ve noticed, particularly in [last week’s] issue, a few people in the state of Pennsylvania (of which I am a former resident) are giving a few people in the state of Florida (of which I am now a current resident) some competition. There is a reason we have always referred to everything between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as Pennsyltucky (is that wrong?).” And yes, it’s a complete coincidence that there is a fine example of obliviocy from Kentucky in this week’s issue: I didn’t know about it until Mike pitched the story to me on Friday, and I told him to get it to me right away!
Anyway, I told Bill that’s not “wrong,” but maybe it’s “bad.” Let’s just say (I continued) that when I’m categorizing stories into my archive, only two of the categories are state names. Obviously, Florida is one. The other is “Florida North” ...though that is actually labeled Pennsylvania. Sorry! In other words, I told him, it seems you jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire when you retired.
It’s not that everyone from the Keystone State is dumb (or, for that matter, all Floridians!) There are very dumb — and very smart — people in every state and country. Some just have quite the knack of getting into the news. Wait’ll you see the astounding story a longtime Pennsylvania reader sent me this week involving a teen DUI: it’s definitely in the queue for next week.
Mark in Texas: “I’ve long been a big fan of your work, and have been wanting to reach out to tell you how much I and my family enjoy This is True. I think you’d get a kick out of hearing that I’ve been doing something similar, but on a much smaller scale, since my freshman year in college (1969). Back then my fraternity house received 4 different local thru national newspapers, and I enjoyed scouring thru them to find & clip the bizarre and absurd stories. I started posting them on the house bulletin board, and it became such a popular feature that the clippings soon overwhelmed the other notices, and we eventually dedicated a separate board labeled ‘AMAZING CRAP’ just for these clippings!
“When I left college and began my engineering career, I continued the tradition with an Amazing Crap bulletin board in my office (discreetly hung behind the door); it became so popular that my office experienced an endless stream of visitors dropping by daily to check for ‘new crap’! Of course, years later — with the advent of the digital age — I found This is True and just HAD to start following! Thanks for all the ongoing entertainment over all these years!”
What’s funny to me isn’t that Mark did pretty much the same thing I did, but that he had the same reaction from co-workers that I did: visitors dropping by to see the “new crap” when he put it up. Maybe if he had also put his bulletin board outside his office, he would have ended up being a columnist! :-)
New in My Blog: Back in 2012, I expanded my Spam Primer site into a short ebook on Amazon, describing what I do to have much less spam in my inbox. Very briefly, it’s a 1-2 punch with software on my server to filter out the worst of it, and then Gmail picks up what’s left after that filtering pass and it does its own pass. It has been very effective for more than 15 years now.
But Gmail is ending that service — picking up mail from other servers — in January. That means those of us depending on that effective (and free!) technique need to do something else. The new blog post describes my plan for what’s next. If Gmail Picks Up Your Domain’s Mail, Read This.
This Week’s Ask Me Anything video covers the questions, Do I track reader clicks? Do ship people read True? And more.
Ten Years Ago in True: Zero Tolerance for Imagination.
This Week’s Story of the Week (you’re welcome to share it), about , is posted on Telegram, Mastodon, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, and/or Facebook, or grab from any of those to post elsewhere.
This Week’s Sunday Reading: A ‘professional copyeditor’ takes exception to my Style Guide in 2006; it was established in 1994. A “Letter”? From an “Editor”!
This Week’s Honorary Unsubscribe goes to Duane Roberts. It doesn’t really matter that you probably have eaten what Roberts invented, but it’s interesting what he decided to do with the money he made from it. The story in about 4 minutes.
- And So Long to cinematographer Adam Greenberg, perhaps best known for photographing the first two Terminator films (1984 and 1991, the second earning him an Oscar nomination), in between which he worked on 20 other films, including several big hits. He died in Los Angeles on October 30 at 88.
- Honorary Unsubscribe Archive.
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Copyright ©2025 by Randy Cassingham, All Rights Reserved. All broadcast, publication, retransmission to email lists, web site or social media posting, or any other copying or storage, in any medium, online or not, is strictly prohibited without prior written permission from the author. Manual forwarding by email to friends is allowed if 1) the text is forwarded in its entirety from the “Since 1994” line on top through the end of this paragraph and 2) No fee is charged. I request that you forward no more than three copies to any one person — after that, they should get their own free subscription. I appreciate people who report violations of my copyright.
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Seshadri Vellimedu
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Rajaram Krishnamurthy
- Major Ad Platforms: Companies like Meta and Google provide the infrastructure through which these fraudulent ads reach a massive global audience. Regulators in various countries, including the US and the UK, are investigating these platforms for failing to adequately protect users from fraud.
- Fraudulent Advertisers/Scammers: The individuals and organized crime groups who create these ads operate internationally. They often use AI to create convincing ad copy, images, and fake business websites to lure shoppers. They post ads for "too good to be true" offers, fake concert tickets, fraudulent investment schemes (often involving cryptocurrency), and banned medical products.
- Users as Targets: Everyday users scrolling through their social media feeds are the primary targets. Scammers leverage the platforms' targeting algorithms to find potential victims.
- Financial Losses: Fraudulent ads cause significant financial harm to consumers worldwide. In the UK, a regulator found that Meta's platforms were involved in 54% of all payments-related scam losses in 2023.
- Regulatory Scrutiny: Governments and consumer protection agencies globally are pressuring these platforms to take more responsibility. The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in the UK has banned specific ads and highlighted the need for platforms to crack down on the issue.
- Enforcement Challenges: Internal documents from Meta show their enforcement systems are often insufficient. For instance, after being provided a list of scams by Singaporean police, Meta staff found that 77% of the examples "violate the spirit of the policy, but not the letter," and were not immediately removed. The company sometimes charges suspected but unconfirmed fraudsters a higher ad rate rather than outright banning them.