There’s a weird Prius ad that keeps running on Craigslist, and it starts

2007 TOYOTA : PRIUS HYBRID 60 MPG US$ 5400

followed by a ridiculous description and then, in huge letters, the email address to contact the person, and a chunk of spam text.

So I searched on the email address — they’re in every Craigslist location. There’s 31 on that location alone, all in the last day.

There are more elaborate variants, with similar spam text at the bottom: you can search for “georgecallum878@gmail.com” too and see the same pattern.
Or chrisgrande898@gmail.com did a ton of them at the start of the month, offering almost exactly the same text as George Callum would a week later.

They’re flagged and removed almost immediately, but I don’t see what the angle is here, unless it’s just an attempt to get people’s addys. And the fact that it’s been run repeatedly makes me think they’ve got to be getting something out of it or they wouldn’t keep trying.

But the spam text is random, torn from Wikipedia I think, the kind of stuff used to get spam email past Bayesian filters:

another Red Sox pitcher hurl a no-hitter and the next Fenway Park no-hitter won’t come untilcoin It originally meant the side of a die with only one mark before it was a term for a playing card Since this was the lowest roll of the die it traditionally meant ‘bad luck’ inin 1977 to become Harris Queensway plc until the company was taken over in 1988 Lord Harris was also a non-executive director of(4 8 15 16 23 and 42) It is also the number of minutes within which these numbers must be entered into the computer and the button must be pushed

— it’s not as if people are searching for that stuff. Randomized post stuffing isn’t going to get a lot of people searching for those terms, seeing a Prius ad, and handing over their email addresses. You’d want to go for Allison Williams or one of those other weird keywords that delivers a bunch of strange traffic to your doorstep.

I don’t get it. Unless it’s all more or less automated so it doesn’t require any effort, it doesn’t seem like the return would be worth it.

Also, the people at Eastlake Auto Brokers post over and over about their cars and it’s really annoying.

From Dan’s Data:

Embassy couldn’t possibly allow Cartrivision to just be a general purpose record-and-playback system. They were just like today’s split-personality entertainment megacorps, who on the one hand want as many people as possible to pay to “enjoy” their “content”, but on the other hand would rather like it if any customer who even considered copying some of that content for a friend immediately burst into flames.

I used to make coffee with my Aeropress. It was pretty awesome. I got more and more into it, started being able to tell the difference between good and bad cups, started rating the local coffee places, and eventually I bought a nice Rancillio Silvia and a quality grinder to do it at home.

For a while, I was happy. But the more I know about how it’s supposed to go, the more frustrated I am.

There’s a rule for making espresso shots, which is that you want (for a double) 2-2.5 ounces of liquid in 20-25 seconds. Once I get that dialed in, I can pretty consistently make it. Then I bought a nice tamper to replace the awful one that comes with the Silvia, along with this book, this horrible, cursed book from Cafe Vivcace.

It’s a great book, but it’s got all kinds of descriptions about what a shot’s supposed to look like as it pours, coloration, how to tamp, all the variables to control, and I can’t make a good shot now.

Seriously. I’m totally screwed. I’ve been trying to get to their level, and it’s not happening, and now I’m thinking “I really need one of those temperature sensors, no two, and then better… no! no!” They turn out horrible and bitter, none of them look like they’re supposed to when they come out or when they’re done, I’m tinkering with everything and generally unhappy.

I had to do a bunch of work from home this morning, and before I did, I tried to make a cup. It took me five tries this morning to get a decent shot, which I eagerly gulped down. Five tries, and it wasn’t even that good.

And a minute ago I thought “hey, I should go have a cup of coffee”… and I didn’t want to go make it. All I want is a good cup of coffee. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

On the way in to work today, I had to fish out cash because I didn’t have my bus pass, and I realized that with gas this high, even my extremely short trip to work starts to makes economic sense just on the gas. It’s only ~4 miles each way, but it’s all sitting at stop signs and long stop lights. Seriously, from my house to work, it’s eight stops one-way. My 14-year-old Volvo gets well under 20mpg running back and forth (in fact, it might be sub-15, which is totally embarrassing and why I don’t drive to work). I’d always looked at bus fares and figured it to be a wash, but that’s not the case at all.

At $5/gallon for the premium the 1994 Volvo 850’s owners manual tells me it needs, I’m looking at $1.25/trip over four miles, and Metro’s only $.50 more than that.

Atrios mentioned something similar today:

At $4.50 per gallon in many places I guess that changes. If you’re getting 20 mpg, a 50 mile round trip commute will cost you $11.25. The 13.2 mile trip from downtown Minneapolis to the airport, which you can do on the train for $1.50, costs 3 bucks by car.

The point I’m trying to make is that when gas was cheap, people thought in terms of the cost of filling the tank rather than the cost of making a trip. People didn’t really make a marginal cost/benefit calculation because they didn’t really perceive the cost for short trips. That’s changing.

It’s been a while since I ranted about politics, this, from Elenanor Clift, doing a post-mortem on the Clinton campaign:

She did run an extraordinarily close race, and if the Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as the Republicans, she’d be the nominee. If Obama hadn’t outorganized her in small caucus states like Idaho, which the Democrats have no hope of winning in November, he wouldn’t be the nominee.

This may all be true, but it’s first unknowable and second condescending and manages to miss the point at once.

They both attempted to win the nomination under the rules set at the start (mostly, since Clinton later attempted to change them when it favored her). It’s like watching a baseball game and then saying “if the winner was determined by stolen bases, the Brewers would have won.”

Well, sure, had nothing else about the game changed. But if the winner was determined by stolen bases, both teams would have spent a ton of money on speedy baserunners instead of good fielders, they would have fielded only left-handed pitchers who could deter the runner on first, and they’d have devoted their farm systems to producing cannon-armed catchers who could throw out anyone.

Obama and his campaign showed an absolutely amazing ability to organize without the support of existing party structures, they raised astonishing amounts of money, and they worked the rules to their maximum advantage, and they won and won and won.

Who’s to say that if the rules were different, and both teams played on a different field, under different rules, that they couldn’t have won then as well?

The best we can say is that Obama won the contest at hand, and the rest is unknowable. And it’s okay to leave it at that.