Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for May 27, 2023

Has “mute” been upgraded to “shut the h`ll up”?

Rat soon found himself locked out of his phone.

I think I’ve met him on Twitter!

there is an app for that Rat!

Can we get an upgrade for Rat?

He speaks the truth as only he understands it…

I NEVER get calls unless I expect them, maybe my iPhone has a spam call monitor, I dunno

I want that upgrade

I intend to stay downgraded.

I wonder if Rat’s phone has face recognition, and if it screams in agony every time it sees him?

From another(s) perspective: His “Do not disturb” = No need to disturb (any more) because he’s plenty disturbed as it is.

OFF works, too.

A Rat special app!

Just get rid of the phone and be done with it, Rat.

lmao, classic Rat.

Rat is a sleazy, narcissistic, arrogant and horrible rodent being, but we love him just the same. Plus, I get spam calls and messages all the time. I decline and delete them immediately.

My phone tells me if a call is spam, so I can ignore it.

So I went and bought a new-to-me vehicle last weekend. Over the following few days I started getting calls from an unknown 866 number, which I ignored. Finally I answered and the caller said they were from the bank that was financing my new SUV and they wanted to verify some info. Thinking it was a scam, I told them to contact the dealership that sold me the vehicle and hung up.

Yesterday I went to the dealership to get a minor paperwork issue checked out, and while I was there I brought up the phone calls. Turns out the calls were, in fact, legit calls from the lender wanting to set up a payment schedule.

I’m guessing that maybe 80% of my calls are spam. The phone gives a “Spam likely” message. But the spammers let the phone ring 5-6 times before giving up. The racket is such that it’s easier to just pick up and say “not interested”.

What’s the use when the message goes through anyways?

This update is for people with anger issues.

Someone once said, “Anyone who owns a phone is at the mercy of any da*n fool that knows how to dial.” I bought my phone for MY use- not everyone else’s. I just don’t turn it on unless I want to use it.

It’s certainly a very niche upgrade option.

remember it’s @ before # except after $

That’s a solid firewall, but remove these bricks: 443, 80, UDP, 53, TCP, and ICMP so you can receive my crap and comment to me.

Some spam slips by, but I only see the number as I delete the junk.

The junk phone calls I get go straight to my answering machine. None of them ever want to leave a message.

Rat is on the cutting edge of technology. Very cutting….

Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it’s not caused by machinery; it’s not caused by “over-production”; it’s not caused by drink or laziness; and it’s not caused by “over-population”.

It’s caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe.

And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?”

And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on “Christian Duty” in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for

Where can I get that app? I checked the app store but it’s not there. I need it badly!

I call back spoofed numbers and get the “not a valid number” recording. So my game plan is to record that, say hello when I answer the phone, wait for the “bwoop” that lets me know the call’s transferred to a live person, then play the recording.