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“I’m not opposed to this. I feel like we’ve long neglected the application of air brake tech into our backend, which has been notoriously slow”
Try eating more fiber instead.
SAE’s “Corporate Communications Manager” may be as nice a person as this note suggests, but in that role they at least need to learn the difference between its and it’s.
Or even the difference between its and it ‘s
Minor mistakes like this will be the way we can tell human from AI writing…for a short while at least.
Blessed perspective. Thanks.
Well it is now. Is this all a scam to get us to worship at the alter of Brown Manual Wagon?
As an official Deacon of church Brown Manual Wagon, I am empowered to accept your cash offerings, also any well butchered animal sacrifice. Funds will be used to support our Bentley Bible study group, next class focusing on the gospels of Saints Bentley, Haynes, and Chilton and their different views on replacing a 1984 heater core.
My inner 12 year-old cackled at “I feel like we’ve long neglected the application of air brake tech into our backend, which has been notoriously slow.” Now you’re probably on a contact list for medical supplies.
Can’t wait for the day a random religious text becomes a bestseller, only because the famous foreword by The Autopian:
“We were genuinely confused as to why the Society of Crocodiles wanted us to endorse this book, but page 326 devotes an entire paragraph to vivid description of historical car taillights. Good enough for us.. we guess? Why did we read this again?”
I didn’t know whether it really worked till very recently, but in the last three days alone I had the opportunity to take a deep breath and go “…Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior???…” in an old lady’s voice on three different phone scammers in as many days, and the thing works like a hammer smash on a cockroach.
I should start answering all my SPAM calls with “Miracle news Jesus is coming!”
Corporate Communications Manager doesn’t know the difference between it’s and its…this is the world we live in.
It’s the world we live in…
It’s the Society of Automotive Engineers. If they are anything like me, they aced the math portion of the SAT and got 400 on grammar.
I have a silly there/their/they’re graphic tee and an annoying I vs. me usage rant, too. (Didn’t see your comment here before I made my mine about it’s ten hours later.)
“See? Sometimes I have real points!”
Mostly about taillights, but still …
Oh! You should ask the SAE to be put on their lighting… Committee or whatever it is
I monitor a couple open to the public email accounts for my employer. The scams run from just dumb to very sophisticated. The most annoying scam mimicked our corporate phone numbers in phishing texts to outside contacts – fortunately we do not do texts as a rule and most of our contacts avoided it.
I was just having a conversation last night regarding younger members of the workforce, who apparently do not read or respond to email, and have to be engaged via text messages. I suspect this type of grift will be on the rise in the next few years as our communication platforms shift out of our walled email gardens.
The amazing algorithms have once again hit their marks! Truly incredible, this modern technology.
When I was in Egypt, I ran into a scam that I never found the punchline to and I’ve always wondered what it was. In this one, a guy comes up to you (it’s always a guy because women can’t talk to strangers) and asks what an English word means. In one case, it was “congratulations”. You tell them and they tell you to wait while they get a pen and paper for your to write it down. Then they go inside the building behind them or whatever. Is it a distraction so I’m writing while another guy comes up from behind and pick-pockets or is it something clever like the infamous-nomadic-people-of-bad-reputation-incorrectly-known-by-a-name-that-references-Egypt-as-a-place-of-origin played on me in Italy with some colored string? Never found out, just took off as soon as they disappeared.
Pneumatic tubing is interesting, since it can be a restricted export.
Hmm, can’t answer that one directly, but when I went to Shanghai many years ago, I was warned that high school/college aged girls would come up to English speakers and ask for their help practicing English. If the mark agreed, they’d be taken to a nearby cafe and the girl would order coffee, sodas or whatever. When the mark was ready to leave, the bill would be brought out and each drink would be $10-$20 and a very large man would make sure the mark paid up.
That sounds like a variation of the bar scam where you’re invited into/enter a bar and some (presumably) attractive women sit next to you and get you to buy them drinks with the indication that they’ll go home with you. When they tried it on me and a friend in Greece, the women were my mother’s age. We got a good laugh out of it and left.
I have a business that deals in hot dogs and sausages (name checks out). I frequently get requests to talk about dog grooming supplies, kennel supplies and dog collars.
Oh my god, what do you put in those sausages!?!??
They put Schauzer in the schnitzel!!!
No one REALLY wants to know how the sausage is made
I’m guessing some sort of AI agent is responsible for these (SAE letter not withstanding).
Just think – this is the same tech that people allow to drive them around at highway speeds.
I’ve provided an example: https://ibb.co/pBCL8FXV
edit: I’ve thought of a better one: https://ibb.co/DH7DZNgv
at Cars & Bids, our support inbox repeatedly gets ads for condom manufacturing machines.
Makes me wonder: are there people that purchase a condom manufacturing machine from a cold call? There’s a story there, I’m sure.
What is the market there???
Hm. I need a side hustle. I’ll start my own condom brand! People will trust my condoms over the big names because…?
Maybe the idea is to make your own condoms because you yourself don’t trust the big name brands?
…you have no kids?
“When people are thinking about how spiritual and religious beliefs can be subverted for monetary gain, is a goofy car website really the first place they think of?”
Some of us are pretty fanatical about this site. To the point we’ve given you money. We even call ourselves Autopians. It’s not that big a stretch…
“I mean, aside from that cult I used to run in the ’90s?”
Still got a newsletter we can subscribe to? Oh wait. I think I already do…
uh, yeah
The Autopian has no good cutomer sevis!
Feel free to forward any class 5 and above truck stuff to me if you need industry input. Especially class 8 and transit buses.
Please Please Please send a blurb for the book. If you send me the PDF I’ll write it for you. I want the Autopian on the back cover.
I second this!
I wonder if the company looking for a shuttle bus is interested in an RTS? lol
I was going to say…based on some of the staff’s adventures, it’s not THAT unreasonable for them to assume you either a) have or b) want a shuttle or a dump truck.
Likewise, forwarding their RFQ on a dump truck to Galpin wouldn’t be nearly as nonsensical if they needed it anywhere near Southern California but even on mobile I can see the picture of the letter says Virginia.
Of course, if you can get content from driving it out to them…
We get these. You have “auto” in your name so they take their best shot. I’m pretty sure these are variations of the scams that came around about two decades ago, where we would get a request via fax for something like 3000 NGK spark plugs of a specific number. The way it works is once you’ve sourced them and sent them off, they pay you with a card that turns out to be fraudulent, that is, if you’ve been dumb enough not to wonder why a person in the middle east would need to bother contacting a NAPA store in Illinois. I actually heard of people falling for this, as amazing as that sounds.
Autopartopian! I always enjoy your commentary Matt – such a cool side of the automotive enthusiast world that doesn’t get enough visibility in my book.
So hold on. The scam is they get 3,000 spark plugs for free? This is only slightly smarter than driving a postal truck full of bottles to Michigan to get those sweet $0.10 deposits.
Funny, we were just discussing something like this because it’s corporate ethics training season at my company. One of the questions was something like “A small bakery in Canada orders 2000 licenses for our product, and the email address they use ends in the Iranian TLD. What do you do?” and we laughed about how obvious it was.
Then again, if they were dumb enough to fall for something like that I’d probably boot them off the team*, so it’s possible there’s selection bias here.
*: Or not. We don’t actually deal with sales so it’s a doubly nonsense question for my team.
It’s rather ironic the promoter from a publisher with IQ in their name can’t figure out their target market.
There is no point to any of it. These kinds of messages are being sent out to millions of email addresses with no regard whatsoever as to what any recipient actually does. No doubt you are part of some globally scraped list of “email addresses in the automotive industry”. I get dozens of emails a day that are only peripherally related to my consulting business, as well as many more that have absolutely no relationship to it whatsoever.
In all seriousness, that’s a really great note from the SAE – mazel!
Especially liked the thanks for “saying the things I can’t” !
“a potential backup option for your supply chain”
Talk about a soft-sell
That’s how they get ya!
But, still no RFPs for V8 motorcycle frames, I guess that’s progress.
The Monetizing Jesus book might have some relevance, there are certainly shady used car dealers and unscrupulous mechanics out there who think putting a cross or a dove on their sign will make them appear trustworthy.It isn’t unique to automotive-related businesses, of course, but it does happen
And theologians agree Jesus drove a Honda but wasn’t a Honda fanboy. “For He spoke not of his own Accord.”
God the Father was a Mopar man, having driven Adam and Eve from the garden in his Fury.
It’s apocryphally believed that Satan drove a Kia bought from a private seller, certainly there are plenty of references to someone having sold their Soul to the devil.
That’s the blurb right there.
I always thought satan drove a DeVille
From the people who bring you Shitbox Showdown, here’s some Jesus. Also Satan in a Caddy.
Isaac is forever grateful daddy Abraham caught sight of that RAM.