Updates and Venting

 I am not able to write as much as I used to these days due to being busy with several things - doctoral dissertation, a tax preparer course I am doing for some extra income, and preparing a paper to present at a conference next month.  However, it is important that I keep updated on the aspects of my life that matter, and I wanted to just do that briefly today.  And, I also wanted to just sound off on a couple of things that have been bugging me lately too. 

The major challenges I have had this year have been financial - my income sources have been drastically reduced from what they were, and as a result it has added some additional concerns to me personally.  The one area that really has caused me some issues has been trying to obtain the means for making income.  You would think that I - having 25 years of office experience, an advanced degree, etc. - would have no issues finding suitable work to substantiate my income, but unfortunately that is not the case.  There are times I actually have felt sort of "blackballed" from employment because it seems as if I am getting passed over for even jobs I would have perfect qualifications for.  All is not lost however, as recently I got the blessing of having a tuition-waved tax preparer course offered to me, and I am about 50%  through it now.  Once I finish it, I can be a certified tax preparer and make decent money during tax season with a well-known tax management company.  There are other things though that bug me about trying to earn income, and I wanted to briefly address those now, as I am sure some of you reading this will relate.

With the proliferation of the internet, it is now possible to access almost anything, and there are some evil scuzzballs out there who want to take advantage of that situation.  In the past, we all know about the so-called "Nigerian Prince Scams," but in recent years scamming has gotten much more sophisticated.  Two areas are what I want to focus on now, as they represent some of my own encounters. 

The first are these listings on job boards such as Indeed and LinkedIn - the job listed will look so good, such as a remote data entry position that pays $30 hourly, and of course when you are looking for work like yesterday it means that this will definitely catch your attention.  So, you apply for the opportunity, and within a day you hear back from someone saying you are "perfect" for the opportunity, and they then will tell you to give them some contact information and they will cut a check to send you for "purchasing equipment."  What makes this scam more convincing is that it will hack a legitimate company, and then use its logo and contact information, but there is a telltale sign of a potential scame when you examine it more closely - the web address or email they give you does not mesh with the actual business, and they will ask you to correspond on a gmail account with them for more details.  A true business manager usually will not correspond with gmail, especially if they have a personal account.  This should immediately send a red flag, and at this point it would be wise to contact the actual company they are trying to pose as - if you can do that, the legitimate business will often inform you that this is not them, and that they do not typically employ people this way. It is quite a let-down for the first few times too - you have been on an endless job search for weeks, and your funds are depleting and bills are due, and you need income fast.  Then this crap comes up.  In a moment, I will get into what I believe should be done with such individuals who try to rip off others like this, but there is another type of scam that I wanted to address first. 

The second type of scam is a little more subtle, and in many cases it can be accessed with a click or two on your smart phone.  I am sure you all have seen these game ads, in which you play the game and supposedly rack up some money you can cash out and it will lead to automatic wealth.  In reality, these games - many of which generate via companies in China - are very misleading, and while you are playing them you rack up tremendous wins - all well and good until it comes time to cash out.  First, you are told you have to reach a threshold, which could be anywhere from $100 to $1000, and that you cannot cash out unless you do so.  Withdrawal thresholds are not an issue per se, as there are legitimate survey sites (Zap, Survey Junkie, etc.) that set minimum cashout limits of $10 - there is a reason for that, and it probably has to do with some regulation or something.  I have made a few bucks here and there from survey companies like this, and they are generally very good at paying out - I have made about $30 or so on those in a month.  The legitimate survey sites are not the problem - these games are.  So, the game sets the threshold, and let's say you keep playing until you reach that - this often involves enduring endless ads for more bogus games like this - and you go to cash out.  They then put another stipulation on you - in order to cash out, you have to watch in excess of 20 ads, each a minute apiece.  So, let's say you do that, and you think you can now access those winnings - hold on!  Yet another stipulation will pop up saying you have to do a minimum of 5 "tasks" to cash out.  At this point, it is starting to get frustrating, but let's say you take that on.  You do what you are asked, and finally a cashout can happen, but there is a problem - in order to cash out, you have to pay a fee for "processing."  At this point, most people have figured out that something is not right, but let's say you do pay the fee, and then try to cash out again. You are then told you are in a queue and that you are the 5000th person who will be processed.  It never happens. The real winner in this is the Chinese scammer who just ripped you off about $10.  After once or twice being fooled by these shenanigans, you begin to see the pattern with these bogus games - they are out for themselves and they are not going to give you anything.  This is where frustration starts to set in, and now I want to talk about what should be done with such nonsense. 

I know we have freedom of speech in this nation, and that the internet is largely unregulated, and that means that any conceivable scan or con will be out there.  They grow more sophisticated by the day too, and they are where you least expect them to be.  But, is this really a First Amendment thing?  How do scammers and con artists fall into free expression?  And there is the fundamental issue.  To be honest, free speech is not absolute - if it is speech or behavior that infringes upon another's rights or safety, it should be regulated.  However, of course we should never go to the other extreme and just censor everybody like the leftist "wokists" try to do, but there needs to be a standard regardless.  The extremes of letting scammers run amok in the name of "free expression" and the complete suppression of any free expression will not solve the issue.  So, there has to be some boundaries in place to regulate this stuff.  While a recipient of a scam email has every right to block, report, and delete the communication in question, in all honesty it does little to stop such people - on a daily basis I literally get hundreds of scams and cons in my email accounts, and while most are easily deleted or "spammed," they still present a serious issue in that on occasion one can be crafted so sophisticated that it will even snag the most aware person.  Scammers are not stupid - they are scumbags, they are corrupt, and they can be dangerous, but they also know how to dangle the right bait in front of potential targets. The key to this is more in-depth research to fight such parasites, and in doing so we can more effectively eradicate them from cyberspace.  These issues are quite serious, and now I want to share a couple of thoughts as to why.

The one thing about these scammers that makes no sense whatsoever is that they often target individuals with little to spare - the person who is investigating that game on the Google Play apps for instance, probably has a real threat of having their power disconnected or being evicted from their home, so they are desperate.  The person who comes across the bogus job listing on a platform is also the most vulnerable - more than likely that person has been unemployed for some time, and their assets are dwindling and they need real work ASAP.  This is the stupid thing about scammers - what do they hope to gain from taking advantage of disadvantaged people???  The answer is quite obvious - the scammer is a selfish parasite out to enrich themselves, and they have no regard for the situation potential targets may be in.  They have no job to offer, and they are not going to pay you $3000 from game winnings - they are the ones who will benefit, and that benefit comes at the expense of the most vulnerable demographics (unemployed, elderly on fixed incomes, etc.).  These parasites need to be rained in quickly, and in all honesty they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law that addresses their behavior.  If no such law is applicable, it is time for our government leaders to create one that is.  The problem with these scammers is that they are not just hurting the vulnerable targets they are after, but often they make legitimate businesses victims by hijacking their logos and masquerading as these businesses.  When that happens, it can cost the business thousands of dollars in lost revenue, and also creates expenses for upgrading their security to prevent being targeted by scammers who masquerade as them. If you ever have a question about a job listing, your best recourse would be to Google the actual business, contact them, and let them know what is going on.  That way, you do them a service and they can nip the scammer in the bud before real damage is done in their name.  Scammers who masquerade as legitimate businesses are engaging essentially in a form of identity theft on a corporate level - they are committing crime, in other words.  They need to be targeted, prosecuted, and brought to an end.  Any rate, hopefully this will resonate with some of you, and I would also strongly encourage you to get in touch with your local representatives in government to press them to look into the issue and find ways to address and combat it.  We live in tough economic times now, and scammers are a risk not worth taking and must be exposed for the frauds they are. 

I went into that lengthy discussion because this year I have had my own set of financial challenges, and some of what I just described I have personally experienced and want to share my insights to hopefully help others.  Due to some factors outside of my control, I have been somewhat restricted in looking for substantial means of income, and this is a thing I am even tackling now as I write this.  Fortunately, I have been able to keep myself busy with various things, and my doctoral dissertation is one of those.  At this writing, I have drafted 4/7 chapters of my dissertation, am starting the fifth in two weeks, and will finish the last couple of chapters by mid-February 2024.  After that, it will be mainly revision work I will be doing on the chapters to craft the dissertation itself, and that will be a process that will at minimum take another year.  Beginning next year, I will be sharing some of my research findings on the dissertation here, as ultimately I want to use the dissertation as a resource to educate others on a more personal level by having academic underpinning. I do have a good facilitator as a faculty reader for the dissertation, but there are some challenges with that too I want to address, so let me do so now with an illustration. 

Imagine you are taking a leisure trip from, let's say, Virginia Beach to New Orleans.  There are two ways to initiate the trip, and those also apply to writing a dissertation or other book.  The first would be to just have the objective as destination, and if you are doing that, more than likely your travel will be all on the interstate system.  You will arrive there fast, but there is another alternative too.  The second approach would be to simply drink in the journey - instead of just going on the interstate, take some back roads, stop at some nice little shops along the way, and eat at some new places that have interesting cuisine.  It may take a little longer to get to where you are going, but you will have a more memorable trip with a lot of detailed account. In many cases, even the best Research Directors for one's doctoral dissertation tend to be destination-focused - they want a complete conclusion to the whole project when you may still be only researching the first chapter of it.  I have had to tell my own RD a couple of times to hold onto his britches because we are still on the journey and will get there soon enough - just enjoy the ride, in other words.  Maybe they have to do this, I don't know, but they fail at times to realize that doing a monumental project like a dissertation does not happen overnight - it takes time, and you may hit some unexpected turns in your findings as you go along, and that needs to be taken into account as well.  If I were an RD, here is how I would approach it - obviously, there needs to be clear questions the research addresses, and there does need to be a basic methodology - these can both change too as the dissertation progresses.  A good RD will understand that and work within that context, thus making the process much less stressful for the person working on the dissertation.  That is one area of contention I have faced, but there is another. 

RDs are often professors and scholars who have done their own research in what are probably unrelated areas.  In my case, my RD has actually written an insightful book on an area of interest he has explored, and it is commendable.  The problem with an RD though is that they are almost trying to inject their interest into yours, and it may not be relevant to your topic.  For instance, if you are dealing (as is the case with my own dissertation) with ideological factors that shaped the Nazis, it is not going to matter so much what the German Protestant Churches during the Third Reich era did to either respond to Nazi policies or adapt to them (which is what my RD wrote his own book on).  There could be areas where it might be an ancillary issue (for instance, Hitler and other leading Nazis couching their propaganda in "Christian" language to appeal to the masses, despite having a more mythological/occultic worldview themselves), but it is not the primary question to answer.  Your RD or faculty chair needs to understand that and perhaps this needs to be addressed if they are causing an issue with it.  I respectfully told mine (and he is a nice guy and capable professor too) that I don't need to be focusing on things not relevant to the question I am addressing, and while he reluctantly accepted it. at least he knows boundaries.  The RD or faculty chair needs to remember that this is your dissertation and not theirs, and they need to let you write it - their job is to help you shape, streamline, and edit so that it can have the necessary revisions incorporated to make it a sound and professional document that could be potentially published.  We always should welcome constructive guidance, but there are boundaries to keep in mind as we do so.  That leads to one further issue.

In doing doctoral research, there is an emphasis on what are called "peer-reviewed sources."  What these entail are academic-level writing that has been vetted and endorsed by leading scholars in the field it addresses, or it has been published and disseminated in a relevant venue.  While there is a certain level of merit to this, and in the past it was probably more valuable, in all honesty today being "peer-reviewed" is overrated in all honesty.  Let's go back to the example of the leisure trip.  In this case, the "peer-reviewed" sources represent direct interstate routes - they will get you there, but you don't have much significance as all you are looking at are multi-lanes and exit signs.  Sometimes, it is good to get off the "exits" and explore a bit, and there are sources one can use which are not "peer-reviewed" but may actually have more value to research.  Some of the authors of these works may be somewhat controversial, or they may be presenting a worldview in their writing, but we cannot outrightly dismiss them.  While we may disagree with their more dialectic approach, often in those types of sources there is to be found a wealth of primary source material that may be valuable to one's own research.  In other words, unless it has some relevance, you don't necessarily cite such non-peer-reviewed sources extensively, but you use them to hunt for other relevant and valuable material.  If one sticks to strictly "peer-reviewed" sources, one will miss out on what could perhaps be new perspectives brought to the proverbial table.  This leads to one other criticism of "peer review" I want to address.

In recent decades, many academic disciplines have been hijacked by political liberalism, and it has tainted their perceptions of scholarship.  Take, for instance, an organization like the Appalachian Studies Association.  One would think that a group like this would love the opportunity to focus on distinctly Appalachian topics, especially when they are proposed by native scholars of the region.  But, in reality, here is what the ASA really is.  The ASA currently is headed by Dr. Rebecca Scott.   Rebecca Scott teaches Sociology at the University of Missouri.  She is a native of California, and she received her Ph.D. in 2007 at the University of California - Santa Cruz.  Her areas of "expertise," according to her profile on the UM website, are "cultural studies, environmental justice, gender, race, and class."  Looking at what she has published, she is a political Leftist, and like many academics she has a bias against conservative values.  In other words, she is not really what represents scholarship in Appalachia. Unlike true Appalachian scholars (such as Dr. Loyal Jones), Rebecca Scott has no connection to the region, did not grow up there, never experienced what people living there have, and she has no clue as to what being authentically Appalachian is all about.  This became evident recently when I submitted a paper to their journal dealing with the history of mining, lumber, and railroad "ghost towns" in the region of West Virginia I grew up in.  I composed this paper as a final project for a research seminar class at my current university, and the professor (who comes from the same area I do) really was impressed and gave me a perfect score on it.  But, I was told by the "eminent" Dr. Scott that my paper was more suited essentially as a travel brochure for a historical society, and it did not meet her criteria for Appalachian topics.  So, what did meet her "criteria??"  Well, for that, let's look at the ASA meeting held this year in Huntington, WV - it featured a "drag show" and some weird papers about racial intersectionality, and the role of lesbian dancers in Nashville or some crap like that.  What is true of the ASA is also now true of other "scholarly" societies in the US - they are largely politically-motivated, cater to "woke" politics, and are largely devoid of actual scholarship. Yet, today when something is "peer-reviewed," these are the "peers" reviewing it.  That is another reason why I don't take "peer-review" as seriously anymore.  Just because something is "peer-reviewed" does not make it a credible source, in other words.  Just read the academic journals of some of these groups and see it for yourself. 

These are just a few insights I wanted to share today about my own experiences in recent months.  I have a busy schedule coming up, as I will be presenting a paper on Our Lady of Gudalupe at a local conference in December, and I also will be finalizing the initial draft of the first five chapters of my dissertation.  I face many other challenges now too, and covet your prayers.  Thank you, and have a nice week ahead.