Puzzling text exchange

I almost never use my cell phone, keeping it largely for emergencies, and I give the number out to just a few people, mostly close friends and family members. Hence I get many fewer junk calls on the cell phone than on my landline. But a few days ago, I received the following text message from a number that I did not recognize but was from my own area code.

The message said, “Dr. Singham, [name] here. What time do you think you’ll be on campus today? Thx”

The [name] was unfamiliar to me so I replied, “I’m confused. What is this about?”

I then got the following, “Just touching base. Then we came upstairs and found you”

This puzzled me even more since I had been at home the whole day and so I replied “I think there must be some mistake. I have not been on campus for some time.”

I did not hear from the person again.

It does not seem like a bot that was doing this. There seemed to be no point served and I have been puzzling over what it was all about.

Any ideas?

Goldman Sachs and sovereign wealth funds

The Goldman Sachs investment bank has been a force of financial evil for a long time and yet it has managed to use its power and influence to avoid being brought to account for its actions. Matt Taibbi did an expose of the bank and said that it had “engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression” and gave it the memorable description of a “great vampire squid wrapped round the face of humanity”. But even after the financial collapse of 2008, it escaped serious accountability thanks to its cozy relationship with Department of Justice under president Obama.
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Entitled comedians should stop taking cheap shots at millennials

Around this time of year, many commentators take the opportunity to make mock graduation speeches as a way of giving advice to young people and comedian Bill Maher used his ‘speech’ to attack the younger generation, all lumped under the ‘millennial’ label, as pampered whiny brats with a strong sense of entitlement who have been so coddled by their parents and the ‘politically correct’ environments of their schools and colleges that they are in for a rude shock when they enter the ‘real’ world.
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Brexit, drugs, and fly-tipping

It’s been awhile since I looked at the goings on in the UK as it staggers towards yet another Brexit deadline on October 31. The latest wrinkle is that the Labour Party managed to squeak through to a narrow victory in a by-election in Peterborough, just edging out the candidate for the newly-formed Brexit party led by Nigel Farage by a margin of 10,484 to.9,801 votes. The Conservative party trailed in third place with 7,243.
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Having health insurance does not mean you can afford medical care in the US

When it comes to health care in the US much of the attention has rightly focused on the plight of those who lack any insurance at all. But this gives the impression that those who have employer-based insurance have few problems and would even suffer with the increasingly popular Medicare For All proposal that has now been embraced by pretty much every Democratic presidential candidate and would replace the current system. But that impression is erroneous. This is because in order to lower insurance premiums, employers are pressuring employees to move to high-deductible plans. But a new study finds that a quarter of people with employer-based health insurance in the US cannot longer afford to pay those deductibles
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Rich people behaving like jerks: Part infinity

Wealthy people like to buy expensive seats so that they can sit courtside at professional basketball games. And when I say ‘courtside’, I am not kidding. They are right on the side of the playing area right near the coaches and substitute players. Why they would want to do this is not clear to me since you can probably see better from a few rows back in the raised seats. You also run the real risk of a 250 lb player barreling right into you as they chase a ball that goes out of bounds and causing you serious injury. Apparently the tickets warn you of that possibility but perhaps the desire to be seen on TV is enough for people to take that risk.
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Perpetuating war by exalting its sacrifices

Currently many world leaders are in Europe commemorating the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. This remarkable scene from the anti-war satire The Americanization of Emily (1964), set during World War II, just prior to the D-Day invasion, has James Garner warning of the dangers of glorifying war to the mother of Julie Andrews, who has lost her husband, father, and brother to the war.

That speech was written by screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky. I wonder if mainstream film companies would allow such a scene these days.

Brilliant catch in World Cup

The West Indies came close to causing an upset by beating Australia today. Australia batted first and West Indies had them on the ropes before allowing them to recover. Set a target of 289 to win, West Indies fell just short, disappointing many in the cricket world who tend to cheer against Australia partly for being part of the cartel with India and England and partly because Australia practices a vicious form of gamesmanship that extends to even cheating, taking the view that it’s ok as long as you are not caught.
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TV review: Unforgotten

I have watched all three seasons of this British police procedural TV series. Each season has a self-contained story and consists of six episodes spread over 4.5 hours and is one of the best of such shows that I have seen. I fancy myself as a connoisseur of such detective shows and like most connoisseurs have strong likes and dislikes. I heartily dislike violence and gore and find action sequences such as chases and fights to be boring. They seem to me to be a cheap way of generating interest to compensate for weak plots and poor writing, acting, and directing. I like shows where the focus is on the process of detection and this show definitely fits the bill.
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