Sunday Musings - Don't Lose Touch, People are Phishing, Time Marches On
December 4th, 2022
Welcome to another Sunday Friends!
Here is your Sunday Musings, a quick dose of what I’m exploring and thinking about. Please feel free to forward this along to friends.
First, THANK YOU to those of you who came to chat at I/ITSEC, the panels were amazing, and we had over 13,000 people at the event!
This week’s entry is slightly different, topical, and, hopefully, thought provoking. It’s my last week in my current job. In my profession we change jobs at least once every two years, and most often every year. I’ve got a week of administrative tasks to knock out next week and then I’m off to a bit of training, then my next job as an executive officer; similar “deputy director” type of position.
I’ve been thinking on my past 1.5 years in this position, and it’s been one of, if not the best, jobs in my career. The people are passionate, self-driven, and professional. True believers in our mission, vision, and goals. I’ve read many publications on how difficult it is to stay in touch with friends and colleagues after transitions where people move to disparate locations and continue on with the tangents and parallels in their lives.
Unsurprisingly, the trick to not losing touch is putting in effort to maintain the relationship. Often, both in school and in our professions, our friendships are born of convenience and proximity. Once We graduate, change positions, marry, have kids, or the myriad other #adulting things we do, that changes. It’s difficult to engage with any regularity without deliberate effort.
I have two methods I use for this. First is the most boring (read effective) method for me. I keep a database of contacts and people I don’t want to lose touch with. The key field for me is the “last contacted” field. I use that as a backup and have an automation set up that lets me know when I’ve gone too long. I reach out to people when I know I have a good amount of time to catch up and just chat.
Second, is I have a standing time block from 9pm to midnight on Saturdays called “Gaming with Friends”. It’s my weekly open invite to either go out and do something with friends in person or go play some video games together. Mainly just a way to ensure we break bread and have some enjoyable time together.
So, why do I say this now? First, I know most of you reading this are busy. Either with university or with work. Many of you will move on to your next position or graduate and you’ll notice a similar time constraint as your live moves in different directions. If you value the people you’ve connected with, I urge you to find a method of maintaining those relationships that works for you, despite life, love, and everything after keeping us all “too busy”.
I’d love to hear any of your methods, tips or tricks!
Have an amazing week!
-e
P.S.A The holiday season is a great time to reengage with people. We are coming off of two and a half years of social trauma. Many have dealt with loss and isolation due to the pandemic and/or economic instability. Studies show that as we get older, we tend to let friendships lapse. When we couple perceptions of loneliness, divided communities, and a pandemic (disaster), we have a brew that affects us all. Reach out to your friends and family, just to say hi.
This Week’s Recommendation
The Full Story of the Lofi Girl - A Generational Comfort Zone by Draper
Most of us know who she is, her steadfast presence on our screen, writing away in her book, her cat lounging in the window, and the melancholic, comforting Low Fidelity (LoFi) beats lulling us into a zen-like productive state. We listen to study, we listen to focus, and we listen to just listen. LoFi-Girl has been around since early 2017 in two iterations, once as the protagonist from Studio Ghibli’s “Whisper of the Heart” listening to music and writing notes, and then as “Jade”, with her own identity but distinctly calling back to where her creator, Dimitri, draws his inspiration. Many viewers identified with Shizuku’s story arc: searching for, and discovering a passion, failing, learning, and persevering.
What many don’t know, is the LoFi team all share a common idea. They started their projects as a way to bring something helpful to their community of interest; which is largely students. Specifically, mental health. In 2019, CollegeMusic, a Lofi-Girl derivative, noticed the a staggering number of conversations about struggles with mental health issues and suicide. So much so that they decided to take action. They partnered with VICE to remove protagonist for a period of time, declaring her on a break to focus on her mental health and provides a call to action to help viewers find help.
Dimitri and the LoFi community continue to push a large portion of the income they make to programs dedicated to combatting suicide and mental health and scholarships to their viewers.
The link is not the best produced documentary, but if you know who LoFi Girl (Jade) is, then she probably holds a special place in your heart. It’s a great little facet of this community that many of us never knew they advocated for.
There aren’t many communities that go this far to support their fans/supporters, and even fewer who do it at no cost to them. Go take a look at Lofi Girl on YouTube or on Spotify and let me know what you think!
Technology I’m Looking At
Caffeine: A Phishing-as-a-Service Platform - Be mindful of your clicks.
Mandiant continues to research and articulate Caffeine, a user-friendly Phishing framework. Duo has a great article from October to give you the highlights. Caffeine is an evolution in intuitive interface design for cyber-criminal activity. It offers a (relatively) low cost for entry while providing useful capabilities like self-service tools for customizing kits, redirect management, dynamically generated URLs, and tracking metrics. Read Mandiant’s write up here, read Duo’s here.
As we enter the holiday season, expect a ramp-up on phishing campaigns to get you to pay for someone else’s presents.
Quote I’m Musing
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
-Heraclitus
On theme, just like a river, our lives are ever changing. We (and those around us) grow up, grow apart, grow old, and grow together. But we are never the same person we were yesterday. Our experiences, our triumphs, and our failures shape and mold us into the people we will become. Similar to being led by a tether, we have little input on the grand path we will move down (flow of time), but quite a bit of choice in how we can move left and right down the path.
In that vein, we can choose how we will react and respond, we make small decisions every day. Those small decisions add up to which side of the path we will move to; and what kind of person we will become. To borrow an idea from Zeno, Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.
There is a lot of uncertainty throughout life, but one thing that is certain, our rivers continue to flow, we are never the same as we were, and places we’ve been have changed, we can’t change any of that. But we can choose to become the kind of person we want to be deliberately.
I would love your feedback!
Which musing is your favorite? What else do you want to see or what should I eliminate? Any other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @erichaupt on Twitter and put #SundayMusings at the end so I can find it. Or, eric@erichaupt.com for long form email.
Have a wonderful week, I’ll see you Sunday.
-e
