The Latest in Robocall Tech: Nothing

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Quick question for the hivemind. For the past month or two I’ve been receiving a lot of very strange phone spam. The phone number is always from my local area code, but it changes with every call. What makes the calls weird is that there’s no recorded message and no human being on the other end of the line. If I wait for a while, it hangs up. I get these three or four times a day on my landline and, more recently, two or three times a day on my cell phone too.

Is this the latest in annoying robocall tech? What’s the point? Why is someone spending money to call people and then do nothing? Is anyone else getting these calls?

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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