I'm only mentioning this because it's not been mentioned in any other comments but there is a Python implementation for the CEF (Chrome Embedded Framework). It let's you write your front end in HTML/CSS and JS while letting you call back to a Python backend. You can use any existing JS framework to do your styling (offering the most flexibility) while keeping business logic in Python. It's not exactly what you were asking for, however you mentioned in a different comment thread that tkinter looked outdated, so thought I'd mention it.
Link here https://github.com/cztomczak/cefpython
That's fair. It seems there's a good scene in recording Scam Baiting antics and putting it on You Tube too.
I think you may misunderstand what I did. It was reaching out to people who had opted in to be part of market research. If they said "don't contact me again" or if they were hostile then they got on the "no-call" list and were never contacted again. The only way that we could have got their phone number is if they submitted it during some sort of sign-up process somewhere. So I think you might be equating the work I did with something else.
The "cold" part of the "cold-calling" I mentioned above was because they weren't explicitly expecting the call, but they had somewhere signed up and agreed to be contacted.
Refusing to take work is a rather privileged position, not everyone has that luxury, and I didn't at the time. That being said I was out of there as quick as I could find something else (I only did 2 weeks).
I have a contact in my phone called Spam (with a picture of Spam), and I add any number that doesn't pass the sniff test within 30s (particularly Robo-spammers, urgh!), it can very helpful to get a repeat call and the picture of a can of spam tells me not to bother picking up.
This is an excellent way of screening. The company I worked for was an opt-in service. So all people being called had at some point agreed to it (though most forget ticking the box on a form or whatever, which is totally understandable), and we therefore had their names, so it wouldn't have worked for what we were doing. But yes if a cold-caller doesn't know who they're calling then it's a good indication you don't need what they're offering.
I heard a podcast with Scott Hanselman (a technologist in the US) and he had a phone system where you had to say the name of the person you wanted to an automated gate-keeper, which sounded like a really cool system, and similar to the sort of screening you're doing.
I mean, I was good with people hanging up during the spiel. Saying "sorry I'm not interested" is more than fine and likely to put you on the upper end of calls that's day. Swearing or getting upset isn't acceptable and fails to recognise that neither of you want to be on that call.
However telemarketing has a better response rate than paper based surveys, and the data is used to drive decision making. A lot of people complain when things don't work out for you - like local council decisions on new amenities, but if you don't submit your opinion you can't be heard. It's not perfect but it is used to define a surprising number of things.
Wrt to you MIL, yeah, it's not nice to be on the recieving end of hostility, I get it can be annoying but as I implied above nobody chooses the job, I personally had to take whatever I could get and I was too young/not out of work long enough for JSA (plus JSA is a pain to get anyway, but that's a whole different story).
This seems like a potential infinite loop because Jason has JavaScript which has JSON which has....
I really like this one. 🤣
Thank you for sharing this. I'm going to try it out on my Italian friends :)