Ahouli-Lia

Spring Break, I believe in you

[tlirsgender]

It's called hard sci-fi because it's not as easy

[tlirsgender]

I thought it'd be fun if I made aliens that respirate CO² into O² like plants but I started thinking about how I'm not actually sure how exactly those chemical processes work and now I'm on the wikipedia page for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate

[tlirsgender]

I feel like the media literacy ogre for biochemistry

[sigrid-antares]

hard sci-fi is when the last quarter of the book is made of research papers references, scientific footnotes and explanation of the rabbit hole that author committed

[steelplatedhearts]

it’s simple: when I like an adaptation, everyone complaining about changes to the text is a whiny baby who needs to get over themselves and accept that sometimes you have to change the story to enrich the experience/work within the medium. when I don’t like an adaptation, it’s because nobody else understands the core themes of the original work and would be better off just creating a story independent of what they’re trying to adapt.

[horreurscopes]

never forget the universal rule of the order of things: People Will Not Read It

[horreurscopes]

signs at stores? émail? menu ?? instruction ? post online ? caption with andswer to question ? group hand outs ??? street sign ??? no. The Written Word Is The Enemy

[lasrina]

#The number of compliments i have gotten for reading a thing

The ability to occasionally Read A Thing will make you a hero in your workplace, especially if it is for example an error message that tells you what you need to do differently, or instructions on unjamming a printer.

[stephaniematurin]

how dare you say we put jam in the printer

[berkelbites]

Ok reblogging this again because story time.

I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.

There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.

So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"

So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.

The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."

So I take a few deep breaths.

Then I lie to her.

I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"

She does.

I ask her if she still needs help.

She does not respond.

[samueldays]

I have similar story from tech support.

Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.

"What did that error message say?" I ask.

"What error message?" asks Client.

I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.

I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.

I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.

---

Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.

But then people with a perverted intellect would still be thinking about ways to avoid reading the message, like dragging it off edge of screen or hiding it behind another window. So maybe the dialog box could have an always-in-front feature to override other windows, and the alert could use the computer's hardware "beep" functionality that can't be switched off by muting the regular sound system, and keep beeping... shit, I realize I'm reinventing pain, and get philosophical about it.

[doccyuk]

Story from The Past about My Mum:

She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)

She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.

So, she asked, did they ever do that?

No! Of course not, was the answer.

So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.

The next week

She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"

She said, of course, can they tell her the error?

And the message was:

"You Said You Didn't Do This"

[aaaaaarchive]

[asteroidtroglodyte]

I do enjoy a good visual gag, and an old favorite of mine is “there is Math on a Board in the background that contextually makes no sense.” This broadly comes in 3 flavors I enjoy:

• the board is in front of a classroom, and the Math is waaay too advanced for whatever level of pupil these kids are supposed to be; like having the calculus integral in front of kindergartners, or relativistic physics in front of high schoolers.

• the board is in front of Criminals, who are Planning Something, and by all rights there ought to be no Math there to begin with. Like. You’re planning a Heist why do you have the Full Lagrangian on there. Are we taking a rocket to the bank.

• the characters are super-genius science fiction people. The Math is “Pi≈3.24” with an unlabeled pie chart.

[glowcowboy]

it is important to cling to wonder btw

[glowcowboy]

many people grow up and forget what it feels like to be a child. we must remember this. we have to remember what a joy it is to play. to learn. to build connections. to grow. to experience. we must hold onto the things that awe us. we are changed by what we love

[aropride]

some birds are very intuitively named. looked up a sparrow going chipchipchip in my yard, it was a chipping sparrow. saw a black bird with red wings, it was a red winged blackbird. gray bird that sounds like a cat? gray catbird. the first time i saw a house finch it was perched on a windowsill. However, some birds are the red-bellied woodpecker

[someofusarequeer]

I gotta google something real quick

[someofusarequeer]

who named this bird

[official-ornithology-posts]

Official ornithology post

[escapedangels]

Does she know how much the lesbians adore her

[depsidase]

[brightlotusmoon]

[foxes-in-love]

[sonandheirofnothinginparticular]

[galaxywarp]

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

why are greek mythology adaptations always so gritty when there’s so many weird ridiculous antics to pull from. helen of troy not knowing how to cheer up telemachus so she drugs him to not feel any emotions and calls it a night. athena divinely intervening to curl odysseus’ hair so he looks sexy enough to successfully beg for help. aphrodite trying to help her kid on the battlefield and having to run away immediately because she gets beat up by a random mortal. achilles’ horse prophesying death to him and then never speaking again

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[sinni-ok-sessi]

I do think the ability to emoji-react is a net win for human communication. not only does it give you an outlet for 'I see and acknowledge this but don't have a verbal response' but it also adds a pleasing alethiometer element to things

my coworker announces that he's off to the dentist. someone reacts with a tooth emoji. is this a statement of dentist solidarity? a wish for my coworker to return with more (or fewer?) teeth than he set out with? simple word association? who can say

[milf--adjacent]

Let the historical record show that Mr. Beast was entirely ignorable if you were just like doing literally anything else. I've been on youtube as long as it's been around and I've never been recommended a video by him. I see him in passing as a meme. I thought he was a made up joke, a caricature of bad youtuber content miners until someone I trust confirmed his existence to me in late 2025.

[phantomrose96]

I'm making this post without a true answer, but I feel like there's been some shift--slight but noticeable--in advertising that's pushing things in a "well aren't you just useless 🥰" direction.

Backlash against 2010's hustle culture? Backlash against 2000's "girls can do anything" messaging? I don't know. But why are the AI advertisements all about how you forgot your wife's birthday or your boss's deadline and the AI saves you? Why is the ideal young-20s woman a frail little girl who lives on her boyfriend's income and makes him lattes while she does nothing all day? Even the sports-betting craze feels like it reskinned the "savvy young day-trader who's skilled at reading the market" to "blind and dumb luck might make you a millionaire so you should try."

And it feels like there's something here because like--yeah AI is being advertised as a functionality of convenience, but so have things like food delivery apps. And I swear my best recollection of food delivery app advertisements used to be like, "busy mom comes home from work and finds the kids messed up dinner--oh well, at least there's doordash!" Like the key target is not someone lazy or useless, they're just busy as hell and won't this convenience service we offer help them a bit?

The instagram girlies were running businesses in the 2010's--most of them scammy bullshit I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole--but the aesthetic of being busy, hustling, operating with drive and passion, was in. The men were founding start-up companies and calling themselves entrepreneurs--again, scammy, 10 foot pole, etc. But the aesthetic of doing something and being capable was in vogue.

I don't know. Something is weird. Forget your whole family's birthdays and let the AI email them a card, you idiot. Spend all day nursing your 5-calorie matcha latte and posting your athleisure outfit to instagram, you dumb girl. Make some dumbass bet on the Mets that'll net you $1,000,000 if you win but that won't happen because the odds are 1000:1 against you and this'll drain the last of your savings, you puppet. It's vogue, somehow. It's hot. It's in. Strive for nothing. Fuck you.