Language and writing were made available

That does not actually describe literacy

[wisedreamdelusion]

can you see what nature did to me it make me special and unique as i can be

[pjotwitter]

[doomtemparts]

one of my friends in a discord server was talking about how they were nervous about their first scheduled acupuncture appointment. another friend offered to do a tarot reading for them. sent this picture.

[segamascott]

got my first ever official customer complaint because when i was going over the terms of their life insurance they were like "well i don't plan to die" and i was like "well you're going to"

[fwizard]

[charlesoberonn]

Necessary and sufficient

[charlesoberonn]

[charlesoberonn]

Adding a second lock was not necessary.

[charlesoberonn]

Understanding the difference between necessary and sufficient is necessary, but not sufficient to earn a math degree.

[charlesoberonn]

Part 2

[charlesoberonn]

Gladly!

[charlesoberonn]

A bit more complicated, but sure!

[dogpuppy]

[nineteenyearoldmeblog]

im fucking crying

[bourdainist-monestary]

[ominous-signs]

Sign I saw near a beach in California a few years ago.

[hussyknee]

The most basic, intractable fact about mental illnesses is that you simply cannot willpower your way out of them. The only exceptions to this rule are the ones I have, which continue to disable me due to lack of determination and other grave personal flaws

[micro-usb-deactivated20230625]

[evilscientist3]

i swear if the wizard doesnt let me out of his abandoned salt mine soon im gonna fucking LOSE IT

[ttechniic]

what did you do to be put into the salt mine

[evilscientist3]

i MAY have eaten his special wizard meal. but i think he should let me out tbh

[ttechniic]

was it good? was it worth it? are you able to bear the weight of your sin?

[evilscientist3]

im not gonna lie it was fucking delicious i would fucking do it again. wait shit youre the fucking wizard in disguise seeing if ive learned my lesson arent you. fuck.

[ttechniic]

10 YEARS IN THE ABANDONED SALT MINE.

[siderealglimmer]

[escuerzoresucitado]

[il-castagno-press]

I made a mini print recently 🍀✌️🏽

If you’re in the Chicagoland area you might encounter this print around the city, I’ve been leaving them around like a scavenger hunt haha. I feel like these prints will be part of a bigger project.

Website//Etsy//Instagram

[beardedmrbean]

how to commit to the bit properly

[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"

[myjetpack]

my latest cartoon for New Scientist.