Shake the Dust

"Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than the stories and people we're quoting." -John Green

[evilvillain123456789]

For this game of dodgeball, I will be specifically targeting the gayest and most autistic among you to eliminate. 

[mtfoss]

Okay so normal rules then

[ghostlywriterr]

[thememedaddy]

[endlace]

You if bugs didn't exist

[m0nk3y-bl0g]

[pikestaff]

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

[themythicalcodfish]

To wit:

[switchelsweets]

I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.

In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:

“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.

“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”

Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.

Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕

[magnuspeccatori]

This is the most inspirational thing I've read all week. Possibly all year

[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"

[queenofthedorks]

I believe I’m late in our quarterly reminder…..

Ed Quinn is a smoking hot man. Smoking. Hot. 

In other news, I’ve started rewatching Eureka from the beginning (again).

[queenofthedorks]

Man oh man. It’s been AGES since I’ve reminded folks that Ed Quinn is smoking hot and today out of the blue he showed up on my FYP over on TikTok. So let this serve as a reminder. Ed Quinn is smoking hot.

[happymiffy]

[machinesonmute-deactivated20210]

the temptation every time there’s heavy rainfall to just go out on the street and

[vangogh-vanhoe]

[cutecipher]

science has always been political. what gets studied. what doesnt. who gets to do the studying. on and on and on.

[cutecipher]

scientists on this post: yuuuup 👍

people who aren't scientists: um actually ☝️

[cutecipher]

This is both one of the issues that radicalized me into fully being a leftist and one of the reasons I've been so harsh on AI, around the time that first started coming to light is when I was heavily involved in studying AI and it has always irked me how we encode bigotry into tech

[tomfoolerytotality]

Superman isn't woke. You're just so evil that you see a man doing acts of kindness and you think it's a targeted political agenda

[otakuvampyre]

This but for people this post is talking about. 🤣

[laikaspeaks]

Get peer reviewed, bitch.

[cosmonautroger]

Landman, 2024

[orcboxer]

autism tests are so funny. I'm extremely literal most of the time, but people don't tell me that generally, so I'm inclined to answer disagree. because I'm taking the statement too literally

[peopleingishard]

^not my post but same sentiment

[kosmogrl]

[qalbtalk-deactivated20231105]

“…use things to have good days.”

[narcissistcookbook]

the loading screen trying to convince me to use even one of my 3000 consumables

[bluespock-blog]

one spock

two spock

red spock

blue spock

glad spock

sad spock

old spock

new spock

hat spock

cat spock

head spock

dead spock

tie spock

high spock

alive spock

revived spock

all the spocks may come and go

but there’s one thing we’ll always know

no matter where or when you may be

spock is there

for you and me

live long and prosper

[trekheritageposts]

star trek heritage post (March 26th, 2016)

[theauthoress26]

LLAP 💙🖖

[biomaterial]

The night gardener once asked me if I knew how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive drought, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death.

When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut

[biomaterial]

thank you for the insight

[saul-tortellini]

This is how 40k works

[batmanego]

im having feelings about the uffington white horse again

[batmanego]

so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.

people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.

we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.

the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?

[batmanego]

couldn’t agree more we’re best friends now