I Digress!

I'm a crazy, contemplative, creator. I have an about me page. This is a Multi-Fandom blog because I digress. I tag things and have a "tag cloud" page. Main blog background by morganmudway Mobile header by inchells

[astronautawry]

New aesthetic: Arctic hares when they're coat is only half done shedding and they look a little fucked up

[is-the-fox-video-cute]

Arctic foxes also do this!

[merymdm]

Coco✨ I couldn't resist making a fanart with good old ink and paper.

[whichcouldmeanothing]

The winners of our episode, Siobhan Thompson and Grant O'Brien!

Game Changer Season 8 Episode 3 "Night Shift"

[simplyreiartblog]

Wanted to draw this since I finished DDD~ One of my fav games in the series so far~

[oscar-isaac]

SPACEBALLS 1987 | dir. Mel Brooks

[nkp1981]

Happy 100th Birthday Mel Brooks

[chrishayley]

bucky barnes + 👋✌️

[partialnoodle]

started outer wilds again and i am at my fucking limit

[elesir]

"Surrounded by Death"

[catasters]

[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"

[luxmoogle]

"Any day spent with you is my favorite day. ˚ . ★⋆. ࿐࿔ So, today is my new favorite day." ˚　.˚　　　✦　　. . 　 ˚

[amongfloweringmeadows-deactivat]

Monarchs butterflies in Mexico 🦋🦋🦋

🎥hobopeeba

[the-storming-sea]

Actually yknow what. WTNV should be considered revolutionary and significant gay media that played an important role in the growth of gay representation in media especially in podcasts. When people talk about important gay media in the early 2000s I want wtnv to be one of the ones people talk about. No if ands or buts about it.

[the-storming-sea]

Actually I cant shut up about this. In 2012, people did not even think about putting gay representation in popular media. Gay representation wasn’t considered profitable yet. Gay marriage would not be legalized for another three years. The Legend of Korra, a show that fought to the death to have their main lead hold hands with another woman, just released their first episode earlier that spring. Steven Universe, a show well known for its gay representation, including having the first gay proposal + marriage on a kids cartoon tv show, would begin a year later in 2013, but wouldn’t show their gay representation hand until 2015 with the episode Jail Break. The Adventure Zone, a podcast currently well known for it LGBTQ+ representation, wouldn’t begin until 2014, and didn’t show their hand until 2015. In my young queer experience, representation was covert, secretive, only implied or dead. 

and then in the summer of 2012, wtnv introduced itself to the world, proclaimed its main character gay in the first episode, and played it gay (pun intended) for years. Being gay wasn’t a trope, or a goof, it was normal. Cecil Gershwin Palmer was just a canon, gay character who fell in love and stayed in love and was happy. and that was that.

if we talk about revolutionary queer media, we talk about Welcome to Nightvale. No exceptions. 

[hushpupper-deactivated20240118]

I think it’s really important Cecil Baldwin credit for this. I’m not saying Fink and Cranor and later Dylan Marron have nothing to do with it, because of course they do. But Cecil being gay was not something the writers intended. Because initially, Carlos was not intended to be a love interest for Cecil. He was just meant to be a character that showed up occasionally to be a tongue-in-cheek goof on scientist characters in shows like Fringe or the X-Files. But Cecil Baldwin made the decision to make his character utterly in love with Carlos, because he was gay, and wanted his character to be as well.

For those who don’t know Cecil Baldwin is HIV+, and he’s openly discussed his struggle with it. This is a large part of why his playing a man who is openly gay and sexually active is also really important. The importance I think of having LGBT people playing LGBT people really shines through with both Cecil and Dylan’s characters. They can be authentic, they can be a source of hope and representation. Behind the scenes, Night Vale is just as diverse as the show itself. Cecil Baldwin’s pretty incredible and it’s worth it to read what he’s had to say on WTNV if you have the time.

[samreich]

great point vic

[mafuyuh]

Euini | Episode 12

[eleilinnrallin]

This is a reminder for those who handmake Christmas presents that now is not too early to start. It may in fact be a good time to start if you have a lot to make/your craft takes a long time. You should maybe start it now, whether that's brainstorming or actually doing the crafts!

[newtsoftheworldunite]

Translating this into tumblr's preferred public service announcement format for this kind of alert:

[autistobrat]

scientists are experimenting on cross-breeding a crab and a cheetah; things could go sideways real fast