La Belgique de l'ouest, l'Espagne du nord

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.

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.

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:

frequently when i’m out and about with someone walking, they can’t anticipate what path i will take and therefore they’re in my way pretty frequently. this is fine! i can politely ask them to step to the side. but it makes me think about how little non-wheelchair users understand the way wheelchair users move. as someone who used to walk everywhere, it was an adjustment period for me to figure out how to navigate the world in a chair. here are some things that didn’t occur to me so that you don’t cut off your friend right as they’re building momentum to go up a ramp 😆

for context, i use an active manual chair. the world is very different in a power chair. even among active manual chair users, there is a huge diversity in physicality and strategies for getting around. this is a general guide that i think will apply to most manual wheelchair users. i’m starting super basic and getting more complicated as i go.

———

1. manual wheelchairs are a momentum game. it is very easy to maintain speed and direction. but speeding up, slowing down, or turning, is hard. one thing this affects is if we’re on a wavy sidewalk or other twisty-turny walkway, that is a pain in the ass and i am taking as straight a path as i can.

2. wheelchair users also have to pay attention to the slope and condition of the pavement, so our path somewhere will be different than yours, even if we’re taking the same route to the same place. for example, i usually have to go down slopes straight, not diagonally, to avoid tipping over sideways. one area this affects is crosswalks. many intersections have one curb cut for both roads you could cross, which means i will go down curb cuts to a crosswalk as if i am aiming for the middle of the intersection.

your path in orange, mine in blue. to you it seems indirect, but to me it’s the path of least resistance.

i also will be building speed in the second half of the crosswalk. this is a much easier way to tackle a ramp. if i approach with momentum, i won’t have to drag myself up the slope once i get to it.

3. building momentum and maintaining it is only half of the job. the other half is stopping. manual wheelchairs cannot stop on a dime if they’re moving with any kind of speed. if i tried to stop immediately when going downhill, i would fly out of the chair. so don’t walk right into the path of a wheelchair in motion and then stop! i will have to turn to the side very quickly and hope i don’t tip. i can’t tell you how often parents pushing strollers will stop their stroller directly in my path and then get offended when i am alarmed and turn sharply to avoid hitting their child. from their perspective, i was being careless and going “too fast.” in reality, normal walking speed takes a few feet to slow down from and stop.

4. in terms of slope. see this street in san francisco?

i can’t go down this street, it’s way too steep. i would give myself friction burns on my palms trying to control my speed. if i was in a situation where there was no avoiding this street, like in an emergency, i would be breaking my straight-slope rule and zig-zagging in the middle of the road.

this would require several zig-zags back and forth, more than the four that i drew. i also could not go up this road other than with this method. up or down, i risk tipping over sideways if i’m not careful.

4. in a similar vein, consider terrain. slopes with grass or carpet take huge amounts of energy to get up. this grassy hill isn’t insurmountable, but it would take me like thirty minutes to get up there. honestly i would probably go backwards, because it’s easier to pull yourself up a slope than push yourself.

other types of terrain can be completely immobilizing, though. this decorative gravel pathway is beautiful, and inaccessible to me. my casters (front wheels) simply will not go through that.

5. in terms of walkways and obstacles. if there’s a deep gap in the pavement lined up the way i’m going, and it’s, say, an inch wide, that is an obstacle for me. my casters are one inch wide, and my back wheels are an inch and a half. i’ll get stuck in it like a train on a track.

i have to straddle this, even if it means being too close to the middle of the sidewalk and preventing us from walking side by side.

similarly, if a crack is greater than an inch high, i’m gonna wheelie over it. at two inches, i have to. a wheelie may require a change in speed, either faster or slower depending on the person.

i have 4 inch casters, so a lip as little as 2 inches will stop me in my tracks. a lip as little as one inch, hit with any speed, can knock my casters out of square. casters can get knocked out of alignment pretty easily depending on the chair. i’d rather not have to pull out an allen wrench and a level, so i’m gonna wheelie.

this happened when i hit about a 1.5” lip on a pavement crack when i was going downhill at maybe 3mph.

6. putting it all together. see how diagonal this crack is?

this is another situation where i have to go straight relative to the slope. because that crack is wide, it will probably also require a wheelie. if i tried to approach that straight relative to the sidewalk, my left caster would get up the slope, i’d wheelie, then my right caster would land in the crack. i have to go this way.

(also lol at the trash can blocking the curb cut)

is because people have been arrested and put in fucking PRISON just for having gay sex in the privacy of their own homes. in the United States. this millennia.

if you think i'm joking, look up Lawrence v. Texas (2003). 14 out of the 50 US States STILL had laws on the books criminalizing sodomy--and yes, you could be imprisoned for multiple years and sometimes even life for repeat offenses.

in the years directly leading up to the landmark case, enforcement even in those 14 states varied, but it was absolutely weaponized against queer people, especially when stacked on top of other offenses to make up a longer sentence.

"Sodomy" does not, in a legal context, mean "anal sex."

It means "any sexual act the court has decided is deviant."

BDSM? Sodomy.

Crossdressing for sexual pleasure? Sodomy.

Jacking off to nude photos or video your consenting adult lover sent you of themselves? Sodomy.

Het oral sex? SODOMY!!!

If you're starting to think "but how could anyone prove that happened without breaking down the door?"

Ha. Haha. Ahaha.

First, I'll give you one guess how they did prove it.

Two, these were often scapegoat charges--basically they couldn't actually nail you on anything because you hadn't done anything actually illegal, only things they didn't like, and they relied on public disgust against your "degenerate character" (yeah there's a very big reason we keep saying not to use that word and it's not to be killjoys) to make sure you knew your place.

Which means that in practice:

Went to a socialist meeting? Sodomy.

Male kindergarten teacher? Sodomy.

Mixing races? Sodomy.

Not Christian (or the right kind of Christian)? Sodomy.

YES THEY FUCKING DO COUNT.

Wanna know why?

Take a look at how many politicians have labeled trans people and their allies as pedophiles.

Take a look at how many politicians used to label gay people as pedophiles.

Take a look at how much suspicion falls on innocent men who just think working with kids is fun and want the chance to help, grow, nurture, and teach.

Take a look at yourself.

What about you could someone twist into "that person is a pedophile" if they wanted rid of you?

I can tell you exactly how they'd do it with me. I'm queer. I have a niece who came out as lesbian in her teens. I supported her.

Clearly I groomed her into that lifestyle, right?

Child sex abusers should be proven in a court of law to be guilty, and penalized to the fullest extent of the law. Pedophiles who have not abused children and seek to avoid doing so should not be hanged for something going wild in their brains.

Yes! That's super uncomfortable to say! I'm a CSA survivor! It's awkward and it means I have to defend people I really wish were not the way they are!

But the rope you use to lynch another will yank you into the tree to die.

Its also a fucking useless example for sodomy law especially because of how wildly age of consent can vary even in the united states. Which I hate that people get so weird about when you try to discuss it. No, knowing this stuff isnt a "red flag" you have to know something before you can speak on it or try and change it!

Child marriage is legal in 34 states with 4 of them technically not even having an age minimum outside of common law that could theoretically set it at 12. If we go back a few years the state of it would be even MORE dire as many of these laws putting age minimums only were put into place in the past eight years! So if one defines sodomy as "any sexual act done premarital that isnt missionary" then these wouldn't be covered.

Sodomy laws are USELESS for protecting children, because laws about CSA are better off being their OWN thing with strictly defined terms. Sodomy is so nebulous and hand wavy it does nothing but punish people who have done nothing wrong, strict terms with clear meanings is what creates protections. "You can't just make "if we think its gross" the law and expect that to actually work on deterring people who are doing the actual crimes. Which are ALREADY illegal.

“We need a law that makes it illegal to go into a bathroom that doesn’t align with your birth sex! Otherwise, people might go into the wrong bathroom to sexually assault someone!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t it already illegal to sexually assault someone, including in a bathroom??? Because if so, then you can just completely discard that explanation for the entire law. It is already illegal to go into the wrong bathroom and sexually assault a person; ergo, the law is not about sexual assault at all, it’s just about bathrooms.

“We need to arrest undocumented immigrants in order to crack down on gang activity!” Huh, interesting, but isn’t that gang activity already illegal??? So, if you wanted to crack down on gang activity, you could simply arrest people who are associated with gangs, and in fact, we do already do that. Ergo, this rhetoric isn’t actually about gang activity at all; it’s just about undocumented immigrants.

“We need to diminish free speech and freedom of movement rights for suspected terrorists, because otherwise they could commit mass murder!” Well, interestingly, mass murder is already illegal, and if you have probable cause that indicates that someone is planning to commit mass murder, you can simply arrest them for that. Since the law is already fully equipped to go after people who are genuinely suspected of gearing up to commit a violent terroristic act, this clearly isn’t really about terrorism at all; it’s just about diminishing free speech and freedom of movement rights.

“We need tort reform that caps the monetary damages that large corporations can be forced to pay, in order to keep people from bringing frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits!” Hmm, but see the thing with that is fraud is already a crime, and frivolous lawsuits can already be thrown out. If a law caps the amount of damages corporations need to pay in lawsuits which were not found to be frivolous or fraudulent, then almost by definition, it has nothing to do with frivolous lawsuits or fraud – it’s just about limiting corporate liability.

I could go on.

Always ask yourself what the actual function of a proposed law is – not just the stated goal, but what it actually does that is not already covered by an equally restrictive law.

And remember, a good general rule is:

*vanilla = opposite of bdsm, the more socially acceptable thing

ok i lied here's a hint of context