Kit

You are vastly underestimating the amount of work that goes into design. On an epic scale. And I think, just maybe, that is the real point xkcd is making. It's not a case of devaluing the workers who brought the idea into reality; our awareness of what the blue collar person goes through to create products for mass production has entered the global consciousness. The work of design, and the complexities involved... Well, clearly, people continue to take those for granted.

That curve on that lamp? It's a compound curve. That's NOT easy to do. Also, he said AUTOCAD. Not Rev-It. Not Inventor. Autocad. The clunkiest, most god-awful program for 3D modeling there is. Sketch-up is a better program. So no. It wasn't done in a couple minutes. That was hours of cussing and screaming and pleading and asking for help before some black magic happened and the program finally behaved and did what you asked it to do and you got the result you wanted.

Design doesn't just mean you throw an idea in the computer and tell people to go make it. You have to flesh out the idea, coordinate with the customer and make sure they like what you are doing, and then you have to make sure you aren't running afoul of any relevant industry standards. Like the IEC. Or OSHA. Or ASME, ASTM, and SAE. And so on.

Then there's the consideration around if what you are designing can even be built or not. Is what you've designed even possible to be assembled? Did you overlook anything? How could people misuse it? How could they break it? How hard will it be to repair? Is there space to get tools in to access screws? Can you get your hands or fingers into tight spots? Does the tooling or machines even exist to build the parts you're designing? What about the materials? Can your parts be built from standard materials, or will they require specialty materials due to things like thickness requirements?

And THEN! THEN YOU HAVE TO DO MATH! You have to perform calculations to make sure that the stresses and strains of the individual components and the entire product can withstand everyday life plus a reasonable factor of safety. You have to verify that your screws have enough thread engagement, that your welds are sized properly for the anticipated loads. You might need to pick out appropriate lubricants or check for the possibility of galvanic corrosion between dissimilar metals. Are your circuits adequately shielded and grounded? And so on.

By the time you get done with all of that, you've redesigned your assembly at least 4 times, if not more. But hopefully by this point, the customer likes the design, it's in compliance with all necessary regulatory and industry standards, is physically feasible, you've chosen your materials, AND is mathematically sound.

Now all you have to do is create an entire set of construction drawings detailing every single feature of every single part, which will include all essential information regarding material, regulatory and industry standard information. You will also have to detail exactly how to assemble everything, in precisely what order, and highlight any important information such as torque requirements for fasteners. Or if you needed locktite, or annealing after welding, etc. Oh, and the way these drawings are done is governed by yet another ISO standard, and you have to make sure that you are writing all of your instructions in such a way that people who DON'T have your knowledge and think you're just an overstuffed bag of dicks that's being stupid will understand (and hopefully follow).

So. Yeah. I stay late working on projects all the time. Engineers are constantly working overtime. Usually on salary. So. About that.

I'm not here to disparage the horrible truth of how bad folks in the trades have it. Or how abused those in sweat shops are. I'm here to disabuse people of the notion that design work is "easy" or even "quick." It's not. Hard work doesn't have to be physical to be hard work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

CA __ How would you describe your character Dr. Ayda Mensah?

ND __ Mensah is doing the best she can under the circumstances. This isn’t the world she knows. She and her team aren’t used to dealing with corporations or politics. We come from a place that values emotional connection and humanity. We have chosen to be on this planet for research. She's holding the team together. She's very warm, she's very open. She listens to each individual as she's running the crew. But she's not supposed to be a fighter. She's not supposed to be in danger. Yet danger arrives. So she covers her panic attacks. She covers the stress. To be a leader, you don't put your fears onto the people that you're looking after. That's what I love about Dr. Ayda, and I loved playing her because she likes people. She likes to see the essence of the person she's talking to.

CA __ When you look at the show holistically, what's one lesson someone could extract from watching Murderbot? 

ND __ The main thing is that with sentient creatures, even with our pets, our hearts open, your life will be changed for the better than when we're in fear of people. That's why I love what Martha wrote. I see our world in her books and in this show. Especially in this moment in time, we have to be willing to meet “the other” as we perceive it. And in Murderbot, the other is a sentient construct, a clone grown from human flesh and metal. It’s a fighting machine, a killing machine. Murderbot doesn’t like humans, because humans are cruel. All the worst attributes it’s encountered come from its job as a security unit. But from my perspective, the joy comes in watching Murderbot meet the people from the Preservation Alliance. That experience changes how it sees humanity. And in turn, it changes how we see ourselves. In a good way.

In other words, some people have extreme wealth, others are poor, and that's evil?

This was posted on Facebook, and a dipshit in the comments said that the monkey could have worked very hard to gather the trillion bananas.

But you voluntarily agreed to pay taxes. Before you got the job, you knew you'd have to pay taxes on your income, and you voluntarily decided to get the job anyway.

You got the job knowing that your boss would take the surplus value of your labor and that the government would take taxes. Both are equally voluntary.