Lunar Lena

Decades of sexual violence. Not in the last few years.

you know it's always been a fear of mine that someone would copy tvp and change up the wording to create a male version and frame it as an equal counterpart, subtracting from the purpose of tvp which is to center transfem survivors... but never in my worst nightmares did I imagine they would make their project specifically about abuse from transfems and nobody else. fucking horrific

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:

Taqwa, Yaqeen, Ihsan, and Iman Mohammed Mahmoud Shabanah (their names, they are sisters). Four girls who were outstanding university students in different science related fields from the city of Rafah, South of the Gaza strip, were killed in cold blood by the Israeli army while displaced in Muase, Khan Younis.

And very true. The Islamophobia propaganda is mind-boggling. Racist conservative, white supremacist maga supporters are constantly trying to sell the lies that all Muslims everywhere around the world with no exceptions prevent their women from receiving an education and that all Muslim girls with no exceptions, are forced into marriage to men twice their age during puberty. That is propaganda that people with actual eyes and braincells would never believe. Like, their solution to that Islamic 'mysoginy' they keep complaining about is to genocide these girls? Also, as if these same issues didn't happen in America, when these people literally support and defend a known pedophile.

I've attended a university in a Muslim country, and in all of my classes, not once did the number of guys outnumber the girls. Every class I attended, there were more girls than boys. So much so that the girls outnumbered the boys 5 or 6 to 1 per class. Female professors were also held in high regard and never treated as less than. In addition to that, from my experience, at least, the Muslim girls in general tended to get higher grades than their male comrades.

If you had to navigate the internet in a language you didn't understand and couldn't even read, how would you go about it?

My friend Wesal (@deemagaza) doesn't speak English. The only way she can find her way around the English internet is by using Google Translate or ask others like me for help. It is very difficult for her.

Yet she has no choice but to do so for her daughter Farah, almost sixteen now, who is autistic and has a kidney problem that - without treatment - makes her deficient in potassium, which, if it becomes too severe, can lead to cardiac arrest.

^ Farah spends most of her days like this now, feeling uncomfortable in her body, but not understanding why.

Farah's medication has become unavailable in Gaza, which has endangered her life and means she has to be treated in the hospital, which is costly and where they are running out of resources as well. Farah's case has now been referred to the WHO to be transferred abroad. If the opportunity for evacuation arises, we must make sure the funds are available!

Please help by donating to Farah's fundraiser and by sharing this post! Farah's fundraiser has been verified by gazavetters, #451!

If anyone has wants to donate but has questions about how the funds are transferred to Farah's family, feel free to get in touch!

If you donate to Farah's campaign, you can get a free commission by @fablebagel! Thank you, Fable! ❤️

tagging for reach, please share and aks your friends to share as well, thank you <3 (let me know if you don't want me to tag you anymore, apologies for any multiple tags)

My family's wound is still bleeding, and my little daughter's illness is greater than words can describe. Please don't hold back your donations, your prayers, or sharing our appeal.Take a step for Farah, for the sake of everything you love. I am a mother who, instead of dreaming about my daughter's future, now dreams only of providing the medicine and every dose she needs to keep her alive.🥹🙏🏻🇵🇸

Their campaign appears as #451 on this list created by @/gazavetters

CW: Suicidal Ideation

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