Hollersponge One-Note

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

they don’t hate you. they’re not trying to change you or make laws against you. they just don’t think of you! society is designed like you don’t even exist

My family and I are living in extremely difficult humanitarian conditions. My father is unable to work, so I have become the sole provider for my family despite having very limited resources.

What hurts me the most is my sister Sarah's situation. She has a disability and needs ongoing medical treatment, medication, and care. Unfortunately, I can no longer afford to provide her with the basic support she needs. It breaks my heart every day to see her suffering while I am unable to help her.🥹🙏🏼

I once dreamed of completing my university education and building a career in my field, but the circumstances forced me to put my dreams aside. Now, my only goal is to provide for my family and do everything I can to care for my sister.

Please, if you are able, help my sister Sarah, even with a small donation. Every contribution, no matter how small, can make a real difference in her life and give my family a little hope.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supports us or shares our story with others.

Please donate through PayPal. Thank you so much for your kindness and support.

Before this crisis, I was a Computer Engineering graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza. I had a house, a car, a promising career, and a life full of dreams. Now, I am a brother carrying the heavy responsibility of keeping my entire family alive.

I sacrificed absolutely everything before turning to this campaign. I spent my entire life savings and sold every single thing I owned, including my laptop. Out of pure desperation to feed my family, I took a grueling heavy-lifting job that my body couldn't handle. My back broke under the weight, leaving me hospitalized for an entire month.

Today, I am broken and in agonizing pain inside a tent, unable to even stand up on my own feet.

I feel completely helpless because my campaign is moving extremely slow—it doesn't even cover the cost of basic food for my family right now. We are starving, and the slow support is leaving us stranded on the brink of survival.

Please, do not look away from our agony. Your donations are our only way to eat and stay safe. If you cannot donate, please share my story. You are truly our last remaining hope 🙏😭🥀💔😔

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: