Land of Kaleidoscopes and Radiance

You don't have to be a jerk about it. The most effective yet civil way of dealing with harmful "humor" is just pretending you don't get the joke and asking them to explain. "I don't get it, what's girl math? What's a girl dinner? What do you mean by you're just a girl? Can you explain the joke to me?"

The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!

But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.

There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.

And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!

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 tender member of your lady love?

Then be assured its texture is unmatched

Now softened as it is by womanhood

KING: Thou dares impugn the honor of thy queen?!

Were we not so close I would have thy head!

FELLATIO: Tis futile. You may have my head but once,

No parts of it extended beyond the lines, and the paper ticket was clearly displayed, impaled on a horn.

Really nice recipes. Every hour.