Most libraries are government property. As a general rule if it’s a government building you can’t carry a weapon. Local, state or fed. My local library has an explicit no conceivable weapons sign at the entrance as per South Carolina state law…

They try to memory hole something in the LOC and every librarian in the country will show them how dangerous the deep state can be. Those “no weapons” signs at libraries will start disappearing into the periodical file.

Enshittification will continue until Notepad is destroyed.

Everything prior to 2018 is archived in the Library of Congress. It’s where all of my beer reviews are.

Linus uploads to FTP and lets the world mirror. I just let the LOC archive my stuff.

Memory hole: A system for altering or erasing inconvenient historical documents, photographs, and articles.

Of all the ways to hold a book that is definitely one of the ones that says you are illiterate.

All that cellphone stuff and the defense contractor were all service/tech/helpdesk.

Much less script based. Maybe you get a script for day one of some launch but otherwise you are on your own in most competent operations once you are out of training and shadowing.

But in sales the script is god until you break free and hit those KPI.

“You go to war with the autism you have, not the autism you want.” – Not Donald Rumsfeld

Funny thing about that. One of my jobs was with the absolutely most rigid follow the script places to have ever existed. The radio ratings. Not only could you never not follow the script verbatim but between calls you could read nothing but the handbook. Countless people must have read this thing cover to cover over the years. But, apparently, not one person had ever understood what they were reading or proof read it. I found 21 errors. And in one of those errors was a little bit of text that explicitly stated to never read the script verbatim.

In most centers the follow the script thing is for newbies. Then you don’t meet the KPI numbers and they threaten you. Then people get desperate and stop following the script. If they get results then no one cares about the script anymore. The top performers never follow the script.

And as a general rule the absolute top performer not only doesn’t follow the script but is a compulsive liar. But they get results and the returns are justified by the sales.

Except at the radio ratings place. Follow the script or die. Even if the handbook has one tiny section that says don’t follow the script.

I left the building each day and left it behind me. One time my roommate worked at the same call center. I was so good about leaving work behind that I forgot to tell her about a bomb threat we had had 2 months before that wasn’t on her shift.

Autistic. But close enough. I sold monthly shareware subscriptions on CDs, Highlander TV show video sets and trenchcoats, animal videos, long distance, gay men’s clothing, bedding sets, golf clubs, did tech support from the days of the Nokia through birth of the BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc, saw the death of the Windows phones and even spent time at a defense contractor. I’m one of the most overqualified Helpdesk/CS/TS call center people ever.

As a two decade veteran of call centers I have had this happen to me.

Came here to say this. But knew in my heart it had already been said.

Can’t at this time but much later today.

That is, indeed, the one where you fell in love with the Pixies.

I used to think it was a good movie. But kinda dumb. But then something happened. My girlfriend would go to bed hours before I did[0]. For some reason when she did Fight Club was always on. It took me months to realize that this wasn’t an accident. She knew that I would be busy on the computer and never change the channel.

She, and others, always wanted me to start a cult. She was trying to turn me into Tyler Durden. I figured it out. She admitted it. And she kept doing it. Turns out that it’s not a good movie. It’s a great movie. Pacing, story telling, visuals, flips, surprises, foreshadowing, acting etc. On the level with Requiem for a Dream or Trainspotting[1].

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it recently it is definitely worth a revisit.

A drawing I did a little while ago for Inktober.

[0] this is a constant in my life.
[1] a double feature that will mess you up.

Company policy

Ask a Trump supporter why they want higher property taxes.

It was the one time my 8th grade civics/history teacher made a note that everything we are studying was the past but this one event is happening right now. He said that just a day or three before the massacre started.

The people there experienced it first hand. I experienced it on an 12 hour delay and the safety of not being there. You are experiencing it decades removed in the context of history already done before you were even born.

One day we will have to explain to kids the small differences between Baghdad Bob and Karoline Leavitt.