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The thing I keep saying is: an error message is not a person telling you what specifically went wrong this time. It's a string somebody writing the program months or years ago thought would describe what they *guessed* back then might cause the code to reach that state unexpectedly.
1. Code can always be wrong, sometimes in ways the programmer hadn't thought of (in fact often since they probably handled the ways they'd thought of) and,
2. Error handling code is code.
@cogitoblood
It's relevant to whether you know what you're talking about. You just said a whole category of people you don't know and that society tends to treat pretty badly shouldn't exist. But they do exist. Now what?
While we're talking shoulds and should nots, I think you should get some trans friends to listen to, and should not talk about the subject until you are informed by them of where you're getting this all wrong.
I assume this will take a while, so muting you for now.
@cogitoblood
How many trans friends and relatives do you have?
There is no such thing as sides. Positions are extreme according to what they imply should happen.
The position that trans kids should be denied acceptance and recognition until they submit or kill themselves is extreme. That trans kids should be allowed to figure out who they are and then live their best life is not extreme.
There's no way to make it extreme except in the delusion of a preferred point of balance between *any* 2 things no matter how unjust one is.
@cstross
I don't care about one pic.
Congress either enforce the full release as the law it passed specifically for that purpose demands, in which case we get to see all the photos and documents, catalogued and with sources, or they don't, in which case it's already game over and none of the photos matter.
Half measures are nothing, because the central issue is whether the executive branch is above the law, not which additional, arguably surplus, crimes the president can be implicated in.
@cstross
Nobody goes into space and colonises their galaxy because it's an insane, incoherent goal with no possible return on the investment of energy and resources. Only civilisations infected by the Infinite Growth mind-virus pursue such goals, and their home planets … don't make it.
I sure hope our civilisation isn't throwing irrecoverable resources into a project that can definitely never pay for itself just to make the number go up for as long as possible.
Ooh I thought of another aspect of letters within fiction. A letter or any other text message is unlike dialog in that it persists to be re-read later, maybe not by the intended recipient, and can be loaded with hidden meanings that you wouldn't expect someone to pick up on or remember accurately if they heard the same words spoken.
I used this twice in The Silk Mind, in a letter to the Badger Survey from Doctor Grey, and rather pointed diplomatic letters between him and Celandine.
You can find both of these stories in Silk and Sharp Edges. Links to the paperback and the book bundle are here:
https://torn-and-crumpled.page/books.html
#WritersCoffeeClub 1 Oct
Have you written in an epistolary format?
For short stories. Yet Here We Are is told in increasingly surreal letters and telegrams from a young man to his possibly indifferent love interest. Journal is, unsurprisingly, journal entries, by a creature trying to piece together the secrets and motivation of his creator.
Letters are great fun in settings that have them. A character gets to say whatever they want without interruption but without certainty of understanding.