robin_realaMar 27

The 'Paperwork Flood': How I Drowned a Bureaucrat Before Dinner

https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-paperwork-flood/

The 'Paperwork Flood': How I Drowned a Bureaucrat before dinner., Sightless Scribbles

A fabulously gay blind author.

Show threadtyingq

Sounds like it's not real but...

It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use.

Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

Mar 27 at 1:36pmWeb
Show threadhrimfaxiMar 27
The person is an agent of the system. That they bear the brunt of the reaction is the system working as intended.
Show threadtyingqMar 27
I guess. Faxing it to someone involved in why the rules are that way would be more satisfying to me.
Show threadmadaxe_againMar 27
You can fax your congressman.
Show threadmiki123211Mar 27

I, as a user with 10k+ karma on HN, can testify that the author has all the hallmarks of a real blind person (active in blind communities and so on). I don't have any evidence suggesting that the author ever engaged in deceptive behavior.

In other words, my P(real) > 0.99.

Show threadtyingqMar 27

Sure. He's real. ̶̶̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶
"Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..."

Edit: Yep, appears I have it wrong. Thanks for the pointers. The non-fiction tag missed my eye.

Show threadlatexrMar 27
This specific post is tagged “nonfiction” and “rant”, though. Writers of fiction often write nonfiction too. Douglas Adams, David Foster Wallace, Harlan Ellison, …, all wrote journalism pieces.
Show threadjohn_strinlaiMar 27

let me finish the rest of the sentence for you, which somehow got deleted from your clipboard. weird bug!

"and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."

extra weird, because you are the third person that has experienced this bug where you can only paste the first half of that exact sentence.

Show threadjerfMar 27

I don't have a word for this, but this falls under the class of things where even if the author who wrote this is did not personally do this and is making it up, it has absolutely 100% happened somewhere, many times over.

For example, it's the same for the DailyWTF... I remember how that would be posted here or on a programming reddit and half the comments would be about how it hadn't happened, and you know, maybe whoever wrote those particular words is just making it up, but I've seen enough just in my little tiny slice of human behavior phase space to know that either the story or something indistinguishably close to it most certainly has happened somewhere, at some time.

Show threadraybbMar 27
Seems like something DOGE should have tackled early if they actually cared about making the government effecient. I guess making the lives of the disabled easier isn't flashy enough.
Show threadunsupp0rtedMar 27

It is and should be an indictment of the employee personally only in the sense that the employee's tone and manner likely conveyed to OP that she thinks of him as a pothole or a buzzing fly: something you have to deal with, rather than someone who needs to be helped.

Not that she has any power to help him really. I would guess OP is more upset by the dehumanization in her tone, rather than the dehumanization of the system she works within.