Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an oppressive, sterile government office. She tries to ignore the overwhelming sense of helplessness and sits down to begin working. Her first call is a person screaming at her about their benefits. She has no power, absolutely no power, to help them due to the rules imposed on her by her superiors, but has to take the abuse regardless and explain the process she has no control over to them. The next call is a case she actually is familiar with: a person claiming to be disabled to collect dole. They aren't, but she has been told that this is a special case and she must work with them. She complies. She sits back in her chair and the phone rings again. An upset person on the other end...
"I have the documents in PDF format"
wholinator2 12 minutes ago [-]
I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then laughed at her anguish.
Yes, life is hard, but surely we can bear our troubles in a way that don't make others harder to bear. Or at least aim your troubles at someone who has any power at all to change things! Find a better way to fight the system, that isn't just stabbing other people trapped in the box with you
john_strinlai 3 minutes ago [-]
>then laughed at her anguish.
anguish? as in, "excruciating pain" or "agonizing torment"?
i dont understand where the "anguish" comes from. he didnt yell at her, berate her, hit her, cause her to be fired, submit a malicious complaint, or anything of the sort. he sent her a long fax. oh no!
if i was in her position, i would shrug and hand my boss the 500 pieces of paper.
if you are just a cog in the machine, it is not mentally healthy to take on the responsibility of more than a cog. caring is the responsibility of non-cogs.
justonceokay 4 minutes ago [-]
My partner works in the office of a prominent Mayor. As a relatively low-totem-pole guy, he has to double-check every vitriolic email sent to the office of the mayor.
Now with AI the screening could be better, but in general every letter has to be read because often people in need of immediate support write very evil things. Think of a dehydrated and irate senior caught in their attic. In a last ditch effort they mail the mayor a racist scree, but they do in fact need help or they will die.
There are lots of people in the government actually trying to help you, despite how depressing their job is
fainpul 14 minutes ago [-]
Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.
spicyusername 2 minutes ago [-]
never blame anyone for anything
That's actually not quite true.
Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.
If the actions of an individual, or a group, were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, regardless of where they're not there is "agency".
This discussion itself is exactly an example of what we're talking about.
If there's no such thing as agency, then how can us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior.
justonceokay 1 minutes ago [-]
If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.
ramon156 7 minutes ago [-]
This. There's something about most cultures that I am slowly am realizing; we always know how to complain and shift the responsibility. And no, you're not immune to this. You're not immune to anything, really.
Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss's fault, not yours. This makes it easy for you to not feel guilty, since your job is to follow da rulez.
How did we get here? Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people. We're not. We're here to squeeze you until we cannot legally ask for more.
lotsofpulp 2 minutes ago [-]
> Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount.
You can, you would just end up without income at best, or charged with a crime and imprisoned at worst.
s5300 3 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
recursivedoubts 10 minutes ago [-]
i don't believe that to be the case at all
but, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it?
but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?
forshaper 2 minutes ago [-]
I don't need blame to hunt an animal for food or slam someone who's biting me.
I don't need blame to swat a mosquito that's trying to live, to remove a cobra from my living room, or to quibble about fine print with someone in such an annoying way that I eventually get what I want.
fainpul 6 minutes ago [-]
right
stavros 8 minutes ago [-]
It is more important that actually disabled people can easily collect assistance than that we catch fraudsters, though I suspect the US, as a culture, has a different opinion.
tyingq 34 minutes ago [-]
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.
miki123211 17 minutes ago [-]
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.
tyingq 3 minutes ago [-]
Sure. He's real. The story though:
"Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..."
InsideOutSanta 3 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long. It's the politicians that people like us elected because they promised to cut wasteful spending, so now blind people have to prove they're still blind once a year. We did that to them.
hrimfaxi 32 minutes ago [-]
The person is an agent of the system. That they bear the brunt of the reaction is the system working as intended.
tyingq 28 minutes ago [-]
I guess. Faxing it to someone involved in why the rules are that way would be more satisfying to me.
madaxe_again 25 minutes ago [-]
You can fax your congressman.
cucumber3732842 11 minutes ago [-]
>It reads like an indictment of the government employee personality in general, and the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use.
Fixed that for you. That's how it should read.
Not only is the system questionable in a "the bricks may be individual defensible but the road goes right to hell" way but the kind of people such a system first creates (nobody signs up to be a cop just to strangle black guys, nobody signs up to work in the disability office to give legit cases the runaround, these people became this way) and then retains are not necessarily great.
And before anyone screeches at me, yes there's plenty of areas of private industry that are just as bad.
sidewndr46 39 minutes ago [-]
For a second I thought this was one of my friends. He had his eyes removed due to a medical reason (already blind). He recently had to go to a vision doctor and take a vision test. To confirm to his insurance that he was indeed, blind.
actionfromafar 27 minutes ago [-]
Regulatory capture.
speedgoose 22 minutes ago [-]
I don’t like the AI writing style anymore. It’s very readable and it has great words, but it’s lacking imperfections. Like a raytraced 3D render of mathematically perfect shapes.
hyperhello 19 minutes ago [-]
It’s a neural network. You can see the macro pretending to be real aspects because our brain is neural too. Interesting, but not thinking.
firesteelrain 19 minutes ago [-]
Giving them a pass since he or she is blind. The text is also very large intentionally
spicymaki 7 minutes ago [-]
Aside from the AI writing the blog itself seems to have a false timeline. It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year. There is all of this promotion about books, podcasts, volunteering to support the author.
What is this about?
newer_vienna 6 minutes ago [-]
I cannot get over the malice seeping through this author's writing. Happiness does not come from making others miserable.
NGRhodes 21 minutes ago [-]
This exact dynamic exists in the UK too.
Lifelong and degenerative conditions.
They have full access to bank accounts, revoked driving license, direct line to my consultants.
Every form filled, every document provided.
They still call to ask if my genes have fixed themselves.
Not sure what verbal confirmation they're expecting - "no, I made it all up"?
looperhacks 8 minutes ago [-]
I know it's fiction - but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. The spam should go to the person in charge, not the person who is forced to deal with this every day
cl0ckt0wer 43 minutes ago [-]
The fax machine we had in the office would convert the incoming faxes to email for us. Maybe that's a security violation for them but I find it difficult to believe they don't have some sort of all digital receipt system
miek 31 minutes ago [-]
While I refuse to work for the govt (my soul would rot), I have family and close friends that do, and the this story (w possibly exaggerated dialogue) is entirely believable.
neoCrimeLabs 36 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, there are also business that provide this as a service.
pluc 31 minutes ago [-]
Whenever I read stories like this about how hard it is for US people to keep getting the little they've been getting I think of people on the other side. It takes an evil compliance to be the Karen in this article. Zero empathy, zero compassion, you're a row in a spreadsheet. If they'd start caring a little and standing up to what is very obviously wrong, the US would be a much different place. Apply that same logic to "the deep state", military men, etc. It's pretty crazy how much of their situation is their own making, yet they'll happily blame the other side.
wholinator2 4 minutes ago [-]
We have no idea what "Karens" life is actually like. I can think of about 5,000,000 scenarios that make her the more empathetic person in this interaction. People need jobs, government jobs are low paying but secure. This woman isn't making $100,000 a year just to say no to blind people, she very likely could be just scraping by as well, working in a call center, in a soul destroying government office, getting what little she can without a college degree she has neither the money, nor the time to complete. Maybe she worked hard and paid harder and got the degree and then it meant nothing. Very likely her boss and her both know she is eminently replacable. If she stands up she will be the single blade of grass getting chopped by the implacable mower.
What I'm trying to say is yeah, she could've taken the risk and stood up and said something. He could've beared the pain and sent the correct documentation. He knows the process by now, he had to have known exactly what he needed to send! And yet he chose to needlessly inflict harm on someone who's choice it wasn't theirs to make. The reality of jobs these days is not a give and take, let's all make the world better by democratizing our decisions type world. It's much much worse.
abright 13 minutes ago [-]
To an extent, I agree. At the same time, Karen may be in a similarly desperate situation. While the morally correct position would be to stand up to what is obviously wrong, Karen may need the paycheck to feed her kids. Karen herself is a row in a spreadsheet that the powers that be could replace in a heartbeat.
I'm not suggesting that this is any reason to support evil policies but I try to be sympathetic to struggles I may not be aware of.
fainpul 11 minutes ago [-]
This is not a US thing, this is a bureaucracy thing. You can enjoy that worldwide (at least in every "civilized" country).
solfox 28 minutes ago [-]
Great read. While I admire the spite, I question the wisdom of pissing off a government employee with the power to deny your benefits.
wittyusername 49 minutes ago [-]
I don't believe this is actually real, but it was great to read nonetheless.
r_lee 44 minutes ago [-]
it's fictional, it says that in the bottom (nvm, tagged nonfictional)
john_strinlai 18 minutes ago [-]
the bottom actually says:
"He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings _and_ nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."
the sentence continues after the "and".
it is also tagged "non-fiction" at the top, as other people have noted.
solfox 29 minutes ago [-]
It actually doesn't say that.
nanoxide 38 minutes ago [-]
It's also tagged "nonfiction" though
actionfromafar 24 minutes ago [-]
Yes, clearly. Something like this could never happen in the real healthcare system, that would be absurd.
wkandek 34 minutes ago [-]
Fictional, but how far away from the truth? I enjoyed this interview with the CIO of the IRS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4odAXoqRT8 who describes his troubles with replacing the fax based system. Security is mentioned. The specific section is around minute 15.
31 minutes ago [-]
31 minutes ago [-]
Papazsazsa 6 minutes ago [-]
This site is so nice.
hyperhello 45 minutes ago [-]
I’m impressed the author was able to learn and handle all the UI while blind. The corner of “just works” computing they live in could be beyond what I’ve ever experienced.
r_lee 43 minutes ago [-]
it's fiction (seemingly everything is on the site?). maybe the title should reflect that
mzajc 38 minutes ago [-]
It's tagged "nonfiction" just below the title.
37 minutes ago [-]
moss_dog 37 minutes ago [-]
It's tagged nonfiction.
hyperhello 29 minutes ago [-]
Apparently we have a case of discerning truth by whether we’re downvoting someone saying it’s fiction.
37 minutes ago [-]
dentemple 41 minutes ago [-]
This is proof that you don't need vision to create a thing of beauty.
mystraline 20 minutes ago [-]
There's a LOT of similar content like this as fast-reading AI generated voice, over on YouTube shorts. The few I listened to were these kinds of GOTCHA HAHA moral superiority games.
And then near the end of like the 3rd one was text that wasn't cut from the TTS engine... "Claude can make mistakes"
ai-inquisitor 37 minutes ago [-]
This entire post is clearly AI generated. My internal AI detector didn't kick in until the sixth paragraph. More slop for the feed.
26 minutes ago [-]
tomq 19 minutes ago [-]
Yeah GPTZero says 100% AI generated
renewiltord 24 minutes ago [-]
Bloody hell. Cerebral palsy, legal blindness then leading to total blindness, and gay. I hope this person lives in a place where at least the last is acceptable because otherwise this is one of the most unlucky rolls you can imagine. They seem to have built a life regardless however. Good for them.
nine_zeros 19 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
TyrunDemeg101 51 minutes ago [-]
Chefs Kiss, thank you for that bit of schadenfreude to go with my morning coffee.
Rendered at 14:09:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
"I have the documents in PDF format"
Yes, life is hard, but surely we can bear our troubles in a way that don't make others harder to bear. Or at least aim your troubles at someone who has any power at all to change things! Find a better way to fight the system, that isn't just stabbing other people trapped in the box with you
anguish? as in, "excruciating pain" or "agonizing torment"?
i dont understand where the "anguish" comes from. he didnt yell at her, berate her, hit her, cause her to be fired, submit a malicious complaint, or anything of the sort. he sent her a long fax. oh no!
if i was in her position, i would shrug and hand my boss the 500 pieces of paper.
if you are just a cog in the machine, it is not mentally healthy to take on the responsibility of more than a cog. caring is the responsibility of non-cogs.
Now with AI the screening could be better, but in general every letter has to be read because often people in need of immediate support write very evil things. Think of a dehydrated and irate senior caught in their attic. In a last ditch effort they mail the mayor a racist scree, but they do in fact need help or they will die.
There are lots of people in the government actually trying to help you, despite how depressing their job is
Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.
If the actions of an individual, or a group, were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, regardless of where they're not there is "agency".
This discussion itself is exactly an example of what we're talking about. If there's no such thing as agency, then how can us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior.
Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss's fault, not yours. This makes it easy for you to not feel guilty, since your job is to follow da rulez.
How did we get here? Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people. We're not. We're here to squeeze you until we cannot legally ask for more.
You can, you would just end up without income at best, or charged with a crime and imprisoned at worst.
but, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it?
but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?
I don't need blame to swat a mosquito that's trying to live, to remove a cobra from my living room, or to quibble about fine print with someone in such an annoying way that I eventually get what I want.
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.
In other words, my P(real) > 0.99.
"Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..."
Fixed that for you. That's how it should read.
Not only is the system questionable in a "the bricks may be individual defensible but the road goes right to hell" way but the kind of people such a system first creates (nobody signs up to be a cop just to strangle black guys, nobody signs up to work in the disability office to give legit cases the runaround, these people became this way) and then retains are not necessarily great.
And before anyone screeches at me, yes there's plenty of areas of private industry that are just as bad.
What is this about?
Lifelong and degenerative conditions.
They have full access to bank accounts, revoked driving license, direct line to my consultants.
Every form filled, every document provided.
They still call to ask if my genes have fixed themselves.
Not sure what verbal confirmation they're expecting - "no, I made it all up"?
What I'm trying to say is yeah, she could've taken the risk and stood up and said something. He could've beared the pain and sent the correct documentation. He knows the process by now, he had to have known exactly what he needed to send! And yet he chose to needlessly inflict harm on someone who's choice it wasn't theirs to make. The reality of jobs these days is not a give and take, let's all make the world better by democratizing our decisions type world. It's much much worse.
I'm not suggesting that this is any reason to support evil policies but I try to be sympathetic to struggles I may not be aware of.
"He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings _and_ nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."
the sentence continues after the "and".
it is also tagged "non-fiction" at the top, as other people have noted.
And then near the end of like the 3rd one was text that wasn't cut from the TTS engine... "Claude can make mistakes"