If you haven’t read about it before, the term comes from the band Van Halen, who demanded that there were no brown M&M’s backstage. People thought it was just a crazy rock star thing, but David Lee Roth later explained that it had a purpose:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.
… So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, “Article 148: There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes … ” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was, “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”
So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
My Brown M&M atm is AI-generated comments like this (first comment is referencing something like df = ... that they removed from the code, but left the comment, second comment is super useless):
# Assuming df is your DataFrame
# Show the plot
plt.show()
That probably means whoever I got the code from just copy/pasted whatever the LLM spit out, and didn’t actually think about the code at all.
What is a small detail that you pay attention to because it means there’s bigger issues to watch out for?
In a former job, I developed “software” (I clicked together some LabVIEW…) for custom designed scientific experiments, which many other researchers (mostly PhD students) would use. Wrote detailed SOPs for their usage, because everything was wonky and in constant evolution, and in some circumstances, data generated could be wrong. So I put a toggle switch with some cryptic acronym on the panel which was told to be flipped in the SOP when users reached the part where following instructions was really critical. The toggle switch did nothing but to log time and date and what user was logged in. When discussing weird data later on, first thing I did was to check whether that log existed, and if not heavily scrutinized the data with respect to errors that could be induced by not following the SOP.
I don’t have photos of myself on the internet and do not participate in group photos. If I see a photo of myself online I know, for a fact, that the person who posted it does not respect my privacy, therefore they do not respect me. I will not trust them with any information about myself and others and in general will cut them out of my life if at all possible. Because of this I don’t have people who violate boundaries they don’t share, so if I said “Actually, I think I may be a woman” or “I have been thinking about leaving the country” they would not immediately judge or try to prevent my doing so, they would let me be and respect my needs. Also because of this I am much more comfortable working on things with these people to make life better and to invest in their wellbeing.
This is gonna be controversial.
When I find out someone is a Christian, I ask them about their favourite part of the sermon on the mount. If they don’t know it, they’re ‘cultural Christians’ who’ve never opened a bible. If they’re familiar with the sermon, it means they do the work. The sermon on the mount is the section of the bible where Jesus explained to people what values they should hold and how they should behave in order to call themselves his followers.
I’m an ex-Christian and so are a lot of people who just don’t know it yet.
I need a towel hanging from the door of the oven or nothing is being done correctly.
The first thing that came to my mind was car repair.
This one wasn’t one purpose. I went to a shop for an oil change and 10,000 point inspection or whatever they called it. I knew one of my headlight bulbs went out a week before, but when I got the inspection report, it said everything was fine. I went to the shop manager and asked him to confirm that the mechanic had checked everything on the report. I didn’t blame him for the oversight, but he was kind of a dick when I pointed it out and had him do everything again until they found the problem.
Also, my dad always wrote the date on his air filters when he put them in because mechanics would often keep a dirty one laying around just to show it to customers and tell them that it was their filter and it needed replaced. He always got a kick out of calling them out on that kind of bullshit.
Partner and I once test drove a car that had “passed” a something something-point inspection at the dealer. As partner turns onto the highway he realizes it doesn’t have a rear-view mirror. We were not impressed with that dealership. (Partner later said that when he got in he made sure the mirrors were adjusted, but his brain didn’t clock that there wasn’t a rear-view mirror until he had to use it. TBF, the missing mirror wasn’t pointed the wrong way.)
Same dealership tried to badmouth my Prius in order to get it as a trade-in. Partner had introduced me as his roommate and driver, which made it even weirder.
I’m one who does all the basic maintenance on my car, so if I had someone push a filter at me saying it needed replacing my response would be I didn’t ask for them to remove it and I change my own filters. Then I’d demand they put it back in with me watching, because it’s probably not out of my car and it’s going to be very awkward when there’s a filter still in there.
Got to always find a shop that you can trust, random ones will eventually screw you even in small ways. I’ve caught missing lugnuts and 50 psi on a tire, and from a dealership for recall work they forgot to reconnect something and it was running terribly. On the flip side the guy I know has called me on the phone and explained exactly what he found and a range of options and prices and recommendations. It’s no wonder I return for his business when I need it, I don’t have to worry about being ripped off. (I do still check behind, can’t help the OCD when it comes to the car lol)
this happened this weekend, I had my transmission fluid changed at 125k miles, went in for oil this weekend at 134k, told me my trans fluid was “dirty and low”. I use the Drivvo app and showed him I did trans fluid when I got new tires, wtf are you talking about.
I always used check the spare tire pressure and note of it was low. Nobody’s going to question your thoroughness if you’re checking the spare tire.
“this MF checked my spare, I’m not questioning whether he put washer fluid. you can if you want.”
Not me, but an old coworker used a similar trick to see if reviewers were actually reading his documentation. Before sending a large document out for review he would add a sentence to some random paragraph stating, “If you read this, come to my office and I will give you $20.” Surprisingly few people ever came for the money.
We joke about putting that in report cards or other special ed paperwork where we’re required to write paragraphs/pages of info that probably never get looked at.
I like to put my petty pop-cultural grievances in documentation because I know if someone reads it I’ll probably get an IM on the subject.
“Delete the file and it will disappear forever, like the show Other Space that was never seen again after Yahoo’s short lived streaming service imploded.”
I didn’t know until right now that Yahoo even had a streaming service.
They were most notable for producing the last season of Community and airing it inbetween buffering.
Season six of Community ‘aired’ there.
I’m still pissed at NBC for selling “Six Seasons and a Movie” merchandise and then canceling after season five.
(And the movie is still coming.)
It was such a funny show! Made me fall in love with Karan Soni.
Ha, that reminds me of Donald Knuth offering 0x$1.00 to anyone that finds a mistake in TAOCP, like this guy:
Turtle.
My 11th grade English teacher would hand back essay assignments with grades at the top and no markings throughout. I tended to get high but not perfect grades, but the impetuousness of youth got the better of me. In my next essay, which I wrote normally, I wrote the word “turtle” in the middle of a sentence somewhere in the middle of each main body paragraph. Just somewhere in the middle of a sentence I turtle copy pasted the word “turtle.”
That paper made a 94. There was no mention of it. I’m pretty sure she just graded on who she liked and I wasn’t a problem.
I had a teacher who was rumoured to make up their opinion of a student in the first two semesters, then just eyeball it from there.
I submitted my final assignment hosted on a web server and gave them the link as my submission - saving the logs to see who connected to the URL. Anyway, no one outside me connected to that web server before it was graded.
83/100 which honestly feels about exactly what it deserves. So even knowing they just skimmed the source code on most of my assignments, I never found that the grades were out of synch with how I myself would have graded them.
I see what you did there
did you turtle?
When I first heard about the brown M&M thing, I thought it was just celebrities being petty, or maybe a joke. Years later, when I heard Roth’s explanation, I thought it was absolute genius.
I use this VH trick at work occasionally for fun just to see if anyone reads my service report. “Your boilers are about to fail in the middle of winter but don’t worry I sprinkled pixie dust on them and did a rain dance”. Never heard from anyone not even my boss. One customer I used to write “Does anyone ever read these? If so call me at (phone number)”. I handed it to the man in charge, he pretended to read it, signed it and handed it back to me. The only one my boss called about was the one I wrote that simply said “I took a shit in the floor drain here”
Honestly, if it was me reading about the pixie dust, I would just find it hilarious and probably not mention it, since I got the joke.
waffle stomping!
I work in the event industry as a production manager, I get to write these things.
As is typical when you have a large crew there will be dietary restrictions, some of them can be deadly. So before me or any of my crew starts unloading the truck I need to have a cold Dr. Pepper in my hand. If I don’t, we doordash, we do not eat the food provided.
Whenever I show up to a “mobilization project” which involves lifting and mounting shipping containers of machinery and IT equipment onboard ships, I check whether the containers have had their grounding wires attached, as well as checking if the deck welds have been spray painted with protective coating.
If not, I need to check if the cable runs are properly done, deck fiberoptics protected from crane operations, antenna mounted without obstructions, etc.Checking random coax cable connections whether they’ve gotten a proper dose of molycote inside is also a pretty good indicator, but the tech department has gotten really attentive in regards to that. The grounding wire is really the only brown M&M I have left on them.
I say howdy to gauge people’s initial reaction when I first meet them. Their reaction to the corny and outdated term is telling about their mental picture of the world. It is the only time I use the word.
I went through a cowboy phase as a kid, and this salutation is the only remnant. I don’t even think about it, it’s just how I’ve been greeting people for all my life.
I only really think about how it sounds when people chuckle or smile at it. It just sounds normal to me.
What do you feel like it tells you about them?
deleted by creator
You may have more in common with people from the south than you realize. I live in WNC where plenty of people use that word regularly. Folks in the mountains have widely varying knowledge bases and depth that they often don’t reveal right away. It might seem out of place in Southern California, but you may be shutting yourself off to the possibility that someone could surprise you and offer insight from a perspective you hadn’t considered.
Interesting litmus. Thanks for explaining. I hope it continues to serve you well.
I say howdy at least a few times a day. 🤷🏻♂️
Howdy fellow Texan!
Nope. I just said it ironically enough times that it’s now an undeniable part of my vocabulary.
Be careful what you do ironically lest it become done ronically
Wow, as someone who says howdy to people all the time, I’m surprised you get any kind of reaction at all other than “hi” back.
How y’all doin?
Same. “Howdy!” is my standard greeting.
A hoy hoy
In Windows XP/Vista times I used to be the “computer kid”, helping others in the neighbourhood with their computers, in exchange of some pocket money. My brown M&M was a huge amount of desktop icons - nine times out of ten it meant that the issue with the computer (typically “why is it so slow???”) could be easily solved by:
- uninstalling crapware
- updating and running the anti-virus
- updating the system itself
- running disk cleanup
- defragmenting the hard disk
And boom, as if by magic, the computer was over 9000 times faster!
The desktop icons themselves aren’t a big deal, but they show that the person is rather sloppy on maintenance of their own machine. And they probably can’t even move files here and there.
One time my teacher in high school wrote somewhere in a HUGE word problem that we’d get credit if we filled in letter E (which was on the scantron machine but not a valid option for that question). They were just seeing who actually read the question from start to finish.
Reminds me of a time in elementary school when our class had a lesson on the importance of reading all instructions before starting a project, then we had a test with long, elaborate instructions. Of course, the very last sentence was something along the lines of disregarding all previous instructions and setting your pencil down. I think maybe one other kid besides me got it and was sitting there while the rest of the class was furiously working away, some of them wondering how we were already finished.
Had a similar teacher as my AP US History teacher. I figured out you could copy/paste anything so long as it met the length requirements for papers. I ended up just using the lyrics to my favorite songs for every one and never got below a A- on any of them lol.
When it’s time for my car to get an oil change I make sure my windshield fluid is empty. It’s a full service oil change and they claim they check ALL fluids. If it’s still empty I question how good or a job they’ve done and what else they skip
My friend bought an old BMW and was taking it to the dealer for maintenance.
Every oil change there was some overpriced small thing wrong that he had to pay for and then adding insult injury at the end they would charge him serious amounts of money for fluid top off. The amount they charged him for windshield washer fluid was enough to buy about five containers of windshield washer fluid. So tired of these antics he went out and he filled the windshield washer fluid 100% to the top there was no air in the jug whatsoever. He took it in for an oil change, they charged him for a windshield washer top off. He demanded the service manager and said that he had topped it off to the very top and there’s no way they added even a teaspoon of windshield washer fluid to it. The service manager refused to take the windshield washer fill off the bill and said they’d give him a credit for the next time he needed windshield washer fluid.
He never went back.
Honestly, the first mistake was a rookie mistake, to trust the dealer on maintenance. The dealer is always a vampire. The only reason to go to the dealer is when your trusted local repair garage recommends it when they do not have a real solution to the problem.
Good thing your friend never went back to the dealer.
or a free recall repair
Windshields. Unless you just want a generic from Safelite or wherever, OEM windshields are typically superior.
But yes, stay away from the Stealer
