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?
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 work in live production, and have actually encountered the Brown M&M’s clause in real life. It was a small 5 person band. We had the show’s producer sitting backstage, picking brown M&M’s out of the fishbowl for probably 45 minutes.
They showed up for sound check, and immediately went “holy shit you guys actually pulled out the brown ones? We added that as a joke!” The producer was in earshot, and I got to watch him take psychic damage in realtime.
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.
What’s your favourite part? I’m agnostic. I always say I have faith but religion can fuck off. I’m big on what he said about prayer in that it’s a private affair. I also like blessing the righteous but then I feel people have polluted what being righteous is.
Sermon on the mount?
Tap for spoiler
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Aside from the sermon on the mount, I’m particularly fond of the parable of the sheep and the goats.
Its the single longest passage in the bible about who gets into heaven and who doesn’t. Surprisingly has nothing about accepting Jesus as your lord and savior.
Tap for spoiler
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
The part I repeat to myself most often is “blessed are the peace-makers”. Because there are so many situations where I shouldn’t say what I’m thinking. :)
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”
At least I think that’s from the sermon on the mount. Raised Christian, but I’ve been a self identifying atheist for about 15 years at this point.
You are correct.
Source: a different ex Christian
I used to work in serious sim. Think using game engines for realistic combat stimulation and training by the army. Systems had to interact and had different jobs rts, fps, driving simulator, etc.
So they each needed a unit database that was unique to that system. They also usually had a two versions a classified database and a less accurate non classified database.
A quick way to test was there was a unit type that was always set to invulnerable in unclassified databases. So drop one in the sim and drop some artillery on it. If it wasn’t destroyed you were unclassified.
Seems like a really roundabout way to do this, surely a unit test (no pun intended) would’ve been a better solution?
We should have totally called it a unit test.
So the area for this was used for both training of soldiers and demos for people without security clearances. So it frequently had to be switched between the two. So you get everything setup and ready.
As a last test you drop the unit in and blam it. Then you go to each system and check the unit status. If it’s ok you are good to demo to civilians.
A unit test wouldn’t work because it’s a deployment situation and a lot the software wasn’t under our control. A lot of time it was just making sure the DIS HLA gateway was properly configured and entities remapped.
Why
Some people can see classified systems and some can’t.
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.
I need VIM mode on my text editor.
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.
My kids school used my kids photos in their community outreach pamphlets that went to tens of thousands of homes in the area.
We have a media policy contract on file with them to not do this. When it was brought up they acted like we were overreacting.
I told them I had history with a stalker in my past that still tries to reach out and make contact, and they have endangered my children because of their negligence. I asked them if they were ready to open themselves for a lawsuit should anything happen in the future and the Superintenant just sat there quietly with nothing to say.
IMO people don’t take their privacy seriously enough until someone is hunting them down to rape and kill them.
Everytime with a project when you ask a document that says what has been agreed with the customer and the estimate for a planning and they look at you like a deer in the headlights to then forward a document from the sales guy that just says “we’ll do everything” and a phone book sized map with “a few additional demands from the customer.” Yeah, that project is auditioning for a role as the Hindenburg.
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.
With the advent of LLMs and access to anyone, there’s been repeated posts about instructors putting some oddball directions in white within the text of a question. Not perfect as a copy/paste into Notepad will show it, but it gets the laziest ones, especially the ones that don’t even review what the LLM gave them.
I’m not telling as if word gets out people will do that. Just like lazy people now remove brown m&ms without doing the rest of the work.
No idea what field you’re in, but of course you have to adjust it regularly. This year it’s brown m&Ms. Next year it’s a bowl of only yellow ones. The year after, it’s Skittles (no red ones). Kit Kats already split into individual bars. A bowl of Skittles mixed with corn flakes. Brown m&MS as decoy for people skimming for the clause, then later another one about 3 musketeers at the bar. I could come up with enough for an entire career without even leaving the candy realm.
It’s meant to be a very simple, but specific task that is easily performed by anyone that actually read and followed the instructions. It could be a bottle of Dr Pepper (as someone else mentioned), or wearing a yellow shirt upon arrival, or calling the lead “Chief”
Mostly I was being snarky, I can’t recall a situation where I’ve been concerned enough to leave such a tell.
Though there is a good warning there: if people expect you are leaving a tell they will look for it. Splitting kit kat bars is easy and obviously not something you really care about except to check so they do that, then skimp on the hard things you care about in hopes that you don’t crawl under the stage to check the bracing is done right. Thus whatever tell you leave make sure there are a few that are hard enough to check that they think you won’t.
The M&Ms are to avoid ACCIDENTAL problems caused by not paying attention to detail.
If they read the guidelines, purposely disregard them and try to hide it, that’s a whole different kind of negligence that’s pretty much out of your hands.
everyone knows that. People pay more attention when they know you check and the most where they think you will check. the only reason for the m&m thing is it is easy to check so anyone who has heard of this will be extra careful to do that. Meanwhile the hard to check places might be ignored. The m&m work well when it came off as spoiled brats asking for something stupid. Nevermind the dangerious fireworks on an unsupported stage, those brats screamed about the m&ms.
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 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.
Same. “Howdy!” is my standard greeting.
How y’all doin?
Same old. ‘boutchyew?
Let’s mosey.
A hoy hoy
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I had a biology teacher that just looked for key words and if they were there you got credit. It didn’t matter I’d you used them incorrectly as long as they were there.
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.
Same here. One of the instructions was “write your name on the board.” Hardcore shaming.
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
FWIW 3rd party companies (safelite in my experience) can get and install genuine OEM glass. Does not always have to be a dealer.
I need a windshield now, I’ll have to ask
