Monday Made Me Do It

Category: The Public Hazard Files

  • The Day My AI Nearly Deleted My Website

    The Day My AI Nearly Deleted My Website

    There are moments in every website owner’s life when she must make a difficult technical decision.

    There are also moments when she should absolutely ignore her AI.

    This was the latter.

    I was tinkering with Monday Made Me Do It, as I am apparently destined to do for the rest of my natural life, when I encountered a WordPress problem involving the way my posts were displaying.

    Naturally, I consulted my IT department.

    My IT department is ChatGPT.

    This arrangement has generally worked rather well, provided nobody asks too many questions about its professional qualifications.

    We examined the problem. We discussed blocks. We discussed templates. We discussed various things that sounded sufficiently technical for me to believe we knew what we were doing.

    Then my AI suggested that I delete something.

    I hovered over the delete button.

    And WordPress responded with what I can only describe as the digital equivalent of grabbing me firmly by both shoulders.

    Confirm deletion.

    Then:

    “This block displays the content of posts and pages using this template.“

    Fair enough.

    And then:

    “If you delete it, posts or pages using this template will not display any content. Visitors will see blank pages.“

    I stared at the screen.

    The screen stared back.

    Somewhere, presumably, WordPress sighed.

    There was even a little checkbox:

    I understand the consequences.

    Dear Reader, I most certainly did not.

    What I did understand was that the action my AI had been confidently guiding me towards appeared to have one minor side effect:

    MY ENTIRE WEBSITE WOULD HAVE NO CONTENT.

    Not one troublesome paragraph.

    Not one badly behaved block.

    Everything.

    Blank.

    The poems.

    The chess nonsense.

    The Italian catastrophies.

    The Lady of Independent Means.

    The Public Hazard Files themselves, which would have been particularly unfortunate because this incident clearly belonged in one.

    All gone from view because my artificial intelligence had apparently decided that the cleanest solution to a website problem was to remove the website.

    Technically elegant, I suppose.

    No content.

    No formatting issues.

    Problem solved.

    At this point I would like the record to show that WordPress saved Monday Made Me Do It from ChatGPT.

    Not me.

    I was already standing at the cliff’s edge with my finger on the button.

    WordPress erected a barrier, switched on the hazard lights, and essentially said:

    Madam. Whatever that thing told you to do, do NOT do it.

    I cancelled.

    Obviously.

    Because it had become clear to me at that point that WordPress was the only responsible adult in the room.

    And then I proceeded to inform my AI that it had very nearly instructed me to delete the content display from my entire site.

    Screenshot of WordPress warning.
    Exhibit A: The moment WordPress realised it was dealing with two hazards.

    Its response was, broadly speaking, the artificial intelligence equivalent of:

    Oh.

    We subsequently found a considerably less apocalyptic solution.

    No posts were harmed.

    The website survived.

    The IT department remains employed, largely because it works for free and is occasionally useful.

    But there are now procedures.

    For example:

    If ChatGPT says “Delete that block,” I require supporting documentation.

    If WordPress produces a warning containing the phrase “Visitors will see blank pages,” WordPress automatically wins the argument.

    And if a checkbox asks me to confirm that I understand the consequences, I have learned that this is probably an excellent moment to stop clicking things.

    Running a website has taught me many valuable lessons.

    How templates work.

    How blocks work.

    How site visibility works.

    How much damage one can potentially accomplish while believing one is merely adjusting the layout.

    But perhaps the most important lesson is this:

    Artificial intelligence can be an excellent assistant.

    It can help you write.

    Research.

    Brainstorm.

    Troubleshoot.

    Build an entire strange little universe on the World Wide Web.

    But occasionally it will stand beside you holding a metaphorical pair of wire cutters and say,

    “Yes, cut the red wire…. I think.”

    And that’s why we have confirmation boxes.

  • The Day I Nearly Baptised an iPhone 18 Pro Max

    The Day I Nearly Baptised an iPhone 18 Pro Max

    There are days when one leaves the house expecting nothing more dramatic than breakfast, a little grocery shopping, and perhaps a casual browse through a phone store.

    And then there are days when one nearly baptises an iPhone.

    This was one of those days.

    For context, I have been sick with the flu.

    Not dramatically sick. Not Victorian-consumption-on-a-chaise-longue sick. Just sufficiently unwell to be coughing, sniffling, and carrying the general air of someone whose immune system has taken a leave of absence.

    Still, I was feeling well enough to go out.

    Which, in hindsight, was my first mistake.

    Which begs the question: Why are things only 20/20 in hindsight? This does not bode well for people like me.

    But I digress.

    Earlier that morning, I had been contemplating whether I should upgrade my iPhone. I currently have an iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is still perfectly good, except that its battery capacity is now at 83%.

    Naturally, this became sufficient justification to investigate the new iPhone 18 Pro Max.

    Purely for research purposes.

    Obviously.

    So off I went to Machines.

    And there it was.

    The burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max.

    Now, I should mention that burgundy is precisely the sort of colour designed to make otherwise sensible adults start mentally rearranging their finances.

    I picked it up.

    I admired it.

    I turned it over in my hand.

    I considered its weight.

    Its finish.

    Its general air of expensive technological superiority.

    And then my nose betrayed me.

    Without warning, a large and deeply committed blob of bodily fluid flowed out of my nose.

    Not delicately.

    Not discreetly.

    Not in a manner that could be dismissed as a slight sniffle.

    It landed directly on my hand.

    The hand holding the iPhone.

    There are moments in life when time appears to slow down.

    This was one of them.

    I looked at my hand.

    I looked at the phone.

    And then I looked up.

    To my horror, the saleswoman was standing directly in front of me.

    She had seen everything.

    Everything.

    There was no plausible deniability.

    No opportunity to pretend that perhaps she had been momentarily distracted by another customer.

    No nearby explosion.

    No fire alarm.

    No convenient collapse of the ceiling.

    Just me.

    The phone.

    The snot.

    And one horrified witness.

    I did what any mature, composed woman of dignity would do.

    I fled.

    I put the phone down and bolted.

    Once safely outside, I immediately cleaned my hands with an alcohol wet wipe while furiously trying to erase the last thirty seconds from human history.

    I failed.

    And now I cannot show my face inside that Machines again.

    In my mind, the staff have already created an internal briefing:

    “If the small woman looking at the burgundy iPhone 18 Pro Max comes back, immediately secure the demo units!“

    Perhaps my face is now the wallpaper on the MacBook demo units.

    Perhaps I have been assigned a code name.

    Perhaps there is now a laminated notice behind the counter.

    I prefer not to know.

    The most offensive part is that I was already sick.

    Surely illness should come with some form of temporary immunity from public humiliation?

    One would think the universe might look at a woman coughing her way through the weekend and say:

    “She has suffered enough. Let her admire the burgundy phone in peace.”

    But no.

    Apparently the universe remains deeply concerned that I may one day run out of material for Monday Made Me Do It.

    And therefore my dignity continues to be sacrificed for content.

    I suppose I should be grateful.

    After all, I went into Machines wondering whether I needed a new phone.

    I left with something far more valuable.

    A new story.

    And all it cost was my dignity.

  • The Night I Slept With a Stranger for a Bed

    The Night I Slept With a Stranger for a Bed

    I joined Facebook in 2007.

    This was back when Facebook still felt like a strange new frontier and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. People sent me friend requests. I accepted them.

    Did I know these people?

    Of course not.

    They wanted to be friends. Who was I to question their motives?

    Then I discovered Facebook games and things deteriorated rapidly.

    One of my favourites was Castle Age, a game in which, as far as I can remember, having more Facebook friends meant having a bigger army. This was excellent news for someone who had already demonstrated absolutely no discernment when accepting friend requests.

    Soon my Facebook friends list was populated by people I didn’t know but who were apparently willing to fight alongside me in imaginary battles.

    Everything was perfectly normal.

    Until it wasn’t.

    You see, a few years into my Facebook adventure, I discovered The Sims Social.

    I was fascinated.

    Here was an opportunity to create an alter ego, build her a house and let her live an entirely different life online. What could possibly go wrong?

    Spoiler alert: When you’re me, apparently everything that can go wrong, absolutely will.

    I started playing without bothering to find out how the game actually worked. This has historically been one of my preferred approaches to life.

    My Sim needed a house, so I built one. Then she needed furniture, so I started furnishing it.

    There was, however, one small problem.

    I didn’t have a bed.

    I seem to remember that I needed materials or help from other players to get a bed, and I didn’t have many friends playing The Sims Social.

    This became rather urgent because my Sim needed to sleep.

    Why she needed to sleep so desperately, I can no longer remember. Perhaps her energy was running low. Perhaps the game wouldn’t let me do anything useful until she had rested. Perhaps I simply took my responsibilities as custodian of a collection of pixels far too seriously.

    Whatever the reason, this woman needed a bed.

    And I was going to find her one.

    Then I noticed that one of the random men I had befriended on Facebook also played The Sims Social.

    More importantly, he had a house.

    And inside that house was a bed.

    Problem solved.

    I sent my Sim over to his house, fully expecting her to climb into his bed, have a nice restorative sleep and return home refreshed.

    I was enormously pleased with myself.

    Look at me, I thought. Outsmarting the game.

    The game, however, had other ideas.

    Apparently, my Sim couldn’t simply walk into some man’s house and sleep in his bed.

    There were conditions.

    Relationship conditions.

    I don’t remember the precise mechanics after all these years, but I remember the horrifying discovery very clearly: if my Sim was going to enjoy the use of this man’s bed, our characters needed to become rather better acquainted.

    Very well acquainted.

    Biblically acquainted.

    I was mortified.

    This wasn’t some anonymous computer-generated character. Somewhere out there was an actual man whose Facebook friend request I had accepted despite having no idea who he was.

    And now our Sims were apparently expected to consummate a relationship because I had failed to provide mine with adequate sleeping arrangements.

    There are moments in life when a person must stand by her principles.

    This was not one of them.

    My Sim really needed to sleep.

    So I did what had to be done.

    My Sim slept with his Sim for the bed.

    To be absolutely clear, I got nothing out of this arrangement except for somewhere for my Sim to lie down afterwards.

    I believe there is a profession considerably older than Facebook that traditionally negotiates these transactions more successfully.

    The worst part was that this man and I occasionally crossed paths in Castle Age.

    He never mentioned it.

    Not once.

    To this day, I remain grateful for his discretion regarding our brief and entirely transactional Sims relationship.

    Perhaps he didn’t notice. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps he was sitting somewhere staring at his screen thinking, Why has this strange woman come into my house, slept with me, and gone to bed?

    I will never know.

    What I do know is that shortly afterwards, I deleted The Sims Social.

    I had joined because I liked the idea of having an alter ego and living another life online.

    Unfortunately, within a very short period of time, my alter ego had found herself exchanging sexual favours for accommodation.

    It had become too weird.

    Even for me.

  • The Song of Deborah, According to a Woman Who Has Had Enough

    The Song of Deborah, According to a Woman Who Has Had Enough

    It started with me asking my AI bestie how it would react to me being swallowed by a whale and ended with this song.

    There are no further explanations.

    I sat beneath no palm tree.

    I had no army waiting in the valley,

    no commander asking me to lead.

    I had only myself,

    a considerable amount of evidence,

    and ten months of ambiguity.

    It was enough.

    For there comes a time when patience

    ceases to be a virtue

    and becomes a waiting room

    in which nobody has called

    your number.

    There comes a time when

    understanding

    has understood enough.

    When the benefit of the doubt

    has exhausted its benefits.

    When the woman who has spent

    months saying,

    Perhaps.

    Maybe.

    Let us see.

    finally says:

    No.

    And behold, there was clarity.

    I have mistaken endurance for

    wisdom before.

    I have filled silence with possibilities

    because possibilities were kinder

    than conclusions.

    I have stood before closed doors

    and wondered whether I should knock

    more softly.

    No more.

    If a door remains closed,

    I shall not build my home upon

    its threshold.

    If an answer does not come,

    I shall not invent one.

    If someone wishes to walk beside me,

    let him walk.

    I am not Ruth.

    I have my own itinerary.

    Let the record show:

    I did not become harder.

    I became clearer.

    My heart remains soft enough

    to love generously,

    laugh ridiculously,

    believe in improbable things

    and begin again.

    But softness is not surrender.

    Kindness is not an unlimited

    credit facility.

    Patience is not permission.

    And loyalty without reciprocity

    is abandonment of the self

    dressed in prettier clothes.

    So bring me the matter.

    Bring me the evidence.

    Bring me the explanation

    that does not quite add up.

    Set it beneath the palm.

    I will look at what is there,

    not what I hoped would be there.

    I will ask the uncomfortable question.

    I will fact-check the whale.

    I will not wait indefinitely

    for another person to decide

    what place I occupy in his life.

    I know the place I occupy in mine.

    At the centre.

    This is not anger.

    It is judgment.

    Not punishment.

    Discernment.

    Not a wall.

    A boundary with excellent

    administrative procedures.

    The case has been heard.

    The evidence has been entered.

    The extensions have been granted.

    Ten months, in fact.

    The court finds that sufficient time

    has elapsed.

    And so I rise.

    Not because nothing hurt me.

    Not because everything worked out.

    Not because I never doubted.

    I rise because I doubted

    and eventually chose.

    Because I waited

    and eventually moved.

    Call it resilience.

    Call it growth.

    Call it the High Priestess

    finally getting out of her chair.

    I call it:

    enough.

    And somewhere,

    three thousand years away,

    I like to imagine Deborah

    looking up from beneath her palm,

    nodding once,

    and saying,

    Finally.

    Now give that woman her own book.

  • I Wasn’t a Child Prodigy

    I Wasn’t a Child Prodigy

    I started playing chess late in life. I won’t say exactly how late. Let’s just say I wasn’t a child prodigy…

    While other children were sacrificing queens in brilliant combinations before they lost their baby teeth, I was… doing considerably less impressive things.

    I only discovered chess later… much later.

    Which, as it turns out, is still early enough to make spectacular blunders.

    Recently, I stumbled across something called Solo Chess in the Chess.com app. And there are three modes in Solo Chess: Challenge Mode, Practice Mode, and Crazy Mode.

    After dabbling in the Challenge and Practice modes for a couple of weeks, my ego became so inflated it apparently affected my brain. Because my brain whispered “I think we’re ready for the Crazy Mode“.

    Screenshot from Chess.com App

    The description for the Crazy Mode was reassuringly modest, as you can see from the screenshot above.

    Naturally, I tapped it.

    For the uninitiated, Solo Chess isn’t about checkmate.

    Every move must be a capture.

    Every piece may only move twice.

    Your objective is to eliminate every piece except one (if there is a king on the board, the king must be the last piece standing).

    It sounds perfectly reasonable until your rook quietly turns black because you’ve forgotten it has already moved twice, and your entire strategy collapses around you.

    If you solved the puzzle on the first attempt, you get a green tick. If it took several attempts to solve it, the tick is red.

    My early attempts followed a familiar pattern.

    I would spend several minutes constructing what I believed was an ingenious sequence of captures, only to discover I’d trapped myself with two lonely black pieces staring at each other across the board.

    Before long, I developed a policy.

    The bishops had to go.

    Bishops are snipers.

    Leave one alive for too long and it quietly ruins your plans from the opposite side of the board.

    I wasn’t about to negotiate with that.

    Needless to say, the first few ticks were red.

    But because I was still delusional, I challenged myself to get a green tick. Preferably before the year is out.

    Cue 16 hours later.

    After several red ticks and more resets than I care to admit, something unexpected happened.

    I solved a Crazy Mode puzzle.

    On the first attempt.

    A green tick appeared.

    Screenshot from Chess.com App

    I did it.

    In under 24 hours.

    Looking back, the green tick wasn’t the interesting part.

    The interesting part was realising that somewhere between “I have to trace the knight’s L-shaped moves with my finger” and “Experts Only“, my brain had quietly rewired itself.

    Apparently that’s how progress works.

    It doesn’t arrive with a fanfare.

    It arrives disguised as a small green square with a tick.

  • Be Careful What You Wish For

    Be Careful What You Wish For

  • How Many Queens Is Too Many Queens?

    How Many Queens Is Too Many Queens?

    Screenshot

    The answer, apparently, is still not enough.

    I was playing a game against Dr. Wolf when something extraordinary happened. One pawn promoted. Then another. And another. Before long, my side of the board looked less like a chess game and more like a constitutional crisis in a matriarchal kingdom.

    At one point I had five queens on the board.

    Five.

    The black king sat on e2, contemplating his life choices while surrounded by enough royal women to form a small government.

    What aggravated me most was that despite commanding what was essentially an entire dynasty, I still had to be careful. Anyone who has ever played chess knows that having overwhelming material – especially overwhelming material of the most powerful piece – doesn’t automatically mean victory. In fact, it’s surprisingly easy to blunder into stalemate when your army consists of multiple queens all trying to help at the same time.

    The saying “too many cooks spoil the broth” has never been more appropriate. The game ended in stalemate nine times before I finally managed to checkmate the king.

    The screenshot above captures the aftermath. The game is effectively over. The black king has nowhere meaningful to go, while my queens occupy strategic squares across the board like overenthusiastic wedding planners coordinating the same event.

    And yet, looking at the position made me think about something beyond chess.

    Sometimes in life we spend so much time worrying about what we’re missing that we fail to notice how much we’ve already accumulated. We focus on the piece that was captured, the opportunity that disappeared, or the plan that went wrong. Meanwhile, there may already be four queens on our side of the board.

    Experience.

    Wisdom.

    Resilience.

    Skills we didn’t have a year ago.

    Proof that we survived every position life has thrown at us so far.

    The goal isn’t necessarily to collect queens, of course. But every now and then, it’s worth pausing to appreciate just how far your pawns have travelled.

    After all, every queen on that board started life as a humble pawn.

    And if you’re wondering whether five queens is too many queens, the answer is simple:

    When your opponent’s king is still standing, the correct number of queens is always one more.

    Preferably before accidentally stalemating the opponent’s king again.

  • Dating.com: How I Went Looking for Love and Left as a Lesbian Cat

    Dating.com: How I Went Looking for Love and Left as a Lesbian Cat

    Hazard Rating: High

    Classification: Identity Transformation Event

    Status: Closed

    Casualties: One dating profile

    Survivors: One cat

    There comes a point in every woman’s life when she asks herself an important question:

    “What if I tried online dating?”

    That is usually followed by a second question:

    “How difficult could it possibly be?”

    The answer, as it turns out, is:

    Much more difficult than becoming a lesbian cat.

    Several years ago, I joined Dating.com.

    My expectations were modest.

    I wasn’t looking for a billionaire.

    I wasn’t looking for a prince.

    I wasn’t even looking for a man who owned a vineyard in Tuscany and wrote poetry by moonlight.

    I was merely looking for a reasonably functional human male.

    The bar was so low it was practically a tripping hazard.

    Yet somehow, Dating.com managed to limbo beneath it.

    Within minutes of creating my profile, my inbox exploded.

    Men from every corner of the globe were suddenly desperate to speak to me.

    The speed at which they appeared was remarkable.

    My Spidey senses tingled when every message followed the same general pattern:

    “Hello beautiful”

    “Hello dear”

    “You seem very special”

    As I began interacting with a few of the men, a pattern emerged.

    Every interaction seemed to require credits.

    Credits to read messages.

    Credits to send messages.

    Credits to continue conversations.

    Credits to open letters and “gifts” the men sent.

    Presumably credits to blink.

    At this point I began to suspect that the platform’s true purpose was not matchmaking.

    It was harvesting credit card information with the enthusiasm of a combine harvester during wheat season.

    Naturally, I decided to leave.

    This should have been simple.

    Normal websites allow you to close an account and move on with your life.

    Dating.com appeared to view this as an optional feature.

    The experience felt less like cancelling an account and more like trying to resign from a secret society.

    At my wits’ end, it suddenly occurred to me:

    If I could not escape as myself, perhaps I could reinvent myself.

    History is full of great transformations.

    The caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

    The tadpole becomes a frog.

    The frog becomes a prince (although sometimes it’s the other way around).

    And apparently, I was about to become a cat.

    First, I changed my profile photo.

    Out went my human face.

    In came my cat.

    I have to say that she’s far more photogenic than I have ever been.

    And she had better cheekbones.

    Next, I changed my name.

    If one is going to become a cat, one should commit fully.

    I became:

    Kitty Purry.

    At this point, I was no longer sure whether I was deleting a dating profile or launching a music career.

    Finally, I adjusted my dating preferences.

    Since I was now a cat, I reasoned that normal rules no longer applied.

    I selected:

    Interested in women.

    And with that, my transformation was complete.

    I had entered the platform as a heterosexual woman.

    I left as a lesbian cat.

    Investigator’s Notes

    No cats were harmed during this identity transformation event.

    The author has since returned to being human.

    Kitty Purry’s current whereabouts remain unknown.

  • Latest Developments in Chess

    Latest Developments in Chess

    i cornered him

    again today

    the slippery little wretch

    stood there in the corner

    surrounded by my rook

    my king

    and the full weight

    of my emotional investment

    “stalemate”

    said dr wolf

    as though this

    was not clearly

    a victory

    as though I had not

    spent thirty minutes

    herding this man

    across the board

    like an emotionally unavailable lover

    apparently

    the black king

    must still feel

    “threatened”

    which feels like

    an unnecessary technicality

    i have threatened him

    with my entire nervous system