4 of Pentacles: Glitch

Once in̛͍̩̯͔̋́͞ a l̗̣͛̂i͉̙̫̍̉͋͞ͅfe̻̬̠̓̐̕t̺̝̅͝ȋ͖̗̖̫͑̕͡m̗̖̊̽e̛̫̯̲̤͡͝͝

Digital Tarot is presented by Capsule Reviews, but the only common thread is that they’ll both be very respectful of your time. You can subscribe and unsubscribe from the tarot cards independently of the reviews.

---

Pentacles represent the real, physical weight and energy and heat produced in computing. Computation is mostly a story we tell about a machine, and pentacles are the parts that are more machine than story. The 4 of Pentacles is the glitch - the machine has made a tiny failure and the story no longer completely holds, input and state don’t map to output in the way you expected them to. You typed WORM but the screen now shows WARM. A glitch is physics refusing to be a science.

Glitches are rare. They will appear in your systems proportional to the size of the system itself. The severity of a bug caused by glitching is proportional to the amount your system depends on its past to determine its future.

Glitches can also be a source of delight as well as a source of bugs - they are a cure for the illusion of control. No amount of debugging will eliminate them.