In the way

I was texting with my best friend. Her mum has cancer, and my friend is going through the brutality of watching it take her piece by piece, just as I did with my own mum 13 years ago.

I was thinking about how to respond to the latest message, too personal to relay here, when a suggested reply, animated in glowing colours to let me know it was "intelligent" popped up: Hang in there!

My thought process was immediately broken as I contemplated what an absolutely obscene thing it would be to send in that moment.

The more I work in building human-computer interactions, the more I think: you can’t assume anything. (You know what they say about assuming? When you assume, you make an a-s-s out of you and me.)

What was already a tough moment, was somehow made worse