brain on fire

Fannish geek, elder queer. Please interact if you're friendly. I REPORT and block ~SPAM~ and FUND REQUESTS

[vividciggy]

That was definitely Pyrrha's last cigarette

Bonus:

[reparrishcomics]

( Instagram / Bluesky / Twitter / Facebook / Graphic Novel / Buy Me A Coffee )

[crankydevon]

after they watch All About Eve:

[galileosballs]

Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.

[cimness]

Harper's Bazaar v. 43, 1909

[so-many-ocs]

no dude it's so cool how attached you are to that character who is singled out and ostracized due to the external monstrousness that clashes with their internal spark of humanity. and i love how drawn you are to themes of horror and love, nature versus nurture, otherness, isolation, and the abject. i bet you have normal feelings about your own personhood

[anaeolist]

the hallucination of edward cullen that harrow keeps around at all times: 

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

you are now a cat in the warrior cats universe! Spin these wheels for your name!

Do you like it?

YES!!!

yes

eh it's okay

no.

IM MOON MOON

results/other

Remaining time: 5 days 20 hours

note: I (the owner of this blog and maker of wheels) am not into warrior cats! I just thought this would be fun to make

(prefixes and suffixes from @yarrowleef)

[spin-the-wheel-polls]

I DON'T WANNA BE DEAD WOLF

[gallusrostromegalus]

It's me. Football Cat.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Apparently some people still need to hear this so: using an 'ai checker' is still using ai. If you are feeding someone's fic to one of these checkers, you will still not be sure their fic is ai because they are not 100% accurate, but you can be 100% sure that you are using ai. For fic. Furthermore you are doing the work of an ai scraper for them. You are, personally, feeding the machine. There is no actual excuse for using an ai checker on fanfic as a hobby. YOU are the problem.

If you think a fic is ai, mute it and move on. That's it. That's all you do.

[scribefindegil]

really obsessed with this photo of the lone giant monstera in our otherwise completely empty living room

[64mpg]

i haven’t been real for a few days thinking about becoming real again soon though

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[allthebooksandcrannies]

My only previous experience with Ben McKenzie before this post was watching him play Jim Gordon in the show Gotham. I had no idea he'd made a documentary or co-wrote an investigative journalism book on the subject of cryptocurrency until I googled him after watching the video. Turns out he's been interested in the subject since his time working on his undergraduate economics degree.

Sharing to hopefully spread this information to anyone else who would be interested but had no idea his book or documentary existed

[some-stars]

more white men need to be pursuing the teen heartthrob to leftist investigative journalist career path

[bluering8]

listen to me, this is so so important: you've gotta get used to really giving it your 60% as a default. like don't half-ass it necessarily but try not to go over 70% or so of an ass. you'll feel better and live a happier more fulfilled life, and on the rare occasions where you do need to lock the fuck in you'll be able to pull off bullshit that the sad miserable wretches giving it their 100% can never dream off, because they're busy draining themselves dry and you have energy reserves to spare.

[smokingchagga]

This is actually what I was adviced to do at the work rehabilitation program I went to. Hasn't left my mind since. 10/10 solid advice

[elljayvee]

I have probably mentioned this before, but I work on a pretty small team and we needed to make a 10-year plan so we found a consultant etc. and what the consultant said was that we were scheduling ourselves too heavily. We were scheduling ourselves at 100%. They were like. No. Schedule yourselves at no more than 80%. Otherwise you will (a) have no capacity to handle emergencies and (b) burn out. 80%. Max.

[remanence-of-love]

[raccoonmilf]

This is also true for bugs

[lizardsfromspace]

Average reaction to The Odyssey on Bluesky: "Wow! Christopher Nolan's tour de force is a reminder of the magic of the movies!"

Average reaction to The Odyssey on X: "This disgusting moral failure of a film is propaganda for woke! We need to support a real version of The Odyssey, generated by Grok"

Average reaction to The Odyssey on Tumblr: "Christopher Nolan is a hack! We need to support a real version of The Odyssey, Epic the Musical."

Average reaction to The Odyssey on Sea Captain Date dot com: "Baby, I won't keep you waiting ten years."

[clotheshorsepodcast]

Listen, I'm no stranger to being called "depressing" or "cringe" by randos on the internet. It's always so silly to me because I'm actually always laughing, creating elaborate hilarious backstories for my cats, singing made up songs, and wearing fabulous outfits.

But it is interesting that the comeback to "don't buy disappointing shit" is always "you suck and you're depressing."  In fact, in last week's Costco Esprit sweatshirt discourse, lots of people (on Threads) thought I was a bummer, bitter, and even a "buzzkill."

If you dig into that, it reveals something important: decades of marketing have successfully transformed us as humans, making us believe that the only real source of joy is shopping.  And TBH if you think buying something is an easy way to cheer yourself up, you're not alone. I was raised to feel the same way.  Shopping was literally the only time my family seemed to get along. Telling someone to buy something (because they "deserved" it) was how we showed our love.

So yeah, a lot of us think shopping = fun, joy, happiness.  Of course, these days shopping is also often disappointing and stressful.  Sometimes we end up feeling scammed or questioning the size and shape of our bodies.  Still, when shopping = happiness, you start to thing that non shopping = unhappiness and misery.

But actually...the slow fashion way of life is filled with joy, creativity, connection, and fun! Seriously, I might be tree hugging, compost loving, Costco Esprit sweatshirt hating buzzkill, but somehow I'm happier than I've ever been because I'm constantly feeding my brain and my heart with information, new skills, and creative thinking.

Anyway, I was inspired by the Threads feedback last week to create my own graphics about this. As I was playing around with this idea while I playing with the foster kittens last night, I realized that it was reminding me of a new version of the 90s Nirvana shirt. So I tracked down the Nirvana font (it's called Onyx) and I used images from the 1978 children's book, Baby's Toy Box.  This post took 3 hours to make.

[crab-day-counter]

Six Days to Crab Day

[hawkesque]

sorry but i shrimply can’t believe there’s a movie where sterling k brown fucks mark duplass pregnant and practically no one on this, the mpreg website, talks about it. what are you people even good for

[ngbri]

I'm sorry but these two posts needed preserved together.