sideblog @rozariodawson

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[parkchanwoohoo]

Hey guys, friendly reminder that job interviews are psychological mind games and you should not be truthful and instead arm yourself with Important but Not Easily Verifiable Lies and practice delivering them until they're off the cuff.

- If someone asks for weaknesses, they're not really looking for weaknesses! They're looking for a combination of self-awareness and indications of self-improvement. Don't say "I'm bad at time management" and just leave it there. Imply that's in the past tense and talk about all the stuff you did to get good at it. Follow up each weakness with some bs answer on what you're doing to address it

- When I say like, Not Easily Verifiable Lies, I mean like, obviously don't make up shit wholesale, but like. If someone asks you your 5 year plan, they can't PROVE you're lying if you say "Oh I want to be the head of my own department, I want to be supervising my own team, etc" other corporate ladder shit. What they don't wanna hear is "Uhhhh idk" EVEN IF IT'S TRUE AND VALID. They can't disprove that you love working with customers to find cost effective solutions. What they CAN do is feel suspicious about how much you mean what you say, which is why practicing until you can make that shit sound natural is important

- (With that specific example of where you wanna be though, be careful lmao. If they think you plan on using them as a stepping stone before moving on, they might question the value of hiring you since they'd just have to start the process over again. Try to strike the right tone of "I want to succeed and grow with the tools you give me, of which there is surely an abundance")

- I can see when you are reading off another screen. It's very visible. If you're gonna do chatgpt shit to come up with answers at least do me the courtesy of keeping the window leveled wherever my face would be on the screen so it looks like you're staring at me the whole time

- Do not talk about how your last company sucked. It's a company. Of course it sucked. This company you're applying for probably sucks just as much if not much worse. Even if you're leaving your company because your boss spends every day attacking you with throwing stars, make up a different reason. Preferably something about seeking growth or some shit

- If you can't think of a reason as to why you'd be excited to join a particular company (and let's be real. Why the fuck would you literally ever), find something else to feign excitement over. "I saw that this new role has X responsibility which I never got to do, but always wanted to learn" or "I saw that you were planning on opening two new branches and I've always wanted to be involved in the growth of blahblahblah vomit". It doesn't have to be true, man. On that note

- Google the company. Look up what they do. Look in the news. You don't have to be able to recite a complete company history or anything but it helps to kow What They Do. "This one seems really obv--" YOU'D BE SURPRISED. If they don't ask you outright what you know about the company, bring up something you learned when it's time for you to ask your questions.

- Have questions to ask, btw. But these are not mere questions of curiosity! Because, again, who could possibly give a shit about their practices and whatnot!! These are instead opportunities for you to show off how diligent you are and tell more anecdotes about what a great employee you would be. "Oh, I had a follow up question about the software you use! When I was training my coworkers how to use this, I came across this issue a number of times, how did you guys deal with that? I did X but that solution probably wouldn't scale for a department your size" <- Okay stop yawning and look. See how nobody gives a shit but now you can brag about knowing it so well you taught others, identified solutions, and recognized the limitations of those solutions? Bragging opportunity.

- You know that archetype of person who only ever talks about themselves and how great they are and everything you bring up only serves as a platform for them to talk about themselves? That is kind of what a job interview is.

"This sounds miserable!" It is!!! People who do this well are worms who have gained extensive experience in stuffing their faces into the excrement of hiring managers. If you're having a good time you're doing it wrong or YOU'RE WEIRD

"But even after doing all that work, I still might not even get the job?" Yes!!!!!! It sucks!!!!!! The goal is to minimize what qualms a person may have and present yourself as a specialized tool for their problems, which is why it helps to know what those problems are. "But that sucks!" NOTHING ABOUT THIS PROCESS DOESN'T SUCK, INCLUDING SUCCESS

[whatagrump]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[enigmaticexplorer]

“If you want to break up dialogue to insert an action"—she gesticulated wildly to emphasize her point—"then you use em dashes around the action.”

“You can also break up dialogue by placing the em dash inside the quotation mark, but—” She took a moment to catch her breath. “—you must treat the action like a sentence. It must be capitalized with an end punctation.”

“When humans speak, we often get sidetracked (and share information that may not be all that pertinent, a secret, or something we probably shouldn’t be talking about). Use parenthesis in your dialogue when you want to demonstrate this.”

***

“If you’re writing a long monologue, then it likely needs to be broken into multiple paragraphs. Because one long paragraph of dialogue that takes up an entire page or multiple pages is very hard on the eyes.

“So conclude the previous dialogue paragraph without a quotation mark, and start the next dialogue paragraph with a quotation mark. This shows the reader that the same person is still speaking, without the need for additional action or dialogue tags.”

[lmaonade]

i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it''s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i'm not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i'm talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it's literally not even that difficult and it matters so much

[lmaonade]

i truly believe that knowing how to cook is a basic survival concept and the fact that so many people can't even make simple dishes is depressing as hell this is the sorta thing that should be taught at a young age. being able to take the ingredients you have around your home and turn them into a meal is like, essential and will make life so much better. you don't need to be a high end chef you just need to understand some things that can be easily taught... but then again maybe the education system is playing a roll against this and ultimately they want you to grow up to rely on mcdonalds for dinner. i don't know. please learn how to cook for yourself if you're able. i'm not asking you to hunt for specific ingredients to make some expensive youtuber's "best" recipe but if you know the basics of cooking you can do a lot with cheap canned ingredients. cooking can be affordable i promise you just need to learn how to make do with what you can get

[eroticcannibal]

Can anyone point me towards resources that teach those basics cus I would LOVE to teach my child this stuff but i dont know how to cook

[loumandliker]

not comprehensive but heres some:

internet shaquille's basics but especially:

making rice

making scrambled eggs

making oatmeal

levels of cooking meat

using & storing vegetables with recipes in the description (this one has a bit of Sassiness directed at people who dont like vegetables but the content is solid)

food safety + a recipe to demonstrate

how to learn to cook (just a list of subtopics, no actual tips)

cooking techniques playlist

how to cut x

basics with babish s1 & 2, but particularly:

freezer meals,

weeknight meals,

kitchen tools (although the specific suggestions are pretty expensive even with the lower end scale items the basic categories are solid, and you can evaluate what items you will realistcially need - eg. if you dont need to read temp for steaks etc the temp reader will not be relevant) &

kitchen care (mid-high advanced home cooking)

basic knife skills

picking the right pan for each recipe

j. kenji lopez-alt's tips and tricks playlist

egg recipes

a little more complicated, involved, and longer than any of the rest of these but good breakdown of flavor & how and why to use the basic seasoning/flavor profiles

and then recipe channels representing various cuisines:

j. kenji lopez-alt (various)

marion's kitchen (southeast & east asian, western/asian fusion)

maangchi (korean)

future neighbor (mostly korean)

the western supermarket playlist of chinese cooking demystified (more recipes available but these are accessible if you dont have "specialty" ingredients)

family recipes playlist by made with lau (chinese)

not another cooking show (various)

cooking with boris (bear with me here i know he does it exaggeratedly humorously but a lot of them are actually solid and beginner cook friendly. mostly slavic/russian)

you suck at cooking (also falls into the intentionally humorous category but most of the recipes are pretty solid anyway)

how to cook that (baking, also does debunking videos of viral cooking hacks - breaks down the reasons the hacks dont work, pretty important to understand those basics imo)

internet shaquille (various)

babish culinary universe (various)

i REFUSE to recommended joshua weissman because he is fucking insufferable but if you want you can try if you can deal with it, the techniques/recipes seem fine for the most part

also disclaimer: these are channels i watch and cuisines i most often cook with (save for YSAC and boris which i just find funny) - there are tons of cuisines that are missing completely but i don’t cook with them much so i don’t really know who to rec

again definitely not a comprehensive list but it touches on most of the basics

[artarii]

They lore dropped personal information and then went oh yea and his middle name is Scott 😭😭

[captainragtag]

Can we include darebee.com with ao3 and wikipedia on our list of really good nonprofits with excellent services that we stan?

It's a free, no sign-up, no ads fitness resource created by professionals who view this as activism (fitness should be accessible to everyone), and it's very thoughtful and thorough.

Features I really like:

- all instructions for workout routines are diagrammed on single pages with a clean, easy to read layout

- there's 30 or 60 day programs you can follow if you, like me, don't know what to do. they take you through a rotation of workouts so you're working different muscle groups on different day for a specific purpose

- there's so much variety and there's a filter so you can find the level and your goals and type of workout you wanna do

- you don't need any equipment

- some of the programs are RPGs or adventure stories! How's that for motivation. There's also badges and achievements or something but I haven't looked that closely at how that works yet

- they're nerds. they name workouts after D&D classes. There's a Lannistrr workout, a batcave workout, a witcher workout

- I've only scratched the surface

I'm doing this really easy one to start out

Darebee, darebee, fitness, visual workouts, workouts, fitness challenges, fitness motivation, training tips, recipes, nutrition

[bisexualshakespeare]

If you don't understand from the picture they have an Exercise Library playlist in YouTube so you can see what all the moves look like in motion!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQSMS0J6JbrKdSOSbyJXaQ_zN_HSSp7zZ

Exercise Library - YouTube

[kentrix11]

[taigacryptid]

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.

use firefox instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).

use mega or proton drive instead of google drive.

get rid of bloatware

use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite

use vetted sites on r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH for free movies, books, games, etc.

use trakt or letterboxd instead of imdb.

use storygraph instead of goodreads.

use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions

use ground news to read unbiased news and find blind spots in news stories.

use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp

make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge

use search for a cause or ecosia to support the environment instead of google

use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)

use flashpoint to play archived online flash games

find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books

burn your music onto cds

use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe

use unroll.me to clean your email inboxes

use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, tuta, or proton mail instead of gmail

remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X

remove bloatware on samsung X

use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta

use NCH suite for free software like a file converter, image editor, video editors, pdf editor, etc.

feel free to add more alternatives, resources or advice in the reblogs or replies, and i'll add them to the main post <3

last updated: march 18th 2025

[an-aura-about-you]

btw while people continue to fight the system don't forget about Undue Medical Debt (formerly RIP Medical Debt), a charity that buys and forgives medical debt. on average a donation of $10 will forgive $1,000 of medical debt.

[an-aura-about-you]

I'm fairly confident that this is now the one original post I've made that has gotten the most notes, and I honestly couldn't be happier. the more attention we give this, the higher the chances that someone will see this and donate. medical debt is both one of the most crushing things a person can deal with and one of the stupidest things humanity has invented. and if you live in the US, I have no doubt that you've had to deal with medical debt in your life, either for yourself or a loved one. even a small donation can do so much good, and now is the time of year when we are encouraged to think of others.

[fatmasc]

Avoiding Fast Fashion: How to Repair your Stuff

A friend texted me asking how to avoid fast fashion and the short answer is: you cant. unless you have the money to make all your own clothes, fast fashion is going to be a part of your life because it has permeated every corner of the fashion industry. However, you can learn basic mending and repair techniques to help your clothes last so that you are contributing far less to the fast fashion industry

Basic Hand Sewing How-to

How to Mend Jeans using Shashiko Methods

How to Mend Clothing (this channel is all about how to sew so check out her other videos)

Repairing a Seam

Re-attach the sole of a shoe

Repair holes in shoes 1 2

[doomedvoyages]

anyways

get a vpn i use mullvad it’s p cheap and just gives you an account number set it to switzerland theyve got nice solid privacy laws and arent part of the main surveillance agreements between the us and its allies (5 eyes, 9 eyes, or 14 eyes) opt out of everything the websites you visit give you the option to opt out of (bc of eu and swiss privacy laws p much every website will give you that option and breakdown clearly what info they wont let you opt out of and what theyll do with it) and install it on both your phone and computer

follow these instructions to keep google from harvesting and keeping your data. altho honestly they probably still keep that data so just avoid google when possible. on that note the google search alternative i use is startpage it uses google results but anonymizes your search bc lets be honest duck duck go kind of sucks and if a service is subpar youll probably just revert to the better one so. startpage.

use firefox google chrome is the devil why are you using google chrome. it’s terrible and you can easily import everything to firefox. clear your cookies frequently.

get rid of your alexa or google home or whatever you do not need it and dont buy one if you dont already have one. dont buy a doorbell cam and if you really need or want one definitely do not buy a Ring doorbell cam. dont buy anything you can avoid thats attached to the Internet Of Things. invite tech companies into your home as little as you possibly can

install ublock origin and privacy badger theyll block a lot of ads and trackers. also install the google analytics opt out extension which will prevent some of your activity from being reported back to google (it doesnt opt out of all google analytics functions tho)

install facebook container, twitter container, and amazon container. this will help prevent them from following you around the web at least a little. also stop visiting those sites as much as you can and uninstall their apps. this includes instagram which is rife with privacy issues. disable or uninstall as many google apps as you can and your phone will allow.

use signal for messaging (available on desktop and mobile and can be used for video, voice, and text/photo chat) and protonmail (choose the .ch domain name) for email. bc i am…..broke and dont really want to have another subscription so i can have two protonmail aliases i use a tutanota account (based in germany which is part of the 9 eyes) for random stuff i want to sign up for and protonmail for personal email.

stop using google news and flipboard they store everything you read and tailor your feed. i use inoreader for now which is an rss feed so you just subscribe to the news sources you trust but i am also searching for a better rss feed app with a good ui to use instead bc inoreader still collects user data, but they dont tailor your content at least.

theres not really a good alternative i know of for youtube but the best thing you can do there is remain aware of past and the latest right-wing dog-whistles so if you accidentally stumble on a shitty covertly alt-right video bc youtube is constantly pushing them, you can avoid that.

do not submit your dna to ancestry websites and vocally encourage your family members not to as much as you can.

im not a Tech person at all so all this is just the best i can do as a random person who doesnt want companies esp companies that notoriously cooperate with the us government given what we’re headed towards to have every tiny piece of my info.

read this article by a Tech Guy telling you all the information google and facebook have on you and some tips he has on how to delete or prevent it i might have forgotten which was the first thing to really properly scare the shit out of me about tech companies a couple years back. also this series about a journalist’s experience trying to avoid the big five tech companies for a week each and how mindblowingly difficult that was. in terms of documentaries lately ive watched the social dilemma (which was infuriating but had lots of interviews with Tech Guys who were formerly high up in many tech companies completely avoiding responsibility for their actions but also telling you all the shit they do) and the great hack about cambridge analytica. also thank you to user @crowleyraejepsen for being your friendly neighborhood librarian helping me do my bare minimum to protect my privacy

i know if anyone reads this massive rambling post theres gonna be a million people in my inbox with “well what if i NEED to do this or CANT avoid them for THIS REASON” and my answer is: then do it! why do you care about or want my approval! i know there are plenty of scenarios where these services are basically essential or unavoidable so just use them when you have to and avoid them when you dont. or do nothing! but be aware of the choice youre making at least

[isagrimorie]

This guy gives good privacy advice, and also I use Bitwarden as password manager, it’s open source and they have a free forever option, and I’ve been using it and it’s really good.

[harpyhormones]

hey i just wanted to put a quick post up for people that may not know, cuz i certainly didnt until a couple years ago, but the whole prescription glasses industry is a massive racket, and i wanted to let people know about the more affordable options for buying or replacing glasses

when you go to an optometrist to get your eyes tested, they take a lot of measurements and will give you a prescription that lists things like how near or farsighted each eye is, spherical and cylindrical measurements for astigmatism, etc, but one measure they almost always leave out of the portion they give you is your interpupillary distance, that is, the distance between your pupils, measured in millimeters

the reason they leave that out is because if you have your full prescription, including the interpupillary distance, you can just go online and buy glasses from a place like zenni optical for less than $20 USD. and if you go and buy them online, thats ~$200 they dont get to bilk from you

so, you have two options, you can either request your interpupillary distance number when you get your eyes tested, which they cant legally withhold from you because its medical information

This Is Specifically Enforced By The Federal Trade Commission!

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2016/05/clear-picture-complying-ftcs-eyeglass-rule

they dont get to withhold this! a lot of them will lie to you, or try to skirt around it, because they want your money. raise a fucking stink. this is an argument you can win.

the other option is to measure your interpupillary distance at home, using either a ruler and a mirror, or a phone app which is made for this purpose

https://www.zennioptical.com/measuring-pd-infographic

once you have your full prescription information, you can buy glasses online, made to your specific prescription, for well under a TENTH the cost of ones you would buy at a brick and mortar store

[mugasofer]

[ilovecats4ever]

[exmellivorinae]

OH MY GOD whyyyy did no one tell me you’re supposed to send thank-yous after interviews?? Why would I do that???

“Thank you for this incredibly stressful 30 minutes that I have had to re-structure my entire day around and which will give me anxiety poos for the next 24 hours.”

I HATE ETIQUETTE IT’S THE MOST IMPOSSIBLE THING FOR ME TO LEARN WITHOUT SOMEONE DIRECTLY TELLING ME THIS SHIT

[a-windsor]

NO ONE TOLD YOU???? WTF! I HAVE FAILED YOU. Also: Dear ______: Thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you (&________) to discuss the [insert job position]. I am grateful to be considered for the position. I think I will be a great fit at [company name], especially given my experience in __________. [insert possible reference to something you talked about, something that excited you.] I look forward to hearing from you [and if you are feeling super confident: and working together in the future]. Sincerely, @mellivorinae

[exmellivorinae]

THIS IS A LIFESAVING TEMPLATE

[a-windsor]

YOU ARE WELCOME

[emeraldboreas-deactivated201809]

My brother got a really great paid internship one summer. The guy who hired him said the deciding factor was the professional thank you letter my brother sent after the interview.

[suaimhneas-peace-deactivated202]

should it be an email? or like a physical letter?

[daminwayne]

email, you want to send it within a few hours at max after the interview if you can so it’s fresh in their mind who you are. 

[khirsahle]

Confirmed! I interviewed for a job right after arriving in NY. The interview went incredibly well, and I went home and immediately wrote a thank you letter and put it in the mail. I had a super good feeling about this interview.

I didn’t get the job.

However, a few weeks later, I was called in to interview with another editor in the same company, and I did get that job. I found out later from the initial editor (the one who didn’t hire me) that he had planned to offer me the job, but since I didn’t follow up with a thank you letter, he assumed I didn’t really want it. He offered the job to another contender–but when he got my letter in the mail shortly after the offer had already been made, he went to HR and gave me a glowing recommendation. It was based on that recommendation that I got called in for the second interview.

So: send an email thank you immediately (same day!) after the interview. If you’re feeling extra, go ahead and send a written one too. OR go immediately to a coffee shop, write the letter, and return to the office and give it to the secretary.

Either way, those letters are important.

[neurofancier-deactivated]

Pro tip: If you really want HR to develop a personal interest in your application, publicly thank them on linkedin. Just make a short post telling your network about how X recruiter really went above and beyond to make you feel welcome, or about how be accommodating and professional they were, or whatever. Make sure to use the mention feature so they’ll get a notification and see it. 

Flattery will get you everywhere… and public flattery that might make its way back to their manager, doubly so.

[oaky-dokey]

Obligatory plug for one of FreePrintable.net’s sites: ThankYouLetter.ws. They have a whole section with interview thank you letter templates, and a page with specific tips for interview thank you letters. (There are also tons of other letter templates if you browse around a bit.)

[cricketcat9]

As a former professional recruiter and recruiting manager, I confirm, especially for entry-level positions, where you are competing with oodles of people. This little thing can make a difference. Also the fact that, maybe, you took time to google the “interview etiquette”.

[boogiewoogiebuglegal]

SIGNAL BOOST

[ironswordandstarshield]

The post-interview thank you notes can be a good way to recover in case you got asked a question whose answer you either didn’t know or felt was super weak. So if you follow the above given template, jump in with something like “upon further thought to your question, here’s my revised answer.” 

But yeah always send a thank you note after an interview. It’s a small thing but it makes a hell of a difference. And def send thank you messages to any recruiters who may have helped. And also after you get the job. Small things like that really go a long long way.

[heckofabecca]

GO READ ASK A MANAGER RIGHT NOW.

AAM is an AMAZING resource for all work-related questions. This is a good starting place—basically the Big Questions people tend to have. (And some weirdness.) Job searching, negotiating for raises, performance issues, living through toxicity, recognizing toxic situations, dealing with coworkers, managing people, helpful starting-point scripts for all of the above… Do yourself a favor and check it out!

[myurbandream]

JFC no one ever told me any of this!!!!

[hil-arrr-y]

Two job-hunting resources that changed my life:

This cover letter post on askamanger.com. A job interview guide written by Alison Green, who runs askamanager.

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Shout-out to @ms-demeanor for putting these on my dash again, I’d like to add this exceptional interview question “answer guide” that explains traps and “the best” way to answer over 64 common questions. I don’t know who to attribute it to, but here it is: PDF from tri valley one-stop career center.

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Hey some of these answer templates helped J get an offer letter from her dream job; strongly recommend you read them if you’re job hunting

[ms-demeanor]

Have you been using the same email address and username on various platforms for twenty years?

Have you been using the same password for your accounts for twenty years?

If so, please do the following:

Go to HaveIBeenPwned.Com. In the search box, search your email address.

If the bottom of the page turns red, it means that your email is in at least one set of data from a breach.

2. Scroll down on the page to look at the breaches your email was in. I want you to look specifically for breaches that include passwords.

What this means is that your email address, which you have used as an account name for twenty years, and your password, which you have used across platforms for twenty years, are available for anyone on the web who wants to look. It’s pretty easy to go and find too!

This is how a LOT of identity theft and fraud happens these days.

Let’s say you created your LiveJournal account when you were fifteen. You used it a lot and by the time you were twenty the credentials you created for it were familiar and you plugged them in whenever you had to create an account. You plugged them in when you created a Facebook account. You plugged them in when you created a bank account. You plugged them in when you created the account that lets you see your lab results from your doctor’s office.

All that someone has to do to seriously fuck your life is to do the following:

Find your email and password in one of these lists.

Compare to other lists and see if the same information is present

Seek out the most common account types (gmail, facebook, yahoo, hotmail, icloud, amazon, and one of about five financial institutions)

Start entering your username and password

Literally, profit.

That’s all it takes. If you used the same username and password in two accounts in a breach, you probably used it elsewhere. Maybe you put an exclamation after the password, or entered your birth year, but those are pretty easy things to guess about and well worth it if someone can send themselves all the cash in your bank or order a shitload of giftcards from your amazon account.

And look: I know it ’s really easy to not take warnings about passwords seriously. I know that if you haven’t been screwed by this yet that it’s easy to think that your password is strong enough, that you’re going to get overlooked because you’ve got less than a hundred dollars to your name, that you’re not going to have a problem with this.

People re-use passwords all the time. They re-use passwords constantly. And a lot of people don’t understand that those passwords are freely available out on the internet.

Think about what would happen if someone locked you out of your primary email account and there was no way to get back in. You go to change your password on social media and what does it do? Sends a confirmation to your email, which you now don’t control. Is your primary email one of the ways that you get information from your bank? Is it how you log into and track orders from online resellers? How do you log in to the profile on your phone? Do you have a browser profile? Do you log in with your email address? Does your browser profile save your credit card numbers?

This is why we use password managers. This is the advantage to password managers. With a password manager there is ONE password you have to be very careful to keep safe (the password to your password manager) and all the other passwords are disposable. Did your email get revealed in the Tumblr breach? NBD, use your password manager to generate a new, unique password for your tumblr account, change it, and you’re good to go.

I know it seems like a giant pain in the ass to start using a password manager. I know it seems like a much bigger headache to log into a password manager and copy passwords than it is to type in the password that you KNOW. But I promise that using a password manager is a much smaller headache than freezing your credit so that people stop applying for credit cards in your name, or trying to start a brand new email from scratch when you get locked out of your old one, or tracking down all of the photos that someone could download from your cloud storage and making sure that they aren’t getting posted on revenge porn sites.

Bitwarden is a secure, open-source password manager that has a free option for individual users. It has apps available for iOS and Android, and extensions for Firefox (which is also supported in Firefox Mobile) and Chrome. It has an extremely comprehensive tutorial series to help you learn how to use it. If you’re thinking about signing up for a password manager but you’re not sure, I strongly recommend checking out some of those videos.

I also promise that using a password manager gets easier the more you use it. It’s a big hurdle to jump over when you’re getting started, but it gets easier pretty much immediately.

And this doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. You can create an account with a password manager and just save one login to start. It’s actually easiest if you keep it low-key and just update your logins whenever you find yourself needing to log in to a site instead of trying to go through and do it all at once before you’re familiar with the program.

I’d recommend starting with at least two things: your primary email and your primary bank account. After that update any major online retailers you shop frequently and any social media that you use often.

A password manager is also a great place to store account recovery codes, answers to security questions, previous passwords, PINs, and secondary contact methods.

A lot of people worry that a password manager is an even bigger risk than just reusing passwords or creating memorable passwords or writing passwords down in a notebook because if a password manager is breached then all of that very important data is exposed. This is a reasonable thing to fear, and that’s why it’s important to be careful about what password manager you use.

This is why I recommend Bitwarden. Bitwarden uses a very secure encryption scheme and never stores any of your data in plaintext. If Bitwarden is breached and leaks data, all that will be leaked is gibberish. What you need to worry about to keep your password manager secure are the following:

Create a good, complicated, unique password for your password manager. This password DOES need to be memorable, so pick something that will be easy for you to remember. I like to use song lyrics and the year a song was released for this, so something like “Nggyu,Nglyd,Ngraady82” if we’re using “Never Gonna Give You Up” as an example.

Make sure that you have secure recovery methods for your password manager; save your recovery passphrase in a safe place (I have a notebook with info like this and software activation codes and so on that I keep in my sock drawer, as well as a password protected folder on my desktop)

Only log in to your password manager from devices that you use a pin or password to log into - if you aren’t doing that, at least make sure to set a short vault timeout, so that your password manager will log out after a set (short) period of time

Do not use the password for your password manager anywhere else

Do not tell anyone the password for your password manager

Make sure that your devices have good security and don’t allow people remote access to your computer or devices.

Basically YOU are the only way that someone can get into your password manager. Your password is the only thing that can unlock it, which means that A) you have to ensure that you won’t lose the password and B) you have to ensure that nobody else has access to the password. I know that first one sounds scary, but there are a LOT of ways to recover a Bitwarden account if you take the time to set them up. The second one is much simpler, and is the thing that is going to keep your password manager safe.

Anyway ILU please use a password manager.

[ms-demeanor]

This is actually a great question. You *SHOULD* be suspicious when presented with websites that ask you to enter your email or when given advice from randos on the internet.

One of the easiest things to do when you see a novel piece of information and you want a general background on it is to check wikipedia.

The wikipedia page does a pretty good job of explaining what it *does* and does suggest that a lot of people use it, but that’s not really enough info to know whether to trust something. So it is perfectly reasonable to do a search of your actual question: “Is haveibeenpwned safe?”

This is somewhat complicated, because various search engines are going to return various answers and it’s not like any of those answers are definitive either.

So, you know that “is haveibeenpwned safe” is a computer security question, so it’s worthwhile to see what security and computer focused people say about it. The Register, PCMag, ZDNet, and HowToGeek are all computer-focused resources; you can search “haveibeenpwned” on those sites and see what they say.

The Register describes it as ‘reliable,’ PC Mag says that it is very useful, ZDNet cites it as a source, and HowToGeek has a whole bunch of articles about the site, including updates on the project going open source and instructions on how to use it.

But you might not trust those sites either. You may want to ask a group of internet-savvy users users. It’s kind of a joke that you need to add “reddit” to the end of a query to get a good answer these days, but sometimes that’s an effective way of getting an answer!

You can also take into consideration the history of the site: It has been around for about 10 years now, and if it were dangerous or risky to use there would be a lot of articles out about it. But when you search “is haveibeenpwned dangerous?” pretty much every site agrees that it’s safe.

Information literacy has a lot in common across a lot of different fields, and one of the things that is true across the board is that you need to be able to identify good sources of information before you can feel secure discussing a topic. It is a VERY GOOD idea to question random tech advice that you stumble across on tumblr dot com because tumblr is not generally known as a good source of tech knowledge.

[diaryofandnwoman]

Fruit will last 3 weeks longer….

Why You Should Keep Fruit In Mason Jars Instead Of The Containers They Come In…….

When you get your fruit home from the grocery store, the first thing you should do is remove it from the plastic containers they’ve come in and recycle them. Next, clean out your sink and fill it with water (you could also use a large bowl). Then, toss in a few tablespoons of distilled vinegar. You’ll then want to submerge your fruit in the water and let it soak for about 10 to 15 minutes. The purpose of this is to get rid of any mold or bacteria on the fruit which is what causes them to go rotten more quickly.

Once the fruit has had a nice soak, remove it from the vinegar water, transfer to a strainer, and rinse with cool water. Leave the fruit out to dry on a tea towel or paper towel. Once dry, transfer the fruit to mason jars and seal up those lids. This is the best way to make your fruit last, particularly berries, which tend to be very prone to mold and bacteria buildup.

And that’s it! Incorporating these few extra steps into preparing and storing fruit can help you eliminate food waste, save money, and keep your fridge stocked with fresh produce for much longer.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

helpful advice for people who don’t eat the entire kilo of raspberries on the ten minute walk back from the supermarket, yay!

[prohumanagenda]

I saw this post a couple months ago and tried it, and it is amazing how much longer I can keep berries now. Plus they look so pretty in the fridge!