Blaisers

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.

https://www.youtube.com/@GutsickGibbon

^^^ phd student in biological anthropology, credentials in about tab, does that thing you mention of just talking about recent findings by going over recent open-access studies.

also there's Stefan Milo who has a layman's approach to it but often interviews researchers on the topic he's discussing so that's an interesting window into the field.

If you are asked beforehand before an event whether there are things that you can't or won't eat, you should tell the truth. Do not lie and say you've got no food limitations if you know that you do. Knowing the truth and choosing to say something false instead is lying.

If you were not asked, but you know that you have food limitations that people should bear in mind, you should let them know nonetheless. If they simply forgot to ask you, they'll appreciate you telling them nonetheless. If they didn't ask because they don't care, they don't give a shit about you. Don't go to events or eat food offered by people who don't give a shit about you.

If you were asked what you can't and won't eat and you lied, and you are offered something you know they didn't know you don't like, you are the one who owes them an apology, not the other way around.

If you lied about what you can't or won't eat and know there won't be anything available that you can eat, then at least bring your own food.

If you lied about what you can't or won't eat and you know that there won't be anything there for you, and you also did not bring your own food, at least try not to be rancid to be around because you're hungry.

If you know there won't be food for you because you lied, and you didn't bring your own food despite of knowing that you're insufferable to deal with when you're hungry, then you'd better be fast enough to outrun me.

If you can't outrun me, then you'd better be able to outsmart me.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.