Set your sights on good fortune. Concentrate

How many can you get?

Accidentally fallen in a natural body of water

Visited the second-largest city on your country

Taken ibuprofen on an empty stomach

Gotten a tattoo in only purple ink

Tried to dye your hair only to find the dye wouldn't take

Drank a spider

Broken your left femur in exactly two places simultaneously

Nearly ran out of petrol on the highway but not quite

Had an allergic reaction during an exam, because of the exam materials

Been prescribed antihistamines

Blocked someone on tumblr

Submitted a CV with a typo in the first line

Drank coffee without sugar

Been in an airplane only for the flight to be cancelled before takeoff

Abandoned a hobby exactly three days after you picked it up

Gotten the wrong prescription glasses because you were too shy to tell the student optometrist they were blocking your view of the eye chart so you just made up some answers at random

Been told "jokes about [trauma you had] are never funny" right after you made a joke about said trauma

Gotten lost at a new school

Been to a birthday party

Told someone you don't speak a certain language, in that language (give yourself a bonus point if you were lying to avoid a having a conversation (give yourself another bonus point if it was your native language (give yourself another bonus point if you clearly doing something - eg reading a book or watching a movie - that indicated that you did in fact speak said language)))

Left kudos on AO3

Read a book longer than 300 pages

Accidentally declined a call you wanted to take

Found a coin on the footpath that was the largest denomination minted in the country you were in at the time

Watched a TV series in an order determined by a random number generator

Gone out of your way to spit on someone's grave

Rolled a 12 on a pair of D6s

Received a scholarship that did not pay nearly enough to cover the course fees

Visited Geraldine, Aotearoa

Been mistaken for a sibling of a different gender

Accidentally shoplifted

Coloured your nails with a highlighter

Thanked your aunt for the lovely handkerchiefs

Been adopted by a calico cat with six toes on each paw

Looked someone up in an actual old-fashioned phonebook

Been given a nickname you initially hated but grew to like

Cut your own hair without looking in a mirror

Lived somewhere everyone says is haunted but you've never noticed anything abnormal

Driven a car older than yourself

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.

Photo of a young Māori woman with her baby on her back. The woman is wearing a kahu kiwi (kiwi feather cloak) and she has a tā moko facial tattoo; Aotearoa (New Zealand), late 19th century.

Aotearoa peeps: here's how you can vote without an address.

Transcript:

Voting Rights For Homeless People

You can:

enrol at the address where you spend a substantial amount of your time, or

enrol at the last residential address where you lived for at least 1 month, even if that was some time ago.

When you enrol to vote, you'll need to provide a postal address where electoral mail can be sent. This can be:

a PO box, or

the address of a family member or friend who agrees to hold your mail to collect, or

a church, support group, or service you go to (e.g. Wellington City Mission or DCM) , who agrees to hold your mail to collect.

You need to enrol by midnight Sunday 25 October 2026. You won't be able to enrol once voting starts this year.

Voting is open from 26 October to 7 November 2026.

take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)

the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it

but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first

comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now

You have become the protagonist of this anime!

-> Phonics For Adults <-