Apply to a job, wait (1) day, then call. Give them your first and last name. Tell them you submitted an application and that you’re very motivated to find [Enter field name] work. Let the conversation lead you wherever it takes. Be very polite. Say” thank you for your time, I’ll be looking forward to hearing back from you.” Rinse, repeat. This is to force them to be looking out for your application.
When you get to the interview, shake their hand firmly, tell them your first and last name.
Describe your experiences as “ two years transcription and data entry” if you have a desk job interview and “ [however many years] costumer service, retail and stock” for your retail jobs.
Don’t use job “ buzz words” I stg they hear them all day. Say things like, “ I’m detail oriented and am very good at taking instruction.” “ I would like to work for a company with integrity and I feel that [ company name] would be a good fit”
When they ask you if you have “reliable transportation” say YES. don’t tell them what kind of transportation, just say yes. (if you don’t do this, you wont get the job , I’m telling you right now).
Research the company. Know what they do, why they do it, how OLD the company is. WHERE it was founded, and what kind of position you’re intending to apply for.
When they ask you “ give us a situation where you had to blah blah blah” Make one the fuck up. Make yourself sound good as hell, and like you put your company’s needs slightly above the customer’s needs, but make the customer happy.
If they ask you about being outgoing, Say you “like to focus on your work so you can concentrate on doing things right” (which buys you out of having to act friendly all the time)
Questions for after the interview:
1. Does this position offer upward mobility?
2. Do you enjoy working for the company? (if you’re not interviewing for a temp agency who will send you anywhere)
Then, shake their hand, Ask them to repeat their name (REMEMBER THIS) say thank you for your time, wish them a nice day and leave. write their name down outside if you have to, just remember the fuck out of it.
AFTER your interview, send a card directed to the name of the person who interviewed you (I’ll give you them) that says “Thank you for the interview, I appreciate the opportunity. have a great day” This shows that you have an understanding of professionalism, and will have them thinking of you kindly (or at least remembering you) when they’re shuffling through the choices.
DO NOT tell them you just moved to the city over the phone. In person, tell them you just moved to the city. Make it sound like the only reason you need a job is because you moved. Not because you’re desperate.
__________
The titles of each section are key words you can use to search for jobs on Snagajob.com and Simplyhired.
In honor of vulture awareness day, let me ask you a question.
Do you love vultures?
You should.
Here’s why:
1, They are simultaneously the most majestic, and the most f*cking derpy of birbs. Observe -
2. THEY’RE SO FUCKING BADASS. We all know that they eat dead things. Eww, right? Wrong. They’re capable of digesting fucking rabies, cholera, hundreds of strains of bacteria that would straight up kill your ass given the chance. They deserve ALL of the respect, but they don’t get any, because ‘eww they eat dead things’.
3. THEY ARE FUCKING AMAZING AT WHAT THEY DO - Some of the highest flying birds ever recorded, with amazing eyesight and smell. Vultures are highly specialised - yes, that means they sometimes have bald heads. So what? People are all over sphinx cats and those semi-hairless dogs.
4. If you think they’re ugly, well, look at these precious babs and tell me you still don’t feel anything:
I have more reasons, but, look, I’ll just get straight to the point:
THEY’RE GOING EXTINCT, AND MORE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
Populations of some vultures have fallen more than 90% in the last 20 years, and that’s scary as fuck. Reasons for this range from livestock carcasses being contaminated with certain drugs, to poachers killing them off because vultures give them away. But whatever the reasons, they’re dying off fast, and we need to act before it’s too late. We need to help protect them and conserve them as much if not more than some of the ‘cuter’ endangered creatures.
So what can you do? Here are some useful links if you want to learn more:
"A bad idea written down is far better and far more useful to you than a blank sheet of paper and a mythical piece of brilliance that has been stuck in your head out of fear of failure. Go ahead and fail. Then make it better."
My screenwriting prof.
I felt like a lot of people needed to hear this. Including myself.
Hello, cishet white people. I am a fellow cishet white person, and we gotta have a bit of a heart-to-heart.
Some of you have decided to do that wear-a-safety-pin-to-show-solidarity thing. Thank you for making that decision. I shake your hand and give you a friendly clap on the back. Seriously. When the choices are “show solidarity” or “meh”? You made the right choice. You have shown that your heart is in the right place. Yay!
But here is the thing. It’s not enough for your heart to be in the right place. In the coming weeks, months, and years, it’s going to take deliberate action, not just good intentions. When your friend breaks their leg, you help them, right? You call an ambulance, or you take them to the hospital, and you help pull them out of immediate danger so they don’t get even more hurt. And then, THEN, once they’re getting medical treatment, then you say, “Get well soon!” or decide to pray for their quick recovery.
If you watch your friend break their leg, and then stand there saying, “Oh no, this is terrible. Let me know if you need anything, okay?? I’m here for you!”… You see what I’m getting at? A good friend says, “Oh shit, oh fuck, you have health insurance, right? Does it cover ambulances or should we try to get you in my car??”
Our country has broken its leg.
Well, okay, let’s be honest – the country broke its leg a long time ago. Last week it also got hit by a high-speed orange train.
And now we come back to the safety pins. You’ve put them on your lapels to designate yourself a safe space. Good start. But, fellow cishet white people, I’m hearing that some of you who have safety pins are standing by and watching while other people get bullied and harrassed. What’s that about, friendo?
I kinda know what it’s about. Privilege blinds us to a lot of what other people go through, and now your eyes are starting to open and you want to help but… you saw something going down and you froze. You didn’t have a mental script for how to help. Your brain went “!!!!!!!!” on five different levels and threw up 404 errors and while you were standing there trying to reboot quick enough to make a decision about oh my god what do I do… the person being harassed looked over, saw your safety pin, saw you standing there doing nothing to help, and felt like you personally had betrayed them.
I think you’ll agree that that’s the exact opposite of what you meant to do.
Fellow cishet white people, I gotta be honest with you: You have to ask yourselves why you’re wearing the pin. Because it’s a responsibility, and some of you just aren’t ready to be shouldering that, just like how we don’t ask someone with zero first-aid training to be on the front lines of an emergency because they’re more likely to hurt than to help. Or they, y’know, freeze up.
But you want the safety pin, you want to help, you want to be part of the fight! Again, good! GOOD! Yes! Welcome! We want you to want that! But you’re gonna need some training first. So I have a few small suggestions for you:
FIRST: Put the safety pin on the inside of your jacket (or the inside of your purse, or in your wallet, or a photograph of it as your cellphone background), somewhere that you’ll see it and touch it often, but where it’s not visible to anyone else. It’s not a sign for anyone else now; you have nothing to be showing off about. It’s a sign for YOU. In the Renaissance, rich folk would carry around these things called prayer nuts: tiny wooden spheres that opened in two halves like a walnut. Inside would be carvings of Biblical scenes of particular significance to the owners, and they’d use them to remind themselves of the sins they were trying to vanquish and the virtues they aspired to. The pin is now your prayer nut. It’s a reminder to you that you have a duty of honor, a social obligation, to be part of the fight and to stand up for people who need help. It is a reminder that you have to try every day to be better. Whenever you see it or touch it, I want you to think, “Did I do enough? Can I be doing more?” It’s for YOU and your betterment, not a sign to anyone else. Not yet.
SECOND: You’re concerned, I bet. You feel a little weird about putting it on the inside of your jacket. You wanted something to show that you’re part of the movement. Maybe something to signal that you’re not a threat, that you’re not about to launch into horrible racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic rhetoric, and you thought the pin was a pretty good symbol of that. I’m stiiiiiill gonna ask you to keep the pin as a prayer nut for now. Instead, go out and get yourself some of those lapel buttons for causes you specifically support: the LGBT rainbow buttons, BLM buttons, anti-ICE buttons… Put those on your clothes. Your message of, “I’m on the good guys’ team” is still there, but you’re also not designating yourself as a Person Who Will Instantly Leap to Someone’s Defense.
THIRD: Seriously, sit down with pen and paper and come up with some things you as an individual can do to help when you see someone being harassed. Come up with scripts and scenarios and rehearse them in your head. I’m not kidding. Half the reason that bystanders are bystanders are because they can’t fucking decide what to do, if anything! So make a decision BEFOREHAND, in a calm, secure, sober environment, and practice it a bit so your brain will be able to cope. You know how trainee pilots do flight simulations of all kinds of different scenarios so they’ll be ready if any of them happen? Same thing. Educate yourself! Read articles, listen to people from marginalized and threatened communities, use what you learn to revisit and modify your mental scripts. Not all of us are social justice warriors. Some of us are social justice clerics, and that’s okay. If you’re not the type to get in someone’s face and scream at them, then there are other ways you can help. Figure out what they are. Some action is better than no action. And maybe after a while when you’ve gotten some practice, you’ll find yourself shouting someone down even though you never thought you would. I’m not requiring you to be a certified superhero by tomorrow. I’m just asking you to figure out your plan of attack so you can be a little more effective. This is going to be a growing experience for you. (Just don’t expect your marginalized friends to give you cookies and pats on the head for your growth. I’m sure they appreciate you and your friendship and solidarity, but again, they’ve got enough on their plates right now, so chill out.)
FOURTH: Execute your mental scripts when you see someone being harassed. Do this until you achieve some kind of minimum level of proficiency and you can count on yourself to be an ACTIVE helper, as in: a helper who TAKES ACTION.
FIFTH: Then and only then, move your safety pin to the outside of your jacket. To be able to say that you’re a safe space, you have to be able to defend people and keep them safe.
Go forth, fellow cishet white people. Educate thyselves, and don’t let other people down by claiming more proficiency and confidence than you currently possess. Do your flight simulations. Actively practice! And then USE THEM, cause we’re going to need all the help we can get.
And hey, thanks for reading this far. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an ask. The newly-founded @rebelrouser tumblr is also aiming to be a good resource for people who are wondering how best to help!
I’m a lesbian fwiw. To this I’d add– Fucking thank you! Thank you for actively thinking about how you can be an ally, what you can do in the face of wild hatred. Being safe to others without making it about YOU is WORK. Having the conversations about why you’re wearing one to those not in the know is work. Listening to those who critique you (or demonstrate rage) for your efforts is work. Freedom isn’t free. But if we’re going to make it through this we’ve got to come together and actively resist oppression. We have to start from where we are. If this is your first awareness– welcome! We need you too!
So according to computer scientists, the election results might have been hacked in 3 important swing states. xx
“The scientists, among them J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, told the Clinton campaign they believe there is a questionable trend of Clinton performing worse in counties that relied on electronic voting machines compared to paper ballots and optical scanners”
Donations have slowed down hugely, so I figured this needs to come back.
In answer to something I’ve seen floating around: Yes, the goal has gone up twice. No, this isn’t shady at all.
They set goals based on the estimated cost of a recount in each state in turn. I first saw this page when the target was 2.5 mil, and even then it clearly explained that, with fees, attorney costs, recount watchers, etc factored in, the total bill for all three states was expected to be 6-7 million. They set the goals so that if theyfailed they could still do something. Now they’re on track to do everything.
So according to computer scientists, the election results might have been hacked in 3 important swing states. xx
“The scientists, among them J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, told the Clinton campaign they believe there is a questionable trend of Clinton performing worse in counties that relied on electronic voting machines compared to paper ballots and optical scanners”
Donations have slowed down hugely, so I figured this needs to come back.
In answer to something I’ve seen floating around: Yes, the goal has gone up twice. No, this isn’t shady at all.
They set goals based on the estimated cost of a recount in each state in turn. I first saw this page when the target was 2.5 mil, and even then it clearly explained that, with fees, attorney costs, recount watchers, etc factored in, the total bill for all three states was expected to be 6-7 million. They set the goals so that if theyfailed they could still do something. Now they’re on track to do everything.
This string of tweets.. I don’t want to pass it off as fact, like things will go exactly as they describe, because I don’t think they will, or I don’t want to believe they will. But I did want to share it because the concept of the obedience test is real and people really do need to take this shit seriously. It’s terrifying.
And we can’t afford to downplay that literal nazis are being accepted into powerful positions in United States government as nothing more than “controversial.” We can’t afford to not be outraged at this. We can’t afford to not react.
This is good advice. Some people will dismiss it as fear mongering. Sometimes, the fear needs to be mongered. The process outlined here is a real one, confirmed to work by trials and studies. It is a trusted and reliable tool in the belts of dictators, cult leaders, even ISIL. Resist the obedience test. We can’t wait and see. We can’t wait until there’s “sufficient” action taken to justify outrage. Do not be the person who says, “I did all I could,” and who did nothing. Hate speech IS action, and it MUST be resisted.
Don’t wait. Learn weapons and self-defence laws. Arm yourself. Bloc up. Bring friends. Scream and don’t stop screaming until it’s over. Silence is death.
[Image caption: a series of tweets by @pookleblinky, reading:
“Steve Bannon is a nazi. When given power, he will kill Jewish people. That’s not interesting. That’s what nazis do when given power. What is interesting, is that many people grew up learning about the Holocaust, and are going to “watch and see”.
My mom is a nevertrumper. She studied the Holocaust since she was a kid. She met with survivors in college. She, even though she knows on an intellectual level that putting nazis in power kills Jewish people, doesn’t react emotionally. She empathizes with the victims of the Holocaust. She stands up for Jewish people when people are overtly antisemitic. She has emotional reactions to swastikas, burnt synagogues, testimonials from survivors. She literally has known how the Holocaust came to be, since childhood.
But, when confronted with an actual nazi being put into a position of power: all of that slides off. All of it means absolutely nothing. Instead: “well I’ll wait and see”; “this is America!” - ignoring that until Hitler, Germans felt the same way about “but this is Germany!”
On an intellectual, abstract level, she knows that putting nazis in power is a Bad Thing. A thing she spent decades learning about. She knows, in better detail than many people, just how horrifying that Bad Thing can be. But, on an emotional and visceral level when faced with the concrete reality of a literal nazi being given a position of power: nothing.
The thing about trump putting a literal goddamn nazi in a position of power, is that it is a test of his enemies and supporters. He wants Bannon not just because the dude is a nazi. But because it is an obedience test.
On an intellectual level, abstractly, nevertrumpers like my mom know it is unacceptable to give nazis positions of power. Absolutely.How they react when one is literally given a position of power, is a good litmus test of how much leeway that nazi will have. Do they vociferously condemn it? Issue ultimatums: this is absolutely unacceptable. You cannot be allowed to do this, at all. Or do they instead adopt a tentative reluctance. “first, he’s our president and we must support him. Second, this is America.”
This is an obedience test to those who support his party. How much will his enemies within it put up? Dictators always turn the members of their party, however reluctantly, into collaborators with a share of blood on their hands.
This is also an obedience test for his enemies outside of his party. Internet radicals, millennial antifas: what resistance do they offer? Do his enemies outside the party respond to a nazi being put in power, by loudly disrupting the process of normalizing this? Or do they write very witty jokes and sell artisanal safety pin jewelry on etsy and write thinkpieces on Hogwarts?
It’s a simple obedience test. It doesn’t seem, on its surface, like a life or death decision. But, it’s the first of several tests each of which determine how far supporters will go and how little enemies will do. Each obedience test will occur after the results of the last have been sufficiently normalized.There is never one single test, a poll asking “is it ok to kill Jews?”
Instead: a series of tests, each edging toward atrocity, each relying on the previous one to have normalized the outcome of this one. The moment America normalizes the result of this obedience test, there will be another, with slightly higher stakes. Those higher stakes will not look higher. After you put the first nazi in power, is a second one really that huge a thing to get around? After you put a nazi in power, is him doing anti-semitic things really that shocking?
So: the next obedience test will have higher stakes, and will look *as hard* as this current one. How you react to this obedience test, is *exactly* how you will react to the next. It’ll feel just as easy/difficult morally. It’ll seem identical in stakes and difficulty as this obedience test. But, it’ll have higher stakes, and take more effort to fail it.Importantly: yes, there is actually an “alright let’s kill Jews y/n” test. It doesn’t feel any different from the first, smaller test. That last test will not feel like it has any higher stakes, or any more moral difficulty, than the very first already forgotten test.That last obedience test, pretty much sets the bar for how obedient you are. And, requires nothing but war as a means of disobedience.That last obedience test always happens. And: fascism moves faster than you expect. It doesn’t take long for the ramp to reach it.
How long? It took Hitler, in an age before instant ubiquitous communication, 4 months to lead up to that question. Fascism moves, let us say, 5 times faster than you expect. You don’t have 4 months, you have 24 days before that last exam question.You have 3 weeks to loudly, visibly, and passionately fail every obedience test given to you. You have 3 weeks to loudly, visibly, and angrily *disrupt the process that allows each test to set the baseline of normalcy for the next* You have 3 weeks to loudly, visibly, and angrily prevent each obedience test from setting the standard of normalcy the next one violates.
No, in 3 weeks you will probably not be given a literal yes/no poll on whether it’s cool to kill Jews. But it’ll be too late to prevent one. After those 3 weeks, those obedience tests will keep coming, and will keep establishing the grounds of what is normal. And sooner or later (sooner than you expect, even if you expect it soon) that last biggest obedience test will be asked of you.”]
I give you over to the philologist in Milton Mayer’s seminal 1955 work They Thought They Were Free: the Germans, 1933-1945:
also I noticed a lot of people (i.e. liberals) framing the discussion around love and violence as if fighting oppression or oppressors (including in immediate self-defense) was somehow antithetical to being a loving person, or to being committed to loving ourselves and other people in our communities, or to recognising love as a revitalising and necessary force in activism and in life in general, such that we need to utterly shun violence as something that’s always morally reprehensible (and thus, to shun people who commit violence in self-defense as morally reprehensible) in order to be capable of love
and I started thinking about how a lot of edgy radicals & leftists essentially agree with this but in the opposite direction–as if we need to utterly shun love as a necessary & revitalising force in order to be capable of revolutionary action or self-defense
in the same way that liberals will say “we must love and see the humanity in our oppressors, so that we cannot use violence against them even if we are ourselves the targets of violence” (or–more likely, since these kinds of people aren’t likely to be people who have ever been seriously targeted by violence–”more immediately & materially marginalised people shouldn’t use violence even if they are themselves the targets of violence”), edgy radicals will say “we must be prepared to use violence against our oppressors, and therefore we must hate and demonise them, as if they are somehow essentially, ontologically evil by virtue of their identities.” & I think that both of these approaches are fundamentally misguided
of course we must be prepared to use violence in self-defense against institutions that commit violence against us–but ultimately, the basis of revolution or whatever cannot be hatred and it cannot be the romanticisation of violence for the sake of violence (and again, a lot of these edgelord-y people have probably never been seriously targeted by violence, don’t have bodies that are marked out for violence–they just like the thrill of it all). it has to be love–love for ourselves & each other & for the future that we have to believe is possible–& that will include love for the people who used to be our oppressors. because otherwise what is the point?
to me “love your oppressor” doesn’t mean that you can’t fight back against violence and it doesn’t mean that you can’t hate the people who hate you or else you’re just as bad as they are and it doesn’t mean that you can’t be angry… what it does mean is that you have to have some kind of fundamental respect & empathy for people’s humanity
it means that, rather than just assuming that all white people are evil by some kind of mystical biological necessity and thus The Revolution requires killing them all or something (I’ve seen this suggested, which is… terrifying), you’ve got to try to understand the material and psychological factors that play into white people behaving in the way that they do (such as, applying class analysis to the racism of poor whites–see, the psychological wage of whiteness, etc.). that attempt at understanding is what I mean by “empathy”
and of course this has a necessary practical function in addition to a theoretical and psychological one–because how can you hope to fight a system that works to fragment and divide the people whom it oppresses without understanding & fighting against the reasons for that fragmentation?
so in all of these ways I see the willingness to empathise & love and the willingness to fight against oppression, not as antithetical, but absolutely necessary to, each other.
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