People’s work preferences are their own, these guys are having fun, good for them.

I always maintained I can’t work from home, I was forced to teach via zoom during lock downs and even now my job is hybrid, I teach in person in a shared classroom but I don’t have an office, I do all my prep and notes from home. Only I don’t. My productivity genuinely dropped when I lost my office.

Then I house sat for a friend who had a home office and I realised I can work from home, just not my home, because it’s not set up for work and my head space in my home can’t flip to that “productive mode”.

So now I go to the local library, which is better than my house but still not as good as an office because it’s still distracting.

But it depends on the type of work, I prefer lesson planning alone in quiet peace, I get so much done, but when we’re developing community events I love being in our open staff room with laptops out, some of us sitting on the floor, others standing and just shooting ideas around, we always get so much done.

But I’ve worked in other centres where that level of collaboration and communication wasn’t there - we didn’t have the right mix of personality types, and a workplace like my current staffroom would be chaos and nothing would get done.

I’m Australian and was always told the cover letter was unnecessary, especially if your CV has a bio.

The cover letter was for additional information not covered by the resume - name dropping the manager at the company you know who inspired you to apply, explaining why it appears your changing industries, justifying “overqualifications”, mentioning a personal hobby that’s relevant to the industry and isn’t technical work experience.

Basically the things you plan to bring up in the interview to wow them, you can introduce them while introducing yourself in a cover letter.

But if your resume lines up with the position description, you don’t need a cover letter.

Basically I was told a cover letter is necessary when you’re a burnt out nurse or teacher applying to be a cashier at kmart to avoid having your resume immediately thrown out.

That said. I’ve literally never written one, even as a serial industry hopper. If there’s no email address to send my resume too, then the system is too auto for a cover letter and they don’t want to read it anyway, if there is an email address, just include a few lines of a short cover letter in the body text of the email before attaching your resume.

This, when I’ve got a new program or a program has updated I take my time to familiarise myself with it, it takes me more than five minutes because I’m visually impaired and have a learning disability, but it doesn’t take that long and I have fun exploring the program without pressure.

But when a program updates the UI the morning I start work and I realise I’ve got 5 minutes to figure out where everything has moved? It’s overwhelming and unfortunately I have a “freeze” response to stress and it took me years of therapy to push through that gut instinct to freeze up and just stare at it feeling like it’s too much and I can’t.

That said, I do still really struggle to find the button mid-meeting. I can vamp, but I can’t vamp while properly searching my screen because with my visual impairment that takes too much concentration, so the result is “okay I’m going to share my screen, but my UI has updated so everyone go refresh your coffees while I hunt down the screen share button” and some helpful person will try to explain where the button is, not understanding that my screen doesn’t look like there’s because I have adaptive software making things larger.

Though a few times I’ve logged a ticket to IT saying “I’m sorry, I know the issues exists between keyboard and chair on this one, I can’t for the life of me find the print button” and they’ll remote into my machine and say “oh, that’s because you’re enlarged font has pushed half your toolbar off the screen entirely. You’re missing a bunch of features” and suddenly it made sense why I felt like my co-workers were more efficient in these programs. Unfortunately they couldn’t fix it so I still have to work around only being able to see half the screen of this program they suggested “returning everything to the original aspect ratio and getting better glasses”

My boss seems to think our little 2 man IT department can fix Adobe’s bad adaptive UI.

Pretty sure I still catch myself smiling over the girl in highschool 18 years ago that said she was jealous because I had really long and pretty eyelashes.

I mean, yes, but a 3.5mm to usb-c adapter is like $10, so that’s still not really an excuse.

Most people use wireless headphones these days, and usb-c headphones are getting more common. (I’m hearing impaired, all headphones sound the same to me, but maybe an audiophile will tell me why usbc headphones suck compared to 3.5mm)

When I bought my new pixel I went to the gym that afternoon and immediately realised I couldn’t use my headphones because I hadn’t been mindful of my missing headphone jack. Worked out in silence, and bought an adapter on the way home for my headphones. Problem solved.

There’s tons of quiet things you can do on your phone if you’re bored and don’t have headphones.

The only people who are allowed to have their phones on full volume plasting noises without headphones are visually impaired people, because otherwise they’d need to put their headphones in just to check what time it is on their phone.

Oh I see your playing the legacy monopoly where house prices sort of match the money paid out by the bank…you need to index property and utilities to inflation but you don’t adjust any of the money paid out by the bank to the players.

Aka Millennial monopoly.

The game is over much faster, unless you introduce a gig economy payment system. Then it really drags on.

And that’s what we do IRL too, a bunch of people aren’t playing by the rules, creating false hope through windfall lotteries, so it’s taking longer to get to the part where we flip the board in frustration and destroy the bank… Behead the mega rich and seize the means of production.

I think it’s “don’t think about getting around plane carry on limits with this”

Accessibility.

We will never get rid of the analogue clocks from our school, we’re an adult education and alternative model highschool qualifications centre.

We primarily teach adults with no to low English, adults and teens with disabilities, and adults and teens refered via corrections services.

There is a significant level of illiteracy within numeracy, and for some of our students, it’s not a failing of the education system, it’s just a fact of life given their specific circumstances (eg, acquired brain injuries are common among our students)

Some students can learn to tell time on an analogue clock even if they didn’t know before.

But even my students who will never in their life be able to fully and independently remember and recall their numbers can tell the time with an analogue clock.

I tell my students “we will take lunch at 12pm, so if you look at the clock and the arms look like this /imitates a clock/ we will go to lunch”

And now I avoid 40 questions of “when’s lunch?” because you don’t need to tell time to see time with an analogue clock, they can physically watch the hands move, getting closer to the shape they recognise as lunch time.

And my other students can just read the time, from the clock, and not feel infantalised by having a disability friendly task clock like they’ve done at other centres I work at - they’ve had a digital clock for students who can tell time, and a task clock as the accessible clock. But a well designed face on an analogue clock can do both.

I myself have time blindness due to a neurological/CRD issue, so analogue clocks, and analogue timers are an accessibility tool for me as well, as the teacher.

That’s alright, there will only be a handful of gen alpha even eligible to vote in a 2029 election, since they were born 2010-not even born yet

“body type” has always been a general term to express the entire shape, size and proportions of a person, including excess weight and obesity.

When I was obese I couldn’t pull off crop tops because of my body size, it was incredibly unflattering, and now that I’m a healthy weight I still can’t pull off crop tops because of my body proportions, I have a short torso.

Body type encompasses both scenarios, so it’s often thought of as a polite way to tell someone something is unflattering without singling out specific “flaws” in their body.

Yup, that’s what the meds are called.

The only reason I’d ever use a brand name is if I genuinely need a specific brand (I have allergies so there are some brands I can’t have because of the inactive ingredients they use) or if I physically can’t pronounce the generic name.

Diclofenac is a prime example. No matter how many times I study the word and practice, I can’t stop myself from saying “dick flen ick” when I get to the chemist. Which is just so wrong. So I ask for “the generic Voltaren”

But I’m also just as likely to ask for a drug by its class if I can’t pronounce the name.

Eg: the beta blockers I used to be on, I’d have to think really, really hard to say “Propranolol” because otherwise I’d end up accidentally saying “propofol”. Not too big of a deal because obviously If I’m picking up a prescription for Propranolol and I ask for propofol the pharmacist is just going to chuckle and correct me. But to avoid it I’d just say “I’m here to pick up a my beta blocker script for, [name] [birthdate]”.

This is a case where the brand name actually unites understanding of a drug whose chemical name differs by location.

Except we don’t have Tylenol in most countries where it’s called paracetamol.

We have Panadol, Panamax, Calpol, Herron and Hedanol.

If it wasn’t for ER, Scrubs, Greys Anatomy and a bunch of other American media, I’d have no idea that Tylenol and acetaminophen are the same thing as Panadol and paracetamol.

Standard Tylenol and standard Panadol are different dosages too. Regular strength Tylenol is 325mg, standard Panadol (and every other paracetamol brand I’ve seen for adults) is 500mg, which is the “extra strength” of Tylenol.

I had two email addresses throughout all of highschool. The one I gave to adults if they asked, firstname-lastname@, and the one I used to sign into msn and give to all my friends… I forget the exact address but it was definitely along the lines of “hotpants-sexi.kitty.87@”

The former is still my primary email. The other one is sitting abandoned since I was 17 and smart enough to realise what a stupid idea it was, but I never deleted it and I can’t even remember it.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

My education background is nursing and social work. I’ve only ever used Windows and very surface level. I’ve never programmed anything, the closest I’ve gotten to anything technical is troubleshooting a game that I’ve modded to within an inch of its life.

Though I’m picking up an old laptop from a school surplus next Monday to wipe and begin exploring Linux. My only other experience with Linux is the interface of my housemates NAS (which I use only to manage a plex and valheim server)

I’m an IT tutor in a community centre - basically just teaching grandma how to close all her iPhone apps. No experience or formal qualifications needed. If you can be patient while showing seniors the basics of the devices they’ve got at home, you’re hired.

Our organisation currently pays too much for an IT managed service provider, who doesn’t provide a comprehensively managed service, so my boss wants to end their contact and hire me as a dedicated IT management officer. My boss is 75 and is confident in my abilities because she thinks power cycling the router when the internet goes out is an amazing and high level skill, but I know enough to know how much I don’t know. But I also know I can learn.

So maybe in a year or so I’ll understand more of the jokes on lemmy.

I’m an IT teacher at a community centre, I genuinely never thought I would see the day when a student younger than me enrolled. I wrongly assumed my role as a public educator would just fade out as younger generations required generally less training around computers.

Obviously courses in disability service centres would remain, and accredited training for people to kick off or retarget their careers would still exist.

But the person at the local library who meets twice a week and teaches grandma how to close the tabs on her phone felt like a job that was destined to die.

I’m in my 30s and this year I have a few teenagers in my class. The conversations are hilarious, they don’t know how to read a file location adreess or open a program that isn’t pinned to the taskbar, but at the same time, I don’t know how to access the notifications bar on an iPhone or quickly find the wifi settings without going through general settings…because I went from windows to 98, to a blackberry, to an Android, just like they went from an ipad toddler to an iPhone teen, and only now are they having Windows 11 thrown at them, and of all the computers to try and learn to use, this wouldn’t be my first recommendation (but it’s what our government funds us to teach 🤷‍♀️)

The skill divide is so hard to explain too. My elderly students just stare blankly at one screen, overwhelmed and confused, unsure how to recognise anything. Nothing stands out as a link, or a click able button, because the entire visual landscape is new to them. There is often a lot of hand holding which can be frustrating especially when you made a huge breakthrough in their confidence and independence only to have come in the next week feeling insecure about their skills because they’ve forgotten a little bit, or had a bad spam caller over the weekend who made them want to never touch a computer again.

Then the teens, who know what links look like and generally what they do will rush ahead, they may not know what it is exactly they’re trying to do, but they think they know what end result is expected and they generally know how to avoid catastrophic issues so they just barrel ahead, I’ll see them make 40 clicks a second for something that usually takes 2, because they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall.

I had a project last week. Dead simple. Save a linked file to a target location, import the file into another program through either drag and drop or browsing for the file, then change 1 thing, and export the final file into another target location, as specified on the activity sheet.

Barely 5 minutes in, I’m still helping Brenda get her mouse dongle plugged in, and one of the teens is finished. And yes, they have every file I asked for, and every edit I asked for, but both are just sitting in the downloads folder. And now we’re at the end looking back, the teen is confused because they have the edited file that is required to "finish*, how is it wrong, and I’m trying to explain why skipping the steps about target locations means they’ll have to start again because this activity is all about target locations and I don’t actually give two shits about this file I just need them to put things in and out of a folder until they can explain to me “a folder is a container” and not just stare into space because a folder is a black hole on their phone things they save go to until they need them again and just download them again.

Thank you, British and Irish Islands seems like it would be more easily understood by the general populous. When I hear South Eastern Icelandic Archipelago, I get a bit geographically turned around because I’m an idiot and I picture Iceland near Greenland which is near Canada, and I picture Ireland near England which is near France, so in my tiny brain Ireland and Iceland are a whole ocean apart (even though paleo-geographically, it’s the same soil)

Makes sense, as a geographical location I imagine it has had many names over history based on who controls the narrative. Can I ask what other names there are for the area that isn’t supportive of British colonialism?

Britain is historically just England and Wales, though colloquially now used as a shorter way of saying “Great Britain”, which is England, Wales, and Scotland.

The British isles is England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (and all the smaller islands like the Hebrides, Orkneys, etc)

I mean, I’d be confused and concerned too if a time travelling European from the 18th century stepped off a boat in 1492