Today is World Narcolepsy Day. I’m raising awareness. — I’ve been deliberating for a few months about whether I’d ever feel like talking about narcolepsy. Until recently, I had been leaning in favor of “Nope! Not now, not soon, probably not ever.” Last year, I published a book of poetry based on the frantic text messages I’ve sent during…

Who needs science when you can believe in the power of interlocked fibers? — It was a dark day when I realized that laying in a bathtub full of amethyst and rose quartz wouldn’t cure my sleep disorder. I know. Shocking, right? All of these internet mom bloggers recommended “healing crystals” and even kindly offered to sell them to me! All I had to…

You can still be productive if you wake up at 9, refuse to meditate, throw out your journal, and ditch the forced routine — With the new year right around the corner, we’re about to see an influx of “new year, new me” posts on social media. Self-improvement articles are about to flood our news feeds, reminding us of how inferior we are because we didn’t allocate our entire days to productivity. …

No matter what the lender’s website says, these loans are consumer loans — NOT private student loans — and there are serious implications to be aware of before accepting the terms — TL;DR: Do not take out a coding bootcamp loan with Skills Fund (aka Skills.Fund). It is not a private student loan. It is a private consumer loan. There is a big difference between private student loans and consumer loans.

You don’t know what “the algorithm” actually does, so stop telling people how to beat it — Many people seem to believe that social media websites are powered by a magical, super-special file called The Algorithm™, as if only a single, complicated equation in a heavily-guarded, secret document determines whether your posts get the organic reach you desire. Your latest post didn’t reach enough people? …

If your colleagues want to be all “modern”, they can upload your Word document to their Google thingy on their own — In case you missed it, technology is “in” and Google Drive is all the rage lately. Gone are the days of using Microsoft Word; your company uses Google Drive now. Say goodbye to email; you can Slack your colleagues instead. Skype? What’s that? You’ll be using Google Meets and Zoom…

Here’s what you should ask before enrolling — There are a few different ways to get into software engineering. According to Hired’s 2020 State of Software Engineers, people typically choose one of four learning paths: get a degree in computer science (50% of respondents) get a degree in something related (19% of respondents) learn independently (22% of respondents) …

How to find out if it has been happening to you — and what to do next — If you have ever written about technology, programming, data science, machine learning, or a related topic — content scrapers have been stealing your articles. I promise you. This is a quick, no-nonsense guide for how to find out and what to do about it.

Let’s take git blame one step further with git chastise — Git has plenty of useful commands that make version control easy. Nonetheless, we still make mistakes. While git blame can show us who did what in a particular file, that’s pretty much the extent of its usefulness. git blame isn’t going to make things better. …