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. Just like…

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. …