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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Oh there’s a lot.

    • When I was a kid, parents and teachers used to teach, if you have sore muscles a day after an extensive workout, you need to work out even more in order to reduce the soreness. In fact, however, you need to rest those muscles.
    • I thought, pepperoni was pepper. (Like bell pepper, just smaller; similar to chilli). Then my girlfriend enlightened me after a confusing conversation, that pepperoni was a kind of salami. And then recently, at a company event before ordering pizza and after a very confusing discussion of what toppings we order, it turned out pepperoni was actually a kind of a salami, but not everyone agreed. So by now I’ve learned that pepperoni is neither of them. It doesn’t exist. It’s listed on pizza menus, and when you order it, you’ll get something for sure, but you won’t know in advance what it would be.
    • This isn’t new, the realization was several years ago, but fits this list nicely: I thought, perfume was something for women. It turned out, there was perfume for men too.
    • Parents used to teach, if you read in the dark (on paper, not on a screen, I must add), you’re ruining your eyes. But if you think about it: wtf does low light do to your eyes? By that logic, you’re constantly ruining your eyes while sleeping.
    • For some reason I used to think, you could simply delete related entities bound by foreign key constraints in postgres, if you ran the query in a transaction. Once when I finally needed to do this, I learned the hard way I was wrong.

    There’s a lot more than this, probably I’ll update this comment in the future. Or not.














  • End of the day, nothing you can do will change what’s happening half way across the world, so why let it change you?

    I beg to differ. Here are a few things you can do. I agree these won’t make an impact, but if enough people are willing to do these, it could work:

    • Donate money if you can afford it. (Just carefully check where you’re exactly donating to.)
    • Promote non-propaganda, factual information. Muscovy spreads disinformation through social media and propaganda websites using their trolls. So why can’t ordinary people step up and upvote, share, publish, and promote factual information? Sure, the algorithms of social media platforms favor the disinformation, but again, if enough people are willing to overcome what’s happening, I believe, it could make a change.
    • Promote education. Only stupid people can be influenced by the far right propaganda. Unfortunately there are way too many stupid people.
    • Just do what you’re good at. If your profession is irrelevant, that’s fine. But if you happen to be a hacker, or want to become one, go ahead, and fight online scammers and trolls. Are you a software developer? Wanna be a web developer? Create something that has an impact if you have the free time and interest. Make it open source. Encourage others to join. Again, if you have no affinity for this kind of stuff, it’s totally fine.
    • Do your research and vote on elections.

    In my opinion, this kind of mindset of “you cannot do anything, get used to it” is a very demotivating and harmful piece of advice. Because that’s what’s been going on all this time; everyone being ignorant, while evil people never stop doing what they’re doing.



  • When it comes to Facebook, Instagram, and other mainstream social media, just stay away, it’s not worth it. I had Facebook, and it was just full of trash. I haven’t had Instagram, but it’s not very appealing either.

    A LinkedIn account, however, for professional reasons is very much advised. Or Glassdoor.

    Although over the recent years I saw some decline in quality on LinkedIn, as it’s getting full of shit posts, but you can completely disregard what’s on the feed. What you need LinkedIn for, is to build a professional profile, have your former and current coworkers in your network, and find and apply for jobs. Or even just let opportunities come to your inbox once you have an impressive profile.

    The most amazing workplace I’ve ever had was possible thanks to LinkedIn, with almost no effort on my part. I have to say, this isn’t typical though. It’s only likely happening in countries where there’s a labour shortage. But a recruiter (among tons of others) found me from a well known company, their opening looked good to me, so I gave it a try. After just one interview I was hired, and I didn’t even have to apply for the job.

    My most recent job was with a relocation to a different country. I can’t even imagine how this would’ve been possible without LinkedIn or Glassdoor. But I achieved one of my big life goals.

    A career advice I got about ten years ago: create a LinkedIn profile and always keep updating it. If you do so, you’ll see it’s kinda awkward to go back in time and retrospectively edit things and connect with former coworkers. But since you haven’t had an account yet, I don’t see any other choice for you.

    As for Glassdoor, it’s maybe a bit less popular than LinkedIn, but nowadays you can find opportunities there too. The best strength of Glassdoor is that you can find reviews of companies, sometimes they’re also reporting their salaries so you know what to expect. In some cases, individual reviews may be misleading as they’re forced by the company (which is btw against the terms of use), it can be a good indicator if you find thousands of good reviews or thousands of bad reviews.

    Regarding the fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, PeerTube, etc.), they’re much better than their corporate equivalents in terms of quality, but they’re not immune to misinformation either. And also not immune to the user’s own stupidity. Obviously, don’t share what doesn’t belong there.

    Edit: added notes for Glassdoor


    • When traveling to/from eastern Europe, always have your checked-in luggage wrapped. In those countries, especially in Hungary, there are many thieves among luggage handlers and there are many horror stories regarding in what conditions the passengers received their belongings at the end (if at all). While you cannot 100% eliminate risks, wrapped luggages are much less likely to be tampered with. It’s also worth wrapping it when you care about the outer texture of your luggage (sometimes the cargo area of the aircraft is really dirty).
    • In the terminal building, find your gate first, so that you know exactly where to go when the time comes. Until then, go, find a comfortable seat somewhere else, far from the gates. At DXB I know a couple of cool locations where there aren’t many people waiting, so there are plenty of free space plus much cleaner toilets nearby due to less frequent usage. However, I’ll keep that information to myself, because I still wanna be able to enjoy those less crowded areas when I’m traveling.
    • Pay attention to the safety briefing and really think it through. You have to remember it in panic situations. Pay attention to every single little detail, because everything is said for a very good reason. (Just as an example: when they say “pull the oxygen mask towards you when it appears in front of you”, you really have to yank on it (okay, maybe don’t rip it off; I have no idea how strong to pull it), because the oxygen flow starts only when a safety “pin” is released, which can be done by pulling on the oxygen line.)
    • If your clothes are in your checked-in luggage, always have at least one set of extra clothes in your hand-carry.
    • Pay attention to the airline’s guidelines when packing your luggage.
    • During an emergency evacuation do not reach for your belongings. Just do as instructed and leave the aircraft as you’re told, ASAP. For this reason, keep your passport in your pocket and try to wear clothing that will be suitable outside as well to some extent. For example, wear your shoes and wear a sweater at least. (And pants as well, but I guess it doesn’t need to be mentioned.) You will get your belongings back at the end (if they’re salvageable, I guess).
    • Others already mentioned it, but it’s so important, I need to reiterate: don’t be an asshole. It is common sense, yet there are so many people not following this rule.

  • Choose a direct flight whenever possible. I usually would pick a shitty, more expensive airline over having a connecting flight.

    I have to say, this is just a matter of personal preference. I cannot imagine myself enduring a 13 hour flight in one go, so I tend to pick an airline that happens to have connections in Dubai. It’s about halfway when I’m visiting my girlfriend, and it feels really nice to walk around, stretch a bit, use a real toilet, etc.

    My girlfriend is the opposite, she prefers to come here with a direct flight because it’s less of a hassle and she’s able to rest on the plane all the way.

    Cheap airlines: you get what you pay for. You will be treated like cattle

    That’s true for European low-cost airlines. Sometimes they would treat you worse than cattle.

    However, on AirAsia I had a much better experience, although I only flew once with them.

    Generally, in Europe they would mess with your hand-carry.

    With AirAsia, my experience was that no one gives a damn crap about your bags. Just follow their rules, and if your bag looks reasonable, no one will say anything.

    On a long flight wearing your seat belt

    I would suggest that at all times when you’re seated, with one exception: don’t wear it while boarding is still in progress and the seatbelt sign isn’t on. While turbulence mostly can be predicted, in some rare cases it cannot be. But they remind you of that during either the safety briefing or the captain’s first PA.

    Wearing a mask is not a bad idea

    Duh. I mean, why else would they be hanging right in front of you while the cabin is getting depressurized?

    Just kidding. I know you meant medical masks.