Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general.
1. Become awesome at Excel.
Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?
Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.
3. Make a dynamic website.
You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).
4. Learn to make a mobile game.
If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.
5. Start reading faster.
Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.
6. Learn a language!
With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.
Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.
7. Pickle your own vegetables.
Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.
8. Improve your public speaking skills.
You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.
9. Get a basic handle of statistics.
UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!
10. Understand basic psychology.
Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.
11. Make your own music.
Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).
Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.
Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.
Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!
12. Learn to negotiate.
Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.
13. Stop hating math.
If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!
14. Start drawing!
All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)
Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.
Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).
Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!
21. Get started with investing in stocks.
If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!
Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.
24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.
It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!
note the similarities in the shoulderpads, gloves, and chest
god of hyperdeath: draws on the power of every soul in the underground to become a god
undyne the undying: “I can feel everyone’s hearts beating as one!”
hearts and souls are essentially the same in undertale. there’s also a heartbeat sound in the background of “but the earth refused to die”
conclusion: undyne the undying tapped into the same power as the god of hyperdeath, the power of every soul in the underground, in order to come back from the dead and kick your murderous little ass. the difference is that where god of hyperdeath took it by force, in undyne’s case that power was given to her willingly for the sole purpose of stopping you.
To further this- the reason Asriel absorbs almost every monster in the underground (every monster besides Napstablook, in fact) is that the souls of every monster in the underground are enough to equal one human soul. So with the power of the six human souls and the monster souls, which equal one human soul, Asriel is able to carry infinite power.
Undyne doesn’t have six human souls, so- with the willing strength of every monster in the underground behind her- she has power roughly equivalent to one human soul. As we know from Alphys’s experiments, the key characteristic of a human soul is Determination. By channeling the power of everyone in the underground, Undyne the Undying is able to try and use Determination like a human would- except, as we also know from Alphys’s experiments, monster bodies can’t handle DT.
Undyne recieved the power of a human soul from the willing hearts of everyone in the underground, and was almost as powerful as a human. The only thing that stopped her was the limitation of her monster body.
I don’t care if Hillary Clinton is corrupt. I don’t care if she lies, if she cheats, if she eats bowls of newborn chipmunks for breakfast.
She is literally the only thing standing in the way of a fascist dictator becoming President of the United States with a Republican majority congress that guarantees he can do anything he wants and nothing will be able to stop him.
I was and still am a Bernie supporter, and I hate a lot of things about Clinton, but none of that matters anymore. If Trump is elected, people are going to die. Women are going to die when Roe v Wade is overturned and Planned Parenthood is defunded. LGBTQ people are going to die when conversion therapy is further legalized and more bathroom bills are passed. POC are going to die as Trump rounds up Mexican immigrants, gives more power to the police, and fuels the fires of Islamaphobia. Poor people are going to die as Obamacare gets overturned and further cuts are made to welfare programs. And that’s just in this country. That’s not even taking account the all-too-likely outcomes of Trump starting new wars in the Middle East and having control of nuclear bombs that he’s said he ‘would not rule out’ using.
This is no longer even about ‘the lesser of two evils’. This is not ‘scare tactics’. This is literally life and death. Don’t fuck around and tell me you’re voting third-party or not voting at all, because you don’t have that luxury.
I am delighted that this post has gotten as many notes as it has, but as Election Day grows closer I would like to flush it out with some additional information and facts, particularly for those people who are still considering voting third party and those who still consider Clinton “just as bad” as Trump.
The official Republican platform includes banning abortion, overturning marriage equality, no background checks for purchasing guns, declaring coal “clean energy”, religion used as a guide for legislation, a border wall, and pornography declared a “public menace”.
im still thinking about how like…if you abort a genocide run, do a neutral pacifist run afterwards then spare asgore, flowey will be like,
Chara…
You haven’t learned a thing.
(for reference, his line is normally “You IDIOT” instead of “<playername>”)
his whole emphasis in the genocide route is that they’ve learned something. his whole emphasis in the pacifist route is that they need to learn something. this, imo, is pretty solid evidence that chara was not like this when they were alive.
even if you stop the genocide really really late – like, as late as right before entering the throne room, even if you close the window during chara’s choice AFTER KILLING FLOWEY and reset – he’ll still be under the impression that chara hasn’t learned to kill yet
like, feeling that strongly about this just makes it feel like proof that chara really was not murderous in life. he doesn’t say they need to go back to normal. he doesn’t say that this isn’t like them. he says they haven’t learned a thing.
i like roleswap aus btu like. a roleswap au isnt one where u just switch peoples bodies around but the characters??
e.g. roleswap undyne passionately throws chemicals together in a lab and cherishes all her creations.
‘it’s a weird and drippy white mess undyne’
‘dont talk about endogeny like that! cherish them! cherish the dogs! they like to be pet’
like alphys, roleswap undyne gets very invested in the human’s story. when they meet, she has a huge speech memorised just like in her shounens
undyne was a loud and boisterous protector of waterfall and captain of the guard, but alphys isn’t like that.
She looks after waterfall, makes sure that the grasses are healthy, and sticks up signs telling people to be careful. She never explains why though
It’s this lack of explanation that gets her a reputation. People don’t see her much, and when she does appear she says one or two words then
disappears again.
She doesn’t interact with the royal guard much, she tells them what to do and sends them written instructions, but doesn’t
interact with them on a personal level.
People mistake her shyness for harshness, her nervous monotone for lack of emotion. Rumours spread that the grass could kill a human, and that’s why people need to be careful.
but, of course,
undyne the excitable royal scientist sees through this and discovers that alphys also really loves anime and with her help, alphys makes Many Friends
I played the entire main pacifist and i didn’t really like him. He didn’t take anything seriously and when he did he was just kind of a jerk. I didn’t like him much. And then i got to the end and met the lost souls and everyone else had all these problems i was already aware of- the first person i saved was alphys! Sans baffled me. Just give up? When was that a thing? Where did that come from? I didn’t like him until after I’d beaten pacifist and replayed. He was identifiable- violently depressed in an ugly ugly way, but covering it with incessant, annoying humour. In a really really familiar way. Like immediately i felt for him, suffering from serious mental illness and doing his best not to let down or worry those around him because he soesnt think hes worth it and doesnt think anyone can even help him.
I don’t like this sad sobby sans you get in fanon. He never cries. He laughs up until the end. He buries everything. And sans doesnt hate you- he believes in you! He believes in you so much! sans wont kill you if theres any possibility of redemption left! If you leave a single person alive he sees good in you. He doesnt kill you. Sans in the background was a great character.
Chara too is an interesting and engaging character if my url says anything but im TIRED of seeing giggling murder child chara!!!
Im tired as FUCK of seeing more drawings of crying blue eyed red scarfed sans fighting chara in the judgement hall. Fun fact that shit didnt happen. Awhile ago i liked the idea of seeing sans wearing pap’s scarf but fuck that im tired! Im tired!!! Sans didnt pick up the scarf! He never cried! He didnt apologize when he killed you. And he didnt ever fight chara! He fought you! In a blue shirt. A blue shirt! This is canon stop this. Chara wasnt there. chara wasnt controlling frisk. You were. Stop drawing chara there. Stop drawing crying frisk grasping at the walls of their mind while the red eyed demon fights sans. Fun fact: chara has brown eyes! Whenwe see them at the end of no mrcy they have brown eyes! FRISK has red eyes! FRISKS eyes are red when they open them! Sans doesnt cry! Sans doesnt remember the timelines! Fuck fanon sans for fucks sake
And Stop drawing skinny white anime boy human sans with white hair eat my ass
honestly just really like undertale 