That’s not white text!
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From my experience, relying on cv alone usually leaves a far higher applicant pool than you can manage. A good covering letter gets applicants the interview.
There’s probably quite a few differences between job types and level of role where the importance of these things vary.
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I’m in the middle of applying for a job at a large organisation who make a big song and dance about their “accessible” application process and how there are multiple ways to apply. I quickly discovered that all of them redirect you to the horrible online application form and a bunch of extremely ambiguously worded screening questions 
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Our recruitment process doesn’t include a cover letter.
Just you entering all of your CV into the online system. Would be easier to submit the CV.
Anyway, currently my applications are just seeing what’s out there.
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As a recruiter, I generally ignore a cover letter until I’ve scanned the CV to see if they are worth looking at. And tbh, if they are worth looking at from their CV, I’ll generally just give them a call. Most people’s cover letters are just their CV, in longhand!
Recruitment systems (or at least some of them) will scan the CV and (if available) a cover letter for keywords and rank CVs based on the percentage match to your requirements. Which does encourage long boring cover letters, unfortunately. Either way, I would recommend tailoring your CV so that the first half of the first page mentions at least 50%+ (if not more) of the key requirements for the role. Recruiters on average look at your CV for like 4 seconds before making a decision whether to read further so make those first few sentences count.
@raged_norm I agree with you and hate recruitment systems that require massive amounts of data entry that just duplicate your CV. Total waste of time. CV parsing tech is pretty good these days if people need to pull out certain details.
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Tiny little ray of sunshine: I managed to recover my lost Discord because I forgot I have Authy and it works as a 2FA (for some reason? I don’t remember setting that up, but whatever).
As soon as I got back into my account I disabled 2FA. Which, hilariously, requires a 2FA. Because of course it does.
I’m using Bitwarden now, and I’ve moved over most of my accounts to it. 20-character passwords using numbers and symbols. Eventually I’ll have everything in there, but for now I have all the accounts that are directly linked to money that I can think of.
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Today was tax day for me. Well second tax day really because as a freelancer I always have to do Umsatzsteuererklärung and Jahresabschluss in first week of January but income tax day was today–I pushed it back this year because I’ll have to pay a lot of taxes this year that I didn’t pay last year because freelancer reasons 
But I am done now. It was really stressing me out this last week. Even though I know by now that every year I stress and every year it is just a few hours of staring at forms and clicking through pdfs… which is all in all quite harmless.
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I think I got rid of Authy for that precise reason: I kept forgetting I had that one, too.
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I did use ChatGPT to draft some cover letters. They needed quite a lot of editing but it was useful for producing something to build on.
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Life tip: if you’re going to back up your harddrive and use the occasion to review your previous backups so that you’re not duplicating everything:
a) Be prepared to spend the majority of the time sorting through old photos
b) My goodness my life was amazing in 2010
c) Do not do this while drinking prosecco because it is basically a list of all the exes you never got over back when everyone was young and pretty, including you
d) Why the hell did I make the life choices I did for the last 10 years?
e) And is this what rock stars feel like when they have to deal with not filling stadiums anymore?
f) At least my photo life since about 2007 is no longer only on one slowly-dying external hd, I guess.
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Man, I was so hot like, six years ago.
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@Acacia Did you feel hot 6 years ago?
@SteveB_uk looking at old pictures is often bittersweet and despite that I wouldn’t want to lose any of those pictures or memories. I hope you can reconcile the then and the now and see that your life right now will probably look amazing to you in another 13 years. But I don’t have a lot of exes that I would need to get over… so maybe I am just talk.
Every once in a while, I examine those regrets that I carry around and I keep ending with the conclusion that had I taken a different path I might either have landed in a very similar place eventually or that it is unknowable whether anything really would be “better” and I might have a similar just opposite regret.
Personally, I think over the past 13 years I have grown some and despite sometimes wanting to be a little younger when the grey grows out or something hurts that didn’t hurt 10 years ago, I think I wouldn’t want to lose the experiences I’ve made, the wisdom I gained (or not) or the knowledge I have accumulated. Watching my friends’ teenagers and my 20-something colleagues drove this one home quite strongly in recent weeks.
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My youngest son hasn’t changed his answerphone message since his voice broke. Him not answering his phone is a beautiful trip down memory lane.
Also @Acacia I’ve seen photos, you’re still hot!
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In my case, it was in 2002, so 21 years ago. That’s the last time I REALLY felt in shape, when I was going for my first black belt. I was 22 and I was ACTUALLY lean. I’ve been in shape since, I have empirical evidence of it, but I haven’t FELT it in a long time.
Now I’m 43, MUCH bulkier (nice euphemism, that) and my joints have a lot of wear and tear.
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Oh wow, exact same story. 2002 was capoeira 3-4x per week. I was about 25lbs (12 kilos?) lighter than I am now and a slab of rock. Now I’m 43 and…bigger. I carry my daughter(s) everywhere - the older one because she needs it and the younger because she’s like a feather to me after carrying the older one 
I’m a different kind of beast and I’m genuinely curious which of us would win in a fight???
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For the record, I’ve always been hot.
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2002 I was doing japanese jujutsu having done about 3 years of Ed Parker Kempo.
I don’t have the knees for it anymore, but I am starting Italian Longsword on Wednesday.
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I have a battleaxe.
Actually it’s my wife’s axe but she lets me borrow it.
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I’d go for the stand on the side and whack the last person standing (presumably knackered) with a large frying pan.
In a tournament situation, I’d save the embarrassment and concede
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I own a frying pan that belonged to my maternal grandmother’s maternal grandmother. In 1862, confederate irregulars set fire to Mrs Duncan’s house, but failed to burn it down. They came back a few months later. She wasn’t having it, and chased them away, with a frying pan. I don’t know if it’s the same one I have or not, but it’s certainly suitable for the purpose.
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