if you don't already, contributing to OpenStreetMap from your phone is easy and feels very rewarding. I recommend StreetComplete for beginners and OSM Go! once you want to start editing features
maybe so, but there is a certain level of self-discipline and privilege needed to be able to study just from books. Lots of people on CS and other courses want friendly exposure to new ideas, not a recommendation of a list of text books
That's more of a personal thing. It's far easier to me to study a technical book on something I know is useful compared to cramming for exams, doing nonsensical assignments, forcing myself through a specific pace that fits a semester, dealing with professors that never seem to be having a good day, wasting time commuting to the faculty (assuming you don't live in campus), etc. I can do that for money, but having to pay and be less efficient at learning than just googling stuff is what drove me to drop out.
Same here, you summed up succinctly why I also have not followed through with a degree. The academic system is now more of a hindrance than a help, compared to studying independently and maintaining connections outside academia. Academia has failed to adapt to modern learning.
Although "learning styles" are widely believed by teachers, there's no evidence that they affect learning. They're basically horoscopes--vague enough to make sense on an intuitive level, but false [0]. In practice, tailoring lessons to this belief reduces effectiveness [1].
It certainly is in comparison to someone raised illiterate, or in any number of unfortunate situations. But in comparison to the privilege of a university education? I'm a bit surprised by the suggestion. If self-taught knowledge is really the marker of privilege in 2020, I'd expect it to be far more attractive than going to university by now. On the contrary, it is not, because learning from books has a much lower bar. You can't use it to select for the well-connected.
I've been creating a tool to make a database of Wikipedia edits Namespace Database [1] and since lockdown I've been making plots of the data! [2] Feel free to ask any questions!
This is disappointingly sparse on details and does not seem to be a nuanced position. It's calling for the eventual abolition of police, not merely scaling back their funding:
> The end goal of these reforms is not to create better, friendlier, or more community-oriented police or prisons. Instead, we hope to build toward a society without police or prisons, where communities are equipped to provide for their safety and wellbeing.
When somebody breaks into my home, I don't need a counselor; I need some sort of investigator or detective who can track that man down and make sure he doesn't do it again. Maybe that guy needs a counselor instead of a prison sentence, I'm [skeptical of but] amenable to that idea, but who does the grunt work of figuring how who did it and where he's at? Who brings him to trial, where his guilt or innocence can be assessed? I can't find any answers for this on that site, so it's hard for me to take seriously.
This document also mentions permanently closing all jails and freeing everybody from involuntary detention, etc. When a man refuses to stop beating his wife, where should he be put? I don't see any answers for this. Is the idea really to create a utopia where people no longer do shitty things to other people? Because if so, that's a pipe dream, not a serious proposal.
One job I got into some fights with marketing and our "design experts" over this because they decided the marketing image of the company was "light and airy" and so they wanted an ultra light font weight everywhere. It was their branding font they wanted for both headers and body text. (The were so focused on ultra-light fonts, to the point where they were even trying to get rid of the option to use strong text in the middle of paragraphs. If Outlook/Word allowed a group policy to disable the Bold button, they'd probably have taken it away. Haha.)
It took a lot of convincing that a software developer would know basic typography enough to know it was a bad idea, much less was I able to convey that it was an accessibility nightmare. I had to use some CSS tricks to get that work done and psychologically "show" that things were still "light and airy" while using reasonable font-weights for body text, and in the end they still didn't entirely believe me about the accessibility issues.
I guess you are talking about user stylesheets and not user agents. Yes, they could but there's a lot of lightweight fonts you'd have to hardcode.
Also that's not possible on (most) mobile browsers and it shouldn't be something people have to do just to be able to read something in the first place.
