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hexenmond · 4 months ago

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madwoman

I am going to teach myself a different keyboard layout. Neo, which is very different from QWERTZ (which I am used to).

Why would I put myself through this? I can type pretty fast with QWERTZ, thanks to years of doing it a lot (never learned it properly though).

There's a few reasons, the latest that is currently tipping me over the ledge being that typing anything in Turkish with a bog standard German QWERTZ layout requires me to copypaste all the special characters from a character table, which is seriously no fun. And switching keyboard layouts just for a word or three – meh, no, uncool. Functional but uncool.

But learning a whole different keyboard layout that will enable me to write things in sooooo many languages? And generally type even more efficiently once I've mastered it?? Sign me up baby 🤩

…honestly I cannot resist the siren call of Optimisation™. Things could be better! I only need to put in a large amount of effort! 😆

But seriously, I'm giving this a go. I already installed the layout and the training programme, AND did my first lesson (two letters, did not pass). No risk no FUN!

(So if you don't hear from me for another while, it's because I cannot type quickly enough, and/or I got stuck entering my password because I can't do it with the new keyboard layout.)

#witch moon ramblings #keyboard layout #digital experiments #optimisation #mad maudlin goes on dirty toes

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reasonsforhope · 6 months ago

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If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

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I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.