"just the ability needed to put together a shell pipeline to get a job done, or a twenty-line script to automate some tedious task. Imagine how much that would change everyday life."
Well unfortunately like learning a foreign language if you don't constantly use those skills they are near worthless. Especially as you get older. And in one way it's quite a bit different than learning a foreign language. There is a great deal of latitude to make mistakes in, say, Spanish. If you don't have it even slightly correct people can still piece together what you are saying. With programming as everyone knows it's got to be near 100% accurate in syntax or it's not going to run and/or give correct results. I agree that being able to do things in the shell is helpful if you are somewhat regularly doing that type of work. I question how useful it is if someone learns that in high school or college and then needs to apply it to do a task years down the road.
Edit: In other words it's not like learning how to ride a bike or play tennis.
What would now be utterly useless skills if I was suddenly in need of adding some code to my work years later.
Ten years ago AJAX was just appearing [1], Web 2.0 was the buzz, and the iPhone was 2 years away. What would you teach kids today to equip them for their work in 2025 ?
"who believe it is in their best interests to cultivate a populace with unquestioning deference to authority"
The populace doesn't ask questions. They simply parrot what a few outspoken people with a mouthpiece tell them to do or think. Most people are lemmings they don't have your brain (I looked at your resume). Not that every conclusion that you would come to would be correct. But in the everyday world (away from NYC, SV and HN) the mediocrity and low level thinking of everyday people is stunning. A large amount of lawn signs is enough to get you elected to local office.
> But in the everyday world (away from NYC, SV and HN) the mediocrity and low level thinking of everyday people is stunning.
Please don't think that 3 communities contain the monopoly on critical thinking. From my observation (living in the "Bible belt"), it comes from a person's news media sources. Television and newspapers (traditional news media) parrot party lines and support the two-party duopoly. People that have always gotten their news this way understandably are easily controlled.
There is a newer generation (not just young people) that use the internet as an augment or even primary source of news[1]. This gives a completely different perspective on world events. These sorts of people are all over the world.
Free to me doesn't matter. By one definition a vendor is a company that supplies goods. Some definitions go further to say that they "sell" the goods. However there is nothing to indicate in any definition of vendor that money has to change hands. A company could be a vendor for a particular product and give it away for free. Additionally whether an organization is non profit or for profit really doesn't change the situation.
Wow, what a page! My personal favorite is "Creative commons licensed", which you apparently shouldn't use because it's universally more important to distinguish the license based on the FSF's definition of free.
Also replacing various biased, propaganda terms (fair point) with "corrected" biased, propaganda terms (less fair) is an interesting choice.
I wonder what controls they have to prevent someone who gets dinged with bad ratings (as a landlord) from reposting the same exact property. After all it would be trivial to post with an address and unit "1705a" and then if a problem just call it "1705b" with different pictures as if it's a completely new listing (and curious if that much effort is actually needed). Likewise landlords (I am a commercial landlord) often have various entities that they use so it's easy to come up with a new "owner" of the unit. I wonder if Airbnb even cross refs ownership with city records at all.
"Finding a warm body to drag a tepid rag around your countertop is easy"
Back in the day I had a cleaning service that I trusted and used regularly put a wet rag on top of a CSU/DSU [1]. Not something that I ever thought could happen. Ironically the spare CSU/DSU was sitting right next to that. (Cold and ready to be put in service if the main one failed.) There were of course vents on the top. That's where the rag went. And I was near the equipment at the time (I would never let a cleaning service in where there was sensitive equipment without being onsite).
Well unfortunately like learning a foreign language if you don't constantly use those skills they are near worthless. Especially as you get older. And in one way it's quite a bit different than learning a foreign language. There is a great deal of latitude to make mistakes in, say, Spanish. If you don't have it even slightly correct people can still piece together what you are saying. With programming as everyone knows it's got to be near 100% accurate in syntax or it's not going to run and/or give correct results. I agree that being able to do things in the shell is helpful if you are somewhat regularly doing that type of work. I question how useful it is if someone learns that in high school or college and then needs to apply it to do a task years down the road.
Edit: In other words it's not like learning how to ride a bike or play tennis.