User:Alumnum

I use the pseudonym Alumnum (Latin neuter form of alumnus, which means "student" or "pupil") because I feel the need of studying and learning. I am an autodidact and I use Wikipedia as one of the main sources for my studies. My main interests are: culture, right-libertarianism, zoology, geology, psychoactive drugs, speculative fiction, video games, linguistics, astronomy and extraterrestrial life.

I enjoy drinking water, tea, almost any kind of juice, and milk-based sweet beverages (I most often take chocolate milk). I do not like alcoholic beverages and soft drinks; they are too unhealthy. As for food, I eat lots of vegetables and fruit and I try to avoid fried stuff. I'm a pescetarian. I particularly enjoy Chinese and Japanese cuisines and Subway.

I enjoy linguistics and learning languages. I have studied many languages to a certain level, but I can only properly talk in English, my native Portuguese and to a lesser extent Esperanto and Dutch.

Politically, I greatly admire panarchism and right-libertarianism. I don't like coercion (and consequently the state) and think it's essentially unethical. I don't think society needs it at all. But I believe that people should have the right to choose under what government or anarchic system they want to live. I definitely do not get along with some people holding excessively sexist, homophobic, transphobic or racist views, but since I believe in unlimited free speech, they are free to do so. The best thing to do is to educate them about the errors in their ideas; but if they do not want to be educated, they should be ignored.

I don't like the idea of schooling (and to some degree universities) as primary forms of education. In my opinion, it is nearly impossible to teach someone what they do not want to learn, so all education should be voluntary. The internet is one great alternative way of acquiring knowledge: it provides unlimited and free information, book downloading (that's because I'm against copyright), groups to talk to people interested in the same subject and many other forms of education.

The top three sites I visit when online are Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. I mostly read and edit articles, listen to music, watch educational or entertaining videos, talk to my friends and participate on groups. You can find out more about me in this bunch of userboxes below, which is a bit unorganized (I'm going to fix this sometime).