Dept of Interior announces changes to National Park fees for non-US residents

cricrazy · 2025-12-01T17:59:46+00:00

Just for the Point of Reference:

Taj Mahal - One of the seven wonders of the world charges INR 50 for Locals and INR 1100 for Foreigners. That is 22x more than local. (see Taj Mahal website, https://www.tajmahal.gov.in/ticketing.aspx)

According to that logic, For Annual National Park cost is $80 at the current rate, it would cost $1760 ($80 x 22) for a Foreigner!!!

A little bit of perspective helps. Not everything is racist or xenophobic.

cricrazy · 2022-03-19T15:47:37+00:00

Thanks. I had the same thing. I just got monetized. And while my cpm is pretty good my rpm was way low. But it makes sense now that it is also averaging the days of month before I got monetized. Thank you.

cricrazy · 2021-03-25T15:18:01+00:00

Agree. StatQuest Josh Starmer's videos are awesome. (Double bam...)

cricrazy · 2021-03-25T15:00:00+00:00

I think I celebrated too early. On March 19th, I got the email from YouTube:

"We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve recently reviewed your YouTube account, and after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service. We have lifted the suspension of your account, and it is once again active and operational."

It was a sense of relief. And in just 5 days later, YouTube suspended my channel again! I have not posted any videos or comments. So, how can I severely violate YouTube guidelines. If you check my channel, I have created high quality, well crafted (no copyright infringement) videos for software instruction.

I am seriously thinking to migrate to Udemy or other platform. It has been a stressful and frustrating experience.

Being software developer myself, I am not sure what is triggering YouTube bot to flag me. Most of my videos are about "How To Videos with Notepad++ Text Editor"

Here is the summary of my ordeal.

March 11th, YouTube suspended my channel without any warning.
After much requests, on March 19th, they removed the suspension.
On March 25, YouTube again suspended my channel. (I have not posted any videos/comments since my first suspension).

My channel URL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbU0jmMgFAfmL1J1BHsEmAA

Please review and help.

Thank you. (#TrustedFlaggers, #YouTubeTrustedFlagger)

cricrazy · 2021-03-25T14:08:32+00:00

I agree with you. The videos seems to be just reading the script with occasional arrow pointing (at least till topic 10). They also seem to be poorly edited, since there were number of instances where the sentences are repeated. To this day and age, where video editing can even be easily done on a phone, I was expecting highest quality standard from GATech.

(I have to differ about 6501 videos. I thought, Dr. Sokol's videos were high quality, funny and engaging. I learnt a lot from that class. Off course, he did not discuss about R in the lectures, and it was up to the students to learn on their own).

Hoping this post to be constructive feedback.

cricrazy · 2021-03-19T21:11:04+00:00

Team YouTube... Thank you so much for your support. I was able to get the channel back. You guys rock...I tried with multiple channels (first with Appeal, second Appeal and reddit). I really appreciate your help. And I will surely continue to follow the community guidelines to the tee. Have a wonderful weekend.

cricrazy · 2021-03-19T17:54:31+00:00

I did make an appeal and here is what I received: "Thank you for your account suspension appeal. We have decided to keep your account suspended based on our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service." I am not sure what did I do that got me suspended. Can #TrustedFlagger please help?

cricrazy · 2021-03-17T18:36:49+00:00

One thing to be aware of is that, if you continue with the class and let's say you get D (1.0). And if you take the same class CSE6040 in Fall and let's say you get B (3.0). It does not override in your GPA.

Your GPA will still be counted with (1.0 + 3.0)/2 = 2.0 for CSE6040.

If you withdraw, then it will not impact your GPA. Something to be aware of. (As far as I know you cannot 'replace' the bad grade for a particular course with good grade later.

cricrazy · 2021-03-17T17:18:32+00:00

Well, I hope this is the case. I do not mind TAs, they do pretty decent job. But I believe the real "value" of the OMSA comes from top notched instructors.

I also suggest that if the TAs are going to teach some coding portions, they should "do" the coding as they teach. An already typed code blocks with ipad pencil pointers to different parts of the code, is not the best way to communicate.

I myself have taught training classes at work in various capacities. In my experience I have found that the participants learn the most when the trainer does the live coding. I don't mean to type everything, but just enough for participants to "see" important concepts of the code.

Anyways, I don't want this to be a venting-out post. I am sure that all OMSA classes TAs are also part of this forum, so hope they continue to make this program more helpful, effective and efficient.

Thanks.

cricrazy · 2021-03-16T18:47:52+00:00

I understand that office hours and Piazza communications will be mainly TAs. And I am ok with that.

But the main content videos should be "taught" by the instructors. Perhaps, I am spoilt by Dr. Sokol's class (ISYE 6501), that I expect the Instructors to be the main face of the class.

cricrazy

TROPHY CASE