hold my hand but please don't touch me

This is the stolen gifset:

This is my original:

Three-cueing is essentially crutches that help you get by but let you down eventually. It's very common when learning a foreign language, I misread kanji sometimes because I pattern-recognize based on context instead of really looking. The solution is to do some proper studying, but I don't wanna.

... Is absolutely terrifying in the context of all other anti-intellectualism happening right now. This guy is STILL pushing his 'observations' while denying evidence that it doesn't work.

I think that this is a runner up for the scariest section:

This last one comes pretty early. But I think this should get the medal of being the scariest. It's short. It's simple. It's like the poison dart frog you see on a leaf. Which is why I am only showing it know.

I think you needed to marinate a bit, but also I think it's a great jumpscare to realise that this was in roughly the first third. This was not some type of final, terrible secret only found when wading deep. They will readily admit this, no not only that, this is part of the sales pitch!!!

You read (or heard) it folks! Actually knowing the text through reading is over, bye bye!

But to be more serious here. You will, as a human being, inevitably come across many topics that you may not be familiar with. Now, a cute romance book or light reading novels might not be very complex and therefore not have too many issues cropping up due to you not understanding something.

However, daily live, vital parts of it, are constantly made up of complex topics. Imagine, your whole basis on understanding text hinges on trying to equate this new word with an old word. The example of pony into horse has it's issues already, but if you are currently reading only for fun, this is not world ending.

This comes to it's disasterous end when you:

Have to navigate legal documents.

Have to navigate forms for various important things like job applications or higher education.

And especially:

Navigating medical topics.

Medicine is already a difficult thing. In german one of the popular dictionary brands called Duden has a whole dictionary specific to medical terms, word structure (pre- and suffixes and more) and even abbreviations. This is because medicine is not only a highly complex topic, but also because a lot of the words have direct latin or english roots. This makes something like Three-cueing very difficult.

Many new words, but they are completly alien. Aortic dissection? Thrombosis? Diabetes? What can you possibly find with the same inital that would fit the meaning of these words?

The way this method is decribed does not sound to me like a competent and confident native speaker. As someone who accompanied many immigrants to medical stuff "as a family friend" for translating the german speaking staff, this sounds like when they have just learned the very basic first things on the language and are trying desperatly to understand by themselves what a doctor, nurse or pharmacist is saying.

Similarly, this first impulse to find an equivalent or similar word being trained into you is terrible. It should be you trying to understand the word based on words and structures and phonics you know. And if this fails it should be to ask the person in front of you in the clinic waiting for you to read the sheet that tells you of the risk of anesthesia. It should be looking up and learning new words. It should be asking for someone to say a sentence out loud for you. It should be that you get help if you need it.

Not to simply guess, skip and hide the lack of understanding and avoid all texts.

This instinct is very similar to a behaviour common with people that are (functionally) illiterate. Due to the largely existing disdain against people like this and the ridicule everyone offers if not being able to do a supposedly easy/basic thing quickly turns into hiding the illiteracy by attempting to make out some words, listening closly to what the other person said additionally and repeating it back, or simply nodding along. And most importantly: never asking. This draws attention. It would mean that their secret is revealed. There are a lot more people who are functionally illiterate than you belive. They normally hide. But they are affected by it daily.

This turns into people going for decades not being able to properly read, driven by shame. This is very destructive to their lives. Any text is a foreign thing, never to be understood. Forms, books, notes and writing become almost to completely insurmountable obstacles, driving the avoidance even further. Not going to the doctor's office because you won't understand the notes they give you and the forms you need to fill. Not being able to properly navigate a new place by reading street signs. Not being able to get a drivers license.

The only way out is getting the oppertunity and accepting it. This is very difficult, especially if the illiteracy has been present for decades. Behaviour has been driven in, like not asking for help or clarification, since this could expose you as not being able to understand what is written. Other factors like not having gone to school, poverty, working in jobs where this is never apparent (making hiding seem easier for the person than attempting to try and find a way out), living in very isolated conditions, isolation in general and bad experiences when asking for help only add to this.

A child learning to read should never be taught these behaviours. A child that is taught this will have difficulty later on due to self reinforcing behaviour. They will not ask for clarification, not understand something like an assignment, try to wing it based on what they think the assignment says, hide this and not consider asking questions, fail, will get scolded or the bad result alone is enough to trigger shame, this shame will make it even less likely that they ask for help now or later, etc.

This is a spiral that can, unless they break out of it themselves or are lucky to get someone who recognises this and helps them (and they accept), only go downwards.

You should not basically set a child on it as if it was a rollercoaster.

The people making millions of profits off of school districts buying their bullshit should be completley exposed as profiting off something increadibly vital to life as we live it and be barred from selling or even being seen as a proper source. Actual scientific validity of what is taught to teachers should be questioned a lot more.

This happens because the people who can directly intervene are completly clueless. Meanwhile the people who believe they are right against all evidence can just live in their la-la-land, completly unaffected.

Basically, people with aphasia often didn't have any serious language difficulties growing up and they remember what they were treated like back then. Only suddenly, they can't produce or comprehend language (often after a stroke).

Being very aware of just how vulnerable that makes them + the stigma that comes with their new disability, a lot of the focus is on *seeming* like you understand things and not being visibly lost.

This will lead to people just agreeing with things, bc that tends to end the conversation (also common behavior with people who aren't very fluent in a foreign language), not talking much overall and just imitating what others are doing in case verbal/written instructions are involved in any way.

And to be clear, this isn't a condemnation of the behavior: not being able to communicate fluently is dangerous in our society and very much paints a target on your back. I wasn't very fluent in German when I moved here and I remember how much more difficult my life was back then, and even to this day people will sometimes try to use my status as a non-native speaker against me, claiming I just "misunderstood" things, despite the fact I am completely fluent.

someone on reddit explained 😭

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

You will have to prove that you can afford a guest, have some income and also usually take responsibility for possible deportation cost.

But if you really are inviting a friend over, they will give you a formal document you can send to your friend. Then the friend applies for a visa while attaching the Very Official document with it. They will get the Schengen visa and most probably will get it expedited too.

the thing happening right now (at the very least in the US and UK) is that trans youth are actively and systemically losing access to healthcare. this has been gradually escalating since the start of the pandemic, and more young people lose healthcare every single year.

when I talk about this I tend to get two responses

"why do trans adults want to expand these experimental treatments to children who can't consent"

"providers offering care to trans adults is a step in the right direction, even if they aren't offering it to trans youth. the perfect is the enemy of the good. we can't fight our allies."

do you see how both the overtly transphobic version and the nominally "pro-trans" version replicate the same misinformation?

this is not a question of "should we expand access to trans youth?" trans youth have had access to medical transition care for a long time. what is happening is the care they already had access to is being made inaccessible and then criminalized systematically.

am I making sense? places refusing to offer care to trans youth are not "a step in the right direction" because that implies that the trend is expanding access that "begins" with trans adults and innately will gradually encompass young people. that is not the case. this is not a hypothetical thing that we can all have different theoretical opinions on. what is happening is the systematic revoking of healthcare.

the further this progresses, the more healthcare is restricted for more demographics. that's how this works. healthcare is being restricted across the board as part of the broader eugenics project. abortion is being restricted. vaccines are becoming more expensive. insurance companies are denying more treatments to disabled people. anti-fatness is surging. ableism is surging. there are active campaigns to get people to mistrust the very idea of healthcare in favor of "wellness" grifts. no one wears N-95 masks. this is the trend. it's been the trend.