Calico Maine Coon

I just read a Fortune article the other day about the fact that some college students can't read a single sentence. One. They cannot parse the meaning of a single sentence. That's terrifying. (Here it is on Yahoo without the paywall, btw.)

The thing is that you do not have to be wholly illiterate to struggle with reading. About half of Americans have low literacy, meaning they read around a sixth grade level or less.

This puts publishers in a terrible position. They need to sell books to an audience that cannot read books made for adults but that doesn't want the simplicity of grade-school books. The books need real adult problems without the nuance, hence the therapy speak and the black-and-white thinking.

Another thing is that cognitive flexibility influences literacy, meaning the reverse is also true; cognitive inflexibility determines lower literacy. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to update your schemas or combine multiple pieces of information without being expressly told to do so. It also impacts whether you can identify the mismatch between what someone says and what they do, which is the gold standard way to avoid therapy speak.

Poor cognitive flexibility means you can't have messy situations, because then the reader doesn't know what to think. Everyone has to be sorted into Good Person and Bad Person, and if the Good Person does something that may seem Bad, then they become a Bad Person unless the text assures us that they are still Good.

You will see many positive Goodreads reviews for these books. I'm not saying every single person with a positive review for a book like that has low literacy, but it's more likely than not. The same thing that drives you insane is what compels other readers who can't handle more complex texts.

Basically what I am saying is that if you want something with nuance, as a reader or a writer, you probably need to seek out selfpub stuff. I know that a lot of selfpub is garbage specifically because of the lower barrier to entry, and a lot of good selfpub stuff is not highly rated because getting reviews takes time and energy.

(I'd like to say my own stuff is good but doesn't have a lot of reviews because that requires active solicitation and I'm busy. I'm competing with millions of authors, both selfpub and tradpub, who have larger budgets. Anyway.)

FINAL ANOUNCEMENT! We start Sloy's "Dig outta debt" Donothon Stream Saturday 13th Noon EDT, and will be streaming 1 minute for every dollar of donations (8 hours per day)!

We got a bunch of goals on the way, but the main ones are art raffles, Frogcurse getting an actual pilot chapter and Otherside Music disk getting finally Animated! + every 100USD I'll do a spin on the punishment wheel which has such fun things on it as 'full clown makeup' and 'dramatic reading of a wikihow article'.

Whenever I post this I get “BUT WHY BURY IT?” From people

Heres why…

Zero odor, which mean no pests going through it. I can even compost “some” bread products because no ones going to be going through it for it.

It never drys out, ever. This helps speed up the break down of everything inside.

Its in the middle of my garden and leaches out into the soil around it bettering my garden. I now have a few of these in my yard, because I love them so much.

Been stuck living in a glorified construction site for nearly a year, and to even get to a watertight frame/walls/roof took 14 months longer than we were told

hour 6: if youu go to the store and buy groceriers you are a piece of shit

label and date everything

dont use adhesives on important stuff they degrade really quickly and can damage things

some paper is much more acidic than others and will degrade and damage things touching it. newspaper and construction paper are the worst and will mess up other papers theyre next to

printed photographs have chemicals that can react really badly to temperatures and dampness and you should keep them separate from other materials

soft and thin plastics also degrade really quickly (unless theyre archival grade) and are the worst to deal with

keep a copy of digital files in at least one separate location (flash drive or hard drive)

some inks will fade over time or bleed onto whatever theyre on. archival ink is a thing but there are also just some inks that are more stable

rubber bands break within a few years, paper clips and staples will rust and damage the paper if theyre not made of the right material

exposing photos or any material with colors to light for a while will obviously degrade them over time and theres not much you can to do restore them at that point

you lowkey should print out digital correspondence or materials if you want to keep them long term and be able to find them regardless of what happens to that email domain, website etc. its not uncommon to have printed out email threads in archival collections

these seem to have been more common in the 70s-90s but those photo albums with thin plastic and slight adhesive pages are terrible and will damage your photos and make them stuck forever

this is what acidic paper does to anything its touching after a few decades so watch out

Guides

How to make Crumbl Cookies!

How to bookbind!

How to pirate movies/shows

How to make frog plushies

How to make a Go-bag for emergencies

How to repair clothing

How to make different a03 kudos!

How to download videos/pictures/gifs from a website

How to make various chocolate desserts!

Tips and Tricks!

A03 formatting

Back stretches!

Depression tips

Adult cheat sheet

How to regulate and understand your emotions better

Disabling Windows 11 web search in search bar

Resources

Horror game recs!

Dca fic recs!

Hand references

Free Adobe photoshop

Artist resources

Free spotify

Pirating sites

Artist resources pt 2

Helpful random sites

Homemaking, gardening, sustainability

Free libraries!

Making stuff and doing things (free book pdf)

Healthcare (medicine discount websites, guide on how to pay hospital bills)