Mossarella

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

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.)

no seriously

RATING: RELIABLE

taumoeba (obviously)

instructions on how to use taumoeba (obviously)

50+ hrs of unedited footage of Grace fucking up a bunch of stuff in the ship

so much info about Eridian language

1700+ hrs of unedited footage of Grace and Rocky fucking up a bunch of shit in the ship

Cannot emphasize how much info on the eridian sentence structure there is here

a weirdass knit sweater pattern that takes people weeks to realize is for Rocky

literally hundreds of pages of Grace just describing Eridian linguistic history which like honestly isn't even his field why should we even listen to this guy- (hes the only one to ever fucking met an intelligent alien Dave. we'll take him at his word)

Why the Goldilocks Zone is for Idiots Part 2: Biological Diversity all across the Petrova Line (subtitled "We haven't found them yet BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN THEY DONT FUDHING EXIST-")

what are essentially just those reaction videos "Alien watches Legally Blonde for the first time" "Alien gives thoughts on movie Cats (2019)" "You'll never believe what this Alien thinks of the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox"

Grace's modified cardigan charts because someone was asking for them on his Ravelry and he never actually got around to posting them

(people have already fully recreated this cardigan just months after his launch. but they appreciate it)

very respective, kind eulogies for everyone who died in this mission (Grace AND Rocky's crew)

a lace shawl pattern inspired by the petrova line with a beaded fringe. knitters everywhere weep in despair because those instructions are gOD AWFUL, the man had 0 (zero) test knitters AND THERES NO PICTURES FUCK

Rocky make Grace cringe compilation statement