See the knitting debacle… where SciShow put out an episode about the science of knitting which was poorly researched and it was clear that they had consulted zero knitters.

I’ve always really liked SciShow - to the point I’ve assigned some episodes to my students - but it’s just embarrassing when it would have been trivially easy to hit up Ravelry and run the video past people who won’t call yarn “string.”

Chick tracts are great schlocky fun. I love the little gay demons in this one

And of course, every DND fan should learn about the dangers of roleplaying games from Dark Dungeons.

The big thing is that vectors seem to be the kind of “shoved into the end of the semester if there’s time after testing” from what I’ve seen. Most of the time, even when I work with calculus students they have no idea what a vector is.

A big thing to is getting them to understand what square roots even really mean. I’ve noticed a lot of students struggle with getting sqrt(x) * sqrt(x) = x, so even just the simple “hey, can you get a negative by taking a number and multiplying by itself?” is often a hurdle cognitively. (A lot of this I suspect has to do with not understanding what multiplication or division really “are” - I usually remediate with the area model)

A lot of straight cis men seek out gay trans men, as if we are just tomboys. Getting called “she”/“her,” dealing with their insecurities about being attracted to a man, a general denial of who I am…

Imaginary numbers are typically introduced in a high school “algebra 2” course in my neck of the woods, like junior year unless you are accelerated or held back. I feel like it’s really common for them to not be taught well - the naming is something that occasionally trips up the teachers.

The teaching of them is something that really interests me - they’re the kind of thing that triggers the “when am I ever going to use this?”/rants about not learning how to do taxes. You can talk about the relevance to electronics, but DC electronics is already hard enough for most to comprehend.

I like to connect it to rotation. Show them the pattern of powers of i with physical movement - quarter turns.

This is the kind of thing one thinks after injecting quite a bit of THC, but a conspiracy theory I half-believe in is that shit like Left Behind was a plot to mislead people so they wouldn’t recognize him when he showed up.

So much of what your average white fundie/evangelical Christian believes about eschatology is not really in the Bible. It’s all mostly based on a Bible edition from 1917 plus John Bircher stuff - see the obsession with the United Nations. It can sorta be an anti Catholic church thing too, but fundiengelicals have mostly had a truce with Catholics since they formed their anti abortion coalition in the 70s (in the Left Behind series, the original pope does get raptured, but most media has the pope as either the anti-Christ or an eager collaborator)

This is how they imagine the end of the world

The Antichrist is a lefty who promises peace and tolerance and good things, so there’s nothing wrong with building a statue to this great guy, almost as persecuted and powerful as Jesus himself. Global warming is fake, really the sign of the end of the world is litter boxes for furries at school.

The goal of negative news imho is to inspire outrage and ideally change as a consequence.

Male puberty as an adult rocked. Being that level of “eat an entire pizza” hungry and being able to sate it is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Best parts of college were splitting a pitcher of beer with a bro and eating the kind of pizza that leaves a snail trail.

The misgendering in the police report is so fucked. The idea that you get murdered because you are trans, because of who you are, and even in fucking death you aren’t respected.

I know if something happened to me, cops would 100% laugh about it and not be arsed to investigate.

Hmm, what did you think of this paragraph?

Notably, the McGee family’s previous loss to gun violence did not receive the same lack of attention. Jayla’s younger sister, Ronziyah, was killed in a shooting at her home on the same block where McGee died in 2022. That tragedy earned extensive coverage from ABC affiliate WPBF.

You didn’t read the article at all, did you? Do you post “what about starving kids” on every sad news story you see, or are you just here to shit on the idea that trans people’s suffering might ever deserve attention?

Are you posting any articles about genocide or homelessness? Because it looks like you’ve mostly been here to spot stupid COVID conspiracy shit.

Hmm, I wonder if there’s more to the story than a headline. But considering that your account is mostly just bad faith trolling, I somehow doubt you actually read any of the articles you comment on.

Any KF fans also watching the Onion show? I’m curious what people think about it versus some of Dan and Jordan’s concerns.

Do you think someone who had weird websites dedicated to counting down when she was 18 might have reasons to say something like that?

And I imagine that this took you about as much time and effort as typing that prompt did! All you’d need to do is load it into canva and spend another five minutes on it and there’d at least be something passable!

I also would expect someone working in grants given to African nations at least have a vague idea of where Nigeria actually is.

Because they aren’t comparable and don’t belong in the same sentence honestly. The name is the same, genitals are getting mutilated, but one usually means a lifetime of pain and discomfort while the other usually means some loss of sensitivity.

Female circumcision is done explicitly so that the girl will never experience sexual pleasure. No anesthesia, sometimes they rub animal shit in, sometimes they sew the vagina close to get forced open on the wedding night.

Male circumcision is usually done in a hospital, and usually the intent is more something like thinking it prevents phimosis - which it might actually even be medically necessary in that case. It’s not done in a way to deliberately destroy function.

Also - don’t feel like you have to be a reading expert to help someone learn to read.

The big big thing is phonics. If you can sound it out and have been speaking English your entire life, you’ve probably encountered the word by now. Of course there are a lot of obnoxious exceptions and patterns and rules but if you just start with slowly sounding things out with them you’re 80% there. We currently have a literacy crisis in the US in part due to a long discredited “whole language” model where children were deliberately not taught phonics, so this alone can be the miracle cure if there aren’t other obstacles (eg dyslexia, which is profoundly under diagnosed)

Other big thing is finding things that catch their interest. It can be very hard to find material that is at a low literacy level but is also actually interesting to an older child/teen/adult. Comic books and manga are absolutely spectacular for this purpose because the pictures help support understanding - you can give them higher level material which will be more relevant to them. I read like I breathe because I read the Hobbit as a child and needed to up my game to get past “A Knife in the Dark” in Fellowship before the movie came out.

The practical thing there - find books to read out loud with them that are compelling. Give them the fattest hit of how powerful the written word can be so that they’ll keep coming back for more. I always display subtle fandom swag or bring up a couple of popular phenomenons so I can recommend something they already like.

I’m not a reading specialist - none of this is based on much formal training in that, but I am good at other pedagogy and have been in the position to need to teach all ages how to read.

Helping teach someone how to read is one of the most profoundly good things you can do as a person, imho. You’re giving someone the tools to improve their life in so many ways. It’s honestly really fun to do as well.

It’s also a fun way to share art! I like to leave some of my prints in the books I’m going to donate.

I think it’s that the antihistamines are in the “specific sedatives” category, not that it’s saying they are opioids.

As a trans guy, I prefer male bathroom culture. I want to do my business and get the fuck out. It was so weird in high school to hang out in the girls restroom and being expected to socialize while trying to shit.

I guess the cultural difference is that women sometimes might need to ask each other for a tampon or something, while men are terrified of being thought to be gay. Have to make absolutely sure you aren’t even getting a side eye at another guys dick.

male or female

Both are bad, but not comparable. Usually you don’t have your holes sewn together with a male circumcision.