It’s very selective. They know Bible stories from Sunday school and have been told a few passages.

It’s a really complicated anthology of books written across 1000ish years (earliest being fragmentary bits of poetry preserved in altered context, most of it being 400 BCE on). Tons of it is related to distant political struggles or cultural norms, stuff so hopelessly distant from us and written in hard to understand language (especially with this KJV only-ists.)

Then, you add 2000 years of history, pop culture, and interpretation. It’s a really difficult text and it’s difficult for anyone to understand without getting a lot of support and context. The context is often presented in a misleading way, pick your denomination and flavor of distortion

Random question -what’s your favorite book? I’m really vibing with your interpretation here.

These is why the alt right pipeline for women is transphobia/TERF shit.

Sexism is real, lots of teenage girls and young women feel frustrated and powerless, but they get easy wins going after trans women. They can’t get Dobbs reversed, but forcing trans people to detransition is an explicit goal of conservative power structures. They get to feel like they “won” with that UK court ruling - that “women’s rights” were won by something that did nothing to actually meaningfully help women.

Not just historian, but a specific type of political historian. “Historian” is a broad umbrella - Snyder is the only one I’ve read, but he’s very much focused specifically on authoritarianism, fascism and genocide. His Bloodlands is kinda the book on mass killings by Nazis and the USSR.

With regard to social issues, they certainly appear to be stuck there.

The point being it’s obnoxious that discussions of any female politician at some point have to bring up their attractiveness. It’s completely irrelevant to the work they do. I can’t think of male politicians getting the same treatment.

Woman: exists

Gooner: is for me?

because it was mandatory to do some

Usually understood to be a violation of ethics if they didn’t provide you the opportunity for an alternative assignment btw.

Thanks for the explanation. It’s very interesting to learn about how others perceive the world.

What does understanding mean for you in this sense?

I don’t mean to come across as ignorant or disrespectful - just curious. A big part of my understanding of that passage is the process of visualization. When I read that passage, I feel it. It’s wet, it’s filthy, everyone is upset and I imagine faces scowling. That’s what “understanding” means to me as a process.

It’s probably some ASD-ish adjacent, but it just breaks my brain every time. It seems like there’s a large proportion of people who don’t seem to actually care whether they have an accurate understanding of the world or not? The amount of times online I’ve been able to show someone evidence that they demanded, and then they double down. At best they’ll go silent, but then you’ll see them making the exact same claim later.

In general right now it seems like there are a lot willing to call evil good, and good evil. Everything is backwards. The Moral Majority voted in a pedophile rapist.

Flex Loans offer borrowers up to $4,000 at 279.5% interest, trapping thousands of people in debt that can land them in court.

Payday loans in the states are horrifying. It got so bad that the US government stepped in to limit the interest rates they could charge military members.

Certain tribes are exploiting regulatory loopholes and charging 600%.

Kellyanne Conway: “I have two friends, who both — well, one is Ann Coulter. She started dating her security guard probably ten years ago because she couldn’t see anybody else.”

She’s a sad loser.

Oklahoma prefers DUI hires.

Hey - don’t stand so close to me.

Nabokov is fun, because he had an opinion on basically every author ever. If you feel frustrated about something you read in an English class, you can probably find an essay by Nabokov reading that author to filth.

“Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre- Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human English words expressing several, although by no means all, aspects of poshlost are, for instance,” cheap," “sham,” “smutty,” “highfalutin,”“in bad taste.” dignity - all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of “sinning their way to Jesus" or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, "spilling Jesus all over the place.”

Like c’mon man - if you don’t feel something reading the Grand Inquisitor passage in Karamazov - are you human?

How’d that work out last time?

How hard would it be to piss on Reagan’s grave?

You say in another comment that this is indicative of a failed American education experiment, and that there’s a generation of illiteracy.

Yes, I’m alluding to a larger context outside of that study. In addition to the obvious harms of COVID/virtual school, many US schools switched to a model of teaching reading that omitted phonics entirely. This simply does not work for the vast majority of students, and this had already been demonstrated in the 1970’s.

The authors refer to that larger context here -

My remarks on generalizing the study to Kansas undergrads was to point out that is an entirely acceptable sample size. In statistics, when you think about sample size, you have to think about the population you are studying. This study was specifically studying the literacy of Kansas English undergrads, which I imagine is a small enough population that you can generalize that study to. This would indicate that many future English teachers in Kansas are struggling readers.

We can put that as a data point next to several other studies about the US’s current literacy crisis.

As far as why they chose Bleak House:

N of 85 is entirely reasonable for that kind of study. You could safely generalize that to the population of Kansas English undergrads - run that through G Power and tell me otherwise.

The ADL is redefining anti-semitism to mean anti-Zionism.

Criticism of Israel is not the same as intolerance of Jewish people. I would think identifying Jewish people with the actions of a rogue genocidal state is pretty anti-Semitic.

The streets are incredibly muddy, as if the waters of the Biblical Flood of Noah had just receded. So muddy, one would not be surprised to find a giant amphibian frolicking in it up on Holborn Hill.

I really love your breakdown here. You should move to teach English in Kansas, they need you.

But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.

It is so goddamn frustrating. I had one on here claiming that the US had not deported US citizens, while linking the article saying that the US had deported four children who were citizens!

I read fast and have been following this shit for so long that I can call a lot out. But it never changes their minds, they never concede defeat. They just jump from place to place. Or “you libs always assume i’m MAGA” is a funny one I keep seeing on here - like, if you are supporting Trump’s policies, you are a Trump supporter. It’s so goddamn slimy and disingenuous.

TERFs are the worst about it. They’ve started spreading Holocaust denial. I saw one claim the the Nazi government issued transvestite passes! Like no! It was the Weimar Republic! The Nazis used those passes to track down and kill trans people!

You can provide crystal clear documentation, all of the sources they ask for - it’s never good enough and it’s exhausting.