Yeah, you caught me being a bit sneaky.
Reminds me of something from my childhood. I can only imagine that the personal computer has made a huge difference in enabling members of the deaf community to participate in larger culture, including productive employment. But when I was a kid many deaf people were extremely poor and isolated. There was a form of peddling that some deaf people used to do on the subway. They'd enter a subway car holding a stack of wallet-sized cards. They would then approach each person in the car in turn and, without asking, place a card on their lap. The cards contained the ASL manual alphabet or a variation thereof and would say something like, "Sign Language Basics." After handing the cards out, the deaf person would circle back around to each person. If you happened to pick up the card from your lap and glance at it, or show any recognition or interest, they would gesture at you with the aim of guilt-tripping you into purchasing a card. We children would invariably look with curiosity at the card, thereby obligating our parental units into spending a buck. As kids we would take the card home, excited, learn how to manually sign our name maybe, crudely pretend to be speaking sign, and lose interest in a few days. I know now that learning the manual alphabet was no more "learning sign language" than learning the Cyrillic alphabet would have been learning Russian. Or learning binary would be learning machine language.
Oh yeah this is the book thread. I'm in the midst of reading "Nonsense on Stilts" which talks about pseudoscience and the type of sloppy thinking and reasoning under which it flourishes. In our current cultural environment where things like flat earth and "double suns" are given serious consideration by more than a few, he's fighting a losing battle but it's a good read nonetheless.
I might just read it again after seeing your post.