Good communication skills. Being able to tell someone else what you mean so they or anyone else could understand. My boss is beyond awful at it makes getting anything done a struggle at times.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Cooking your own food. No, it's not hard. No, it's not unaffordable. And no, it won't rob you of all your free time.
Apparently a lot of older people were never taught algebra. I have a lot of math in my life so I find that weird.
A basic skill that I lack is the habit of keeping things clean. I do my cleaning in bursts, which can be counterproductive because my space is messy between those bursts. It's a basic skill, and one that I'm working to improve, but it sure does not come naturally to me!
Basic humanity/empathy for marginalised groups
Critical thinking skills.
It just astounds me when people who should know what this is and how to practice it, don't.
Looking up the information online (beyond just googling it in your native language).
i.e. Trying out the results in other search engines, when looking for the information about something in a foreign land, or something the specific nation is very good at; try using the local language (and use the online translators to search it and read it).
Knowing the absolute basics of using a computer
Eh, it depends. I don't know how to sew, except to fix a hole in my sock. Couldn't make a coat, never needed or wanted to.
My mother can't use a computer besides checking her emails and finding a movie to watch, which is all she needs and wants to know.
Now, if it's your job to use one effectively and haven't got a clue? I expect you'd end up in management in no time.
The difference between your and you're.
Knowing how to swim or ride a bike. It's not too common, but when someone tells me they can't, I'm quietly kinda shocked.
socioeconomics plays a large part here. I learned to swim at the ymca, but schlepping my silly ass to and from swim practice meant parental involvement.
bikes? learning to ride a bike in the suburbs is natural; learning to ride a bike when you live in an apartment building - hell keeping a bike from getting stolen is difficult when you don't have a garage.
imho, these are both easy to understand when you view through a larger socioeconomic starting point: we don't all have the same opportunities and resources.
Race also plays a large part of it. In most cases, if your parents know how to swim, you do too. But many black people don’t know how to swim, even if their parents know how. Not because of a lack of transport or means, (though that could certainly play a part) but because their parents didn’t want to get their hair wet to teach them.
For those who don’t know, ultra textured hair is a very special beast, and takes a lot of specific care to keep it looking nice. And getting it wet tends to be a big sin unless you’re specifically washing it.
So all the black parents never took their kids to the pool to teach them how to swim. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they physically didn’t want to get wet. So swimming knowledge gets broken from one generation to the next. So the black people who know how to swim are typically the ones who go out of their way to learn on their own, or who have non-black friends who taught them.
How to reason through solving a problem or fixing something. Not necessarily being successful, but just the process of thinking about possible things to try or steps to take.
Taking feedback constructively
To be fair, many people don't know how to give constructive feedback very well either.
Yeah, too many people simply think brutal honesty is the same as constructive criticism. When in reality, they’re just looking for an excuse to be brutal.
True
How dare you. Well I never. You kids these days. Think that you know everything
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The difference between "your" and "you're."
Ur not wrong.
But u r.
tru
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Empathy. It shocks me how many "adults" have a toddler-level understanding of their relationship to the world (as in it doesn't revolve around them) and society (as in we have responsibility for each other). So many "adults" sound like screeching toddlers whenever there's a hint of someone else getting something they don't get. It even reaches the level of "I don't like this movie so it shouldn't have been made" as if the very existence of entertainment or education or whatever in a field they themselves don't prefer is a personal affront.
And this isn't even a right-wing thing. The feminist National Action Committee in Canada was turned from a potent and feared political force to a laughingstock by ostensible left-wing women deciding that their concerns over daycare trumped native women's active murders among other intersectional issues.
i wouldnt call empathy a skill
I would.
Something that bothers me about a lot of people's sense of empathy is that they're only able to employ it by directly relating events to themselves. It's like a stereotypical "How would you feel if this happened to your daughter?" thing, where people can only extend empathy as far as a situation that it's possible for them to get into.
I also hear this a lot around disasters, whether they be natural, terrorist attacks, etc. If you're around somebody who has been anywhere near the location of the event, get ready for the "Gosh, that's so awful. I was only there six years ago, it could have been me." Can't you just fucking care about the wellbeing of things that aren't you? Feel bad because a bad thing happened, not by making it about yourself.
I don't see what's wrong with that. That's also empathy, just not everybody follow the same way to feel it.
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Cooking & self reflection
very basic sewing repair, like reattaching a button or sewing back down a popped seam
but then again fast fashion makes these skills seem worthless to many people
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Imagining the potential of a prototype.
"So with this prototype I want to explore aspect A"
"I don't like it. I don't want this as a final product."
"Ok. Do you like aspect A? Imagine all other things were finished as you like it."
"No, I don't like this product."
Same for apps and sites. Having to explain to someone multiple times that I'm not trying to force their users to be bilingual just because there is "lorem ipsum" text on the page is rough.
Math, and I mean basic math: adding, subtracting, multiplication, division. Basic understanding of fractions, basic understanding of percentages.
I'm not amazing at math but I consider this basic and with relatively regular day to day application. I'm not saying people should be able to make these operations without a calculator on the fly, I certainly couldn't in many cases. But I would expect people to know what math you need to apply to, say, calculate a 20% discount. I would expect people to know if, say, two thirds is more or less than three quarters. But no. Nope
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