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
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
69 points (92.6% liked)
Ask
511 readers
45 users here now
Rules
- Be nice
- Posts must be legitimate questions (no rage bait or sea lioning)
- No spam
- NSFW allowed if tagged
- No politics
- For support questions, please go to [email protected]
founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
Agreed, fast fashion and it's equivalents have pretty much killed off basic repair in general. My great grandmother taught me how to rewire a lamp, and I think I'm the only person in my friend group that can do it. Most people just toss them when they stop working.
Nana was in her early 20s when the great depression hit, and her influence is probably why I'm so in favor of right-to-repair.
your Nana rules. I can't rewire a lamp myself, but I'm fortunate I have a handful of nerd friends I know could do it for me. I'd bake them some bread (mom's recipe) in return
load more comments
(3 replies)
Honest question: what is there to learn? You've got a thread, a needle, you put the thread in the needle and then you stab the things that need to fit together with it. The only thing that i was told during such stabbing to a button once was that i should wrap the thread around the button when done, but it hasn't prevented me to attached them so far?
You would be surprised how many people are unable to do that, who are physically capable of doing it.
At least where I live there's a cultural learned helplessness around sewing. "Nobody does it anymore so how am I supposed to have learned?" or "doesn't sewing something cost more than just buying a new garment?" (both I've personally heard people say)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Cooking & self reflection
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
People being bad at math isn't a new thing but it is getting worse now with everyone having a calculator (phone) in their pocket.
Also. Great time to dust off this old gem.
I'm not sure if having a calculator available makes it worse. The calculator only does the operation. It doesn't reason which operation needs to be done, it just does what you tell it to do. And that's where people fail at, understanding the concept behind the operation.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I frequently do blatantly inaccurate math just to spitball, and when I say the numbers that I'm computing out loud, people get amazed that I can keep track of so many numbers when I'm only tracking the result of the previous calculation and the operator that I'm about to perform.
I'm like, dude, if you accounted for the rounding errors, you would realize how fucking wrong I am, but this math is not precision-important, and so I'm just trying to get an idea of the scope of the numbers that I need to address whatever problem I'm working on.
For instance, if you asked me to spitball how far it is from Los Angeles, California to Atlanta, Georgia, and how long it would take you to drive that, I would assume you would average about 50 miles an hour after breaks and whatnot that you would be able to drive approximately 12 hours a day, which means you could clear 600 miles, and off the top of my head I would guess it's about 3,200 miles between Los Angeles and Atlanta, assuming that you stay on the 40 as much as you can once you get to Amarillo, TX, so I would assume that the average driver would take five days and approximately four hours to drive that distance.
This is very off the cuff, off the top of my head, I could be 600 miles off on the distance in either directions, I could be 10, 12 miles an hour in drive time off in either direction, and I could be off 4 or 5 hours or not even account for a co-driver on the trip.
You can do the trip in like 2ish days. I have done the trip in like twoish days.
But, reality and guesstimation are two separate things, and there's no reason to be amazed by somebody's guesstimation capabilities. It's very basic math that doesn't require any skill greater than your multiplication tables.
I don't know why more people aren't good at it.
load more comments
(4 replies)
How to cook? Or even follow a recipe. Not like hard stuff either, a simple casserole recipe or cookie recipe. Not even find a good recipe, that's actually very hard online these days what with bullshit generators and stuff. I hand you a recipe.
load more comments
(4 replies)
To do very basic home repair and DIY. I keep wondering how people get through life without being able to drill a hole, fix a clogged drain or even change a light bulp. Do they get some sort of service technican for all these things?
I'm one of them! Neither parent could do DIY and I've got poor manual skills. Recently I had to ask [email protected] how to put picture hooks up. They kindly and patiently explained it to me 😊
While I understand that there could be a lucrative market here... It warms my heart to know that there are people who would just volunteer their time to help others... Because that's kind of what a dad would do. Just straight up give advice and experience with the thought that they would be helping the future.
I know! It's really kind of them and they really put effort into their answers
I use a bizarre system that eliminates hooks entirely, relying on velcro instead. AND peels off the wall without a scratch when you don't want it any longer.
That's a clever idea! What do you use?
It's something I saw on Taobao's "try this for practically free" section (where new products get introduced) and tested. They're advertised as being able to hold up to 0.9kg for 2 small ones to 7.2kg for 4 large ones. Let me see if I can find a picture.
That's what they look like in package. The sticky backing is a weird form of "gel tape" that sticks to almost anything, but can be removed by just stretching (at the point where you see the arrows) without leaving a mark. Here's how they're used:
Yep... Some people pay electrician to come and change a lightbulb...
The ability to use the correct words
The ability to use the correct words
"The capacious aptitude for the judicious deployment of linguistically felicitous and semantically apropos verbiage," I think you mean.
Swimming, had to help fish a dude out of the lake because he swam far into the deep end and started panicking when he realized he didn't have the steam to swim back. His only swimming experience was water parks and kiddie pools.
I was on a paddle board a summer or two back, and noticed someone swimming with their really tall, inflatable kayak that they had been fishing off of. For some reason, they were dragging it through the water in one of our lakes.
I felt stupid, but I paddled over to them and asked if they were okay, as they were out in the middle of the huge lake.
He actually said "No, I don't know how to swim, and can't get back into my kayak" which made me ashen-faced, and I helped him onto my paddle board and back into his kayak. Thank fucking God he had a lifejacket on. He was probably about 700 feet offshore and fell overboard much earlier. Had he not had that lifejacket, he might have drowned. He never called for help as he was embarrassed.
load more comments
(3 replies)