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The difference between "your" and "you're."
I'm neurodiverse so I spell things wrong sometimes.
critical thinking
The difference between your and you're.
Listening to understand, rather than listening to respond.
Yep and just waiting for their turn to speak
In guilty of this. I usually know what they want to say at word 3 or 4. Waiting it out is exhausting. Not waiting it out is rude. Hard either way, not talking to people, way easier.
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.
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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.
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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.
Taking feedback constructively
Yep and it can be difficult to tell if someone's reacting badly because they're vulnerable or because they're a twat.
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How dare you. Well I never. You kids these days. Think that you know everything
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.
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Cooking & self reflection
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.
Yes I second this one. Some people can't even hard boil an egg
Makes me remember that old boomer joke "My wife cooks water in the evening so that the next day I just need to warm it up for my tea"
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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?
Yep... Some people pay electrician to come and change a lightbulb...
I'm one of them! Neither parent could do DIY and I've got poor manual skills. Recently I had to ask !dadforaminute@lemmy.world 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.
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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.
The ability to use the correct words
The difference between your and you're
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.
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.
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).
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.
Basics of money.
Like putting away one third of your money every month, keeping a budget, learning when to splurge to maintain self control (budgets not too tight) and learning to live below your means at any cost.
The magic part is the other half of that equation. Money grows in it's own (though slowly) and putting some away for later starts paying for its own pretty soon.
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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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