There’s often a skill that seem interesting, but I can’t see doing anything for me in my day-to-day life. What have you learned that was a lot more effort than the payoff was worth?
Butterfly shuffle
Making tofu from scratch. Also sourdough.
I love cooking in all forms, and there are a lot of things I happily do from scratch. I love baking bread, making my own oat milk, mixing up my own seitan from vital wheat gluten, and a whole bunch of other things.
But making tofu was something I tried a bunch of times and have ultimately given up on. It is extremely time consuming, very difficult to get right, and makes a worse product than what I can buy at the store. It isn’t even cheaper to do, as the cost of the soybeans and the cost of the premade tofu are about the same. I may make it on occasion if I plan on serving it on its own as a dish with soy sauce, but that is about it.
With sourdough, I found it easy to get into, but my husband and I both prefer our baked goods to be not sour, and we both have pretty sensitive tastebuds in that regard. It is easier for me to just use instant yeast whenever I need it and make something we both prefer to eat.
One day sourdough is not sour, and still easier than using commercial yeast. When I’m making sandwich bread I do it in a condensed timeline and the starter just works like a more robust version of yeast. You don’t have to make “the sourdough” as my kids call it (they ask for it because they like it but I do understand y’all’s preference.)
I use my starter to make bread, cinnamon rolls, donuts, once a puff pastry that was so annoying to make but maybe the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I just don’t buy yeast anymore.
Same with making ketchup! Just buy the cheap ketchup, it’s still better and less time consuming! I also agree with the sourdough. I prefer soft white breads over sourdough.
Taught myself how to snake spit. But now it sometimes happens on its own so I really wish I hadn’t trained my mouth so well.
Gleeking?
Haven’t heard that word since middle school.
Let me think -
Mostly software training at work for systems they immediately abandoned.
My interior design skills languish for lack of money.
Most of the other stuff I can do gets some use I think.
As an old time computer nerd I have uncountable examples of deprecated knowledge. There is no use in knowing how to use the reserved upper memory in autoexec.bat and config.sys, nor how to use Napster or Kazaa.
But all these skills do shape your brain and way of thinking.
Assembly language taught me to be precise and think before typing. Flash taught me that nothing lasts forever, as big as it might seem.
Eventually, all this adds up and creates a profile that is very demanded in my career.
That said, my mom taught me to thread a needle without looking. And I can’t sew, so that’s that.
I had to learn himem.sys and loadhigh when I was about 10 years old and the family PC HDD crashed. I had a copy of DOS and a manual the size of a phone book. The only way out was to write my own boot disk.
But yes, these days it’s a bit of a useless skill.
Yeah and to think we had to learn and find out stuff reading a book. A book!!
Functions and derivatives, from late high school to college. They were extremely tedious, and I had to learn tens of formulas I don’t use very often.
English sheep counting, a base-20 number system. Often called Yan Tan Tethera. Lincolnshire is the best version.
Must. Resist. Rabbit-hole…
Every time I try to get into sheep counting I end up falling asleep…
Driving. Never used it.
Ventriloquism. I dont use it at all anymore. Learned it because i thought it would be fun and one could make some jokes with it but nah
I’m a trained electrician. Despite taking and passing a reputable school for it, I can’t get licensed to do it in my state because you have to have 2 years apprenticeship. You get an apprenticeship you have to go through a school supported by the union. The only school supported is the one they own.
Despite being fully capable of wiring a building to code, installing a solar array or electric car chargers I can’t do shit with the information and it way a year and $2k fucking wasted.
Any chance you could get licensed in another state using what you know (without an apprenticeship) then seek licensing in your own state via some kind of reciprocity agreement with your home state?
Unfortunately my state doesn’t recognize it unless you have work history in that state. If I had the ability to move to another state to work for a year I wouldn’t come back to this hell hole.
Anyway to get credit via past knowledge? Like, test out of apprenticeship if you can? You may be able to prove experience via hours worked on timecards.
are you anti union or just anti this one school?
Unions are fantastic. The problem here is that after spending 2k and a year learning, I was told that the only way I could get the apprenticeship hours needed to get licensed is to spend another 2k and another year going to a different school for the exact same class using the exact same books because no one in my area will take you on unless you use this school.
I cannot test out, I cannot transfer credit, I cannot skip it. Because this is the standard in place and going against it violates their agreements with the union, I cannot work in my city. I’m all for unions, but any organization can be corrupted and this is exactly what it is.
Reading is hard.
They clearly already went to school for it before moving to that state.
Seems like he is anti monopoly.
Getting a private pilot certificate. Was fun, but after going to every airport within range, not sure it was worth it.
At least you didn’t go all the way through Instrument rating and Commercial license, only to realize ADHD was a thing and also not treatable while maintaining a medical.
I was already working in tech so the backup plan is chugging along fine; but goddamn the student loans…
What are the rules around flying a small plane with ADHD? I’m unclear if one needs to be off meds for an extended period to get a private license
I believe for even a third-class medical a pilot needs to be off ADHD medication for over 4 years, with additional screening/testing involved if they have been prescribed. My knowledge is limited since I have never been prescribed such meds and only realized I have some level of ADHD due to my son getting a diagnosis. He only took the meds for a year or two in elementary school before he opted to stop due to side effects and his brain overcoming that developmental hurdle.
It sounds terrible, but my advice would be that unless your ADHD is severe enough to demand medication you should never ever tell an Aviation Medical Examiner or standard doctor about ADHD suspicions if flying is something you want to do. I could technically still go fly if I found the time, and have never felt I was distracted given the degree that flying a plane engages all parts of your brain.
There is a dark side to this way of thinking though, as any sort of deviation from the norm with mental health or cognitive performance is often pushed under the rug instead of being treated due to fear of losing livelihood. A tragic example was Germanwings Flight 9525.
I’ve been trying to figure out what to do in my life and this is tentatively on my bucket list. Problem is it’s crazy expensive and I don’t have use for it afterwards!
How did the process of getting the cert go for you?
You could steal planes
If I had to do it again, I’d start with the end goal and work backwards. It was a long time ago, I was single with no extra expenses, had a decent job, and thought it might be fun to learn. If I had wanted to become a professional pilot, the calculation would have been very different.
Getting the cert mainly involved putting in the hours. Having a good instructor helps a lot. Also, not making any stupid mistakes. I almost stalled the plane hard on my first solo touch and go. The hardest part was getting used to the ATC lingo and not stuttering too much. I got an aircraft band radio with a headphone and joined all the weirdos who liked to sit at the end of airport runways.
The cost of leaded gas alone is financially painful.
When I taught flight school, we flew planes that ran on automotive gasoline. (see also: Rotax 912). Even then paying for fuel ate us alive.
Cursive handwriting
Connected cursive with the stupid squiggles is terrible, regular cursive where you just join most of the letters is the fastest way to write.
In France, children learn only cursive. It’s kind of strange to learn how to manually write like a typewriter…
I think it’s a matter of how it’s framed.
It was already going out of fashion in schools when I was growing up, and people did not like it when a teacher (usually older) made them practice it. The original argument of it being faster didn’t apply once computers became common in schools/homes, and printed letters (writing like a typewriter) are better for clarity.
However, I think there is value to it when framed as an artistic skill. Calligraphy strengthens motor skills, and if you make the lesson less rigid then kids can have fun with it and figure out how to express themselves.
I don’t understand it, to be honest. It may be cultural. To learn two ways to handwrite is a waste of time, agreed, but why choose the one which was not thought to be handwritten?
Why?
How much cursive you using these days? It’s pretty much useless outside of reading old letters.
Taking notes in interviews (job related). Allows me to scribble something down while maintaining eye contact and seeing the persons face. Does it well because i dont need to wonder how much space is in between characters like i do when hand printing.
Cursive is the only way I can write now. College destroyed my normal hand writing.
I have excellent handwriting and it has been a valuable asset at almost every job I’ve ever had. So many times people have come to me and asked me to hand write a note to a client.
Also, love letters. Physical love letters written in cursive go fucking hard in the 2020’s.
Every single day!
Every day, it is how I write. It is not useless if you want to write with a minimal degree of fluency.
Don’t you write at all?
Extremely rarely. And when I do I don’t use cursive.
Probably morse code. It was required for my ham radio license back in the day to read it at 10 WPM. I put quite a few hours into learning it through the koch method.
At the end of the day I’m just not very interested in getting a lot of contacts. I just like building and tinkering with radios.
My limited experience listening to ham radio operators with my scanner (listening to voice, not Morse code) is that when hams do get in contact with each other, they mostly talk about ham radios. Which, I mean, I guess is understandable, since it’s a common interest to all of them, but a lot of it is people who like building and tinkering with radios talking about building and tinkering with radios.
That’s often the topic on your local repeater or 80m ring.
Morse tends to be a bit more brief like “I’m in grid ab12cd and read you 599”, with a lot more abbreviations. Usually for competitions or just crossing off every square on your maidenhead-map.
I have a full UK licence, and I’m thinking of learning it. It’s one of those things, it sounds interesting for QRP etc. However I’m the same, I rarely speak to anyone anyway!
Can’t think of anything.
Life’s a journey, not a destination.
Cursive I guess.
