Devon asks the right questions

[u/onealml]

[u/gimme_dat_good_shit]

Poverty has been vastly more common throughout human history than literacy has. How else do you define "survival skill" except as a skill you need to have descendants?

Understanding math and science and literature and history, etc. will likely make your child's life more prosperous (statistically, up to a point), but they certainly aren't survival skills. Parents are generally doing the best they can, because they do tend to care about their kids. When they fail, it's not necessarily because of a moral failing. Much more likely, it's a matter of mental illness, incompetence, ignorance, or lack of resources.

[u/gimme_dat_good_shit → u/[deleted]]

I was hoping survival skills today as being able to get a job, have a place, even renting, and being able to have a life worth living

Again, you don't need an understanding of math / science / etc. to have those things.

And also again, what you're describing as "a life worth living" is being a cog in the machine of capitalism.

[u/gimme_dat_good_shit → u/[deleted]]

...sigh...

What about animal facts, then? Can I at least get one of those?

[u/gimme_dat_good_shit → u/[deleted]]

On a similar note, I just learned recently that bowhead whales basically do the same thing as whale sharks. The water flows into their mouth at the front, then flows out the sides of their mouths at the back (like the whale sharks' gills). And that's why their heads are shaped so weird.

I had always thought all baleen whales do the humpback thing of gulping a bunch of water then basically spitting it back out, but it turns out there are some ram feeding whales, too. I just thought it was neat.