What the fuck is going to happen if the shit hits the fan and power goes out?
I'll probably be fine because I know how to get shit done in the absence of electricity and running water. More importantly, I know how scale up water purification, distribution and storage and sanitation from the individual level on up to to tens of thousands of people using rudimentary to more sophisticated methods. Likewise, electricity generation, distribution and storage (though less sophisticated).
Most of the rest of you are probably fucked.
Most people aren't interested in learning useless knowledge. The history of the banana? Really?
I don't think the desire to learn of such facts means you're better. I think it means you have way too much time on your hands.
Most people learn things when they're relevant and nothing wrong with preloading knowledge that might become useful some day.
Did you know that the banana that we're most familiar with, the Cavendish, is not what people ate, fought wars, deposed governments and propped up dictators in Central America ("the banana republics") over? That variety was called Gros Michel or Big Mike, though calling them a variety isn't quite correct either, since they weren't so much a variety as genetic clones. Same as the Cavendish we all eat now.
Did you know there's a worldwide banana plague sweeping the world and that it's likely to take out the Cavendish strain, same as how the Gros Michel variety was taken out?
In Uganda, the word "motoke" is the same as the word for "food," much as how in Asia, "rice" is literally synonymous with "food." It's not the same variety as the yellow commercial varieties and have to be cooked to be eaten (they're specifically not plantains) but they are showing to be somewhat vulnerable to the banana plague.
Why isn't it interesting? It is science. I find how we came to eat these bananas much more interesting than how to fix a car or how hardwood floors are installed.
Cars is too broad a topic, but if you're ever going to do hardwood floors, do yourself a favor and don't cheap out on the flooring nailer. If it's too light, you are going to make that job unnecessarily tedious.
