learn
Explanation
This comic takes aim at the common complaint that school teaches things "you'll never use in real life" by showing that the same criticism applies to virtually everything humans voluntarily spend time on.
The comic begins with a familiar setup: a student (or parent) complains, "Why do we make kids learn algebra? They'll never use it in real life!" A teacher responds with a series of counterexamples of things people eagerly learn that are equally "useless" in practical terms:
- So much of spoken Portuguese (a niche language skill for most people)
- Kings made to read King's Landing lore and know which kingdom belonged to which house's daughters (referencing Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire lore)
- Learning that humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes (fascinating but rarely actionable)
- Being able to name two specific cocktails that differ only slightly
Each example highlights something people voluntarily and enthusiastically learn despite having no practical application. The person being lectured keeps trying to interject but the teacher steamrolls on.
In the final panel, the complainer admits they can't stop talking once they start listing useless knowledge -- they were never "taught how to stop talking." The joke here is self-referential: the teacher has become the very embodiment of someone who accumulates pointless knowledge, unable to stop sharing it. The comic's broader point is that humans love learning impractical things; singling out algebra (or any school subject) as uniquely useless is hypocritical when we eagerly absorb trivia about TV shows, cocktails, and evolutionary biology for fun.