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> Technical literacy in the broader population can be approximated with the Thanksgiving test: what sort of questions do you get at Thanksgiving? That's the ambient level of literacy.

I didn't understand this one (perhaps due to not being American). Can someone explain it please?

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Thanksgiving is a holiday where many people have a big family meal. If you have family members who you usually only see once a year, there's a good chance that day is Thanksgiving. So that's when a lot of people tend to field questions from people who 1) care about them enough to ask how their new job is going but 2) have no idea what they really do at work.

I thought they meant that they would ask you to fix their computer.

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