44
votes
What is your silly or (kinda) useless talent?
Everyone knows about the big stuff we're good at, which are sometimes linked to our personal projects and professional activities. That is not what this post is about.
Here, I am asking about the little things that distinguish you. Your quirky superpower that impresses no one (or maybe just a few). Maybe this is something odd you never really made any effort to learn.
Some people just have this ability to whistle really loudly, or make the largest bubble gum bubbles.
What is your silly talent?
I have corrected strabismus which gives me independent vision. I can look permanently forward with one eye, and in any direction with the other at the same time.
In split-screen video games, I didn't merely have to peek at another's screen, I could watch them clearly the entire time without ever having to take an eye off my own screen. This ability also makes things like copying text or comparing images and outputs rather easy. But the downside is that I can't cross my vision to make those 3D glasses work, so there's that.
Can your brain fully understand and work in two different visual contexts at the same time? Like if you put a VR headset on and had each side display different images, would that work? That sounds really cool.
I don't have the ambidexterity to control two video game contexts, but yeah I can totally process the two different sets of images. Though, I suppose I've never really tried that with VR specifically. But yeah, I can watch two different people doing stuff, or two different TVs. I can't read two books at the same time, but I can compare texts side-by-side really well.
Does it mess with your depth peception at all? If not, I see literally no downside.
I get fuzzy periphery in I guess what is the center of my vision, especially if I move my mobile eye really far in a given direction.
I see an object with two slightly different angles, so if I'm doing something like playing darts or target practice of any kind, I need to focus on one eye and pick an angle to adjust to. So that's a slight annoyance at times.
I do have a drivers license though, and have never had problems gauging depth on the road.
EDIT: Oh, but I also have dyscalculia, which is apparently likely related to all this. So a more round-about downside is sucking at math because of my vision. Win some, lose some.
How is dyscalculia related to a vision thing, do we actually visualize maths inside our heads?
Hey but that means you can do two unrelated brain things with your eyes, like watching tv and working.
According to my neurologist, we are learning about lots of overlap in how the parts of the brain do or do not develop and integrate together well. My joke was a bit of a stretch to suggest that strabismus caused dyscalculia. Rather, the impact of my brain's development is seen in both the strabismus and dyscalculia. Having a non-moving eye does impact the way that area of my brain gets to handle information. Having differing or straying parts in my brain impacts the depth of their connections to other areas. Dyscalculia apparently doesn't just affect general number comprehension, but other things too, like one's sense of direction.
So generally, processing visual information in an abnormal way goes hand-in-hand with the way my brain tries to process other kinds of information, and numbers just so happen to be an info type that is negatively impacted, unfortunately.
That's fascinating if somewhat unfortunate, seeing as how so much or our lives are affected by money, and companies seemingly try their utmost to make it terrible and confusing for everyone.
Can I ask you more questions about your dyscalculia?
Yeah, money and cost are not my friends, so I tend to avoid them.
And sure, go right ahead!
A. Are you good with money stuff that's not number related or at a level that isnt money related. Eg, macro concepts of savings, interests, inflation, investments, etc
B. Does it extend to geometry and graphs if you don't need to manipulate numbers with them? What if your bank statements came with a line graph of money going up and spendings going down, would that help?
C. Did you have a heck of a time at school and how did you/your family get a diagnosis?
D. Are there apps that help or can you think of types of apps that would? For example, an app that presents your incomes and spendings in a pie chart form, or price check at a store with shades between green and red for how good of a deal it is?
E. Are phone numbers, account numbers and other strings of numbers a problem? What if they were written down as words like six zero four?
These are all very good questions!
A. No. I mean, I'm organized and use a spreadsheet template to keep track of rent and utilities, but beyond entering billing numbers, things get complicated. I split my paycheck into what to me are arbitrary amounts that go into checking and savings, but I avoid spending where I can so as not to impact those arbitrary amounts too much.
B. I can derive logical conclusions from spotting visual patterns in graphs, but beyond the impression of a trend, that translation into numeric data is largely meaningless to me. If a bank statement comes with a graph, it tells me that something is happening in an upward or downward direction, but it doesn't help me quantify my spending or saving beyond the obvious, "yep, I bought a few things this month." If I bought four books, each of which were $18.99, even right here I'm struggling to figure out how much that would be, but probably $80.00 given 18.99's proximity to 19 and 19's proximity to 20. 20 x 4 is 80, so 80 it is.
C. I did have a heck of a time at school! I was constantly behind in math and Algebra was as far as I made it and I had to take it twice. I am from the States, so I was placed in what is called an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. I was diagnosed around age 5, when my teacher and parents noticed how tough learning was for me. This was decades ago.
D. I'm not sure what apps would help. Generally, I rely a lot on my family to help me stabilize my saving and spending. My sisters are very thrifty and my parents have taught me good tips for keeping physical track of bills, setting up spreadsheets, and writing calendar reminders, so I still manage. But retirement and investment are just those things that are sort of out of my grasp. I don't work somewhere that puts money into a retirement account, so I put a little into one here and there when I can, and I probably have like two or three others that I don't even know about from various employers over the last 20 years, but I doubt its very much. At my income bracket, it's not likely that I will be able to retire in this lifetime anyway, which I've made my peace with.
E. The written representation of a number is not a problem; it's whether they have a symbolic attachment to a piece of information that I can process or not. So, remembering a phone number is not hard because it's a piece of information related to a person or place, e.g. "Clair's phone number is 555-213-8774." It's similar with years. Saying, "The Great Schism occurred in in 1054," is an easy fact to remember. However, saying "The Great Schism occurred in the 11th Century, 187 years after the Photian Schism ended in 867," I'm going to struggle to derive what approximate year that would be because of the math involved. With numbers that big, I'm rounding up to the nearest hundredth and then working backwards to ease the mental load, but it's still tough. Anything that involves a trend or translation is difficult, like I could not tell you what "5% of 200" is. I can grasp the logic of a good explanation of what it is, but I just can't seem to put it into practice, which is frustrating. I'm good with abstract ideas, but not discreet calculations.
Oh! But otherwise your have no problem punching 200 * 0.05 or 1540 - 867 into a calculator, right?
:p well most of us aren't retiring anyway so
... It sounds like you've made adaptations that work well enough
Also, I spent way way too long staring at my hand trying to look at both sides of my hand lol
200 * 0.05 =...
10🤦♂️
Yeah, no problem, lol! Honestly, the calculator is a lifesaver for simpler math.
Yeah, the cost of living is really unfortunate! But yes, I'm a decent enough planner, and life is really very good otherwise. Whether or not I work until I die, any needless treasures that I don't spend in my lifetime will go to my nieces and nephews, so I gain either way.
Hahahaha, yesss! My eye doctor talked about that hand trick. She is so fun and I'm like her only patient with independent vision. With the hand thing, everybody's a little different, but the more cross-eyed one can go, the more detail they can glean, and some people have to switch to do so, while others like me just don't.
Sometimes I wonder what it's like to have both eyes looking in the same direction and seeing the same thing without my focus getting all weird. With reading, I tend to have my fixed eye one line ahead while the other follows along to construct the information. It's almost like double-reading, where I gloss over a sentence first, and then pass it again a second or two later to actually grasp the information. It's a comfy way to read.
I'm quite jealous of your boosted reading and tv watching powers. With my ADHD I have a hard enough time focusing on anything with supposedly two regular vision's eyes and supposedly normal auditory processing. I watch almost everything sub'd as much as I could because the attention deficit doesn't care about language fluency : and yeah I definitely can't dual focus on both details and text, often missing info even after rewatching.
Oh!!!? You know that demonstration attention clip about the people passing a basketball and then a surprise thing happens???? Did you get it the first time?!
I mean, I still get the most out of something by focusing my sole attention on it, but yeah ADHD is such a tough thing to have to deal with either way and I hope it doesn't keep you down too much!
Is that the one with the gorilla? Hahaha, yeah by having one eye stationary, it just walks right into view for me while I'm using my other eye to track the ball. Totally got it the first time without even realizing I wasn't necessarily supposed to notice.
That's so funny! We saw it back in psych class and it took me three tries to see the gorilla even after knowing something surprising happens because "oooh orange ball!" + [Mind wandered to an adjacent plane]
Hey, me too! When I was young I had a "lazy" eye, but rather than have surgery to fix it my parents opted to take me to vision therapy instead where I was taught to practice controlling that eye by following visual targets with it (e.g. a ball on a string or stick). And ever since then I've been able to control that eye independent of the other. Although I can only process what one eye is seeing at a time, unlike what you seem to be able to do by "seeing" out of both at the same time. I can quickly flip my brain's focus back and forth from one eye to the other, but trying to actually process what both eyes are seeing at the same time doesn't work for me unless they're aligned together.
And 35+ years later, after not really using the "skill" very often (other than as a party trick to freak people out ;) it's gradually gotten harder and harder to do. I really have to focus on the formerly lazy eye to control it enough to make it go completely off-center now, whereas when I was younger it was almost second nature.
Vision buddies! Yay! That's really cool. Yeah, sometimes it's almost the inverse for me; if I hyper-focus on a single object, I wind up trying to flip back and forth. The vast majority of people I've met don't really understand what it's like beyond trying to close one eye and then the other, but that's more jarring and doesn't capture the subtlety of switching.
I was born with my fixed eye permanently facing down, and it took several surgeries to bring it back up, so that may help explain some of the differences between your and my developments, but who knows? Because the muscles actually pull my fixed eye back in the socket, the bone grew in a bit around it. On x-rays you can see that the opening of that socket is actually a tiny bit smaller than the other, which is also weird and interesting. I learned to smirk with the opposite cheek to compensate for the illusion of difference in the size of my eyes (i.e. they're the same size, but different depths so it doesn't look it in photos unless I place my cheeks the right way).
Yeah, and it's really hard to explain the difference too. Unlike with closing one eye then alternating to the other, because both my eyes are still open it's more like I'm just suddenly more aware of what one eye is seeing but lose some of my awareness of what the other is. When the eyes are in alignment that slight awareness switching doesn't do much (unless one eye is blurry from it tearing up or something) other than it slightly changing the perspective on whatever I am looking at... The only thing I can compare that to is one of those stereoscopic gifs, which I can cause my vision to do without having to alternate closing my eyes. But when I have one eye pointing in a wildly different direction than the other, losing awareness of one eye actually makes it really hard for my brain to comprehend what that eye is actually seeing. Like, I'm intellectually aware of what it's seeing if I take a moment to think about it, but my brain can't immediately comprehend the image, or update its understanding with any new information from the eye I'm not currently focused on. I can still switch my focus back and forth between the two eyes, but that's really disorienting when my eyes are out of alignment, and takes my brain a brief moment to figure out what it's seeing from the eye I just switched my focus to when I do that.
Although it sounds like you don't suffer from that same issue? If so that's still pretty damn cool, and I wish I could do that. :P
Yeah, that stereoscopic gif nails it! You are so right!
Okay, so if you flatten your hand like a karate-chop, then place your thumb up to your nose and try to focus on the detail of your palm on one side, and the metacarpals on the other, you have to switch to focus the detail of either, correct? For me, it's a little bit different; I can focus on the details of my metacarpals with my fixed eye, while running my free eye up and down my palm. It's only when I try to account in the periphery fuzz in the middle that I start to break into switching. But if I don't try to "fill in" that boundary, I can freely process the two sides without issue. Right now, I'm sitting here like an idiot with my hand in my face, swirling my eye around, lol!
For the hand on nose thing my eyes are close enough in alignment that my brain actually doesn't have trouble parsing the details from both eyes at the same time even if I move one slightly out of alignment. The issue mostly arises for me when the eyes are more noticeably out of alignment. So if I hold both my hands up on the sides of my head, so that looking forward only one eye can see one hand each, I can do a slight reverse-cross-eyes thing to look at both hands more directly at the same time, but then my brain only wants to take in the details from one eye or the other, depending on which my awareness is focused on. And that detail blanking from the non-aware eye gets even worse with moving objects too. I can always tell something is moving in the field of vision of my unaware eye, but get virtually no details about it until I switch awareness to that eye, but then I lose the ability to notice details with the opposite eye.
LOL, yeah an outside observer would probably be super confused and weirded out if they were looking at me just now too. :P
Oh, I see, I see! With the hand thing, my fixed eye is completely fixed, so I can't actually cross it to look towards my hand, but it's close enough to see detail. My free eye can cross to look in or away, however.
To an extent, the farther apart two things are, the easier it is for me to track them simultaneously. I think you put it well in calling that a sort of reverse-cross-eye approach, but I don't have any problem tracking movement or gleaning detail for the most part. I retain a majority of the visual information, but the more disparate the intellectual tasks are, the harder it is to retain that intellectual information. Like, I can read and watch TV, but I either follow one story or the other, not both. I liken it to listening to a podcast while playing a game; when you relisten to that podcast, you can recall what you saw in the game, but you were focused on the information of the podcast rather than the game's story. Oh, but this does make watching things with subtitles a breeze since I can gobble up every corner of the visuals without taking an eye away from the words. Not really a super power, per se, there's just no switch of focus or strain in doing it for me.
Honestly, I think it's cool that your eyes can sync up! Brains are weird, right?!
Oh damn, now I'm REALLY jealous!!! I watch a lot of subtitled shows/movies, and I'm pretty good at still taking in the details of the video above the text while reading them. But I often do still miss some of that detail, especially when its a fast moving scene, since my focus needs to be far more on the subs part than video part for me to comprehend the text.
Isn't this like a mild super power?
In terms of having an intimate, undistracted, face-to-face conversation with someone, it's a bit of a curse. In terms of going to the supermarket, it makes little to no difference. In terms of cheating at old video games, for a time, I was genetically superior, lol!
Naw, this is a full on superpower
I can sing klingon language battle songs whilst juggling. A rarely useful talent.
If we ever organise a real-life tildes meetup, I'm ABSOLUTELY going to need to see this in person...
This implies that it is sometimes useful, and I'd really like to know what situation calls for this particular set of skills...
Once when I was at a trek convention. And that's it, really. And thinking about it further, I wouldn't say it was actually useful, more mildly entertaining, I suppose.
An effective distraction when exercising your bortaS DIb, so a few times per lifetime?
Do you wear a full on klingon costume and juggle razor sharp Bat'leth's?
I have pretty good subconscious time keeping, it's not really that useful. It's the kind of thing I'll set a timer for something like cooking and I'll not think about it, then it'll pop into my head like "it must be done about now" and hey, the alarm goes off.
It also means I tend to also sleep the right amount of time when I go to bed, even without an alarm.
I also have an uncanny ability to go down to check the washing machine like exactly 3 minutes before it's done every time, which makes me think it takes longer than it says on the display but whatever.
This is one of my odd talents too! I used to impress my housemates a lot by setting a timer on our smart speaker while cooking, forgetting about it entirely, and asking how long was left when I remembered. Almost always the answer was 'you have less than 10 seconds less on your timer'. Interestingly though, I am entirely incapable of doing this if I try. I always end up asking a few minutes too soon. It's a pretty rubbish party trick if I can only do it when I forget I can do it.
I put it down to doing a lot of cooking and being familiar with the times it takes for things to finish, but also probably receiving subliminal clues like the smell or sound of a pot boiling down to the right moisture level.
Yeah, snap! I was going to edit my post afterwards and add on that I also cannot do it on command. My ability to tell time consciously becomes remarkably ordinary when I think about it, but when I don't it's like almost to the second.
It's amazingly annoying when I forget about something incredibly unimportant like how long my tea has been brewing for, but when I'm trying to time travel or an meeting then wow, thanks brain, no help there!
So like "I have a girlfriend but you can't meet her she lives in Canada"? Just kidding :) am envious. I've ruined many a cup noodles by even setting a timer and not registering when way more than 3 minutes has passed.
Same, but I can (usually) even track time while asleep. It is almost always within 15 minutes even when wearing a blackout mask, but usually it's within 5 minutes. I also "feel" the time pass while I sleep.
I’m the exact same. You’re the first person I’ve come across who experiences this, not that I’ve mentioned it to many people.
I didn't for a long time, because I just thought it was normal. Then I heard someone describe normal sleep like "power off, pause, power on" and I was so confused. Then it turns out others were confused by my experience when I started sharing it. All the memes about, "sleep is like a free trial of death," really freaked me out when younger. I still can't imagine non-existence in a real way, because I'm never really "off," you know?
I think I know what you mean. Meditation helped me experience a depth of “off” that I’d never imagined. But, I’m very inconsistent with it: both in the habit and the results.
Curious. I've meditated before, but never had time loss...which is what it would feel like to me (I think). I had an appendectomy, and knew it went too long when waking up from anesthesia because I felt the time while I was out.
Oh I see. You meant “off” time wise and fairly exclusively - which was actually clear more that I reread your comment. I was thinking “off” as in switching off or not thinking. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, but it’s fascinating to me how different our perceptions are, and our impressions of life as a result.
Oh it's just "normal" for me. It was surprising when I found out that wasn't so for others!
That's actually something that happens. Washing machines adjust the timing based on the load.
Oh yeah I'm aware. I mean I don't really know how it works, but you'd think it'd not change by the same amount every time.
That said we've got quite an old machine that I'm consistently early too, but the newer dryer just makes up what time it takes because it decides the clothes are dry (they aren't) and stops.
Do you have any musical abilities? I’m similar to you and I’m wondering if there’s any correlation since keeping time internally is a useful skill that musicians have to train, implicitly or otherwise.
None what so ever. Infact, I'd argue I'm not very good at rhythm or anything muscially related at all!
I tried to play trumpet and piano when I was younger and ended up trying to remember the rhythm rather than go off instinct because I had zero lol. Not great!
This is a good data point! Human brains are so strange
For about a year or so I was into transcendental meditation and my meditation sessions were 20 minutes long. This was self timed and no alarm -- every so often peek at the clock and if you're not done, go back to meditating. After a few weeks of this I learned exactly what 20 minutes felt like, and also got much more efficient about doing stuff because I would know if I could accomplish a task (e.g. folding laundry, playing a game, etc) within that time.
Usually when I wake up in the dead of night, I somehow know the exact time give or take a few minutes. This is before I check the clock.
I don’t have that ability during the day but at night I always seem to have this feeling of confidence that the time I have in my mind is correct - and it is.
Like ape my ancestor, I do things with feet pretty good, open cabinet, close door, operate dishwasher, even kill shoulder height mosquito (enemy of my people).
I have no idea why I have that kind of balance. I never practiced any kind of related martial arts or sports and I barely even go for walks.
I'm gonna need a visual here please.
Like are you clapping mosquitos in between your feet in mid-air? Or stomping on them when they land on a wall? Roundhouse kicking someone when a mosquito lands on their shoulder? I'm imagining so many possibilities...
Only one foot at a time I'm afraid!
I don't know about shoulder height mosquitoes, but I'm pretty good at picking things up with my toes. I grew up with a friend who could pick up a tennis ball with his toes, which I have always regarded as the pinnacle of that particular art.
I remember reading a science fiction story when I was a kid where people that permanently lived in zero G had their feet surgically altered to be more prehensile, since they never had to walk on them. I've always been captivated by that idea.
And here I thought I was an absolute chad picking up my boxers and socks from the ground with my toes.
I can do the same! I was a dancer and gymnast in a past life (read from age 5-20), and learned foot control through those methods. it's been over a decade and I can still use my feed fairly well. I can also write my name with my left foot.
I type in English fairly quickly, testing around 140-150WPM on monkeytype. Nowhere near competitive speeds, but I know few people IRL who break 100WPM, so I feel alright about it, haha.
What the actual ... that's pretty insane. I feel smug about being able to go over 100 with good accuracy, but I don't think I've cracked 110. Anyway, thumbs up to you.
THe rteal power move is leavingh in all the tpypos
As a fellow fast typer, but not quite as fast (>90wpm with near perfect accuracy on a proctored/official test), I have one question-
How well do you type on a smartphone, specifically on a touch keyboard?
I feel like I suck at it and am constantly frustrated with the things that are supposed to make it easier. Autocorrect often just fights me, but if I go without it, it's still a challenge to correct errors. Some days I just give up and throw away tildes comments halfway through due to the struggle.
I'm up at 150wpm myself and have hated that aspect of smartphones since the beginning. It always feels like I have to speak excruciatingly slowly, and almost never say all of what I would like to. I cut a lot of corners.
It doesn't help that I use Google's keyboard to "glide" type, which has a ~ 70% accuracy. So every couple of words I have to go back and redo it; a problem I don't have when I'm typing on a keyboard.
I've been waiting for years for phones to somehow do better, but it seems like it's not a priority. I guess that makes sense.
Yeah, I've looked into a few potential solutions, but I'm unimpressed by what currently exists. I will say that I use an iPhone, and some of these options may actually exist in a better format for Android phones.
For a physical iPhone keyboard, if you want something actually attached to the phone, you have to buy a specific one that also becomes your case. This clicks keyboard case is the only option I know of. (It looks like they have some open box models for a bit cheaper, so maybe I should try it.) I've read that blackberry has a patent that still applies to this concept, so it's hard for anyone else to do it.
Apple now allows you to install custom software keyboards (which has been a thing for quite a while), but I've found all of them lock up or crash every so often, where the official one "works" the majority of the time. I was even considering finding a software keyboard that did T9 predictive, as I thought I could type faster with it back in the day, but that might just be nostalgia.
I remember my LG Doubleplay being a quirky and fun device, and I am pretty sure I could type reasonably well on it too.
(Including @Kirisame into this comment thread)
Wow, I haven't thought about that in forever... I remember the days when you had to ask people if they knew how to use predictive text! Man, my bones are creaking.
I never tried testing it before, but I just attempted a 30 second English Monkeytype test on my phone; Pixel 7 pro, no swiping.
73wpm, 92% accuracy (made a typo near the end and autocorrect doomed me, lol). I also feel very annoyed anytime I type on the phone, for basically the same reasons. Autocorrect is nice because most of the time it does help, but it's so much more noticeable and infuriating when it gets in your way... Even if you know that most of the time it's helping, not hindering (it helped me out with typos a good few times as I wrote this very reply).
And here I was all smug about 60ish lol that feels faster than stenographer speed (with their shorhands)
I think stenographers exceed speeds that even competitive typists can achieve (>200WPM)!
My talent is understanding bra sizes and spotting women wearing bad bras (size-wise). There are many vectors how this talent of mine is absolutely useless, I will list the most important pair of them: 1) I'm a man, 2) I'm married
I could give advice on spot, but how would it look if an unknown married man approached woman in a park and told her she has bad sized bra? I could count seconds before I got punched in my face or being arrested. What a shame, I could really give advice on that. At least my wife profits from that (she hates me when she tries a bra for milionth time).
EDIT: A few female friends of mine know about this talent of mine. One of them came with idea we should open underwear shop together - she would be the one doing accounting and image of the shop while I would be the genius who can give advice to shopping women. She would basically make it legit as I don't believe that many women would come into underwear shop where there is only a man behind the counter.
I can say the alphabet backwards! I sung in choir in high school. We would sing scales with the alphabet forwards. Then my teacher started having us sing it backwards a few letters at a time. Over a few months, we started doing it all backwards. Now I can say it all backwards without having to sing it.
♪ Now I know my z - y - x'es. Next time let's all walk to Texas ♪
Are some of your exes in Texas? ;)
This thread of odd flexes really perplexes
I learned my alphabet backward at my first job just to pass the time. I can say them equally fast, backward and forward.
I fall asleep pretty easily*. If I feel disciplined enough to put down and phone and curl up a bit, I can readily get some solid sleep fairly quickly (? 5 min? ) Handy for travel esp flying red eye. Down side is if I'm chatting with my partner while going to bed, if there's a slight lull and he says something else, I'd startle awake, so I don't make a very good conversation companion at bed time.
can be blocked by illness, anxiety about the next day, moving air across my face, flashing lights, loud bass music, sudden loud bang etc
Completely jealous of you. There's a strong argument to be made that my life has been moulded around the precise needs of my body to be able to fall asleep, I have such a tough time with it: a big enough bedroom for 2 beds because I can't share; a home in a place quiet enough i won't anticipate sounds; that kind of thing.
When travelling, I've found myself curling up in unusual spaces (empty hallways, closets, vehicles) when the more 'proper' sleeping space couldn't meet my fall-sleep requirements. But mostly I just accept sleep deprivation.
It's wild how much of a spectrum sleep can be! My older sister had terrible trouble falling asleep, but when she did, she slept hard and was almost impossible to wake.
With regards to even anxiety getting in the way of sleep, it's always those pesky little things that ruin a good super power.
Yeah it drives me insane when it happens! I had an important appointment I was stressed out about and I definitely needed to be alert for the long drive. And my brain was like, yeah I'm too stressed out to sleep, and I'm like WHAT but we NEED to sleep don't be crazy! And then the meta anxiety of not being able to sleep when I need to sleep!
Thankfully it can be mitigated (1) if someone else in charge of waking me up (2) it's not first thing in the morning (3) background normal anxiety is fine. Sleep is a handy escape.
Oh sleep is the best! Cats seem to have it all figured out in that regard, hahaha. But my mom definitely wishes she could nap on a plane the way you can.
Ooh, thinking about the anxiety-loop, I just thought of a senryu that would have been really good for that haiku thread the other day:
*snaps fingers in appreciation
Wait holup can you sleep with one eye open?
Sometimes I sleep with my mouth open, but no I can't sleep with any eyes open. Have you ever done that, that you know of?
Reportedly my eyelids don't close all the way but I lose consciousness pretty quickly and never noticed, myself. Mouth not open. Does your mouth feel all dry when you wake up?
Ugh, the dryness is the worst! Thankfully it doesn't happen to me all that often, but when it does, it's very unpleasant and my whole throat dries up to the point of coughing.
That's so interesting about your eyes not closing all the way! I had a friend in school whose eye-lids did that. It never seemed to affect his sleep, and as I recall, that's just how the muscles around his eyes relaxed.
Maybe that's related to the good sleep: even my eyelids totally chill out and call it a day (night)
I'm the same. I can sleep almost immediately even under the effect of stimulants, and sleep through the night. What ruins it is the bed talk when I'm in the process of falling asleep.
I'm unfortunately currently not in the habit of meditating, but when I have practice anxiety doesn't stop me either. I struggle more with waking up at night, and getting agitated about things like the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
Five minutes! I'm pretty jealous, though I suppose my trouble getting to sleep is probably linked to my lack of discipline with the phone...
I can make my pupils vibrate really fast. Absolutely useless and disorienting but fun party trick.
I can also half swallow things so they they're fully out of my mouth and then regurgitate them. I used to do it with gum in school when I got caught with it.
I also have the pupil thing.
At the local kids science center, they have a couple of LED strips that flash very fast and if you rock a mirror back and forth to view the LED strip you can make out a picture. Or you can just look at them while doing the pupil thing.
Occasionally aa parent who has never been there before will be trying to figure out how the exhibit works, and I explain to look at it through the mirror to see a clock/bird/spider/whatever (it changes every few seconds). Then they look even more confused when I just look at the solid red strip of lights and say that it is currently a spider or whatever.
Not so useless after all!
Confused patrons ask you a question, becomes even more confused
The whole point of the science center is to evoke wonder and make people ask questions, right?
I also don't work there, so I am allowed to make the world a more confusing place.
Me too! Apparently around 8% can control the muscle needed for the eye shake, so there’s that.
So....is strobe lights just regular lights for you?
That's a good question! I've never tried.
I thought of another one. I have a pretty decent internal compass. I can usually say what direction north is within a handful of degrees. I am very rarely wrong, no matter how lost I am otherwise. I am currently on a high speed train going generally north, so it’s not super difficult, but I was only off by about 5 degrees. And no, it wasn’t just the direction of travel. The train was going NEN at the time.
That's quite cool! More relative, but I'd say I'm very good at getting back to original point A from point B without really having to think about it, whether I've been wandering a big foreign city all day or in trails/backcountry*.
Maybe this isn't a special skill worth mentioning, but also I've known people who struggle with relative space.
*though, of course I'm safe outdoors and use maps/gps!
To get back, do you have to backtrack? Or can you get back without having to backtrack? Even just being able to backtrack is impressive, but if you can go directly, that is even more impressive.
I gotta say I am pretty jealous. My internal compass is quite useful, but it doesn’t help that much for backtracking.
I'm usually pretty good at keeping myself oriented, so i can sort out which general direction I should be heading. But, when I don't want to think about it or if I've found myself turned around in terms of relative orientation, simply backtracking is definitely the more foolproof 'brain-off, feet-move" method that works for me.
No, it's useful and not universal. plenty of people get lost inside a mall or can't find their car in the lot or can't find a classroom they've been to every day for a while semester.
Do things like tall buildings and dense cities affect this at all for you? My partner has a crazy good internal compass as well, but too many skyscrapers blunt the signal a bit.
Honestly, not really for me. The worst for me is probably being underground. Even still, I am usually pretty good even after being underground for a bit. I don't remember feeling disoriented after the Paris Catacombs tour, which is a long underground walking path where you exit in a different place than you enter. Underground combined with smoothly curving trails is probably the worst. Taking underground metro trains can throw me off pretty reliably, until I get familiar with the train lines.
I can read text which is upside-down or mirrored.
For mirrored text, not only is this natural-feeling, but if there's not "un-mirrored" text around to compare to, I'm likely not to notice. Since it's generally assumed that this sort of text is essentially illegible, this can have some surprising consequences (like trying to pull on the "push" side of a glass door because I'm reading the label on the opposite side).
I have this, but not quite to the level you’re talking about. I almost always notice, and for anything longer than a single sentence it’s noticeably slower for me to read it, but it’s not particularly challenging.
Very occasionally useful in restaurants if they only have one menu at the table — I’ll just let the other person read it the normal way up, and I’ll (slowly) read the menu completely upside down.
I’ve often wondered if my ability to easily read mirrored or upside down text has anything to do with the fact that I really struggle with “left versus right” and “east versus west” — I don’t have any difficulty with larger spatial awareness or orientation, but when it comes to translating the internal direction of “that way” into “okay now I have to pick one of the words, either the word Left or the word Right” I’m incredibly inconsistent at picking the correct word for the situation.
If we’re exclusively using words, I’m fine. If we’re exclusively using pointing and gestures, I’m fine. It’s the transition from the real actual direction to the word, or the word into the direction, that’s where I stumble so often.
This is very interesting to me because I have the same issue in a different flavor. I have never struggled with left/right at all but have no intuition with east/west and it takes a lot of time and mental thought to figure out the right one to use. I always thought this was directly linked with having perfectly fine relative understanding of direction but no intuition with absolute positioning. But it sounds like you're the same as me from an intuition standpoint but different in mapping those to language so now you're making me rethink this.
Another possible point to explore — if you have issues with east/west, do you also have issues with north/south? So I guess is this a general issue with cardinality, or is it specifically only east/west that trips you up?
I suspect part of why I have trouble with east/west is that I’ve mentally tried to link them with left/right, but because left/right isn’t well anchored either, they all become unstuck.
Specifically east/west. Never had any issue with north/south. The more I think about it the stranger it is.
So mirrored + upside down text is merely flipped one way for you? Or is that read normal as well?
I'm not sure I've ever seen that in the wild. Playing a bit with an image editor, it takes some effort to read, so I guess closer to "merely flipped one way".
ꓷ: ʜɈod ƨwoʜƨ Ɉi ɘяɘʜw moɔ.ɈxɘTяυoYqilᖷ bɘllɒɔ ɘɈiƨ ƨiʜɈ bnυoʇ I
lol niarb ym gnitruh s'tI ?gnikrow ti sI
Same! If I hold a world record in anything it's number of times one person has put on undies backwards after checking / reading the brand on the waistband.
Look at the bright side, putting your clothes on the wrong way is a ward against the evil eye ;)
If I hear any song three times, I will have it memorized. Forever. This was in fact useful in high school marching band, so I never had to bother marching with sheet music--and in fact saved lots of time throughout my musical endeavors. However it comes with a pretty steep price. All of the theme songs to all of the stupid shows I've ever watched, and worse, all of the commercial jingles I heard three times are NEVER GOING AWAY. They are constantly popping into my thoughts, triggered by the slightest tangential cue. I fear my final flutter of consciousness before passing on will be the lilt of "If you think it's butter--but it's not! It's Chiffon!"
Wait, I have that one too, but that's not a useless talent! It's so good for karaoke!
May I recommend progressive rock to drown out the jingles? The more weird and convoluted, the better.
I wish it were s easy-- I have no control of the songs that bubble up. I find just letting them play through is better than trying to suppress them--like not thinking about elephants.
I fall down exceptionally well.
When I was six, I took judo for several years. One of the first things you learn is how to hit the ground without hurting yourself. Keeping your head up and chin tucked is the most crucial part, but shoulder rolls and break falls are also important. In the Japanese tradition, a martial artist who rolls well is said to have good Akemi.
This skill has literally saved my life several times and also made me a much better physical comedian in my youth with some spectacular prat falls to my credit.
In my 50s now, I’ve learned how important it is to keep learning new things, have the beginners mindset, and be humble. So when an ex MMA friend invited me to join his gym a few years ago, I jumped at the chance.
There I was, the oldest, smallest, and least experienced fighter on the mat. But I convinced everyone I knew how to take a fall and they wouldn’t hurt me. So for a couple years I worked on my beginners mind by having these brutes throw me against the floor for an hour.
My superpower is having absurdly strong, borderline unbreakable nails, even without taking any steps for their health.
My nails grow pretty fast, end up absurdly long, are pretty thick, are so healthy they're pretty translucent, and are flexible enough that they never break during any physical impact, no matter what I do to them. Hell, it's more likely I fuck up my nailbed than my actual nails.
Funny thing is both of my biological parents have pretty weak nails. One of them always has them breaking vertically and the other one's break horizontally.
Hell, it's hard to even cut them with a nailclipper sometimes.
I'm jealous. My nails are so weak and it sucks so much. Feels like every little thing breaks them. According to women I lucked out with eyelashes, but I'd rather have something useful like this rather than the privilege of my blinks hitting my sunglasses.
Men actually generally have longer eyelashes than women! Testosterone promotes eyelash growth, which is why it's not all that uncommon for some guys to start getting compliments on their eyelashes from girls around high school. Lots of trans men have apparently also observed their eyelashes getting longer after being on T.
Considering how testosterone is highly involved in hair growth (& maturation) that does make plenty of sense. But weirdly enough, I've experienced the same thing in the opposite way...?
My (already pretty large and thick) eyelashes got even larger and thicker when I started running on estradiol, thereby exhibiting the same behaviour albeit with almost 0 bioavailable testosterone in my system.
I've heard an explanation that it's actually something that testosterone gets processed into, which might be something in your system as well? Or it could be that there are two different things at play. But that's way above my paygrade when it comes to this stuff lol
Technically yeah, testosterone's direct metabolite, dihydrotestosterone (via 5α-reductase type 2) has the most direct impact for hair. It's directly related to the virilisation of hair and for example is the hormone responsible for androgenic alopecia.
It might also be produced via androstenedione (again via 5α reduction, but through androstanedione), or, if you're susceptible to the "backdoor pathway", it might be created in significant concentrations via progesterone's further metabolites (17OH-progesterone, dihydroprogesterone, allopregnanolones...) converting into androgens that eventually metabolise into dihydrotestosterone. But most people, the primary contributor to DHT synthesis is testosterone, generally - with 5-20% of testosterone (depending on how active your 5α-reductase is) gets metabolised into DHT. Estradiol & other estrogens cannot really convert into DHT as the aromatisation of androgens into estrogens is an one-way process.
Considering the pathways for DHT synthesis, I do not actually have significant levels in any of the hormones required for its synthesis, and on top of that I take 5α-reductase inhibitors to further decrease the concentration of any remaining DHT in my body, so in principle my DHT should be practically nonexistent, too 😅
Edit: My assumption is that it's either something related to genetics or something related to estradiol's effects on the hair growth cycle, paired with the higher-than-average estradiol levels often aimed for in transfeminine HRT to improve the suppression of testosterone (if on an antiandrogen) or to fully suppress testosterone (if on monotherapy)
I'm familiar with DHT's existence and broadly its effects but the random comment about eyelashes being affected by a hormone downstream from testosterone wasn't talking about DHT and seemed to be implying an effect that was separate from the effect on other hair growth. But they also weren't much more specific than that tbqh, so I should probably take it with a whole shaker of salt.
Hm, no clue in that case... The only direct metabolites of testosterone I'm aware of are estradiol, DHT, and (technically) androstenedione - and for the latter, the reference ranges overlap regardless of natal sex, so that should exclude it from consideration as well. And of course, it shouldn't be just estradiol either, as it would imply the opposite of what the general observation seems to be.
My only guess in that case would be that the comment might be referring to testosterone interacting with prostaglandin production, e.g. raising PGE2 or PGF2α or lowering PGD2 in that specific tissue, thereby extending the anagen phase, rather than testosterone being metabolised into another steroid hormone, but then again, estradiol can affect the anagen phase too so we might as well back to square one...
Interesting point though. I'll comment back here if I ever see any worthwhile data/studies about what else could be the culprit.
I think they may have argued it was estradiol actually? which is... confusing, since that doesn't really seem like a super convincing explanation for trans men growing longer eyelashes. But as I said, this is all well above my level of knowledge lol
Oh yeah, that'd definitely even more confusing 😅
My partner was also like that and her doctor recommended trying out omega-3 supplements with some specific concentration or some shit and that did make her situation noticeably better.
Can't guarantee it'd do anything for your case, but I can ask her for info if you'd like.
That's a superpower, eyelashes hitting sunglasses. And lab goggles. And ski goggles. And swim goggles. But if your usual make up routine (guessing "none") doesn't include wanting to have long curly lashes, then yeah that's kind of weak sauce
Does whistling songs count? Cuz yeah, that. Been whistling since I was a kid and always thought to myself 'damn, really wish society valued good whistling more'. If I could play any instrument half as well as I can whistle I'd probably do that for a living.
Same here. I can whistle just about anything and I have a pretty decent pitch range, too. Sadly the only "whistling song" that anyone seems to know these days is that one song from Deadly Premonition, and that's fading pretty fast.
What about the Kill Bill whistle song?
Quite easily.
What about Big Enough, that song about a giant Jimmy Barnes screaming over the mountains? (If it’s your first time coming across this song, I strongly recommend the music video)
Six minutes? Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Are you talking about the opening or mid whistling? That’s so processed with reverb I can barely tell what the structure is. The second song at the end, though, would be tough. It would take a bit of practice because of the surprisingly complex melody but I think I could do it.
Edit: I just tried to record some of my whistling. Now I understand the need for processing….
Oh yeah that’s one thing I know about whistling — there’s a lot of turbulence involved, and probably some pretty intense changes in pressure, and it’s basically controlled blowing, so you can’t whistle directly onto/into a microphone from close by. I’ve had some success basically whistling past (or even pointing away from) a microphone in the past?
Same! I learned to whistle breathing in as a kid, didn't learn to whistle breathing out until an adult...then I learned to tone match the two, so I can whistle an arbitrarily long time just by alternating which way it goes without need for a breath break. Honestly, my lips begin to spasm after a minute or so of constant whistles, so that's the limitation.
My tongue is capable of moving behind my soft palate, which is apparently not common. I can touch my mucous membrane and even pull out phlegm directly from my nostrils.
I used to frequently do it mindlessly and end up becoming sore up there. But when I need to spit phlegm, I don't need to do the gross cowboy noise. You know the one.
This is gross, but useful, but eww. I must admit, though, that in the depths of a horrid cold I've wished I could clear out that whole system quickly (à la these dudes).
Now that's some skill not many people have!
Same! It kills me when I get hay-fever and it's super itchy back there. I do more damage than good and it drives me insane.
Funny voices is one thing. If I end up within a new group, have been there for a while, and feel comfortable, I like to throw out a voice message with a very weird high-pitched voice you would not expect to come from me.
The 'what the hell was that RaspCoffee?'-esque replies are glorious.
That's the type of thing that would make me laugh my ass off. Making others smile in a unique way is a useful talent! :)
Remarkably useless, but I can pop my left thumb out of alignment in the same way some double jointed people can pop their shoulders out. I can only do it with my left thumb and I can't do it with any other body part. The only use for it I've found it giving my wife the heebie-jeebies.
Some days I get to hallucinate for free.
Can you turn this ability off when you don't want it? At least you'd never be bored I guess
Two things: one, I can clap really loud, and two,
Alpha bravo charlie delta Echo foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kayla lima mike November Oscar papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango uniform Victor whiskey x-ray Yankee Zulu
Off the top of my head, voice to text, one breath. Obviously it's Kilo, not Kayla, but google can't transcribe everything perfectly
That's very cool. I can do similar with the Greek alphabet but I never learned the phonetic one.
That alphabet is so useful, though, especially if giving info over the phone. I always forget the correct words for each letter, and just make up random ones. Sometimes the words I think of on the fly are no more helpful in clarifying which letter I'm trying to say than the letter itself (like.. M as in Matt, or N as in Nat?)
I can say (and also type) the alphabet backwards EXTREMELY quickly
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
just now, to verify i got it right (I'm on laptop so I'm slower), i read it back in ZYX order, that's enough
I have several useless talents!
I can name the components of smells and tastes, because reasons.
Perfect relative pitch and tonal memory, which are more of a curse than a talent unless you have a guitar to tune. I guess it's supposed to be related to mathematical talent. While I'm capable enough at higher math, I didn't have a passion for anything besides probability and statistics.
I can grow most foods on a very, very small scale. You want fancy tomatoes, I can make that happen, one or two plants at a time. Exotic super hot peppers? Here's your bottle of extremely hot sauce... singular. I had two bushes of Nanking cherries this year - enough for exactly one pint of jelly.
I once had the smallest legible handwriting of any person I've ever seen. 1 mm high capital letters, entire semesters' worth of notes that require a magnifying glass.
It's official - we have a ton of whistling talent in here and need to hold some kind of Tildes whistle-off.
Edit: contestants will be know an Tistlers.
I can croak, like a frog. It's super easy, at least in my opinion, but everyone apparently does not agree.
I close my teeth and lips and basically draw a vacuum in the back part of your mouth/top of your throat. Once you've done that, try to drop your jaw. Breaking the vacuum is what causes the noise.
There are so many cool sounds and voices from their thread! Can you record it?! I'm amazed by the cheek flick water droplet trick that others can do as well.
Here is hopefully a recording of my croaking.
The cheek/underchin flick for a water droplet I can do, but not with any regularlity. Would need more practice.
You forgot the h in the https:// so your markdown link is broken. FTFY:
I fixed the link! But thank you for posting this too!
Oooh!! I heard it!! (Your link was missing an "h" for http) you'd fit right into my back pond!
I can do the wave with my eyebrows. I'm not sure how I learned, but I must have been quite young, as I remember being in 2nd or 3rd grade and having my sister gather her friends around at recess to have me show them.
My special talent is also whistling-related (it seemed to come up a few times in this thread!) but what I might lack in professional level skill, I make up for in variety.
I can whistle:
The last one with two notes that are harmonised are actually really difficult to sustain because I think if the ratio of resonance isn’t just right, the air pressure/turbulence/whatever from each of them interferes with the other, so they usually fight for which note is happening. Getting two at the same time this way is kinda rare.
I'm really good at picking things up with my toes. It saves my lazy ass from having to bend over to grab whatever I just dropped.
To the horror of friends, family, and casual acquaintances, I can quickly, repeatedly, and infinitely crack my knuckles by closing my hands over and over. The rest of my body, while not cracking infinitely like my knuckles, also cracks loudly like a glowstick (back, neck, jaw, shoulders, knees, ankles). Can be used to disorient people I have just met.
If thrown in an arch, I can catch pretty much anything with my mouth.
Started when I was young, practicing throwing up M&Ms and catching them with my mouth.
Now I am able to catch anything thrown at me from the other side of the room as long as it fits in my mouth.
That, and I can turn my tongue upside down.
Wiggling my ears. All the men in my family for at least the last 3 generations on my dad's side have been able to do it. It's not totally useless though because my kids found it funny when they were really little.
Aw, ear wiggling died with my Grandpa. =( Neither my dad nor I can do it.
I can make a weird kinda sorta dolphin/monkey noise. Even with my mouth closed
I'm hypermobile and hyperflexible so I can unhinge my jaw and fit my entire fist in my mouth. Entirely useless except to terrify almost everyone who's seen it, and I can fall into a split without warming up in left foot in front, and right foot in front splits as well as a full side split. I used to be able to get both of my feet behind my head, though my weight gain from my chronic illnesses has stopped that for me. If I can lose about 30 more pounds, I'll be able to do it again. My bones also pop out of alignment really easily, and I can play with my patella without ruining my knee. I'm basically Gumby or the wild wacky inflatable guy.
I can also accurately measure volume with just my hands. If you need a 1/4-1c of anything, can grab the exact amount on the first try. Mostly useless, except when I'm baking, and the recipe doesn't come in metric which is the only way I bake, even as an American (yes, I'm a heathen).
I guess I'm also part of the Tildes whistling club? I can whistle melodies fairly well. Even though my entire life growing up was musical between dance, playing piano, and being in band, I have a hard time telling if I'm on the right key/note without guidance from someone else. So I can whistle anything if someone guides my key.