No political posturing.
Driving without touching my phone.
Every damn person every damn day. It’s a sickness
So close to an upvote until I saw it said phone.
WHAT DID YOU THINK IT WAS???
I genuinely do not know
Penis
Navigating UIs on PCs, Smartphones, Ticket Machines etc.
Reading UIs is definitely a skill, I can navigate most menus regardless of language. But it makes it harder to design stuff for the average user.
Popping their ears. I can “pop” my ears by opening my eustachian tubes on demand. I can even hold them open if I want to. Apparently a lot of people can’t do that.
I can do this too. It feels like I’m trying to flex my jaw muscles downwards. And makes that satisfying crackling noise when they open up.
I can also do this but it feels like I’m flexing them outwards, not down. Weird!
Ear rumbling!
Do you know people who can’t do this? Seems pretty common.
TIL there are people who can’t do this
Same; can you also, by any chance, wiggle them?
I can pop them also! Which is good because I need to do it frequently because of sinus problems ‘clogging’ them.
That right there is a skill I learned. When I was a teenager I got these terrible sinus headaches, driving up and down hill would get me. Then I went to flight school. I can control the pressures in my head pretty precisely now.
I can do this but it makes me yawn
I can only do it by yawning, funnily enough
Holy shit, I can do that too. I noticed just now because of your comment.
Thank you for unlocking my new power.
Basic hygiene, sadly
Explaining difficult technical concepts to laypeople. Just gotta find the correct analogy.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough.
That’s one of my favorite sayings.
The problem is that people who are subject matter experts in a field tend to over estimate the amount of knowledge a layperson has about their field.
With the caveat that a simple explanation stipulates a basic understanding of the topic at hand. I could explain the concept of First Break Positioning to anyone, but it’s gonna take a while unless they have a basic understanding of how a seismic survey works.
I am grateful and envious: I would love to have the same ability. Stuff is crystal clear in my mind, and I still hardly can transform it into something someone else can parse… analogies are great, but finding the correct one is often beyond me
I’m not a fan of analogies. They can be very condescending and convoluted and I find I dont learn much from them. I dont think there are any shortcuts to learning in that way really.
I find most the times the issue I have with someone teaching me something is that they are treating it as a one sided communication. If the person teaching won’t learn about the student, they end up assuming a lot of things and that is what breaks understanding.
Analogies are nice when the purpose isn’t to really learn but to socialize, though. Its more a way for people to acknowledge each other and show respect for the things we are interested in. Its a mutual thing in that way.
I excelled at tech support with this skill. I can quickly figure a person’s technical ability. If you talk below them, they’re insulted. If you talk over them, they’re insulted. Gotta hit 'em where they live.
I have this but explaining business situations with analogies to history
Being able to see through fake people’s masks. Like, people who appear nice and friendly on the surface, but are narcissistic snakes who will destroy you to benefit themselves. The people who everyone will swear “oh, they aren’t like that.”
It’s so obvious to my wife and I, possibly because we’re on the spectrum, but no one else sees it until one of us lays out all the supporting evidence that they are in fact like that.
It’s the dead eyes. Every photo of Mr. Beast has them.
In my case I just feel like I have a strong intuition about there being something off about someone. Usually I can’t even put my finger on what it is exactly yet I seem to often be right.
I grew ip with a narcissistic mother and I can spot those people, too. Sometimes others don’t believe me someone is bad news until month later when they get screwed by that person. I’m always baffled how people fall for the obviously fake niceness.
Doing basic research on the people I vote for.
Spotting fake BS on the internet. It just seems so obvious to me when someone is making up a story for clout, or to plug a GoFundMe scam, or to push an obvious narrative of hate toward a group of people. And then I go into the comments and want to fucking scream.
And then, when you point out that something is fake, half the time people get all defensive about it. “Who cares? It’s still a good story” or “Well, it might be fake THIS time, but I can imagine people actually doing this, so I’m going to internalize this as more proof for my biases.”
I don’t get it, how is it so hard for people to spot? Like, yea, there’s the occasional one that’s done so well that it’s easy to fall for, but 99% of these kinds of posts and videos are so blatantly fake that I worry about the level of critical thinking skills the average person has. I thought the explosion of AI shit would make people be a bit more skeptical with the things they read and watch, but it feels like it’s going the other direction.
Two things to keep in mind here.
Firstly, the toupee fallacy: all toupees look fake. You may be able to spot all bad toupees but the good ones fly under your radar and thus you can’t ever know how good you’re actually at spotting them.
Also the assumption-as-fact bias. You think a story is false but did you ever get confirmation that you were right or are you treating your assumption as a fact?
Yeah, this is just confirmation bias at work. Nobody is immune to propaganda, because our brains are biologically hardwired to initially reject data that contradicts our worldview.
They are stupid and take everything at face value and their brain things the world is as it appears. They think marketing is real.
You are skeptical. The other thing is skepticism… is mental work… and most people are incredibly lazy mentally.
There are levels of utility to identifying such things though. Like the amI<insert adjective> subreddits, in fact who gives a shit if that’s made up? Its entertaining. But for news, yes, critical thought is useful.
The thing is, on places like AITA, those made up posts may seem benign and just entertaining, but I encourage you to look with a more critical eye. Well over half the time, there is usually someone in the story specifically acting unreasonable or idiotic or “bad” in some way or form, and they tend to belong to some group or another that the poster is relying on biases of to try and make more convincing. It’s not usually minorities exactly, but things like bosses, or in-laws, or tourists, or women in general. Just some group that people often have preconceived biases against. And then people read the made up story and go “Yea, those people really ARE like that!” and even though it’s completely fake, there is now mental support for those biases; and the world gets just a tiny bit more unfriendly and a tiny bit more isolating.
Another common defense I see is “the same thing happens in all forms of fiction, but I don’t see you complaining about movies or books!” which completely ignores that other forms of fiction aren’t trying to pass themselves off as something that actually, really happened, for real; with real people, that actually exist and act like that. And that’s the difference between telling a story for entertainment, and just fucking lying.
Embracing the chaos.
Not everything works out, not everything goes to plan. Routines will be disrupted.My job in a nutshell. Not a bad job, per se, but I’m the kind of employee who get paid handsomely to show up at weird corners of the world to make stuff work with whatever resources I can muster. Planning ahead can only get you so far.
Your “everyday carry” must be amazing! 😀
In my work backpack, off the top of my head:
20Ah USB battery.
Laptop with charger.
A multi-tool. (Goes into checked bag when flying)
Laptop with charger.
Console cables for various routers and switches.
A thick syringe needle with enclosure (excellent for those tiny reset buttons)
USB serial adapter.
Misc USB cables.
A Ziplock bag of all sorts of SFP modules.
A spare PCIe network card (SFP ports)
A microSD card with SD adapter.
A Linux live USB.
A general purpose USB with nothing in particular on it.
A spare SIM
Passport.
Seaman books from two countries
TWIC.
A plastic fork.
Cup noodles (because arriving hungry late when every eatery has closed sucks)
An extra pair of socks.EDIT: Forgot power adapters for plugging into US and UK outlets. And a few zip ties.
… and I suspect no small amount of experience in that backpack as well :)
A TWIC? You must really need to deal with chaos.
Only reason why I’ve been to Mississippi was to file the paperwork for that TWIC. I happened to be in Mobile AL for a couple of weeks, and Gulfport happened to have a slot, so I drove there.
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Being isolated. It’s always confused me how much people complain about loneliness. I genuinely don’t think I have ever felt that emotion before.
There is a tv show called 60 days in. It’s about sending people into these US shithole prisions without anyone knowing that they don’t belong. The idea is to figure out what goes wrong and where drugs come from and so on. Anyway, they always talk about solidarity confinement and how bad it is. Like the biggest and baddest dude is worried about getting into “the hole” Then there was this one guy who was on the show who got into solitary confinement and enjoyed the shit out of it. He would get in trouble again and not do anything to get out of the hole.
I always felt like this guy.
Solitary confinement is torture. That guy just felt it to be less torturous than being with the general population. Which is quite a commentary on the horrors of the prison environment when you think about it.
i feel it when I’m in a group of people who I find alienating and miserable to be around. or after breakups briefly.
i recently had to quit a group i’d been a part of for years… because the new members were really petty and vindictive people and being around such people is awful. they’d sit around after activities and just talk shit and mock people, it was disgusting.
Holy shit that was kind of my old friend group. Every time we hung out it was just shitting on people that weren’t there. At some point i realised that they shit on me too when i’m not there and felt less and less the desire to hang out with them.
yeah 100%. it was depressing af. the OG people in this group were nothing like that. They were… interested in the actual activity… not pretending to be into so they could socialize and talk shit and spread gossip.
all the OG people left because they started families. the people who were shitty… were perpetually single.
With age, I have become more introverted also. I guess i havent met that many amazing people. But ive been working in offices a lot, so probably why.
Not being on my phone at work.
I yelled at a coworker once for this. He was kind of a slacker, and known as such. One day I was to be teaching him my line (plastic extrusion and slitting). It was a tough product and the blade box was shit and wrapped. It’s a tense moment, we have to fix it quickly and do a restart, there is so much to do, and it’s a giant pain in the ass.
I go to grab a tool, and like, be on your phone when things are good, I don’t care, but it takes two to run this shit. I come back and he’s still just staring at his phone, Facebook of all places, instead of fucking helping clear the wrap and prep the line. I yelled at him to go sit down if he wants to be on his phone as now he’s in my way. I told him to get tf off my line if he wanted to play gossip on Facebook.
The only lady in my department, I don’t think anyone spoke to him like that before. He put his phone away the rest of the shift and I avoided working with him again. This dude worked there longer than I did, knew less than I did, and got paid more. Fuck outta here.
Manufacturing is an attractive environment for that type of person. The guys who skate by doing the absolute bare minimum and keep the job because finding new people is hard. They never excel, never rise above “machine operator 2” or whatever grade allows them to work the coil line with the least physical interaction possible. Every year or so they’ll be caught on their phone by the wrong person or at the wrong time and the company will issue it’s cell phone usage policy again, reminding everyone to keep the phones away until break time. And then for a few weeks bathroom stalls will be in short supply because 5 versions of that guy just can’t be bothered to actually do their job.
Then the crunch will come, overtime will be posted and that dipshit will volunteer every fucking weekend.
Yupppp
Computers just work around me. Steady the software and programs. I’m not in the tech or it field. I’m in retail management.
The amount of times people call me over only to say “well now it’s working but before it took me to some other screen”
“Glad I could help”
My husband is this way. I take advantage of it regularly. I used to consider myself tech savvy but I went into the arts and the tech world left me behind. I used to try and muddle through it, but eventually I just stopped trying because I’d be doing everything “right” without success and then my husband would look over my shoulder and suddenly it would work. So now I swallow my pride and ask him sooner.
Spatial awareness.
I was in gymnastics as a kid, so built up a strong sense of balance and where my arms and legs are in relation to the stuff around me.
Are you also good at catching stuff that falls without ever looking?
No. Most of the time I just bat it into the air, higher than it originally fell from, thus exacerbating the situation…
I do occasionally “pin” something to the wall/table/storage apparatus with my hand. That’s about as good as it gets though :/
“I bet you’re also good at x”
“Oh nah not that, especially not that”
That candidness was charming lol. Fellow gymnast. What the other person was talking about is another spatial reasoning skill that often coexists with yours. As it pertains to external objects and their trajectories, you see it more in athletes who played sports involving a ball. Humans are neat.
Yeah, I forgot what the sense was called, awareness of your limbs in relation to your body and balance, the sense that gets all wobbly with alcohol; hence, the close-your-eyes-and-touch-your-nose test. I’m 40 and still walk on curbs like they are balance beams. Favorite was the rings, the closest thing I can get to flying without also becoming motion sick :/
You throw me a ball, I’ll prevent it from hitting me, but forget intercepting the things with any grace or plan. Me trying out for tennis in middle school was basically mini dodge ball.
Hey rings were my favorite too! Followed by pommel horse and anything with a foam pit at the end. Almost made floor work worth it lol.
Totally, I think most people can train motor, reflex, and spatial reasoning skills and learn all kinds of sports, well past 40 since the brain and peripheral nervous system remains remarkably plastic into old age, but it’s pretty cool to have something your body has known since childhood that sticks around and helps you out day-to-day :)
Due to waaaay to much hackysack in my youth, I’m very adept at catching things with my foot. Phones, empty mugs, that sort of things.
I partner dance and I joke that I’m graceful as long as I have on dance shoes. Off the dance floor I’m always bumping into things, knocking stuff over, just generally klutzy seeming. On the dance floor I’m able to navigate the crowd and prevent collisions.
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I was in my 40s until I admitted to my self that spatial awareness simply doesn’t work in my brain. My young friend across the street is excellent and I often have to call him over to assemble something I’ve taken apart. In fact, I’m going to hit him up to help me reassemble a shed. Used, it came with no directions and no way in hell do I figure out how it goes together. And I took it apart!
In elementary school standard tests I’d excel at every subject except spatial reasoning. I’d try! But no, I have no idea how those shapes rotate to make the shape wanted.
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Spatial awareness/reasoning. How far things are, where are we relative to this landmark, which direction are we headed, how to account for the moving shadows when choosing a place to settle down at the beach, and so on and so forth. It seems like people around me are utterly lost in space
Having calm discussions without screaming. Even if its a passionate discussions for example about Cheese. (Yes this gets very heated with me and my friends haha love them so much)
Openes to new facts even if it challanges your world view.
Empathie