I’ve mastered the ability to take any idea or thought and transform it into anxiety. Jitters McGee
I know I have plenty but can’t for the life of me think of one.
I can aolve a rubiks cube with my left hand only.
Not your right hand? I Am do it with either, it just takes a long time
I can also do it with my right hand, but i did it with my left first cause there is this german phrase “doing something with left” which means something is so easy for you, you don’t even need your dominant hand for it.
I can read UPC, UPC-8, ISBN, and EAN bar codes. Tear the numbers off the bottom of the bar code, hand me the lines, and I will tell you the numbers you tore off.
I used to work the midnight shift at a call center back in the late 90s. It was incredibly boring because we weren’t allowed to browse the internet when no calls were coming in (which was most of the time, got maybe five calls total per night). So I picked up a copy of Yahoo! Internet Life, a now-defunct technology-centered magazine. This issue had a how-to section for wacky shit like that, so I committed it to memory because wtf else was there to do?
Well that’s cool. Can you write in scan-able barcode?
No, there is too much precision required.
If you got graphpaper?
I could never spin a pen around my thumb so instead I learned how to “flick” it, have it do a flip and land back in my hand.
I can also rapidly place two strips of tape on one another with no bubbles and parallel enough you’d think it’s one piece. However I can only do this vertically
The pen flip/flicking seems like a skill I would love to learn. Do you have a video or know of a video showing or teaching this?
It’s possible there is someone or a video who can show you though I came up with it myself in leu of spinning it so I don’t personally have any sources.
I can give you a written explanation though!
Step one: Hold the Pen as you normally would
Step two: Get the rubber pen grip (or associated area, roughly 1/3 the length from the tip) onto the knuckle at your finger tip or just in front of it (towards the tip of your finger). This should have your finger in a C position which should put you pretty close to a flick position.
Step 3: Put your thumb in front of the tip of your finger and apply counter pressure between your fingers (ready to flick)
Step 4: Release your restrained middle finger causing your finger to flick and sending the pen up in a flipping motion.
Notable: If the pen flys forward try adjusting how forward or backwards the pen sits on your knuckle (I.E. 1/3, 1/4 etc.). Same if the flip is too speedy or slow.
Adjusting your wrist or moving your hand up to start with some momentum can be useful when learning.
Consistency is hard but you’ll get the feel in time
I turn yaml into aws bills
I wouldn’t call that useless. That is how you get to be the executive lead cloud DevOps engineer.
I can spew random trivia about every latin american country.
Give me your favorite please!!
There is a taco bell in the historic city of Antigua Guatemala. Guatemala also has like 30 volcanos and their flag is light blue and white with the coat of arms featuring the quetzal bird on it.
I can speedwalk very fast and with good stability. It comes on handy when I need to move fast with a glass of liquid, which doesn’t come up a lot.
Were you ever in marching band? I got relatively good at that after putting my all into marching band in high school.
I won’t say “mastered” as I have lost the ability now, but back in college Pokemon endgame content gave me the ability to read braille by looking at it.
That’s about as useless as possible.
And yet I’ve always wanted to do that 😅
See also https://xkcd.com/315/
Alternating between American and British spellings like it’s nothing. I just use whatever spelling I vibe with at the time. I’ll do the same with units of measurement as well.
As a a Canadian, I just do this naturally as well.
I have an uncanny ability to do things that are unpopular, that later become popular, but I can never imagine them becoming popular when I do them.
Saw Nirvana in a crowd of 30 people before they got famous, certainly never thought they would, it was so different from what was on the radio then. Bought a shirt from them, out of their little van parked in the alley behind the bar!
Used to wear vintage dresses from the thrift store in the 1980s, nobody around me was dressed anything like that, but later all of them got bought up by flippers.
Had tattoos when it was remarkably unusual for a woman, like if another woman with tattoos saw me they would stop and talk to me, I never ever ever would have thought they’d be mainstream.
Lots of stuff like that, like I’m out of synch with time but I can never capitalize on it because I don’t have the vision to understand that it will catch on!
You’re constantly ahead of your time, without foresight. So you can’t seem to capitalize on it - oh well, money ain’t everything. You’ve got experiences no money can buy.
What are some things youve done that have not caught on? What are you into currently?
Gardening in the last few years, sourdough and home fermentation I’ve done for 15 years or so. I don’t really think those will catch on generally because most people don’t cook but I will say a few people have asked for some of my starter lately so who knows? Tepache I’ve been making for years and I just saw some being sold in whole foods, so maybe. But more likely that happened as an offshoot of the Kombucha craze, which I was not a part of. Have been using henna to color my hair for years too, that hasn’t exploded in popularity.
I have been late to the party on things too - mobile phones I held out as long as I could, Pokemon Go, late adopter. Electric bike. Fontaines DC.
On the really spooky side though - I had this dining room set from the 1940s, the upholstery tore so I went to the local commercial upholstery shop and found sparkly red vinyl from the state fair rides, reupholstered them (badly) with silver trim.
Couple years later was at Target and they had a reproduction set exactly like my old one - exactly the same chairs, covered in the exact same sparkly red vinyl I’d used. It was precisely like my kitchen table set just better execution. What the actual fuck?
Target legit steals designs from lesser known artists, even here in Australia they’ve been caught doing it
I can make double fart sounds by laying on my back and cupping my knee-armpits with both hands.
Not entirely useless though; I showed this to my SO 7 years ago when we started dating and she was clearly impressed as she’s still hanging around.
I was worried I was the only one! I can also do elbows, neck, and chest. Also eye sockets but it’s not very loud, I’m working on it.
I wish you a great success on your journey towards the eye-socket-fart mastery
I can’t imagine spending the time to master anything and then thinking the skill is useless.
I can palm a tennis ball, roll it down my arm, bump launch it with my bicep, and catch it. Freaks people out who are standing close as the balls launches right at them, but I’ve always caught it. Discovered later I could do it with anything that rolls like a microphone.
This is amazing. I’d love to see this. Probably wouldn’t pay, but I’d clap vigorously afterwards.
Hmmm, how many things roll like a microphone? That seems very specific.
I was a dj for about 20 years.
I can solve a 3x3 rubix cube in under 60 seconds.
Just practice and memorization, it’s not that hard.
Back when I was 15 or so I spent a summer solving one, no guides or resources used. Took me about 3 months and it would take me about 10-20 minutes to solve after I figured it out. I was always proud of that haha
I can fluidly open a trash bag, pull it into a straight line, and toss it like a dart, landing it in an open trash can from up to 30ft.
This only works with those cheap bags that businesses use and this was honed over years of changing trash at various businesses. Not useful, very majestic though.
