No political posturing.
I read comments and someone said “math”.
Now I remember that I have a this 9x9 times table in my brain lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_multiplication_table#The_Nine-nine_song_text_in_Chinese
Its like the PEMDAS thing, but its an entire multiplication table. I can recall the product of any [1 digit x 1 digit] within like 2 seconds. When I came to the US right after learning the 9x9, I found out my entire class has trouble doing the times table, and they were still learning it when I already had it memorized. They took longer than me to do multiplication. The teacher asked some kid a random [1 digit x 1 digit] and the kid just like sat in silence, I’m like: I KNOW THE ANSWER. I guess it makes sense… the “gaokao” there is a nightmare, overworking kids and rote memorization becomes norm in China. Depression also becomes norm and suicide rates go through the roof. I might’ve killed myself by now had I still be there.
A lot of math things. It hasn’t been nearly as lucrative as people assume.
Cold turkeying stuff. It’s not a superpower level but I can quit most stuff then and there without thinking about it again.
Executive function.
I don’t know but it seems like a lot of people around me are just in a haze. Probably some of it is ADHD.
a lot of people never develop it because they don’t have to. they survive by mooching off others their entire lives who do all the execution function for them. parents, friends, partners.
such people really struggle with being alone or independent.
Not being on my phone at work.
Actually getting annoyed by ads to the point I do what I can to block them. I work with IT and yet a good number of my coworkers don’t use any adblock at fucking all
I use them at home, at work its my employers time I am wasting.
Using any sort of digital device. I’ve really never had a problem figuring out how they work and what needs to be done to fix them.
basic life skills. cleaning, cooking, showing up on time, expressing myself, doing my job, etc.
i don’t know why so many people struggle with them. but there are a lot of very unhappy people who’d be a lot happier if they could do these things. they they choose not to do them, I will never understand.
I know so many people who can’t cook if their life depends on it, and it drives me crazy.
I like it better when they complain about how they are ‘struggling’. As if eating out 2-4x a day and spending $100 a day on food is a form of oppression.
I can stop hiccups the moment I notice I have them, usually after the second hiccup. It started as a conscious effort to change the breathing rhythm through diaphragmatic breathing, now is almost like a reflex action.
My wife and I joke that we found my mundane superpower. When she gets hiccups, if I go embrace her, they stop almost immediately. Otherwise, they’ll persist for fifteen minutes.
Talking to strangers. I’m always the person my introverted friends push to the front if the group has to say something. Ohh, and phone calls! I’m the designated “Can you call them please?” person.
Talking to strangers. I’m always the person my introverted friends push to the front if the group has to say something. Ohh, and phone calls! I’m the designated “Can you call them please?” person.
tell your friends no.
Plumbing. I’m not a plumber and I’m not particularly good at it, but it’s one of those things that most people won’t even consider looking at.
Also, 3D visualization. I had a carpenter do the gutters on my house and I explicitly told him that the reason I didn’t do them myself was that the eaves are slanted inwards so that the slope on the gutters would cause the gutters to go inwards when it goes downwards, and I was unsure what best practise was for that case, where to get the proper hangers for this or if we’d need to put a vertical board up first in order to make it work. He assured me that it’d be fine, having done many gutters before. When I got home, he had put ordinary hangers right on the slanted eaves, and the gutters were halfway under the roof at one end. He stood there scratching his head and tried to argue that the wall of the house was not straight, because he could simply not see any other reason for it to do that.
minor plumbing tasks sure, changing gaskets is pretty simple stuff though., but for major ones you need to know how to cut pipe, braze, or even weld. how many people do you know who have brazing equipment just lying around?
those aren’t really easy/everyday things.
I’ve never heard of anyone needing to braze or weld pipe for house plumbing. Most of the time you’re soldering copper or gluing PVC. And soldering copper pipe is fairly easy. You can learn it with a 3 minute Youtube video, a $50 trip to the hardware store, and a few practice runs. Compared to a hiring/scheduling a plumber it’s way quicker and cheaper.
Just remember to shut off your main line before working, and to test the pipes when you’re done before walking away
Nobody said this had to be easy/everyday things.
Thankfully welding is a thing of the past. Plumbing in normal circumstances isn’t too hard if you have the tools. But if you fuck up and flood your home, good luck. I’ll never forget that video that is titled “the worst plumber ever” that shit gives me chills. Some guy tried to replace something in an apartment complex and didn’t turn of the main for reasons. I think it was because it was a small thing and turning off the main is a pain in the ass sometimes. Anyway, the residents were filming how he was under the sink flooding the whole place and whatever was underneath it. The sheer hoplessness of being there, knowing you fucked up and also realizing that there is pretty much nothing you can do is so real.
Tldr you do not want water damage in your home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30okjpCko I found it. It’s also hot water, holy shit.
yeah, that’s true. plumbing can be a high consequence affair, also electrical work can seem really easy/simple but also be deadly/catastrophic if you mess up. i can require an outlet, but i would would not try to upgrade capacity or something more involved like that.
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.
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.
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.
Writing with my left hand.
Designated Southpaw.
I am pretty shit at writing with my left hand, but I am even worse at writing with my right hand. I know at school once I had a teacher that made me write with my right hand for a while and it was also terrible but also uncomfortable and incredibly slow.
I can do an oil & filter(s) change and or a brake job on most normal cars pretty easy. Many people I know would have trouble with these.
I think a lot of people would just never try to do it or think about any job on the car is doable by non mechanic. At least that’s how i always felt. I think it dimmed when i watched someone changing the air filter in a car. Oh, so it’s literally just open the flap and insert the new one huh? I don’t really fuck around with breaks because they make the car stop. But it really isn’t that hard as long as you know how to bleed the breaks.
STEM back in school. That’s how I make a living now.
Living below my means. Moving somewhere where pay to living cost is better helped.
