I’ve mastered the ability to take any idea or thought and transform it into anxiety. Jitters McGee
I remember reading about a Pa Kua Chang master who could walk through a crowd with a full teacup and not spill any. For whatever reason I started to practice walking with a full to the brim teacup (with or without a handle) and now I can go up and down stairs with one or two and not spill anything. Usually
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.
I know I have plenty but can’t for the life of me think of one.
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 hold a marker with my toes and write with it.
Ok so, how did you develop this talent??
By not having arms.
Write, “lemmy” with your toes and take a pic… Bonus points if you draw the rats face
I bet you just made up this claim… you probably can’t even hold a marker with your toes -let alone write with that marker!
It’s on the
TVInternetFediverse, so it must be true!
I’m worried that would put this skill over in the useful category.
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 absolutely believe that, but I don’t think I had any Target executives over, and it was before social media. And that’s really why I think it’s a useless skill, someone else could have looked at it and thought “huh, that would sell” but all I was thinking was that it would look unusual and cool and not sellable.
I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered it but with my current set up I am as good as I can get with macrophotography.
i can roll quarters down my fingers continuously because I saw Val kilmer do it in Real Genius and I wanted to be cool like him.
Ha, I saw Val Kilmer do it in Tombstone and always wanted to do it, but never followed through.
he does it in tombstone?
i must have completely forgotten about that.
haha he definitely must have told them that he could do it from practicing on set at Real Genius and they should let him do it in tombstone too, that’s hilarious haha.
Yep, when he’s playing cards here. I didn’t realize he’d done it in other movies. I’d look for excuses, too.
Fuck I love that movie.
ha, thanks for the clip! thats great.
I can pick up different objects with chopsticks in both hands at the same time. Can also eat this way.
I didn’t put any time into mastering this, though. I just gave it a try one day and found it to be easy.
I can clap with one hand
I just tried and was successful. I have long fingers which probably helps. But it’s not as loud as when I clap with two hands.
What’s the sound of one hand clapping? ;-p
It sounds similar to normal clapping but more faint, and lonly and with echo, the damn echo!
That’s pretty useful of you’re at a concert holding a beer though!
Oh yeah!
Finally answering the zen question of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”
I can jump up a small flight of stairs (3-4 stairs) in a way that makes it look like I just floated up the stairs.
I got good at it because in high school I thought it would be funny to be able to do this so I started practicing.
wtf ? I need a video of it
not happening
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 suppose that might work, it never occurred to me to do so.
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 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 learned to open bottles using a lighter, and then taught my friends. After a while, we just started referring to lighters as “bottle openers”.
