Machines speak to me.
Not literally of course. In my youth I discovered that I could hear changes in the sound machines make a LOT earlier than anyone else. Even people who spend hours every day with said machine and that was the first time I had been around it.
I can do it even to this day. I have worked in IT for the past 30 years and the number of hard drives I’ve predicted to fail and then they went on to fail is well into the thousands. All because I walked past the rack in the data center and heard something “off”. For those that work in data centers you know just how f’ing loud they are.
My wife’s last car was a 2003 Camry that I almost never drove. She was backing out going to work and she saw me give her car a weird look. She stopped, drove back into the garage and told me to look. At that time we had been together almost 10 years so she’s seen my ability numerous times. I looked under her car and sure enough the flexible connection between the exhaust manifold and exhaust system had a small hole. It wasn’t enough to be loud, it was just enough to change the note the car made. Even being told what to listen for, my wife could not pick out what was wrong.
For the record, while I’ve never been diagnosed it’s a given that I’m neurodivergent.
I have an internal CAD. It’s very useful when building something like a deck for my home. Technically, I show no one this. They only see the end result.
I can perform oral sex basically indefinitely. I’m just happy to be there. It’s like my favourite place.
Edit: I guess I show it quite a bit. Just not to most people
My tongue is my favorite muscle. Want to know why? ;)
I actually kinda do. >>
I can be happy, depressed and horny all at the same time.
I can calculate IPv4 subnets in my head with ease. Usually when I set up a network I use 26, 22 or 20 bit masks and it drives my co-workers nuts.
I’m ADHD. I’ll find a new one by next week.
I can do a pretty decent Smeagol impression, complete with moving about on all fours. There really isn’t a time and place for that to emerge, sadly.
Hey I have the exact same talent for reproducing his voice, I can do it in english but I’m especially good at doing the french dubbed version!! Maybe we should form a duo.
Someone I knew ran a “talent show” about a decade ago for a summer show at a local theater.
What they wanted was a showcase of musical talents and things related to musical theater specifically. They neglected to put that in any of the advertising materials.
I was quite upset when they didn’t include a little girl who did a spot on Gollum impression with movement, props, and full scene reenactments. She was super excited to show everyone, and while everyone else was blown away, “this isn’t really the type of talent we’re going for” is all he could muster.
That girl was a solid 10/10, and should have been allowed a slot in the show.
Her talent is wonderful, a truly hidden artform. It’s a shame the talent show organizer couldn’t recognize that fact.
Your local ren fair or comic con?
You expect me to believe “Butt Master Flex” cannot find an appropriate time to say “my precious” and stare intensely while twiddling your fingers Mr.Burns style?
You sir, need to find your bootstraps
Surely you whip this out on halloween or in a dark alley way
That’d be a great way for me to get dragged along, showing some stupid hobbitses the way into Mordor
I’ve got a good Smeagol and a good Stitch. Never comes out
Pretty sure I’ve seen that Farming While Beige guy on YouTube do both in a video.
Never had a problem falling asleep. Bed, couch, chair, floor. Indoors, outdoors, as long as it’s not sweltering hot or freezing cold I’m out in under 10 min.
As someone at the opposite end of this spectrum, I was envious but…
Everyone I knew with this talent eventually got diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, which does get worse as you age.
Get tested, just saying
Such a fantastic skill to have. Saw my dad fall asleep in the dentists chair, as an ultimate flex of this excellent talent.
Based on my own dad, it’s a talent that becomes a liability when you get older and can’t stay awake through a single movie
I’ve been able to fall asleep pretty much anywhere. Airplane seat bolt upright, office chair, it matters little.
It does suck now getting older that it is less of a choice.
Jalous
I’m a super smeller, and I’ve trained it well and made myself some party tricks. For example, I can identify a coffee down to the grow region and altitude based on the scent of a fresh cup.
Also I can roll myself up into a little ball and be very compact. I used to date someone with a thing for contortion, I don’t think I’ve really shown it off since.
You could probably make a killing as a sommelier.
Wow I thought I had a really good sense of smell, but nothing like that. I can tell if someone’s been walking downtown main street by the combination of smells they pick up there.
I wouldn’t call myself a super smeller, but I smell things to check how hot they are because hot things smell different. My wife cannot believe in my ability and mocks me and says I’m just feeling the heat with my face.
I also check outside temperature with my nose. It’s very reliable since the nose has a very even temperature, the cold sting on the nose is good for -10 to 10 degrees. Also outside just smells very different by how hot it is from 15 to 35. Celsius that is.
Well, similar to how hot things sound different when poured because their viscosity is different, the heat would also cause different compounds to be released and likely also release more aroma in general I guess.
I’ve got a very specific ‘talent’ in that regard. I can smell when tomato sauce has the right amount of salt.
I put that into quotation marks, because it’s more of a learned skill probably, since I have cooked potentially literally a metric ton of tomato sauce in my life.
My mum once joked that she’s surprised I’m not orange from all the tomato sauce I eat.Are you an armadillo by chance?
Yes
Gus?
🍍
I suck a mean dick. 😤
What about a kind dick? 😊
Kind Dicks Remain Unsucked by Kolanaki
I have no idea why my voice to text capitalized the beginning of that.
Makes it sound like a punk rock song. I’d at least give it a listen.
We could get @assassassin to scream it out.
but why do you almost never show this ability?
Cuz most people don’t lemme suck their dick. 🤷♂️
Why is that?
I can tie a knot in a spaghetti while it’s in my mouth.
That’s impressive.
Back in the day there was a TV show called Twin Peaks. On this show one of the actresses did this with a cherry stem. Later on Saturday Night Live, they spoofed this with one of the comedians trying a bow, like you would get on a Christmas package. Cracked me up.
I can fold my lips out over themselves to make a perfect “giant plastic clown lips” look.
Its usually not well received.
This is a skill I am genuinely impressed with
I’m good at drawing detailed gore.
Have anything you’d like to share?
Hhhhmmm… No. Not from those drawings.
But I use “Tattorack” as my username everywhere, so if you’re motivated enough you could find them.
Valid. I’m not going to look it up, but I believe you.
Speaking Spanish. Haven’t needed it in years and my actual grasp of the language is tenuous at this point but every native speaker I interact with says my pronunciation is great. Understanding the differences between English and Spanish phonetics helps a ton in that regard.
I hear you on this, I spent my late teens through my 20s and 30s living abroad and learning other languages. I’ve since moved back home and had kids. I had to break out my Spanish a few times in the past year or so and both my kids did a double take/didn’t know what the hell was happening when they saw me speaking passable/semi-fluent Spanish to native speakers.
I’m just your average stay at home Dad living in a small town nowadays but had a wildly international life before settling down. When they saw me speak another language the questions started to come out about where I had been or what I had been doing.
I hadn’t spoken about it much to my kids when they were younger but now, based on their questions, I half suspect that they think I was some sort of international spy. Nope, just a lot of wanderlust, a knack for languages and learning about the psychology of other cultures first hand.
Alpha bravo charlie delta Echo foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet kilo lima Mike November Oscar papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango uniform Victor whiskey x-ray Yankee Zulu
All in one breath, transcribed via voice to text. I die a little inside whenever I hear someome say “A as in Apple”
Did you say M as in Mancy?
J as in Gif
You of all people.
Lemmy.radio is right this way
“T as in tsunami”
“I as in Aisle”
T is pterodactyl
Agreed! Worse, when I try to spell my name over the phone with the NATO alphabet, people just kind of mentally vapor lock. I guess they can’t work out what letter “papa” represents? And, then, when I use the conventional “p as in Paul,” sometimes they copy down b, as in ball.
I did a ten month stint in a call center to make ends meet once. I had to quickly and unexpectedly learn this. And, occasionally put up with the, I’m guessing, old vets who insisted on rattling it as fast as possible when reading off serial numbers, etc. And, WOULD NOT slow down to accommodate me at all. So, I’d just ask them to repeat it sometimes four or five times, until I got it.
Everything’s easy when you know the trick:
Guy who knows the trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPsgEdmlUf0
That flow chart is pure, concentrated evil. At least now I know that zero is: dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dash-dit.
Nah, just read the dashed lines. Zero is dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, where two is dit-dit-dah-dah-dah. It’s the international morse code! With pastel colors!
I’m learning that medical receptionists/nurses in admin duty are not used to hearing this these days. Tried giving my email address multiple times recently and, as a soon to be former proton user, giving them an “@ papa mike dot mike echo” resulted in @papamike.mikeecho multiple times.
deleted by creator
Why does it have to be alpha or bravo or delta? What difference does it make if it were apple, boy, Dennis? As long as it does the job.
Because C as in Caren and K as in Karyn. Because Bill and Will sound the same, especially if you have an accent. Also because if you just say Alpha foxtrot november, it’s shorter than saying A as in Apple, F as in Frank, N as in Nick etc.
But you do you, I just find it extremely convenient to use it to make it clear to a phone. If you want to stay cute and confusing that’s fine with me.
C as in cat. K as in kite. B as in boy. I think it doesn’t really matter what you use as long as the other person gets it
Well then you will be oscar kilo with me if I use a little alpha bravo charlie.
Absolutely. The whole thing was just me being curious.
Clarity and uniformity.
Remember, this was designed for old style, tube radios. They might repeat the message three times and still not get it perfectly.
For clarity.
For repetition, and clarity. And repetition.
Apple and boy and Dennis are clear, too. I feel like some of the ones you mentioned are actually hard to grasp. Foxtrot is one of them.
RobWords on youtube or Nebula has a 20 minute video on the NATO phonetic alphabet thats more engaging than most. Worth a watch if you have the time, but the tl;dr is there needed to be a concise, interintelligible code to transmit as much data as possible over unreliable connections and multiple languages.
It is because each word doesn’t sound like the other words so if it cuts out part of the word for interference or background noise you know ‘lta’ was delta and ‘vo’ was bravo and not some other words.
Experts and multilingual people were involved in choosing the words that could be pronounced clearly by people who spoke different languages, the words were each unique, and they have been consistent across many decades. The current list is the survivor of multiple attempts to do the same thing!
This annoys me unreasonably, because they use Quebec for ‘Q’, but the correct pronunciation of Quebec is KEH-bek. It’s as dumb as pronouncing Lyon as ‘LIE-un’ instead of ‘lee-OHN’.
I pronounce it with the ‘Keh’ sound when I use the phonetic alphabet, and I’ve heard others do so as well. The word doesn’t need to start with the sound of the letter, it just needs to be somewhat intelligible as that word, and not one of the other words in the phonetic alphabet. For example, if Celine was spelling her name, she would use the phonetic ‘Charlie’, even though her name doesn’t start with the ‘Ch’ sound.
“Have to be” is a pretty strong verbiage… but like the others have said, it’s about both parties already knowing the alphanumeric replacement of choice. That’s why any military boy will roll their eyes and probably have some silly comment if you start using random words like apple, boy, or dennis.
Civilian side radio users, like fire, ems, or police, have a different one
spoiler
Adam, Boy, Charles, David, Edward, Frank, George, Henry, Ida, John, King, LIncoln, Mary, Nora, Ocean, Paul, Queen, Robert, Sam, Tom, Union, Victor, William, X-ray, Young, Zebra; if you were curious
that they use, and you’ll always hear someone firing back on the radio about not calling in an airstrike when a former military member slips up and uses the military version.
Civilian side radio users, like fire, ems, or police, have a different one
911 dispatcher here- pretty much everywhere around me uses the NATO phonetics, except one neighboring county that I’m pretty sure doesn’t use any sort of standardized phonetics at all, or at least their officers and dispatchers and such can’t be bothered to use it.
Things aren’t totally standardized across the country though, different 10-codes (or no 10-codes at all,) different terminology, different phonetic alphabets, etc.
There’s some old timers around my county who have been around forever who tend to fall back into other systems from time to time, or people occasionally have a brain fart and have to spit out something different on the spot.
I’m pretty sure APCO at least strongly recommends using the NATO alphabet.
I think every service in the eastern half of my state uses the one I listed, and it’s probably about a 90/10 split on plain english / 10 codes. Most of the 10 code usage is in the extremely rural areas. And god, don’t get me started on 10 codes not being standardized. At least most of the major things seemed to be close. I haven’t traveled to the western side for work, so can’t speak to there. It is definitely interesting how things shake out in regards to agencies following recommendations.
“A as in Apple”
Ffs, me too…me too. 💀
ICAO FTW
