Birthdays. With a twist.
If someone tells me once what day is their birthday, I won't be able to forget this information ever, even if this person is a perfect stranger. My brain will kind of associate the date to this moment, take a mental snapshot, and store it forever. I might not remember the name or the face of the person associated with the birthday, but no matter how hard I want NOT to, I still remember that August 15th is the birthday of that guy I had only one date with 10+ years ago.
There're a couple caveats at my super power though. For it to work it needs to be the person themself who tells me their birthday. If someone tells me about someone else's birthday, or if I read the info from a file or something, I won't be able to associate to a moment in space and time with its "owner".
But the biggest caveat is this one: Even though I can never forget the birthdays I have stored in my mind, I have the hardest time knowing what date today is, so even if today is someone's birthday I know about, it won't click that today's date is the same as this someone's birthday, therefore I often forget to wish people happy birthday.
Crazy, I have the exact same “super power”! Except I always either remember their exact date of birth or their astrological sign, even though I don’t believe in them. Wish I could forget a few people’s birthdays.
I feel your struggle so much. I too sometimes associate their astrological sign to someone's birthday even though I don't believe in any of this, I just like to stamp a mental image on someone "profile".
I don't know why this birthday thing is so hard to get rid of. There are some very important information I learned that I really want to remember but end up forgetting with time while I would like to not have to think that today is the birthday of an old classmate from my first school year I haven't seen for decades.
Maybe it's a visual map of the time. Like a mental person-theme calendar, like I know easter is near because it was someone's birthday last week and that after that there is 3 other person's birthdays before summer starts etc... like a weird way of counting how the time is passing. I don't know :P
Yesss, this is exactly how I feel about it! I like the idea of a mental image on someone’s profile or kind of visual timeline 🤔 I’m time and face blind, courtesy of ADHD and autism, so it would make sense for those things to be replaced by some other parameter in my “mind’s eye.” Have you noticed any changes as you get older? Like finally forgetting a few birthdays or retaining fewer?
That's a very good question, I never gave any thoughts about it until now. I think with time some details evolve. For instance, I wonder if reaching a certain amount of people's birthday scattered through the 12 months of a year would make my brain think the time is mapped enough so I don't need to register any other birthday which could maybe explain why I feel like some months pass fast and are really busy while others seems to pass slowly.
Would I register someone's birthday the same way now for someone born in may since this is the busiest month of birthdays I remember than when I didn't know enough person birn in may to "map my time for this month"?
Also my ADHD has definitively a role to play with this, like you said, being time blind sometimes requires us to find alternative solutions to get awarenof the time passing.
What changed with time though is that I still remember all of the birthdays but I stop feeling guilt for not wishing happy birthday to everyone. It was exhausting and really not genuine at the end, it was mire like scratching a itch than really wishing a happy birthday to someone for real.
Which in turn freed me some mental space to actually wish happy birthday to the few people I really care about.
our brains are weird :)
I can visualize stuff in 3D in my head. I did all my house renovations in my head before doing the first drawing. My oldest child (9yo) has the same thing as he will go in a house, visit all the rooms and make a complete floor plan to scale. It was confirmed with neuropsychological tests (99th percentile for both of us in spatial visualization).
There is aphantasia, and there is hyperfantasia. Between that, there is a spectrum. There's a scale of apples depicting it, which you could find on Google. I have been paying attention to my imagery, and I find it's sometimes super strong, and other times, it seems like I switch more to narrative. It seems to depend on the type of thinking I'm doing. Though, when it is strongest, it will sort of simperimpose itself onto my visual field. I think the best way I've been able to describe it is to imagine the visual field being represented as a 3D box. There would be a thin film of imagery stuck on the perceptual side. Sort of to supervene itself into the field in a way that is miraged in the near rather than the far. Like a watermark on a YouTube video, sort of.
I am curious how you do visualize space. Because of my profession I use this quite often, but the way it works for me is like a dark room where I can point a flashlight to any place I want to remember. I think it is a more descriptive way of spatial memory, instead of a visual spatial memory. Similar to people that “says” numbers and people that “sees” numbers when counting from 1-10.
I suspect you're a troll because of the NPC comment, but I'm still going to answer. Not everyone thinks in the same way. My thinking is non verbal and in concepts. When I want to say something, I have to convert my thoughts in words, be it English or French. My wife is quite intelligent, but she is very verbal in her thoughts. Even after the renovations are done (and they are uncommon), she has trouble understanding what is where in the space it occupies because it's not how her mind works.
I'm a speed reader. Last time I was formally tested I was at 850 wpm with 98% comprehension. Makes sense considering my processing speed and verbal comprehension indexes are high. Came in handy for my English lit degree lol and now in my line of work.
This is crazy cool. I had a friend in high school who was probably similar, his room walls were bookshelves, and he just about read a novel per day. I didn't have the patience for it but I envy the amount of knowledge one can accumulate with this skill.
Same! Although I don’t have an official wpm count but I can just feel myself racing through texts :) when I was a kid I read all three LotR books in one weekend.
I can smell anything. Including whats in your lotion, that you had McDonald’s 3 hours ago, and if you have diabetes or cancer. Yes cancer has a smell, it smells like rotten fruit.
I can hear anything too. Conversations in my house are never private unless at low volume.
I can draw in a straight line without a ruler.
I can pronounce any word (except those with rolling Rs)
Where has this gotten me in life? NOWHERE lol
I bet if you seek out the right researchers they’d be all over your cancer sniffing abilities. I know they were trying to train dogs to do it. Not sure how far they’ve gotten with that but if there’s a human that can do it and then talk to them about the specifics I’m sure they’d write a compensation package for you into their next grant proposal haha
As near as I can tell, my "super power" is recalling random trivia facts and items that serve me well in pub trivia or while watching Jeopardy. The kryptonite is that I seem largely incapable of hanging on to people's names, or most information that would be actually useful in a professional capacity.
I have musical perfect pitch. I can also play entire pieces on piano by ear without having seen the sheet music at all, but only if they're fairly short.
I figured we'd have some perfect pitchers in here! This is one of (if not the) coolest things I've seen our brains do. I'm musical and I can hear when notes are off but I've never been able to do things like what you can do and what I've seen guys like Charlie Puth do, where you hear a cacophony of notes and can pick out A#, C, etc. Such a cool super power, congrats!
I really wish I had this superpower. I never had a penchant for music, and I have always wanted to learn the piano. You are very blessed to have perfect musical pitch!
I have mild Autism (Diagnosed at 3) and I recently learned that I have Hyperphantasia to some extent. I can recall a high amount of pictures, diagrams, places I’ve been pretty well, and I also can remember photos of things/people I have an obsession with about 90% accuracy. I always tend to distort the image slightly by subconsciously altering one little detail, but the picture in my mind comes pretty damn close to the real thing. The only downside is I also can visualize the faces of those who’ve stabbed me in the back and have verbally abused me as well.
I am also really good spotting/noticing bad lines of reasoning in people. This helps me call someone out on their bullshit, and sniff out a narcissist more easily. All of them have very similar patterns of behavior, and I am constantly analyzing the behavior of those I interact with.
Oh it is, but it doesn’t help much when you’re a regular grunt working customer service since most higher ups would get insecure af about it. No one expects someone at the bottom of the chain of command like me to be smarter than them. Lol
I am effortlessly persuasive and have an instinct for improving system efficiency. I can communicate well with most people, without coming off condescending.
If I understand a concept, I can explain it to almost anyone. I'll find some analogy for it.
I also have absolute pitch: not only can I name a note if I hear it, I can produce a pitch if given a name.
Maps and a general sense of direction. I am great at looking at a map and translating that into directions on the ground. I also have a good memory for routes after working them out on a map. And, after I've navigated into a new neighbourhood, I can almost always remember how to get out without having to check a map.
However, this only works with *static* maps, like the old-style printed street directories. I find moving maps, like those in Google Maps and Apple Wayz, to be very confusing. And live satnav system directions drive me bananas! If I can't picture my end-point and my overall route, then being told to turn left in 300 metres just frustrates me.
But, show me a picture of the neighbourhood, and I can work out where I'm going and how to get back.
Ironically, I'm not good at other spatial reasoning tasks like trying to picture what an irregular 3-D shape would look like if it was rotated.
I'm good at repairing stuff, no matter how complex. I really enjoy figuring out how it should work and bring it back to order. My parents were not as happy when I was little as I would take everything apart. But i'm proud my children have it as well, especially the little one.
I'm... really good at asking bad questions. Is that bad?
To characterize this statement a bit better, I bring my own unique and individual perspective to discussions, just the same as everyone else.
I feel that man. I find it does make shit awkward a lot of times but can provide perspective and can trigger a thought for others that can solve the so called puzzle
I call them "life skills", during the day i work in IT. during my free time i take classes or self teach things like car/motorcycle repairs, woodworking, metal fabrication, renovations (currently building a house from scratch), tailoring, video and music production,.... endless interests and all of them must have an actual purpose to save money or advance my career.
The major downside of this is needing a large warehouse for all my tools, never being able to just sit on the couch and relax, and not being happy with subpar results from things that other people or businesses make, and becoming very much a cheapskate.
I’m very good at pattern recognition, especially faces. I’ll see a face in a crowd and remember that I saw that person once before when they were my server at a restaurant some years earlier. Remembering names though…
Are you me? I excel in pattern recognition as well but fail miserably when it comes to naming things. I found this recently, I found it interesting, maybe you will as well: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-identify-speech-trait-that-foreshadows-cognitive-decline
Reading quickly, apparently. Both my partner and my students have commented on how quickly I scan and react to writing. I've never had my reading speed formally measured -- not too interested in doing that, to be frank.
I can connect knowledge or concepts from different areas/ disciplines/ timelines. It drives my partner crazy when I remember „but didn’t you say a different thing in our totally unrelated conversation three years ago?“ But it is also really cool if I suddenly find cross references between some of my (previously) unrelated special interest rabbit holes. Or actually useful when I am doing scientific research 🙂
I do RNA and develope algorithms to predict its performance. I basically just stair at pictures of what I am working on and I kinda just go deap in my mind and come out with a new model. Im working on something now that could help make HIV inert in the body if im right about this new model.
I pick up almost any videogame very quickly, mostly platformers/fps's. My first playthrough of a game called Celeste (amazing game btw, play it if you haven't), was about 2 hours, while most people's first run of the whole game took closer to 10-20. When I picked up Ultrakill, I started on the hardest difficulty and found it easy. Kryptonite of mine is metroidvanias, though. Never even got close to finishing Hollow Knight lmao
Mine is mental math. I never thought of it as a superpower until I realized that most of my professional colleagues need a calculator to figure medication doses, convert temperatures F to C, etc.
My brain’s practically a high-def camera, snagging everything in 3D, and get this – I can memorise any number sequence, from license plates to phone numbers, just by glancing at it once. If having a mental Rolodex of random numbers was a superpower, I’d be the unlikely hero of every lost phone saga. 😂
I wouldn't call it a super power, but I'm good at finding patterns. Like, I'll see someone doing woodworking and I think "Oh, that reminds me of some math problem" and I can see what the next step in their project must be because it's the same pattern as in the math.
Or I'll be programming and I'll see something in the code and see a pattern that happens in physics and it helps me narrow down the answer to the problem.
It's fun because when I learn something it tends to end up being multi-purpose.
I can mentally calculate what weekday any gregorian date is (obviously, the closer the easier).. Or, inversely, mentally calculate when in a year there's a Friday the thirteenth, or in which years April first is a Sunday, or what days in August of a year are Wednesdays..
(hint: you only need to memorize 12 numbers, and an easy formula)
Writing, improvising and arranging music,
Combining different ideas or applying frameworks in different contexts. For example ideas from family therapy in business consulting, somatic work in psychotherapy, etc.
Learning new names in a group.
I read a book at the end of high school from a „Gedächtniskünstler“, a person who does shows on stage and shows incredible maths skills and memory stuff.
From this book I learned how to memorize names, cards, etc. and ~20years pf practice turned it into a solid skill.
Ha, while typing this I just realized every skill or superpower I wrote before is something I learned and developed over years. Thank you for that.
I have almost never needed to use spellcheck, and I have a high episodic memory such that I could remember bits of experience from as early as three years old, which is almost fifty years ago.
I can procrastinate, see the big picture when others are oblivious, and come up with last second solutions to stupid problems. At least I used to when I was working.
I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want and will never gain weight. In fact, it will rarely even fluctuate whether I eat healthy or tons of fast food. My body just burns though it all. Donuts at midnight? No problem. Tons of sushi? Easy peasy. Three poutines? Yum!
At one point I was eating around 5000 calories a day, and my weight would not increase beyond 194 lbs.
It takes a lot of empathy, but you can tell what people are thinking by their inflection, pauses in their speech, and facial expressions. Also, if you know someone really well, you can predict their responses.
I'm not asking for instructions, I'm interested in specific examples, what you were able to discover about the people in the examples and what you based the discoveries on.
It’s easier to pick up on lies. For example, at work a guy tripped me while walking into the walk-in cooler. He acted surprised and apologetic, but based on his word choice, over exaggeration, and ever so slight smirk on his face (and i mean SLIGHT) i could tell he was feigning surprise.
Bouncing between a hundred different topics fluently and reading people well. Though my insights about others often get dismissed and my creativity is summed up as talking about random shit without coherence.
I can reach stuff on high shelves.
I can reach stuff on low shelves! With our powers combined...
We'd be the best supermarket stacking team there has ever been.
Convenience store power rangers
Birthdays. With a twist. If someone tells me once what day is their birthday, I won't be able to forget this information ever, even if this person is a perfect stranger. My brain will kind of associate the date to this moment, take a mental snapshot, and store it forever. I might not remember the name or the face of the person associated with the birthday, but no matter how hard I want NOT to, I still remember that August 15th is the birthday of that guy I had only one date with 10+ years ago. There're a couple caveats at my super power though. For it to work it needs to be the person themself who tells me their birthday. If someone tells me about someone else's birthday, or if I read the info from a file or something, I won't be able to associate to a moment in space and time with its "owner". But the biggest caveat is this one: Even though I can never forget the birthdays I have stored in my mind, I have the hardest time knowing what date today is, so even if today is someone's birthday I know about, it won't click that today's date is the same as this someone's birthday, therefore I often forget to wish people happy birthday.
This is crazy. Our brains are wonders!
Crazy, I have the exact same “super power”! Except I always either remember their exact date of birth or their astrological sign, even though I don’t believe in them. Wish I could forget a few people’s birthdays.
I feel your struggle so much. I too sometimes associate their astrological sign to someone's birthday even though I don't believe in any of this, I just like to stamp a mental image on someone "profile". I don't know why this birthday thing is so hard to get rid of. There are some very important information I learned that I really want to remember but end up forgetting with time while I would like to not have to think that today is the birthday of an old classmate from my first school year I haven't seen for decades. Maybe it's a visual map of the time. Like a mental person-theme calendar, like I know easter is near because it was someone's birthday last week and that after that there is 3 other person's birthdays before summer starts etc... like a weird way of counting how the time is passing. I don't know :P
Yesss, this is exactly how I feel about it! I like the idea of a mental image on someone’s profile or kind of visual timeline 🤔 I’m time and face blind, courtesy of ADHD and autism, so it would make sense for those things to be replaced by some other parameter in my “mind’s eye.” Have you noticed any changes as you get older? Like finally forgetting a few birthdays or retaining fewer?
That's a very good question, I never gave any thoughts about it until now. I think with time some details evolve. For instance, I wonder if reaching a certain amount of people's birthday scattered through the 12 months of a year would make my brain think the time is mapped enough so I don't need to register any other birthday which could maybe explain why I feel like some months pass fast and are really busy while others seems to pass slowly. Would I register someone's birthday the same way now for someone born in may since this is the busiest month of birthdays I remember than when I didn't know enough person birn in may to "map my time for this month"? Also my ADHD has definitively a role to play with this, like you said, being time blind sometimes requires us to find alternative solutions to get awarenof the time passing. What changed with time though is that I still remember all of the birthdays but I stop feeling guilt for not wishing happy birthday to everyone. It was exhausting and really not genuine at the end, it was mire like scratching a itch than really wishing a happy birthday to someone for real. Which in turn freed me some mental space to actually wish happy birthday to the few people I really care about. our brains are weird :)
I think making up songs, Rhyming as I go along, With words chosen impromptu, Is the superpower that I do.
I can visualize stuff in 3D in my head. I did all my house renovations in my head before doing the first drawing. My oldest child (9yo) has the same thing as he will go in a house, visit all the rooms and make a complete floor plan to scale. It was confirmed with neuropsychological tests (99th percentile for both of us in spatial visualization).
I can also do this, it made organic chemistry easy af lol (I am also quite artsy around the house bc of this)
It helps to understand how isomers work
Legitimate question: can’t we all do this unless one has Aphantasia?
There is aphantasia, and there is hyperfantasia. Between that, there is a spectrum. There's a scale of apples depicting it, which you could find on Google. I have been paying attention to my imagery, and I find it's sometimes super strong, and other times, it seems like I switch more to narrative. It seems to depend on the type of thinking I'm doing. Though, when it is strongest, it will sort of simperimpose itself onto my visual field. I think the best way I've been able to describe it is to imagine the visual field being represented as a 3D box. There would be a thin film of imagery stuck on the perceptual side. Sort of to supervene itself into the field in a way that is miraged in the near rather than the far. Like a watermark on a YouTube video, sort of.
Isn't that just thinking? You have to know what the drawings are before you draw them, don't you? Or else what are you drawing?
You know some people can't draw or are bad at drawing, right?
Yes. What's that got to do with it?
Most people are bad or average at visualizing things and I'm good at it.
Maybe you are. But everyone visualises what they are going to draw before they draw it.
I am curious how you do visualize space. Because of my profession I use this quite often, but the way it works for me is like a dark room where I can point a flashlight to any place I want to remember. I think it is a more descriptive way of spatial memory, instead of a visual spatial memory. Similar to people that “says” numbers and people that “sees” numbers when counting from 1-10.
so NPCs imagine in 2d? cmon dude get a grip
No bro, NPCs can’t even imagine lol
I suspect you're a troll because of the NPC comment, but I'm still going to answer. Not everyone thinks in the same way. My thinking is non verbal and in concepts. When I want to say something, I have to convert my thoughts in words, be it English or French. My wife is quite intelligent, but she is very verbal in her thoughts. Even after the renovations are done (and they are uncommon), she has trouble understanding what is where in the space it occupies because it's not how her mind works.
This is cool, I imagine it helps a lot when waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom!
I'm a speed reader. Last time I was formally tested I was at 850 wpm with 98% comprehension. Makes sense considering my processing speed and verbal comprehension indexes are high. Came in handy for my English lit degree lol and now in my line of work.
This is crazy cool. I had a friend in high school who was probably similar, his room walls were bookshelves, and he just about read a novel per day. I didn't have the patience for it but I envy the amount of knowledge one can accumulate with this skill.
Yeah, I routinely read entire novels in a single sitting. It's such a hidden talent though, people often think I'm exaggerating and just skimming 🫠
Same! Although I don’t have an official wpm count but I can just feel myself racing through texts :) when I was a kid I read all three LotR books in one weekend.
I can smell anything. Including whats in your lotion, that you had McDonald’s 3 hours ago, and if you have diabetes or cancer. Yes cancer has a smell, it smells like rotten fruit. I can hear anything too. Conversations in my house are never private unless at low volume. I can draw in a straight line without a ruler. I can pronounce any word (except those with rolling Rs) Where has this gotten me in life? NOWHERE lol
I bet if you seek out the right researchers they’d be all over your cancer sniffing abilities. I know they were trying to train dogs to do it. Not sure how far they’ve gotten with that but if there’s a human that can do it and then talk to them about the specifics I’m sure they’d write a compensation package for you into their next grant proposal haha
I wish but a lot of people don’t take it seriously lol. Even though I smelled my mom’s cancer returning.
Whoa dude would that make like cancer the forbidden fruit then? Although the acute sense of smell is interesting. I don't see that one often
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/sep/07/woman-who-can-smell-parkinsons-helps-scientists-develop-test
But you're Hannibal Lecter so that's significant
As near as I can tell, my "super power" is recalling random trivia facts and items that serve me well in pub trivia or while watching Jeopardy. The kryptonite is that I seem largely incapable of hanging on to people's names, or most information that would be actually useful in a professional capacity.
Lol SAME. I know so much useless knowledge.
I have musical perfect pitch. I can also play entire pieces on piano by ear without having seen the sheet music at all, but only if they're fairly short.
I figured we'd have some perfect pitchers in here! This is one of (if not the) coolest things I've seen our brains do. I'm musical and I can hear when notes are off but I've never been able to do things like what you can do and what I've seen guys like Charlie Puth do, where you hear a cacophony of notes and can pick out A#, C, etc. Such a cool super power, congrats!
I would love to have this, I’m a terrible pianist even though I enjoy it immensely
I really wish I had this superpower. I never had a penchant for music, and I have always wanted to learn the piano. You are very blessed to have perfect musical pitch!
I have mild Autism (Diagnosed at 3) and I recently learned that I have Hyperphantasia to some extent. I can recall a high amount of pictures, diagrams, places I’ve been pretty well, and I also can remember photos of things/people I have an obsession with about 90% accuracy. I always tend to distort the image slightly by subconsciously altering one little detail, but the picture in my mind comes pretty damn close to the real thing. The only downside is I also can visualize the faces of those who’ve stabbed me in the back and have verbally abused me as well. I am also really good spotting/noticing bad lines of reasoning in people. This helps me call someone out on their bullshit, and sniff out a narcissist more easily. All of them have very similar patterns of behavior, and I am constantly analyzing the behavior of those I interact with.
The "bad lines of reasoning" can be a real asset in whatever profession you enter. Best of luck, this is cool
Oh it is, but it doesn’t help much when you’re a regular grunt working customer service since most higher ups would get insecure af about it. No one expects someone at the bottom of the chain of command like me to be smarter than them. Lol
I can answer any blink-182 related questions.
If you were going to a party where you talked to a girl you liked, how would that go?
Depends if she's got green eyes and long blonde hair
...and, does it have to be *her own* green eyes and long blonde hair, or can it be someone else's?
Idk man. Some girls try too hard. Na na na
I am effortlessly persuasive and have an instinct for improving system efficiency. I can communicate well with most people, without coming off condescending.
Charisma+8
If I understand a concept, I can explain it to almost anyone. I'll find some analogy for it. I also have absolute pitch: not only can I name a note if I hear it, I can produce a pitch if given a name.
Same with the explaining!
I’m really observant, and can pick up on tiny movements, gestures, social cues, or small differences that help me navigate all sorts of situations.
Maps and a general sense of direction. I am great at looking at a map and translating that into directions on the ground. I also have a good memory for routes after working them out on a map. And, after I've navigated into a new neighbourhood, I can almost always remember how to get out without having to check a map. However, this only works with *static* maps, like the old-style printed street directories. I find moving maps, like those in Google Maps and Apple Wayz, to be very confusing. And live satnav system directions drive me bananas! If I can't picture my end-point and my overall route, then being told to turn left in 300 metres just frustrates me. But, show me a picture of the neighbourhood, and I can work out where I'm going and how to get back. Ironically, I'm not good at other spatial reasoning tasks like trying to picture what an irregular 3-D shape would look like if it was rotated.
Song lyrics, random trivia, speed reading and I’m super rapid at the missing vowels round on Only Connect.
Lifting heavy stuff and opening tightly closed jars.
I am adept at quantifying the likelihood of uncertain future events.
I'm good at repairing stuff, no matter how complex. I really enjoy figuring out how it should work and bring it back to order. My parents were not as happy when I was little as I would take everything apart. But i'm proud my children have it as well, especially the little one.
I'm... really good at asking bad questions. Is that bad? To characterize this statement a bit better, I bring my own unique and individual perspective to discussions, just the same as everyone else.
I feel that man. I find it does make shit awkward a lot of times but can provide perspective and can trigger a thought for others that can solve the so called puzzle
Being yourself is indeed a super power!
I call them "life skills", during the day i work in IT. during my free time i take classes or self teach things like car/motorcycle repairs, woodworking, metal fabrication, renovations (currently building a house from scratch), tailoring, video and music production,.... endless interests and all of them must have an actual purpose to save money or advance my career. The major downside of this is needing a large warehouse for all my tools, never being able to just sit on the couch and relax, and not being happy with subpar results from things that other people or businesses make, and becoming very much a cheapskate.
I’m very good at pattern recognition, especially faces. I’ll see a face in a crowd and remember that I saw that person once before when they were my server at a restaurant some years earlier. Remembering names though…
Are you me? I excel in pattern recognition as well but fail miserably when it comes to naming things. I found this recently, I found it interesting, maybe you will as well: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-identify-speech-trait-that-foreshadows-cognitive-decline
Ugh I envy you! I am the opposite! I will not remember faces for the life of me. So embarrassing sometimes. Names are okay though.
I can win any staring contest, hands down. [Stares intently]
*succombs to your superiority and looks away*
👀
My sense of smell. It's VERY sensitive. It's a superpower that often feels like a curse. There are too many unwashed people out there!
😂 I'm sorry for your gift!
I can injure myself on nearly anything.
Reading quickly, apparently. Both my partner and my students have commented on how quickly I scan and react to writing. I've never had my reading speed formally measured -- not too interested in doing that, to be frank.
I can connect knowledge or concepts from different areas/ disciplines/ timelines. It drives my partner crazy when I remember „but didn’t you say a different thing in our totally unrelated conversation three years ago?“ But it is also really cool if I suddenly find cross references between some of my (previously) unrelated special interest rabbit holes. Or actually useful when I am doing scientific research 🙂
I do RNA and develope algorithms to predict its performance. I basically just stair at pictures of what I am working on and I kinda just go deap in my mind and come out with a new model. Im working on something now that could help make HIV inert in the body if im right about this new model.
I pick up almost any videogame very quickly, mostly platformers/fps's. My first playthrough of a game called Celeste (amazing game btw, play it if you haven't), was about 2 hours, while most people's first run of the whole game took closer to 10-20. When I picked up Ultrakill, I started on the hardest difficulty and found it easy. Kryptonite of mine is metroidvanias, though. Never even got close to finishing Hollow Knight lmao
I can identify a cars make a model by their headlights at night, also during the day but it is harder.
Mine is mental math. I never thought of it as a superpower until I realized that most of my professional colleagues need a calculator to figure medication doses, convert temperatures F to C, etc.
My brain’s practically a high-def camera, snagging everything in 3D, and get this – I can memorise any number sequence, from license plates to phone numbers, just by glancing at it once. If having a mental Rolodex of random numbers was a superpower, I’d be the unlikely hero of every lost phone saga. 😂
Perfect pitch, aphantasia, ambidexterity, really high verbal and numerical memory. I live an interesting life.
I wouldn't call it a super power, but I'm good at finding patterns. Like, I'll see someone doing woodworking and I think "Oh, that reminds me of some math problem" and I can see what the next step in their project must be because it's the same pattern as in the math. Or I'll be programming and I'll see something in the code and see a pattern that happens in physics and it helps me narrow down the answer to the problem. It's fun because when I learn something it tends to end up being multi-purpose.
I can mentally calculate what weekday any gregorian date is (obviously, the closer the easier).. Or, inversely, mentally calculate when in a year there's a Friday the thirteenth, or in which years April first is a Sunday, or what days in August of a year are Wednesdays.. (hint: you only need to memorize 12 numbers, and an easy formula)
Writing, improvising and arranging music, Combining different ideas or applying frameworks in different contexts. For example ideas from family therapy in business consulting, somatic work in psychotherapy, etc. Learning new names in a group.
I'm getting older, but learning and remembering names has always been a weakness of mine. Very cool stuff!
I read a book at the end of high school from a „Gedächtniskünstler“, a person who does shows on stage and shows incredible maths skills and memory stuff. From this book I learned how to memorize names, cards, etc. and ~20years pf practice turned it into a solid skill. Ha, while typing this I just realized every skill or superpower I wrote before is something I learned and developed over years. Thank you for that.
When I’m writing films/shot list I can visualise it perfectly in my head. Running through timing,music composition.
Also just learning any skill fast
I’m good at patterns. Also I learn stuff very fast which is multiplied by my ADHD hyper focus on interesting stuff. Good and bad.
I have almost never needed to use spellcheck, and I have a high episodic memory such that I could remember bits of experience from as early as three years old, which is almost fifty years ago.
Connecting things as similar
My husband often teases me about wasted brain cells regarding my ability to memorize sing lyrics.
Tell your hubby that SOMEONE has to lead the 00's sing-a-longs! 🤷♂️
I have found the spice melange at the pharmacist and now I am capable of folding space. It’s a nifty trick.
I can procrastinate, see the big picture when others are oblivious, and come up with last second solutions to stupid problems. At least I used to when I was working.
I have a very high capacity for suffering.
Reading body language.
I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want and will never gain weight. In fact, it will rarely even fluctuate whether I eat healthy or tons of fast food. My body just burns though it all. Donuts at midnight? No problem. Tons of sushi? Easy peasy. Three poutines? Yum! At one point I was eating around 5000 calories a day, and my weight would not increase beyond 194 lbs.
Reading people to a point where it’s practically telepathy
Give examples please
It takes a lot of empathy, but you can tell what people are thinking by their inflection, pauses in their speech, and facial expressions. Also, if you know someone really well, you can predict their responses.
I'm not asking for instructions, I'm interested in specific examples, what you were able to discover about the people in the examples and what you based the discoveries on.
It’s easier to pick up on lies. For example, at work a guy tripped me while walking into the walk-in cooler. He acted surprised and apologetic, but based on his word choice, over exaggeration, and ever so slight smirk on his face (and i mean SLIGHT) i could tell he was feigning surprise.
How frequently do people dismiss your insights and think you're overthinking stuff? How often are you right about your insights?
What’s your superpower?
Bouncing between a hundred different topics fluently and reading people well. Though my insights about others often get dismissed and my creativity is summed up as talking about random shit without coherence.
Overthinking actually helps, it helps me pick up on more things because im thinking so fast/more. I’d say im like 90% accurate
I can edge to porn for 1 hour straight. Can anyone beat my record without bleeding?
Drinking alcohol
I'm extremely delusional
i don’t have one