Considering almost every one of my ancestors for the last few hundred million years managed to have sex at least once, I’d say it’s pretty remarkable how I’ve managed to avoid it so far
Classic selection bias. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I remember reading that the majority of men who have ever lived never reproduced. That’s unfortunately pretty normal.
Historically, before agriculture it was about two to three women having offspring for every man who did.
During the Agricultural era (12,000 BCE to 2,000 BCE) that ratio hit a high of 9 women reproducing for every man who did so, and stayed around that for most of that time.
From there it slowly declined back down to the current world-wide average of two women reproducing for every man who manages to do so.
Was surprised I started mixing up left and right after I broke my right-hand wrist while biking.
Turns out I subconsciously associated “right” for the direction my stronger hand was on, and once my left hand started feeling like the more dominant one during recovery - my brain would automatically choose that “right” should be on my left-hand side instead, until I actively thought about which direction is which.
This gradually decreased out as my right hand recovered and got back to being the dominant one over the next few years, but was eye-opening what shortcuts my brain uses for such basic things.
Funny enough, I stopped mixing up my left and right after I broke my arm roller blading (on another occasion I broke my arm while biking). I didn’t have a way to mentally keep track until the doctor set the arm slightly off with the bone bowing out a bit - it feels slightly different now, but visually you can’t tell.
Whistle.
Tell right from left without thinking about it.
Read a map, unless it’s oriented the way I am facing. My mind will not flip it.
I have no sense of direction. None.
I work in construction. If I show up to a site that is completely built, I get lost. If the floor is symmetrical in layout, I am totally screwed. It took me two full days on site once to get adjusted.
When assigned to a new site, if there are more than a few turns in a commute, I’m using the GPS to get there for a couple of weeks.
Also, I had no idea half of the people on this planet couldn’t whistle.
I have no sense of direction. None.
Sounds like you are a real-life Ryoga Hibiki.
Just curious: do you also lack the ability to visualize things in your mind? For example, I am able to bring up a road map of my city in my mind, figure out the most effective route between two points, and rotate that map in all three dimensions to “look” at it from all angles. My familiarity with the city layout and geography is the determining factor on how easily I can visualize that map. I can also do the same thing with large buildings and their internal layouts.
My wife, on the other hand, has a somewhat similar (but nowhere near as bad) sense of direction as you, and a commensurate inability to visualize objects in her mind. So while she can mentally visualize a soccer ball as a spherical object, she cannot even visualize the hexagonal pattern of pieces, much less (on a traditional soccer ball) how some are white and others black. She doesn’t technically have aphantasia, as she is still able to visualize to a small degree, but I have always suspected her inability to visualize effectively was directly connected to her inability to navigate effectively. She also relies heavily on GPS and maps when navigating anywhere else other than the town she was born in.
For what it’s worth, I can’t visualize either, but have excellent directional sense.
So maybe it is not related, then. Or maybe only causally related, or under certain more specific visualization deficits.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not OP but I can visualize great, still have no sense of direction.
You’ll probably have your answer when I tell you that when you brought three dimensions into the map analogy, my brain kind of melted.
Sounds like you’re describing my wife for real
My husband bought me a Garmin when they very first came out, not because we were flashy people, but he wanted to know I could get somewhere by myself if I needed to . You are not alone my friend
Process sugar (diabeetus)
I’ve never been able to ride a bike without at least one hand on the handlebars.
I’ll never lead a nation with a microphone, a microphone
How is this basic?
I’m not sure what to tell you, other than that yes, you can simply take your hands off the handle bars on most bikes if you’re going fast enough.
Most people in my country can do it.
Remember people’s names or faces
That’s actually a cognitive disorder called Prosopagnosia.
And welcome to the club - I had a stroke and while luckily all major deficits returned to normal with timely treatment, I developed prosopagnosia.
It’s fairly freaky at times. While it’s not my main job anymore I still work as a paramedic occasionally - and when I get a massive trauma at three o’clock in the morning I can hand it over in the ED to the full resus team with every detail without looking into my notes once. But if they ask me for a name I need an ID card or my notes.
Thanks, I’ve never been diagnosed or anything but it’s something I’ve had trouble with all my life, kind of just learned to be very wary about various social situations because I’d get it wrong a lot.
Associates faces with names easily.
Like I’ll remember who you are, but I won’t remember your name. Got me into trouble a few times
Edit: also forgot, but this includes associating the names of places. Combined with the fact that I can’trememberr paths and situate places I see IRL on a map, I get lost often.
Prosopagnosia is the name of the cognitive disorder you likely have.
Another name to forget!
I can’t whistle. Honestly I think it’s because one of my lower front teeth is crooked, twisted at an angle. 🤷♂️
My parents used to tell me as a kid that I couldn’t whistle because I wasn’t eating my pizza crust. After I started eating the crust I learned how to whistle.
Have you tried eating crust?
Me neither, and for the same reason.
I lost my ability to whistle in a tragic playground accident when my front teeth met the skull of a friend travelling in the other direction. Ever since, crooked front tooth.
ow
I used to be unable to jump, but then I did Morris dancing. I learned how to jump normally at 27.
What happened when you tried to jump? I can’t picture this.
I could spring from my ankles, but getting my knees involved made me mess up the timing and I got no lift.
I second the curiosity. What would it look like? Sudden crouching? Paralyzing indecision?
I’m picturing those seizure goats
Basically
Forgive the audio, recommend muting, but I expect it might have been similar to this video of a woman who does not know how to jump:
What in the world. Thanks, this simultaneously explains so much and so little.
Put the ball into an open net in Rocket League.
I love flakes road to… Without mechanics videos. My mechanics suck after thousands of hours playing the game but focusing on non mechanical aspects of the game really helped me. Still miss open nets though. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
Nice shot
Wow !!
Snap my fingers. That or whistle.
Be myself.
It can take some practice, but there’s no one better for the job
I apologise for my sappiness. I hope you have a good rest of your day
Just try harder at it.
You know how you increasingly fail at a thing the more you concentrate on it. Like walking or riding a bike?
Yeah… That.
What if they’ve got pedo tendencies and so it’s good that they’re not themselves. That’d be a good rom com. Some hot middle school teacher tries to get with her class but they keep dodging the sexual assault with Roblox Go or whatever.
Well you can acknowledge tendencies but still decide not to harm others.
Like my authentic self has wanted to break someone’s arm before, and I honoured that by yelling at them (I’m not proud), because part of my authentic self is also avoiding violence (and staying out of prison (I really do not picture myself in prison - very inauthentic situation for me imo))
It would make for a devastatingly funny show (always on the edge of being a totally offensive disaster) to make a story that’s obviously a cute romantic story through some 1980s artistic lens, but also obviously a story of sexual assault through some 2020s artistic lens.
Could be a comedy and a commentary on how that’s changed.
Like, to somehow make a comedy about the millennia of trauma we’ve all inherited from the past. That would take a genius but it could be so funny.
I can’t wink. Other people make it seem so easy, the best I can do is a scrunched up face with a sliver of one eye open enough to see
Strange, can you blink at all?
Not sure if you’re joking, but blinking is fine. It’s blinking one at a time that’s the problem
Not joking at all, apologies if that came off as rude
It did not, it’s just that sarcasm/irony is common on the internet, and tone is hard to convey just from written text. I was not offended at all, but thanks for being a nice person on the internet and apologizing anyways!
Cooking. I’ve tried learning multiple times but I still can’t really make anything more complicated than boiling pasta or frying eggs or a grilled cheese. I wish I could learn but everytime someone tries to teach me I can’t retain what they teach me and do it independently. I’m constantly fucking up in the kitchen which leads me to waste food, which my parents drilled into me is like the worst sin you can commit, so I stopped trying. I hated throwing things out because I’d fucked them up, especially because by that point I’d be so hungry that my failure would have an outsized effect on my emotions, and I wouldn’t want to try again. So I just order food, make simple things like noodles and sandwiches, and avoid anything more complicated.
What I did so far to overcome it:
- Accept that sometimes you can’t make every food perfect.
Sometimes the rice is overdone or too sticky or the pasta is too salty. - Try out simple dishes and continue from there. (Potatoes + sour cream -> Baked potatoes (wedges) with rosemary in oil -> Hasselback potatoes -> etc.)
- Keep track of what you liked that your parents prepared for you.
Interrogate them if it’s necessary. Until they stop with the “Do as much as you like” and instead instruct you with “Put about a cup of X and about a quarter of Y by volume”. If you got this you are nore prepared for the measure by eye and feel.
It’s like science. It is science.
Until they stop with the “Do as much as you like” and instead instruct you with “Put about a cup of X and about a quarter of Y by volume”.
My parents are the worst about this. It’s all based on vibes. My dad acts like Amadeus in the kitchen, furiously experimenting and being creative. I’ve asked him to explain wtf he’s doing and he never does. Like he’ll tell me what he’s literally doing, but with no explanation of why.
Edit: Particularly with cooking meat, which I never seem to do right. My parents both describe the temperature and time they choose purely in terms of vibes and I have no idea how to copy that when I go from trying to learn with them where I’m typically trying to cook for 3-4 people to trying to figure out how to cook for just myself.
Meat: get a ThermaPen instant read thermometer and cook meats to 120 for rare, 125 for med rare and 135 for medium. Pull the meat off heat 5 d before it hits you desired temp.
This book should take care of the basics: https://amzn.eu/d/16lMSZG
(If you are not in the EU area, just search for the title on your local amazon or book store)What I read so far in it is bits of explanation of the science of taste and cooking whats happening inside the food and storytelling. This would give you an aid to be closer to what your father does being an able to experiment and deviate from a recipe.
Personally I enjoy the recipes from http://justonecookbook.com
The recipes are not very complicated and tasty. It usually is supplemented by a youtube video that shows the steps as well.
Interrogate them if it’s necessary. Until they stop with the “Do as much as you like” and instead instruct you with “Put about a cup of X and about a quarter of Y by volume”. If you got this you are nore prepared for the measure by eye and feel.
I get around this by asking them to make the specifics dish, gathering all the ingredients for them, then weighing everything before and after to get exact numbers.
It really is a matter of “do as much as you like”, but without an intuition on how different ingredients taste and affect the dish at varying quantities, you’re not going to know how much you like. So getting that starting point to experiment with is very important.
Usually my meals end up in “I feel like there is one aspect missing to tie the whole thing together”.
I love cooking and I’ve gotten pretty good at making a lot of stuff completely from scratch. But my rice has always been awful, it seems so simple.
We got a $20 rice cooker a few months ago and its been a game changer. Perfect rice every time.
Also I just recently found out your supposed to wash rice before you eat it. Apparently its covered in a lot of heavy metals or something.
Dunno about the heavy metal stuff. I am in Germany and usually our stuff is (I hope so) relatively safe and if unsafe levels are noticee the product has to be recalled.
Usually to wash rice to get rid of the accumulated starches. Usually with short grain rice. Long grain didnt require ut the few times I did it.
Ahh I think I had it mixed up, in the states at least rice contains a lot of heavy metals so when my son was young we avoided giving him too much rice, which was difficult since basically every kid snack is rice based.
A quick google search says washing it ‘could’ get rid of some of those metals, but not really. Makes me feel a little better about not ever washing my rice but it does cook a lot nicer after washing which makes sense.
- Accept that sometimes you can’t make every food perfect.
Cooking can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Could it be that you’re having problems because you’re going too far into the complicated end?
If you care to share how things usually go wrong for you, maybe you’ll get some useful tips in return.
Often I overcook or undercook things, use too much or too little of some ingredient, and generally have no intuition for the quantitative side of things. These aren’t exactly recipes, just literal fundamental skills like cooking meat or vegetables for the right amount of time, at the right heat, with the right seasonings, etc.
So, I was in the same spot for a long time. The one thing I can suggest is to get a tiny portion of something you want to cook, for instance you want to make fried chicken at some point; in the beginning just get like 2 thighs that you aren’t planning on really eating. It’s literally just a test. The pressure is off for dinner that night and you get room to explore while still knowing if you have to throw it all away you are okay with it.
I used to struggle with picking seasonings too, but here’s a strategy that I picked up from the internet somewhere:
- Decide which basic flavor(s) you need
- Pick an ingredient that will satisfy one or more of those flavors.
Here’s a baseline “basic flavors” that should always land you a flavorful meal:
- heat (eg peppers, wasabe)
- acid (fruit, vinegar)
- salt (table salt, soy sauce)
- fat (butter, bacon grease)
But there’s a few others that might come in handy, like:
- sweet (sugar, honey, fruit, many veggies)
- mint (thyme, rosemary, basil, black pepper)
- bitter (grapefruit, many veggies)
- savory (soy sauce, meats)
- whatever flavor alliums have (onions, garlic)
Of course, figuring out which basic flavors you need is still a skill to develop, but this two-stage process helped me a lot. Plus, if you’re trying to stay traditional, then the second stage where you pick the ingredient may already be chosen for you. Mexican food needs acid? Lime. Italian needs heat? Red pepper flakes. Asian needs salt? Soy sauce.
TL;DR: Don’t go straight to choosing ingredients you need, instead choose a basic flavor you need then pick ingredients that will satisfy that flavor.
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I totally get you, I’m the same with auto mechanics, I tried but no joy. But I do know a thing or two about cooking.
There are some things you can do to help yourself, get a list together of meats that are better with lengthy time cooking methods- for instance pork shoulder or sirloin.
Get a crock pot, slow cooker, or smoker.
Basically, you can get recipes for these which are literally the same: Season meat, add potatoes, carrots or other hearty vegetables. Set to cook and walk away- it cooks itself.
Cooking at home doesn’t always mean cooking from scratch, you can absolutely grab a can of soup (cream of mushroom) and add it to boiled pasta with some canned tuna, then bake it with a little cheese over the top.
Focus on methods & repetitive dishes, then you can branch out from there.
Meats (braise, slow cooked)
Sides (potatoes, root veg, onions)
Seasonings (seasoning blends, packets, etc)
Sauces (bbq, salad dressings, soups, etc)
Don’t be too hard on yourself, I am in the kitchen everyday and there is nothing better than a good sandwich for me at home. Simple, easy, not complicated flavors and filling. When we get busier the sandwiches get simpler, lol.
Good luck.
