Ask Lemmy

There's a woman who can smell Parkinson's Disease with almost 100% accuracy.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/23/820274501/her-incredible-sense-of-smell-is-helping-scientists-find-new-ways-to-diagnose-di

Books. I own probably a thousand physically, have hundreds of thousands of PDFs and epubs between my laptop and NAS.

The superpower is that I have a book “sense.” I know about where each book I own is - my shelves are not organized in any meaningful way, because I’m ADHD and will just pull one out to look at something and reshelve it. I’m not at home right now, but I can imagine my shelves and stacks in my head - can tell you where Palestine and the Palestinians or The Forty Days of Musa Dagh or the beautiful English translation of the 左传 or House Made of Dawn or the book on Scottish coins i thrifted a few days ago all are.

I can look at almost any given strangers bookshelf and recognize/have read at least one of their books. I navigate libraries by feel and don’t need to look up books.

I also read inhumanly fast I think, and have somewhat of an eidectic memory for text. It’s been almost twenty years since I read The Great Gatsby but a student brought it up and I was able to do a 45 minute lecture on it, with quotes from memory.

I’m also prodigious at sex. I’ll read more books in a week than most do over their life, and I’ll also fuck more people in that week than most do over their life.

Knowing a timer is almost ready to go off.

I have this stupid sense to know that any timers I set (for cooking mostly, but other tasks around the house too) are very close to going off. Without watching the time when I set them with Alexa, if I ask how much time is left, it generally is always < 10 sec left. If it happened somewhat often, that'd be over thing, but this happens like 80% of the time.

I've even had 12h timers (slow cooking, etc) where I've checked once the entire time and it was within 10 to 30 sec remaining.

Nothing to do with my time management skills though, because I'm still late to all events. Whoops.

Two. The first is that I can make traffic lights turn green within 5 seconds of putting the car in Park.

Secondly and perhaps more usefully, there's a computer Problem Exclusion Zone around me. I can just stand next to a misbehaving computer, not looking at the screen and with my hands in my pockets, and it'll start working properly.

I have never been, nor seem to be able to get motion sickness. No seasickness either. I can read books on all sorts of moving vehicles, and I love roller coasters. Whip me around upside down in pitch dark at 60mph and I'll just call it a good time. My husband says I am squandering my powers because I can play as much of whatever motion intense VR game as I want, but I just end up playing Beat Saber most of the time.

A lot of my memory is based on Music. So if I hear a song I get all of my memories of both the things that have happened in my life while that song was playing, and where I first heard the song (if I heard the song in a movie or show I can say/picture what was happening in that when the song was playing as well). To the point where many have said it's a photographic memory based in song. Importantly, if there wasn't music playing then I only remember the rough details instead of pinpoint details when there is music.

Now if only it worked for studying, then I would have been able to listen to music while studying and remember all the shit I was supposed to instead of being terrible at tests.

My super annoying power is a sense of smell similar to the person in the post. I can smell ants, roaches and sick humans. I can smell all kinds of things and it has its uses. I can small bad food and mold a day or so before it is apparent to others.

The downside is that I can small all kinds of things such as horrible BO that others can't. I can smell when women are menstruating. I can smell so many things that others can't that I'm jealous of people who just smell things normally.

Apparently, criticizing inaccessible content.

image of text
no alt text or link to accessible alternative (eg, source)
people with accessibility needs can't read this

Tsk, tsk, OP.

My mouth doesn't have the receptors to detect capsacin, the chemical that makes spicy food burn/hot. I can eat the spiciest food imaginable and it will not burn my mouth at all.

That said, those receptors exist in other parts of my body. Very often while I'm sitting on the toilet I'll realize my dinner the previous night was particularly spicy.

Also, after more than 1/3 of a century of eating spicy food indiscriminately, my stomach lining has taken quite the beating.

If there's some important time by when I need to wake up (flight/train to catch, or waking up to travel by car or go for an appointment) I wake up around 5-10 minutes before my alarm. Like, always. I wish I was joking.

I am a very heavy sleeper. But I have no idea what happens to my internal clock at moments like those.

I have abnormally good colour vision.

I have no idea what to do with this.

Found out when studying photography. We did some colour tests that get gradually harder. You are supposed to fail at some point. I kept on passing all of them. My "regular" vision is just normal though.