What's your superpower?
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I learned this. The trick is to force yourself to do it. And your body goes "now I don't want to anymore"
That's not the trick I use. I just relax my throat; midway between breathe in and breathe out, and temporarily stop inhaling and exhaling for a (now halted) hiccup cycle or two.
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Old. Repost.
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I used to hear it too, now I'm old and I can't hear anything above 16KHz, maybe less now.
Same, but more like 13k Hz last time I tested myself.
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I can cut butter to the exact weight each time.
Get him! He's to dangerous to keep alive!
(Sorry if that's not your gender, I have a really hard time formulating the same joke in a gender neutral way)
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I have a few different versions of synesthesia.
The most prominent one is that is see words and letters in color. If you tell me your name I can more or less paint your name like a weird color code. Whenever it is brought up it's almost like a fun little party trick where people ask me what color their names are and I tell them.
Spoiler alert, though: if your name has A or S in it, it will most likely have red in the mix. M and N are differnet variations of green. Some letters are dominant and others are submissive so depending on the word they either pain other letters a specific color or take color from dominant letters. E is a submissive letter. Tends to be a pale yellow, but will change color depending on the letters it is put together with. D is a weird dominant letter that changes color all the time. Either black or a deep purple. Completely depends on the word.
Numbers have colors too.
0 - white
1 - black
2 - pale yellow
3 - sky blue
4 - red
5 - dark brown
6 - black
7 - yellow
8 - dark purple
9 - orange
Random names and their colors:
Jack = black and red, white and black again.
Stephanie = red, yellow, green and yellowish white
Peter = gold and black
Mary = forest green, red, black and orangy yellow
Robert = black, white black
Lily = white, silver, yellow like sunshine
William = black, white, red, forest green
Karen = black, red, black, a sprinkle of yellow and spring green.
Russell = black, golden yellow, red, yellow
Evelyn = sunshine yellow, white and spring green.
Etc etc
To me, pretty names are not just pretty if they sound good, they also have to have beautiful and unique color combinations. Most names tend to have red and green color combos for me so whenever yellow, blue, purple or pink appear in a name I really like it. In my country there's a man's name Åge which isn't the prettiest sounding name, but to me it is so friggin beautiful because it's one of the rarest color combinations I have in my head: dusty blue, morning pink, white, misty overlay and a bit of golden brown. The letter Å is the prettiest letter to me as it is this rare double color of blue and pink and it is a dominant letter so whenever it appears in a name or a word, it is like a breath of fresh air among all the greens and blacks and reds.
Does the coloring of numbers help or hinder your understanding of maths?
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I can repressurize my ears without yawning, just by flexing a muscle. Even less useful, I can focus my eyes to different distances without using the finger trick, which comes in handy never.
I can focus my eyes to different distances without using the finger trick, which comes in handy never.
I'm assuming you're talking about convergence. When your eyes are physically turning inward to align on a nearby object, that's called convergence. Focusing is what your lenses do, although the technical term is "accommodation".
I'm excellent at controlling convergence, too. I can be looking at my phone screen (like right now) and diverge my eyes just enough to make neighboring letters overlap. Or diverge them so much I see two phone screens entirely. Or anything in between. Same with converging and going cross-eyed.
I can even diverge my eyes slightly further than parallel, making individual stars in the night sky look like two stars. But not by a lot. Looking at me, you'd probably just think was looking in the distance. I can't make my eyes look in different directions like a chameleon.
This does have one handy use: I can see those Magic Eye posters at will, in a split second, even across the room!
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Can most people not vibrate their eyes!?
It is related to nystagmus. I thought I only did it on purpose, but when I am tired I also sometimes do it involuntarily.
From the link:
A slightly different form of nystagmus may be produced voluntarily by some (8% of) people. Some can sustain it for up to 35 seconds, but most average around 5 seconds.[19][20][21]
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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.
I have this too, i'd set a timer for 8am or 6:30am or 12pm, and I'd always wake up half an hour to 5 minutes before the timer
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Does the coloring of numbers help or hinder your understanding of maths?
In my case it does nothing for my understanding of math. I am pretty bad at math so my synesthesia would only benefit me with numbers if I was good at calculating things in my head. Then I would probably see the color of the number before getting the facit.
With words it can be helpful with spellings. If I or someone else misspell a word I see it immediately because the color is wrong. This is also how I remember people's names. I tend to ask people how their names are spelled so I see their colors correctly. To me, that's part of knowing someone. If I haven't seen someone's name written in front of me, they won't have a color and I then tend to forget their names, which is super awkward sometimes.
With some words that can be spelled in different ways, I prefer some spellings over others because the color is prettier or more appropriate.
For example with gray and grey I prefer grey because the color of that word is light grey and a very light yellow. Gray is a dark, denatured brown and red. I don't like it as much.
But yeah, when it comes to math, it does almost nothing for me because I'm not mathematically gifted at all.
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I can whistle both ways, without a tonal shift. So I can basically breathe as I whistle and do it indefinitely. Full control, too, because of years of doing it.
I can do the same thing. It's fun!
I just wish my tonal range were higher. Some app I just installed says my high is C7 and my low is G#5. What's that... An octave and a little?
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.moekadu.tuner/
But that doesn't indicate the range where it sounds the best.
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I'm really bad with names and faces, but I can distinguish twins. I mean not the twins like "and my twin has a penis" but monozygotic twins.
I don't claim it to be any kind of a super power, but with my inability to recognize people even after they've been at the hairdresser it's really astonishing.
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Wait until you hear about inward singing! I can whistle inward too but not as well as outward (it takes a lot more air, and my range is reduced).
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I can do the same thing. It's fun!
I just wish my tonal range were higher. Some app I just installed says my high is C7 and my low is G#5. What's that... An octave and a little?
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.moekadu.tuner/
But that doesn't indicate the range where it sounds the best.
It's a very useful skill when you have a melody on the tip of your tongue and need some software to recognise it :).
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What is a pretty looking name or word to you? Also, what are the colors of the numbers to you? Some synesthetes have really awesome colors while I feel like mine are pretty lame most of the time xD so many black and white and green and red letters. So few yellows and blues and pinks and purples. It's tragic lol.
I don't have a complete favorite, but generally anything with R or M are appealing. Room is one I like - dark green, white and blue-purple.
I have a real mix of colors. Lots of primaries and whites/blacks too, but definitely more blues. For example, A is red, K is bright pink, but then V is fuschia and X is brown. I find it interesting that numbers have their own colors, but the letters than make up the name of the numbers don't match. So 7 is a very pale but intense orange, while s-e-v-e-n are yellow, bright blue, fuschia, and tan.
I'm curious how your color preferences apply to your synesthesia. I personally dislike certain shades of orange and yellow, so J and S get unfairly judged.
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In my case it does nothing for my understanding of math. I am pretty bad at math so my synesthesia would only benefit me with numbers if I was good at calculating things in my head. Then I would probably see the color of the number before getting the facit.
With words it can be helpful with spellings. If I or someone else misspell a word I see it immediately because the color is wrong. This is also how I remember people's names. I tend to ask people how their names are spelled so I see their colors correctly. To me, that's part of knowing someone. If I haven't seen someone's name written in front of me, they won't have a color and I then tend to forget their names, which is super awkward sometimes.
With some words that can be spelled in different ways, I prefer some spellings over others because the color is prettier or more appropriate.
For example with gray and grey I prefer grey because the color of that word is light grey and a very light yellow. Gray is a dark, denatured brown and red. I don't like it as much.
But yeah, when it comes to math, it does almost nothing for me because I'm not mathematically gifted at all.
Really interesting. I allways wonder whether some mathematical geniuses were able to see way more then just numbers and I could imagine color might be a useful tool when you get into the weird stuff. Thank you for sharing.. That was really interesting.
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Really interesting. I allways wonder whether some mathematical geniuses were able to see way more then just numbers and I could imagine color might be a useful tool when you get into the weird stuff. Thank you for sharing.. That was really interesting.
I am sure there are some of those out there! I saw a guy online who had color and shape based synesthesia with letters and numbers and he had built is own alphabet from that and actively used it for note-taking. He seemed exceptionally intelligent and his notes were a complete trip to look at. Some people called him schizophrenic in the comments because they didn't understand it, but it was very clear to see that there was a logic and a system to his alphabet and his notes that wouldn't have been there if he had schizophrenia. People fear what they don't understand xD
I wish I could remember where I saw that. It was awhile ago. It was so cool.
From what I have been able to tell, many people with synesthesia are either artists or scientists. I'm sure there are also bankers and accountants with this affliction out there, but I guess you don't hear about them as much as they don't tend to become famous.
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I don't have a complete favorite, but generally anything with R or M are appealing. Room is one I like - dark green, white and blue-purple.
I have a real mix of colors. Lots of primaries and whites/blacks too, but definitely more blues. For example, A is red, K is bright pink, but then V is fuschia and X is brown. I find it interesting that numbers have their own colors, but the letters than make up the name of the numbers don't match. So 7 is a very pale but intense orange, while s-e-v-e-n are yellow, bright blue, fuschia, and tan.
I'm curious how your color preferences apply to your synesthesia. I personally dislike certain shades of orange and yellow, so J and S get unfairly judged.
That is awesome!! My version of "room" isn't too different from yours, actually! Black, white and dark, rich forest green. Im pretty jealous that you have so many blues and pinks. Urgh, lucky!
And I totally get what you mean! 8 is dark purple but eight is bright yellows and whites, with a bit of beige in there somewhere before ending a little spot of black.
Well, for me, the colors show up in ways that tend to make them appealing or unappealing, so for example, I'm normally indiffernet to a plain orange color, but when I see the letter Æ, it is orange like a sunset. Shining, vibrant, light and shadow ripples through it like leaves in front of the afternoon rays.
Almost everytime Æ appears in a word, it gives the word an afternoon, golden hour quality that makes the word prettier than normal. The Danish word længes (longing) pretty much has the color combination of you walking through a beech forest in the afternoon sun in May. The browns, the greens and the orange and the gold makes it one of the most beautiful words in the Danish language to me.Meanwhile the word lærer (teacher) just has a regular flat orange and is surrounded by blacks and browns and isn't the most appealing word to me for that reason. If the Æ had somehow managed to get the space and support from the other letters to become the afternoon color, then maybe I would like lærer better?
There are other words that are incredibly ugly and either have dull or clashing color combinations like høreapparat (hearing aid) which is a distressing combination of a dry, desaturated brown clashing with a more rich, reddish brown, then black and vibrant red and a yellowish orange and then some reds and blacks at the end. Hideous word. Any time r's, a's, ø's and h's are put together I see puke colors and we have those letter combinations in plenty Danish words so that's fun. And yet, sometimes it just works too. Ørsted is sleek. The brown is almost consumed in a pure black, the red is bold and fresh and there's a little spark of a pale morning yellow in there to give it a bit of life. When the colors are clean, I like it. But with høreapparat, it's just muddy, ugly colors that don't fit together at all.
My personal favourite color is green, but I have so many green words and in various shades of green too, that I am bored of green when it comes to my synesthesia. Pinks, blues and purples are much more interesting to me in that context because they are so rare.
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I can smell ants too, and it's been useful here in the land of fire ants...
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My sister and I were talking about benign superpowers and decided the X-Men probably have someone like a band director with a superpower like perfect pitch who watches after the school while everyone else is off adventuring.
I want to see a MCU series that just follows around mutants with helpful but mostly benign mutant powers or powers that can't really be used in fights. Like every-day people who can do almost fantastic things like always know what time it is without looking at a clock or never needs to use the bathroom.
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I used to be able to tell if a TV was on or not. I can't really explain it, but it was like I could vaguely hear/feel it? I don't know, I was a kid. My grandma would play her games without sound sometimes so she wouldn't wake people up (and probably to play without a kid hanging off of her), but I evolved to counter it.
