What's your superpower?
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My super power is that I always know the difference between a fart and a shit before it exits.
"Oh, excuse me, I accidentally farted..."
"COME NOW, CITIZEN, WE BOTH KNOW THE TRUTH."
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My boyfriend can smell when someone drank alcohol hours (or even days!) later. He seems to smell it in a person's sweat, so we suspect he senses some kind of metabolite.
As to me? In-person I seem to emit a comforting, trustworthy aura. Children and stray animals approach me like they just know that I'm a safe space for them. As a result, I've acquired quite a list of no-kill shelters in my phone. I also ended up working in children's therapy.
Adults who share my wavelength can also recognize it in me, and I can recognize it in them - we're drawn to each other in the same "inherently trustworthy" way. I suspect it's an aspect of neuro-divergence.
I'm similar. Ever since I was a kid, my mom would notice that "babies love me." They really do. If there's a baby nearby, it'll probably love me and I'll probably be making faces at it, etc. I think it's partially the beard, but it was true pre-beard, too.
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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.
I organized my books by color long before learning some people hate that.
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I can't really speak for you of course, but I can add that I thought it was the same for me. Until it turned out I was the only one who was hearing these noises.
I have some version of this that thankfully only happens very rarely. But it is more like a violent electrical sound that "feels" so loud that I should be dead. It is awful.
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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.
I had this too! I think my high frequency hearing is just really good.
I recently was at a wedding and only the little kids and myself (in my 30s) were really annoyed by this device the venue had which used high frequency beeps to scare away rodents and things.
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Old. Repost.
I beg your pardon, elucubra, but I'm deeply afraid to say it might not be the spring chickeny of content, but rather +/- 6h in lay online. 'Tis but a smattering of minutes aged. Not a repost, good elucudra.
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I organized my books by color long before learning some people hate that.
To me, it communicates that you prioritize the aesthetics of the books over their contents. (That hackneyed phrase, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ I think is part of the “hatred” people express towards this choice.)
There are def books to be collected because of their aesthetics - I have a gorgeous Taschen on the Crusades, a Maimonides text in Hebrew (which I can’t read), or very old English translations of Chinese texts. I’m very jealous of people who have things like complete Harvard Everyman’s or lots of vintage Penguins. Or people who just love Moby Dick so much that they’ll fill shelves with Dicks (Along color - Penguin put out a beautiful blue edition that I still can remember holding and debating on buying back in 2018.)
I don’t get “hating” the way someone else chooses to collect or organize their books. (And I’d have no room to stand on, because some of my shelves have more stacked on them than they have in them, it’s chaotic) I do “judge” people on the books they have and show, because the books you read and consider important are pretty easy ways to see what ideas have influenced your mind.
I love the opportunities for conversation that looking at a bookshelf brings, because I suck at small talk. It gives me a deeper understanding of a person - I can pick up a few niche interests and broader themes with a quick look.
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I can turn ducks around... but only when they are in the water
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I get to be the favorite of pretty much all the family pets. Always been.
Some family and friends joke that I probably could go to an African safari and the lions wouldn't harm me. Not really rushing to find out if it's true tho.
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My cat has the same ability to know when it's time to feed him. When he comes to me and starts to gently tap me with his paw, I look at the clock and it's 30 seconds till his feeding time.
Lol my kitty starts with laying on me and purring loudly. Then onto licking my hair, then onto the paw taps, and finally she'll burrow under the blankets and start crawling all around like crazy.
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To me, it communicates that you prioritize the aesthetics of the books over their contents. (That hackneyed phrase, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ I think is part of the “hatred” people express towards this choice.)
There are def books to be collected because of their aesthetics - I have a gorgeous Taschen on the Crusades, a Maimonides text in Hebrew (which I can’t read), or very old English translations of Chinese texts. I’m very jealous of people who have things like complete Harvard Everyman’s or lots of vintage Penguins. Or people who just love Moby Dick so much that they’ll fill shelves with Dicks (Along color - Penguin put out a beautiful blue edition that I still can remember holding and debating on buying back in 2018.)
I don’t get “hating” the way someone else chooses to collect or organize their books. (And I’d have no room to stand on, because some of my shelves have more stacked on them than they have in them, it’s chaotic) I do “judge” people on the books they have and show, because the books you read and consider important are pretty easy ways to see what ideas have influenced your mind.
I love the opportunities for conversation that looking at a bookshelf brings, because I suck at small talk. It gives me a deeper understanding of a person - I can pick up a few niche interests and broader themes with a quick look.
Not true, though! I just think it makes my shelves look nicer. I know where everything is, like OP says.
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Picking stuff up with my toes. I use the two big ones like chopsticks or just scrunch something up with all of them together. My toes can spread out as wide as my fingers, so it's easy to manipulate things with them. Also, I am very well balanced on one leg, probably because of doing this for so long.
This power is more and more useful as I get older and find it more of a chore to bend over, with my beer belly getting in the way (I'm almost 50, it's a sign of success!). If it's below my waist I'm going to pick it up with my foot 50% basically.
I live in a warm climate and hardly ever wear closed shoes luckily, I know some places it wouldn't be practical..
This was almost the complete comment, answered all the questions it raised as I read along except one thing.
How wide can you spread your toes? I just checked and my fingers (without thumb) is ~18cm.
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Old. Repost.
I've never seen this in a post before, sorry if I accidentally reposted it
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Sorry, but can't everyone blur their vision? You just use your eye muscles to lose focus, right?
I have to squint to blur mine
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I have extremely sensitive hearing. I can tell when there's an animal scarer nearby.
This brings me to Microsoft Teams. You might have seen people mention that their dogs know when someone joins the call before they do. That's because they introduced "ultrasonic howling" to detect if they're in the same room as you, and mutes their mic.
It hurts like fucking hell with headphones on.
Animal scarers make me feel like someone shot me in the head.
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I can make the sound of one hand clapping.
It was a thing that went around my middle school. You keep your hand at about a 90 degree angle to your arm, and then flap back and forth with your fingers loose so it hits your palm. Takes a little practice.
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I can blur my vision on command, kinda useless but a bit of fun to play with.
I also have a lazy eye, so I can scare unsuspecting people, sometimes two at a time if they're positioned right.
Huh, I did not realize not everyone can adjust their eyes' ~focal lengths at will!
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I aquired this superpower trough habits, but i can intuitively find the north.
Apart from that, well, I'm just myself
Like based on the position of celestial bodies like the sun and stars or ?
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I can count almost perfect seconds. Most people think they can count seconds until they try to prove it.
Like, give me a stopwatch. I can count seconds to within an average of .05 of a second.
I can do this consistently over a long period of time, i gave up counting when i tested it.
It's because i used to have 3 clocks in my living room, and they all used to tick at different times. I guess from when the battery was connected and it would create all these different rhythms.
After many years of hearing these rhythms and noticing the different rhythms that would be made as we changed the batteries over time, i ended up being able to tap the rhythm out on a table/in my head etc and now its just ingrained into my head.
taTA ta... taTA ta... taTA ta...
Absolutely useless.
I have a similar good sense of timing, but not to that precision, based upon a childhood experience with shower length.
My parents were frustrated with how long I would shower, so I brought an egg timer in to help myself keep track of time. Over a year or two of this habit I developed a very good sense of timing in 5-10 minute intervals.
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I have super sensitive hearing, so while I can hear the faintest of noises, it also means loud noises are overwhelming and painful.
