What is something you can sense that few-if-any people you know can sense? Literal answers only.

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[–] 61 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I have a heart condition that I get an ECG (electro cardiogram) done for every 6 months or so. It's just an ultrasound on your heart. They always take mine from a bunch of different angles and a bunch of different types of pictures.

But I was recently in the hospital and told the technician that their machine was loud. She looked baffled. I told her I can hear the ultrasound and hers is the loudest I've encountered. Apparently I'm the only person she's ever done work on (or however to say that) that's been able to hear it.

So I guess that is my super power. Or I'm just autistic, as apparently many autists can hear very high pitched noises.

But the ultrasound is pretty cool. The frequencies and the pitch will change depending on what photo mode they're in. Like a doppler mode is all pewpewpewpewpew while the normal mode is all eeeeeeeeeeeee. Lol. It's hard to explain.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Its seriously wild that you can do this!

    Apparently, ultrasound machines can use frequencies that start just higher than human hearing, 20kHz.

    Can you hear dog-whistles, bats, or other electronics?

    Get a hearing test and call Guiness (c:

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I was entirely confused for a moment- I think you might be getting an echocardiogram, rather than an electrocardiogram. If you could hear an electrocardiogram, there would be something seriously wrong with their machine- It's meant to be a passive electrical measurement. Echo on the other hand is exactly what you described, an ultrasound of the heart.

    I was actually thinking you might have a strong interoception, which is when people have an awareness of their own heartbeat signals- super rare but super cool.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    I had this exact experience and tried to ask the technician about it. She didn't understand what I was asking. I thought I was just explaining it poorly.

    Lemmy needs to stop trying to convince me I'm neurodivergent.

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  • [–] 41 points 8 months ago

    The fucking documentation for the libraries we program with, apparently. Everyone else at work either just vibecodes or goes "aw I don't know how to do that, it probably can't be done :c"

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  • [–] 33 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    I can smell your fabric softener, no matter how long ago you used it. Artificial perfumes of any kind just murder my sinuses. It suuuucks.

    I also can hear electronics, even just the lights, if that's all that's on. Maddening, because I can almost never find real silence. It's why I love camping.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I experience the first set of powers, and I hate it. Every detergent, shampoo, deodorant I use is "sensitive", "baby formula" or whatever.

    And a few years ago some deodorant company started using some I guess artificial compounds that just pushes the air out of my lungs, it's so bad. I can not only smell it, it digs into my forehead.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I get this with pretty much all perfumes, scented candles, tobacco smoke (oh god the tobacco smoke) and extinguished matches and candles.

    With some people I wonder how they can exist with so much perfume poured over themselves that I can't breathe while walking behind them. I just don't understand.

    An upside of being smell sensitive is that it helps with debugging electronics. Burnt parts smell very obvious, and I can even smell hot stuff like heatsinks.

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    [–] 24 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    I can see lights flicker when others can't.

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    [–] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I used to operate a drill rig for taking soil and water samples. I learned to read all the utility markings and to spot the telltale markings of previous drill work. I can walk around an urban area and tell you where all the gas stations and drycleaners used to be just based on a look at the pavement. In that sense I can "see" things others can't.

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    [–] 20 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I can smell when a woman is pregnant. I've shocked several friends by congratulating them before they even took a test.

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    [–] 18 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    The god-awful taste of sugar substitutes.

    A lot of people can taste things like saccharine I think? But I can taste any fake sugar, even when there is a mix of real and fake sugar in the same thing.

    Aspartame/acesulfane is definitely the worst of them all, but sucralose, stevia… all of them taste like medicine kind of.

    I can also taste the difference between cane and beetroot based granulated sugar. Beetroot sugar is sharper.

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    [–] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

    i can see very well in the dark, like pitch black night in the arctic circle in a forest i can see the ground enough that i wont trip and can avoid things like snakes

    i fucking hate all the bright lights on cars now btw. the sun is genuinely distressing to me i just simply cannot go outside without sunglasses, even when its very cloudy

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    [–] 15 points 8 months ago

    The ringing in my ears is my own personal sensation. There are many others with a ringing of their own, but this one is mine and it undoubtedly is as unique as my fingerprint.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago*

    Not me but my gf has a rare condition called SCDS. Basically, she can hyper hear her own body. Her heart sounds like a loud bass drum. She can hear her eyes when they move. She can hear her bones when they creak.

    It is unsettling and can be quite dis-orienting and painful. She has surgery scheduled next year to fix it!

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I see certain shades of blue as grey, while my partner can distinguish more shades of blue than the average person, leaving me often feeling like I'm being fucked with

    I wear almost exclusively grayscale clothing, except for a pair of pants that are apparently navy blue, and a shirt that's supposedly slate blue

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    [–] 13 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Low light vision.

    I was always very sensitive to bright lights and sincerely fear I'll go blind at my last years but I can see at higher definition under low light conditions.

    My vision stops processing color and I get higher definition of contrast. I've walked through dark areas with no difficulty, where others simply said they could not see a thing.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Maybe everyone already knows this but you can generally see better in your peripheral vision in low light.

    Almost all of your color vision / cones are concentrated in a tiny central area of your retina.

    The grey scale / rods are dispersed around that.

    In some ways I think night vision is a kind of skill that some people might be better at than others, even if the mechanics of their eyes aren't special.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Based on what I've read about senses, I think most of human sensory variance is born in the brain and is trainable to be much more sensitive than we'd generally expect possible given our comparatively weak hardware. Some of us have the supertaster gene, but no one comes out of the womb a sommelier.

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    [–] 13 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I used to be able to smell ants and hear electricity. My senses aren't as keen as they used to be though.

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    [–] 12 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Mould, I'm always surprised at how few people can smell when food is mouldy. I've had people insist the smell is a chemical smell, until we've found the offending mouldy item (e.g. When someone's left a cup of coffee on their desk and gone on holiday) and I reap the glory of being right.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    Yeah I feel like i can't smell a foul old coffee cup better than anyone else, but everyone's sponges always smell bad to me. I always hate washing a dish at anyone else's house because the bacteria in their sponge leaves a smell on my hands that doesn't come off from a normal hand washing or three. Rubber gloves also leave a smell on my hands that will make it difficult for me to sleep that night it smells so strong. Latex ones only, though.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (1 child)
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    [–] 11 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I can feel whether a battery is full or empty based on its weight. I know it doesn't make sense but I've done a blind test and it works. Empty battery is lighter.

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    [–] 11 points 8 months ago

    When food is going to go off, or when an object has developed mildew/black mold, I can tell way before anyone else by smell.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    High pitched noises sometimes. I have an audio spectrum visualizer app installed to confirm these. But they can be pretty weird as they bounce around. You'll get these heat spots. Unfortunately, I feel like my ears are degrading now.

    Anyway, dimmable LED lights are often a problem due to PWM. Only full brightness is quiet.

    Smell, I don't even know what the hell that was. There is or was something in the back of one bus. I wouldn't say it's smell, but... something. Just a spicy punch that doesn't quite let me breathe in. I noted down the license plate if I'll experience it again to confirm it's the same vehicle, but this wasn't the first time, though unfortunately I didn't copy it that first time. Same line though, so possibly same vehicle as well.
    But I am not sure if I was the only one, no one was visibly bothered, but who knows.

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    [–] 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    There are syringes that come prefilled with saline used to flush IVs. Some people can taste it when it's injected, others can't. I'm one of those who can.

    I can quickly learn to recognize specific people's footsteps, so I can hear who's approaching. Sometimes it doesn't even depend on what footwear the person is wearing.

    Apparently I can hear high pitched sounds too. I've heard such sounds several times where people around me weren't able to hear it, and recently I could hear an ultrasound device too, which kinda make sense since they start at around 20 kHz.

    Also, this isn't about sensing, but I can slow my heart rate temporarily simply by holding my breath.

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    [–] 10 points 8 months ago

    Despite having tinnitus, I can still hear very subtle sounds and identify them.

    • For example, a long, deep hum means a garage door is opening/closing.
    • I can also hear (and feel) footsteps and movement from people around a building, even very subtle movement.
    • I can also pick up on all the little creaks a building makes.

    However, despite being able to hear subtle sounds, I cannot hear "no" sound or silence due to the ringing. :/

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    Not exactly sense, but my brain's processing. I can easily pick out the melody of only 1 instrument in music. It's like Fourier transform but on instrument level.

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    [–] 9 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Apparently I am the only one who can smell this odor that is on dish sponges. It it harsh as smelling salts and is like burning chemicals of some kind. It is not on fresh sponges and doesn't always develop on used sponges. I thought it might be a chemical reaction between the soap and synthetic sponge materials. I tried searching for it online but haven't found an answer yet.

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    [–] 9 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    I can smell iron in the soil from a distance (depending on how much there is), and if there's a lot of iron I feel very sick, almost like I'm going to vomit, and I want to get away from it. There was one place like that where the closer I got the more sick I felt and the more iron I smelled, I could taste it like there was blood in my mouth, some months later did they start digging there and found a lot of iron.

    I do not really like lager (love other types) for the same reason, the taste has a lot of iron in it especially some brands but I seem to be the only one who can taste it. I kind of rank lager as less or more irony taste lol.

    Sometimes at some bars does one or multiple beers on tap taste weird and sweet regardless of type or brand. No one else of my friends seem to be able to tell. I where at a bar once where only one beer tap tasted as it should... The rest had the same sweet weird taste.

    I also do not like coca-cola or Pepsi so my taste buds may just be weird.

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    [–] 9 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I can tell where a laser is pointed on me without looking. Like if you blindfold me and got a laser pen and shined it on my arm, I can point to where it feels like it is with pretty good accuracy. It’s easier to detect motion than precise placement, and sensation wise it’s not touch or heat like you’d expect it’s more like raw proprioception.

    Also it felt the same regardless of the color of laser we used which seems odd since you’d think higher frequency light would be easier to detect.

    Tbf I haven’t done the experiment since I did it with my siblings when I was pretty young. Not sure if I can still do it, but my siblings and cousins couldn’t do it even back then.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    apparently no one i know can sense the chemical/marker(?) taste in artificial cherry flavouring like dr. pepper or cherry coke/pepsi

    i seriously don't know how anyone can get past that taste, so i figure people either enjoy it, or don't notice it

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Changes in air pressure(I think). Its like everything goes quiet theres ringing it feels very weird. I always ask to see if anyone else notices.

    You how you get up on a winter morning after the rain and everything sounds different and the air is crisp. Yeah sometimes I can feel that a sudden shift and its very jarring like ive been stunned for a few seconds.

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    [–] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    I can hear the muscles in my eyes when I look from side to side or up and down.

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    [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I think maybe I'm sensitive to some bad smells other people don't get. One time someone was demonstrating to a group (including me) making chocolate and it smelled like vomit to me and I had to leave. The others weren't bothered.

    This might be a personal preference thing rather than a sensing-something-undetectable thing but I've always hated the flavour of dairyβ€”can't stomach dairy milk, dairy cheese, dairy butter, etc. The vegan versions of these things are fine to me though because they don't have that distinct "dairy" flavour whilst still having the other qualities of the product.

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    [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Back in my youth when I ruined my teeth by drinking 5-6 liters of Coca Cola a day, I could smell if a bottle was three or less months from expiration date, or if it was fresher.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I can hear baselines (from blocks away!) that my family can't hear at all. Or, hear isn't the right word, but I feel it as an ache in my ears and head.

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