I just learned the mind palace technique to memorize stuff and wanna put it to use.
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Came here to say this. Instead of pronouncing your name on the phone, just read the NATO alphabets that constitute your name.
My problem is that I learned it in Dutch before I learned the international English version - and I can’t remember it in Swedish. Throwing in very typical Dutch names in a conversation happening in a different language can lead to confusion.
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For day-to-day purposes, if you are used to Fahrenheit but not Celsius or vice versa, and all you want to do is get a rough sense of how warm or cold it is outside without having to do arithmetic involving fractions in your head, then remember that there are two temperatures in Celsius that are roughly the same in Fahrenheit but with their digits transposed: 16° C ~ 61° F, and 28° C ~ 82° F. You can then roughly interpolate/extrapolate by about 2° F for every 1° C.
Also freezing is 0 in Celsius, so 32f is 0c. That one always helps me. Not as useful for converting c to f.
Alternatively, 100C is boiling, which is 212F.
Bob and Doug Mackenzie thought me to roughly convert C to F by taking the temperature in Celsius, doubling it and then adding 30. It gets you in the ballpark.
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For the rubix cube one, besides showing off, it’s also fun to learn how to solve it and practicing to get faster and faster at solving it. It’s worth it.
I got down to about a minute and then realized it would take a lot more time to get lower than that.
My problem is everything makes sense until the last face. The algorithms seem too abstract at that point; it is memorizing a thing vs intuiting a thing.
The litany against fear
The mneumonic major system. Once I learned it by heart, it helped me memorize all kinds of numbers: cards, IDs, passwords, addresses…
That sounds a lot more complicated than just memorizing the number itself. How long did it take before you felt comfortable with this?
To give an extreme example:
“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” vs. “053250411391271”
But to be fair, I never end up with nice sentences. It’s more like “Thank you, rainbow. Clock firework” and I imagine myself thanking a rainbow and telling it to “clock firework”, whatever that means…
As to how long, I think it could’ve been a couple of months doing a dozen or so conversions. In total it’s a very small investment of time, assuming you space it out and don’t cram. It really helps to use the Wikipedia mnemonics (like how 4 is kinda like a mirrored R).
Thank you. I’ll give it a shot, since the example you gave is awesome.
Anyone who isn’t at least mildly interested that you know Morse code isn’t someone you want to know :-)
Good filter technique.
Also works the other way around, which is neat.
In that you know to avoid the weirdo in the corner wearing a “Ask me why I know morse code” t-shirt at the party?
Correct.
what if someone is mildly interested in why you use it as a filter technique? :P
Learn some alphabets of foreign languages. Russian is fun because some of the characters looks like English letters but have completely different sounds. Korean is also cool because it looks crazy complex but it’s actually extremely simple.
I don’t know any Korean, but the Korean alphabet is by far the best writing system I’ve seen.
The characters make the shape your mouth makes while annunciating that letter. It’s ingenious.
A crowd pleasing karaoke song!
I’ve never seen these flop at kareoke (if done with average competency):
Jump around - cypress hill gang
I will survive - Gloria Gaynor
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
Billy Jean - Michael Jackson (many other covers)
Shake it off - Taylor Swift
Pick 1 of the above plus a Beatles song and you’re good for impromptu Kareoke.
If you have a few days notice and a friend to plan with the options expand…
I’ve got Sir Mixalot’s “I like big butts” on lock
Given that you cannot lie, this must be true.
New Jersey state law requires everyone to sing along to Don’t Stop Believing.
I once chose Paradise By The Dashboard Light for karaoke and that was the only time I’ve ever done karaoke because I’m still embarrassed ten years later at how awful a choice it was. Great song, terrible for karaoke.
Subnets
A completely random ordering of a deck of cards. You can have a deck pre-stacked in this order, learn some false shuffles, have someone pick a card and place it back anywhere they want without marking its location in any way, and when you inspect the deck you know exactly what their card is. And they’ll never guess that the way you did it was memorizing the order of every card in the deck.
I’m sure there are a lot more advanced ways to take advantage of this, just a handy ability to have in your back pocket (literally).
If you’re going to memorise a deck of cards, you’re better off learning something like the Mnemonica Stack as you can use it as the basis for a whole load of card tricks.
Not necessarily the part for calculating the day of the week for any arbitrary day centuries ago, that’s just a useless party trick, but for the current year so you don’t need to pull out your phone to check. Knowing that 1/3 (or 1/4 on a leap year), the last day of February, 3/14, 4/4, 5/9, 6/6, 7/11, 8/8, 9/5, 10/10, 11/7, and 12/12 are all the same day of the week, that this year they’re all Tuesdays, and next year they’re all Thursdays, is mostly easy to remember and very frequently useful.
If you drive, the 3-4-8 second tailgating rule
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=QhGMm4aKWxc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thirty days has September, April, June, and November.
I always just used the knuckle trick for counting. The ones that have 31 days are at the top of the knuckle and the 30 (or 28/9) day months are in between the knuckles.
This is definitely the way.
My school taught it as “30 days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have 31, except the second month alone.”
The metric system.
Recipe for cooking. Useful for having a good meal and make other people love you.
