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

  • BobQuasit@beehaw.org
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    1 hour ago

    I’m a super-taster and thanks to lots of childhood abuse I’m hypervigilant. So pretty much everything. If a person anywhere in the area has been smoking or in a smoky room any time in the last day or two, I’ll know it. I know what you last ate - and drank, if it wasn’t water. I can hear a woman sobbing quietly in a locked room down the hall when nobody else can.

    I see beauty in the clouds in the sky at night. I smell faint smoke on the wind. Scents that remind me of long ago, when I was a child - like the smell of shrinky-dinks coming off a hot metal mold, or pastries coming out of an Easy-bake oven. Autumn leaves swirling in an icy breeze. Or the smell of something like earwax, or tar.

    I often wonder how normal people live without sensing so much of the world!

  • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Idk if it’s rare, but my wife thinks it’s weird that I can smell on the breeze if we are near a winery. It’s kind of an astringent smell

  • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Older TVs I could “sense” when they were turned on or off like a room over.

    I assume it was a sound but I couldn’t really explain it back then lol, it really was more of a “feeling”

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      5 hours ago

      CRT TVs have a very iconic high pitched noise. It’s somewhat similar to the sound of tinnitus. Combine that with some people not being able to hear those high pitched noises very well (especially as they age) it makes sense that you may have been able to hear them but not really consciously be aware of it.

  • Christian@lemmy.ml
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    6 hours ago

    Before I lost my sense of smell I was absurdly sensitive to ranch. If my ex opened a ranch dip in the apartment I would be dry-heaving very quickly. When I was a kid I would sometimes move seats eating lunch at school because other kids had ranch doritos. Not having to deal with that anymore was a rare positive to come out of my awful experience with covid.

    I can enjoy coldcuts and cheeses, but they’ll make me sick if they’re not extremely fresh. In some cases they already smell and taste like they’ve gone rancid fresh off the slicer.

    Pancreatitic sepsis fucked my tastebuds, my hospital stay was extended a full week because I couldn’t keep down foods other than sweets. They actually restarted me on the feeding tube because of that. When I went off the NPO and got to eat again for the first time I asked for a spicy sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, I’m pretty sure it was just an ordinary spicy sandwich but in that moment it tasted like the spiciest thing I had ever eaten in my entire life. I don’t like the taste of water anymore, which is miserable.

  • BanaramaClamcrotch@lemmy.zip
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    14 hours 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!

  • IndieGoblin@lemmy.4d2.org
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    14 hours ago

    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.

    • isyasad@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      I get this too. I didn’t think/know it was air pressure though? Seems to happen to me randomly, and rarely.

  • NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net
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    14 hours ago

    The frame rate on high refresh monitors

    I’ve got friends that say they can’t tell the difference, who’ve only ever used 60hz

    • FatVegan@leminal.space
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      13 hours ago

      I’m kinda like that. While i love high frame rates, i don’t think i see the upgrade. From 60 to 120? Not really sure. But from 120 to 60? Why is my game a slideshow?

  • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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    20 hours ago

    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

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    I don’t have a sense of smell but I can still smell if it’s cold or hot outside.

    Ah I can hear security cameras sometimes.

  • howl2@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

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

    • Doublenut@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Same. If there’s a fair amount of particular types of ants I can smell them still but not which corner of the yard has fire ants anymore.

  • KumaLumaJuma@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • saigot@lemmy.ca
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      1 hour ago

      I can definitely taste the difference between aspartame and sugar but its not unpleasant to me.

    • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      So much this. I live in a country with a sugar tax, so almost every soft drink on the market has part of its sugar replaced with some kind of sweetener. I didn’t drink a lot of soft drinks before, but now I can’t drink them at all.

    • Evoliddaw@lemmy.ca
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      7 hours ago

      I thought I was the only one that could not stand aspartame like how is it in so many things and no one says anything haha

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      This is so interesting, since I simply can not tell a difference between the aspartame/acesulfane and actual sugar in fizzy drinks. I guess I have it easy because of that, but I have a somewhat keen sense of taste otherwise, I cook a lot and can detect what the taste is missing or has too much of pretty consistently, and know the “opposite” tastes/ingredients to apply. And wines and such, it’s sort of a synesthesia thing too, since I kind of feel them as something close to colors. But sweet things I have trouble with. I thought, not sure why, this was a human thing, but it’s interesting to hear someone can detect the sweet things granularly! Cool!

  • gtr@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    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.

    • YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      Drop a full and an empty battery from the same height onto a flat surface. The empty one will bounce more, the full one will just drop.