For real. Everytime I get in the shower I end up having to point the showerhead away and cower from the cold water and I could have just turned it on first?
I’m a first gen immigrant but despite having native American English, sometimes once in a blue moon I’ll encounter a semi-rare word I’ve yet to be exposed to.
So my closest analog is that I was confused for the longest time why people kept referring to statues of figures from shoulder level upwards as busts when they never had chests or breasts or boobs or blossoms or busts!
So for the longest time not only was I confused, I would be on the lookout for statuses that depicted from breast height upwards, but I never found one, lol.
If your dinner scrapings are too soupy or wet to go in the bin, you can tip the whole thing in the toilet so you don’t have to fanny about trying to sieve the noodles and vegetables while decanting it into the kitchen sink.
30 years old when I had dinner at a friend’s house and they did it casually like it was obvious.
I can’t think of an incident like this off-hamd for myself, but I once dated a woman who didn’t know that women have a urethra. She thought the urine just came out of her vagina. She was ~23.
Me, the first time I realized I could wash pillows. (Only certain types are washable)
I think I’m learning in real time that pillows are a bitch to wash 🤦♂️
They take a long time to dry on tumble low. I recommend washing them in the morning, lol.
I don’t do them too often, usually every 6mo. But it gets the musty/sweaty smell out of them. And if you are allergic to dust mites, it helps.
Love that for once we’re mostly not mocking them and are actually sharing similar experiences, we’ve all had one of those moments.
I genuinely can’t tell you what my thing is. Other than that deep down, I know the feeling and know that I have one. This has happened to me before. I have felt this feeling. I just don’t remember what about. I’ll keep you guys posted if I remember.
For me it was about 5 years ago, I’m over 30, realizing that my parents and extended family lied to me about watermelon seeds growing in your stomach.
It was just so ingrained in me as a child that it took more than 20 years for me to question it.
Watermelon is so much easier to eat now.
I learned recently that your can cut the two vertices that form the base of triangle watermelon slices as you cut the watermelon to make all the damn slices easier to eat, so they don’t collide with your cheeks. It’s seems so obvious but none of the adults around me did it growing up, lol.
I’m joining you on team traumatic memory repression.
As someone living in the tropics, where home heating doesn’t exist, warm/hot showers only takes 2 seconds after turning it on.
As for one of my own fuckups, I once put a piece of pizza with styrofoam as a plate in the microwave. I was 15 at the time. I did not eat pizza that day. Not the last time I fucked up with the microwave.
I mean, having lived more than half my life with water catchment NOT county water, letting the water run is wasteful and can mean you go without during drought. That means turning the water off while scrubbing, too. I’ve learned to embrace the cold on purpose at the end, with the closing pores n all.
Cold water is actually good for the skin, keeps it firm
And once again, we learn that common sense is actually not that common.
I’m positive if we took a closer look at your life we’d find many such things. Nobody is perfect.
Yeah I thought nobody being perfect was common sense.
I only fail ironicly.*
And of course, we have a relevant xkcd.
To be fair this is possibly the most relevant xkcd of all time
Yeah it’s probably the most linked xkcd with some margin, would be fun to see the traffic data to that page.
“I’m working on my masters and I feel like such a dumbass…”
Never assume someone with an advanced degree knows anything outside of that degree because “they must be smart”.
I worked with someone who was working on his second PhD in computer science and the guy did not know how to print.
Literally couldn’t figure out how to click the print button.
In computer science.
PhD.
Computers.
‘Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes’
- Dijkstra, 1970
To be honest, printer technology is some arcane eldrich bullshit
I’ve worked in tech for almost 20 years. A big misconception is confusing Computer Science and IT. Computer Science is generally more about logic, data structures, and programming paradigms across languages. IT is generally more about the configuration, deployment and usage of technology and operating systems for end users.
There’s a ton of nuance in there, like Infrastructure or devops, where it’s about the deployment of technology software and hardware to power large technology services, which sits in the middle.
That being said, I’ve generally found that the more specialized someone is in computer science, the less they know about the operating system they use and how it works. Especially if they spent the time to go for a PhD or something.
The smartest programmer I’ve ever met is my boss, our CTO. PhD from an Ivy League school. Can write haskell on a napkin, even though our stack doesn’t touch haskell. Also doesn’t know shit about how MacOS works even though he uses a Mac, and consistently asks me relatively simple questions regarding unix/linux differences, filesystem stuff, package managers, etc. It’s very interesting to see the difference in knowledge.
Wouldn’t it make sense though for computer scientists to make some effort to actually learn how to do practical things on computers? This seem weird to me, like a car designer who never drives. Sure you could probably design a decent vehicle never having driven one, but you might make a fantastic vehicle if you have.
Absolutely. I’m a tech, hubs is a dev. Brilliant dev, one of the foremost specialists in my country.
Can’t build a pc for shit, can’t fix a network issue, screams for wifey when the printer’s being a dick :D
Haha I’m unsure if “opposites attract” fits here, but perhaps “there’s no computer science without the computer”
nah, no opposites here, but it’s been funny watching over the years (we met outta uni) how extreme specialisation has pruned other branches. He isn’t fussed, I buy / setup/maintain all the equipment and like all BOFH I’m a raging control freak so I like he doesn’t try to play with the setup.
You can tell he is smart because he asks you about stuff outside of his domain.
Oh yeah he never has that Dunning Kruger setup I see from Junior people on the team. He knows (or finds out) who to ask and when, and always admits when he doesn’t know something. All super important qualities that some people learn earlier rather than later in probably every industry
There is a difference between “intelligent” and “smart” is the way I like to describe myself.
I’m college educated. But I’m also the guy that took twelve years to realize that his stove had a cook-timer on it…
Also theres a difference between being knowledgeable and smart or intelligent. I know a lot of facts because I’m curious about stuff. But I’m not particularly better at figuring things out than the average person.
I know mine has one, I just don’t know how to use it. Does that count?
I know I have one and know how to use it but I don’t know why I’d use it
Boiling eggs but your phone is charging
My microwave has at timer function, extremely useful.
Anti vax nurses are my favorite.
They aren’t mine because of the amount of damage they can do
Honestly, speaking as somebody with two different masters degrees, it’s a good idea to not assume they know anything WITHIN their degree field too, until they prove otherwise.
Famous physicist and misogynist “Surely you’re Joking” Mr. Feynman comes to mind. Didn’t even know you can’t have both lemon and milk in you tea.
I’m not joking, and don’t call me Shirley.
Being “smart” and “thinking” are two very different things. You can be very smart but have no conscious thought. You can be a great thinker without ANY formal education or experience. (Calm down internet geniuses, you’re not that special.)
We might start figuring out how to get either one if we start understanding that there’s a difference.
Your brain doesn’t work the way you think it does. Your mind isn’t entirely your own. Your language influences your internal dialogue, and if you have no internal dialogue, you need to exercise that by reading a lot more and thinking about your thinking.
Best tip I can give: Turn the sink hot water on and let it run until it’s hot and the lines are filled to the bathroom. When you turn on the shower, turn it to full hot until hot water starts coming out, and then adjust it to your personal preference. No waiting for shower to warm up now. Just jump in.
That just sounds like waiting with extra steps.
Waiting longer, assuming the shower has a higher flow rate.
Fairly long pipe from the tank to the shower so I could see the benefit of the tap and the shower mixer in cold water too. Not sure how the flow rate compares but the tap probably can be worth doing. I rarely bother though and just run the shower for a bit first.
I remember this thread. One of the responses was from someone who thought that the beep his car made when locking the doors got quieter when activated from further away.
We had a guy at work a couple years ago, nice guy but not too bright. He’d fill his bottle from the water cooler, and always got surprised by how fast it filled up at the top. He thought the water cooler’s dispenser somehow got faster as the bottle filled up, not realizing that it’s because the top of the bottle is narrower than the bottom.
Well…by the power of the inverse square law, they kinda do, I guess.
Also probably by the power of Grayskull
Ow. My face.
You’re not supposed to just stand there and waste that warming-up water, you’re supposed to collect it in a watering can and put it on your plants! It’s got stuff from having sat in the water heater so it’s not the best for drinking but plants don’t mind.
This legitimately is something I’ve been looking for as I hate just running a gallon of water out for no reason.
Iirc if your water boiler supports it, you can have it circulate the hot water in the pipes to warm them up without wasting water
I don’t think that’s possible in my 1970s building. My water heater is in the kitchen and the tub/shower is way across the apartment so I get 2 gallons. I have a big balcony with lots of happy plants.
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Also before someone asks, they were just roommates
Parenting. You think you’re doing great and you realise at times that some of the thing a you take for granted, you haven’t taught your kids.
Just because they’ve seen you do something a thousand times doesn’t mean they understand why
I remember a story of a child watching their mother cook a roast, and asked why she cut the ends off before putting it in the oven.
The mother learned it from her mother, so they both went and asked the grandmother.
Turned out the grandmother used to have a small oven and did that to make it fit.
There’s a weirder variant where they always cover meat with a draining rack while it’s marinating. After N years the grandparent visits for dinner and explains “yes but you see we had a cat…”
I immediately thought of the variant of this story I’ve heard when I read the post.
In the variant I heard: grandma never had bakeware that could fit the entire roast.
Same difference. I kinda like yours better.
As a parent, I was surprised at the amount of stuff kids need to be taught. Stuff that I assumed was obvious isn’t - it’s learned behaviour. And you don’t realize that it’s learned until you see your kid struggling with some trivial task.
An interesting one that sums it all up - crawling babies aren’t instinctively scared of cliffs or drops, they have to learn not to crawl off an edge. Which isn’t all that surprising except for the fact that when they start walking, they don’t carry this lesson forward and will happily walk off an edge. They need to learn it again.
As an ex kid, I only recently realised my parents taught me almost nothing. Even though I later learned a lot of very varied things, I could have started much better equipped for life. To people who chose to have kids, don’t be like my parents. It’s really crippling.
The fun part is watching your kids figure out complex and nuanced things that you never even thought about, much less understood, while struggling with those trivial tasks.
OMG yes! One of my kids I have to micromanage to brush their teeth but is like Deanna Troi when it comes to their friends. (I’m more Data)
The fact that those are the comparisons you chose to use confirms you are, in fact, more like Data, hehe
See also: why LLMs can seem clever and still be incredibly stupid
I just had to say “don’t put your chicken in your butt” to be met with “Why?”
It was the chicken that asked the why?
