Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Bodily Oddities

vester.si

181–190 of 221 posts

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#181

An interesting story about the Photic Sneeze Reflex [0]: it's one of the things that fighter pilots are screened for. The reasoning is that they can't have a pilot looking down and dark ground, look up to scan for enemy fighters and start sneezing. Some people with the reflex can also have multiple sneezes in a row. I find this all fascinating as: - I have this - I was also born with no sense of smell 0 - https://en.…

Do you like to eat? Or do it out of a sense of duty?

I def have taste preferences e.g. I like grapefruit better than orange juice. Another example is Sriracha tastes great to me as it's spicy but not too spicy. Too spicy and I just can't taste anything.

In other words, I have the same 5 basic tongue tastes that you do e.g. salt, sweet, bitter, sour and "umami". Flavor is usually taste + smell and that's the part I'm missing.

If you are more interested, I wrote a Twitter thread about all of this here: https://x.com/alexpotato/status/1559865770515087360

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#183
post #169

Monday is a light brownish, Tuesday black, Wednesday blue, Thursday ochre, Friday dark blue, Saturday white/silver, Sunday black. January blue, February brownish, March is black and white, April green, May black, June yellow, July darker yellow, August dark green, September ochre, October blue, November brown, December black. Thanks for coming to my synesthesia TED talk.

“Prime numbers are bright orange” - Sheldon Cooper

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#184

Sleep Paralysis is for sure my favorite oddity. I've not experienced it in 20 years and I miss it. It happened about once a year when I was young and into my early 20s. Mine often had weird noises and hallucinations and creatures floating around. The first few times it was rather scary but then I realized it was pretty neat. The trick I learned is to tell myself I just have to move my toe.

Why do you miss it? It is usually described as being terrifying. BTW sleep paralysis is likely the cause of many 'alien abduction' reports: wake up, can't move, presence in the room, sexual element (e.g. probing!).

No, it's not always terrifying. I think the terror is because some people feel they're being pressed down. Once you know what it is, it's a lot less scary. It's to stop you acting out your dreams.

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#185

Sleep Paralysis is for sure my favorite oddity. I've not experienced it in 20 years and I miss it. It happened about once a year when I was young and into my early 20s. Mine often had weird noises and hallucinations and creatures floating around. The first few times it was rather scary but then I realized it was pretty neat. The trick I learned is to tell myself I just have to move my toe.

I was prescribed Xanax for a bit and it gave me the absolute worst sleep paralysis imaginable, with nested false awakenings.

Nested false awakenings are the worst. Now I have a phrase to use for when that happened to me.

I dreamt that I was attacked and killed by a monster. Getting killed in a dream makes one wake up immediately, lol. I was hanging out with a friend of mine and telling him about the dream and as soon as I told him what happened he turned into a monster and killed me.

I was driving down the road with my friend Lloyd who was a passenger beside me in the car and telling him about this crazy dream. As soon as I mentioned the monster killing me, he turned into a monster and killed me - while I was driving my stinking car! Then I woke up and I was like "am I fucking really awake now?" I was.

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#187
post #169

Monday is a light brownish, Tuesday black, Wednesday blue, Thursday ochre, Friday dark blue, Saturday white/silver, Sunday black. January blue, February brownish, March is black and white, April green, May black, June yellow, July darker yellow, August dark green, September ochre, October blue, November brown, December black. Thanks for coming to my synesthesia TED talk.

What does that mean?

Like if it's Monday, do you see light brownish everywhere throughout the day? Or is it when you see the word "Monday" written out that the color comes to your mind? And/or if someone says the word "Monday"? If it's Monday and I tell you "want to grab lunch tomorrow", do you see black?

If I tell you that Monday in Japanese is pronounced "nichiyoubi", do you see light brownish when seeing "nichiyoubi" now?

Actually I lied that was Sunday, Monday is pronounced "getsuyoubi" - do you see light brownish when I write "getsuyoubi" now? If not for Japanese and you've learned a foreign language, how long until Monday in that language was light brownish?

Questions coming from legitimate curiosity! I really want to understand what you mean by "Monday is a light brownish". If someone asks me to come up with a color for say March, light green comes to my mind instantly - probably because of the association with spring (same with eg Christmas and red, or January and white) but I don't think I would say that "March is light green", so you're probably talking about something else.

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#189
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu The feeling that you haven't experienced something before, which should by all accounts feel familiar to you. >A study by Chris Moulin of Leeds University asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. He reported that 68 percent of volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. I also like this poster: https://…

Thats an interesting poster. Is it real? Im just trying to understand what an MTA employee would do with that information. This seems very portal-y. On the jamais-vu front, I once had to write "school" a few hundred times in detention and it stopped having meaning because I began to just see it as the jumble of letters id been writing for the previous hour, perhaps as a coping mechanism, rather than doubting it was a…

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation , which is a closer match to both your experience and the "door" description above.

Re: Show HN: Bodily Oddities

#190

I can move my ears. But it's not ears alone, whole scalp skin seems to move and ears get pulled from behind as a result. I learned it from my uncle as kid though by trying to do the same as him.

So you can move the entire ear rather than just wiggle the tip? I can wiggle one ear, very slightly, and it looks like im having an aneurysm when I do it.

No. It's like the skin behind ears is pulled moving ear slightly back. Can't move tips.
Post reply on HN