Try to keep it practical (like something that would be fairly doable, you just havent gotten around to it...yet)

There are apps that you can input text into and they can replace the characters in each word incrementally to help learn them. Wanna get into that

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[–] 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you're involved in any kind of protest, the phone number of a lawyer. Hell, generalize this. Make sure you memorize numbers of at least the first few of your emergency contacts. You never know when you will be separated from your phone.

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

    You know, you are allowed to cheat in this test. Just write those numbers on your arm with a permanent marker or whatever. Get a fake tattoo, if you want.

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  • [–] 26 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    White-orange, orange, white-green, blue, white-blue, green, white-brown, brown.

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago

    First aid procedures.

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago*

    P Sherman 42 wallaby Way Sydney

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (7 children)
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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    U havent already? How many digits could it cost, 10?

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Proper sequence of attaching jumper cables.

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    That one is easy positive, negative, nipple, nipple.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Negative negative
    Positive positive right?

    Sometimes a chassis connection?

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    The important thing is not to complete the circuit near a battery, since it can cause sparks which can ignite the flammable vapors that batteries tend to emit when discharging. This is especially important near the dead battery, which has potentially been discharging quite a lot recently.

    So the usual sequence is:

    1. Dead positive
    2. Live positive
    3. Live negative
    4. Dead ground (to the metal chassis, ideally not right next to the battery)

    I usually start by clipping the dead negative cable to something non-conductive to keep it out of the way and then move it to ground as the last step.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Basically any song on guitar that I like. I can sing the entire song back to front, but I can't for the life of me remember the chord sequences. And I've been playing for many years.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Why should I memorize songs that you like?

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago

    How to convert various units of measurement. (Including between imperial and metric.)

    2.54 centimeters in an inch. Degrees Fahrenheit is nine fifths of degrees Celsius plus 32. Stuff like that.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    The standardized NATO phonetic alphabet

    ...for when you need to read alpha numeric codes or clarify spellings.

    Especially with, how, inexplicably, phone connections seem to have gotten more garbly in recent years.

    This code was invented to be reasonably understood as much as possible in less-than-ideal communication conditions.

    As time goes on, civilian life is full of situations where you'll need to read off serial numbers, codes, or even spelling your own name, to somebody seemingly connected to you from a million miles away via coconuts and twine.

    So, learn it, and you never need to go "M as in...uh...'Mancy'?" ever again! Your IT department might thank you.

    ...and let's be honest, it sounds kinda cool. :)

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    More garbly? That's those hosers using built in laptop microphones or speakerphones. Terrible.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    Oh definitely! If there's one thing I'm done with, it's people calling on speakerphone while their phone is like, seemingly, in their gym bag in the trunk LOL.

    Like bro, you're not Jack Bauer and I'm not your handler, it can wait until you're done going 75 on the freeway.

    Maybe my work's phone network service is just awful, even landline to landline, but yeah, for how much faster data connections have gotten, I feel like I got clearer voice quality on my cordless Vtech in 2004 LOL.

    Maybe it's me and I should get my hearing checked. πŸ˜…

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Converting between hexadecimal and binary. It's not that hard and it would've been useful many times, but I still haven't memorised it

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    If you're a software engineer, memorizing an ASCII table (particularly the hex numbers of each character code) is definitely helpful. If for no other reason than so that you can read things that are randomly written in binary without having to consult a table.

    Something not really otherwise terribly useful that nonetheless helped me keep my sanity: learn how to convert to base64 in your head. At work, we had really boring 8-hours-a-day training for a couple of weeks. To pass the time, I came up with random strings to base64 encode in my head. "Hat is 48 61 7a. The first six bits are 010010 which in base64 is an S. The next six bits would be 000110 which in base64 is G." Etc. I'd write down the base64 strings character by character as I derived them and then check my results for errors when I got back to my desk.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    When is it useful past the point of just looking it up as need be?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    It's not something you try to recite. You just do it so many times you became too good at it to look at the table.

    Four bits can represent up to 15, from 0000 to 1111. Correspondingly, 0 to F in hex.

    Binary from right to left is 1, 2, 4, 8.

    One byte is eight bits. It takes eight digit places.
    XXXX XXXX

    0000 0000 to 1111 1111
    00 to FF
    0 to 255

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    I mean when would it be so necessary that it jystifies itself or the time cost to do so

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  • [+] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    Do Germans care a ton if you get the wrong article? That must be a common thjng for even native speakers to get the article wrong on millions of individual words

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    They learn the article with the word. So they never really have a problem. The biggest problem is that the article is necessary to know how other words need to be written.

    Also, in English you can have one word that is written the same but can be the name of two entirely different things. We use the context of the sentence to determine which word is actually intended. Germans know through different articles, which word is intended.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Also no German really gets upset by it if you get it wrong. They know that German is complicated in that regard. They are usually just happy that you are trying.

    The only person that has ever said anything at all about it, is a colleague that I asked to correct me. It helps with the learning process.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    I find that it's mainly frustrating to those learning German at an advanced level, since using a wrong article immediately exposes you as a non-native speaker. Because yeah, as the others said, it hardly ever happens that native speakers use a wrong article...

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    how to navigate whatever town or city you live in without GPS

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    The general knowledge of prefixes, suffixes and sentence structure of the language families/subgroups, in order to better grasp a basic understanding of a common language when I encounter it, and be more respective - for example knowing when to use -kun, Fraulein, seΓ±ora, and courteous actions native to the locale

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    Your wife's birthday?

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    how to division in your head. i always have to go the long way round.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    just developing an intuition, like how you don't do addition in your head by just doing 1+1+1+1+1+1....

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    I do 5+7 = 12 without much thinking . But 123912+987696 uhhh

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Approximate 3. I do not want to think past whole number division lol. Wtf is 2/7, that is what remains as the fraction I guess

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Your state's mental hygiene/commitment laws and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities treaty that U.S.A. is the only country not to ratify.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    Fa Do Sol RΓ© La Mi Si
    (F....C....G....D...A...E...B)

    this is the order in which sharps go. Gives you the tonality of a given song. Let's say the song takes 4 sharps- take the last one (RΓ©/D), add a half-tone to it (Mi/E), there it is, your song is in E major

    It works with flats as well, in the reverse order (Si Mi La RΓ© Sol Do Fa). Take the next-to-last flat, that is your tonality.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    That's cool!

    I don't understand any of it. (ELI5 please? Thanks for sharing this anyway!)

    ^Have^ ^a^ ^great^ ^day,^ ^be^ ^kind,^ ^and^ ^thanks^ ^for^ ^sharing!^ ^:D^

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    It's helpful if given a partition (with sharps or flats duly noted in the key signature), of which you want to quickly know the key -thus the tonic chord, usually the one any given song begins and ends with... broadly speaking. With this mnemonic you can immediately tell what the key is and start playing. Of course most people who play an instrument have developed their ear so that they can find the key of most songs they hear intuitively/empirically, the trick is useful with a partition only.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    Keeping it practical, I'd like to know the basics about every regionally important city in the world. Capitals should be easy, I probably have most of them down already, and I have a few ideas about how to compile a list of the rest.

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

    Pretty much how to do any task without electricity or a device that depends on it. It can be really useful to know how people did every day stuff 200 years ago.

    Do you know how to do your laundry without a machine? Use a map? Send mail via post?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    If you cook, bake, brew, anything with food and drink.

    Common volume conversions: 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, 4 tablespoons/2 fluid ounces in a quarter cup, 8 fluid ounces in a cup, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon.

    Common weight conversions: 28 grams in an ounce, 16 ounces in a pound, 2 pounds and 3(ish) ounces in a kilo.

    And common volume to weight conversions based on ingredients you use. For me: 200 grams in a cup of sugar, 125 grams in a cup of AP flour, 6 grams in a tablespoon of cocoa powder.

    Makes it a lot easier to halve/double recipes, or use a scale for a volume written recipe.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    My credit card number and associated details.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Nah thats what password managers and physical custody of the cards are for

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    It came in handy when paying for parking today.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago*

    You didnt have your phone or the physical card on you? If not I agree, if you did its seems little redundant, huh? Never gonna recommend ignorance over knowing for the most part, I just dont think it outweighs the fact you pretty much need to use a password manager anyway so why not batch everything in that way, where do you draw the lines?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    The NATO alphabet comes in handy sometimes

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    The first 100 digits of pi lol. On a more serious note, it is very useful to remember how you should react to certain comments you know others will make in the future.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    How to do almost anything by hand, and the phonetic alphabet (specifically nato phonetic alphabet) can be useful for misunderstandings. I want to learn shavian, an alphabet optimized for english, just for fun.

    Have a great day, be kind, and have fun! :D

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Multiplication table.... One day I'll get those 7s and 8s.

    (I'm 40).

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