I’ve been watching lots of videos on the Dude Perfect Youtube channel (a very big channel about sports trick shots, competitions, and comedy). They’re huge, with ~300 videos and ~58 million subs.
Culture shock: Apparently the five members are all deeply religious and yet there’s not a single indication in their videos (or at least in those I’ve watched so far). I only learned about this when I browsed their website and stumbled on one single sentence on the About page of their website, namely “We’re about giving back, spreading joy, and glorifying Jesus Christ.” They’re fine to believe in whatever they want; I was just surprised that they managed to keep their faith private when they apparently consider it to be so important.
Really dumb failure to notice confusion: Every one of the five members has a nickname, and two of the members are nicknamed “twins” and look so similar that I constantly mix them up. Turns out they’re actual twins ffs...
Ooh, I found the first video where I maybe could have noticed that they’re religious (though not that their belief is particularly important to them: In every video of their Stereotypes series, Tyler plays the Rage Monster stereotype where he gets angry and wrecks stuff. But in their Christmas Stereotypes video, Tyler temporarily stops this performance before he’d wreck a nativity set, with these words: “That would be a little bit too far. By the way, if you’ve got your nativity set up like this, technically it’s not biblically correct. The wise men weren’t actually here yet. They were still travelling. Anyways, <turns around and resumes Rage Monster shtick>”.
EDIT: Found another, rather subtle one, from their Skiing Stereotypes: Part of a trash talk is this exchange:
A: “You ever missed a church Sunday service?”
B: “Have you ever been to church?”
...
A: “By the way, I go to church every Easter!”
B: “Sure you do.”
EDIT2: Found a non-subtle one, namely this huge “Holy Spirit” wall poster thing in the background of this Game Night Stereotypes video. Or from the same video, a scary chainsaw scene which is randomly cross-shaped and is followed up by an “Easter” equip.
Other than that, I’ve learned that they play Christian songs over some of their videos, but I never pay attention to the lyrics, so I never noticed any of that.
When we switched Internet providers in our house, I had to relocate the Internet router and reconnect the network cables.
I first tried to connect my own PC (via a labeled patchfield), but could not get a connection to the router despite attempts with three (longer) network cables. I found the experience incredibly perplexing—I knew three three cables could not all be broken, and I knew I was missing something, but not what. But I eventually realized my error:
In a seemingly unrelated fact, I had traded rooms with a roommate some months prior. Because the patchfield was labeled with person names, not rooms, it no longer reflected reality from that point on. (I even figured at some point that it needed to be relabelled, but then forgot.) Whenever all network cables were connected to the router, this basically did not matter (except for LAN port numbering). But when only one network cable was connected, it made all the difference.
When I want to set a recurring reminder for something, I use Google Calendar’s email notifications. I wanted to set a reminder for monthly reviews at the end of the month, and so created a calendar event set to repeat “Monthly on day 31”.
Soon after, I discovered something that incredibly surprised me. Can you guess what it was?
The calendar didn’t generate events & reminders for any month with <31 days. This was not the desired outcome for an ostensibly monthly reminder!
I consider my memory to be terrible and make do with tools like such reminders. If I hadn’t noticed this problem right then, I might not have noticed it for a long time.
I’ve been watching lots of videos on the Dude Perfect Youtube channel (a very big channel about sports trick shots, competitions, and comedy). They’re huge, with ~300 videos and ~58 million subs.
Culture shock: Apparently the five members are all deeply religious and yet there’s not a single indication in their videos (or at least in those I’ve watched so far). I only learned about this when I browsed their website and stumbled on one single sentence on the About page of their website, namely “We’re about giving back, spreading joy, and glorifying Jesus Christ.” They’re fine to believe in whatever they want; I was just surprised that they managed to keep their faith private when they apparently consider it to be so important.
Really dumb failure to notice confusion: Every one of the five members has a nickname, and two of the members are nicknamed “twins” and look so similar that I constantly mix them up. Turns out they’re actual twins ffs...
Ooh, I found the first video where I maybe could have noticed that they’re religious (though not that their belief is particularly important to them: In every video of their Stereotypes series, Tyler plays the Rage Monster stereotype where he gets angry and wrecks stuff. But in their Christmas Stereotypes video, Tyler temporarily stops this performance before he’d wreck a nativity set, with these words: “That would be a little bit too far. By the way, if you’ve got your nativity set up like this, technically it’s not biblically correct. The wise men weren’t actually here yet. They were still travelling. Anyways, <turns around and resumes Rage Monster shtick>”.
EDIT: Found another, rather subtle one, from their Skiing Stereotypes: Part of a trash talk is this exchange:
A: “You ever missed a church Sunday service?”
B: “Have you ever been to church?”
...
A: “By the way, I go to church every Easter!”
B: “Sure you do.”
EDIT2: Found a non-subtle one, namely this huge “Holy Spirit” wall poster thing in the background of this Game Night Stereotypes video. Or from the same video, a scary chainsaw scene which is randomly cross-shaped and is followed up by an “Easter” equip.
Other than that, I’ve learned that they play Christian songs over some of their videos, but I never pay attention to the lyrics, so I never noticed any of that.
“In the Disney movie Moana, what’s the problem of the demigod Maui by the time Moana finds him?”
“He’s washed up.”
A: “Having recently gotten a niece, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about babies, it’s that they’re cuties.”
B: ”… that doesn’t seem like a particularly novel insight.”
A: “No, I mean that they’re QTEs. Quick-time events.”
B: ”???”
A: “Every time you’re too slow, they get hurt, and then you feel terrible.”
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.
Here are some instances where I learned something I found so surprising as to e.g. audibly shout “what?!”:
When we switched Internet providers in our house, I had to relocate the Internet router and reconnect the network cables.
I first tried to connect my own PC (via a labeled patchfield), but could not get a connection to the router despite attempts with three (longer) network cables. I found the experience incredibly perplexing—I knew three three cables could not all be broken, and I knew I was missing something, but not what. But I eventually realized my error:
In a seemingly unrelated fact, I had traded rooms with a roommate some months prior. Because the patchfield was labeled with person names, not rooms, it no longer reflected reality from that point on. (I even figured at some point that it needed to be relabelled, but then forgot.) Whenever all network cables were connected to the router, this basically did not matter (except for LAN port numbering). But when only one network cable was connected, it made all the difference.
When I want to set a recurring reminder for something, I use Google Calendar’s email notifications. I wanted to set a reminder for monthly reviews at the end of the month, and so created a calendar event set to repeat “Monthly on day 31”.
Soon after, I discovered something that incredibly surprised me. Can you guess what it was?
The calendar didn’t generate events & reminders for any month with <31 days. This was not the desired outcome for an ostensibly monthly reminder!
I consider my memory to be terrible and make do with tools like such reminders. If I hadn’t noticed this problem right then, I might not have noticed it for a long time.