Many people mentioned clearing ALL the snow off your car, but I didn’t see people mentioning why. Here are some videos to elaborate how terrifying and dangerous it can be when people don’t do that.

One, two, three, four

It takes a lot of energy to clear the car off, but it’s critical. Don’t be the person that harms someone else just to save a bit of time and effort.

I’ve definitely talked about ND behaviors within minutes of meeting strangers at parties (either they bring it up or I do about myself, never calling someone else out for it).

I’m a nerd, therefore most of my friends are nerds, and so too are their friends. While I don’t have data to back this up, I believe most nerds are ND (I literally can’t think of any NT folks in my social circle). We tend to be good at pattern recognition, so identifying similar traits when there’s already the confirmation of being friends-of-friends tends to be enough to get into such topics, lol.

If I think of tasting a lime, my mouth puckers and salivates like I’m about to eat something sour. I could probably say I’m imagining the taste, similar to how you described, like a 1/10.

I think hearing is maybe like that but like 1/100 instead of 1/10? It’s hardest to explain that one because with the stuck song thing, it’s there. I know it’s there. I can’t not imagine the song when it’s stuck. But I don’t “hear” it in any way like my ears hear things?

Smell I can’t imagine at all, but I can usually recognize smells (“usually” because for things that are similar to a memory, like someone wearing the aftershave my dad used as a kid or something that smells like my grandmother’s house from 25 years ago, are likely a miss, but normal things I recognize without question).

Visuals are probably more like smell in that I just don’t have them, but remembering visuals is more critical so I’m better at coping with that one.

I will mention I’ve met people and then instantly forgotten everything about how they looked, like I could only tell you gender and race, but I recognized them when I saw them again. Now, I had context clues. Like I met a couple in a dive shop in town then saw them at the airport on the way to the trip we were both going on through the dive shop. I knew I’d probably see them at the airport and I knew them when I did. But I couldn’t have told you a thing about them until then! It was the weirdest experience, and I think not being able to visualize was the root cause.

I remember their name as a fact associated with the person.

That’s how the way something looks is stored in my head.

Derp, I was exhausted last night and said the wrong shape. But yeah, I just recognize things without needing to visualize it when it isn’t around.

I’ve definitely heard other aphants talk about not enjoying books. I love reading, but I typically don’t care for authors who are overly descriptive about visual things OR I just zone out during those descriptions. Most authors I read stuck to 1-2 sentence descriptions of things and then move on to what’s actually happening. That’s fine, and I might keep 1-2 of those details in mind.

I recently drew what I imagined the layout for a building in my favorite book series to be, then went back and found the text describing it to compare. I was way closer than I expected to matching the description, except I didn’t remember the entryway was a “long hallway” because literally none of the story happens there. If the description matters to the plot, I’m more likely to retain it. If something is only described at the beginning and in a lot of detail, I probably will not retain any of it.

I cannot hear in my head either, but my partner is an aphant who can do that, so they are unconnected. That one is weird too because I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I ‘know’ what they sound like, and my brain keeps the beat with the song, but I’m not hearing it. If anything it’s more like I’m silently singing along to the song. I do tend to get snippets of songs in my head because I can’t always remember where it goes though (I write as one line from a song circles endlessly through my mind).

Can you taste or smell things that aren’t around? If not, do you still know what those things are when you do taste or smell them?

It’s hard to explain how one thinks. But yeah, I think of the words to describe something and they are automatic. I can’t describe a lot of detail about anything unless I’m looking at it, but I know enough of the basics to remember things.

I think the name comparison I mentioned is probably the best I can think of. When you see a person you know, how do you remember their name? Unless you’re a person who imagines their name on their forehead in order to remember it in the first place, I assume it’s just a word you associate with that person? That’s what the details of everything are like for me.

A triangle is a shape with three sides; that’s all I need to know and I can draw it. A stop sign is a hexagon, red, with STOP in the middle.

I can’t draw anything more complex than that unless I’m looking at it. I’m pretty good at recreating images I look at, but I can’t do art from my own head for shit; it’s paralyzing to even consider doing it.

When I’m reading a book, I’ll retain the most often repeated and basic physical traits. Harry Potter had a lightning scar and glasses, Ron Weasley was red headed, and Hermione had crazy hair. If there were other descriptions in the books, they never sunk in; my brain just disregarded them. However, now I think of Daniel Radcliffe and the other actors. I can’t describe what they look like but I can recognize those people with no hesitation.

Not who you asked, but yes I could answer and also yes it’s gone from my mind’s eye. I would be answering from memory.

I have no mind’s eye. Full-stop. But I have memory and can recall details without needing to see the thing.

If you can remember someone’s name after meeting them, that’s the same process it would be for me to remember their hair or shirt color.

Motion sensor and smart light switch. There are two rooms in my house with multiple entryways and awful light switch options, so without these I’d just stumble in the dark.

We also have it for our carport and it’s so pleasant for the light to automagically happen and then go off without needing to remember to change anything.

(And all of this done through local mesh and Apple HomeKit. We do not use proprietary services that can be shut down on us.)

I was going to call it a “small” city but Google told me that 300k is mid-size so I went with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The city is ~350 sq km and our tiny downtown area is probably about 1 sq km, so the entire city is kinda like a suburb. Heck, I’m from Houston which is known for its urban sprawl, and yet there’s lower population density where I live now.

I’ll just use the same criteria you gave as an example.

• To the nearest convenience store: 1.5mi (2.6km)
• To the nearest chain supermarket: 1.8mi (2.9km)
• To the bus stop: 0.5mi (800m)
• To the nearest park: 0.3mi (480m) - I’m lucky to have several parks in my neighborhood
• To the nearest big supermarket: 2.1mi (3.4km)
• To the nearest library: 2.2mi (3.5km)
• To the nearest train station: 5.1mi (8.2km)

Edit: I live in a mid-size city (300k) on the east coast.

Hey, I know the person who made this meme originally! (He got a kick of seeing his work spread around.)

Great examples. The most valuable use for me has been writing SQL queries. SQL is not a part of my job description, but data informs choices I make. I used to have to ask a developer on my team all the questions I had and pull them off their core work to get answers for me, then I had to guess at interpreting the data and inevitably bug them again with all my follow-up questions.

I convinced the manager to get me read access to the databases. I can now do that stuff myself. I had very basic understanding of SQL before, enough to navigate the tables and make some sense of reading queries, but writing queries would have taken HOURS of learning.

As it is, I type in basics about the table structure and ask my questions. It spits out queries, and I run them and tweak as needed. Without AI, I probably would have used my SQL access twice in the past year and been annoyed at how little I was able to get, but as it is I’ve used it dozens of times and been able to make better informed decisions because of it.

That’s a good one. A few others that help with my executive dysfunction are:

• “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” (It’s better to do something than to obsess over trying for the impossible goal of ‘perfection’.)
• “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” (This one helps especially with art and things I enjoy but struggle to do if I’m not instantly great at them.)
• “Laziness does not exist.” (This was inspired by a Medium article I read years ago which explained there is always an underlying cause of procrastination. Mental or physical ill health issues, uncertainty about the task, fear of failure, etc. When I am struggling to move forward, I now look for that reason and can begin to remove the barrier.)

HR response isn’t the only thing though. A number of years ago, my (F) partner (M) was sexually harassed by his female boss. He didn’t report it to HR, but he did sometimes bring it up around his friends. He had multiple people who base a lot of their identity on their feminism/acceptance/equality views tell him it wasn’t possible for him to be a victim of sexual harassment.

And then if he brought it up around more normie people, especially guys, the most frequent first question was, “Is she hot?”

The responses he got from so many people were part of why he never took it to HR. The other part was that she was smart enough to never do it in writing, so it would have been he-said-she-said. It was just easier to get a new job.

I want to know this answer too…

To clarify for anyone else who might be unaware: It’s not a toilet; it’s a bidet. It’s like a wash station for your underside, so you still do your business in the toilet but then come over here to wash. So, much like there’s no flush in a sink, there’s no flush on this.