Tumblr Post: Random Knowledge Can Be Super Clutch

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    Font - kaijuno The most genius I've ever felt was when I was working in the physics lab. We had installed a camera at a pressure chamber window so we could watch a laser do pulse ablation on a metal plate. However, we had a problem no one could figure out; the laser would phase in and out on our live feed from the camera. The team was freaking out about the possibility of this 30k laser being defective and they were about to take apart the vacuum chamber when I was like "uh.. guys? We're firing
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    Font - The professor is like “... Yeah? What about it?" And I explain: “Most cameras film at 24 frames per second. The laser looks like it's phasing in and out because it's out of phase with the camera" so we adjusted the pulse per second a bit until it was in phase and shockingly! It worked perfectly. The prof and the grad students just looked.. dumbfounded? And I guess camera fps rates aren't common knowledge, at least to them. They treated me like I was the smartest person in the room even th
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    Font - feanor-the-dragon Look. You are smart. Applying random bits of knowledge gained in unrelated activities is smart. You learned something and retained it, and it was later useful. This sort of thing happens all the time to me at work, only I usually end up lying about how I knew it, you know, to the other engineers, because it's always like "I hyperfixated on nerf gun manufacturing once," or "I looked it up because something in a fanfiction struck me as scientifically wrong but it turned ou
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    Font - m_imuy • 2d Imao right. i'm literally always hoarding information. at my first job people were like "i wonder where our happy birthday song came from!" and i told them the whole story about how it was a radio contest to translate the english happy birthday song, down to weird details about copyright and the name of the station. someone looked it up and they were so shocked i knew that and asked where i learned it and i was like "uhhhh a magazine when i was, like, 6?"
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    Font - they all acted like i was some weirdly smart alien. also didn't help that i was a graphic design intern who was only supposed to know design stuff, it was a skincare company and it was right before skincare became a super popular beauty thing and i was totally hyperfixated on it for a few months before getting that job. they couldn't figure out how i knew literally almost every product in every competitor's line, how i knew obscure actives and stuff. i ended up quitting cause it was my fi
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    Font - richard-mt · 2d In college I was helping out the produce department even though I was normally a checker. A guy had returned a coconut that was moldy (don't know why he didn't buy the stuff in the bag) and wanted us to open his replacement to make sure it didn't have mold again. Both the manager and regular produce guy were both struggling trying smash it with a hammer and even using a wood saw. I stroll by and nonchalantly ask if I can try because I had just binged next iron chef and wat
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    Font - _jacen • 2d Sometimes when you've dived a little too deep into your project it's difficult to see "obvious" mistakes or solutions to problems. That's why at some german universities they like to employ students who just graduated high school as scientific staff. Because someone who has little to no knowledge but is seriously interested and open-minded can easily spot things you've missed for months. Even as "just" a bachelor student you can be employed in a lab, as a "professional idiot",
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    Font - haelesor • 2d Once got a little kid to trust me enough to help him unstuck his head from between some bars by telling him about the RMS Lusitania. Kid was obsessed with naval disasters. I only knew about it because of a short story I read about a dude cursed to be the only survivor of every major shipwreck. Had never heard of the Lusitania previously and looked it up for context. When you know you know. 6 Reply 8. ...

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