Top products from r/LearnUselessTalents

We found 23 product mentions on r/LearnUselessTalents. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/LearnUselessTalents:

u/bobbyfiend · 2 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

There are a variety of ways to go about this.

Salience: This means "standing out." In this case, in your mind. If you're trying to memorize a list of really boring stuff, try to visualize or mentally attach it to not-boring stuff. Don't be PC. Don't be kind or gentle in your mind. Be shocking and graphic. To memorize the sequence "Ortho, Meta, Para" in Chemistry, don't use your teacher's lame phrase, "Ortho met a pair of hot ladies." Instead, imagine a person named Ortho, a cruel mockery of the fact that he had to wear orthopedic shoes as a child--he was bullied, beaten, urinated on, by the horrible thugs he called classmates. These wannabe cavemen claimed that his nickname was "So meta" because he actually was ortho! Get it? Huh Huh Huh. He was miserable until he met a paralegal, whose name he could never remember, so he called her "Para." She seemed like the one for him, until one day, in bed, while doing it doggy style, she cried out, "Oh, Ortho!" And he lost it. Killed her with his orthopedic shoes. Then beat himself to death with them.

All because Ortho Met a Para. Or something.

Mnemonics: These are tricks to memorize things. One simple mnemonic is the "One, a bun. Two, a shoe. Three, a tree..." type of thing. You first memorize a simple sequence like this, then to memorize other content you tie it to the easy-to-remember sequence. Another mnemonic technique, as described by /u/The_Cantigaster, is the method of loci.

Let's say you needed to memorize these facts: (a) The first psychological laboratory was in Germany; (b) Titchener, Wundt's student, brought Wundt's ideas to the US, and (c) William James made psychology popular through easy-to-understand books and lectures.

Using the first method, you might spend time vividly imagining:

(a) A wound (sounds like Wundt?) in a delicious German bun (maybe it has sausage in it?), oozing blood.

(b) A twitchy student with a twitchy shoe--really twitching like crazy--traveling from Germany to the US ('twitchy' sounds kind of like Titchener?)

(c) A tree with huge branches shaped like a "W" and a big swing hanging down, shaped like a "J" (William James) planted in the dead center of the US, being chopped down to make popular psychology books.

OK, so YMMV.


Repetition: In itself, it's not very good as a memorizing strategy; however, if you leverage it right, you can get some serious gains. Hermann Ebbinghaus (sp?) started research on "forgetting curves," which are just line graphs of how much you remember about stuff you've tried to memorize, over time. You can find literature online about how to use that research to maximize memorization, mostly by setting a schedule of exactly when to repeat your study of new material. The key to really efficient memorizing by this method is to refresh your memory/studying, multiple times, at just the right point in the forgetting curve. See the next point.

Get this book: Make it stick. The second author (Roediger) has been leading a bit of a large leap forward in the science of how to learn things. He uses cognitive psychology methods, rather than traditional educational theory or more fancy stuff, which has sometimes made him unpopular in certain fields--but overall his stuff has been well received. Don't be fooled by the casual tone of writing (the first author's doing); Roediger and colleagues have racked up an impressive, well-thought-out mountain of empirical research that has led them to some great insights about how to learn. Notably, he has sort-of based a lot of his research on Ebbinghaus' original "forgetting curves" studies. This book--or rather, the research it's based on--will help pretty much anyone improve their learning of pretty much anything, a great deal. Another reason Roediger's work has been pooh-poohed by some is that he focuses on memorizing, not fancy higher-order learning. However, he has found that memorizing well actually promotes that higher-order critical-thinking type of learning, and that the techniques for doing both kinds of things are not terribly different, anyway, if you want to do them efficiently and well.

Going from pure memory here (my copy of the book is lent out), Roediger suggests some overall principles:

  1. Study less; test more. Test yourself over and over, repeatedly. Read one page, then test yourself on what you remember. Then do that again. Don't read twice; read once, then test twice. Read again if necessary, but test, test, and test more. Flash cards. Make your own phone-app quizzes. Get your friends to test you. Testing makes you learn more fully, more deeply, and more quickly than studying or reading or merely repeating does.

  2. Test yourself even on things that you think you know. Roediger has found that people trying to learn/memorize things often stop when they have a 'feeling of learning.' That feeling is often a lie. Test and retest. In fact, the "feeling of learning" is very frequently an illusion. Part of learning well involves ignoring that feeling and basing your self-assessment of learning on... assessment. So keep testing yourself, not just to learn, but to really see what you are (and aren't) learning.

  3. Lots of booster/follow-up tests. This is in line with "forgetting curve" research. As you slowly begin to forget, revisit your earlier material over and over, at various points later. This locks things in better. Roediger, in the book, has some suggestions for how often to revisit/retest. If you look up his academic papers, you'll find more specific recommendations, if you want.

  4. Mix up your testing. Use different methods, etc., but--more importantly--test yourself on all kinds of different things all mixed together. Don't give in to the temptation to study only one thing at a time. Mix various things you're studying in one course (if you're in school), and mix your studying for various classes together. If you can't mix them, then at least alternate. Spend 30 minutes studying your vocabulary lists for Advanced Finnish and then 30 minutes studying your lists of ions for Intro Chem. Don't make a "Finnish study" night and a "Chem study night." You need to remember this stuff later, possibly in a different and confusing context. Force/fool your brain to learn how to recall things in various contexts. Train your brain to "switch gears" quickly.

  5. The harder you work to learn, the better you learn. My students hate me telling them this, but it's a solid, well-established fact. You have to make your brain work. Give yourself problems to solve that you can't quite solve. That you need Google and a couple of phone calls to friends and looking through your 7th-grade math textbook to solve. Read things that require a dictionary to look up the hard words (and maybe the words used to define the hard words in the dictionary). Write your own questions and problems. Give them to friends/family/homeless people for five bucks. See if they can understand and answer them. Answer them yourself. The more your brain works at processing, slicing, dicing, and--importantly--making connections with what you're learning, the better you will learn it. Things like "mind maps" and writing your own summaries of what you've learned will help with this. You might also try explaining your learning to someone else.

    Hope this gives some ideas. There's a perfectly enormous amount of work that has been put into answering your question over the last... um... few thousand years. And there have been great leaps forward in the last ten or twenty.
u/benjerryicecream · 15 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

Magician here. Head on over to the sidebar at /r/Magic - there's plenty of information on exactly where to start.

For my money, there's no better place to start than a cheap book. For card magic, look to "The Royal Road to Card Magic". For coins, grab "Modern Coin Magic". For general magic, pick up either Mark Wilson's Complete Course or Joshua Jay's Complete Course.

None of those books should run you more than fifteen bucks. Grab a copy and just read it until you get bored.

Also, please, don't ever learn magic on youtube. The thing that's hard for those new to magic to understand is that it is a craft that has been worked on for thousands of years. Every secret, every beautiful piece of magic ever invented has been based on the work of others, which couldn't have existed if it weren't for the work of others even before them. Every secret, as minute as you can imagine, deserves to be shared with the express permission of the person who put in the hours, days, and years of work it took to discover that secret. YouTube magic schools rarely give proper credit, and truthfully, they rarely teach a magic trick very well at all. You can also never be truly sure that a YouTube magician is worth their salt, whereas you can see--from the fact that these books are decades old yet still being heralded as some of the best magic books out there--that we magicians think they are worth reading.

Bottom line: youtube will teach you secrets. A good magic book, like the ones I recommended, will teach you how to be a magician.

u/FAMEinvt · 119 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

So the Dr. (who is such a good person, like look at him, he totally made that kids day) is using these little fake thumbs that have lights inside of them that turn on when you press them against something (that’s why he looks like he’s doing 👌🏻all the time). From personal experience they are super fun and a great little toy, however unless you have big enough thumbs it doesn’t quite work, also if you were to drop one or the kid were to figure it out it would be a no bueno. I’ve copied an amazon link to the ones that he is using, let us know how it works out!
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Makers-Light-Thumb-Tips/dp/B00XWTVV9U

u/Jazzspasm · 3 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

Reading the answers there's some great banter, but here's some more practical info - in case you were actually serious in your question.

If you're after Judeo-Christian concepts, then look up Gustav Davidson's Dictionary of Angels as it lists numerous demons.

Another guide would be the Lesser Key of Solomon which has detailed demon descriptions and guides for summoning.

Another place to start would be Enochian Magic principles. Put the three together and you're off to a good start... but

Read this before you do anything, Dion Fortune's Psychic Self Defense.

/u/Insanelopez has the best advice so far - if you're being serious. Don't get stuck into something too quickly that you don't know anything about.

u/IMessedUpReadBad · 1 pointr/LearnUselessTalents

211 Things a Bright Boy can do is pretty cool, it just has a bunch of neat activities and diy projects that aren't time consuming kind of useless really

http://www.amazon.ca/211-Things-Bright-Boy-Can/dp/0399534156


The book of secrets is kind of the same story really neat as well

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/afb6/

u/SweaterVestGuy · 5 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

To anyone interested, this method is used in this book, as well as other mathematical shortcuts.

Enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0471467316

u/R4gn4_r0k · 6 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

Looks great. If you don't mind, I would recommend one thing, if your wife is ever like mine. My wife has several dress shirts that she won't dry, she has to hang. You could get a retractable indoor clothesline and install it in that gap between your shelves. That way you don't have a pole constantly in the way but a spot for her to hang clothes if needed. This one works well: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JGJVGJS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_FppZCbZXG4720

u/metallic201 · 639 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

I could be wrong but I believe you just buy special caps for your thumbs like these that light up when you press them.

u/ManiacalV · 2 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

My brother got me this one a few years back. More Show Me How.

The series has the first and second books, a survival one and one for each new parent (mom/dad, not every parent in the world). It's a rather cool series. It's all very stylized.

u/sockmonkey16 · 2 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

Potassium Nitrate is the primary ingredient in almost all stump removing powders. Here is is on Amazon for less that $6.

If you can't get Potassium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate will probably work as well but may burn too hot and/or explosively with the sugar (a new ratio should be worked out).

u/xBearJewx · 45 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

Read more :\^)

I personally don't put much stock into the whole speed reading thing. You lose the sense of the prose and you likely take less away from the material (I do).

I'll echo what others have said and work on comprehension. Also, you could read "How to Read a Book" by Adler and Van Doren. It's an insightful look at what constitutes a text and how you should approach it. It focuses not only on literature but other texts (history, science, poetry, etc.) as well.

u/ohgodwhydidIjoin · 1 pointr/LearnUselessTalents

Buy the Gregg Shorthand manual on Amazon. You will be able to write basic words after the first chapter.

u/wetanwild99 · 2 pointsr/LearnUselessTalents

After a quick search i found some on amazon. Even has a few people who say they made the crystals from it

u/abreak · 1 pointr/LearnUselessTalents

I can't believe that no one has yet mentioned that there is an entire Latin-English dictionary devoted to sexual vocabulary. That's the real goldmine for useless Latin words (unless you're reading Catullus).

u/Puntley · 1 pointr/LearnUselessTalents

This is literally a book full of useless information. Heck, it's even in the title! There are five total, I have three.

u/OfficeSpaceBalls · 1 pointr/LearnUselessTalents

[The Dangerous Book for Boys.] ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062208977/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/185-6547800-0282416) It taught me so many things that I never needed to know.