What really dumb/random shit/superstitions do you believe in?

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Aegix Drakan wrote:...aside from the recurring sightings, It doesn't bother me at all. Heck, one of my pet peeves is buildings NOT having a 13th floor. IT screws up the whole system, and for what? a silly fear of a number!

And come on, like the people on the 14th floor don't know what floor they're really on. :wink:

There was one time I looked at a clock in a car and it said 4:44 and the thermometer next to it read 44 degrees, which was pretty cool.

Oh, and after I saw The Number 23 with my friends, as a joke any time we saw a string of numbers we'd try to do some crazy arithmetic to get it to equal 23, but a few times it was actually eerily close, like we saw a cab outside a 7-11 and the digits on it added straight up to 23, then we went inside and saw something priced 2/$3, then outside a car had a license plate with the letter "W" (23rd letter) on it.

While we're on this topic of numbers, as I recall hospitals in Japan typically don't have a 4th floor, as the word "four" sounds similar to the word for "death." It's kind of interesting that suspicions about numbers seem to be universal.

What I find even more entertaining is the absurd belief that by not labeling something as floor 13 or floor 4, that somehow changes what it actually is. Hallucinating the way reality works is fun!

The only superstitions I have that I can tell, are a few interesting recurring numbers and themes and phrases and words, etc. It's not the entities themselves, but the patterns which present themselves at the most unusual of times.

I started reading the Vorkosigan book series by Lois Bujold, and she uses the word "nonplussed" a lot. I'd never heard of the word before, but after the first time I read it, I start seeing it everywhere. People I never thought even knew half of the English language started using it.

Then there's the number 744. A good friend had started seeing it everywhere and on everything, and took it as his username. Then I started seeing it too. It's not like in the Forer Effect, how anything that seems familiar to you will naturally be noticed more. The number genuinely started appearing far, far more often. I'd wake up at exactly 744 AM every day for a week, on my own, without any help from an alarm clock. I'd have dinner at 7:44 PM or would get home at 7:44. I'd look at my watch in the evenings, and bam, 7:44, after having no memory of time until then.

Ahhh... numerology... such a unique... superstition? It seems the number 9... is my number. Not sure how to explain it...

Dec 16, 1978 - first marriage began (not necessarily a '9'... but... read on...)

9 days later - Christmas - 25th December

9 days later - 1st husband birthday Jan 3rd

9 days later - my birthday 12th Jan ... and no... we did not deliberately plan that. And actually it was a few years after we got married that I finally realized the number sequence.

July 9, 1986 - My hysterectomy

July 9, 1994 - Paul and I got married

There's more... but eh... that's just a sample.

Ever since I was taught how to determine if a number is evenly divisible by the number 9 (add up the digits and try to divide by 9, so the number 414 would be 4 + 1 + 4 = 9, and 9 is obviously evenly divisible by 9), I would use this trick on just about any number I could find. My house address? 2370, nope, not evenly divisible by 9 (but it is by 3 -- you use the same trick for the number 3).

Aahh, number logic. Speaking of which, this is really awesome:

Take any four-digit number made up of different digits (try 5764). Then, rearrange the digits to get the largest (7654) and smallest (4567) numbers. Subtract those numbers to get 3087, then continue the process with the resulting number (rearrange 3087's digits to get 8730 and 378, subtract them, etc.). You’ll eventually reach the number 6174. No matter which four-digit number you start with, you'll end up with 6174. This is just weird. For example:

2398

9832 - 2389 = 7443

7443 - 3447 = 3996

9963 - 3699 = 6264

6642 - 2466 = 4176

7641 - 1467 = 6174 :toast:

And what happens once you get to 6174? Let's find out.

7641 - 1467 = 6174

Hmm, that's pretty cool.

Usually hotels don't have a room 666, either.

I found a cool article about the 6174 phenomenon

http://plus.maths.org/issue38/features/nishiyama/

According to that, the addition of all the digits of any results of the kernel of the operation equals 9, so for 6174, 6+1+7+4 = 18, and 1+8 = 9...

I dont really have any random dumb/random shit/superstitions i believe in, but I do have this thing where i dont like it when rugs are touching walls

i believe i am anti-happiness.

nit in the emo sense but... ah hell now i gotta explain.

if i am happy and having a good day then everyone around me is having a shitty day. it never fails.

and if im having a shitty day everyone around me is always having a good day.

every
fucking
time

hope this doesent happen with anyone else. its hard to blend in when youre the exact opposite of everyone else.

Master Maniac wrote:i believe i am anti-happiness.

nit in the emo sense but... ah hell now i gotta explain.

if i am happy and having a good day then everyone around me is having a shitty day. it never fails.

and if im having a shitty day everyone around me is always having a good day.

every
fucking
time

hope this doesent happen with anyone else. its hard to blend in when youre the exact opposite of everyone else.

Ah, so the pain and misery of others sustains you. That is a path to the dark side. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Master Maniac wrote:i believe i am anti-happiness.

nit in the emo sense but... ah hell now i gotta explain.

if i am happy and having a good day then everyone around me is having a shitty day. it never fails.

and if im having a shitty day everyone around me is always having a good day.

every
fucking
time

hope this doesent happen with anyone else. its hard to blend in when youre the exact opposite of everyone else.

This is about as non-emo as Hayden Christensen playing Anakin Skywalker in Episode III...

I like this Star Wars theme Archibaldo got us on.

I believe that at certain but hard to discern times, people around me and people on the internet become...

Hmm, it's hard to explain. Possessed? I don't know if thats the word. I just hear my thoughts echoed in things I read or what people say. And as is the case in real life, when I ask them what they said, they repeat something different than what Im almost 99% sure I heard the first time.

Doesn't happen extremely often, and lately , much less. But still, when it does, It drives me bonkers. In recent times, I refuse to believe its schizophrenia or something, as nothing I hear seems to be a hallucination.

Also, I'm currently going through the "recurring numbers" thing. Never fail to see the any 3 digit variation of the number 157.

I.E. 157, 517, 571 etc

It can happen almost five times a day, but only seems to happen when I'm NOT thinking about it.

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I have OCD, so my life is full of these things. I shy away from certain numbers, not only the standard 13 but also 23 and 29. Like, if a clock says it's 20:13 or something, sometimes I have to wait for it to be 20:14 (or later) before I leave the house or whatever. Then, there's this writing project that's turned into the Winchester House...I'm convinced I need to add to it each day, so now it's a grotesque and unstructured mess of contradictory, random, and nonsensical crap. I have to say various "mantras" before I go to bed each night, too.

bigjoe wrote:I believe that at certain but hard to discern times, people around me and people on the internet become...

Hmm, it's hard to explain. Possessed? I don't know if thats the word. I just hear my thoughts echoed in things I read or what people say. And as is the case in real life, when I ask them what they said, they repeat something different than what Im almost 99% sure I heard the first time.

Doesn't happen extremely often, and lately , much less. But still, when it does, It drives me bonkers. In recent times, I refuse to believe its schizophrenia or something, as nothing I hear seems to be a hallucination.

Also, I'm currently going through the "recurring numbers" thing. Never fail to see the any 3 digit variation of the number 157.

I.E. 157, 517, 571 etc

It can happen almost five times a day, but only seems to happen when I'm NOT thinking about it.

maybe 99% of the time you hearded what they actually said so when they repet them elsves they repesat the right thing anf then you think they changed thiet answer/.?

I believe some superstitions and some I don't believe. I walk under ladders with reckless abandon and only break stride when a black cat crosses my path whtn my brain melts at the cuteness. :kitty:

Archibaldo wrote:maybe 99% of the time you hearded what they actually said so when they repet them elsves they repesat the right thing anf then you think they changed thiet answer/.?

Maybe you were just drunk, bigjoe, like this guy.

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