vesterde

I made this bodily oddities page and posted it last week. The response has been great! I now have a very odd dataset on my hands of what people's bodies sometimes do.

What stood out from the submissions from readers was how many different things make people sneeze.

At the end of this post is a list of user-submitted reasons, and a few I added, I would love to see which apply to you, and you can submit more.

And thank you to everyone that gave feedback and suggestions, and voted on oddities. Keep it coming.

And to nip it in the bud, yes AI helped (is helping) with this.

To address all of the peer comments at the same time: I don't know.

There are places where men dancing is gay-ish and that deters them. That's an easy answer, but it's not enough because very progressive countries don't do much better on this, by my experience.

I would agree learning to follow in the very beginning can be easier, so that sounds like maybe men don't remain because their job is harder, but I wouldn't agree with this explanation because I observe fewer men showing up for beginner classes, when they don't know their job might is harder (whether or not it actually is).

Maybe men are more asocial on average? I'd be willing to believe that, especially in these times.

A comment above yours comments that this isn't true in Turkey, Buenos Aires, and I would add Paris to this list from experience, and then there's the entire continent of Africa we haven't mentioned and I can't really comment on, but what those places have in common is a cultural presence of dance, often a deep connection to dance where families dance together, maybe mom dances when she's cooking, dance isn't something you pick up as an exotic hobby, it's just that thing everyone does, and maybe you decide to do it a bit more than others.

Every culture with a lot of cultural dance presence would have a different view on this, I suspect.

If you're male (or want to dance as a leader), there are universally not enough of you to go around in partner dancing (with occasional exceptions), so any partner dance you pick you should be well received if you aren't a creep and just do the work to improve. Some of these dances are easier to get into than others. So your area might have salsa classes. Salsa is nice because it's easy to get into, but you can keep getting better at it forever. Bachata is similar but it's a bit more intimate in my view, so depends what you're after.

Some places just have "social dancing" classes, which is a different thing each week, but they might require you bring a partner, so look into it.

If you're from the US, or less commonly outside of the US, line dancing is a non-partner dance, so a group dance. One of my best friends does it and he loves it. Again don't need to be good to start.

I did not expect my weekend and week to be spent on the first page of HN, let me tell you.

I agree, and actually I put that asterisk there all that time ago when I wrote that article intending to put a footnote at the end, and clearly forgot. I meant to say that yes certainly people don't learn in the same way, but the thing I'm averse to is someone saying "I learn by seeing", and leaving it at that. It's simplistic, and I've found that individuals can also be wrong about their own opinion if their learning style.

The way I read some of the literature is that these may more often map to preferences, so the individual may prefer to see things, when learning, but it might not actually lead to more learning happening.

In dance I would yield that some people can repeat a movement just by seeing it, and others can't, but again I would say that's a learning style, I'd say there's a capacity inside them that is less strong/developed, translating movement seen to movement done. And it can be improved.

Several, but as the other comment pointed out, Urban Kiz is my main focus, as well as Tarraxo and Zouk.

That makes sense, thanks!

I've heard these fever dreams referred to as big-small as well. I believe it's the same phenomenon. For me it was pillars from high up above, where they're all the same width, but one is also much bigger at the same time. Hard to explain... Just an odd feeling.

And, anecdotally, I have gotten a similar feeling reaching deep enough meditation.