Punching The Info In Once: which facts or concepts NEVER sink into your BRANE no matter how many times you try to remember them?

*Everyone* has *at least one* of these.

Mine are manifold.

I can't claim it's coz I don't care enough about the items in question.

I can't deny it gets worse with my advancing* age.

(* as opposed to what???)

which superheroes are Marvel and which are DC.

The meanings of multiple words - invidious/insidious, ontology, recidivist....the list goes on.

At school (not so much of an issue now): Krebs cycle, photosynthetic pathways, any kind of equation.

Excel basically doubles or trebles this problem.

How do I do pivot table, XLOOKUP, and VLOOKUP? Fortunately all this is easily LOOKUPable.

yermans name. not christian bale. not his dad.

my big ones are keyboard shortcuts and time zones

Any math higher than multiplication and division. In fact, I have problems multiplying and dividing fractions and converting them to percents, and even junior high school level algebra is completely inscrutable to me. I've dropped out of college three times, largely because of this.

Spring Forward Fall Back

I don't know how many times I've looked up the word "feckless"

Whether my Mom's birthday is August 4 or 5, entirely because my brain torments me with "Are you sure? You know you always get this wrong."

Does it affect something or effect it??

I learn and forget what "syndication" means re: TV at least twice a year

My best friend, otoh, will respond "it's a bummer Philip Bailey died" any time someone brings up Earth Wind and Fire, and he hasn't stopped despite me having clarified he's alive on 4 or 5 occasions

Three light switches alongside our kitchen door. I can't remember which controls which light and, if pushed, I'd swear someone moves them around daily.

when I'm entering dates and have to convert the month from a word to a number (sth I often have to do for one reason or another) this is the list from easiest to remember to hardest

January = 01
December = 12
July = 07 (because it's my birthday)
February = 02
September = 09 (because school year)
November = 11
June = 06
April = 04
March = 03
May = 05
August = 08

(a MASSIVE gap here)

October = 10

Indemnity / indemnification, and who indemnifies whom. I'm a contracts specialist.

Whether my Mom's birthday is August 4 or 5, entirely because my brain torments me with "Are you sure? You know you always get this wrong."

My mother and brother have birthdays one day apart and I can't remember which one is first. I think it's my mom's. (My dad's birthday was about a week later, but he's dead so who cares.)

I'm happy texting and PMs exist because it means that I can scroll back and read about who the folx I'm talking to are and what they've talked to me about before. I'm extremely embarrassed about having to do this.

names of flowers

The meaning of the word ‘prior’. I got it wrong once as a teen and I’ve second guessed myself every time I’ve written it ever since.

“don’t be a dick on the internet”

I make both positive (A=1) and negative (B does not =2) correlations between different pieces of data and then can't remember which is which.

I’ve probably got lots of these, but one that springs to mind is the terms for appositive phrases as being either ‘restrictive’ or ‘non-restrictive’. I understand the difference between the two types and how they should be punctuated, but I always get the terms themselves mixed up. I cannot seem to get it into my head which term describes which type.

I get 4s and 7s mixed up in my head all the time. Any sequence of numbers with either of these numerals in them, I struggle to memorise

ergative-absolutive alignment, I understand how it works but it just won't stay in my head... sorry Kaqchikel and Basque

Halfway unwittingly reminded me of one: where the jumper cables go. Positive to positive? Negative to positive? Seems like an important thing to know.

also, anyone's birthday that isn't memorable by virtue of it being, like, the 4th of July, or 7/7, or Feb 28th, or whatever. And basically any birthday after the 10th of any month

Red goes to red, black goes to black, don't overthink it

Am talking about ergative-absolutive alignment, obviously

what calculus and trigonometry are

it has been explained to me many times and i recall nothing beyond "math"

perhaps you need to spend some time studying Wang Chung's album Points on the Curve

Red goes to red, black goes to black, don't overthink it

It is important when removing a car battery to remember to disconnect the negative cable first, then the positive one; and when installing the new battery, connect the positive cable first, then the negative one.

which one is Jimmy Fallon and which one is Jimmy Kimmel. I don't get the two guys mixed up, I just can't remember which name goes with which guy. This is because I had originally "learned" their names the wrong way round, and so now I get caught in this endless loop of "it's the opposite of whichever one you think it is"

History
Biology
Science book
French I took
What a slide rule is for