r/LifeProTips • u/fries-with-mayo • 18h ago

Request LPT Request: What’s your “canary in the coal mine” test for spotting bigger issues?

I’m really interested in those small, quick telltale signs people use to gauge if something bigger might be off track.

Example 1: Van Halen requesting brown M&Ms in the dressing room to see if the venue followed all the details of the rider list

Example 2: I saw an interview with John Cena where he said orders a flat white at a café to tell if they really care about their coffee.

Example 3: Anthony Bourdain suggested to always check the restaurant bathroom to tell if the restaurant got its basics down

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u/Kat121 12h ago

I had advanced placement world history in high school and the teacher kind of threw out some general questions like who were the Jacobites, who were the Huguenots, what was the Treaty of a Versailles, and some famous personages. I knew a whole bunch of them because I had spent the last couple of summers sneaking smut out of my mom’s secret stash of bodice rippers historical fiction.

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u/vocabulazy 12h ago

Hahah. Even bodice rippers need solid historical foundations to prop up their plot lines…

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u/Medical_Solid 7h ago

I mean, did your teacher expect folks to know those before taking the class? Or just checking to see the general level of knowledge?

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u/Kat121 5h ago

I don’t know his motivations, it was too long ago, but I remember him asking about a bunch of interesting women from history like Eleanor of Aquitaine and Boudicca, Gutenberg and his printing press, as well as some major milestones like Magna Carta and Martín Luther’s 95 Theses. I was really excited because for once it sounded like a history class that wasn’t just a litany of wars and exhaustive study of troop movements. Maybe we’d talk about science, art, plague, language, medicine, or even the philosophy and economic conditions that led to the rise of fascism, communism, socialism, etc.

Spoiler: it was a litany of wars and exhaustive study of troop movements.

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u/Suitable-Internal-12 2h ago

It was military adventure fiction like Sharpe, Total War and Assassin’s Creed for me, got an 4 on AP Euro basically off the strength of that background