You must pick one very minor talent:

[ethicalprofessor@mstdn.social]

@futurebird

I chose the 4th option. But...

Waddya mean 'minor talent'???

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@futurebird I can kinda already do 3 so I had to pick 4. Let's make this bidirectional.

[sanpan@mas.to]

@futurebird These choices are legit super-hero stuff, I´m team Green Meowtern.

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@futurebird Joke's on me tho, I wasted my wish. It turns out all the sounds just mean "FEED ME!!!!""

[shadsterling@mastodon.social]

@futurebird the last two being separate is just cruel. I guess we need to pair up

[neatchee@urusai.social]

@futurebird it was a real struggle picking between 3 & 4 for practical reasons, and 1 for the sheer meme of it

[y6nh@im-in.space]

@futurebird Now obviously the cat communications are winning here, but hear me out. I already understand what my cat says (it's almost always "give me food"), and she wouldn't care about much I had to tell her.
But if I could understand modem noise, that's 56kbit/s. It wouldn't be too hard to play back arbitrary text as modem noise, so I'd be able to speed-read at 7000 characters per second. I'd be able to read Ulysses in under 5 minutes. Clear win.

[webhat@infosec.exchange]

@futurebird I wouldn't call it minor to my cat

[chrisjagged@mastodon.social]

@futurebird

I like the idea of understanding the cats but not being able to respond. I can thwart all their plans and they'll think I'm omniscient

[glitzersachen@hachyderm.io]

@futurebird

Tough choice.

(4) will leave me enslaved to my two lords and masters, so that absolutely out.

(3) is not useful: I think they already understand and mostly don't care, depending whether it fits their little furry agenda.

(2) is also not useful, except to understand what garbage the people are emitting who chose (1). Because nobody uses modems any more.

(1) Is by far the coolest: I can cosplay as a terminator T-X (see Terminator 3 where it makes those noises to communicate with the official databases).

It has to be (1). Def.

[cstamp@mastodon.social]

@ChrisJagged @futurebird Cats can already understand us.

[glitzersachen@hachyderm.io]

@ChrisJagged @futurebird

That assumes they're not aware of you understanding them. A big if.

[gray17@mastodon.social]

@futurebird "cats understand what I tell them" feels OP. I'm gonna tell them about computer programming and lockpicking

[chrisjagged@mastodon.social]

@glitzersachen @futurebird

I'll act all indifferent, like they do. But I'll KNOW

[jkelly@theforkiverse.com]

@futurebird I really think you're minimizing the skill involved in these truly extraordinary talents.

Although, if I saw someone talking to a cat I would likely just think they're drunk.

[glitzersachen@hachyderm.io]

@ChrisJagged @futurebird

Much luck. They read your body language. Your surprise, your anger, your ennui after the 10th iteration of "some more food".

[sfb@nerdculture.de]

@ShadSterling @futurebird I think it is also impossible.

[netraven@hear-me.social]

@futurebird I understand my cats, but apparently 51% of us don't.

[tsturm@famichiki.jp]

@y6nH @futurebird From personal experience of listening to many ZX Spectrum games loading from tape: The Speccy loader was running at roughly 1200ish baud, and with a trained ear you could actually discern between long groups of 0, structured bitmaps, or large semi-random code blobs.

Not enough to "read" random text by listening to the noise, though.

[totientfunction@mathstodon.xyz]

@futurebird 5. when you make modem noises, cats will understand what you mean