this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
82 points (96.6% liked)

Showerthoughts

43095 readers
265 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Nature creates round objects all the time (stones in a river, a hedgehog in a ball,...), but the principle of an axle is not found as far as I know.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] alpine_jim@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, that's what I meant by not an axle.

But, come to think of it, we can swing our arms round and round, more than 360°.

[–] technohacker@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would argue that's more due to the up-down and front-back limited rotations combining to form a circular mode, kinda like a Cartesian to Polar coordinate mapping

[–] alpine_jim@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago

that's reasonable.

bonus fun fact - the etymology is connected - "axle" comes from older words for "shoulder", or "armpit", which survives in some regional Englishes as "oxter" - the connection is apparently that you'd carry a person by putting their arms up and linking at the shoulders, much like an axle is how wheels carry a cart.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/axle