this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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Showerthoughts
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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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- 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.
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My statement was qualified to include edge cases. If you want your product shipped with special care, or with special considerations like refrigeration, or in a time frame shorter than is expectable via bulk mail, then there would be plenty of market for those.
For standard shipping, it is less that I think there is a problem with private entities existing in the space, but that few, if any actually would exist if there was and had always been a national comparable alternative, like there are no non-municipal water services but theoretically could be if not for lack of demand.
But isn't that describing the system we have now?
In the USA, USPS will ship any mail or parcels up to 70 lbs. Shipping heavier than that is an edge case which you've described. You can send anything via USPS, except for edge cases or if you want a special accommodation like sooner delivery.
That is true, but the market overlap between the USPS and, say, FedEx and UPS, is indicative of a failure of government in that arena, in my opinion.
The USPS service is tax subsidized and benefits from tax exemption and de facto huge economies of scale. The fact that those for-profit enterprises can compete on price at all in that direct like-for-like competition is dubious and indicative of a failure of the USPS to act per its national charter, as a public service.
Qualified? No, your statement was quite clear, absolute, with no qualification.
The whole body text was the qualifiers for the subject line. It's saved above; we dont have to argue about it, we can just read it.