this post was submitted on 14 Jan 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:

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.

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[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think their point was they picked 12 and not 24 or some other number to divide a circle by

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.

All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Nowadays though, having weird fractions like that is more inconvenient and annoying than nice. Thanks to the Babylonians, we have super messy time units now.

Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight, volume and money. Yes, even money had convoluted fractions. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.

[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length

But we can still blame the English for the furlong.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

According to that Wikipedia article:

The furlong was historically viewed as being equivalent to the Roman stade (stadium), which in turn derived from the Greek system.

Yeah, even the history of units is messy.

[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Interesting, thanks for the detailed description!

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wouldn't blame the Babylonians for us breaking the good standard and going 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 instead of the 58, 59, 100, 101, 102 that works just fine. They were first, we are the ones who added a new system aside the old one instead of replacing it.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago

The French actually kicked out so much trash during the Revolution. Time units did stick around though, but at least they tried.

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If that was the case, we would now be talking about 48 h clocks vs. 24 h clocks.

18:40 pm on the 24h clock would equal 36:40 on the 48 h clock. You would still not know whether it's night or day just looking at the time.

[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You’re not wrong but the question is why?

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

I’m sorry I was inebriated this question makes no sense ignore it