this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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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: 1

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We have learned to approximate and then precisely measure time millennia ago through various means, yet never on this journey we learned to alter it, except by a miniscule margin using relativistic effects.

We can measure distance, and we can move things. We can measure illumination, and we can create light. We can measure sound, and produce it. Alter temperature? Yes! Produce all sorts of artificial radiation? Yes! Electric charge? Sure!

But time? Nuh-uh.

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 15 points 19 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Allero 2 points 17 hours ago
[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 10 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Time is just an illusion anyway. We can't measure time, because time is the measurement. It's how humans measure change. Fundamentally a second is no more "real" than a centimeter. You can't have a bag of either, so to speak. They're just abstract concepts.

[–] Allero 3 points 19 hours ago

They all are concepts that can be tied to something material. We know how to manipulate matter to create more light, for example, yet lumen is as intangible as is centimeter

[–] ValiantDust@feddit.org 10 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I would argue that moving things is not the same as changing a distance. If that were the case, then moving an event to a different time or our own moving forward in time would be the equivalent to moving an object through space, meaning we can alter time.

[–] Allero 5 points 21 hours ago

Hmm, fair!

Never thought of it that way. In these terms, spacetime is fairly consistent.

[–] LouNeko@lemmy.world 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

You can skip percieved time by sleeping.

You can also alter time by going fast. Satellites have to account for time dilation for their positioning.

[–] Allero 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, that's what I mentioned under relativistic effects

But it's very minor and mostly hypothetical for anything but clock correction

[–] vrek@programming.dev 3 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

Fun fact about relative speeds though if you can drive at 1/5 of the speed of light you should never get a ticket for running a red light as all red light will be green due to the doppler effect. That said the speeding ticket you'll get...

[–] Grunt4019@lemm.ee 1 points 6 hours ago

Well the light would only be green to you not to the traffic cameras or police right?

[–] Allero 1 points 11 hours ago

The ticket will be so hard next one will be for the bus

Love those hypotheticals, though