this post was submitted on 26 Apr 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:

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

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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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LED lights are great, but I miss having a mini hot plate on my desk to mindlessly touch and burn my hand.

(Do kids even watch cartoons these days, or do they go into scrolling withdrawal before the first commercial break?)

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

What's cartoons? Is he on TikTok?

[–] Yermaw@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

Yeah he plays minecraft

[–] ickplant@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I did the lamp thing once. The temp went up to 42 Celsius, and my mom thought I was dying. She wanted to call the ambulance, and I had to come clean. Fun times.

[–] veroxii@aussie.zone 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] ickplant@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

She probably did and was basically calling my bluff. Either way, it worked, and I crumbled like the liar I was.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Close to the edge of believable. Pretty sure I hit 106F as a kid once. 107F is bordering on dain bramage.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think 103 is the safety limit

[–] MoreFPSmorebetter@lemmy.zip 1 points 16 hours ago

Wait is that true? I hit 104 like once every 3 months. I've been having regular fevers every month or so since I was like 7 and every couple times they get baaaad.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I had an ice bath once at 107, shit, and I don't even remember why

[–] OrderedChaos@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago

The memory was burned out of you.

Skill issue. I practiced and was able to hit 38-39 °C consistently.

[–] Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz 55 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Kids today don't know that until quite recently if you turned on the TV and you didn't get any picture, you could give the thing a firm slap on the side and it would work.

[–] roguetrick@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Percussive maintenance is still quite useful for shitty solder jobs. It's not going anywhere.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I miss the times where I just put my favorite cassette in a random player and heard an audio play for the night, without needing Spotify and searching for a specific episode

And I'm 19

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I miss cassettes and vinyl records only for nostalgia's sake. Realistically, they were a BITCH to handle and store with questionable lifetimes and middling audio quality.

[–] lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't miss cassettes, getting eaten by the player in the car and impossible to get out without snapping the tape. Tapes of any kind are subject to being gobbled up by the player, looking at you VHS.

I miss albums, they were cool to look at, but only a few of mine survived. My music is all digital these days.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The VHS was a bastard on an entirely different level. My cousin lost his The Empire Strikes Back tape because a roller got stuck and the tape got twisted around the reader head.

Should've used a Betamax. /s

[–] 30p87@feddit.org -3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Never had problems with handling them, and analog quality is better for most purposes.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I grew up with analog audio, and still have most of my dad's late 70s "high tech" equipment, about a hundred vinyl records (mostly 33s with a few 45s), and several boxes of audio cassettes. Given the chance... I wouldn't go back. That era had some severe issues that we just had to deal with because it was the best that contemporary technology could offer.

  • Magnetic tapes have a finite shelf life. If not stored in a dry and cool place, the polyurethane tape absorbs moisture, which ruins the binder and the ferromagnetic coating falls off. Eventually the tape itself disintegrates.
  • Magnetic tapes are susceptible to mechanical damage, they naturally stretch, and they can scratch if the rollers are dirty.
  • They are also obviously vulnerable to electromagnetic fields.
  • Playback quality is strongly dependent on the recording equipment, the magnetic medium's quality, and the playback device.
  • Even though the compact cassette is the icon of media sharing, copying is never 1:1 and always incurs a loss in quality.
  • The best achievable audio quality can't physically reach the quality of most digital recordings because of the granularity/resolution of the medium and the noise introduced by the pickup and amplifier circuits. The same is true for vinyl records: the superior audio quality is just a myth.

I loved analog audio recordings when they were relevant, but there are good reasons why magnetic tapes are obsolete, and why we largely skipped the CED and LaserDisc and moved on to CDs and digital audio with their own unique issues.

In the theoretical sense, digital sound files have over double the potential dynamic range of the best cassette tape or vinyl. CDs are better, but still well below what can be done with digital files.

The issue is that most digital formats are so compressed that they end up with 1/10th the dynamic range of a cassette tape.

So its more like analog is “better” only because we need to improve storage and up/down speeds before we can truly enjoy how much better digital can be compared to analog. Its just not practical yet

[–] WorldsDumbestMan 5 points 19 hours ago

Took me too long to understand why.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

My sister and I shared a room at one point, and she decided to improvise a wax melt by sticking a tube a Cherry Dr Pepper chapstick to our lamp.

The smell never left the room.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago

My kids love the original Tom and Jerry and watched it on you tube. Then they watched the modern remake and they hated it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wait til the OP learns about the Easy Bake Oven.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

You mean hotboxing weed in a tiny car?

[–] unknown1234_5@kbin.earth 5 points 1 day ago

I'm in college rn and i grew up not understanding that until i asked one time while watching a movie.

How did that feel as a rectal thermometer?

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Pfffftttt. the real trick is to put ice cubes in your underarms for a few minutes before they checked your temp.

[–] OrderedChaos@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

This is a new one for me. Doing this makes your internal tempt go higher?

[–] anguo@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

There are no commercial breaks, if you know what you're doing.

But that's the least obvious one, I have to explain telephones to my kids.

[–] msmc101@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

dO kIdS eVeN wAtCh cArToOnS

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 1 points 23 hours ago

Yes, if their parents go out of their way to find them.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org -3 points 1 day ago

There's no incentive to watch something as long and sometimes deep as cartoons, when Andrew Tate or PoliticalTruth88 can fake acknowledgement, a perspective and a community for them with 30 second clips.