this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
107 points (90.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
37419 readers
322 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:
- 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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No year "exists", we made up the entire concept of keeping track of "years" in the first place.
Neither do nations or borders. Yet I still have to pay taxes and show my passport at the airport.
At some point, something just exists.
Sure, if you want it look at it that way. But if years exist than so does the year 0.
If you want to look at it that way, then year 0 is when earth started orbiting the sun.
But that's a bit silly. Afterall, we don't usw Kelvin inszead of Celsius despite Celsius being "made up" and Kelvin measuring the actual null point.
Or, just like with temperature scales, you can just make up a new one and put zero anywhere you want.
So, we made it, thus it exists? Or did we somehow manage to create a year system but it still doesn't exist?
That's really a philosophical question. Whichever you prefer.
My point is consistency. Either you believe years exists, in which case the year 0 also exists. Or you can believe that no years exist at all.
The obvious meaning of someone saying "year 0 doesn't exist" is that the Gregorian calendar does not have a year 0; the year before 1 AD is 1 BC. It's not a math thing, it's a protocol thing.
Your point on consistency is just wrong. There is no reason that "believing years exist" would necessarily imply "believing all numbered years exist"
Then the comment should have mentioned the Gregorian calendar. It's not the only calendar there is.
The Gregorian calendar is by far the most commonly used calendar in the world, certainly in the English speaking world, and while I don't particularly care to defend or attack your comment or the original comment, my point stands that the most obvious interpretation of what they said is in the context of the Gregorian calendar and to pretend they meant it outside of that context is silly.
we made up all abstract concepts, but some abstract concepts are more real than othe6