this post was submitted on 02 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:
- 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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Yeah, or maybe just don't do that, because that's not how physics work.
Do you think you are contaminated by something when you walk in the subway and smell urine?
It's just a harmless combination of gasses that we have learned to identify as such. It's literally impossible for any "particles" to travel that far, else you would constantly get smear infections just standing near a public bathroom.
What people write here sometimes borders psychologic compulsion disorder.
Urine smells, but it doesn't contain all the bacteria that aerosolzied shit does. But I guess you are the kind of person who thinks that illnesses just form spontaneously, colds are caught because you got cold and hygiene is for the weak, so there is no need to wash your hands.
Quite the opposite is true, actually. I personally consider myself on the cleanlier side from what I've heard and seen.
I just don't belive that inventing terms like "shit aerosols" is a reasonable way to discuss this topic, nor is it in any way scientifically accurate.
I would rather trust personal protection guidelines from people who are in danger of getting sick by working with feces daily than hysterical people discussing toilet seats. I think hospital staff would laugh at some of these claims.
Did I make it up or are there research papers about that? I don't know, you tell me.
Closing the lid reduces the exposure of aerosolized pathogens by 90%
With the toilet seat lid open, tests demonstrated that C. difficile could be recovered following a single flush with the end of the air sampling tube at seat level (12-fold greater counts than when lidded)
Source 1 simulates that closing the toilet lid very much concentrates the droplets near the user instead of a wider area, so you either spray yourself or more of the toilet area.
Sources 2 investigates how the bacteria behave in vitro, without any evidence of any person actually getting infected in the process.
I believe you're missing my point. I'm not claiming that it's impossible to get sick if you hold your head over the toilet while someone else is flushing their diarrhea.
Just that putting the lid down is not some kind of magical thing that will make your bathroom into a cleanroom. And I highly doubt that any droplets you could even get in contact with from visiting the toilet after a healthy person should be your top worry. Do you also hold your breath after you flush?
A nice strawman argument you have there. A shame that nobody made that argument. You would have totally owned that person if anyone did.
Because that's how studies work. You measure one thing: Will shit make it into the air and can you measure that bacteria from shit will reach air that the user can breathe.
If they get sick from that is an entirely different measurement that depends on a ton of other things.
The point of the lid is to reduce the amount of stuff in the air, not to make your toilet into a clean room. Because any sane person knows a 12x reduction is a huge benefit and that perfect clenliness is neither achievable nor the point.