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:
- 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
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- 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
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I still don't know why everyone doesn't just use the 24-hour clock. It's so much easier.
It's like someone had doubts people could count much past 12, so just had them do that twice. Or maybe Big Clock didn't want to manufacture 24 hour faces and sold the lie.
As for the clock face, a 12 hour face is much easier to read at a glance or from a distance.
More like the people who invented a lot of shit used base 12.
Things restarting at 12, is because the thing is so old, it predates base 10.
Like, pick a language, count to thirteen:
Ein, zwei, drei, fire, funf, sechs, seben, acht, neun, zein, elf, zwolf, dreizein...
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen...
Notice how 11 and 12 aren't one-teen and two-teen?
On each hand is 4 sets of 3 knuckles, touch your thumb to each knuckle and your finger counting on one hand higher than we can with two. Pretty sure there's some pretty neat math tricks with their method too, almost like built in abacus.
But all this is off memory.
Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan, yhdeksän, kymmenen, yksitoista, kaksitoista, kolmetoista...
(though, notice that our words for "eight" and "nine" are derived from those for "two" and "one". We used base 8 before migrating to Europe and applying the local standard. Then it was "two left until the new ten and "one left until the new ten"
With base 8 you can use your fingers to count up to 24 because you can use your thumbs for marking the "tens". Or to 32, but that already takes a little bit of an effort because from my perspective your left thumb is on the right.)
But yeah, base 10 is the worst. 12 can be divided by 3 without problems. And base 8 allows counting far higher with just fingers.
Still better than Danish...
/s
But yeah thanks! When I saw it was Finns I checked the Danes because they're always doing their own thing, they go by 20s, so tens alternate "half 20s".
I thought we got it from the Babylonians, turns out we actually got it from the Ancient Egyptians.
Nope, it's just down to how many "decans" you could see at any one point during the night.
The cool math trick I know of is using your other hand to count groups of 12, 5 fingers times 12 knuckles is 60.
It's not called Big Clock, it's called Big Ben /j
Um akshually, Big Ben is the bell. The clock is just “The Great Clock of Westminster.” And the tower itself is called “Elizabeth Tower.”
(But everyone just calls the whole thing Big Ben.)
one thing that I'm proud of my team at work for is just defaulting to using 24hr time when adding timestamps to filenames. I require datestamps, but there are no rules on timestamps if there are multiple files for that day. and a few of them just started appending the time in 24 hour format. I was so proud.
I dont like the look of the numbers
In general?
No. Only on a clock or time scenario
looks at London and it's big clock you, have been, REVEALED