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:

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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[–] Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Although the 12 hours aren't divided in day/night are they?

And depending on where/when you're at, it can easily be light out at seven and seven, even in the same day.

What the 12 hour clock does well is to track when the sun goes up or down relative to the only convenient time marker: midday. It also does so in a pleasingly symmetrical way: it gets light and dark at about 8, rather than 4 hours before and 8 hours after midday.

I'd argue if you want to track time, rather than record the ends of daylight, a linear scale for the whole day makes more sense. If it should be reset daily or not, be divisible by 24, 86400, 100, 1000000, a second or whatever is mostly a choice of convention. If you have constant access to a clock, Internet time seems convenient, for humans without clocks we use daylight and units like hours and 5-minute increments.

For that the 24 hour clock seems simple and convenient, although it would be nice to be able to calibrate without a watch (is it two or three hours before midday? How many more hours until wake-up time?). 24 hour time isn't perfect, but it's much better adapted to modern life than the 12 hour clock.

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 27 points 17 hours ago (11 children)

AM/PM time is another thing that needs to sink with the USA, just like the Imperial system and Fahrenheit.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

EU fella here. I'm strongly pro-Metric and yet don't see a problem with 12-hour time. 24-hour is kind of clumsy to use in informal speech or chat/text, but I would use it in all other instances.

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I use 24h all the time when speaking, never got strange gazes for doing so. And I never remember which one is midday and which is midnight on the 12-hour time.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Well... it depends on the language too - although I'm not a native English speaker, I would use 12-hour in spoken English too (like I would in my native Bulgarian) - often without even appending "AM" or "PM" because it would be obvious from the context.

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[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 100 points 22 hours ago (12 children)

Clocks were sundials.

If you can see the time, it's not night.

[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

I think their point was they picked 12 and not 24 or some other number to divide a circle by

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.

All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Nowadays though, having weird fractions like that is more inconvenient and annoying than nice. Thanks to the Babylonians, we have super messy time units now.

Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight, volume and money. Yes, even money had convoluted fractions. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.

[–] billbasher@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Interesting, thanks for the detailed description!

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I wouldn't blame the Babylonians for us breaking the good standard and going 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 instead of the 58, 59, 100, 101, 102 that works just fine. They were first, we are the ones who added a new system aside the old one instead of replacing it.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 44 minutes ago

The French actually kicked out so much trash during the Revolution. Time units did stick around though, but at least they tried.

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 2 points 9 hours ago

If that was the case, we would now be talking about 48 h clocks vs. 24 h clocks.

18:40 pm on the 24h clock would equal 36:40 on the 48 h clock. You would still not know whether it's night or day just looking at the time.

[–] procrastitron@lemmy.world 30 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (5 children)

100% This.

Also, being an evolution of sundials is the reason all analog clocks move their hands in the same direction.

[–] sircac@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

I was answering about the Northern/Southern hemisphere logic of this... and realised that it depends if the sundial is vertical in a wall (facing South in the Northern hemisphere) or horizontal (facing the zenith/sky)... today you can easily find those wall sundials in many monumental buildings (at least these seem to me more common than the others) and the shadow is casted counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere, so not sure if the clockwise sense was locked by sundials... also in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 1 points 5 hours ago

in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.

In the southern hemisphere they think Australia is suitable for human life.

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 34 points 21 hours ago

*Being evolution of sundials located on the northern hemisphere.

[–] nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

So you're saying clockwise can also be called sundialwise?

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub 1 points 5 hours ago

At least some North American indigenous peoples say something akin to "with the sun". And I think in yoga terminology they have a similar phrasing, or am I mistaken?

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 9 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 1 points 5 minutes ago

This image makes it look like he’s about to say he was turned into a newt.

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[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I took a nap one time on a spring afternoon and woke up at 6:00. Only I wasn't sure if it was afternoon or I slept all night until morning. Weird feeling.

[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I did this recently. I woke up at "sunrise", had a cup of coffee, and it started getting darker outside. I was very confused for a few minutes.

[–] Jumbie@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 hours ago

Are you ok now?

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 32 points 22 hours ago (9 children)

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.

[–] kaulquappus@feddit.org 21 points 21 hours ago

As for the clock face, a 12 hour face is much easier to read at a glance or from a distance.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 14 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (4 children)

It’s like someone had doubts people could count much past 12

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.

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[–] TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It's not called Big Clock, it's called Big Ben /j

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[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 21 points 22 hours ago (3 children)
[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

I've never seen one of these in person. Only in pictures.

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[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

Honestly my mind has been tweaking lately ever since I started working. I'm under artificial lights all day long and sometimes I have no clue when I see "9:00" if it's night or morning for at least 5secs. I really hate how my phone doesn't show AM PM either.

Also using 24hrs clock really puts the time spent in the day into perspective. 9pm doesn't look as daunting as "you're 21hrs" into the day.

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