this post was submitted on 08 Jun 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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What if the car companies lobby the government to ban manual cars and pedestrians from the road so that speeds can be safely increased, thereby increasing noise and particulate pollution and isolating us in between high speed nightmare roads?
Are they building non-"manual" cars that are noisy and polluting? I've never seen the term "manual car" yet, but I'm assuming it means a non-self-driving car, which already includes many electric options.
I haven't driven a car in about 2 years, now, and I've tried to keep up with the news of self-driving developments (and snake oil), but I still think we'll still see self-driving cars long before we see the ability to remove cars from the equation completely.
Kumbaya.
They mean not automatic. A car that you need to work the gears. A normal car in most places.
They mean human operated vehicles. And Waymo has made significant progress towards fully autonomous vehicles. The whole "humans are actually driving," thing was misrepresented. Basically the humans were customer support when the vehicle ran into a situation like, "the end of the road is blocked for construction. A U-turn is required but is also a traffic violation."
Manual driving will go away at some point. And fully autonomous vehicles would be electric, so no noise increase.
Once autonomous vehicles reach a critical mass, there won't be a real need to own one and auto insurance premiums will skyrocket since human drivers would be the highest risk.
The government probably won't need to intervene to kill human driving on public roads
Plus the number of vehicles in existence will dramatically decrease, thus lowering total pollution from manufacturing and maintenance.
The fact is that humans are awful at driving; it's one of the leading causes of death. A computer that doesn't get tired, intoxicated, or distracted with 360° sensors reporting a great many times per second will be significantly safer than a human.
We're not there yet, but companies like Waymo are making significant progress.
At low speed, most of the noise an ICE car produces is the engine. At high speeds, most of the noise is the tires on the road. At high speeds, electric and ICE cars are equally loud. At even higher speeds, they're even louder.
Electric vehicles have to artificially add engine noise so people can hear them...
Compared to ICE vehicles, they're silent. Whenever hybrids came out people kept getting hit because they couldn't hear them coming.
At low speeds, yes. They're just as loud at high speeds because the noise comes from the tires, not the engines.