this post was submitted on 20 Sep 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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Unlike children, and some adults, I don't eat sand, be it in a heap or not, so I'm not entirely convinced that's the right model either.
Interesting "paradox" though, as the initial premise of one million grains of sand being a heap falls over as it doesn't specify the structure of the sand: which is what defines a heap of anything.
You think that's a worse fit than: If I replace parts of a thing with SOMETHING ELSE is it still the same thing? The ship of theseus is more well known, but you would need to eat sand to think it's a good fit IMO.
As an aside, the structure of the heap has nothing to do with it. The point is simply "when does a heap stop being a heap if I remove one grain at a time?" That is the same is the same as when does food stop being food if you make it poop one bit at a time. If you don't like "heap" you can call it a pile WLOG.
If I spread a million grain heap of sand out evenly over a plane such that the grains are still touching it's no longer a heap. Therefore the heap is a structure not a numeric quantity.
I said no such thing.