this post was submitted on 25 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.
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- 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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Fuel efficiency is already reported using the American backwards notation: miles per gallon. Why not use the same silly method to screw people at the gas pump as well. Just go with barrels per cent, if you’re feeling extra diabolical.
Would you prefer we talk about .04-.07 gallons per mile?
Prefixes would be the obvious choice but ancient Roman’s hadn’t thought of that. I guess the next option is to use a smaller unit. Floz or something.
Sorry, what do the ancient Romans have to do with it?
And, ok, so we'd be talking numbers in the 5-10 oz/mi range. Why is that better?
Status quo: "How far can I go with a unit of fuel?"
Flipping it: "How much fuel does it take to go 1 unit of distance"
It just seems arbitrary to me. What am I missing that makes the status quo backwards?
Edit: I'm leaving this up, but nevermind -- after posting this reply, I read your replies to others in the thread. I think I see. Linear units vs. "confusion units" (lol, cute term!).
Ancient Roman’s came up with some seriously messy but revolutionary systems. By today’s standards their units, money and even numbers were a total train wreck, but the Brits inherited them regardless. As the British empire conquered about half of Africa and as much of the rest of the world as possible, their messy systems also spread to those places. Incidentally, America wasn’t spared of this plague.
Next time you step on the Lego of measurement systems, you can thank the Romans for that.
I don't agree. It's easy to backseat drive the chariot now, but at the time? A mile as one thousand paces? That seems sensible when you're measuring distance for men marching and horses or oxen pulling wagons. I can't really speak to their monetary system, I'd have to read up on it more. And for numbers, well, you can hardly fault them for not using something that didn't exist yet.
For units in general, though, there are definite benefits to a base 12 system over base 10: You can easily deal with halves, thirds, and quarters without introducing decimals.
Oh, and I did chuckle a bit at your Lego remark. I'm glad you phrased it that way :D
They had to start from nothing, so even a bad system was obviously better than nothing. Developing the alpha version is great. But you're supposed to switch to the next update when it becomes available.
Speaking of division, a couple of thousand years earlier the Babylonias came to the conclusion that base 60 is a great compromise. It has many divisors without the number itself being absurdly large. If you want something smaller than that, 12 is also pretty good.
Having all of these divisibility properties is nice if you have to do calculations on pen and paper. As soon as you have calculators, the base no longer matters. Regardless, I can appreciate the beauty of divisibility enough to make a spreadsheet that explores this feature. If you want to have a number that is highly divisible without being absurdly large here are your best options.
Honestly, anything past 60 getting a bit silly. You may have also noticed that 10 wasn't even on the list, as it has only 4 divisors. If 4 divisors is all you need, go with base 6, because it's a more elegant way to get the same benefits.
Argh. Miles per gallon makes me angry enough. And then you've got the metric using proto americans using km/L like that makes any sense.
Fun fact: that's not the only non-linear unit out there. Like, the Mohs scale and all the various gauge units Americans love. Lots of fun units out there.
All of it makes sense if you want to screw around with people. For example, this figure went from 20 to 15 while that one went from 50 to 45. It's the same difference, right? Who needs linear units when you can have confusion units.
I don't understand? What's the alternative?
L/km, or L/100km practically because it puts the litre value in a useful range for comparison.
This is exactly as linear as miles per gallon.
Yes that's because we're comparing it with miles per gallon....
Linear units follow the format [what you give]/[what you get]. That format makes comparison easier. ~~With non-linear units a 1% change can be negligible or huge depending on where you’re at the scale.~~ Linear units are always very clear regardless of where it’s used.
If your fuel consumption drops from 6 l/100km to 5 l/100km, it’s exactly as useful as the drop from 16 l/100km to 15 l/100km. Try that with mpg, and you’ll see how deceptive those numbers are.
Edit: That 1% stuff was wrong. The argument would have made sense if I had written something like 1 unit change can be negligible or huge.
I don't get how the change between 5 and 6 (47 to 39mpg) is the same as 15 and 16 (16 to 15mpg). One is a much smaller change than the other.
I always just think stuff like 30 mpg means a full 10gal tank can go 300 miles.
Let's say you drive the a 300 mile distance with two cars. First one does 45 mpg and the other one does 40. Seems like a small difference, and it is. Once you reach the destination, and compare how much money you spent on gas, the difference is probably something like 3.6 dollars.
Next, you do the same trip with a different set of cars: 20 and 25 mpg. That was a small difference, right? Not any more. At the end of the trip you compare the receipts and find that it's a 13.2 dollar difference now.
As gas is the material being consumed and miles is what you get in return, having them in the mi/gal configuration implies you should care a lot more about the miles. However, the distance you need to drive usually isn't something you think about that much. Instead, people care much more about how much you have to spend on gas. The volume of gas connects with how much you end up spending, and that's why you should put it on top, not below.
If gas was nearly free, an all you cared about is distance, mpg would be ideal.
Both this and miles per gallon are linear.
Edit: A 1% change is THE SAME no matter where you are on both. A 1% increase in miles per gallon is a (100/101) times [decrease] in gallons per mile (which is linearly convertible to l/100km). What you did is two different % changes.
My bad. Fractional changes are are immune to this. Absolute changes get weird with non-linear units.
Skill issue