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.
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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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.