this post was submitted on 27 Oct 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:

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Edit: Today I learned that UTC is an actual real thing and not just a setting I scroll past on my computer 😅.


They also complicate things.

It made more sense back before we had electric lighting and when everyone lived by the rising and setting of the sun. Now it doesn't seem to really matter.

Obviously, the whole world deciding where to start the time would be nigh impossible but it could be like: starting at this date, on the first day of the year, what ever point is farthest away from the sun is 00:00 from henceforth.

And then people just adapted to what that meant for their particular area. Somebody's morning might be 13:00!

Imagine if the whole world was on some global time schedule.

Edit: From my comment below

Look at the earth from a top down perspective. It's a pie. With 12 or 24 slices depending on the granularity. A clock, basically. It would take the same amount of energy to learn which slice of earth is lined up towards the sun for each hour as would be to learn anything else in elementary school.

After which, for the rest of your life you'd have an intuitive grasp of where earth is in its rotation and what "time" it would be for any place in the world.

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[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It’s rare until you switch to a company with many international teams for every project.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

It's actually easier because people will bother to add timezones to everything or just reference UTC

[–] cattywampas@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And then it's still rare even if it's happening to you.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

It’s rare to most people. A subset of the population deals with this mess every week.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

But even in that scenario, this change wouldn't benefit you because instead of needing to lookup and convert potential meeting times into their time zone, you'd need to lookup and convert their offset work hours into your work hours to find something that works for both of you.

This would be further complicated by certain offices allowing their employees to work different hours like imagine trying to schedule meetings with two branches in the same time zone currently but one operates 7-4 and the other operates 9-6. After this change you'd need to do an extra calculation to account for this while the current system would have both branches sharing the same base time since they're in the same regional time zone. This takes 24 regional time zones and changes them to a million individual "time zones" set by each individual business around the world.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Oh, you’re talking about solar time? Yeah, that gets messy when every 1 second slice of the planet is essentially a small time zone.

Anyway, I was just thinking of having a single universal time. When scheduling meetings, everyone would just need to tell what time window is ideal and what’s tolerable. Just like nowadays, you would still need to look at a meeting planner to figure it which time that works for everyone.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At which time, UTC covers the job perfectly. It's also great for keeping computer logs consistent.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

True, but you still need to coordinate meeting schedules. The current system means it’s a total disaster, but a universal time would turn that into a genuine headache. I guess the latter is still preferable, given the options.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

UTC is designed to be unambiguous, not convenient. I'd imagine most companies would either remap to local times for convenience, or have calculated windows when meetings are reasonable between various parties.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

If only people actually used that.

Nevertheless, that’s a good idea. I’ll have to check if any apps or sites take advantage of it. Sounds like a pretty neat solution.