Who are you and how did you get in my sandbox?
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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Showerthoughts
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1898 users here now
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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I also like that Lemmy has a displayname field separate from the username and it allows you to make it cooler than just boring plain text. 😏
Haha you are definitely the person that came to my mind but my client only shows the plaintext username now so it's a bit harder to spot you
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it allows you to make it cooler than just boring plain text
Agree.
People who find it annoying have grown old and boring, or are too young to have posted on a phpbb with a tacky signature.
Tryin' to make a change :-\
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Some people actually use the tag feature so that they remember users when they see them again lol
Oh, you maple syrup monsoon
Thats exactly why I am using lemmy exclusively for brand awareness
Can I be the guy that's known around town for pointing out that in the given context, it's actually "fewer users"
And yeah yeah, I know about evolution of language and common usage, and all that crap. But it really does just boil down to the fact that fewer sounds more elegant when the object is plural. ie: "There are usually fewer unexpected costs associated with new home ownership", vs "There is usually less unexpected cost associated with new home ownership" (Both are correct in their given context)
It's about how language rolls off the tongue. If we lose that we might as well grunt at each other draw pictographs with our own feces.
/end of rant.
This specific case isn't really to do with the evolution of language, more just ineffective linguistic prescriptivism. Some guy 200 years ago decided they didn't like how "less" had been used for the past millennium so they made up a guideline for what the preferred (like what you just said) then people decided to treat that as an actual rule. Obviously it's still common to use "less" that way even after a couple of centuries of people trying to enforce that rule, it's a good demonstration of how prescriptivism is a waste of time.
Strangely enough, in my experience many prescriptivists who rely on etymological arguments are fine with language changing for this one rule. Makes me think they never really did care about historic usage of a word.
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It's actually about whether the object is countable.
Water -> less water Cups of water -> fewer cups of water
It bothers me a bit, too, but American English is definitely evolving to replace "fewer" with "less".
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Oh, you fewer less users
You look at usernames? I've never done that here or on Reddit.
Even without usernames. There is some people i recognize by topic, opinion and the way they express themselves. If you spend too much time here that isn't difficult.
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Considering how new anonymity is for the human race, it amazes me how people treat it like a crucial element of life. Civilization mostly lacked it for thousands of years because almost everybody lived in villages or small towns - about half the people in the world still do.
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I have a feeling everyone knows who I am, and those who don't haven't blocked me yet.
it's fine. I'm not going to apologize for my opinions because that's somehow worse than defending unpopular opinions.
I'd rather be the person who owns their hill and dies for it than someone who runs from hill to hill because the group thinks it sucks.
I mean, you just mentioned that. Of course someone will disagree, but most probably wont bother. I just wanna know, do you exclude gaining a new perspective from this? Because I'm exceedingly strong willed when encountering illogical or otherwise short sighted points. But sometimes folks just show me a new perspective and I am compelled to agree. Doesnt happen often except in tech questions but here we are.
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