this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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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:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. 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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. 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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[–] JackLSauce@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The oldest known writing system (Mesopotamia, I think but not sure) is base 60 and by and large influences calendars, degrees, etc today so I wouldn't preclude the possibility of an alternate timeline where this could happen based on historical factors alone

[–] MiddleKnight@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

“Hundred” in Germanic Europe used to be 120 before the Romans came and introduced their “century” with a value of 100. This is still known as “the long hundred”

12, 60, 120, 360 are the first superior highly composite numbers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_number

These number divides neatly into integer parts in many ways for their size.

They are also the basis of many pre decimal counting systems, some of which are still around. 360 degrees in a circle. 12 hours in a day.

The Babylonian’s used base 60. We still do for time as you pointed out. The minute refers to a minute(as in small) part of something. The “second” is the “second minute”. Ie a minute divided into minutes. This system is also used for geodetic cordinates. Where we have arc minutes and seconds.

[–] UniquesNotUseful@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

60 is useful because it’s easily divided by lots of small numbers, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, other factors include 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. This is why we can split our day so much.

The Babylonians popularised base 60. The origins of which were possibly derived from 2 separate groups in Mesopotamia, that started trade but one used base 12 and one base 5, multiply together to get 60.

You can count to 5 and 12 on one hand easily (12 by using thumb to count each section of your 4 finger). Using both hands you get to 60.

https://mathsciencehistory.com/2021/11/09/count-to-60-with-your-phalanges/

China also has counting to 10 on one hand, theory being you can indicate quantities with one hand full at a market.

[–] pipows@lemmy.pt 4 points 2 years ago

Kind of. Although they did use base 60, it was largely based on a simpler, base 10, system, like we do woth our clocks, so it seems that they had a base 10, and then developed base 60 to help math

[–] MrShankles@reddthat.com 10 points 2 years ago
[–] mySFWaccount@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

We would probably even still call is base 10! There would just be two more number between 0 and 9...

[–] prettybunnys@reddthat.com 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

We are the nine 11 deniers. Me and my eight friends know that 11 is a bullshit number!

[–] Oursunisdying@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Damn, you just blew my mind.

[–] mySFWaccount@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 years ago

Every number base system is base 10... from a certain point of view...

[–] aja@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

Reading through these comments and it’s safe to say I’d binge the shit out of a podcast series on the history of numbers. Does anyone have any recs?

[–] s6original@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

And increase our typing speed by 20%.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago
[–] Waraugh@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago
[–] BlackRose@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
[–] Fanghole@reddthat.com 2 points 2 years ago

This is a plot point in an old manga series. I forget which one. Needless maybe?

[–] hoodlem@hoodlem.me 0 points 2 years ago

I suppose we used our fingers, but if we would have used our number of hands/eyes/ears/etc we would have come up with binary.

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