this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
65 points (90.1% liked)
Showerthoughts
41459 readers
727 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.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No, that is incorrect. Modern displays have subpixels of red, green, and blue and they are only ever producing various brightness levels of those exact colours. In the case of an OLED or LED displays, they would be perfectly monochromatic colours. The colours do not combine as coloured paint would to produce a new colour. That isn't how they work nor how you view them. We are looking directly at the subpixels and they are activating your rods and cones directly.
Yellow does not exist when a monitor displays a yellow colour. Your brain thinks it does because its red and green cells are being activated. This is also how you can see the colour magenta despite your monitor display red and blue, colours which are on the opposite ends of the visible spectrum. Magenta never exists during the process of displaying magenta on a screen, it only does in your brain.
Exen paint mixing does not result in a new color; it's the same effect.
What I meant is that if you have a photo of a yellow flower, I'd would say that the file contains "yellow color", even though it only uses RGB values. The display is "transmitting yellow into your brain" by emitting a combination of wavelengths. Wavelength that normally represents color yellow is not emitted, but the "color yellow" is sent, in a way
A few nitpicks
Subpixels would not be perfectly monochromatic unless they were laser displays. Quantum dot can get kinda close though.
if mixing light additively didn't create new colors then mixing paints subtractively wouldn't either. the results of those processes still result in light that can activate our cones with combinations of wavelengths in the exact same way.
I think the semantics of what color light is doesn't matter which wavelengths are used to produce it, but what it looks like. We don't say something is yellow because it has wavelengths of light that look yellow on their own, we say something is yellow because it looks yellow. Likewise people use the term white light all the time when there's no single wavelength that produces white.
Sigh...if you are going to lecture people about what is incorrect, at least try and educate yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattron#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DQuattron_is_the_brand_name%2Cto_its_advanced_color_technology.%3Fwprov=sfla1
A 16 year old niche display tech that has seen next to no use is not the epic zinger gotcha you think it is.
If I were to cover every single niche display tech that wasn't strictly RGB then I'd be writing a damn novel. Nearly every device that people interact with will be RGB. That is the common standard.