this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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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
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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One of the early utopias was that people would no longer debate about things because the internet would bring people together and provide them with information about anything and everything… well then algorithms and social media happened, and now we’re stuck with echo chambers of anti-vaxxers and flat earthers.
Other than that, it’s been nice in many ways nobody could have anticipated back then.
Social media empowered narcissistic self-publication, which is one of the main things that ruined the Internet.
The problem is that the subject of discussions was moved from objective topics to the self. Every topic being discussed is now tainted with the insertion of the self as part of the topic, for the purpose of garnering attention to the self. Instead of the topic being discussed, now it's "Look at what I'm talking about, isn't this interesting what I'm telling you?"
Facebook and Xitter are very user centric platforms where you care about the person more than the topic. Meanwhile, in (formerly) Reddit and (currently) Lemmy I rarely even look at the usernames. I care about the topic, and that’s why I’m here in this thread.
But you could actually learn and grow via the internet then. Information was free, available, and tools actually helped you find it.
I think that is still true. It isn't that hard to immerse yourself in the free web. There is a ton of high quality and user-friendly FOSS software these days, much more than in the old days. I actually think we are living in a golden age of FOSS software right now. Other than games, I don't have much need for commercial software anymore.
The same is true of information. There is a spectacular amount of free information available online now compared to 30 years ago. You can leaen to fix damn near anything nowadays just by watching free YouTube videos. Not to mention high quality, well-produced free videos, free podcasts, free databases and reference materials, journalism, etc. about any subject you can think from history to computer science, math, biology, literature... the list is endless. It wasn't like that 30 years ago, that's for sure.
Even on the commercial side, $15 a month for my whole family to access almost any music, anywhere, anytime? Shit, I used to pay $15 for one CD and the only way to get music on the internet was to pirate it! Cheap, high quality, comprehensive music catalogs availabe everywhere at the touch of a button is what we used to dream about and now it is a reality. And video? I remember the first video I ever watched on the internet. It was a tiny, grainy, 20 second video of a Shuttle launch being streamed over the internet... and we sat in awe with our mouths hanging open watching it over and over, lol.
That isn't to say that the internet is perfect. The tracking nowadays really is horrendous. But, damn, it is much better now compared to the old days in terms of content.
You’re absolutely right about learning stuff online. Once I bought a mango, but had no idea how to cut it without making a huge mess. Well, there are also lots of videos about it, so now I know what I’m doing with delicious mangos.