this post was submitted on 11 Jan 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:

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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[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 33 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Most buildings named after people are done because they donated money for it. In most cases it's still kinda cringe.

[–] Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Funding for buildings is sometimes driven by recurring donations in exchange for someone’s name on the building. These funds pay for deferred maintenance and renovations.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

yeah it's cool that buildings are maintained and so on, but it's cringe to pay a bunch of money for clout. rich people basically view botting IRL

[–] Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s similar to Kickstarter, where a certain level will get your name in the credits.

[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 4 points 1 day ago

oh yeah rich people do that with movies, too! "executive producer" sometimes means "i donated to put my name here"

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 72 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Then there is Australia. Naming a swimming pool after a Prime Minister that drowned.

[–] Mantzy81@aussie.zone 50 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

We love dark humour here, but he was also an avid swimmer.

Not a good one but avid.

[–] Welt@lazysoci.al 2 points 1 day ago

Pity he wasn't navid.

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 9 points 2 days ago

They need to rename the maccas where scomo shit himself.

[–] TomArrr@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

"Allegedly " drowned 😉

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[–] shittydwarf@piefed.social 128 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Trump is literally unable to see the difference. It doesn't matter if it was but there by him or someone else, the important thing is that "big thing has my name on it". He doesn't see how miserable it is, in his mind he's winning

[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago

This is a guy that wears shirts with his own name and branding on them. He's as crass as they come.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

Maybe you already listened to her, but Mary Trump has insight...

[–] DoubleDongle@lemmy.world 59 points 2 days ago

Hmm, this sounds a lot like you're thinking of someone specific. I wonder who that could be...

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

What dictators do is to erect their own monuments, and wreck the memorials of their opponents.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 34 points 2 days ago (5 children)

What about being named after a building?

[–] the_mighty_kracken@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

That's a brilliant idea, Mr Bungalow

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[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

In german we have the saying "Eigenlob stinkt" which can be translated to "honouring yourself stinks" which fits perfectly here

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That goes for steaks as well. /s

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

And universities

And vodka

And bottled water

And magazines

And morality

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[–] Astrealix@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dunno, Doofenschmirtz Evil Inc. is quite good

[–] TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today 17 points 2 days ago

Tbf that was the company name not the building

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

There is also an escalation of this, between naming a building you own, after yourself and naming other's buildings after yourself let alone monuments

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (5 children)

That's okay.

It is mostly possible to erase a person's legacy, at least in the physical sense. Egypt almost erased a whole-ass pharaoh from history. (Akhenaten)

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah just like how all of those Civil War Generals were erased from history for betraying their country for the sake of preserving slavery.

Let's be real. Americans are incapable of shame. As long as USA continues to exist, Trump's actions will be whitewashed and there will be statues of him made in the future.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah just like how all of those Civil War Generals were erased from history for betraying their country for the sake of preserving slavery.

This is nowhere near an appropriate comparison to Akhenaten.

Let’s be real. Americans are incapable of shame.

The 2025 elections, where every Donald-won district from 2024 flipped, is empirical evidence to the contrary. It seems that people were on-board for a mass-deportation, but not for the targeting of legal immigrants and the military occupation of American cities.

But sure. It's your world and your algorithm. Think what you want.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Naming things after people frequently backfires. The person later turns out to be politically divisive, or a nazi, or a rapist, or a pedophile, or some other awful thing.

I’m so tired of seeing “XYZ memorial highway” signs everywhere. And schools should just stick to naming themselves after the region (north/south/east/west), or going by PS numbers. It’s all just asking for trouble and a waste of taxpayer money.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 32 points 2 days ago (2 children)

See the perfect example: Star Trek Discovery namedropping Musk in-between the Wright brothers and Zephram Cochrane (in-universe inventor of the warp drive), and even having a high school named after him.

This, mind you, happened right before his "pedo guy" comments - the episode aired in early October 2017, whereas Musk made the comment on 15 July 2018. So within a year Musk managed to kill off the respect of a large chunk of nerds just by letting his inner Nazi appear for a moment.

In my mind, I rewrote the episode’s script. Essentially, Elon laid himself down feet first in front of a steam roller, after giving away everything he owned to fund Universal Healthcare.

So, they named a local elementary school after him, as it was literally the very least they could do after he was squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste.

[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's fascinating to think that if Elon hadn't spent so much time hanging around with former sexpats such that the word Thailand meant paedophile tourism to him, America could have a functioning democracy right now.

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nah, the issue is much deeper rooted. fElonia has been a white supremacist moron for a VERY long time.

When he sold his first company, Zip2, to Compaq, the latter said that the code was practically unusable.

Later on, he funded the formation of the original X dot com, an online bank, where he fired all other founders within the first half year due to "creative differences", basically stole their work, and within a year they merged with Peter Thiel's PayPal/Confinity. A few months later Musk got ousted as CEO because of mismanagement. Go figure.

Half his ventures since have been abject and utter failures, which would've ruined anyone else financially, but because he's got his rich emerald mine owner daddy, he always had a nice little trust fund to fall back on.

And his views also go back to his father, who was a fervent supporter of the Apartheid state, and is essentially a white supremacist (also an elitist piece of shit). Don't even get me started about mummy dearest, to whom muskie had to run just so he didn't have to fight Zuckerberg...

At SpaceX there literally used to be a "Musk management department", solely tasked with giving the imbecile random tasks that don't affect mission critical stuff, and making sure he's not saying absolutely moronic BS in interviews.

He's basically stuck on the mental and emotional level of a 13yo teen who just hit puberty, combined with that Cybertruck shaped body, more gender affirming care than your average post-op trans person, and a botched micropenis he can't even use. Him going full on alt-right wasn't a question of if, but when.

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[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

I'm happy to use it to memorialize someone who is long dead (like, at least a century; long enough that we can be pretty sure what kind of person they were in life), or to mark a notable feature or plant or animal in the region. Even an institution (College Park, Museum Way, High School Rd). Not everything has to be purely functional. And if the local government has to pay for the signs to be printed anyway...

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[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Fun fact, the hollywood walk of fame is a bought honor, you pay for it, you get it. It's not given out based on some achievement criteria

[–] MrFinnbean@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes and no.

You need to have +5 years of history in entertaiment business and/or in community work and somebody else needs to nominate you. Then if the commitee acepts you and you pay the sponsor fee you get the star.

But yeah. If you have lots of money and friends in right places you can pretty much buy it, but its not like any bluecollar worker can just take a loan and buy one for themself without any merit.

Its not really that different than how people get wings in hospitals or libraries named after them. Except Hollywood star does not benefit normal people in any way.

[–] GuyFawkes@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Another fun fact is that once a star is there it’s there - no mechanism to get it removed.

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[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Still kinda shitty honestly.

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