this post was submitted on 23 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:
- 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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Well central information control is out. And a democratic approach means putting the mon in charge, which is bad for a couple reasons.
I'm thinking that an overarching control is to be avoided. There is no good version of that. Control on the small scale. Individuals and small groups maybe. And keep the large scale uncontrolled and wild.
Putting the mob in charge is the least-bad form of government humans have ever conceived of.
Experts can and do establish reputations to persuade the masses or those chosen by the masses.
When we try putting the experts in charge directly, they invariably become corrupt and stop being as skilled.
There is a reason why America's founding fathers put a wall between church and state. Not because they thought religion was bad, but because they learned from history that when you give a topic-expert political control they stop being good at either function.
Maybe nobody should be in charge. Just a federation of factions. I guess that's Lemmy.
Yes. Having any one person 'in charge" who is not an immortal with superhuman morality and judgement will eventually lead to tyrannical suffering or the waste of a bloody civil war.
Lemmy (and piefed) is a great example of human societies done correctly. There are people who run things, and while they can establish whatever rules they want for the parts they run, everyone else is free to either ask for a change or go elsewhere.
For bad actions, options range from immediate negative feedback (downvote) and.corrective speech (public comment or private message), to negative consequences from those in power (ban account from instance), which can ultimately rise to community separation (de-federation). Heck, even the underlying software can be forked or replaced.
Of course, the stakes here are essentially trivial. Which means the consequences are too, but also we all have less incentive for bad action than in the real world where poverty and death are a possibility from bad action.