this post was submitted on 05 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
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- 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
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I'm going to add to the sun point, and remark that the cool range of tones is associated with snow and ice, since these reflect the blue of the sky. So even if people didn't need fire to cook or live their lives at all, they would associate the blue ranges with winter.
Water in its liquid state also looks blue, and is usually associated with something refreshing in warm areas. So even in the tropics you would have a reason for associating blues with cools.
In contrast, most desert areas are naturally in orange ranges. You can also argue autumn forests would look orange and they're not exactly warm, but the light in an autumn forest doesn't bounce as much or as tinged compared to light conditions in desert areas, where the soil or sand is yellow or orange -red, and where whatever casting a shadow is probably the ground itself.
Finally, human bodies are more in a warm range tone (no matter the skin color) when compared to the same body suffering cold. Nails and lips take on a bluish hue, so do fingertips.
I think you would need to tweak your universe a little bit more to achieve a reversal in color association.
Those are some pretty solid points! Especially the one about healthy vs. freezing skin tone.
Those substances are blue due to Rayleigh scattering, not because they reflect the sky
The highest energy (shortest) wavelengths scatter first, so out of visible light blue is the first scattered colour