this post was submitted on 14 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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Clocks were sundials.
If you can see the time, it's not night.
I think their point was they picked 12 and not 24 or some other number to divide a circle by
That’s a Babylonian thing. They were obsessed with highly divisible numbers like, 12, 24 and 60. Basically the opposite of prime numbers, which are super annoying to divide. Babylonians wanted their numbers to as nice as possible when dividing. For example, 60 is particularly nice since it’s not absurdly large, but when dividing it, you have lots of options.
All of this was long before the decimal point and calculators were invented, so divisibility was a big thing back then. Nowadays though, having weird fractions like that is more inconvenient and annoying than nice. Thanks to the Babylonians, we have super messy time units now.
Thanks to the Romans, we also have super messy units for length, weight, volume and money. Yes, even money had convoluted fractions. That’s not a huge deal though, since basically nobody uses those any more.
Interesting, thanks for the detailed description!
I wouldn't blame the Babylonians for us breaking the good standard and going 58, 59, 60, 61, 62 instead of the 58, 59, 100, 101, 102 that works just fine. They were first, we are the ones who added a new system aside the old one instead of replacing it.
The French actually kicked out so much trash during the Revolution. Time units did stick around though, but at least they tried.
If that was the case, we would now be talking about 48 h clocks vs. 24 h clocks.
18:40 pm on the 24h clock would equal 36:40 on the 48 h clock. You would still not know whether it's night or day just looking at the time.
100% This.
Also, being an evolution of sundials is the reason all analog clocks move their hands in the same direction.
*Being evolution of sundials located on the northern hemisphere.
I was answering about the Northern/Southern hemisphere logic of this... and realised that it depends if the sundial is vertical in a wall (facing South in the Northern hemisphere) or horizontal (facing the zenith/sky)... today you can easily find those wall sundials in many monumental buildings (at least these seem to me more common than the others) and the shadow is casted counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere, so not sure if the clockwise sense was locked by sundials... also in the Southern hemisphere logic flips completely.
In the southern hemisphere they think Australia is suitable for human life.
So you're saying clockwise can also be called sundialwise?
At least some North American indigenous peoples say something akin to "with the sun". And I think in yoga terminology they have a similar phrasing, or am I mistaken?
Or just sunwise
This image makes it look like he’s about to say he was turned into a newt.
Not all, but most
I present to you, illuminated clocks!
crowd gasps MY UNIVERSE IS COLLAPSING the crowd starts screaming and lighting things on fire
...and then they noticed: "Damn, we could have lit everything on fire and seen our clocks in the night time millenia ago!"
Galaxy brain time
Your sundial still isn't showing time.
Depends on what you mean with "showing time". They won't be showing the correct time, that's true. But.
It's showing a time
Clocks, not sundials
The lights go out, and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
How are the illuminated clocks able to comprehend your presentation?
Magic ✨