this post was submitted on 15 Feb 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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[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

This kind of thing happens even if you don't assume time repeats. As far as we can measure, the universe is spacially infinite. Finite age, infinite spacial extent. If you ever hear someone talk about the diameter of the universe, they're talking about the diameter of the observable universe - the part of the universe close enough for its light to actually reach us. But as far as we can measure (based on measurements of large scale spacial curvature), the universe is truly, literally infinite. It's possible it curves back on itself with a radius much larger than the diameter of the visible universe. But if it truly is infinite, infinities make some very weird things possible.

For example, a diameter the size of the observable universe has a finite number of states. There are only so many atoms and so many ways to arrange those atoms. This number is unfathomably large, but it's not infinite. But in an infinite universe, on a large enough distance, everything repeats. It doesn't repeat in a regular pattern, but it does repeat. So get in a space ship and fly off into space. If you could go far enough, eventually you would run into an exact duplicate of yourself, with all the memories and life experiences you have - an atom-for-atom copy of yourself. Travel far enough and you'll encounter a duplicate of our entire observable universe. And worse still, if the universe truly is infinite, there must be an infinite number of such copies.

I'm not talking about alternate realities or parallel universes here. I'm not talking about getting in a time machine and visiting an alternate timeline. I'm not talking about the quantum many worlds theory. I'm talking about the very space you inhabit, this universe. If you go out in a space ship and could travel arbitrarily far, it would eventually seem like you had come right back home, even though you're quintillions of light years from where you were born.

Infinity is a terrifying thing.