this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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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:

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The butterfly effects would add up and and any zygote formed would not be the hitler-as-we-know anymore, since it would be a different combination of sperm and eggs.

Who needs guns when you got a time machine? Don't like your highschool bully, just bump into their parents back in time. Or you know, "bump" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) into their parents.

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[–] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't believe it would prevent the holocaust though. If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.

Just like now, if it wasn't Trump, the Heritage Foundation would have found another fuck to carry out their bidding. Fascism is a systemic issue.

[–] throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I wonder what that other timeline is like where that dumbass kid actually aimed correctly at the rally.

[–] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

Would have been cool if Nikki Haley were the nominee and there would have been a female president no matter what

[–] FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 49 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Let's say you're right and you've prevented the birth of Adolf or altered him to send him to another life trajectory. Who is to say that there wouldn't be another mad person, naturally a man, who would rise to power and commit similar if not even worse crimes. It's not only the person that made the fuehrer possible, it's also everything happening in the world, especially politics at the time. So you've bumped Adolf but you've created Anton who was similarly radicalized but he wasn't a landscape painter, he was a physics major and he made Germany develop nuclear weapons much faster. So now you have to go back and disturb Anton's conception. Which brings about fuehrer Armin and so forth. You might be stuck in a time loop you'll never be able to stop because you can't control all the variables.

[–] throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 40 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

They told me to "get rid of hitler" and I technically acomplished the mission. 🤷‍♂️

[–] GuyFawkes@midwest.social 26 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah... shit... here we go again...

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago

All you had to do was follow the damn train (to Auschwitz) CJ!

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 18 points 5 days ago

For real, there was nothing particularly special about Hitler that made him the one and only being of his type.

It was a confluence of multiple differing things, the emergence of new media technologies, and the ability to repeat a single message over and over again to as many people as needed to hear them without any equally as loud voices of dissent.

Combine that with an incredible financial depression and the consequences of an ill thought war being foisted upon your country's shoulders.

Admittedly, it was his own personal biases against the Jewish people that caused the Holocaust, and the Aktion T4 was similarly born out of his hatred of people with mental disabilities.

In any case, if you take a miserable nation, give them a lightning rod to direct all of the misery of their own lives at, and an eloquent or charismatic leader to tell them it is okay to vent their frustrations on the helpless people that surround them, then you too can create another Hitler.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 7 points 5 days ago

Without the Holocaust, there'd have been no international horror over the atrocities of concentration camps, gas chambers, human experimentation, genocide. Anti-Jewish sentiment was rampant around the world.

Progressives made a lot of progress off the back of WWII, and the anti-fascist sentiment in the US that survived until the greatest generation died and their grandchildren took over. It's entirely possible that, without WWII, the fascism we see in the US today would have happened much earlier, and we'd have run our own concentration camps.

Ironically, the people who probably would have benefited most from preventing "Hitler" would be the modern Palestinians, because without Hitler, Israel would not exist today, and it wouldn't be carrying out a genocide.

El. Psy. Congroo.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But fuck Hitler's mom just to be safe

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Plot twist: Hitler was actually your son and become like that because of a missing fatherly figure

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[–] Mallspice@lemm.ee 13 points 4 days ago

Unpopular opinion.

Humanity is going to generate tyrants until we vaccinate everyone with a sense of morality and even then, we’re going to have problems with dark empaths starting shit as long as we think child soldiers can be saved.

[–] meme_historian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Then get hit with the plot twist that it was your "bumping" that actually conceived Hitler

[–] Lemming6969@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

This is the correct answer in any single chain deterministic universe... It always happened just like that.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 3 points 4 days ago

Oh man, this happened with my wife too, just bumped into her and next thing you know she's pregnant. I can't believe how fertile I am sometimes.

[–] philpo@feddit.org 14 points 4 days ago

Dude, don't you think we tried that? The first time we got Schickelcutlerstalin for some reason who killed everyone with his out off-control biological weapons. Then for some fucking reason we got a fucking snake hitler!

And now we are all out of time-travel juice and locked down in a reality where hitler lived AND an orange is also hitler. Well, I had a little bit left,but a giant testicle came along, kicked me in my testicles,shouted "you want fucking Mother Theresa torturing everyone to death" and disappeared.

Now I am stuck here. Fuck.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 25 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

cuckolds Hitler's dad

discovers that paradoxes don't exist the hard way

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[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago (1 children)

We have our own hitlers living now. I think we should care about them first before thinking on time traveling

[–] throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Maybe someone did send a time traveler. But idk why they sent a kid with zero training and no scope lmao. It was so fucking close.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 days ago

Everyone is always assuming that these time travelers have good intentions...

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

Don't like your highschool bully, just bump into their parents back in time. Or you know, "bump" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) into their parents

Forcing your high school bully to call you daddy is one hell of a power move

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Knowing what his father was like, it's very likely that they'd still produce a horrible kid.

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The butterfly effect refers to divergent chaotic systems. Chaos in math isn't the layman's chaos. It doesn't mean wild. It only means there is no closed form mathematical solution. For example stepping on a butterfly can't affect the weather such that the moon would crash into the Earth.

Bumping into Hitler's parents wouldn't necessarily change anything. You have to do something drastic such that he was conceived days to weeks apart such that the sperm was completely different. Even a minor delay wouldn't affect it because the sperm that fertilizes an egg isn't random. There are selection hurdles in mobility that the sperm passes such that the most "fit" is likely the one that fertilizes the egg.

[–] LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Chaos means that a small change in initial conditions can lead to drastically different places in the long term, so I think OP was using the idea correctly. Though I agree that just bumping into the parents may not be enough to push the system into another trajectory.

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[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 5 days ago (11 children)

No it doesn't mean that. It means that tiny changes in input result in big changes in the output.

By your definition, a simple ellipse is chaotic. Which it clearly isn't. Tiny changes in the axes result in tiny changes to its shape, and by extension its perimeter. Yet there is no closed form formula for the perimiter of an ellipse.

This could also be verified using a simple dictionary, not even a math textbook.

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[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago

The real criticism of this plan is that whether you assassinate Hitler or just prevent his birth, it doesn't solve the societal problems that led to the world wars. Hitler wouldn't have happened, but the Germans would still feel snubbed by the outcome of the Great War

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is how we get the red alert timeline. Killing Hitler only makes a stronger enemy

[–] TastyWheat@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Heetler.... ees... out of de way."

/cue Hell March

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

REform LINE! Quick MARCH!

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 10 points 5 days ago (4 children)

on a side note...

Important Note: In order to marry, Alois and Klara had to obtain a dispensation from the Church due to their close familial ties. This highlights the fact that they were indeed related and their marriage was considered unusual for the time.

[–] Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I need to know more. Source for quote please?

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 9 points 5 days ago

https://allthatsinteresting.com/alois-hitler

Alois Hitler wanted to marry his cousin immediately, however, their close relation posed some legal difficulties and they had to request a dispensation from the local bishop. The bishop was clearly also disturbed by the very few degrees of separation between the pair and forwarded the request to the Vatican, who eventually granted it (perhaps because by this time Klara was already pregnant).

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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 7 points 5 days ago

B. F. Skinner would like a word

For twenty-five hundred years people have been preoccupied with feelings and mental life, but only recently has any interest been shown in a more precise analysis of the role of the environment. Ignorance of that role led in the first place to mental fictions, and it has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise.

[–] SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 days ago

Someone should go back in time and convince monke to stay in tree

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 3 points 4 days ago

What’s even the point man, the world will still find a way to shit on us

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

If the same geopolitical environment still led to World War II but with a different German leader then the outcome of the war could very well have ended differently.

Leading up to major invasions like D-Day in Normandy and the invasion of Sicily the allies implemented major deceptions to confuse the Germans. Despite some senior leadership recognizing at least some aspects of those deceptions, Hitler himself fell for them pretty thoroughly and ordered troop movements that reduced German defenses where the attacks took place, and delayed moving them back because he still believed the deceptions were real. There are other examples of poor decisions by Hitler throughout the course of the war that proved helpful for the allies as well.

If Germany had a more qualified military leader running things then events like the Normandy D-Day invasion could have had a very different outcome. If the Germans had the Normandy beaches better defended then that invasion could very well have failed. And if that happened then there’s a good chance Germany could have won the war.

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