this post was submitted on 14 Mar 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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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 12 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Well, then it's a good thing MAGA cancelled Climate Change, so we don't have to worry about it.

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Blowing up oil production could be argued as carbon negative.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

No. Complete opposite. Not just full emissions from the buring oil, but replacement oil "needs" to be dug up.

[–] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I disagree. That oil you are seeing burning is just a few days of normal production. So it would have gotten burnt regardless. If you take the broader view, disrupting global oil production will give renewable energies a much needed push. If your petrol gets too expensive, the electric car maybe looks better now. Using solar and wind looks better when fossil fuel prices are more expensive. And heating your home with a heat pump is currently much, much cheaper than using gas or oil. So this will give a push, if done correctly.

Some countries might even wake up and realize that it's better to produce their own energy from the sun shining on their own soil than being kind of a victim of whatever happens somewhere else in the world.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Oil spikes do be making a MF invest in alternative energy. Just hope you don’t get clean coal

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 hours ago

Wells burn for a long time

[–] pedz@lemmy.ca 6 points 12 hours ago

Just for fun, look up how much the US army pollutes.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 10 hours ago

Don't worry, nobody will be able to afford to drive, so that will offset it.

[–] Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago

We don't have the room for AI either and that's not stopping anyone.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

yeah but what about out cabron budget?

[–] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago

I think the red hot chili peppers blew through that in 2002

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

There's always room in the budget for one more cabrón

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Te Debo una cabrón

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Hear me out. Depending on how massive the war is it could actually help on the long term.

At the end of the day less people equals less pollution.

[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds like an ecofash take

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

While we are at it: Don't treat the personal in critical and low life expectancy (e.g. heavily mutilated but could live through until natural death) to save on pension funds and later medical infrastructure.
More for the young in need (a bit of /s and /j)

[–] Mangoholic@lemmy.ml 7 points 14 hours ago

Yes but just very few people make up the majority of pollution.

[–] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I have a feeling that the carbon budget is going to be the least of our concerns soon.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, these days I'm more worried about the potential of future radioactive fallout.

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'm worried that I live a bit too far from the closest likely nuke target and I might survive the first phase of the war

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That's an interesting perspective. Thinking like that, I'm probably going in the first wave.

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That would be for the best. You really don't want to survive a nuclear war: what comes after is so much worse

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 9 hours ago

The UK movie Threads from 1984 is probably the most accurate fictional representation of what nuclear war would look like. You can find it on Youtube

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 4 points 15 hours ago
[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

What room is there for anything with a negative budget?

[–] NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

Well, you see, it works like money. You go over budget and plan to pay later. Then, when you go beyond what you expected to borrow, you change the debt ceiling and borrow more. And then when you are beyond your ability to pay off the debt, you change the rules such that you can take a few extra decades. Keep doing this until you have kicked the can down the road beyond your anticipated lifespan. And then your grandchildren can just get fucked for all you care.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

No problem! Let's craft a new Accord! They're fun!

[–] RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 83 points 1 day ago (4 children)

We were never gonna get the carbon thing under control.

[–] j_elgato@leminal.space 1 points 11 hours ago

Sure we will!

Human-driven climate change will accelerate the Holocene mass extinction, ending Homo Sapiens - and with us will go all carbon-producing industry.

The carbon thing finds its equilibrium after some tens of thousands of years, and the climate stabilizes some hundreds of thousands or millions of years after that. And then, provided the biosphere wasn't damaged beyond its ability to compensate or regulate for the increased solar luminosity that has occurred since the last "Hot-House Earth" climate, it will recover and heal.

And if not, then we've killed everything down to the tardigrades, and probably them too, and we end up with a runaway greenhouse Venus type situation some 0.3 - 0.6 billion years early.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

as A physics channel person as said, countries have largely abandoned global climate change for a while now. they are mostly going YOLO with oil now. plus there are subtle acts of undermining/sabotaging environmental activism for years, like funding "carbon footprint companies" so they dont have to reduce thier emissions, and funding "eco-activists" you hear in the news defacing public properties to incite ire against protestors.(mona lisa, gluing yourself to cars,,,etc)

Some science channels were called out for promoting these companies as a way of reducing your carbon footprint, luckily they stopped once they found out.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 61 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Not while we still allow psychopaths to be in control.

[–] MrKoyun@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

Not while we still allow them to be alive.

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[–] Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 20 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Oh boy, I get to post my doom call!

If you live for another 50 years, you WILL witness the collapse of civilization. We have blown past every single warming-limit goal, and are not only continuing to warm the planet but are doing it at an accelerating pace.

Its getting warmer, and its getting warmer FASTER.

Very soon the major breadbaskets of the world will no longer be able to grow crops. As soon as the grain agricultural industry collapses, billions, with a B, will starve.

We are witnessing the end of modern civilization, which will end just as fast as it arrived.

[–] jpeps@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Doomerism like this is not healthy. Things are dire and will get worse for a long time, but the idea that civilisation is guaranteed to collapse is the kind of doom propaganda that fuels inaction. There is so much we can do, and the outcome for future generations better with every positive step we take. What we do does matter, and there's a good chance our core societies will still be going strong in 50 years.

[–] BrioxorMorbide@lemmings.world 2 points 10 hours ago

the kind of doom propaganda that fuels inaction

And worse, the destructive "we have to exploit everything because it doesn't matter anyway" attitude.

[–] 0tan0d@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

A ray of hope: Oil being expensive makes solar more attractive. Having an EV and home solar insulated my family against the daily hike in the price of a gallon of gas.

[–] bridgeburner@lemmy.world 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but only wealthy people like you can actually switch to EVs and solar. Most people can't afford an EV, and if they can, most of the time they have no place to charge it as a lot of people live in rented apartments and not in their own houses. So the majority of people are powerless when the oil gets more expensive, as they literally don't have an alternative and have to suffer the higher costs.

[–] 0tan0d@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I just looked. The newest Nissan Leaf is $29,990 with a 300 mile range. That's not too bad compared to the more popular Toyota rav4 @ $ 31,900. Its way better than I thought. I hear you on the plug issue but if you can make it work EVs are the way to go.

[–] ashughes@feddit.uk 2 points 16 hours ago

I agree but would add that collapse isn't an absolute end in itself and to frame it that way is boss-level doomerism. Collapse is an unavoidable part of a natural cycle that signals the beginning of a new cycle. It is an opportunity to plant the seeds of something better and watch it grow. That's not to say collapse will be easy, comfortable or harmless but we open ourselves to far greater harm by fearing collapse.

[–] Tiresia@slrpnk.net 8 points 21 hours ago

We are witnessing the end of modern civilization, which will end just as fast as it arrived.

So it'll take 10,000 years?

Civilizations and cultures survive the loss of >30% of their population all the time. The black death, the columbian disease exchange, the mongol empire, the collapse of the western roman empire, etc.. Losing billions of people will be terrible, of course, but the billions that survive will still exist and work to survive, and they will be people worth fighting for.

Current food production is over 10 times what is necessary to feed everyone on the planet, with the vast majority of it being wasted on the meat and dairy industry that we can just stop. Food forests require more labor per calorie but are far more resilient to climate change and require far less land area, allowing the remaining agricultural land to rewild and act as a carbon sink.

The AMOC (atlantic current) is "making Europe livable" by making it warmer. Helpfully, climate change will do the same. In pessimistic scenarios, Europe returns to the current average temperature after a decade or two. Again, yes, in this scenario >90% of current human habitation would probably have to be abandoned and human population may dip below one billion, but those hundreds of millions of people still deserve the best chance we can give them.

If our best efforts mean we can only keep a billion people alive, it would be worth it.

If our best efforts mean we can only keep a million people alive, it would be worth it.

If our best efforts mean we can only keep ten thousand people alive, it would be worth it.

Every kiloton of CO2 we stop the emission of is a life saved, and the vast majority are emitted in the US, Europe, and China. If you live in any of these regions, there is so much you can do.

[–] Damionsipher@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Maybe we can hope for a mini-nuclear winter!?

Honestly the replies of "if we can save a single life, our struggle will be worth it" are nothing if not funny in the face of the horrors to come, especially as their coming so we can collectively shove just one more burger in our faces.

Every passing day I get one step closer to just saying "fuck it" and becoming a hedonist while watching 90% of the world seemingly not give a single fuck about the future.

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[–] ImmersiveMatthew@sh.itjust.works 6 points 23 hours ago

100% agree, but the worst side of the human condition is in control and they want to burn baby burn it all down.

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We'll combat global warming with nuclear winter! 🙃

[–] SGGeorwell@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Throw another hotdog on the uranium! It’s almost time for The President’s Daily Truthcast.

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