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:
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.
In some places the nice beaches have been privatised by local hotels or clubs so you gotta pay them to sit on the beach or go sit somewhere less nice. Coming from Western Australia where we have the nicest beaches in the world (all free), I take this concept of "owning beach space" as a personal affront.
They don't even have to be privatized. Some municipalities in the US require a "beach tag". I lived on a barrier island growing up, and we had to buy ours every year, or go to the beach two towns over where it was free (...except where it was privatized).
looking at you greece ಠ_ಠ
Few places nowadays is it legal to lay around & do whatever you want outdoors, usually getting cited for loitering or something.
What kind of shitty place are you living in?
I always find it funny to figure out that stuffblike loitering isn't something the Simpson invented. It's something americans are not allowed to. But freedom is very important to them
Loitering laws are mostly just racism.
It's rich people not wanting "riff raff" hanging around. No one cares if you're hanging around slums and ghettos.
That's where you're wrong. Police love loitering laws there too. Easy excuse to harass people and search them
The US is a shithole
I once went to a park sat on a bench and right in front of me was a no loitering sign. It's a park, what else am I going to do?
Most of those "no loitering" signs only exist to give the police a legal crowbar against homeless people. Realistically if you're just sitting and minding your business nobody will actually come along and eject you.
I once went to a park sat on a bench and right in front of me was a no loitering sign. It’s a park, what else am I going to do?
That is hilarious (well, sad actually, but you get what I mean). Also kind of reminds of that one politician once saying that "breast are not suitable for small children" in the public breastfeeding debate ...
I disagree with the initial claim.
I can go sit just about anywhere without concern of being cited for loitering.
Not sure where you get this idea from.
Are you white?
TBF they might just not live in America. Never really seen "loitering" being a thing outside of that mistake of a country, or at least I haven't seen it enforced and I've been everywhere in Western Europe (where one would assume these things are more enforced since they're culturally closer, idk).
Yes its an american thing. I can sit where I want in my country, unless its blocking some entrance or something.
Its because in America, you are not a human being. Someone should have informed you.
Another thing ive seen in American movies - people are not allowed to park and sleep in their cars it seems. There is always some officer walking up and knocking on their window and telling them they cant be there. Seems to be another sign of America.
No, I'm rural in liberal territory.
I cannot think of a single place within 20 miles in any direction that is not indoors nor private property that any human being cannot be more or less indefinitely.
You can't camp within like 250 ft vertical of the treeline. That's off limits for protecting the environment reasons.
If you're pulled over in a car I the side of the road, a state trooper may come to see if you're ok. Our states troopers got a much better rep than our cops, and our cops don't do too bad comparatively.
Acab, but know your enemy. It ain't the outdoors.
Not everyone can.
Those elements oft scorned by society who might otherwise be ticketed or jailed for sleeping at a park are treated closer to equal when sleeping on the sand.
TIL that "loitering" does not mean leaving garbage in public spaces. Ive heard the term but never expected it to mean standing around idle, this is so stupid.
EDIT: nvm i was thinking about “littering”. english is hard.
You are thinking of littering. Loitering is standing around idle on another person’s property. It’s usually used now adays to move vagrants along but the law has jim crow origins.
Oh wow, you just blew my mind. I am in fact thinking about littering! I was a bit suspicious about me not realizing the true meaning sooner, but did not look into it further. This makes a lot more sense now, thank you for clearing this up. :)
It’s a common mistake since the words are very close, it does not help that many people who loiter also usually litter.
It's a common mistake for non native English speakers. I thought the same for years but now know the difference.
It's baffling to me that you can get fined by just standing somewhere doing nothing...
As the guards around Skyrim will sternly remind you: "No lollygaggin".
In the UK all farmland is fenced off, with occasional walking paths available. I used to think the Ridgeway was great because there was about 50 miles of trails one could walk on or ride a bike, and in summer motorbikes and 4x4s were allowed too.
It blew my mind when I moved to Spain and I worked out I could get pretty much anywhere off road whenever I felt like it.
For novelty I once rode my little motorbike from my house to the supermarket, with only about 50m on paved roads. It was very liberating. But unfortunately some of the yoghurt I bought got squashed by the jostling on the way home, and my bag smelled of bad milk for a couple months even after I'd washed it :-/
In Scotland under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 you can walk, camp, and explore most land in Scotland—even if it’s private—as long as you’re respectful, don’t cause damage, and give people (especially homes and farms) their space.
Yeah, bit then the midges get you
Seriously though, Scotland is mostly ahead of the rest of the UK in many ways. I had some of my best times in Scotland :-)
Loitering is illegal in the US because public spaces are free. Why are you just sitting in a public space for free when you could be sitting in a cafe or restaurant and contributing to the economy? Oh you don't have that money? Well then you're worthless to society and just shouldn't exist, obviously.
In Finland we have "Everyman's Right" which is the right to access nature on private land without needing the owner's permission.
You can walk, hike, cycle, swim, pick berries/mushrooms, and camp temporarily, as long as you stay away from homes, gardens, and cultivated fields. Making a fire is however not allowed without permission.
Is this another stupid American thing? I've never heard anyone getting in trouble for just laying around on public property
There's plenty of places by me where you can do this, and I live in the most dense state in America.
In Canada, a very old arrangement dating from the creation of the country, says that navigable water is a federal matter. Whether it's on the side of the ocean, a big lake, or a river, the water and anything below high tide is Crown "land", and public. There are obviously exceptions and access by land can be controlled but not by water. At least not the beach itself.
It leads to weird situations, like a provincial park that can't stop boaters from using remote parts of "their" beach. Or another where boats band together between some islands, and party and jetboat among kayaks and SUP.
But this also prevents owners of big houses around lakes to claim a part of that lake, or the foreshore.
We don't have the right to roam in general here, with some exceptions for Crown lands, and it happens that bodies of water and rivers is Crown land.
Anyway, that's how I understand this.
If I am not laying on private property or in the entrance of a shop or something I can lay around whereever I want. I don't really understand what OP is talking about.
Blm land? National forest? Can lay around for 14 days straight.
The land billionaires are salivating to carve up, log and develop? That land?
EDIT: I realized that this comment seems a little to pessimistic and doomer. I didn't mean it to sound like we should just roll over and accept that these beautiful areas are taken from us and others. We absolutely need to fight back, and you'd be surprised, that even most conservatives (save for the ultra-MAGA people) actually care about this land too and are deeply against it being privatized.
Now... Does that also say something about them caring less about POC than land, yes. But this is one of those issues you really don't have to push very hard to get people to care about. Even if they're not annual park visitors, a very large chunk of citizens in the US seem to care about this.
We just can't get a break from you guys, can we? Doesn't matter what the discussion is about, it always gets turned into US political grievances. This is what's killing this platform and making every sane person leave.
i mean, this post is explicitly political tho?
Black Lives Matter land?
For the fellow east-of-the-mississippi and not-US folks. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) operates public lands with fairly loose rules about use, including camping up to 14 days.
Except in Italy, nearly the totality of the coast is privately handled and you must pay to access it...
Shoutout to Daniel Burnham and Montgomery Ward for keeping Chicago's lakefront free and open for the people.
What ?
