this post was submitted on 11 May 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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[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 46 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Here, just let me put this fish in your ear.

[–] HeHoXa@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that. poof

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Impossible, as the structure of language is not the same so you will always have lag or you need context to get the right meaning of a word. If someone is going to a ball, are they going to a dance, or getting a toy off the ground?

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Anyone who knows at least two languages can tell you that you need to listen to the whole sentence before you can start translating. Usually there’s something in the end that changes everything. In many cases, the word order is more or less reversed, so you have to start translating from the end.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 29 points 2 months ago (6 children)
[–] Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 months ago

Indeed Japanese the chat entered.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

chat the entered japanese

I felt it was imminent. My bro married a beautiful girl from japan, and she's so patient; but, even being marginally fluent in Thai and Mandarin as well as his French and English experience - thus, super plastic for languages - Japanese is still so hard. It seems to be THE poster-child for inscrutably challenging second-languages!

(Hmm. He needs to watch more anime maybe?)

[–] schnapsman@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago

Turkish the chat to also enter it did

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Japanese as context the chat as destination entered*

If you're translating 日本語はチャットに入りました。

EDIT Mine would even be “Japanese as context the chat as destination entered (conjugated to polite)”…

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Seems like a lot of asian languages follow this structure, a bunch of Indian languages are like this as well

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

About 45% of all world's languages are like this, it's the most common order! English (and some other European languages) are the weird ones out!

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

TIL, I always thought the English pattern was the more common one

[–] batshit@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

It's still not impossible, since professional humans can do it too. It'll never be 100% accurate though and that's just something we have to accept.

[–] GuyFawkes@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Maybe just get AI to the point it knows that I’m taking my toy to the dance, and remembers that for the next piece of the convo?

[–] ennof@feddit.org 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Doesn't this already exist?

[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yep I have some. We've been waiting for them to add Bulgarian so my husband can use them to learn.

[–] nbsp@programming.dev 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ai investment sould go to public education so we can all learn whatever language we like

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Right?

It drives me nuts that they want to spend trillions of dollars on technology to write for people instead of teaching people how to write.

[–] Buffalobuffalo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 months ago

As they say, "suck a man's penis, satisfy him for a day. Teach a man to suck a penis, and he'll insist instead you just do the sucking again this time."

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 15 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I still think we should agree on a universal sign language and then have every country teach it in school for all years of public school.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

we should agree on a universal sign language

Have I got an xkcd for you!

[–] Quadrexium@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

there are 6 competing standards!

[–] Quexotic@infosec.pub 6 points 2 months ago
[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That would be not very accessible for people with sight or hand mobility issues. We'd need a spoken form of it, too.

[–] BussyCat@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We will never be able to have a perfect international language but considering all of the difficulties involved in creating an international that people around the world could speak, sign language that “only” alienates a small percentage of the population would be a huge improvement over the current system

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 1 points 2 months ago

It would, but we also can do better

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We'd need a spoken form of it, too.

We have, like, 3 of those: logban, Esperanto, and ..lochebem?

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago

yeah I just kinda figure we would never agree on a spoken one but I think sign language is doable. Then also would be a huge boon for those who have to use it.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I agree but the esperantists will be annoyed by us choosing a different language

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 2 points 1 month ago

There's dozens of them!

[–] Fedegenerate@fedinsfw.app 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ne, mi ankaŭ ne volis lerni esperanton.

I joke, it was fun, esperantists are good people. I did it to 'cheat' at being bi-lingual, I don't think that was the best motivation. Toki pana would've been easier.

[–] colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

Why do you think universal sign language would be better than universal spoken language?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/123185

Apple already has this, and I think google or Samsung also have something similar.

[–] saimen@feddit.org 4 points 2 months ago

Obligatoric Babelfish reference:

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

[–] vsg@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The issue would be the languages having different syntaxes (syntaces?).

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I dont know how well LLMs work translating chinese to english, but for the uses i give it: spanish, french, german and english, i dont see any issues. I did have some issues translating russian to english though... the stupid bot decided that i invented a modal verb

[–] FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 2 points 2 months ago

Let’s get ai into the right hands first and make it sustainable for this planet.