this post was submitted on 31 Jul 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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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There is only the human race. Any differences in appearance is less that a % of genetic difference.
The modern concept of race was invented in 1684 by this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Bernier?wprov=sfla1
It's been utter bullshit from the start
Of course he was fr*nch
I'm ngl he looks exactly like what I expected.
omg he's even got a fedora... gotta be a hoax...
"Our"
I've ever only seen Americans and random racists use the term that way. Most of us agree that we're one race.
Are you kidding? I've heard Scots and English vilely denegrate Welsh, Germans denegrate Saxons, English denigrate black people...on and on and on.
Black people denigrating blacker people, Indians denigrating darker Indians, and so on. Yeah, we're tribal, evolved that way.
These people all bent over the word "race". Meh. Give it a rest. The word used to be in common parlance, now I never here it IRL, despite being told us Southerners are the most racist people on Earth.
I'm in the deep south and I hear it a lot, from every race.
People use the word "race" in conversation? Hard to get my head around! Not doubting you, but we don't talk like that. OTOH, we're seriously race (heh) mixed in NW Florida. My block is a nearly perfect cross-section of black, white, Asian demographics for the area. LOL, my wife being the 1% Asian rep. :)
No Hispanic folk, but they were really rare before 2004. No joke, there were hardly any Mexican restaurants before they flooded in to save us from the destruction.
Maybe you're so used to it, you don't notice. Or maybe it's said in other ways, eg, "Certain races do this thing or think that way." Or maybe it's more subtle, "That's just their culture." "That's just how their people are."
It's also maddening when discussing medical issues. "Why does my race have to be brought into it?” "Because certain ethnicities have problems with this particular medical condition moreso than others." "Because I'm more susceptible to x and I can't do y with you."
No! Don't even hear the subtle shit anymore. Which is both weird and heartening. I get the feel that people who wish to speak like that don't say it to me. I'm pretty redneck in certain contexts, maybe the long hair makes then shy? :)
OTOH hand, I rarely get the impression that I'm being "felt out". Only time that happens is when someone wishes to express a liberal view. :)
And yeah, I get the medicine thing. And yeah, we need to talk genetic history! My first wife was a pale redhead, notorious folks for pain-killer resistance. OTOH, we got medical professionals who think black people don't feel pain as whites do, stuff like that. What a mess.
I'm glad you don't hear the dog whistling. It gives me hope, although Ron Got I DeathSentence.
I don't get "felt out" either. It's just said, bluntly or subtly, sometimes because people think I'll automatically agree, others because they're poking.
Edit because fur baby bumped my hand: it's a mess, agreed.
south of what?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_South
Might be a German thing, but race and racist don't have the same base for nothing. You don't talk like that here and I've only heard it in the us. Maybe Scots bite their tongue taking to a German about those things.
Plural of anecdote... Yes I know, forgive me for not documenting all the times I've heard it. Maybe people posture, depending on the surrounding people. Maybe they feel more free to be more honest as tourists. Perhaps both.
Hahahahahaha, that's some funny shit right there.
Fun fact, there is more genetic variation within Africa than there is in the rest of the world combined. This is because only a small lineage of humans ended up migrating out of Africa.
There's no logical difference, but there's all the emotional difference in the world. We evolved to be suspicious of that tribe over on the other mountain. And well we should have been! They might just come over and slaughter us for our women and land.
Besides, we didn't evolve to operate in groups larger than about 150. Past that, other people become objects in our minds. We can't be truly close to more than that many people. What is the Monkeysphere? ( <- solid article on all this)
It's why I understand the immigrant hate. Earth's population has more than doubled in my lifetime. "Who ARE all these people and why are they from another tribe?! It was already crowded!"
Only way we get over the hate ironically consists of two seemingly opposed plans:
We'll get there. There have been massive strides in my lifetime alone.
If we don't extinct ourselves and a bunch of other species, first. Maybe. The current race toward devolution gives me pause to doubt, however.
We're not going extinct. Humans are the toughest beasts on the planet, the AR-15 of animals. Not the best at anything, not by a long shot, but we're perfect multi-purpose lifeforms. Hell, we survive in every ecosystem on Earth. Insects can't even claim that!
But yeah, I've commented enough in the past on what we're taking out with us. Lived through seeing 73% of animals go POOF! since 1970, seen my local ecosphere crashing out over the last 5. I want to cry and scream! And no one is aware. When I talk about it IRL, people are captivated, "You're right. Hadn't noticed that. Wow." You can see their gears turning, truly a new thought.
I do believe climate science. And I do think a nuclear world war would decimate humans. I do hold hope, and recognize very real potentialities.
And right back to football, video games, occasionally maybe standing somewhere publicly with a clever sign.
LOL, I'm a child of the Cold War. You can't tell me about global thermonuclear war fears! :) Weirdly, us teens just accepted it was a thing that could happen any second. Whatever.
And don't be so cynical! Educating people like that, showing them how things have changed for the worse in their experience has impact. But you gotta follow through with solutions they can work with! "And that's why I don't use pesticides or herbicides. Notice the frogs are back on our block? Seen all the dragonflies? Check out my ponds. They double as mosquito control!"
I think we're missing the trees in this forest of doom. We're powerless to fight the megacorps, and bitching about them only makes people feel more powerless. But we can teach people to chip away, give them actionable goals. Put the idea in their heads that, "This isn't normal or right and you've experienced this!", without being preachy. It's hard.
I've seen massive social and environmental progress in my life. It all started with grass-roots talking points. Don't say "fag", don't toss your cigarette fag (heh), pick up trash that's not yours, and on and on.
Don't lecture or lay blame, no guilt trips, talk about the problem in a personally, emotionally understandable way they'll internalize, give them a solution they can act on right now, today.
Maybe I'm still an idealist. So it goes.
There's no logical difference?
My particular health risks would beg to differ.
There's differences, but basing your opionion of someone on their race (bigotry and racism) is "philistine, backward thinking".
Got me there! I was referring to the previous post saying we're so genetically tight as to be scientifically indistinguishable as "races". But yeah, a couple of base pairs coding for a misfolded protein is certainly a difference!