this post was submitted on 09 Feb 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: 1

Rules

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  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
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  4. Posts must be original/unique
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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.

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I have no idea how one could find this out.

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 52 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yes: Five has four letters. Nine has four letters.

There are no more.

If you meant to ask if there are any more whole numbers with the same number of letters in the name as the number, then the answer is no. It is fairly simple to check - you only have to look at the numbers 0-30 before it becomes clear no other number will fit this pattern.

If you went into fractions like 20.12325 then there will be many numbers where all the letters added would get close but the fraction itself would mean you couldn't quite reach the exact number as you can't have fractions of letters.

If you included negative numbers then "minus eleven" has 11 letters. Minus thirteen has 13 letters. It seems to again break down once you go beyond 13, and its dodgy to include negative numbers as you can't have negative letters.

So, no.

[–] WR5@lemmy.world 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

To your first point: zero also has four letters.

[–] perfectly_boiled_pizza@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Inb4 anyone start saying mean things to eachother. There are a lot of people who have very strong opinions on this.

Btw the people who think it ISN'T can eat shit.

[–] eldain 7 points 2 weeks ago

Sigh. Time to introduce real letters that can be negative and fractional.

[–] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 43 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don't know in English, but in Spanish the word for five, Cinco, has five letters.

[–] SatyrSack@feddit.org 34 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

I was able to come up with a list of similar scenarios for various languages using a simple formula in LibreOffice Calc: =LEN(A2)=ROW(A2)-1 (row 1 being a header row)

Language Word Digit
Danish To 2
Danish Tre 3
Danish Fire 4
Dutch Vier 4
English Four 4
Finnish Viisi 5
French N/A N/A
German Vier 4
Indonesian N/A N/A
Italian Tre 3
Norwegian To 2
Norwegian Tre 3
Norwegian Fire 4
Polish N/A N/A
Portuguese Cinco 5
Spanish Cinco 5
Swedish Tre 3
Swedish Fyra 4
Turkish Dört 4
[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 weeks ago

In Hungarian, it's "négy", but it's actually only three letters, n, é and gy.

[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

This is a clever solution

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

二 (pronounced and romanized to "ni") is 2 in Japanese and has two letters kinda

Same with 三(San)

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 32 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] TheRealKuni@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago
[–] Majorllama@lemmy.world 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yeah. Fivee. Siiiix. Seeveen. Eeeeight. Niiiiiiine.

[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 29 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

-9 (minus nine) kind of works if we’re getting desperate.

[–] JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

"Negative Fifteen" and "Negative Seventeen" also work in the same way

[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

But negative fifteen has 15 letters, not -15

neetfif evitagen has -15 letters, but i dont think its a number

[–] tgrowl@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago
[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 weeks ago

Nice. I like.

[–] jrs100000@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The number one hundred million sixty six thousand five hundred seventy three has exactly 100,066,537 letters.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago

Wait a minute...

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 weeks ago

Flive has flive letters.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How about strokes? 一,二,三 😆

[–] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sorry but whenever I see this symbols only thing I can think of CFT(d-orbital splitting). Because one time I asked my friend about CFT he used this symbols.

[–] sga@lemmings.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

was not expecting cft

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 15 points 2 weeks ago

The fifth letter of "fifth" completes the word.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Remind me of the classic sequence where every number leads to 4.

10 -> 3 -> 5 -> 4

1024 -> 21 -> 9 -> 4

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago

Oh! Now I understand what that other commenter was talking about by 'matching of letters to the numbers' or something along those lines.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Dammit, I was going to do that one....

[–] Omgboom@lemmy.zip 13 points 2 weeks ago
[–] pauldrye@lemm.ee 12 points 2 weeks ago

It's the only one in English unless you allow things like "The absolute value of -20".

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 weeks ago

No, but cinco has 5, lol.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

No. As a matter of fact, this is a neat party trick I used to use.

Start with literally any number, and count the letters to match it. You will always end up at four because it's the only English word and Arabic numeral represented with equivalent letters.

[–] yournamehere@lemm.ee 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Okay, it was my neat math class trick. I was a lame nerd, you caught me... My calculus teacher thought it was cool okay??? Lol

[–] xylogx@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago

The answer to your question is zero yet at this he same time zero is not an answer to your question.

[–] harryprayiv@infosec.pub 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

Stand up maths did a video on this 8 years ago. https://youtu.be/LYKn0yUTIU4

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

I think the answer is no. It would only be possible with very small numbers. Even by the time you've reached 100, it's not going to happen again.

[–] miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago
[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

ITT: lots of people who misunderstood a clever but badly-phrased question.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ten and a hal^f^

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago
[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago
[–] db2@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

All of them except one, two, six and ten have 4 letters. Most have more than that, but they also have 4. 😁

[–] MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

~~I hate sharing YouTube links, but Matt Parker has a video on this ~~

(Can go all in on Open software with Linux, Firefox and Lemmy, but atill locked into YouTube)

I was too late

[–] lipilee 1 points 2 weeks ago
[–] PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago
[–] robocall@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago
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