this post was submitted on 14 May 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:

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People love to act like someone staying up until 3am and sleeping until noon is lazy but really, when you think about it, their sleep schedule is the exact same as someone a few timezones over.

Maybe east coast snoozers are actually just the pacific early risers that never got to be in the right part of the world.

Maybe all someone needs to fix their sleep schedule is a move west? The formulas arent complete but I'm refining my thesis.

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 18 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

:O how do they do it so perfectly

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Randall Munroe is a witch

[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 23 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I've always hated this train of thought (when people call you lazy for staying up late/sleeping in).

I have been working in IT my entire life, from 24/7 data center operations to managing world-wide systems. There were times where I had no sleep, because as soon as the Americans left the office on the west coast, China and Taiwan were waking up and starting their day.

Just sleep when your body tells you to sleep, and wake up when your body wakes you up. Force fucking a time schedule is awful and 9-5 does not work for every physiology.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I think you're agreeing with me, so let me rephrase: the sleep schedules we don't align with could be due to a geographical misalignment in our circadian rhythm.

If you live on central time and never get tired until 4am maybe your body is telling you that your natural state would be somewhere in Hawaii. The friction comes from people generally being scattered across the world in places that don't agree with what their body feels should be the right time to go to bed.

Does that make more sense? Go to sleep when your body tells you to, and then figure out where in the world that lines up with a "normal sleep schedule" you know what I mean?

[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

No need to rephrase, I understood perfectly. I am agreeing with you 100%, just adding my own reasons for why I hate it when people call you lazy for staying up late, and an example of how often time staying up late and sleeping in is actually the exact opposite of laziness.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Hell yeah, we need someone to run the 7/11 overnight! /s

To stay on brand: hire someone from Europe, and then nobody has to "stay up all night" lol

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Amusing thought, but doesn't really make sense biologically. Your body doesn't know your geographical location. It just reads the environmental time using a bunch of different inputs and guesses at what the actual time is. Your body is actually fairly good at guessing the time, but people are just naturally predisposed to sleep later or earlier.

That tendency is influenced by genetics and also changes over time with age, but I also heavily suspect that people are actually just messing up their circadian clocks without knowing it. Try dimming your lights after sunset, you'd be surprised by how early you get tired.

[–] MicrowavedTea@infosec.pub 1 points 39 minutes ago

Wish it worked like that with the lights. I don't like artificial light so only have some back lights on or none at all most of the time. And will sleep until 1pm with two big windows without blinds in my room.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Humans didn't evolve for everyone to have the sleep schedule, because that would have been an incredibly dangerous arrangement for the vast majority of our existence.

We stay up late when young, "normal" in middle aged, and asleep at 4pm but awake when the teens are just going to bed when elderly

Obviously there's variation, but almost no one keeps the same schedule their whole lives.

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 10 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

I think that a lot about how many couples I know have mild friction because one of them is an early riser and the other more of a night owl. It can be a bit annoying, but for most of human existence splitting the time you're awake and vigilant must have been quite an advantage.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

People think 2,000 years is a long time, but evolutionary that was like, last Tuesday.

We're not built for modern society.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

We’re not built for modern society.

We say this as if modern society were imposed on us by aliens—but we built it ourselves with the freedom to adapt it to our existing biological needs.

We just really fucked it up.

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

There's been times me and husband pass in the night because we simply slept different schedules. It's annoying but eventually they realigned!

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm loving this comment section lol this was just a silly idea and here's a really interesting conversation happening under it

[–] kaeurennetwo@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

A machiavellian construct :/