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.
It's pretty normal to count the thumb as a finger. I find it strange that you would not.
If you were asked "how many fingers do you have", would you answer 8, or 10? Surely, everyone knows the answer is 10 (assuming no physical abnormalities)? On a fingering chart, music will instruct you to play a note with your thumb with the number "1" and your pinky with the number "5".
The whole concept of even having a middle finger is a bit arbitrary. When you put your hands on a table, all 10 fingers spread out, the gap between the hands is the exact middle. If you include all 10 fingers, there is no middle finger, but there is a middle gap.
Andy why do we even count the fleshy fingers, when we could be counting the gaps between them? Itβs the number of gaps that really matters when youβre holding on to a bunch of things like papers, magazines, forks, sticks, stones, strings, cables or whatever.
Sure, but we don't say you have one middle finger, we talk about the two middle fingers. As in, one per hand. It's not the middle of all your fingers, it's the middle of the fingers on that hand.
We don't count the gabs because that's...not how counting things works. When delivering a bag of apples, you don't count how many gaps between apples there are, you count the number of apples. You have to know that your second paragraph here is a stretch that would make a Republican lawmaker seem sensible, don't you?
make a Republican lawmaker seem sensible
Whoa now, hold your horses...
Not a comparison I use lightly, I assure you.
Maybe that one politician a while back who wanted to redefine pi to equal 4 would be on this level.
Why leave Pi to mathematicians rather than democratically-ish elected leaders? Pi is far to important to be left outside of democracys sphere of influence
Andy why do we even count the fleshy fingers, when we could be counting the gaps between them?
Each finger is conveniently split into 3 parts. Using 8 fingers we can count to 24 without resorting to any fancy math.
Thatβs the point most westerners seem to miss. There are so many ways to use fingers to count, while the one common in Europe the simplest one possible. Itβs like demo version, while some other countries get the full pro ultra max edition.
There are so many ways to use fingers to count, while the one common in Europe the simplest one possible
But this isn't about counting on fingers. It's about counting fingers. As in, the fingers themselves are what's being counted when you talk about your "middle finger".
Fair enough. This was an unnecessary side tangent.
Just go base 2 and you can count to 31 without using knuckles
Actually can count to 144 or a gross if you use base 12. One hand for the ones place and the other hand for the dozens.
You take one hand and count with the thumb as 1 and the pinky as 5 and the middle number is 3. If you switch and start with the pinky as 1 and the thumb as 5 the middle finger is still the middle number. Talking about the gaps can be useful but anatomically we name things for whatβs there and whatβs not there and we talk about fingers much more than we talk about the gaps
All of them are fingers. Thumbs are fingers, but a finger is not necessarily a thumb. I dont know where people get the idea that a thumb is not a finger. So many common sayings reinforce that it is. "Counting on your fingers (including your thumbs)", healthy babies have "Ten fingers, ten toes", "What did the five fingers say to the face... slap", "high five", "five finger discount", etc. Also, honorable mention to Princess Bride's Inigo Montoya searching for "the 6 fingered man" which includes his thumb. "Middle finger" is not the only thing that makes no sense if you don't accept that the thumb is a finger.
In almost every other language there isn't even a separate word for "thumb", it's just one of the fingers.
I don't think that's right? I know polish has a separate word, and sampling in Google translate seems to show separate words in German, french and Spanish. Maybe I got lucky and hit the exceptions, but it seems to commonly be a separate word.
Do other fingers get their own names in those languages, though? Or is thumb special, like in English?
I only know Japanese, but it is θ¦ͺζ (oya yubi) which means parent-finger.
This is like the square/rectangle thing: "Not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers".
I used to genuinely argue that it wasn't a finger bc it had only two segments, not three. I've since realized that there is a third and I'm fucking stupid.
Your original instinct was actually correct. Fingers have the metacarpal, proximal phalange, middle phalange, and distal phalange. The thumb doesn't have a middle phalange. The proximal and distal phalange connect directly to each other.
Which I find hard to accept.
How?
Probably because of its unique structure. It is slightly different than the rest of your fingers. I wouldn't consider it different enough to exclude it from being a finger though.
Its more of a finger than a finger is a thumb
The thumb is thicker than other digits so naturally it'll be harder to accept. A lubricant may help but the key is to relax and go slow.
What's wrong with you?
Why do you accept your pinky as a finger?
Yeah, that's classified as dwarf finger now.
"middle finger" is "the finger in the middle of the digits" not "the finger on the middle of the fingers"
you count your pinky as a finger ? it is not a finger; it is a pinky.
with the thumb being a thumb and as we have previously discussed about pinky leaves three fingers and certainly a middle one
You have three fingers named fingers.
Index finger, ring finger and middle finger. The middle finger is in the middle of the three. Thumb and pinky are both outliers.
I have always known it as the "Pinky Finger" myself.