this post was submitted on 01 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:

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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[–] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

killing all of wikipedia is gunna be almost impossible, theres probably millions of backups around the world. here's a few links to download it, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To add to that, and to make it easier for some, you can use Kiwix!

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[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not only that, but MediaWiki is FOSS, and all existing content on all Wikimedia Foundation (except for a relative few kept on fair use grounds) is at most as restrictive as CC BY-SA 4.0. So you'd have whatever exists on Wikipedia currently (plus Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, etc., keeping in mind too that there are many Wikipedias besides English) plus the software that interacts with that data, other countries which haven't fully descended into fascism, the members of the Wikimedia Foundation, a bunch of pissed-off editors, and a pissed-off public... I think a new, substantially similar non-profit would crop up in the UK etc., and very few things would have to change about the content that's on the platform (where the UK has more restrictive speech laws).

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[–] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago
[–] seeigel@feddit.org 1 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Does it matter? History only matters if actions in the now are justified by interpretations of the past.

Thanks to the internet, we have instant access to the experience of billions of people. All human experience is already there and doesn't have to be approximated by history.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a very uneducated take, and shows that you don't understand how access to information can be changed, and modeled to elicit certain outcomes.

Unbiased, well cited repositories of information are essential.

[–] seeigel@feddit.org 0 points 1 year ago (18 children)

I agree, for the way our societies are structured.

My point is that we could organize us in a way that history could provide additional depth but that the essential decisions could be made as well without the knowlege of history.

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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Start downloading comrades

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

I mean they can try to censor it but I really don't see why the wikimedia foundation wouldn't just move shop to a different country, or a different group just starts running a mirror of it. Like it might be down for a while, at which time we would have to use mirrors, but I can't see any future where its just gone forever.

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They don’t need or want to kill Wikipedia. They just need to heavily edit it. Kind of a dream come true for those pushing a narrative.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In my mind that would be killing it.

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s already happened, and is still happening. So is it dead? Or maybe it’s been a half-aware zombie all along.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

One example:

https://pierrekorymedicalmusings.com/p/the-fdas-relentless-persecution-of-0e4

From what I can gather this urine salt treatment has actually cured many terminally ill cancer patients. Medical journals refuse to acknowledge it because he didn’t give a placebo to patients (which would be unethical because they would die). Because the treatment is based on multiple compounds in the salt, it cannot be isolated, patented, and profited from. So it must be discredited and buried. Plus if it really works as well as it seems to, it would warrant further research funding into drinking urine, and possibly home remedies. Nip it in the bud.

[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any examples of Wikipedia trying to rewrite history?

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The pyramids in Egypt were dated by radiocarbon dating, but those dates only indicated that the pyramid structure was inhabited or used at that time - it says nothing of the construction date. Yet the pyramids have dates with no cited references on Wikipedia. What is so wrong with saying that we don’t know with any certainty how, when, or why the structures were built?

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, they could have been built by aliens who just wanted to share their urine salt treatment for cancer with us.

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago

god forbid someone has hobbies 🙄 /s

[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I get what kind of guy you are now.

Everyone itt note: this guy is against Wikipedia and thinks these things. This is EXACTLY WHY we need Wikipedia. He would literally be smarter if he had never used social media and had only used Wikipedia random article generator.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC)

Tell me, what does the "c." before those dates mean? It's pretty explicitly an estimate. Have you ever bothered to click their source links for this info to understand why they got these dates?

https://aeraweb.org/

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[–] aubertlone@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You have actually got to be kidding me.

This is pseudoscience...... It does seem like they threw the book at him.

But this stuff isn't medicine man. I wouldn't really call it effective at all. For Pete's sake!!!

Even the guy who wrote the article Pierre Koy. Talking holistic approaches to treat long COVID. Bro it's so easy to tell how people are based on the shit they spew.

Just remember people were taking ivermectin IVERMECTIN for COVID.

Do you even hear what you're saying? There's no way we can prove what's in the salt but it definitely works.

Do you actually believe any of this stuff?? Dude just go ahead and drink the pee. Tell me how you feel I hope you don't have cancer. I truly mean that

[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

I don’t believe anything because I haven’t had terminal cancer or the treatment. I’m guessing you haven’t either. It’s not about choosing a side. It’s an illustration of corporate interests controlling the narrative from scientific journals, to media, social media, and Wikipedia. It would be naive to believe they can’t or don’t edit Wikipedia.

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[–] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you think Wikipedia is the only place that stores historical knowledge, please, start thinking about how much time you're spending online.

[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It is a modern library of Alexandria, free to all globally and community built. It's genuinely an amazing surviving piece of the old internet. No one is saying it's the only place, but it is vitally important and a huge deal if it goes away. Shame on you for downplaying that.

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[–] Migmog@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tech bros like musk who capture companies to gut them.

[–] Migmog@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But Wikipedia isn't a company. It's a non-profit foundation.

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[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

First of all, they aren't going to kill Wikipedia.

Second, Wikipedia isn't even close to being the only place to get your history. There's this neat little place called a fucking library. You can go there for free.

[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

-Elon has repeatedly stated he wants to defund and shut down all nonprofits that upset him. This includes the ACLU and Wikipedia

-DOGE has already started cuts to public libraries and many are being shut down or greatly reduced hoirs/access/materials/etc

It would be awesome if people like you had some intellectual humility instead of coping with hubris. It's a fucking issue that our admin and many fellow Americans are ushering in an anti-intellectual dark ages.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago (12 children)

chill the fuck out, doomer. Wikipedia has enough cash on hand to survive for the next several decades, even if Trump takes away their non-profit status. he can throw a fit about them all he wants, the absolute worst case scenario here is they just move offices to somewhere in Europe.

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean every historical source is full of one sided propaganda.

Have you ever heard the phrase "history is written by winners"?

What have keep history alive is not Wikipedia. Is the fact that multiple people from multiple POV write things down and we can find and read multiple sources.

Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is great, but it's not what keeps history more or less accurate. Take into account that Wikipedia is a sum up of other sources. In order to write to Wikipedia you must quote a primary source.

And AI really doesn't have much to do with anything here. Bad sources have existed forever, since Herodotus.

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