this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
47 points (91.2% liked)

Showerthoughts

35894 readers
1776 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

People can grow vegetables and simply eat. But bread is way too complicated.

There is a bakers' dozen of big steps to go from wheat into bread. And multiple special structures needed too.

Same with beer. Wine makes total sense but how do you even invent ale? How are these common foods everyone knows and uses?

I was thinking "imagine if mediveal people knew how to boil seawater and sell salt" and now I spent 20 extra minutes in the shower.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

People needed beer because the water was not always safe to drink. The alcohol in beer kills parasites and bacteria that might make you sick. Even kids drank light beer in medieval times for this reason.

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 7 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I believe that the the claim that medieval people needed to drink beer because water wasn't safe to drink is a bit of a myth. They built aquaducts, dug wells, etc.

As far as I understand it, it was more to do with preference (beer is great!) and calories. Beer was a good way to turn grains into easily quaffed liquid meals.

[–] shoo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

To be fair, wells and aquaducts are fairly clean ways to get water (read: animals haven't shit or died in it yet). Rivers and other surface water were as bad as today, if not worse because it was a de facto village sewage system. Water quality issues were also mitigated by a diet very heavy in stews and soups, so less extra hydration was needed.