this post was submitted on 07 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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Everything that makes advertisers happy is to the detriment of humanity as a whole. Everything that makes advertisers' jobs easier also makes it easier for authoritarian governments. "Innovation" is no longer about creating new things, it's about taking what already works, breaking it, shoving ads on it and charging a ransom in the form of a premium subscription.

On the other hand, there are endless ad-skipping tools, pages and sites where the main attraction is the lack of ads without a subscription. More and more people are talking about how intrusive and annoying ads are, even those who make their living from them. As the efforts of big tech to please advertisers grow, so do the efforts of ordinary people to screw them.

Very Cyberpunk.

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[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

And then for convenience, add a shopping cart so it's not a separate research step - congrats, you've invented Amazon.

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 13 points 16 hours ago

Amazon is everything but a level playing field and it is highly manipulated.

[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes but now do a search for the item in your cart and buy it somewhere else.

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

I absolutely agree with you. But where I live, Amazon is cheaper than any other sellers, online or stores. I hate it but I only have so much money to spend.

[–] frog_brawler@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If you continue to support monopolies, soon you'll have less to spend.

[–] PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Average consumers are in a lose/lose situation. Choice is a privilege that not everyone can afford.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Congrats, you missed the whole point about Amazon.

As others already replied, the business model of Amazon (and any marketplace that sells its own products within it while being part of an oligopoly) is precisely to prevent unbiased comparison. Amazon gets data on all the products being sold on its website, its warehouses occupancy ... then make Amazon Basics and replace them. They did that before also with diapers among many other examples e.g. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails-detail-amazons-plan-to-crush-a-startup-rival-with-price-cuts/ but they also do the same with software products, e.g. AWS.

So no, clearly Amazon is not about having fair comparisons and a shopping cart. Amazon is about being the ONLY shopping cart one can have fill it with Amazon products.

PS: to clarify also something very obvious but just in case it's not so, Amazon by the simple fact of controlling the order of search results control what customers can, or can not, see and thus compare and in fine buy. Even if it did not sell it's own products (which again, it does) it would still be able to manipulate what customers buy. That is, again, the opposite of an unbiased product comparison service.