this post was submitted on 30 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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[–] vatlark@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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

It was an experiment with too many mice, too well cared for. The mice became withdrawn and... "Though physically able to reproduce, the mice had lost the social skills required to mate."

That guy's experiments were the inspiration for the Rats of NIMH books, which led to The Secret of NIMH movie!

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Now I want to see human population density compared to birthrate 25 years later for regions with a current sub-replacement birthrate.

"Losing the social skills required to mate" sounds like many people I know.

[–] Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If you had to guess, what form would this "loss of social skills and non-mating" take in a human population?

[–] kemsat@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It’s an experiment that was conducted to see what would happen when mice were given what people supposed would be a mice utopia. Things did not go well.

Here’s some videos, pick your poison lol

https://youtu.be/7ReBJfxHjFU

https://youtu.be/NgGLFozNM2o

https://youtu.be/5m7X-1V9nOs

https://youtu.be/7CXj0AGuh4c

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's not Utopia, that's rats in a bag: overcrowding.

Animals need more than food, water, a clean environment, nesting material, stable temperature and freedom from predators.

All life forms need space to live.

[–] kemsat@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

“…when mice were given what people supposed would be a mice utopia”

But it also works as a comparison to our real world, where the ability to expand is restricted.

[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 1 points 1 week ago

“…when mice were given what people supposed would be a mice utopia”

and I flatly disagree with that statement. That’s not Utopia, that’s rats in a bag: overcrowding.

But it also works as a comparison to our real world, where the ability to expand is restricted.

It's a poor model for our world because it locks the rats in a tiny ecosystem with massive external resources "providing for their every need." If you backed out and looked at the space required to provide what Universe 25 was using, it's hundreds to thousands of times the land area of Universe 25 itself.

You might try to make the argument that humans are "locked in the cities" but that's barely true for half the population, and the "urban city" I live in still only has 2.1 people per acre of land including roads etc. The home we live in only packs in 3.1 people per acre of privately owned land - that's 14,000 square feet per person, in an urban metropolitan area that is counted in those statistics that say "over half the world's population lives in cities."

I wholeheartedly agree, human population growth is the biggest problem of this peri-century. I believe that globally we should be targeting a reduction to 2 billion - not overnight, but certainly we shouldn't be playing the "don't worry, be happy, everything's gonna be alright, tax incentives for babymakers!" while we continue to add 80 million people per year globally.

Regardless of population numbers, this: https://eowilsonfoundation.org/what-is-the-half-earth-project/ is a good goal, and again, it's all about space to live.