this post was submitted on 13 Jul 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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[–] [email protected] 0 points 22 hours ago

I still licked lead pain in the craddle, ate too many food preservatives and artificial colorants, ate too much red meat, too much fat, got micro plastics poisoning...

And all I have to tell is bad breath, flatulence that could strip paint off the walls and a stupid sense of humour.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago (9 children)

Microplastics cause neurological damage and anti social violent behavior?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago (10 children)

We don't know about the longer term consequences yet, just like we didn't about lead.

Not saying it's a definite but I wouldn't be surprised.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago

We are just beginning to understand how much the chemical Imbalances that lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders originate in the digestive tract and how microplastics from food may disrupt the processing of these chemicals.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't think the impacts of microplastics are quite as catastrophic, they can't be or we would already know.

Which isn't to say they aren't bad just damn lead is realllly bad.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago

The concentration of them is rising exponentially, that's the part that terrifies me.

It's possible we just haven't crossed a threshold yet.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm crazy. Mark My Words. In 20 years, we'll have so many microbes capable of consuming plastic people will be bitching about their packages not being able to effectively protect their goods from spoiling. The goldfish has spoken.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've run across at least three separate articles now of researchers from across the world discovering plastic eating bacteria in the wild. Short plastic. Its days are numbered.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Once at a Phish show, I consumed a rather copious amount of 🍄’s while hanging w/ mah friends beforehand. For some reason I couldn’t get the image of Plastic Man (Comic cartoon on Saturday mornings in the early 80’s) Out of my head. Every fucking song from that show I processed through the Plastic Man perspective. I was done with that memory before my brain would allow me to forget it. It was a loooonnnggg show b/c 🍄’s.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

I once ate shrooms and went to a club (late 90s in the Netherlands, psytrance). The party experience was complete gone for me, it was just like watching a nature show, where I heard a David Attenborough narator talk about how the female of the species was using various color pigments on her face to attract the male. While the males where using dance moves to show strength and virility.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OP, you are in for a seriously rough time if you think containing micro plastics is as simple as removing lead from gasoline and paint.

[–] ech 17 points 2 days ago

Nobody said it would be.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

And the person responsible for both issues is the same dude Roy J. Plunkett

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[–] ininewcrow 12 points 2 days ago

Pffft! .... at least microplastics take decades or a lifetime of accumulation to affect your body, mind and health

Social media rots your brain and mental capacity in a matter of years or months

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

This one's gonna last a few (the final few?) generations.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago

Eliminating lead products has been a lot more feasible than the impossible task of eliminating microplastics. They are in everything. So unfortunately Gen Z and onward will suffer with us millennials.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

but at least people are born now without nuclear explosion isotopes

up until a few years ago every living being had them

so if we can stop lead from being blasted everywhere

and we can stop exploding nukes

maybe we can stop the plastic problem... but probably not for a few generations

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

and we can stop exploding nukes

We might be going backwards on this one

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (4 children)

What's replacing plastic. Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

What kind of generational hazard would you like to have growing up, kids? :D

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

What did plastic replace? Good chance we can go back, if we can convince some people the line doesn't need to go up. Good joke, everybody laughs...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Do you mean what ubiquitous toxin will be next?

Or do you mean how can we get by without plastic?

If it's the second one, the answer is easy, fucking aluminum. We've had the answer forever and it still works great. Glass too, good for many applications.

Now the actual problem isn't plastic bags or beverage containers though, it's clothing and tires. Most clothing is plastic these days and tiny plastic fibers break up into micro plastics and take to the air or end up in the sea. Car tires are also just plastic these days, not rubber (which is arguably better for the environment than leveling rainforests for rubber tree plantations, sigh...), the tires rub off on the road like a pencil eraser on sandpaper. This also ends up in the air and sea.

So anyway, replacing plastic beverage containers is a great step, a no brainer, but it also doesn't address the real problem at all. I hope that some day soon tires and clothes can start to be made with biodegradable "eco plastics", but if that doesn't turn out to be feasible, we'll be in some serious trouble. And once we have some real, feasible, affordable replacements, then we need to actually outlaw the use of older plastic tires, in every country on the planet, despite heavy lobbying against any new measures from vested interests... I can't even imagine how to make that happen. How did we do it with lead? Has every country outlawed lead in gas?

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