this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
117 points (90.3% liked)
Showerthoughts
37095 readers
1528 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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- 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
- Posts must be original/unique
- 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
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's up to you if it helps you to think of it that way. However, if everyone is on the spectrum, then "autism" is less useful as a term for categorizing a group of people with a shared condition that may need help/accommodation in specific ways. How do you provide special services for autistic people when everyone is "on the spectrum". There's a solution, but requires a different way of categorizing people.
"spectrum" is a useful analogy to the EM spectrum, which is a literal spectrum. The autism spectrum is not a literal spectrum, we call it that because it's a useful way to understand neurodiveristy. However, like any analogy, it eventually falls apart as you go deeper into applying it. It's not the complete way to understand autism nor is it the only applicable analogy.
Autism is not fully understood, but it is characterized by several dimensions that each involve variation from the norm due to a complex of causes. This is why the "spectrum" analogy falls apart--it reduced autism to one dimension. Another analogy might be a crystal that grows in multiple directions, with more growth from the centre being divergence from the norm. Some crystals grow a little bit in all directions, some grow only in a couple directions, and every other combination of amount x direction.