this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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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: 1

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
    • If you feel strongly that you want politics back, please volunteer as a mod.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

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] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Giff with a hard g.

Yes there are many examples of soft g before i, like gist. But English orthography isn't self-consistent, so ultimately all these arguments become reductio ad absurdam.

~~G in GIF stands for Graphics. Period.~~

I agree that g for graphics isn't a terribly good argument one way or another. But the reductio ad absurdam part is the more important bit. All language, ultimately, is arbitrary, with successful information exchange being the only measure that really matters. It's especially so for something like GIF that occurs far more often in text than speech.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I find the "G stands for graphics" an extremely weak argument. In English the pronunciation of acronyms never seem to consider the pronunciation of the original words. Examples include scuba and laser. If you pronounced those like the letters in the original words, they would be pronounced scuhba and laseer.

That said, pronounce it how you want, I don't care. You don't need a reason to pronounce it one way or another beyond "this is the way I heard first" or "this is the way I hear the most". But the "graphics" reason is not a good one because (at least in English) nothing else follows that rule.

[–] RememberTheApollo_ 1 points 1 year ago

I choose giraffics.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In that case, my vote is on GIF with the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ from genre and measure.

[–] RGB3x3 1 points 1 year ago

It's ✯✯fancy✯✯