this post was submitted on 05 Dec 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

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    • 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.
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[–] TheQuietCroc 99 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Prince literally wanted us to call him a symbol with no explanation.

[–] LemmyKnowsBest 85 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It took me years until I finally learned why he did that. It had something to do with the music industry owning his name. He reclaimed ownership of all his music and art and made a departure from the extortionate music industry.

[–] TeaHands 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Could've picked something easier to pronounce, though.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was actually brilliant. Got everyone talking about him without really giving up ‘Prince’ in the public consciousness.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Never thought of it that way but yeah. Gave up his name without actually giving it up. Brilliant. That guy was savy as fuck. Also a genius.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I asked GPT why:

In the early 1990s, Prince was embroiled in a contractual dispute with Warner Bros., his record company. He felt they were restraining his creativity by not allowing him to release albums as frequently as he desired. In 1993, in an act of rebellion, he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, which was a combination of the male and female gender symbols, in order to free himself from his contract obligations to Warner Bros. Since the symbol had no pronunciation, he was often referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" during that period. He returned to using the name Prince in 2000, after his publishing contract with Warner Bros. expired.

[–] A_A 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The unpronounceable symbol :

Hollow circle above downward arrow crossed with a curlicued horn-shaped symbol and then a short bar

(known to fans as the "Love Symbol")

[–] kamenlady 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm in awe of the outstanding quality of the symbols pic

[–] A_A 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

24 x 28 pixels, 320 bytes, from Wikipedia...
Prince_logo.svg.webp
... if it really was SVG format it would be much greater quality.

[–] kamenlady 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They may have made the classic "let's batch-optimize all images for the web" or maybe using a CDN provider, either with wrong settings.

Yeah SVG would make it almost endlessly scalable.

[–] A_A 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] kamenlady 2 points 1 year ago

Nice - i also found lots of prince wikis, but not the svg

I know now what to hear tonight, perfect

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Maybe you know, did he want to be called "the artist"? And then everyone added "formerly known as Prince"?