this post was submitted on 01 Jul 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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Why do we use base 60 for time and base 10 for everything else. Why has no one decided to integrate it. (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 2 years ago by atrax to c/showerthoughts
57 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Thought of this in the shower this morning, if anyone has an answer I'd be very interested!

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[–] Etterra 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IIRC, people have tried to create, and enforce, metric time in the past but it always fails. Basically it seems like that ever since the Mesopotamians invented base 60 mathematics for keeping track of time, some geometry, and related concepts it is stuck for that purpose because it really does seem to be the best number set for the job. It did not stick around for anything else though because it's basically garbage for those tasks. Base 10 works pretty good; it's easy to move around zeroes and decimal places, and since most people have 10 fingers it's pretty intuitive.

[–] xtract 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agreed, most people have ten fingers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'd like a second opinion on that.