this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
167 points (96.1% liked)

Showerthoughts

30401 readers
818 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: 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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

How come people say 5,000 km and not 5 Mm?
why not just say millions of meters or Mega meters?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 78 points 10 months ago (22 children)

Familiarity I guess. Mega isn't really a widely used prefix outside of computers. We even say tons instead of megagrams.

[–] gedaliyah 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes, I think it's a question of use. I can't think of many examples where you would quickly need to know the measurement to the nearest Mm. Maybe if for some reason you deal with a lot of lunar orbits? Diameters of exoplanets?

Any earth distances we need to know with greater precision, and any stellar distances are probably better measured in light years, etc.

[–] southernbrewer 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] pete_the_cat 1 points 10 months ago

"I've driven 112.326 megameters" takes the same amount of time to say as 112,326 kilometers. 🤷‍♂️

load more comments (19 replies)