this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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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:

Rules

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  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
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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.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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(And thus perfectly acceptable to eat for lunch)

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[–] immutable@lemmy.zip 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] piconaut@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] piconaut@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The authors of salad theory actually discuss their objections to cube rule.

The cuberule theory is amusing, but tragically inconsistent. It also performs poorly against Occam’s razor (it has eight rules for categorizing food into different sections). The choice of a cube as opposed to other geometric shapes appears to be entirely arbitrary. Each category both omits common foods colloquially considered to be members of it, while including many foods that colloquially are not in it.

Cuberule food categories are extremely unstable. While amusing, we find it particularly objectionable that merely slicing or biting into a food changes its nature according to cuberule (a calzone is a calzone, but a calzone with a bite taken out of it is a bread bowl). The same applies to a burrito (calzone when fully folded, bread bowl when bitten into). Notably, a burrito with a significant quantity of carbs mixed in on the interior (e.g. burritos often contain rice) would actually be categorized as toast, which is peculiar.

By category:

  1. Salad: Correctly includes a fruit salad, but would omit a caesar salad because of the croutons. It also includes things like steak.
  2. Toast: correctly includes foods that are called toast. It also includes a bunch of things people don’t normally think of as to toast, like pizza and nigiri sushi.
  3. Sandwich: Correctly includes most sandwiches, but not all. It excludes sub sandwiches where the bread is connected on one side (e.g., like a sandwich you’d pick up from subway). It also would include some peculiar foods, like a single layer of lasagna.
  4. Taco: This correctly includes tacos, but questionably includes things like slices of pie.
  5. Sushi: This category includes maki sushi, but excludes nigiri and sashimi. It also includes an unclosed burrito and a taquito.
  6. Soup/Salad w/ Bread Bowl: This section includes breadbowls unless they have any rice etc in them in which case they’re toast.
  7. Calzone: This section includes calzones, jelly-filled donuts, and other such baked goods, as long as you don’t cut or bite into them.
  8. Cake: This section includes foods that have layers of starch, such as a hamburger.

Our position is that unintuitive inclusions are acceptable so long as there are no unintuitive exclusions. But when you have both, it’s solid evidence that your rule is wrong.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cube rule is a tongue in cheek comedy bit that exaggerates the topic to a hilarious point by focusing in the inconsistency of food names. It quickly descends into madness, and the images helps.

Salad theory tries too hard to take the subject seriously and drags it out for far too long, undermining the potential humor.

Cube rule is Spaceballs. Salad theory is Meet the Spartans.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 7 points 1 week ago

Cube rule is Spaceballs. Salad theory is Meet the Spartans.

oh god it is

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can't believe this isn't already here...

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If poptarts are ravioli, but also a sandwich, does that mean that all ravioli are sandwiches from the ingredient/structural rebel perspective?

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Makes perfect sense to me, but I'm both a structure and ingredients anarchist.

[–] grysbok@lemmy.sdf.org 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Cake is a quick bread, which might not count as bread for the purposes of sandwiches.

Further study is required. OP, how was your lunch cake?

[–] Hegar@fedia.io 15 points 1 week ago (6 children)

We don't have this problem in Australia, where a sandwich is narrowly understood as being between two slices of bread cut from a loaf.

If it's on a bread roll it's not a sandwich it's a roll. If it's on a burger bun it's not a sandwich it's a burger. A sub is not a sandwich, it's a sub. A hot dog cannot be considered a sandwich, nor could a cake or anything else that's clearly not a sandwich.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

What about a burger on toasted bread slices?

Example of Sonic burger which is on Texas Toast slices instead of a bun

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So if you put peanut butter and jelly between hamburger buns, it's a burger?

[–] not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

No, it's an abomination. But also yes.

[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

✅ Cream cheese on banana bread

Got it.

[–] Tujio@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Get the fuck out! I am not making you a cottage cheese pastrami sandwich on banana bread! That would severely damage my reputation.

[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Let me ask you a question: how do you feel about frilly toothpicks?

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Pizza is technically an open-faced sandwich, but it's still pizza.

What about Turkish bread?

[–] rivalary@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Yep, drives me nuts when they call burgers sandwiches. If you gotta classify them together, call them handhelds.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Yes, and?

Nordic (or Finnish/Swedish at least) "sandwich cake".

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sandwich cake is already a term that means the same thing as layer cake. The classic combination of two layers of Victoria sponge with strawberry jam and whipped cream in between is called a Victoria Sandwich. Anyone arguing that a layer cake isn't a sandwich is just illiterate, not a defender of semantic specificity.

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I've never heard of anyone putting jelly/jam on cake and now I want to try it.

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My spouse makes one that way that everyone we know goes wild about. Literally just yellow cake, cooked strawberries, and homemade whipped cream. We're both baffled by how popular it is, but I guess the Midwest isn't used to real whipped cream.

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'd say most Americans aren't used to real whipped cream in general lol. Just the other week, I went to a Harry Potter-themed birthday party for who is essentially my niece and my brother made a British recipe for whipped cream for the butterbeer slushies we made. It was thick as hell and pretty damn good.

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The butterbeer was literally cream soda with a small leveled spoonful of butterscotch per can. Then we had a slushie machine then we put it in and it came out perfect.

[–] Gerudo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

One of my favorite cakes is a chocolate traditional cake and frosting but the inner layer is raspberry jam. It's so good.

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[–] BlueLineBae@midwest.social 9 points 1 week ago

Ice cream sandwiches are just ice cream between 2 dense cake layers. So by this definition, you'd be correct!

[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Cereal is soup

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

More importantly than having bread on the outside is being handheld.

Yes, you can eat anything with your hands, but cake is typically a fork food.

[–] Today@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

In my house most baked goods are eaten without a fork, one small sliver/square at a time, while standing at the counter and repeatedly saying, "I'm just going to have one small bite."

lasagna is a sandwich.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Cakes predate the Earl of Sandwich so really a sandwich is a subset of cake

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

OBJECTION!

How can a sandwich be a cake if cakes are sweet and sandwiches are salty?

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[–] not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Once could, if so inclined, put cake between two slices of bread. It'd be hard to argue that's not a sandwich.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If the cake layers don't get your fingers messy and don't crumble when you hold it, I'll allow it. It also has to be small enough to be able to take a bite out of all the layers at once.

[–] magnetichuman@fedia.io 5 points 1 week ago
[–] proper@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If cake is a sandwich then a loaf of sliced bread is a sandwich.

Never had a bread sandwich I see

[–] OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It’s a stack of bread sandwiches- where the number of sandwiches is:

total number of slices / 3

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Is cake bread though?

[–] Nosavingthrow@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is that the definition of a sandwich, or is there something about 'sanwhich' that transcends its constituent parts? Could 'sandwich' be a cluster of different properties that, when considered as a whole, become 'sandwhich'? I think to get to the heart of this 'sandwhich' question, we need not look at the sandwhich but instead at 'cake'. What is 'cake' and do those propertie exclude sandwhich? What common aspects do cake and sandwhich have, and are both of those elements essential?

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Words aren’t isomorphic to their dictionary definitions—words had commonly-accepted meanings long before the existence of dictionaries. Dictionary definitions are just an attempt to come up with a heuristic for identifying things as instances of the term in question, but they’re never perfect—and the real-world usage is ontologically prior.

If the dictionary definition of sandwich fails to distinguish cakes from sandwiches, it’s just an imperfect definition (like all definitions are)—and we can leave it at that.

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[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Bread pudding is a brown sugar sandwitch.

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