this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
416 points (100.0% liked)

Showerthoughts

34150 readers
974 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:

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
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

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
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 week ago (6 children)

killing all of wikipedia is gunna be almost impossible, theres probably millions of backups around the world. here's a few links to download it, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents, https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

To add to that, and to make it easier for some, you can use Kiwix!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Not only that, but MediaWiki is FOSS, and all existing content on all Wikimedia Foundation (except for a relative few kept on fair use grounds) is at most as restrictive as CC BY-SA 4.0. So you'd have whatever exists on Wikipedia currently (plus Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, etc., keeping in mind too that there are many Wikipedias besides English) plus the software that interacts with that data, other countries which haven't fully descended into fascism, the members of the Wikimedia Foundation, a bunch of pissed-off editors, and a pissed-off public... I think a new, substantially similar non-profit would crop up in the UK etc., and very few things would have to change about the content that's on the platform (where the UK has more restrictive speech laws).

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There's more to history than Wikipedia. Like physical books

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I didn't even think of that 🤦

I've been online for too long

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Back in my day you had to buy Wikipedia. It came in like 20 massive volumes that ate up a shelf or two.

Thinking about it… I wonder what my parents did with our copies…

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

I doubt Britanica has a page dedicated to Limp Bizkit.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

The encyclopedia even came on CD for a while. It was called Encarta. But I loved my parent's World Book Encyclopedia much more.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

here's the torrent: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents#English_Wikipedia
like 20gb when packed, ~90 when unpacked

Also archive.org, idk which one to seed that personally fits my limited storage space, so i'll just link the category, https://archive.org/details/wikimediadownloads

there's also this, but idk about it, just listing options🤷‍♀️ https://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/

*just in case someone thinks its suspicious: they were all linked directly from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download under the "Where do I get the dumps?" section

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Thank you so much for this. I have been trying to offline Wikipedia for months but the torrent links on the kiwix site are broken or something. They stall out for me in the first 10m everytime. The download from your link is working perfectly.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can't kill Wikipedia. MediaWiki is free software. If hosting in the US proves to be too hostile, the foundation can either pack up and host elsewhere, and even if they don't, anyone else can easily host their own Wikipedia as well.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I'm not here to be a doomer but net neutrality was murdered.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago

You can download Wikipedia to your computer. It’s big but it’s not an unreasonable download size. Many people have backed it up already!

It’s very unlikely to disappear without someone having a copy.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you think Wikipedia is the only place that stores historical knowledge, please, start thinking about how much time you're spending online.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

It is a modern library of Alexandria, free to all globally and community built. It's genuinely an amazing surviving piece of the old internet. No one is saying it's the only place, but it is vitally important and a huge deal if it goes away. Shame on you for downplaying that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Unfortunately it’s not exactly community built, but more like a class of chronically online editors control it and prevent heterodox views and ideas from being added entirely.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Not for long

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They don’t need or want to kill Wikipedia. They just need to heavily edit it. Kind of a dream come true for those pushing a narrative.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

In my mind that would be killing it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (14 children)

It’s already happened, and is still happening. So is it dead? Or maybe it’s been a half-aware zombie all along.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Wouldn't it make sense to just host the website from another country, outside of US jurisdiction?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Better fucking not. Wikipedia is my life bruh.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Tech bros like musk who capture companies to gut them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But Wikipedia isn't a company. It's a non-profit foundation.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

I mean they can try to censor it but I really don't see why the wikimedia foundation wouldn't just move shop to a different country, or a different group just starts running a mirror of it. Like it might be down for a while, at which time we would have to use mirrors, but I can't see any future where its just gone forever.

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

There are a lot of citations to things like Britannica from 1911 that is archived and public domain.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First of all, they aren't going to kill Wikipedia.

Second, Wikipedia isn't even close to being the only place to get your history. There's this neat little place called a fucking library. You can go there for free.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Download the Downloader / Viewer at https://kiwix.org/.

Get your own backed up copy and keep it on a thumb drive.

load more comments
view more: next ›