this post was submitted on 29 Jul 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:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less. The era of growing up with a home computer that required fiddling and dial up, etc is over. People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.
Exactly. Exposure to technology does not make you tech literate. Tech literate typically means engaged with new technologies.
For instance, people were using phones, fax machines, calculators, watches, etc when dial up came out. Those users were not considered tech literate.
The same happens today, an iPhone or Android user is not tech literate by default anymore.
i also notice they fall for the simplest scams too online,
And for that reason alone I built a Linux PC for my 11 year old and told him to go to town figuring things out. (I supervise everything of course). Dude has been doing fantastic so far.
If he doesn't solve problems with chmod 777 then he's already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company
Oh, but you gotta drop a chmod nuke at least once to feel the terror having done something irreversible. As a bonus, you’ll also gain a brand new appreciation for snapshots.
sudo chmod 000 /for securityAnd it’s also so much faster than full disk encryption. Cool little trick the admins don’t want you to know.
You don’t even need to do it recursively:
This is extremely fast.
Who's going to win?
SELinux+Seccomp+Containers...
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.
Neither! It's whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.
Cool. I'm old enough that in middle school I begged my Mom to take to the mall to buy Linux. I got a Red Hat Linux CD-ROM pack from a store called Babbage's. I couldn't download the ISO on our modem and I don't remember if we even had a burner at that point.
I grew up starting my computer use having to navigate DOS just before windows 3.11 was released. I work in tech today and I feel like just knowing about a lot of the automated things we take for granted today has given me a little bit of an edge.
I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles, both ways uphill!
So a friend of mine went to a convention to show off his gaming project. The kids there were trying to touch the monitors to play the game. They didn't grab the keyboard and mouse. They didn't touch the controller. They touched the monitor. People's framework of what a computer is and what it's made of is completely different than what it use to be
Even when I was like 4, I would've gone for the controller. I knew how to use it from Lego Star Wars. I knew how to use a keyboard, but I didn't play on pc, so I'd have had to have been told the controls.
Hate to say it, but that technical literacy from having to operate computers the difficult way was a small blip in history. So things are just kind of going back to "normal."
Now, the only real natural entry into "computing" is gaming. Pretty much everything else has to come through formal education, which is largely myopic and boring.
Don't think I've even worked with a gen Z engineer yet. I assume they exist.
I work with a lot of gen z engineers that are very competent
There's still a second natural entry, it is being critical and annoyed by corporate greed in apps, streaming services, ads, accounts for everything etc. The privacy/piracy entry.
I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting... Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn't grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don't seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.
I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.
One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don't know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don't know. Saying I don't know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with "but I will find out" or "can you help/explain it". Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.
I work in a completely different field, but you last paragraph mostly sounds to me like a typical young person entering the job market. There is this false sense og confidence, pride and know it all when graduating. I've just seen it a few too many times and I remember how confident and skilled I thought I was when I got out. At the same time, there's some anxiety and fear of doing a bad job and admitting fault may make you seem weak or unskilled and you want to impress the mentors and blah blah blah.
It is a bit funny to remember how I thought I was going to be helpful to colleagues who were way more experienced than me and then years later I'm being talked at by soon to be graduates who are trying to be helpful by sharing tips with me that I already do on the daily or don't do because I learned years ago they don't work. And when I try to give them advice or instructions it's like they just space out and hear what they think I mean and then do something completely different from what I ask of them, haha. I can't be mad at it, because it's just a part of learning and growing into your career. I think it would be a mistake to think that a newly graduated person in any field will be able to hit the ground running without any hiccups.
Maybe I'm just a bit of a softie when it comes to young people, but I just remember how eager I was when I was in their shoes and how incorrect my assumptions were when it came to what my elders expected of me. It all came gradually as I learned how to be a professional and how to solve tasks and find my rhythm. I imagine new generations on the market can't be much different from myself in that regard. 😊