2w ago

I... Genuinely only realizing this now

For real. Everytime I get in the shower I end up having to point the showerhead away and cower from the cold water and I could have just turned it on first?

195 comments

"I'm working on my masters and I feel like such a dumbass..."
Never assume someone with an advanced degree knows anything outside of that degree because "they must be smart".
- There is a difference between "intelligent" and "smart" is the way I like to describe myself.
  I'm college educated. But I'm also the guy that took twelve years to realize that his stove had a cook-timer on it...
  
  I know mine has one, I just don't know how to use it. Does that count?
  
  Anti vax nurses are my favorite.
  
  Also theres a difference between being knowledgeable and smart or intelligent. I know a lot of facts because I'm curious about stuff. But I'm not particularly better at figuring things out than the average person.
- I worked with someone who was working on his second PhD in computer science and the guy did not know how to print.
  Literally couldn't figure out how to click the print button.
  In computer science.
  PhD.
  Computers.
  
  I've worked in tech for almost 20 years. A big misconception is confusing Computer Science and IT. Computer Science is generally more about logic, data structures, and programming paradigms across languages. IT is generally more about the configuration, deployment and usage of technology and operating systems for end users.
  There's a ton of nuance in there, like Infrastructure or devops, where it's about the deployment of technology software and hardware to power large technology services, which sits in the middle.
  That being said, I've generally found that the more specialized someone is in computer science, the less they know about the operating system they use and how it works. Especially if they spent the time to go for a PhD or something.
  The smartest programmer I've ever met is my boss, our CTO. PhD from an Ivy League school. Can write haskell on a napkin, even though our stack doesn't touch haskell. Also doesn't know shit about how MacOS works even though he uses a Mac, and consistently asks me relatively simple questions regarding unix/linux differences, filesystem stuff, package managers, etc. It's very interesting to see the difference in knowledge.
  
  'Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes'
  Dijkstra, 1970
  
  To be honest, printer technology is some arcane eldrich bullshit
- Honestly, speaking as somebody with two different masters degrees, it’s a good idea to not assume they know anything WITHIN their degree field too, until they prove otherwise.
- Famous physicist and misogynist "Surely you're Joking" Mr. Feynman comes to mind. Didn't even know you can't have both lemon and milk in you tea.
  
  I'm not joking, and don't call me Shirley.
- Being "smart" and "thinking" are two very different things. You can be very smart but have no conscious thought. You can be a great thinker without ANY formal education or experience. (Calm down internet geniuses, you're not that special.)
  We might start figuring out how to get either one if we start understanding that there's a difference.
  Your brain doesn't work the way you think it does. Your mind isn't entirely your own. Your language influences your internal dialogue, and if you have no internal dialogue, you need to exercise that by reading a lot more and thinking about your thinking.

I'm so thrown off by our current shower which legit heats up in 2 seconds. I was so used to waiting like a minute for it to warm up, I built my rituals around that. But this one... it's just hot, like right away. Bizarre
- In fancy installs, the hot water supply is a loop, not a tree, and a circulating pump keeps the entire run hot.
  
  That sounds like a great way to waste energy.
- The distance from the heater to the shower is usually the biggest factor.
- Same here! Moved to an appartement so everything is closer and now I don't need to turn on the shower 5 business days before I want to shower
  
  I'm in a SFH but all the bathrooms are very proximal to the heater so it slaps
  
  Some apartments with central hot water have a recirculation pump, so the water is almost always hot. My building has one. The water is always hot, but for some fucking reason the hot water is like right next to the cold water, but the cold water doesn't have a pump, so the cold water pipes will get hot from the flowing hot water. Then when I turn on my shower the cold water will be just as hot as the hot water... for like a minute, making the entire thing fucking pointless because you still have to wait to get in. But I can burn myself on demand so I've got that going for me.
- I think some of the really fancy installs have a secondary tankless water heater for the shower....
  I think I saw that somewhere.

Parenting. You think you’re doing great and you realise at times that some of the thing a you take for granted, you haven’t taught your kids.
Just because they’ve seen you do something a thousand times doesn’t mean they understand why
- As a parent, I was surprised at the amount of stuff kids need to be taught. Stuff that I assumed was obvious isn't - it's learned behaviour. And you don't realize that it's learned until you see your kid struggling with some trivial task.
  
  As an ex kid, I only recently realised my parents taught me almost nothing. Even though I later learned a lot of very varied things, I could have started much better equipped for life. To people who chose to have kids, don't be like my parents. It's really crippling.
  
  The fun part is watching your kids figure out complex and nuanced things that you never even thought about, much less understood, while struggling with those trivial tasks.
  
  An interesting one that sums it all up - crawling babies aren't instinctively scared of cliffs or drops, they have to learn not to crawl off an edge. Which isn't all that surprising except for the fact that when they start walking, they don't carry this lesson forward and will happily walk off an edge. They need to learn it again.
- I remember a story of a child watching their mother cook a roast, and asked why she cut the ends off before putting it in the oven.
  The mother learned it from her mother, so they both went and asked the grandmother.
  Turned out the grandmother used to have a small oven and did that to make it fit.
  
  I immediately thought of the variant of this story I've heard when I read the post.
  In the variant I heard: grandma never had bakeware that could fit the entire roast.
  Same difference. I kinda like yours better.
  
  There's a weirder variant where they always cover meat with a draining rack while it's marinating. After N years the grandparent visits for dinner and explains "yes but you see we had a cat..."
- See also: why LLMs can seem clever and still be incredibly stupid
- I just had to say "don't put your chicken in your butt" to be met with "Why?"
  
  It was the chicken that asked the why?

when I was little I would wait for the water to warm up, then pull the thing to turn on the shower head. But there's like 2 seconds of freezing water in the tube to the shower head so I would have to really quickly pull it, run back to the edge of the shower, and block it with the shower curtain. It had a 50% chance of failure and I did it for years
- I learnt that there’s a bit of cold water when switching to the shower head the hard way.
  Pointed it at my wife and swapped it and she screamed. Whoops lol.
  
  ...and you survived. That's amazing. :)

I remember this thread. One of the responses was from someone who thought that the beep his car made when locking the doors got quieter when activated from further away.
- Well...by the power of the inverse square law, they kinda do, I guess.
  
  Also probably by the power of Grayskull
- We had a guy at work a couple years ago, nice guy but not too bright. He'd fill his bottle from the water cooler, and always got surprised by how fast it filled up at the top. He thought the water cooler's dispenser somehow got faster as the bottle filled up, not realizing that it's because the top of the bottle is narrower than the bottom.
- Ow. My face.

You're not supposed to just stand there and waste that warming-up water, you're supposed to collect it in a watering can and put it on your plants! It's got stuff from having sat in the water heater so it's not the best for drinking but plants don't mind.
- This legitimately is something I've been looking for as I hate just running a gallon of water out for no reason.
  
  Iirc if your water boiler supports it, you can have it circulate the hot water in the pipes to warm them up without wasting water

I lived the same "realization moment" last year talking to a friend.
I was saying that I need to go home to wash my white undershirts as I only got blacks left (small t-shirt to wear under a shirt and not freeze to death during winter).
He asked me why so I have several colors of undershirts.
Well, black and grey for black or dark colored shirts, white for white or clear colored shirts otherwise you’ll see it behind the fabric, duuuh, are you dumb?
The answer:
Or you can wear white ones under dark shirts as well and it won’t be visible…
🤔🤔🤔😧 FFS dude, why did I never thought of that?
- I wish the same were true for bras. Women's shirts are often much thinner than men's, so a white bra might show through a dark shirt. It took me until this year to figure out that in order to make your bras less visible under light or white shirts, you should use a skin-tone bra instead of a white bra. Blew my mind when I figured that one out.
  
  I had the skin tone bra thing down pat, but blew my mind when I realized you can also have cute color bras that match or contrast with the outer clothes so if your strap shows it looks intentional!
- You can sometimes see the white collar part, unless that's just it being weird how it sits on me.
  
  Depends on if you get a V neck or not.
- You gan also use light grey in most cases, except almost translucent clothes.
  Why light grey ? Because you can wash it with dark or light clothes, worst case it get a bit darker or lighter. And as there is almost no color, it doesn't spill on other clothes. Moreover, unlike white clothes, you fon't have to worry about it getting a bit yellowish with time, the color is enough to mask it.
  
  The majority of the clothes on the planet do not bleed color anymore.
- Black probably stays nicer longer though. And if it does show at all, it matches.

And of course, we have a relevant xkcd.
- To be fair this is possibly the most relevant xkcd of all time
  
  Yeah it's probably the most linked xkcd with some margin, would be fun to see the traffic data to that page.

And once again, we learn that common sense is actually not that common.
- I'm positive if we took a closer look at your life we'd find many such things. Nobody is perfect.
  
  Yeah I thought nobody being perfect was common sense.
  
  I only fail ironicly.*

I can understand the shower one, but who tf is insane enough to not use oven mitts or a rag? I'd imagine you'd take a moment to think about the possible solutions before doing something that painful
- It's an analogy, not real life.
- These are /thathappened.
  There is no way anyone is pulling 350°F+ items out of an oven with their bare hands.
  There is no way someone grew up without a parent both demonstrating and explaining to let the water warm up first. Might as well fill a tub with cold water and sit in it, then say just add hot water until it’s comfortable. Even if the household was abusive or something and kids were told to shower cold while the water warmed up they still would have figured out on their own that running hot water first would get hot water faster.
  
  I've seen video of someone pulling stuff out of frying oil with his bare hands. This was made easy for him because all his nerve endings in his hands were dead because he had been putting them into frying oil, but still, I never would have believed anyone to do something that ... I don't know what to call it, callous maybe.
  
  Most people wouldn't, but I know a blacksmith who handles hot metal all day long. He regularly pulls baking sheets out of a hot oven, but he's got such thick, calloused hands that he can handle that kind of stuff.
  Average Joe who doesn't understand what oven mitts are? Probably not.
  
  I mean...I do sometimes. Usually pizzas or things on aluminum foil. I also used to pull out noodles from boiling water to test them while cooking
  Obviously I'm not grabbing 350F glass or metal with my bare hands, but if you're very deliberate with your movements you'd be surprised what you can do without burning yourself
  
  There is no way anyone is pulling 350°F+ items out of an oven with their bare hands.
  I used to be able to do that when I was working in a kitchen. If you burn your hands often enough you kinda build up a tolerance/calluses. We used to call it having asbestos hands.
  
  100%. I say this in jest quite a bit, but I'm absolutely serious this time - Nobody is this stupid.

I didn’t learn until my 40s that if you exhale gently while getting water on your face, none of it goes in your nose.
- I think I learnt this when I was taught swimming as a child. You always slowly exhale or at least keep the air in your nose slightly under pressure while you're underwater, so the water doesn't get in.
  
  If you do water somersaults you have to push harder when upside down since the air escapes!
  
  Blowing bubbles is always the first thing I taught kids when they were learning to swim.

So he's about to have shower sex and he is capable of thinking about anything else?
- why would they have shower sex, when they could have sex then shower
  
  Yeah, shower sex might be one of the most overrated things I know. It always feels like a good idea at first and then you quickly realize that the logistics of it are hell
- I think he mentioned knowing he's a dumbass, so

No one mentioned (probably an assumed thing) to turn the water on full hot to let it warm up, then move it to the preferred mix position. Doesn't waste the cold water which will stay more or less the same temp, it's only flushing out the cold in the hot water line. And because you have it fully on hot, it takes less time.
Or get a tankless water heater to get it almost right away. I've seen debates on which is a better choice when factoring everything in, and I think it's a close tie with no clear winner, each having their caveats.
- The water in the pipes is still cold. Tankless heaters are endless, not instant. You still have to wait until the cold water is pushed out of the pipes, same as with a tank. Tankless heaters are still installed in the same central location as a tank and the hot water has to come from that point.
  
  Well, there's those suicide showerheads containing the heating element...
  
  This is true, but a lot of tankless sells advertise a feature that some have that recirculate the hot water so it's available without the wait.
  So some people assume it's a feature all tankless have.
  
  In Asia these tankless heaters are in the shower room itself, when they are not turned on there's no water in the pipe (in the part after the heating element).
- or install a circulator so cold water in the hot water pipes get back into the tank to get reheated

Love that for once we're mostly not mocking them and are actually sharing similar experiences, we've all had one of those moments.
- I genuinely can't tell you what my thing is. Other than that deep down, I know the feeling and know that I have one. This has happened to me before. I have felt this feeling. I just don't remember what about. I'll keep you guys posted if I remember.
  
  For me it was about 5 years ago, I'm over 30, realizing that my parents and extended family lied to me about watermelon seeds growing in your stomach.
  It was just so ingrained in me as a child that it took more than 20 years for me to question it.
  Watermelon is so much easier to eat now.
  
  I'm joining you on team traumatic memory repression.

Yeah. Took me like 16, 17 years to realise I could put a bit of TP down first to stop the splash making such noise and firing back at my asshole.
- I am still baffled by how many people suffer from Poseidon's Kiss on a regular basis. Like I've had it happen once or twice ever, and I'm not a spring chicken.
  
  Diet mainly.
- This is gold. And yeah, it took decades before someone told me the secret.
- ... what?
  
  They're talking about a crash pad for poop, since some people don't like it making a sound when they take a dump in public.

Similar dumbassery: Taking a shit and seating there for 20 minutes inhaling feces stench when I could do a flush as soon first turds come out and stay on the toilet until I can't feel my legs without a farty atmosphere in the bathroom.
- Although, if you're a ball haver, this is a great way to get poo water splash on your balls...
  
  Stand up halfway, flush, sit back down

Its okay buddy. I thought ovaries were in the boobs till I was like 20.
- Pee is stored in the balls
- I once thought the females of the species had one opening for both. Growing up on a farm means you have some wicked advanced knowledge compared to other kids your age, but can introduce some really hilarious beliefs...
  I never thought about why I thought women were more like our chickens than our horses/cows, but eh, some things just pan out.

I mean, having lived more than half my life with water catchment NOT county water, letting the water run is wasteful and can mean you go without during drought. That means turning the water off while scrubbing, too. I've learned to embrace the cold on purpose at the end, with the closing pores n all.
- Cold water is actually good for the skin, keeps it firm

I can't think of an incident like this off-hamd for myself, but I once dated a woman who didn't know that women have a urethra. She thought the urine just came out of her vagina. She was ~23.

I don't think I've ever used a shower where there was no way to avoid an initial cold spray while standing in it, so it never occurred to me to turn it on first because it wasn't an issue.

I don’t like wasting water, so I just stand at the far end and try to start wetting my hair until it gets warm enough to fully step in.

I had a very cold shower once until I realized the way that one knob faucet worked was you had to turn it an insane amount to get to the hot water.
- If you still have that, know that it can usually be adjusted by removing that one screw you see and go behind the knob and adjust the hot water stop. Really changed the shower comfort over here, as it used to be real hard to find that sweet spot between lukewarm and scalding hot.

What's the difference between pointing the shower head away and standing outside at first?
- Geometry
- Cold water going by in close proximity will probably result in some splashing on you, plus the movement of cold air in close proximity is going to suck away some heat too.
  It is kind of refreshing in the summer, but very different if it is chilly in the bathroom. Plus you can keep your PJs/robe/a towel on you to keep warm outside the shower while the water is warming up.
  
  I've never waited for more than five seconds for the water to reach acceptable, and 10 seconds for the set temperature (40° max in my case). Always had and used a tankless water heater.
- Turn on the water reaching in from outside, then get undressed, then get in. Saves time overall.
  
  Doesn't work with my workflow, but I guess it could work for some people

I'm a first gen immigrant but despite having native American English, sometimes once in a blue moon I'll encounter a semi-rare word I've yet to be exposed to.
So my closest analog is that I was confused for the longest time why people kept referring to statues of figures from shoulder level upwards as busts when they never had chests or breasts or boobs or blossoms or busts!
So for the longest time not only was I confused, I would be on the lookout for statuses that depicted from breast height upwards, but I never found one, lol.

Have you ever done something...this dumb?
Well, at least OOP realizes it was dumb. I’d tell them to relax and not let it ruin their evening. We’re all astonishingly stupid sometimes. It happens to the best of us.

I prefer to cower in fear, actually. Too much of an effort to lean in and start the water beforehand. Plus now I usually shower in a standing stall so I have to be in it to turn the water on anyway. Just gotta set the angle and the cower space just right.

Best tip I can give: Turn the sink hot water on and let it run until it's hot and the lines are filled to the bathroom. When you turn on the shower, turn it to full hot until hot water starts coming out, and then adjust it to your personal preference. No waiting for shower to warm up now. Just jump in.
- That just sounds like waiting with extra steps.
  
  Waiting longer, assuming the shower has a higher flow rate.

I remember seeing this reddit post like a decade ago. Lol

Im one of those dumbasses that likes a cold shower.
- The occasional cold shower is amazing!
  I have zero idea about the health benefits but after taking an ice cold morning shower, I feel like I can take on anything after getting past that lol.
  
  On a hot day, its like having armor on for a lil while. Like bring on 90 degrees Fahrenheit, my skin is made of ice!

As someone living in the tropics, where home heating doesn't exist, warm/hot showers only takes 2 seconds after turning it on.
As for one of my own fuckups, I once put a piece of pizza with styrofoam as a plate in the microwave. I was 15 at the time. I did not eat pizza that day. Not the last time I fucked up with the microwave.

Also before someone asks, they were just roommates

people who talk about their education when it is not part of the conversation are usually pretty dumb.

Kinda sweet that she was prioritizing water conservation over her own comfort level

If your dinner scrapings are too soupy or wet to go in the bin, you can tip the whole thing in the toilet so you don't have to fanny about trying to sieve the noodles and vegetables while decanting it into the kitchen sink.
30 years old when I had dinner at a friend's house and they did it casually like it was obvious.

In situations like this I always think, "What would archer/xander cruze say?"

I'm in awe of the guys who pull their trousers entirely down at urinals when they must have seen everyone around them not doing that.

Me, the first time I realized I could wash pillows. (Only certain types are washable)
- I think I'm learning in real time that pillows are a bitch to wash 🤦‍♂️
  
  They take a long time to dry on tumble low. I recommend washing them in the morning, lol.
  I don't do them too often, usually every 6mo. But it gets the musty/sweaty smell out of them. And if you are allergic to dust mites, it helps.

I learnt that USians have to do this from movies (because you guys have weird plumbing, I think?). Does this person not watch movies?
- I'm fairly sure a lot of places have to wait, unless you have an electric shower.
  In the US people usually have an immersion heater tank for the hot water. Here in the UK I've got a combi boiler that produces water for hot taps, showers, and also central heating radiators.
  In both cases there's some distance of pipe between where your hot water is coming from and where your shower is and that's what you are waiting for - for the water to get where it needs to go.
  How does your stuff work?
  
  I've certainly never had to wait long enough to be worth turning the water on before I get in (or even before undressing). Some English terms for what's the standard here are apparently "flow heater", "instant water heater", "tankless water heater" and similar.

Average engagement bait/troll.
(Edit: The Reddit user, not op!!)
- Got your engagement
  
  Why, yes, that is why I am here!
  (In case I messed up - I didn't mean you being a troll, I meant that first shower-noob op.)

I stand in the shower and turn it on hoping it was indeed left with the shower head disabled, then I turn it on low pressure and let water flow until its warm.
No need to waste arbitrary amounts of water! If you don't have a normal shower (you're american) and only have some on/off shower pressure control, step inside, run the tub until it's warm, and act like a human being who can take the .3 seconds of cold water that may still be in the pipes between the diverter and spout. Odds are the cold water was drawn down from the water rushing out of the spout anyway, unless you have an adjustable showerhead. See step one.
- The amount of water is the same. It’s the volume held by the pipes between the water heater and your bathroom. that’s the same amount of water, whether it comes out of the bathtub or the showerhead, at a high or low rate of flow.

195 comments