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- Hacker News
- Thank You! Thank you very much...
This has much less to do with taking a shit, than it does with sitting and quietly thinking to yourself.
This idea that you need to be constantly receiving some external input, and that just sitting and thinking is "boring", is really the primary symptom of internet brain damage.
Yes, there used to be National Geographic in the bathroom. and the people of that era weren't internet brain damaged, they were TV brain damaged.
The barrage of electronic media assaulting our senses has led to the biggest decline in individual human thought, ever.
So, go take a dump, and don't take your phone...
by johnea - There's also showering. (But I've taken to playing music in the shower with a waterproof boombox. Bluetooth'd from my phone, of course.)
And of course, sleeping. ;)
But there is something to this. Intuitive ideas come to you in the quiet moments.
by pmarreck - HN readership and comments would greatly decline if people did not usr their phones in the can.by drnick1
- But then how would I take the photo I need to feed my AI-powered fecal analysis agent?
- I’m confused, doesn’t your toilet bowl already do that for you?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/despite-accessing-us...
by close04 - Pro tip: send the photo to spammy overseas recruiters, bonus if you add the photo in a .docx with a password. then when they call you asking for the password, tell them over the phone so you can hear their reaction when they see it.by gosub100
- My parents had the Desiderata 'poem' on the back of the toilet door when I was growing up, so I read it a thousand times.
Being older and reading it again, it's a beautiful sentiment and something that, I think, seeped into my subconscious and made me a better person.
My favorite line:
"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here"
by BLKNSLVR - Oh, thank you, what a lovely choice of text. I wonder if your parents meant for you to read it?
My sister mentioned to me recently she has a print of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver on the back of her bathroom door. Your quotation made me think of her poem.
https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oli...
by tigerlily - Flip side: more sitting on the toilet ensures a more complete emptying and less rushing/straining.by sethammons
- ? What? A healthy colon and diet usually do not need to strain or rush. Just sit and poop. like 1min tops.by iterateoften
- Flip side: sitting too long on the toilet increases hemorrhoid risk. [0]
Not having a distraction doesn’t mean a person needs to strain.
by al_borland - From an evolutionary perspective, this is a super vulnerable moment and are in a state of hyper vigilance.by ozten
- Eridians have figured out the solution for vulnerable moments: I watch, you shit.by aeve890
- That's why we have a lock of the door.by dolmen
- Odd that sloths spend their life in the trees except when they climb down to have a crap.by jjgreen
- TIL that in the past, I definitely would have died while pooping.
- Yeah, exactly this. Once you have a toddler you realize there is an inherent desire to be alone while pooping. There is a sort of shame about this. Always Sunny made a joke about this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TFqzjdk5XPsby 01100011
- But there aren’t enough shampoo bottles to read.by Waterluvian
- Yes yes I know this contains sodium laureth sulfate what else have you got?by jhfdbkofdchk
- There are dozens of us!by maguay
- that explains Dr Bronner's branding
- Pooping is interesting. Having a toddler reminded me how pooping is this uniquely vulnerable, sensitive time for humans. I think a lot of us use books/phones/etc to distract ourselves from a sensorily intense activity. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, just noting it.
I will say that playing my Nintendo DS on the toilet many years ago gave me hemorrhoids that still persist decades later. Don't camp on the toilet.
by 01100011 - I remember Nintendo doing a commercial about that!by retired
- And yet the toilet is one of the most connected places in the house. I love this BBC "Thinking Allowed" podcast episode on toilets that makes the point powerfully:by goobatrooba
- > pooping is this uniquely vulnerable, sensitive time for humans
GRRM chose that vulnerable moment to kill off a character.
by conmod278 - Yes, the only other closest parallel is maybe giving birth without reducing the intensity of an experience of child birth…by brtkwr
- You are not alone! Starting with Freud and the anal stage, many psychologists have concerned themselves and linking this not with sexual but with mortal aspect of the human conditionby minifridge
- We address the vulnerability by retreating to a private space. The phones come out just to address boredom. Sitting on the toilet is boring.
> I will say that playing my Nintendo DS on the toilet many years ago gave me hemorrhoids that still persist decades later. Don't camp on the toilet.
Right. People spending 30 minutes sitting on the toilet are clearly not feeling all that vulnerable. But, yeah. Don’t do that.
by dpark - Who read this while in the act?by brtkwr
- you called me outby tt_dev