this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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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. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Humans are bi-pedal animals who walk extensively over long distances. However our feet are soft and not well suited to the task. However dogs, monkeys, and other animals have paws that serve as shoes to protect the feet.

No other mammal has such unprotected - but we are known for walking the farthest distances / nomadic behavior. Is this a joke?

I want paw feet instead of shoes.

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[–] medusa 92 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Walk barefoot, toughen up your feet. I prefer having thumbs and hands to paws.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I mean honestly this is the answer. I used to long board barefoot as a teenager and I also ran track. Often ran barefoot. By the time I was 16 I could walk on some glass without bleeding.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

TBF, walking on glass is a fairly common sideshow trick

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah shoes were optional for a solid chunk of change of my lifetime and I used to have some real rough feet and damn do I miss them =P! How do you do nowadays? I am still pretty minimalist. I like the heel of my shoes to be as thin as I can take them. But hiking, when I use those minimalist shoes I keep torturing myself my poking a fat rock right into a nerve that sends pain rushing up my being =P! I don't think I'll ever have it like I used to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Lol yeah I'm pretty much the same. I try to keep slim shoes for everyday wear but I need boots for any rocky hiking. The only rough part left on my foot is my heel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Hahaha! Mine too! I could put a tack in that back part =P! But the rest is like a little soft girl =P!

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Thumbs are cool. I’m talking paw feet

[–] agamemnonymous 62 points 3 months ago (2 children)

As others have said, you wear shoes, keeping your feet soft. There was a time in my life I walked everywhere, and did it barefoot. My feet became pretty well calloused and protected, to the point I could walk on gravel no problem. Even hot pavement wasn't too bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What life were you living where you walked a lot barefoot?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

If they're anything like my tree hugging mom, then just for kicks I guess.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And don’t get me started on keratinized dicks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Yes, please don’t start.

[–] agamemnonymous 3 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Not OP, but I didn’t wear shoes as a young man living in a beach town, surfing, and just chillaxing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I would love to see a picture of your paw feet 😂

[–] agamemnonymous 2 points 2 months ago

I have since re-shod myself for many years, losing my rough pads. Unfortunately, I did not take any feet pics in that phase of my life.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 months ago

your dog's claws need a trim

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's just you. You're weak, and soft, because you've been trained by society to wear shoes.

There are many people who never wear shoes, and they have tough soles. From indigenous tribes, to modern Olympic athletes.

That said, even your dog can step in sharps and hurt their feet; cuts, thorns, stabs - shoes provide protection that paws and tough soles do not; this is the main reason we wear footwear.

If you're interested in a more back-to-nature approach without giving up extra protection, there are dozens of companies that sell minimalist footwear - in essence, modern moccasins. Vibram is one such, but there are many more. Fitkicks is a cheap version (~$20). Look for "active" and "water shoes."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry - not true. This dog lives on the couch and has barely set foot outside.

They come with paw feet naturally. I want that too, not to go harden my foot pads by walking on rocks and buying fancy nature shoes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They walk around inside barefoot. Despite the cushiness of their surroundings, they nonetheless don’t wear socks and shoes.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

Trees. We went into the trees before we came back down and walked on two feet.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

That sounds like an invitation to be put on a list.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Well your first problem is using Google.

Gotta use Duck Duck Go + Tor + VPN on a burner phone you can yeet into the middle of international waters when you're done. Make sure to sink the boat while you're there, too. That way, under international law, nobody owns it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'd recommend a Boeing spacecraft instead, ocean is still reachable by commoners.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

If you take a Boeing spacecraft, you risk ending up in the ocean anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Google gorilla feet in Minecraft

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Spray-on shoes!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

if I had dog hindpaws for feet I'd get rich from onlyfans

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

The first sketchy plastic surgeon who gives someone paws, fur, a tail or some other weird furry things is going to be very rich...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Your feet develop this texture if you walk barefoot a lot.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

personal anecdote; I spent a year barefoot as a teen after dropping out of high school. The only time I had anything on my feet was orthodontist visits they said i couldn't go on without flip flops but nowhere else cared.

After about a year of this the callous on the bottom of my feet was so thick i could walk a few hundred meters on summer asphalt without a break and once got a small square of windshield glass embedded in my foot and it just plucked right out and left a square hole, zero pain at all. The pads were about 3/4 cm thick at the ball of my foot and 1/2cm at the heel.

I did this after reading about this effect in a book and wanting to see if it was true and it really was!

edit: also if you try this i should mention that your feet pads turn black and are impossible to clean really just get to a less dark black. most other people find this offputting.

cw: gross, blood

Tap for spoilerdon't read this part if you're squeamish

I would often have to pick tiny rocks and slivers of metal out of my feet when I did this because I walked to my friends house all summer and there was no sidewalk so it was on the streets.

So i had my dad's tools like these little snippers and needle nose pliers to grab the stuff and pull it out. So one day i'm like picking at my toe where the callous is really deep and I see something black embedded in it so I start digging for it. And damn this one is deeper than most I'm snipping into the toe deeper and deeper with the metal snippers and i can't quite reach it and it's starting to get to sensitive tissue.

And that's when I snip some little blood vessel in my toe that i had mistaken for embedded road debris. Ooze not squirt so i suppose it was just a big old capillary but oof it hurt and was a mess and that was the end of my messing around with my feet I started wearing shoes and socks again after that!

Thank you for reading my barefoot memoirs 😂🦶

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Walk around barefoot and you'll get calluses similar to what you want. The more shoes you wear, the fewer calluses you'll get.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Alternatively, line your shoes with sandpaper and toss some gravel in there

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Great way of deterring foor fungus, is to not have the skin to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

we use shoes, this keeps our feet from developing the callouses you see shoeless animals do.

this is a modern human thing, not a genetic human trait.

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

You have to walk... barefoot. My feet are messed up and I have some impressive callouses on the balls of my feet. They are a little better after surgery, but recovery sucked. Ultimately, your feet build up protection. Caking on mud probably helped. Animal skins, rudimentary sandals from various plants, and other natural resources could provide extra protection. Unfortunately, we have built an environment made for shoes and evolution is doing the rest. Walking on pavement is not great without shoes. Especially when it bakes. Walking on soil and grass feels a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Walking on some surfaces is downright pleasurable. Dewy morning grass or a dry hard packed dirt trail for instance

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

I'd argue it's not always comfortable for them. Consider how hot black pavement can get on a summer day. I never make my dog walk across a parking lot when it's been baking under a 100 degree sun. I carry him to a shaded area, at least.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Developmentally, our hands and feet are modifications of the same underlying genetic template, so they’re going to have similar morphology.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Same reasons kittens have pink beans for toes. They get roughed up and don't stay pink and cute

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I want beans too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Because we are primates, and none of our forest-dwelling ancestors had paws.

Humans developed footwear before we started walking long distances. We didn't evolve for it, we built tools that let us do things we couldn't do before.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Your feet are not suited for long distance travel because you wear shoes, just walk around a bit without them, you'll grow callouses

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We do, we gain and then but lose them in the womb. They're called volar pads

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

If that is your foot you should seek a doctor

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

The answer is evolution. Put shoes on dogs and in few hundred thousand years their paws will be like humans.

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