Does anyone else feel like fireworks are a complete waste of money and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary Pollution?
300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.
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300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.
Yup, that could also be said about music, cinema and any other form of art/entertainment/distraction. It doesn't produce anything "useful", but again, what is "useful" varies from one person to another. Some would say the waste of money is the point. You blow fireworks because you can.
Ultimately nothing matters because there is no true meaning of life, so anything that pulls you away from the dark nothingness of existence is good to take.
I can't think of other art forms that blow off the hands of so many people, wake up my daughter in terror at 11PM, and make both dogs and veterans suffer for an extended period of time. I'm fine with the large group spectacle that is planned and controlled. What I can't stand is the widespread uncontrollable nonsense of just anyone buying them and setting them off at any hour on the 4th. Law enforcement can do absolutely nothing about it. I'm just gonna have to deal with it. I'm just surprised we haven't collectively shifted to something less harmful.
Not just dogs or other pets, but also farm and wild animals. And it may not only lead to suffering, but also lead to their deaths.
A local icecream place that also had goats and ducks was fucking setting them off right over the goat pen. They were sprinting from shelter to shelter inbetween explosions.
I don’t plan on going back there now. It’s a shame because it’s one of the better shops nearby.
Really?
Yep. With wild animals it may result in the running away in fear without thought and get lost or injured which may result in their death. This technically applies to all animals.
Another aspect which affects all is heart attack from the shock.
I guess ban vehicles of any sort, then. I'd imagine animals dying from fireworks are nearly 0. I'd imagine ones dead from traveling are a thousand an hour in the US.
Great whataboutism. I assume you mean roadkill? That makes one relatively small chance of directly affecting (not necessarily killing) one animal in wider area. One firework has pretty much guaranteed chance of affecting all animals in wide area.
The utility of the firework is also zero compared to a vehicle. In a vehicle you have a chancenof affecting the outcome of potential collision. You can drive more safely when the chance of encountering animals is higher.
And about the nearly 0 chance of death - I don'tbhave statistics but have some examples of pets dying due to shock. There was this village where fireworks got banned because every year a couple of horses died on New Years. A couple of years back there was really eye opening picture (I think from Rome) where a whole square was littered by dead pigeons morning after New Years.
And less not forgey the stress and suffering caused to countless others that don't die. Discounting them is like saying tortuting is ok because people usually survive it.
And if you don't care about animals, think about the PTSD of war veterans or other people living through war. Plus the polution and smoke is not good for the health, not mentioning the lost fingers that strain health care for that day.
Is a few pretty explosions really worth others suffering (especially when there are now ways to have light shows without or with considerably less negative effects)?
That's what I'm saying. One day we'll look back in amazement that we let the public buy fireworks willy-nilly. Even the "it was good enough for me!" crowd of angry old-timers will have to go "Well, yeah, people blowed they hands off. And it bothered my vet'ren son and the neighbor's dogs somethin fierce. They're alright. It's prolly fer the best."
Now, I fully admit later today I will be running around in a country field with my friends shooting bottle rockets at each other. But we won't be bothering SOMEONE ELSE, and that's my thing.
Except fireworks has literally been a part of civilization for 1,000 plus years, so I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
So have horses
One day we’ll look back in amazement that we let people have sex willy nilly and bond with whomever they like on a whim, forming friendships and families without central oversight.
But that doesn’t mean that future we’ll be looking back from in amazement won’t be a dystopian nightmare, or that our perspective won’t be warped by even more decades of infantilization.
As someone who generally is in favor of regulating dangerous things, fireworks are fine as-is. They're basically limited to one night a year, the damage is not very extreme, and the people getting hurt are by and large the people choosing to endanger themselves.
Do you understand why this is our way of celebrating Independence Day? Fireworks are a loud, visible, symbol and example of freedom from authority.
You mean freedom from british authority, we still have authority.
We also have the freedom to self govern. Laws are on the books to prevent firework usage in my state, it is simply ignored one night a year because it turns out mass lawbreaking is hard to handle. I don't have the right to conduct a parade in the middle of whichever street I want whenever I want. I participate in the social contract of sacrificing absolute freedom for mutual gain because I live in a country and am not a sovereign citizen claiming complete supremacy over all others. My taxes pay for a small and well moderated fireworks show at a designated location conducted by a local government for which I had a hand in voting for. My freedom is louder, collective, voted for, and more sensible. Not all freedom must be focused soley on the individual.
You make a good point. Which can also be made about any form of freedom as soon as it encroaches on someone else's comfort.
Ignoring the obvious nuance, a loud concert or a horror movie are also not something law enforcement will do anything against but it could terrorize people as well.
If a loud concert or horror movie popped up next door and rattled the houses of an entire neighborhood from 10pm to 2am, I'm pretty sure law enforcement would do something about it.
Did you miss the "Ignoring the obvious nuance" ?
Then what value does the comparison have if you nullify the main point of comparing them?
it would bother you that much even only being once a year? really?
that's wild
If only it were once a year. This year, people started on the 28th of fucking June, and didn't stop until the goddamn 6th.
If it actually was contained to the 4th, I would be fine with it, but getting woken up by an explosion every night at 1:30am for a week straight, it gets real old, real fast.
Ah. In my area it was like 3 days but I also don't get woken up by them so i can't really understand.
Yeah but none of them are anywhere near as ephemeral as a firework display.
That doesn't make them more/less worth it.
If your criteria for worthiness is persistence then is a nice looking meal as worth it as equally nutritious goop ?
Something like a sunset, a blizzard, or a thunderstorm are the more closely comparable natural equivalent. They're special because they're short-lived or rare.
A theater performance is equally ephemeral. Or a concert. Or meeting your favorite celebrity. Or a good meal.
It's a nihilist, Donny!
There's nothing to be afraid of.
Eh. Half of that 2.7 billion being put into research into a disease like Myalgic Enceph. (ME) could probably significantly improve the quality of life of 80 million people who have one of the worlds most disabling diseases.
Fireworks are a cool spectacle, imagine never seeing a fireworks show. Also the money isnt gone, its just changed hands.
They probably shouldnt be how they are now though, where every individual family wants to fire their own, thats a waste and really obnoxious when its in the middle of neighborhoods. Keep it to one centralized show, away from residential areas, and everyone gets to watch a bigger show.
3/4 of the fun is doing it yourself.
For you. Its obnoxious for others.
Technically it's 2.999.../4 of the fun
So technically 3 again?
I think I will fight that math forever. Getting infinitely closer does not count as actually getting there.
Completely agree!
Not with this though. A portion of the money has changed hands, the portion that goes to paying workers and investors. Another portion of the money was used to extract, refine, and process something that just burned up and no longer exists.
While money as an abstraction is made up, what it represents, the underlying value of society's resources, is not, and that is unfortunately finite. So it's also important to consider opportunity cost. That money could have been spent on other things, when you spend it on something wasteful and unnecessary that means it can't be spent on more useful or productive things.
All that being said, I still think fireworks are rad and worth it, but they are a waste.
Money was used to pay workers to extract, refine, and process resources. Absolutely none of the money is gone.
Wait, are we not supposed to tie $100 bills to our mortars?
Cost saving tip! Use $20 bills and cut your holiday expenses in half!
It’s just not the same…
The money itself? Sure. But that's not what people talk about when they talk about money, they are usually referring to what the money represents, i.e. resources, which were all burnt up and used to create that fire work when they could have gone to something else.
i.e. if we spent some huge proportion of our money on fireworks every year, we would still have the same amount of money on paper in the economy, but absolutely everything else would cost far more. From our actual lived perspective we would be poorer.
Thats just not how money works. We did spend a huge amount of our money on fireworks, things didnt become more expensive.
That is absolutely just how money works, if that same money had gone to say, healthcare companies instead of fireworks companies, we would have the same amount of paper money, and we wouldn't have fireworks, but we'd have lower healthcare costs since we already paid some of them.
You're bringing up a lot of examples that literally happen in reality and do not have the results you are claiming. Healthcare companies have been both steadily receiving more money and increasing their prices.
Assuming you're talking about American healthcare companies, thats because you have a broken nonsensical healthcare system filled with middlemen who will suck up profits.
That has nothing to do with the concept of opportunity cost. Pick a different industry, like agriculture / food then. If you spend $20 on food every month instead of fireworks, then feeding yourself the rest of the food you need is $20 cheaper.
That's like saying vacations or going to the movies are a waste. It's entertainment and it stays in part as a memory. By your argument the only thing you should purchase is a large decorative rock for the front yard, because it will last longer than you do.
Money isn't gone, resources are gone.
Money was literally invented to be an abstraction of resources. When people talk about money they usually mean resources.
My uncle came back from Vietnam with really bad PTSD (among other problems like alcoholism). Every fourth he would spend the whole day/night in the basement with the curtains drawn (to block out the flashes) and headphones on with the sound turned all the way up (to block out the sounds).
He would also take my cousins to buy fireworks every year.
I don't mean to minimize your struggle, I just thought the juxtaposition was interesting.
I hope you could work through your struggles. I'm happy to say he was able to. He was able to quit drinking and minimize the effects of his PTSD. By the end of his life he was out there watching us shoot off the fireworks.
Were you drafted?
edit: by the time I got to this comment, I was thinking of this thread as being about “Should fireworks be banned?”
I’d be very opposed to a volunteer soldier arguing people’s freedoms should be taken away on account of their PTSD. I’m not sorry about that.
But I am sorry that I didn’t read this carefully enough to notice this person wasn’t arguing for a ban at all. Just saying their opinion on fireworks.
The military is the only form of upward mobility for large swaths of the population, they are chewed up and spit out by the machine, after being indoctrinated in nationalist propaganda from the time they were able to form memories. Veterans are members of the Prolitariat and should be educated about the system that abused them, not mocked and rediculed for being a victim of it. Yes America has committed mass atrocities, but almost every service member who signed up was completely unaware of that at the time of their enlistment.
It’s not about atrocities at all. It’s a question of whether kids understand that they are signing up for a job that involves using explosives to kill people. It’s kinda hard ignore that aspect of what the military is, no matter how sheltered or propagandized one is. As the propaganda has grown, so has the ability of literally any child to google “what do militaries do?”
Being aware of the atrocities might require someone to have been paying attention at some point in school, but knowing that you’re gonna face bombs and killing in the military, that takes even less awareness.
Gotta tell ya: The atrocities and stress of war doesn't really seem real until you're hunkered down in a cab because the truck in front of you took an IED, to use just one scenario. I could throw a few more your way if you like.
Having said that, and here's the irony, not everyone in the military is "gonna face bombs and killing". There are huge swaths whose job it is to do anything under the sun that doesn't involve firing any form of weaponry. Chances are you'd have had to been paying attention at some point in school to know this, or something.
War is shit. The military has good and bad people, and often shit practices. For some people it's one of the only ways, in the U.S. at least, to stand even a fleeting chance of doing more than becoming a low-rung manager at Walmart.
Do people get to choose whether they face “bombs and shit” in the military? Like can a person say “I don’t want a position where I can get PTSD”?
Or, I’d have to be aware people can’t just check “No PTSD-inducing positions please”. Or if they can, they are signing up just as equally at the moment they either check or don’t check the box. My point stands. You get PTSD from military service, you signed up for it unless you were drafted.
Now whether an 18 year old is wise enough to be capable of making that decision is one and the same as their being capable of making the decision to join up. If you think an 18 year old is not old enough to sacrifice his mental health for his country, then why not argue to raise the recruiting age?
I’ve never held a managerial position. I don’t see myself as entitled to any particular level in the managerial command structure. I don’t think my rights are being violated without any kind of guaranteed path up to there.
I dunno man. I’ve got nothing but compassion and gratitude for vets. But you don't get to claim the shit is something that just happens to people. Adults join up, take an oath, stone cold sober.
Again, if you think those people aren’t old enough, I’d probably agree with you. I’d be all for raising the age to 30, if you wanted to push for that.
But for whatever age it is, that’s the age because ir’s the age at which it’s no longer a thing happening to someone.
Like if it was “military or die”, that’s a different thing. But if it’s “military or no upper management jobs for you” it just doesn’t move me.
And that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing we have a volunteer army. It’s good for everybody.
The human brain is really good at keeping two conflicting ideals "harmonized". I don't think it's much of a stretch to fall to the romanization of the military while also recognizing the killing part of it.
It's easy to fall to propaganda. Is it the recipients fault? Is it the sender of propagandas fault?
I would argue both to some degree, but mostly I will blame the sender because they are generally older and better at rational thinking when compared to younger people. (I'm grossly generalizing here. I know younger people who can think more critically than some older generations).
Summary: by the time they realize they don't want to be part of it, it's too late and they have to serve their time.
So if you blame the older men, would you raise the minimum recruiting age? If so, to what?
No. I don't that would be a good solution. Maybe create a law that the military has to give informed information. The intention would be to prevent propaganda in the first place. Then age or wisdom would be less impactful because education on the horrors of war would be more universal.
Dude have you seen an American public education?
America is the hero throughout all of history class.
You and I went to different history classes clearly
The long and the short of it is that we live in a society of different people who enjoy different things. Nearly everything is a trade off of some sort. Some people value the enjoyment they get from fireworks more than others. Some hate it. That is true of litterally everything. I strongly dislike the keeping of pets on anything smaller than a farm. But I don't tell people they shouldn't have pets. Being part of a society means living with a mix of things you like and don't. And the society determines what is so commonly disliked that it should be not allowed by the law. Now many will say the fireworks are illegal in a lot of places. Yes so is speeding. Our system has three parts, the laws, the enforcement, and the penalties. Enforcement of fireworks laws are often pretty lax, same with speeding. And the penalties are almost always purely monetary. So society has said it doesn't really care that much about fireworks. And the large number of people who use them and who show up to fireworks shows backs that up.
I have a dog who would agree. If he could speak English (he's from Mexico).
https://youtu.be/rLIXd9bzxGE?feature=shared
That's fucking hilarious. What is that from?
I'm old.
Anchorman
Ohhh. Well shit now I might watch that.
My girl only speaks limited English. She is currently in a panic attack and we're about 8 miles away from the fireworks. She agrees.
Honest question: have you considered getting him desensitized to the sound? It’s totally doable; hunters teach their dogs to not be afraid of the bang from their guns after all.
Highly unlikely. He was heavily abused and clearly has trauma, as any kind of sudden noise makes him jump.
Can't you say the same about virtually any form of entertainment? The electricity that runs the server you used to post this doesn't come from nowhere.
I don't think this is a fair comparison. Fireworks launch a lot of nanoparticles, metals, and other harmful chemicals in the sky and directly worsen air quality while many Lemmy servers (
lemmy.worldincluded) use renewable energy.I think a fairer comparison in entertainment would be sport. On paper it doesn't produce anything to better humanity, there's a ridiculous amount of fuel used by teams and fans to travel especially when it comes to something like a World Cup because it's on a global scale.
In reality, the world absolutely needs it because that's what people use to entertain themselves. People can't be mindless drones fucking about; they won't just read books all the time or go camping every day. There's something primal that just comes out when it comes to sport and most people can't live without it.
The materials to make the servers don't come from nowhere. And the processes to get those materials are often very polluting.
Bruh we dont have to blow up servers everytime we post and all the materials they are made of are valuable recyclable.
You would be surprised how often parts need to be replaced in a data center. There is a lot more than severs in there to make all this happen. Then you need the device to read it on, and the infrastructure to get the bits to you... a lot of plastic in all that which won't break down for a very line time too.
That's a good point
It’s a totally valid point. Both waste your time and money to distract for a brief moment. You can use all the renewables you want but in the end the consumer is the product and the product needs you to keep consuming it to justify its existence. We need pyrotechnics to excercise ghost as much as we need another season of that marveldisneyfox show to survive. Or the steam summersale to make us think we are saving money by buying more games. Unsub, unfollow, smash the bellbutton and block shit more often.
Fireworks are a celebration of peace. They’re made from the same ingredients as bullets but they make something beautiful instead of death. I’ve always found this a profoundly meaningful thing.
Unless you count birds that abandon their nests, and other animals that flee their homes. Or the heavy metals and other chemicals that are added to the environment. Or the significant increases in particulate matter in the air.
https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-fireworks/
"they make something beautiful instead of death" Agreed, but your neighbor's kid's fingers might not agree after that M-80
Waste of money? No more so than any other form of entertainment that is temporary.
Environmentally, yeah…they’re pretty bad. Air pollution is a big issue. Some birds get killed when they run into things because they can’t see very well after being scared off by the fireworks. Any large human event is environmentally bad, like a sporting event.
We generate literal tons of plastic and other human waste when we gather for mass entertainment.
Yeah but at the end of the day we're handing out explosives for people to play with, even kids. Just feels like it's not the best form of celebration.
Yes. Injury and fires are compounding factors, no denying that.
We already know sterile environments make people allergic.
I am actually concerned about what kind of behavioral “allergies” will arise from a society with no danger. It is not a natural state and it is not something we should be experimenting with lightly.
We already know what happens.
Anti-vax
Pro-war
Pro-authoritarianism
Anti-education
Etc.
Once you’ve divorced yourself completely from the dangers of watching family and people around you die from preventable diseases all the time, the horrors of actually having to live through your city destroyed and people you know be devastated by war, the crushing oppression and greed of authoritarian regimes, your education controlled specifically to prevent you from you getting any ideas about real freedoms, that’s what you get when you remove real danger from society.
But I think you probably meant something more mundane like kids will start making graffiti or something.
Well, I meant more like the dangers of nature.
Having your whole city get destroyed is an unnatural thing that comes with advanced civilization and armies. I’m totally fine with eliminating that kind of “danger” from the world.
But the danger of riding a motorcycle, or lighting firecrackers, climbing a tree, fighting a beaver, whatever, those are dangers on the level that we evolved to deal with.
Just like in the analogy with sterility, I’m fine with making environments free of bio weapons and meat industry goop full of mega bacteria and the kinds of biological threats that civilization itself creates. But getting rid of the base load of strange micro critters, that yes do pose some danger of sickness and even death, turns out to be taking it too far because it makes people more likely to have allergies and autoimmune problems.
Explosives are actually predictable. Way more predictable than people or animals, for instance. A person can protect themselves when handling explosives by being careful.
But these are just my theories about what the mechanism might be. At the higher level, by analogy it’s just there’s a system we have, that has evolved to protect us, but it’s evolved to learn from encounters with the thing it’s designed to protect us from. If you give ir no encounters, it goes haywire.
I don’t know what the mechanism might be exactly, but I worry our ability to navigate danger might itself be a system that can go haywire.
Ok, I follow. I think we’re already there. Plenty of people are doing stupid things that are dangerous, either out of ignorance, lack of forethought, or nowadays for clout on social media. Pretty sure people have been doing dumb things for a long time, but they were more lethal in the past.
Where’s your science in this?
No allergist or dermatologist I ever met would ever make that claim.
The results are from patient to patient. There’s a whole subset of sensitivities to chemical makeup of the food and another set of sensitivities to the environment the food was grown in. Food and products have dramatically changed and this also creates a lot of reactions. Mass production of food introduced a lot of irritants which we notice now. Then you have a subset of sensitivities that are entirely based on changes in the body with hormone. And then there’s family history.
There isn’t a standard answer with allergies.
Not a natural state? Lots of things humans do aren't natural. Hell you could say playing with explosives is not a natural state. Danger in the wild makes you survive and balance needs vs risk. There is no need to play with explosives and if you need to see a kid lose a few fingers to know that then you'll face many problems in life. I mean should we let kids play in traffic to learn about danger?
Okay so we generate literal tons of waste. There are also literally hundreds of millions of us, so “tons of waste” would happen if we gathered to eat brownies distributed on napkins.
Well that makes it all right then, doesn’t it?
Yep, typical what-about-ism
A local, professional display uses about 80lb of gunpowder (NEQ). When combusted this will produce about 40lb of CO2. To put this in context, most new internal combustion engines will produce about 190gm of CO2 per mile.
Therefore a single car would need to travel 88 miles to emit the equivalent amount of CO2 of your typical fireworks display. If you consider the a round trip distance for the entire audience to watch a single fireworks display, gunpowder is a fraction of the CO2 footprint.
The problem is pollution, not GHG emissions. Particles, NOx, Plastic debris...
On top of that your local fauna is not at all prepared for the nosie and light pollution.
Again, probably more particles, NOx, Plastic debris etc. from the audience.
Any football game with a flyover is multiple times more polluting.
i am quite certain that people do not emit particles or NOx like this. In particular nobody is just exhaling heavy metals.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240703-how-4-july-fireworks-pollute-the-air-and-might-damage-your-health
Here is a map for New Years in Germany with a nice slider. Particle concentration increases up to 1000x the base-value of that day (which already includes people setting off fireworks earlier)
https://gis.uba.de/website/silvester/
Unless it is normal for people at football games to ignite pyrotechniques, or they all smoke 5 packs of cigarettes each during the game, there is nothing that would make a comparable pollution.
I think he's talking about everyone driving to the game and idling in the parking lot in addition to the jets
Again looking at the map of Germany as well as the article from the BBC stating an increase of Microplastic by over 1000% compared to the baseline shows that fireworks are a very strong additional pollutant.
People in the US drive their cars all the time. During rush hour more cars are emitting in traffic jams than are driving to a football match. Yet we see these huge spikes in pollution when there is fireworks.
Think about it: Everything form a firewokr that does not turn into CO2 will stay dispersed in the air or fall down as debris. This is most of it, as the op pointed out himself the GHGs to be only a small part. Meanwhile for cars the vast vast vast majority of its emissions in quantitative terms are CO2 emissions, with particles, NOX and Microplastics being much less. They also pose a massive problem, but because of hundreds of millions of cars on the road every day.
Car tyres, naked flames, trash, waste disposal.
Yeah. I can't shoehorn heavy metals into this scenario. Soda cans?
Do people take their waste to a football match and burn it there?
Tailgate parties
This guy maths
Nice.
Now do the calculation that includes all of the direct suffering to humans, pets, and wild life, and then quantify all of the solid and liqueous waste associated with generation, transportation, and utilization, the latter including all of the waste associated with spectators attending the phenomenon.
What I think we'll all discover is that private transportation and the lack of robust recycling infrastructure and waste recovery the world over sucks. We should all do something about it.
Reddit forces me to use their app and Lemmy forces me to recognize the bad in everything. The internet is basically trash now.
Fireworks are like. 000000000000001% of a concern for GHG.
You shut down a coal plant for 1 days because you switched to solar temporarily and you probably offset the output.
Love them. There are tons on unnecessary things we do.
It's only a waste if you don't enjoy it. Just like some people think painting a bunch of nonsensical images is a waste of time and money but you might thoroughly enjoy it
I wouldn't say it's ridiculous if it's once a year. If we did it every night...yeah. But people spend more money on a lot dumber stuff, like expensive purses and giant luxury trucks.
I think they're amazing. The chemistry of colored flame has fascinated me since I was young, and there's nothing quite like being close to explosions. If I had more time and lived in the US I'd be a hobby pyrotechnician.
I hate fireworks and always have. I get people like them, but I wish they didn't go all night from every direction. If each area had a central park/spot where they did a big firework show for everyone for a little bit I wouldn't mind it as much, but now every street has they're own fireworks that go off randomly through the night.
Also something I don't think a lot of people think about. In my old neighborhood a lot of us had varying forms on PTSD and couldn't deal with the loud bangs. Holidays where fireworks were heavy were treated as a ceasefire/peace day for the most part since basically everyone who had been involved in a shooting was a mess, which was almost everyone. Others took the chance to disrespect that and use the fireworks as cover, they weren't treated well.
I'm sure most veterans feel the same or worse.
It's not just dogs who lose it at fireworks.
I'll disagree on the "most veterans" part. The people who I know who fire off the most and biggest fireworks are vets. They seem to be more comfortable around explosives, or just more used to it. I don't know which.
Sooo, what you really hate are your neighbors. Not the fireworks :D
Welcome to the misanthropy club. We have cookies. But we're not sharing.
I look forward to missing you at next months meeting.
Of course they are a waste of money, and the plastic packaging is incredibly bad for the environment. And they are fun and I will buy them again next year.
I like them. The big shows are a rare form of artistic expression. And even the stuff you can buy, is a form of fun you cannot get anywhere else.
Drone shows are boring. You can watch them on a screen and lose none of the experience. I mean, the first time you see it it's interesting, but then you remember it's just a bunch of drones, and your going to be stuck in traffic just so you can see a pixilated coke can or something. There's nothing unique or special about the experience I feel. Unlike fireworks, while they can look fine on a screen (if recorded properly) but you can see the difference on someone's face when you're there. You see it, feel it, and smell it. It makes sense why humans have been doing this for hundreds of years.
I think they're fun
I am not worried about their environmental impact, but I hate seeing my dog spending the evening shaking because of the explosions. Even sedatives aren't enough. If you could have fireworks without the big booms, I wouldn't care, but the big booms scare the shit out of a lot of animals.
What are your hobbies, OP?
I love animals. So I would agree with you. I do enjoy watching fireworks but it's not worth the suffering of innocence creatures.
Fire, explosions and bang sounds are fun. It gets old quick (I'm not a fan of firework shows), but I do enjoy lighting a small bunch of fireworks with some friends once a year or two.
Edit: I hear the argument for poor puppers, and I'm not saying I don't care about them, but I'm pointing out the argument that they're not just a complete waste of money/pollution
It hurts so many animals too.
Fireworks are a funny one because you're completely right and also not completely right I think. It's one of those unresolvable dichotomies of life where two opposing ideas are both true at the same time. I've often thought fireworks were the most obvious way to set fire to a lot of money that could be better used somewhere else. However, what is also true is that humans have a deep need to celebrate and to come together in large groups and have shared experiences. Fireworks are perfect for that. You can put a million people together and launch a massive firework display and they will all immediately connect with each other through the shared experience of going "Oooooohh" and "Aaaaaaahh" :) Fireworks are awesome and also, personally I feel they remind me that there are bigger things out there than the daily grind of existence.
Isn't that what parades are for?
There are other ways to get that. The universe is huge, look up on a quiet night with little light pollution.
Kinda. Parades are also for showing off nuclear warheads and how precisely your soldiers can march.
Fireworks are a more non centralized version of it. Everyone can participate in the fireworks, not just stand there and watch.
Also they burst in air, giving them better visibility than something that just flows down the street in front of you.
Don't we just stand there when we watch fireworks too 🤣
"Your existential fulfillment is wrong, do it my way instead."
It's a huge environmental hazard too.
But parades are boring
People need novelty in life, if it's there every day it's not special.
That's fair, I just think there are ways to get that besides blowing things up once a year, especially given that fireworks produce a lot of unnecessary waste and pollution in the environment.
I mean, I think it's good that people get to safely experience explosions, something most people probably wouldn't experience in their lives otherwise.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily safe, ERs are full of people who almost blew off their hand or other appendages around 4th of July.
Stairs are relatively safe, tens of thousands of people still die from them every year.
Only one of those things is completely optional.
Fair enough, but why does every single person need their own firework? That connection is conpletely lost then
I obviously can't speak for everyone, but whenever we do fireworks on the 4th or New Year's, it's with a group of a solid 15-30 people. I don't think we'd ever set off fireworks by ourselves
Yup, we have a solid 30 people put together a show. It catches on fire every year and it is awesome!
Every single person needs the opportunity to get their own firework and contribute. We’ve never had a rule like “everyone needs their own firework”.
Everyone needs the option. That is important. It’s not important that everyone takes it, but it’s important everyone is given the option.
I just don't get it. It terrifies people's pets, and the wildlife outside, it's incredibly noisy (meaning you can't get away from it if you live near someone doing it), and it produces tons of waste and pollution. Can't we just have a big BBQ like we do the rest of the year when we celebrate stuff?
Why is this important?
... you know that's not how money works right?
Yes they are. Somebody extracted the ressources. Somebody processed them into materials. Now someone put them together into the pyrotechniques and finally someone set it off.
All of this labor and capital usage went into creating a short display of pretty lights and bangs, of which afterwards nothing but smoke and memories remain. This is the purest consumption in the economic sense.
Compare that with people using that labor to produce cars instead. Those cars take years before needing renewal and they can be used productively, so they are investments in the economic sense.
Finally lets take clothes, while also consumption they address an immediate human need and are reuseable for some time, so while they are also consumption they are quite different form fireworks.
Food is also consumption. But without food people die, so this consumption directly contributes to keeping the value of the economy up by keeping the workforce alive.
As for the poo safely removing it in WWTPs also costs more money than what can be recovered in energy or hopefully phosphate in the near future. Also the capital investments are significant and as they age and need replacement this value is also gone.
However the alternative is people dying of Cholera and other shitty diseases en masse, so both the investments as well as the expenditures are well spent.
Just so we're clear for anybody else reading since they chose to ignore the easy refutation lol.
That the money is still present in the economy and provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of people in the supply chain both through sales, materials production, assembly, and labor, entertainment, and local economy boons from festivals.
I also wouldn't mind the 💩 talk lol.
What represents the value of money? What you can buy with it. What determines what you can buy with it? The total capital stock available and the services offered through labor.
This part of the capital stock is gone. Literally into smoke.
Money is not some abstract independent entity. Its value is directly linked to the real production of the real economy.
Yes, but the point of the person you responded to is that work for the sake of work is also a waste.
May as well all just suicide and mulch ourselves so we don't do anything without purpose.
Just to be clear, I was just saying that the point was ignored, not that I agree.
Although your response isn't good either, you can advocate for more efficiency so people get to do more rewarding work, such as arts and crafts. Part of these arts and crafts can also be fireworks.
I don't think the work that's done to create and use fireworks is without purpose, in the end it's a celebration and that's purpose in and of itself.
in this part of the world, we are blessed with stray dogs who are also protected by our supreme court. it's quite literally against the law, for example, to prohibit the feeding of strays by animal lovers.
i once saw one of them shudder and whine at the sound of fireworks. its tail scrunched under and it pissed itself in fear and confusion. its plaintive moans were drowned out by the incessant blasts of the "mala" crackers (a literal garland of 10,000 or so crackers strung out in sequence that goes on bursting for an hour or so). the poor thing just did not know what was happening and it became a shivering ball of anxiety until the blasts stopped.
anyone who sees an innocent animal suffer like that will never, ever, want to light a firecracker again.
I'm ok with professional firework shows.
I'm not ok for every kid in the neighborhood having access to little explosives.
A good compromise. When 20000 people have a great time watching a scheduled event that seems fair. Peeps can make preparations to participate or avoid.
Backyard rocketry is imo something to be celebrated, a bit less if it's just buying premade fireworks, but kids learning chemistry and engineering in an exciting way isn't bad- it also helps with developing a sense of responsibility when you will probably mess up and hurt yourself
i think fireworks are nice but they're to a large degree something from a different age and at this point we should only really be using smaller volcano-style ones, and like holy shit we have drone technology, why aren't drone displays standard in any vaguely populated area?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lnBmYAiduo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyEWcfn7rT0
look at this shit, it's so cool! can we please push for this to be the standard?
Good news then!
NPR: Why drone light shows are replacing traditional July 4th fireworks
What makes them “something from a different age”?
I definitely think they can and are often overdone. Where I'm from civilian fireworks use is very uncommon unless you're out in the sticks. So we get at most 2 municipal fireworks display per year, New year's eve and Canada day. New year's eve fireworks happen some years and don't others.
I personally love fireworks. The awe of the display is never lost upon me. I can see it becoming old if it's something you deal with all the time. That isn't an issue here though and I always step outside to watch them when a display is done locally.
My city had a drone show this year and it kinda sucked. I probably won't go again
I mean, yes and no. The festivals I visit and my gaming PC are also a complete waste of energy when you view it like that. I hate the dangerous situations we have every year in the Netherlands with fireworks. The heavy fireworks and loud bangs, the vandalism. But I'm okay with the people who send a lot of nice colourful fireworks into the sky around new year's eve, and the farmers with their loud "carbid" launchers.
It's like asking a texan to get rid of their monster truck. Sure they live with their parents and never use the truck for work. But it's just not gonna happen buddy.
They also scare the crap out of my dog, and cause a lot of accidents. Though, they can be beautiful...
I absolutely hate them. Birds die because of them, and they terrify my dog.
No, fireworks are cool and fun and people enjoy them.
For pollution, at least CO2, 300M lb is 136k metric tons. I didn't know the water to CO2 ratio for solid rocket motors, but I'd guess maybe half is CO2. Cars produce 1.5B tons of CO2 per year in the US, so the CO2 would be about equivalent to about 24 min of driving cars. That doesn't seem too unreasonable.
But maybe you were taking about the metals? I don't know how much of an issue those are.
Unfortunately this isn't complete combustion. There's a shit ton of PM and everything else. Ever go to a big show? They have to take pauses for the smoke to clear so that you can see the next batch.
You're concerned about the smoke rather than the CO2?
You do know that CO, SOx, NOx etc is worse that CO2 right?
Health wise, not global warming wise. The original post sounded like a global warming concern.
Acid rain ain't no problem huh.
Post said "unnecessary pollution".
That depends on a lot more factors for how dilute it gets. I didn't know how likely it is for the air currents to dilute the aluminum exhaust over a large enough area before it rains. Maybe someone could do some analysis, but I don't know how.
Everything is unnecessary. We could just off ourselves and there’d be no more pollution. The only reason our existence matter is the way we feel about it. Which is the same reason fireworks matter.
You shoud do a calculation and show the expected change in global temperature from a fireworks show.
That number is close to meaningless. Also don't ask others to do large amounts of research in a lemmy comment, it won't be accurate.
You could find it by coverting 70k ton CO2 into ppm and multiplying by climate sensitivity.
It's not worse, it's different. CO2 kills everything on earth but that takes a lot of it. The toxins you listed can give a community long term health issues without that much exposure. It's a local problem vs a global problem.
How many fireworks shows does it take to give someone long term health effects from the smoke?
The metals are a big thing. Breathing heavy metals is bad for people and animals.
The particulate matter, specifically heavy metals, go through the roof.
There's also a bunch of paperwork involved in removing those measurements from the pollution data sets with a rule that gives a pass for fireworks.
Sorry, completely off-topic, but your name keeps reminding me of rock-a-doodle. I know his name is completely different, but it has the same flow and a really similar sound. Chanticleer. Prounounced Chant Eclair, a french pun for "sing loud and clear".
Personally I think it's important to understand Co2 emissions aren't the only factors in the pollution of air quality. Like you mentioned, heavy metals are a big factor in climate (for example how private jets still use leaded fuel).
So many injuries and fires every year, aside from all the noise and pollution. My friend’s house (old farm) burned down because a firework landed on the roof :(
no i think they are beautiful
Does anyone else feel like adding salt to food is a complete waste of money?
Personally I hate them and I think they are more harm than good.
Let's do some clarification: I can appreciate the high in the sky fireworks, while I simply hate those you fire by hand in between the legs of other bystanders.
Overall I think they are dangerous and should not be freely sold, while keep doing the big ones in the sky.
But, honestly, a form of art that harms so many people and animals maybe should be banned after all.
The art of it has use. However I think drone shows would be an interesting replacement.
Are drones really less pollution than fireworks?
They’re not a replacement for fireworks.
Parent comment claims it would, so my questions refers to that.
Objectively yes.
Objectively, so you have some data to back it up? Do you have the comparative carbon footprint of those shows?
Yes, I do. Here you go champ.
No you don't, that's for fireworks, now we need the impact of drone shows to answer the problem. Would you have it?
Edit: I was wrong, it does mention drones.
Edit2: After proper reading. It only mentions it as an opening hypothesis in its conclusion. It does not quantify the impact of drones, which is what we need to understand if they are actually more eco-friendly.
My brother in christ, drones are all over that paper. Have you read an academic paper before? Do you know how to follow sources in papers? Tell you what, you go find some sources of your own and we can compare. Sitting back and saying "nuh uh" ain't gonna do it. Put up or shut up.
Ok, I got time to read it. Drones are only mentioned in one paragraph of the conclusion. Here it is:
The use of drones is an opening hypothesis, not the subject of the study. Impact of drones is not quantified, it is hypothesized to be lower. The linked papers that I have also checked also don't quantify the impact but similarly mention it as a potential eco-friendly alternative.
Would you have a different reading of this article?
My mistake, I read the abstract too fast and too late, let me read it and get back to you.
Lmao are you being serious or do you lack basic logic, drones are reusable and put off zero emissions, fireworks are not reusable and put off a shit ton of emissions.
Zero emission at use, not at fabrication, probably not when recharging and not as electronic waste at the end. Yes, I am being serious, considering only emission during usage is a very limited view of what carbon footprint is. A view that is often used by companies for green washing. Do you also believe electric cars are zero emissions? Considering full life, knowing which one emits more is not trivial.
And ignores the typical 20%-40% of energy lost to heat during charging for most batteries.
There are emissions in the production of fireworks as well. Drones can be recycled at the end of their life cycle, fireworks cannot be recycled. EVs ARE zero emission just like drones, they offset the emissions put out during their production after around 40k miles and are extremely energy efficient unlike combustible engines. An EV running on a coal fired electric grid puts off less emissions than a prius.
Absolutely, fireworks also have emission in their while life cycle, so let's get the data and compare. EVs are not zero emission and offsetting is not zeroing emission, it's just compensation, pollution is still being produced and if everyone does that we will not reduce it. In fact EVs sometimes have higher emissions than thermic card at fabrication, but it has been demonstrated that they emit less during their full lifecycle.
Please stop with such language, we had enough of it on every mainstream platform.
I genuinely call for civility here.
As per the substance, as already mentioned, the production and later disposal of drones does have ecological footprint that is very much not negligible.
How are fireworks better then?
I wasn't the one to claim that, and neither was the person who opposed you, from all I could see.
There's just not enough research/calculation done on drones vs. fireworks, and a lot has to be taken into consideration. How often are the drones used? Are they recycled at the end of life? Which materials are used in their production, and what is their source of energy? etc. etc.
The advantage of fireworks is that they are very simple and use little materials to produce, most of which are safe (but some are not great).
Drones, on the other hand, require a lot of lithium and cadmium, as well as other basic resources like metal/plastic, silicon etc., and some parts of their manufacturing involve high-end facilities that require a lot of resources to maintain correct conditions. All of this leads to high footprint of their manufacturing, and if you use such drone just a few times for some large-scale swarms and then forget about it for a while, this will get way less ecological than fireworks.
Don't get me wrong, the technology is good and drones can absolutely be a superior option. But this heavily depends on how they're used.
I am not saying they are better. I am questioning if they are. Please don't mistake my question as veiled disagreement, I am not a Xitter user. Someone claimed an objective opinion, and that supposed to have data and a study to back it, but there likely isn't any yet. I am open to the possibility, I just want to make sure it is actually more ecological. It is objectively demonstrated for electric cars vs thermic cars, for fireworks vs drone show, it probably isn't yet.
B-b-but they use batteries!!! Electricity bad! D:
/s
Batteries = genuinely bad.
Also, energy doesn't always come from clean sources, and even then, they do have footprint of their own.
Charging batteries typically loses 20%-40% of energy to heat.
Lol so?
I'm no expert, but this article covered what I expected: https://en.reset.org/drone-light-shows-could-provide-a-green-alternative-to-dangerous-and-polluting-traditional-fireworks/
Drones wouldn't scare the shit out of local wildlife and people's pets at the very least.
I was surprised and heartbroken to discover my neighborhood did that last night. It's not as good at all. Now I know to check, and go someplace with real fireworks.
They also cause fires, severely injure and kill people, trigger people with PTSD, frighten animals and disrupt local wildlife.
Fireworks are art. Art isn't inherently wasteful.
Bread and circus, boys, bread and circus.
As someone who grew up in a country where fireworks are legal and used on every festivity, they suck if you are a baby, a dog or not the one lighting the up.
If it weren't for fireworks, we wouldn't have funny stories about dumb people shoving them in their ass cracks, setting them on fire and cauterizing their buttocks.
Yes, I wholeheartedly think this
I agree that they've moved into the territory of mostly annoying, but getting rid of the fireworks is unlikely to reduce the cost of celebrations. they'll just be replaced with equally expensive drone shows and the like
less environmentally damaging and less harmful to wildlife. Sounds like a great idea
Several other people feel this way and you're all wrong. Is good food wasted because after you eat it it's gone? Are vacations stupid because once it's over nothing has materially changed? No? So why are fireworks pointless simply because they're temporary?
The major difference between fireworks and those other examples, is that fireworks directly affect others around you. In my city, people go out and buy the big fireworks that are illegal here because they go into the sky and make lots of sparks and they shoot them off in the city. Fireworks majorly affect all the animals in a pretty wide radius. Which is why I hate them, because the people have no respect for how much they are traumatizing the animals or how much they are affecting their neighbors. And don't forget they are a fire hazard.
This becomes more of an argument about peoples' irresponsible use of fireworks rather just the use of fireworks at this point.
To be fair, my dog is equally scared of thunder and the jets from a nearby Airforce base. But I agree they're a pretty unnecessary addition.
Sounds like neighbor problem, not a firework one
But.. muh freedum
I'm not totally against fireworks. As others have mentioned, sometimes we do need to just have some fun and not worry about the consequences. But they should be done far from residential area, so that unwilling people (e.g. vets, children, or pets) aren't disturbed. (Honestly though, I wish we didn't have any vets with PTSD, that's the worse problem. As long as we still have wars, I'd say let the people have some fun.)
I think a big part of it is that they're dangerous. It's fun to experience just a tinge of fear from how big they sound, or even just from being near the little street versions. It's a (relatively) safe way for us to experience something that would otherwise be terror inducing explosives.
I mean, safe aside from all the accidents that happen every year. Like kids blowing off fingers or what have you. I mean I get it, but having any random Joe be able to buy a ton of explosives then go home, drink, and play with them seems needlessly risky. Especially in dry areas where fires can start or around large groups of people.
Yes. Fireworks are not as safe as pillows. They’re … relatively safe.
That's a false equivalency.
They are explosives. They are less safe than most sports, movies, video games, concerts, tons of things. This is like saying "yes, doing knife throwing tricks at people is less safe than pillows". Of course it is, what bar are you setting. Come on, fireworks are literally playing with explosives. Children and drunk people alike.
They're safe relative to other explosives like bombs.
And way less safe than not playing with explosives at all.
You gain brief enjoyment at the risk of fires and injuries. This makes no sense.
It's almost like our collective experience is so boring and gloomy and so stressful for our little bodies and brains that we as a species are prone to mercurial outbursts where we act recklessly as a way to prove our existence to ourselves
And you’re in your 60s or something, wise with age and experience? You’ve at least got half a century under your belt I hope, to criticize the concept of traditions generally?
In many fireworks displays such as the London new year ones there are drone displays incorporated.
Yes.
A community of ultra redditors must of course be the fun police :(
I think people should get to do them! I don’t enjoy them, but whatever. If we could make louder noises, flashes and colors with environmentally friendly fireworks, that’d be awesome. I think the noise, flash and color of fireworks is what other people enjoy, but we all suffer the poor air quality afterwards. So I just want something that will make other people get what they want out of fireworks while not damaging the air quality
Nah friend, I spend time, bandwidth, electricity, etc., talking to strangers and morons on the internet, fireworks give me much more bang for my buck.
Backyard fireworks, yes. Professionally done fireworks at a planned place and time, no.
Professionally done fireworks are usually pretty amazing and fun to watch. They usually happen right around 9pm and last 15-30 minutes.
Backyard fireworks in dense neighborhoods are pretty fucking lame. One mortar every 30 seconds is not the spectacle you think it is. And it typically goes on for hours in my neighborhood. It terrifies dogs and is completely unpredictable. Maybe if everyone agreed to light everything they had between 9 and 9:30 it would be more impressive and less annoying, but that’ll never happen because “muh freedom” or something lol
Asceticism is a dead end.
100% Thats why there is thr Middle Way.
As a middle path I propose we let people buy fireworks on a free market. That way they’re there, but nobody is forced to set them off.
And this "everyone" thing is a straw man.
If everyone in my neighborhood alone set them off, it would be thousands of people doing this in an area about 0.5 Sq mile/1.29 Sq km/129 ha.
As is, it's about 20. And even that is quite entertaining.
Same goes for all american flags.
They're worth it when it's a sanctioned display, and they've spent enough money to make it worthwhile.
I'll never understand why people set them off in their own garden. Fireworks aren't cheap, and unless you spend some proper money you're basically just setting off fireworks for a dick-swinging contest with your neighbourhood.
Honestly I just don't care about them anymore, they are all basically visually the same, once I've seen one professional fireworks show it starts to feel like I've seen them all. It's loud as fuck too, it hurts my ears more than it used to, I just stayed in yesterday.
Fireworks are a complete waste of other people’s money. Besides the regular fireworks show (taxes), I like watching people’s money go up in smoke. It’s fun!
Yes. They only exist for brainless people who think blowing useless things up, annoying neighbors, scaring pets, and waking sleeping babies is fun.
here and there are fine, I think sometimes they have their place but I'm really not a fan. the noise bothers me and I hate that people shoot them off to celebrate the same veterans that suffer ptsd during firework shows. I hope some communities start to move to drone shows in the future. https://youtu.be/pZ-zJ0Vq0FU Much quieter and leaves way more room to switch it up year to year.
Yep
I don't like the loud noises, the smoke, or the debris leftover.
Maybe 200 years ago they were impressive. All the color and whatnot up in the sky. But we live in a modern age. We have things way more entertaining than colorful explosions that don't have such immediate drawbacks.
It's also supremely annoying and like a microcosm of everything wrong with humanity that some folks will be like "I don't like them for a set of valid reasons" and a bunch of people will be like "but I like them so I don't see the problem and won't stop"
Well yeah, when it's 2-3 days a year it just makes me want to say "Womp Womp" about the complaints. Not everything has to be something you like
So you're lacking in empathy. Acknowledging something is an important first step.
I imagine that if you had a dog you wouldn't be "womp womp" about torturing it two or three times a year.
Or if you had a friend with PTSD, you wouldn't go out of your way to aggravate that a couple times a year.
Certainly not for an extremely mild form of entertainment.
These were not the arguments you presented. Those arguments I am more empathetic to. You said:
To which I want to say "Womp Womp"
People don't like the loud noises because they terrify their dog or trigger PTSD.
That's not as simple as not liking it, that's having a specific complaint. Which wasn't what was said
You are technically correct in that my language was imprecise and I haven't made the clearest, most well organized, argument here. Probably because this exchange has been ongoing over a couple days.
Regardless, if one side was like "That's really annoying to me, could you not please?" responding with "womp womp" is extremely rude and selfish.
On top of that, fireworks give people "genuine" problems on top of simply not liking it
In summary: Fireworks upset people for reasons ranging from "I just don't like loud noises" all the way through "they're basically torture for my dog". When people are like, "I don't care I'm gonna do it anyway," that's garbage behavior.
It is narcissistic of me to assume something annoying me should influence the behavior of strangers, and get them to stop doing something. A lot of things annoy me, and I'm all for criticizing and complaining about them(I do that a lot)- but someone not caring about my complaints and continuing to do what they enjoy is their right, and they aren't a bad person for not caring that it annoys me.
I'm sensitive to smells, we all recognize how unreasonable it would be for me to demand my neighbors don't smoke weed because it bothers me at home, or I can smell cigarettes on the bus. Similarly, yes demanding people stop doing something they enjoy with their family because you have to wear headphones for a couple hours once or twice a year is something that I want to say "Womp womp" to
So you consider it to be “everything wrong with humanity” that people can’t just snap their fingers and stop other people from doing things? That one person’s concerns don’t equal another person’s lifestyle change, and that’s the dark side of humanity?
It actually kinda sounds like you’re saying freedom, as a phenomenon, is what’s wrong with humanity.
If you look at it one way, “freedom” is a word for the concept that “A person’s reasons are always legitimate”.
So really, some people claimed legitimate reasons for stopping others from using fireworks, and other people claimed legitimate reasons for saying no thank you and continuing.
No, the thing that's wrong with humanity is having someone say "hey this thing that's not a big deal for you (fireworks) really sucks for me (PTSD, pollution, it frightens my dog, etc). Can you refrain?" and people go "nah. I don't care about you. I wanna see some pretty lights"
What are these legitimate reasons for fireworks?
They're entertaining, special, and impressive
Drone displays are increasingly popular.
He's one: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LLhkrj1HDNo
The average number of drones for a Sky Elements performance is 300 typically costing $45,000 all included. Though costs have been dropping, they're still usually higher than for a large fireworks production, which averages about $1,000 a minute and usually lasts about 20 minutes.
but the volcanoes do more damg tho
Just the noise here. Dont see any pretty sky lights
I dislike when they're used to excess
I agree and have felt this way for a long time, and is why I have not taken part in firework displays nor been interested in them for years.
It just seems like an excuse to pollute the air on a massive scale, beyond other issues. I would much rather see drone shows today than fireworks.
Yeah, it's a silly tradition. But old habits die hard and traditions like this die even harder.
Yes, they should be replaced by drones or LED light shows
I agree for a multitude of reasons but I much prefer the drone shows. They look much cooler.
Careful, soon there will be Russians having their PTSD triggered by the sound of a drone.
It's not really pollution since the materials at the end are trace minerals necessary for biological processes. But the fire hazard is going to get them banned some day soon. Maybe they should move the 4th of July to February or March. You know, one of those wet months.
Not sure if art good or just lights up
Hey, most of us drive about in small, fuel-efficient cars the whole year
Ban our fireworks once you ban your millions of tiny-penis trucks!
Oh yeah because you just know the people calling for ending fireworks because they’re “messy and loud, ick”, are the people driving around in big trucks.
Oh yeah because you just know the people that enjoy them despite them being messy and loud are the ones running about in tiny-penis trucks
I agree completely. I could see an argument for one instance that is shown globally via screens or whatnot as each year passes, but other than that it is such an enormous amount of unnecessary wastage.
And noise pollution
Bring back the drones! They were way cooler.
No.
Nothing good about 'em!
Yeah I don't care for them. Had fun when I was a kid but that was before we all had computers in our pocket.
Actually Cities generally do not consolidate funds to have big enough shows, just a bunch of tiny embarrassing shitty shows.
I agree with the waste of money, I like them but they are far too expensive to be worth it.
as for the environmental impact, I don't really care, there are far worse things that people could be focusing on environmental wise instead of things that help bring joy in this already gloom world. I would prefer efforts be wasted on that then wasted on trying to ruin others fun.
No
They’re just used by people that hate birds and/or war vets
Not only that, but they seriously freak me (and like a bunch of animals) out. Not to mention everytime they go off, even on 'murica day, someone thinks it's a gun. At least where Ive lived.
Firework is usually used by assholes.
Jesus fucking christ when will you babies get over this concept the world has to be perfect.
Yeah, humans pollute. It sucks, but not as much as not existing sucks, so maybe our stinky parts are just part of the deal.
Fireworks are fun. Fireworks are pretty.
You are aware that pollution could easily lead to a futute where humans are not able to exist on this planet right?
A lot of song birds with their heads blown open by fireworks lay around this forested neighborhood after every 4th of July and New Years.
For freedom, I guess.
This is only likely in areas where large numbers of birds are nesting or roosting.
From the first Google result I got, per "Dr. Kevin McGowan, senior course developer and instructor for The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Bird Academy":
Wow. Much American. Literally only country that fireworks.....