Public transport too. It really seems like every time a public service is privatised it goes to shit, almost as if for-profit motives aren't aligned to public interest.
Could be worse, I guess. I live in a "secular" democracy that essentially collects members fees for the Catholic and Lutheran churches (and only those two!) via the federal income tax.
In Germany, state-recognized churches collect taxes from their members in order to finance their activities as well as wages. Everyone who is a member of an officially recognized religious group automatically gets a percentage of their monthly wage taken from their paycheck. Usually, this amounts to around 9% of income tax — with the exception of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, where the church tax amounts to 8%.
For native Germans, church tax is often automatically collected. Many Germans are baptized at a young age and thereby become members of a particular church, which means they pay taxes to that church when they begin to earn income as an adult.
If you’re a foreigner moving to Germany, you can declare your affiliation to a church when you register at your local citizen’s office.
9%? That's absurd. Is there a way to remove yourself from this?
Sure: There is a third box "no confession" next to "Catholic" and "Protestant" on the form. You can check that and those 9% remain with the state instead.
German secularism has a few more peculiarities. Many charitable organizations e.g. running hospitals or institutions caring for the homeless, elderly, and disabled are in fact religious (Diakonie, Johanniter, Caritas, Stadtmission, ...). This has some unfortunate effects: They often hire people of Christian faith only, meaning atheists or adherents of other religions are mostly excluded at these organizations. There have also been cases of a doctor at a Christian-run hospital denying the abortion because of their faith -- despite abortion being legal here. However, much of the money these organizations receive is in fact public money, supposedly spent on serving the public. Another wrinkle is that Religious Law is used when it comes to e.g. prosecuting rape cases involving priests etc. Somehow, this separate system of law that doesn't really seem to work particularly well is accepted by the German state.
Just want to clarify: It is 9% of the income tax, not 9% of the income. Still too high, but not as absurd as some people may think after reading this incorrectly. I know some people who thought that it is 9% of the income although they were paying church tax for years...
Honestly I didn't realize that. That does make it a bit more reasonable but it's still a lot of the income tax. But the other explanations I've read sort of make it make sense. Churches were the original social services for the needy and Germany basically coopted the model into their tax system - rather than tearing down religious hospitals or making them private.
Definitely not how that works. All companies are taxed and they don't get any special representation outside lobbying that they were going to do either way and churches do in fact put a lot of the money they should have payed in taxes into lobbying.
No, but well-connected companies use regulatory capture to structure taxes as a burden on their competition.
Consider for a moment how churches would be taxed. Maybe they are taxed on their assets. That would disproportionately affect larger churches with valuable real estate holdings, like the Catholic and Mormon churches. Maybe the donations they receive are taxed. That disadvantages newer churches which don't have corporate investments or endowments. Tax land? Hurt cemeteries. Tax salaries? Favor Quaker meeting houses where there is no specific pastor.
Look, I don't think churches should be involved in politics. Any that donate to candidates or endorse a party should lose their tax exempt status, because they are no longer churches. But a blanket removal of all tax exemptions for religious organizations is a threat to religious freedom. It would allow the religious leaders in government to play favorites and pick winners, kind of like they do now already.
Tax code is applied by politicians. Do you really expect Christian Conservatives to fairly tax Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus at the same rates as their own churches? Freedom of Religion cannot exist when political leaders are able to tax competing religions into oblivion.
To some degree, agreed, but your original assertion is still wrong. Unless you count all the devoutly religious people in Congress, and they already have that representation.
What if I’m in my own home minding my own business and an attacker named Enola comes and waltzes right in my door and how do I protect my property then?? Some people smh
Well the waste of land part doesn't really matter much cause if we ever did need that land for other things, it's still there. It's not as though building a golf course makes that patch of land into an irradiated wasteland that can never be used for anything else again.
Golf is equivalent to licking an entire countryside so nobody else can use it. The only activity in human history that used more space for less people were the Apollo moon landings.
But in reality, military aerial drones are much more terrifying. It sounds like a sci-fi dystopia that a billionaire could type your name, press a kill button, and within a few minutes a drone locates and bombs you. But this tech has already existed for over a decade, and is being used by the US in the Middle East and North Africa.
Any individual possessing more than a lifetime's worth of money. Like after you have $30 million the rest goes into a bucket for everyone else to use. You can re-up from the bucket once you drop below mmmm a 5 year amount of money say $2 million. You can still amass bazillions of dollars, just not kajillions.
There is a subtle, but important, difference between letting people know your product exists or improved, and brainwashing people into buying your product.
Is a grocery saleman at the local saturday market allowed to shout about the sale he is doing on strawberries? Because that is also marketing.
I fully agree that the average advertisement you see on youtube is pure cancer. But what about an advertisement for an emergency fund for a disaster?
As usual with "where do you draw the line" questions, I suspect there's a reasonable way to do it, but I don't know what it is, and finding a good answer might take some work. It would be worth investigating if there was any possibility advertising would actually be reined in.
The only departement you don't really need, except your competitors have one, so now you need one too.
And the problem for me is not with a simple ad for the local grocery store. It's when they made a science out of influencing people and targeting specific groups and working on your subconscious.
I would like to think that I'm not affect by marketing. But the truth is that we all are being led by subtle marketing too, not just the obvious marketing.
So in a way, they affect the choices I make and I don't want anybody but me to make the choices.
Obviously marketing is not going away now. If anything, it will only get more intrusive and intense. I hate marketing...
After you hit a billion dollars, you should get a party and a nice trophy that says "You Won Capitalism!", and then you should start from scratch again.
Yeah, but don't you think they exaggerate some of the historical elements even a little? At one point, they used their unrealistically diverse artifact collection (with bobby-dazzlers made from everywhere except China) to promote the idea the ancient Romans discovered Canada (Rome was barely aware of even Iceland).
Uncured bacon doesn't exist. It's a lie. Uncured bacon is cured with celery nitrates and nitrites instead of synthetic nitrates and nitrites. It is all cured bacon.
And that's fine. If people want a more naturally cured bacon that tastes worse and has zero health benefits, and costs more, calling it "uncured" is still deceptive. It's also crowding out the actual bacon market on the low end.
Yes, American grocery stores sell a product called "uncured bacon." It's bacon cured with celery juice, which is a natural source of nitrates. You can also buy pork belly if you have the right butcher.
Sometimes my grocery store also has it, but in a specialty meats section. I didn't want to presume that every store would. I've heard good things about Costco but I don't live near enough to one to justify a membership.
I believe the bacon cured with celery nitrates actually has more nitrates than regular bacon as well, because it's not regulated like using regular nitrates.
So it's much worse for you than just eating normally cured bacon.
You're right, but that's the 'paradox'. Given our most pessimistic estimates for the chances of life we should have seen at least something that was a huge give away by now. Maybe better telescopes and observation methods will find them, we can get a spectrum from exoplanets. That's incredible; but so far all we see with our telescopes is more lifeless space. That doesn't mean they're not out there, it means our estimates are wrong. It probably means that we just don't understand what factors are required to create life very well and advanced life is incredibly rare.
Yeah, but we have like a billion years of "observation time" minimum, since there's every reason to think one of the alien species will be expansionistic. They're not here yet, blurry photos aside.
There is a very good chance that this is the first truly habitable era in milkyways history and species now active are truly the first in sensible distance.
Source? Like, sure, there probably wasn't enough heavy elements in the first few billion, but it only takes one planet to grow aliens, and aliens could colonise the whole galaxy in just a few million years, so you have to constrain things pretty tightly for us to be early at however many billion years in we are (the exact count is uncertain these days).
Well you can find this material usually with "we are the first"-solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
If dust and gas is too hot it can't form new stars. So star formation has it's own cycles. Too much new big stars and star formation halts for some time till things cool down. There are plenty of collisions in Milkyways early history that caused a star birth eras when there was very little heavy elements present. There is also probability that milkyway had an active center in early days that kept things nice and sterile.
Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with the argument. I'm not alone in being unconvinced, though. There's a lot of exoplanets, including rocky ones around very old stars. Honestly, I felt assuming just a billion years of potential alien arrival was conservative.
There is also probability that milkyway had an active center in early days that kept things nice and sterile.
I don't know enough about the radiation one of those galaxies produce to comment on whether it could be sterilising. A thick enough atmosphere can block pretty much anything, though.
they are fine. except the 4th. that should have been never existed.
I know lots of people hate the sequels, but they add to the story, it's another question they are... just action movies with a little bit of early 2000s cringe.
I understand that, but this reasoning as well don't really help on it at all. ruining something nice because "fuck you all" is just... I don't even know.
edit: I think Matrix could have been a great series, even with something main plot that the 4th one had. or a cartoon. I know lot of frenchise went downhill after taking this path, but it's something that would have fit nicely with Matrix.
I honestly appreciated some of the tongue in cheek self awareness of the 4th movie, but it was overall just another long series of action sequences. The first movie was a movie with mystery and a story to it beyond contrived excuses to use bullet time. The sequels are very low on substance. Not a big fan.
I agree 💯 Could not stand finish watching second movie and I can only imagine how bad were the other sequels. The original Matrix was pretty cool though
There's other lesser fuckery in different breeds, like shepherds having back legs that are too short. If we had been given breeding privileges as a species, we'd have definitely lost them.
Look for dogs that look like dogs, if you have a choice.
Cars. They are everywhere and are like cigarettes. Addictive, bad for our environment and bad for ourselves.
And we even try to keep using them as long as possible by switching to an electric version, just like cigarettes. "But it's electric, it can't be that bad!"
Humanity is not running to its doom, it's taking a car.
As a person that hates cars, I still have to disagree. For transportation of goods (like building materials) and in remote areas, they are sometimes the only efficient form of transport.
Change "cars" to "personal vehicle" and you've got a winner. We still want delivery drivers and taxis and such. What we want to do is avoid the use of a car when it's unnecessary, and that really leaves those who practice a trade/service and need to transport their tools. Heck, most could probably use a cargo bike.
Obviously just outlawing cars tomorrow would cause mass deaths around the world as society isn't equipped to deal with it, so what could we transition to?
My assumption is that you'd suggest public transport for all? But that wouldn't save us, as only about 1/4 of transport emissions come from cars, it'd just make us die a little slower.
Edit: if the next 5 people to downvote this could leave a reply it'd be appreciated. I try my best to do my bit for the environment but I depend on my car to participate in my local community given, and so I'd like to know what the ideal solution is? What should I be asking my representative to be voting for?
if you design a city with the assumption that people won't have cars, you can make it easier to bike and walk to most of the things you need. This kind of urban design is superior to the car centered urban design in that it's cheaper, healthier, safer, and more environmentaly friendly.
So which city are we going to tear down and rebuild first? And we have to come up with some new laws, like you can only own a home that's within walking/biking distance of your work.
We had a taste of a viable alternative, thanks to the pandemic. Remote work - it accomplishes most of what you propose without totally ditching private transportation. Maybe we should make that a law - business has to show that physical presence is required or they must allow employees to work remotely.
So which city are we going to tear down and rebuild first?
It's not a good idea to tear down a city and build a new one centraly planned. Don't be Bob Moses. We want gradual, community directed, increases to the density of cities, and we want to stop building new stroads.
We have to come up with some new laws like you can only own a home that's within walking/biking distance of your work.
That's a bad idea. We should just tweak the existing zoning laws to allow high density everywhere, and mandate it in some places.
[Remote work] accomplishes most of what you propose
I strongly disagree. The commute to and from work should not be the only transportation need in a healthy life. People should also visit shops, visit friends, and visit parks. These trips should not require a personal car. Not to mention the large (majority?) number of jobs that absolutely cannot be done remotely.
The pandemic did not cause large changes in uban design, and absolutely did not make streets safer for pedestrians, so I disagree that remote work accomplishes most of my goals.
What if you don't live in a city? We are country folk and operate a farm that feeds you city folks. Cities can't exist with out us back woods country folk. Our "car" works every day.
I'm talking about urban design. If you live on a farm, this doesn't apply to you. However, it does apply to the 98% of people in America who don't live on farms.
Nobody is suggesting that you put a light rail out to the local farm. The urban area will be urban and the rural area will be rural. Where work is needed is connecting up the suburbs and ensuring that you can get to your places of work/school/etc without driving. Some cities never deconstructed themselves for cars (see SF/NYC) and are doing well. Other cities (see Cincinnati, OKC, etc) have room to grow.
LOL nobody said that tomorrow they would be outlawed. People are saying that we can undo the damage that was caused by 70 years of Boomers and their parents who destroyed the world in the name of the open road and "freedom". It was an aberration and we'll be returning back to how things were prior.
My comment wasn't meant to suggest someone was making that argument - I was just setting the premise for my question.
I dont know why my genuine curiosity has triggered so many people...I was hoping for some rational suggestions that I could incorporate into my lifestyle.
As for going back to what it was like 70 years ago....I find it unlikely. There are a lot more people on the planet than there were back then and prosperity is broadly increasing...in reality we'll transition to more sustainable and healthy living which I think entails better urban planning and greater government action on pollution.
That's not what I said, it isn't 25% of all emissions, and I didn't say it wasn't worth it. I pointed out that the deaths from lack of cars without a plan would outweigh the lives saved by removing cars.
It absolutely is worth finding a way to remove cars in their current form. There are also far more effective things we can do, like eat less meat.
We've had standard stuff (injustices et. al), we've had edgy if understandable stuff (god/gods/religion/whatevs), so I think I'll instead go with an unhinged take that I (mostly) only say for the memes:
Dolphins. They're fucking assholes. And like. They are assholes in much the same way we humans are: They aren't thoughtless critters just following basic survival rules. They are higher-brained creatures that are intelligent enough to be capable of choosing between kindness and cruelty, and they are absolutely cruel in a lot of occasions.
Now you may be wondering "does that mean you also think humans should go", to which I say no, because I happen to be human. So of course I'm rooting for my own team. Dolphins are competition for the spot of "intelligent species that engages in cruelty" and so they gotta go.
Imperfect political and economic systems like our current version of capitalism and democracy. (Both could be better, or even replaced by something different which is better.)
Thats impossoble because a perfect systen depends on one's morals which differ from person to person. Whats a perfect system to you may be a bad system to me.
A perfect system would be able to deal with this. Of course, that's a purely ideological goal which probably wouldn't be reached in practise. But I think we could gain a lot on the road there.
Let me say it with a quote of Richard Dawkins on the example of the God from the old testament:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Well, I hope you did read The Bible by yourself to make these statements, rather than leaning only on Dawkins, who seems to seek for reasons to be an atheist. I also hope you did understand the context of what is written in Bible, relating to people's norms, God's treatment of those norms, history of nations, prophecies, etc. Besides, the same “Old Testament” God had sent His Son to the Earth to save humanity, rendering The New Testament and the doctrine of forgiveness, love, friendship, and being the better human being.
Did God instruct people to hate each other? Did He say "kill, murder, hate everyone, and destroy the world" or something like that? I thought He said the complete opposite. Like, love each other, don't kill, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't be envious, etc. What's so bad about all of it?
Also, we're talking about God, but you said "Gods". Why's that? What do you have against other gods or gods in general?
Why? Never heard of it but it seems similar to Tails. I'd rather use Tails than something I've never heard about, but is there anything inherently wrong with it?
So you're saying every company should be owned by a single person? If two people want to start a company, it should only belong to one person? That doesnt sound right to me...
Maybe it's more about the legal requirement for infinite profit due to being publicly traded. This has led to such fun things like, rising costs, planned obsolescence, the general enshitification of everything.
The laws says (indirectly) that management must work towards profit. It doesn't specify long term or short term profit, though, and in many cases investors show up specifically for slow but steady returns. There's plenty wrong with capitalism, but it's not pure nonsense. If it was, it'd be really easy to get rid of.
So many people have no idea how finance works, but still comment. It's too bad, because there's things that do deserve criticism, but fly under the radar as a result.
Injustice.
Heartlessness. Violence. “Utopia justifies any means” worldview. Schizophrenia, paranoia, and other mental disorders.
Traumatising pain. Misunderstandings. Nazism. Racism. Sadism. Masochism. Bullying. People turning into monsters in moral sense. Politicians turning into monsters in moral sense (a subpart of the above, but I thought I should specify it). Treachery. Thievery. Murders. War. True evil. Sinfulness. Original Sin.
I've already said it below, but I'll say it again:
Please love yourself. You are wonderful even beside you doing anything. If you're feeling guilty, then you should try to do something good to redeem it.
Agreed, but why not attach it to the side of town they're on, or at least give them a normal, full road like all the others if your going to bother the rail traffic?
I'm guessing it was a driveway originally, and crossed the tracks way back when that was no big deal, and became a public road later somehow. It's still cursed.
Please love yourself. You are wonderful even beside you doing anything. If you're feeling guilty, then you should try to do something good to redeem it.
I don't get the hate for kale. Never would buy it after decades of reading how horrid it is... Decided one day to try it and found it's actually refreshing and tasty, aside from the health benefits
I don't get the appeal at all. Many other perfectly good leafy vegetables. Eating kale is like accidentally chewing on some flimsy decorative plastic that fell into your meal. No thanks.
Not joking. It turns out that kale actually was predominantly an alternative to decorative plastic before grifters started pitching it as a "super food".
Altruistic behavior in social creatures improves the fitness of the group, and has positive evolutionary pressure. Strong, cohesive groups pass on their genes, so actually pretty probable!
On one hand, yes, absolutely; on the other hand, when the chips are down, we seem to choose violence over compassion and cooperation. Given how difficult living likely was in the distant past, I would have guessed that compassion would have died in the crib.
Thank you. I know of it, but haven't read it. I probably know a very superficial version of the argument, but I might find a full-length description of it more credible. Even so, it seems more fortunate than inevitable to me.
You saying that makes me think you either have never met true compassion or doubted every example of it whenever you did. Either way, it makes me regret your worldview. I hope you meet true compassion someday, the one which you'll not be able to doubt. Love and peace to you.
For-profit medical care.
Piggybacking for-profit prisons.
Public transport too. It really seems like every time a public service is privatised it goes to shit, almost as if for-profit motives aren't aligned to public interest.
For profit education
Cries in American
For-profit anything-necessary-for-survival
Tax exemption for religious organisations.
Could be worse, I guess. I live in a "secular" democracy that essentially collects members fees for the Catholic and Lutheran churches (and only those two!) via the federal income tax.
Knew it was DE before I saw the instance domain.
9%? That's absurd. Is there a way to remove yourself from this?
You can only resign from being part of the church, which many young people do once they see this on their first paycheck.
Sure: There is a third box "no confession" next to "Catholic" and "Protestant" on the form. You can check that and those 9% remain with the state instead.
German secularism has a few more peculiarities. Many charitable organizations e.g. running hospitals or institutions caring for the homeless, elderly, and disabled are in fact religious (Diakonie, Johanniter, Caritas, Stadtmission, ...). This has some unfortunate effects: They often hire people of Christian faith only, meaning atheists or adherents of other religions are mostly excluded at these organizations. There have also been cases of a doctor at a Christian-run hospital denying the abortion because of their faith -- despite abortion being legal here. However, much of the money these organizations receive is in fact public money, supposedly spent on serving the public. Another wrinkle is that Religious Law is used when it comes to e.g. prosecuting rape cases involving priests etc. Somehow, this separate system of law that doesn't really seem to work particularly well is accepted by the German state.
Just want to clarify: It is 9% of the income tax, not 9% of the income. Still too high, but not as absurd as some people may think after reading this incorrectly. I know some people who thought that it is 9% of the income although they were paying church tax for years...
Honestly I didn't realize that. That does make it a bit more reasonable but it's still a lot of the income tax. But the other explanations I've read sort of make it make sense. Churches were the original social services for the needy and Germany basically coopted the model into their tax system - rather than tearing down religious hospitals or making them private.
I get it, but it's also weird!
Or better yet, religious organizations.
Taxing religious organizations gives them official representation in government affairs which is just as bad, if not worse.
Definitely not how that works. All companies are taxed and they don't get any special representation outside lobbying that they were going to do either way and churches do in fact put a lot of the money they should have payed in taxes into lobbying.
You don't think certain companies get favorable treatment via tax code and lobbying?
I think certain companies don’t pay any taxes at all.
Lmao
Their paying taxes is not what gets them special treatment.
No, but well-connected companies use regulatory capture to structure taxes as a burden on their competition.
Consider for a moment how churches would be taxed. Maybe they are taxed on their assets. That would disproportionately affect larger churches with valuable real estate holdings, like the Catholic and Mormon churches. Maybe the donations they receive are taxed. That disadvantages newer churches which don't have corporate investments or endowments. Tax land? Hurt cemeteries. Tax salaries? Favor Quaker meeting houses where there is no specific pastor.
Look, I don't think churches should be involved in politics. Any that donate to candidates or endorse a party should lose their tax exempt status, because they are no longer churches. But a blanket removal of all tax exemptions for religious organizations is a threat to religious freedom. It would allow the religious leaders in government to play favorites and pick winners, kind of like they do now already.
yes, freedom of religion can only exist with in perpetuity tax free landownership
hahaha
Is that what I said?
Tax code is applied by politicians. Do you really expect Christian Conservatives to fairly tax Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus at the same rates as their own churches? Freedom of Religion cannot exist when political leaders are able to tax competing religions into oblivion.
To some degree, agreed, but your original assertion is still wrong. Unless you count all the devoutly religious people in Congress, and they already have that representation.
Not taxing them hasn't kept their fingers out of the American government.
Far from it.
Hell, the current speaker is trying to convince everyone that the government was always intended to be based on religious dogma.
Please elaborate...
Like, do you think McDonald's as a corporation gets to vote?
Do you think priests and preachers don't get to vote now?
I'm guessing the way its suppose to work is tax exemption means you should apolitical like a think tank lol
corporations given constitutional rights in the us like living people.
Like people but without also being subject to incarceration...
Billionaires
Since it wasn't said yet, nukes. No one needs them.
Who’s gonna stop the whales?
gotta nuke somethin'
¯\ _ (ツ) _ /¯
and somethingsomething asteroids?
CUE AEROSMITH... I DON'T WANT TO MISS A THING....
Liv Tyler is getting old and Aerosmith is geriatric.
We need a backup plan.
What if I’m in my own home minding my own business and an attacker named Enola comes and waltzes right in my door and how do I protect my property then?? Some people smh
A lot of these are things that we can improve
Here's one we can't: giraffes 🦒
an old meme:
Man I think the unbelievable part stays in the fact that that horse fucking flyies ...
Pegasus != Unicorn
Also, Pegasus was just the name of that particular flying horse. Not the name of the species.
The original baby Yoda
Wait wait what am I missing here ? Do unicorn fly ?
50,000 Square Foot Mansions. Such a waste.
I agree. How are you gonna make a mansion with just a square foot? Let alone 50,000 of them.
The U.S. Geological Survey's most recent water use data for Utah shows the state uses about 38 million gallons of water on golf courses per day.
PER FUCKING DAY.
Japan and the UAE have entered the chat
UAE is cheating since they outsourced it to the Netherlands to do their sea reclaiming for them.
Well the waste of land part doesn't really matter much cause if we ever did need that land for other things, it's still there. It's not as though building a golf course makes that patch of land into an irradiated wasteland that can never be used for anything else again.
Golf is equivalent to licking an entire countryside so nobody else can use it. The only activity in human history that used more space for less people were the Apollo moon landings.
TikTok
spez
Billionaires and Guinea Worm.
The good news is we are on the verge of eradicating Guinea Worm.
I’d like to add botflies. The whole removal process is nightmare fuel.
I had a professor in college who intentionally got infected by a bot fly to see what it was like. That's dedication.
I hope he got some kind of credit for it.
every tropical disease
elon musk
These Boston dynamics robot dogs
But in reality, military aerial drones are much more terrifying. It sounds like a sci-fi dystopia that a billionaire could type your name, press a kill button, and within a few minutes a drone locates and bombs you. But this tech has already existed for over a decade, and is being used by the US in the Middle East and North Africa.
I don't think you just type a name and set it to go. Someone is remotely piloting that drone.
For now, anyway.
Not me! Wikipedia lists 14 people with my first and just name just in the category of American politicians.
The 1%
Any individual possessing more than a lifetime's worth of money. Like after you have $30 million the rest goes into a bucket for everyone else to use. You can re-up from the bucket once you drop below mmmm a 5 year amount of money say $2 million. You can still amass bazillions of dollars, just not kajillions.
Poverty
Private/for profit prisons
Marketing
There is a subtle, but important, difference between letting people know your product exists or improved, and brainwashing people into buying your product.
Is a grocery saleman at the local saturday market allowed to shout about the sale he is doing on strawberries? Because that is also marketing.
I fully agree that the average advertisement you see on youtube is pure cancer. But what about an advertisement for an emergency fund for a disaster?
What about a sponsored video of a game?
Where do you draw the line?
As usual with "where do you draw the line" questions, I suspect there's a reasonable way to do it, but I don't know what it is, and finding a good answer might take some work. It would be worth investigating if there was any possibility advertising would actually be reined in.
The only departement you don't really need, except your competitors have one, so now you need one too.
And the problem for me is not with a simple ad for the local grocery store. It's when they made a science out of influencing people and targeting specific groups and working on your subconscious.
I would like to think that I'm not affect by marketing. But the truth is that we all are being led by subtle marketing too, not just the obvious marketing.
So in a way, they affect the choices I make and I don't want anybody but me to make the choices.
Obviously marketing is not going away now. If anything, it will only get more intrusive and intense. I hate marketing...
billionaires
After you hit a billion dollars, you should get a party and a nice trophy that says "You Won Capitalism!", and then you should start from scratch again.
New game+
"There's no such thing as an innocent billionaire."
America's Got Talent. For the past ten seasons, it's been as much a talent show as The Curse of Oak Island is a show about historical accuracy.
Wtf oak island is awesome
Yeah, but don't you think they exaggerate some of the historical elements even a little? At one point, they used their unrealistically diverse artifact collection (with bobby-dazzlers made from everywhere except China) to promote the idea the ancient Romans discovered Canada (Rome was barely aware of even Iceland).
Uncured bacon doesn't exist. It's a lie. Uncured bacon is cured with celery nitrates and nitrites instead of synthetic nitrates and nitrites. It is all cured bacon.
And that's fine. If people want a more naturally cured bacon that tastes worse and has zero health benefits, and costs more, calling it "uncured" is still deceptive. It's also crowding out the actual bacon market on the low end.
Canadian here. uncured bacon is pork belly. This is really a thing this cured "uncured" pork?
Yes, American grocery stores sell a product called "uncured bacon." It's bacon cured with celery juice, which is a natural source of nitrates. You can also buy pork belly if you have the right butcher.
Costco
Sometimes my grocery store also has it, but in a specialty meats section. I didn't want to presume that every store would. I've heard good things about Costco but I don't live near enough to one to justify a membership.
I am my own butcher and bacon maker. I didn't know this existed because I haven't purchased that slimy shit they call bacon for decades.
I don't think people are eating bacon for the health benefits
No, but people buy the "uncured" bacon because they think it is slightly less bad for them. It isn't.
I believe the bacon cured with celery nitrates actually has more nitrates than regular bacon as well, because it's not regulated like using regular nitrates.
So it's much worse for you than just eating normally cured bacon.
squints at the Fermi paradox
Umm life?
"Paradox" is a strong word when you sit on a speck of dust middle of nowhere and can barely see.
There should be life ahead of us and life behind us.
We can see about 10,000 other solar systems with our naked eyes.
We can see 217,000 with a pair of binoculars
5.3 million with a 3-in telescope
380 million with a 15-in telescope
I can't find the number for a 64 node earthwide radio telescope but If we were going to find life it would probably be with that.
You're right, but that's the 'paradox'. Given our most pessimistic estimates for the chances of life we should have seen at least something that was a huge give away by now. Maybe better telescopes and observation methods will find them, we can get a spectrum from exoplanets. That's incredible; but so far all we see with our telescopes is more lifeless space. That doesn't mean they're not out there, it means our estimates are wrong. It probably means that we just don't understand what factors are required to create life very well and advanced life is incredibly rare.
And yet. We wouldn't see ourselves from Alpha Centari unless there was deliberate directed transmission.
Yeah, but we have like a billion years of "observation time" minimum, since there's every reason to think one of the alien species will be expansionistic. They're not here yet, blurry photos aside.
There is a very good chance that this is the first truly habitable era in milkyways history and species now active are truly the first in sensible distance.
Source? Like, sure, there probably wasn't enough heavy elements in the first few billion, but it only takes one planet to grow aliens, and aliens could colonise the whole galaxy in just a few million years, so you have to constrain things pretty tightly for us to be early at however many billion years in we are (the exact count is uncertain these days).
Well you can find this material usually with "we are the first"-solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
If dust and gas is too hot it can't form new stars. So star formation has it's own cycles. Too much new big stars and star formation halts for some time till things cool down. There are plenty of collisions in Milkyways early history that caused a star birth eras when there was very little heavy elements present. There is also probability that milkyway had an active center in early days that kept things nice and sterile.
Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with the argument. I'm not alone in being unconvinced, though. There's a lot of exoplanets, including rocky ones around very old stars. Honestly, I felt assuming just a billion years of potential alien arrival was conservative.
Fairly unrelated to this discussion, but I'll link it because it's cool: there's a detectable echo of radiation from our galaxy being more active just a couple centuries ago, at least momentarily.
I don't know enough about the radiation one of those galaxies produce to comment on whether it could be sterilising. A thick enough atmosphere can block pretty much anything, though.
Republicans.
Influencers
The interstate highway we have on Oahu. It doesn’t even extend to other counties.
I think we should build a huge highway bridge to Hawaii
You have my support.
Perfect, we were hoping for volunteers. You swim out to the middle and hold your arms up....
wait, not like that
School lunch debt.
The Matrix sequels. All of them.
they are fine. except the 4th. that should have been never existed.
I know lots of people hate the sequels, but they add to the story, it's another question they are... just action movies with a little bit of early 2000s cringe.
Well, the 4th was a sequel to deliberately end all future sequels.
I understand that, but this reasoning as well don't really help on it at all. ruining something nice because "fuck you all" is just... I don't even know.
edit: I think Matrix could have been a great series, even with something main plot that the 4th one had. or a cartoon. I know lot of frenchise went downhill after taking this path, but it's something that would have fit nicely with Matrix.
I honestly appreciated some of the tongue in cheek self awareness of the 4th movie, but it was overall just another long series of action sequences. The first movie was a movie with mystery and a story to it beyond contrived excuses to use bullet time. The sequels are very low on substance. Not a big fan.
I agree 💯 Could not stand finish watching second movie and I can only imagine how bad were the other sequels. The original Matrix was pretty cool though
French bulldogs
Also pugs. Really just any animal bred to have a smooshed face
There's other lesser fuckery in different breeds, like shepherds having back legs that are too short. If we had been given breeding privileges as a species, we'd have definitely lost them.
Look for dogs that look like dogs, if you have a choice.
billionaires
for profit access to the internet
fox news
the turtle mcconnell
hospital advertising departments
religion, any. lets not discriminate
Fake chocolate flavors.
In the same vein but two completely different ends of the spectrum: Nestle and most American chocolate because it tastes gross
I have never heard of that. Is this something like Mockolate in that one Friends episode?
Cars. They are everywhere and are like cigarettes. Addictive, bad for our environment and bad for ourselves.
And we even try to keep using them as long as possible by switching to an electric version, just like cigarettes. "But it's electric, it can't be that bad!"
Humanity is not running to its doom, it's taking a car.
As a person that hates cars, I still have to disagree. For transportation of goods (like building materials) and in remote areas, they are sometimes the only efficient form of transport.
Obviously: fuck cars.
Change "cars" to "personal vehicle" and you've got a winner. We still want delivery drivers and taxis and such. What we want to do is avoid the use of a car when it's unnecessary, and that really leaves those who practice a trade/service and need to transport their tools. Heck, most could probably use a cargo bike.
Name one car-addicted person. Like, someone who has withdrawal symptoms.
Addiction can be psychological.
What would you use in place of cars?
Obviously just outlawing cars tomorrow would cause mass deaths around the world as society isn't equipped to deal with it, so what could we transition to?
My assumption is that you'd suggest public transport for all? But that wouldn't save us, as only about 1/4 of transport emissions come from cars, it'd just make us die a little slower.
Edit: if the next 5 people to downvote this could leave a reply it'd be appreciated. I try my best to do my bit for the environment but I depend on my car to participate in my local community given, and so I'd like to know what the ideal solution is? What should I be asking my representative to be voting for?
if you design a city with the assumption that people won't have cars, you can make it easier to bike and walk to most of the things you need. This kind of urban design is superior to the car centered urban design in that it's cheaper, healthier, safer, and more environmentaly friendly.
So which city are we going to tear down and rebuild first? And we have to come up with some new laws, like you can only own a home that's within walking/biking distance of your work.
We had a taste of a viable alternative, thanks to the pandemic. Remote work - it accomplishes most of what you propose without totally ditching private transportation. Maybe we should make that a law - business has to show that physical presence is required or they must allow employees to work remotely.
It's not a good idea to tear down a city and build a new one centraly planned. Don't be Bob Moses. We want gradual, community directed, increases to the density of cities, and we want to stop building new stroads.
That's a bad idea. We should just tweak the existing zoning laws to allow high density everywhere, and mandate it in some places.
I strongly disagree. The commute to and from work should not be the only transportation need in a healthy life. People should also visit shops, visit friends, and visit parks. These trips should not require a personal car. Not to mention the large (majority?) number of jobs that absolutely cannot be done remotely.
The pandemic did not cause large changes in uban design, and absolutely did not make streets safer for pedestrians, so I disagree that remote work accomplishes most of my goals.
What if you don't live in a city? We are country folk and operate a farm that feeds you city folks. Cities can't exist with out us back woods country folk. Our "car" works every day.
I'm talking about urban design. If you live on a farm, this doesn't apply to you. However, it does apply to the 98% of people in America who don't live on farms.
Actual country folk are less then 15% of the US. You are probably talking about Suburbs or Exurb dwellers, and those shouldn't exit.
If you want to say something shouldn't exist, you have to account for 100% of the people who rely on it.
Nobody is suggesting that you put a light rail out to the local farm. The urban area will be urban and the rural area will be rural. Where work is needed is connecting up the suburbs and ensuring that you can get to your places of work/school/etc without driving. Some cities never deconstructed themselves for cars (see SF/NYC) and are doing well. Other cities (see Cincinnati, OKC, etc) have room to grow.
singapore is doing this kind of city design already why can't others follow
So we just have to replace all the cities? Sounds easy enough.
Cities change over time. We should make sure those changes improve the city.
LOL nobody said that tomorrow they would be outlawed. People are saying that we can undo the damage that was caused by 70 years of Boomers and their parents who destroyed the world in the name of the open road and "freedom". It was an aberration and we'll be returning back to how things were prior.
My comment wasn't meant to suggest someone was making that argument - I was just setting the premise for my question.
I dont know why my genuine curiosity has triggered so many people...I was hoping for some rational suggestions that I could incorporate into my lifestyle.
As for going back to what it was like 70 years ago....I find it unlikely. There are a lot more people on the planet than there were back then and prosperity is broadly increasing...in reality we'll transition to more sustainable and healthy living which I think entails better urban planning and greater government action on pollution.
Read more carefully. They didn't say 25% of all emissions.
Thank you. The reading comprehension on this thread has been worrying...
That's not what I said, it isn't 25% of all emissions, and I didn't say it wasn't worth it. I pointed out that the deaths from lack of cars without a plan would outweigh the lives saved by removing cars.
It absolutely is worth finding a way to remove cars in their current form. There are also far more effective things we can do, like eat less meat.
Mosquitoes. Fuck mosquitoes.
We've had standard stuff (injustices et. al), we've had edgy if understandable stuff (god/gods/religion/whatevs), so I think I'll instead go with an unhinged take that I (mostly) only say for the memes:
You had me up till "please don't kill all the humans".
I mean, you can do that too if you're into it. But I'm rooting for my own team here.
Well based off your own argument, we're as bad as dolphins lol.
rich people who ruin things
Corrupt politicians
lol
Imperfect political and economic systems like our current version of capitalism and democracy. (Both could be better, or even replaced by something different which is better.)
Violence.
Judging without critical and unbiased thinking.
I'm curious how you propose we achieve a perfect political system without building on a series of imperfect ones?
In practise, we probably don't. But maybe we could speed up a lot of progress if we could remove some obstacles and think about it really carefully.
Thats impossoble because a perfect systen depends on one's morals which differ from person to person. Whats a perfect system to you may be a bad system to me.
A perfect system would be able to deal with this. Of course, that's a purely ideological goal which probably wouldn't be reached in practise. But I think we could gain a lot on the road there.
Injustice.
(Please clap.)
God.Gods.have you heard the good news?
I heard that there are people far in the north that claim that this is already the case, do you mean that?
yes
Which one?
Good point! I should rewrite it from God to Gods.
But why?
Let me say it with a quote of Richard Dawkins on the example of the God from the old testament:
Well, I hope you did read The Bible by yourself to make these statements, rather than leaning only on Dawkins, who seems to seek for reasons to be an atheist. I also hope you did understand the context of what is written in Bible, relating to people's norms, God's treatment of those norms, history of nations, prophecies, etc. Besides, the same “Old Testament” God had sent His Son to the Earth to save humanity, rendering The New Testament and the doctrine of forgiveness, love, friendship, and being the better human being.
Did God instruct people to hate each other? Did He say "kill, murder, hate everyone, and destroy the world" or something like that? I thought He said the complete opposite. Like, love each other, don't kill, don't steal, don't bear false witness, don't be envious, etc. What's so bad about all of it?
Also, we're talking about God, but you said "Gods". Why's that? What do you have against other gods or gods in general?
The thing is, God didn't say any of those things because he doesn't exist.
Okay. And, he doesn't exist because of... Why? What makes you think that?
Because no evidence for his/her existence has been presented.
So absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, did I get it right?
Why? Never heard of it but it seems similar to Tails. I'd rather use Tails than something I've never heard about, but is there anything inherently wrong with it?
10 mile long retail receipts!
Elon Musk
Shares / Stock
So you're saying every company should be owned by a single person? If two people want to start a company, it should only belong to one person? That doesnt sound right to me...
Maybe it's more about the legal requirement for infinite profit due to being publicly traded. This has led to such fun things like, rising costs, planned obsolescence, the general enshitification of everything.
The laws says (indirectly) that management must work towards profit. It doesn't specify long term or short term profit, though, and in many cases investors show up specifically for slow but steady returns. There's plenty wrong with capitalism, but it's not pure nonsense. If it was, it'd be really easy to get rid of.
So many people have no idea how finance works, but still comment. It's too bad, because there's things that do deserve criticism, but fly under the radar as a result.
Injustice. Heartlessness. Violence. “Utopia justifies any means” worldview. Schizophrenia, paranoia, and other mental disorders. Traumatising pain. Misunderstandings. Nazism. Racism. Sadism. Masochism. Bullying. People turning into monsters in moral sense. Politicians turning into monsters in moral sense (a subpart of the above, but I thought I should specify it). Treachery. Thievery. Murders. War. True evil. Sinfulness. Original Sin.
Capitalism
self aware matter
You're pretty nihilistic, bro.
Inflation
SFW or NSFW?
I like my balloons flat too.
me
I've already said it below, but I'll say it again:
Please love yourself. You are wonderful even beside you doing anything. If you're feeling guilty, then you should try to do something good to redeem it.
This one road in my town, that's only one lane somehow, and has it's own crossing across a busy railway line to reach a total of 3 houses.
Those 3 houses have a right to access a roadway just as much as you or I
Agreed, but why not attach it to the side of town they're on, or at least give them a normal, full road like all the others if your going to bother the rail traffic?
I'm guessing it was a driveway originally, and crossed the tracks way back when that was no big deal, and became a public road later somehow. It's still cursed.
me
Please love yourself. You are wonderful even beside you doing anything. If you're feeling guilty, then you should try to do something good to redeem it.
That's very kind of you to say, thank you. I hope you're doing well.
The same for you. Please be well, my friend.
same
Same as above.
Anything at all.
Legeraged buyouts
My penis
Rick Ashleys never going give you up
The idea that kale is edible food.
It's much more edible than a lot of other foods. You don't even have to cook it!
I don't get the hate for kale. Never would buy it after decades of reading how horrid it is... Decided one day to try it and found it's actually refreshing and tasty, aside from the health benefits
I don't get the appeal at all. Many other perfectly good leafy vegetables. Eating kale is like accidentally chewing on some flimsy decorative plastic that fell into your meal. No thanks.
Are you joking? It's one of the more flavorful brassicas.
Not joking. It turns out that kale actually was predominantly an alternative to decorative plastic before grifters started pitching it as a "super food".
You don't have to cook fruit and or alot of vegetables. Nuts berries plants and some meats and fish
Yup, and kale is one of the ones you don't, unlike, say, candlenuts.
Compassion. Its existence is most improbable.
That's probably not how you meant the question, but it's the meaning that comes to my mind.
Altruistic behavior in social creatures improves the fitness of the group, and has positive evolutionary pressure. Strong, cohesive groups pass on their genes, so actually pretty probable!
On one hand, yes, absolutely; on the other hand, when the chips are down, we seem to choose violence over compassion and cooperation. Given how difficult living likely was in the distant past, I would have guessed that compassion would have died in the crib.
Thank you. I know of it, but haven't read it. I probably know a very superficial version of the argument, but I might find a full-length description of it more credible. Even so, it seems more fortunate than inevitable to me.
You saying that makes me think you either have never met true compassion or doubted every example of it whenever you did. Either way, it makes me regret your worldview. I hope you meet true compassion someday, the one which you'll not be able to doubt. Love and peace to you.
Food banks