• föderal umdrehen@feddit.de
      10·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • defunct_punk@lemmy.world
      38·
      2 years ago

      Taxing religious organizations gives them official representation in government affairs which is just as bad, if not worse.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
        10·
        2 years ago

        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.

    • vivadanang@lemm.eeEnglish
      32·
      2 years ago

      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.

          • ZC3rr0r@lemmy.ca
            5·
            2 years ago

            UAE is cheating since they outsourced it to the Netherlands to do their sea reclaiming for them.

        • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          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.

    • YourFavouriteNPC@feddit.de
      17·
      2 years ago

      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.

  • VoilaChihuahua@lemmy.world
    332·
    2 years ago

    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.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    25·
    2 years ago

    A lot of these are things that we can improve

    Here’s one we can’t: giraffes 🦒

    an old meme:

    • Rednax@lemmy.world
      201·
      2 years ago

      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?

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        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.

    • MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee
      10·
      2 years ago

      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…

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
    22·
    2 years ago

    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.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 years ago

        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.

    • EssentialCoffee@midwest.socialEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      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.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
    222·
    2 years ago

    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.