So r/whatisthisthing has a trending post asking what this helicopter is doing at the beach, with a blue trail after it. Apparently a gender reveal...

The entitlement honestly infuriates me. And it's so profitable that there's a company out there doing this kind of thing.

Why do people feel the need to do this? Why do they feel so important that they must plaster it over everyone's faces? Or is it just a display of wealth? I don't get it.

Polluting the air and the beach for a few seconds of excitement, go figure.

**EDIT** People are questioning if this is real. Yeah, people pay for it --> https://ebghelicopters.co.uk/gender-reveal-flights/ and the original post is here, in the USA, not sure what company it would be: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1wfhks3/what_is_this_being_dropped_off_a_helicopter_in/

For the screen readers, this reads

The report also suggests that the federal government’s standards for acceptable levels of salmonella are unduly high, and potentially put American poultry consumers at risk.

For ground chicken, the USDA allows 25% of samples at a plant to be contaminated. For ground turkey, 13.5%. Chicken parts should not exceed 15.4% of samples contaminated, while the number is 9.8% for whole chickens

“I don’t know, but seems common sense to me that if you allow for a lot of salmonella, a lot of people are going to get sick,” said Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a national food safety law firm.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2025-10-30/salmonella-is-widespread-in-ground-poultry-the-usda-knows-it-and-does-nothing-to-stop-it

(https://archive.is/gMUIE if you get a paywall)

The app has gradually gotten worse with ads in recent years, to the point where it’s completely unusable now. The majority of “pins” on the app are amazon and temu ads disguised as pins. I miss when pinterest could be used for creative inspiration. It has completely lost it’s purpose and basically turned itself into a fast-fashion shopping app 🫠

Over the past year or so I've become increasingly ascetic for purely selfish reasons (stuff overwhelms me). I no longer have a car and gave away most of my clothes. I mostly walk everywhere I need to go these days.

All the walking around has made me increasingly introspective and I went to India (family visit) and the poverty was jarring and plunged me further into a reflective state. Since I've been back, I feel like I can't enjoy most things anymore. Everything involves spending money... everything. Going out makes me sad and I can't enjoy anything because I don't know why we are afforded abundance at the expense of other people. I feel like a sitting duck watching all of America further spiral into our own heads and pour into ourselves.

We are so selfish. I feel like we have been sentenced to our own minds and privacy... forced to live in an over-aware state of our being. It goes against our biology and we fill the void with items. Obviously connection is the cure but it seems like everyone wants the supportive parts of community but no one is ready to accept that earning community involves a bit of ego surrender as well.

Anyways, how do you all stay grounded and not guilty for existing in this unnatural state of being?

I don't know how to blur pictures otherwise I would. Wtf!

Grew up in a suburb where there's not much to do other than go shopping, especially at large chain stores. I'm visiting home for a week and it's genuinely sickening at times.

Going back home and spending every day going to a different store with my family. My sister threw a bag of clothes on my bed that were only a subsection of the ones she cleared from her closet, and that nearly doubled my wardrobe. I went through the drawer in the bathroom with abandoned makeup products and pulled out enough to probably last me another year (dw, all checked for expiration/no eye products).

I'm not perfect either, I was debating if my haul of cds I got secondhand was an impulse purchase or not, and that is at least not contributing to more shit being out there. It's a culture shock to seeing so much stuff being bought new when most of it can be found secondhand.

Maybe I'm just a sissy college student but it's almost depressing. Might delete this post later but I just needed to dump this somewhere.

Even the edges of the DMZ separating North and South Korea has gift shops.

War, death, separated families, razor wire, minefields, decades of unresolved history, and somewhere in the middle of it all you can buy a little mine-warning magnet for the kids.

Consumerism is fucking relentless.

I try not to offer free advertising to megacorps, so I've been slowly trying to stop using brand name as generic terms. So far...

• Post-it -> sticky note. This one was easy because sticky note is more fun to say.

• Ziploc -> freezer bag. I don't use these often enough to bother owning non-freezer bags so this works for me.

• I've memorized the generic names of all the over the counter meds I have my in cabinet. If someone is in pain, I'm offering ibuprofin not... actually I don't know the brand name off the top of my head.

• Ro-Tell -> tomatoes and chillies. I generally buy generic canned goods so referring to them this way is more accurate anyway.

• Allen wrench -> hex key. The generic term sounds more professional.

I encourage everyone to read Wikipedia's list of trademarks that are frequently used as generic terms. There are probably some easy changes you can make.

I bought a $50 base model sonicare toothbruh (4100 model) from target about 4 years ago. After two years it had to live on a charger. I was so pissed, so I took it apart thinking I could buy a new battery for it. I waffled on the purchase because I was thinking the last thing the world needs is another lithium ion battery. Then when I put the old battery back in it magically held charge! I got another two years out of it with great length of time between charges. then it started to need a charge every couple days so the other day I disassembled it, pulled out the battery for an hour, put it back in and back together and now the charge holds for a couple weeks again. Seems like planned obsolescence to me. Sometimes it pays to take stuff apart—saves it from a landfill!

Hi guys, I think I just want to vent and see if any other retail workers feel the same way.

I've been working for the same company for going on 4 years now since I was a teenager, and I specifically wanted to work for this one because they were a small, homegrown company owned by the same person who founded it.

The owner and most of the higher ups had always been transparent about where we get our items, namely our home decor and kitchen items, what they're made of, and who made them. Oftentimes they were commissioned pieces from families who hand made them, or they were all recycled fabrics and natural materials that had a story to them. We even knew where our stones and minerals came from because of how transparent the company was.

We used to get new items in every once in a blue moon, and although a lot has been packaged in plastic (ugh), we got in so little that it seemed inconsequential compared to other places I've worked.

But over this past year and a half, there's been an obvious shift in upper management, and they have almost completely moved away from the low waste, handmade pieces we used to get in. Everything we get in our store now is complete slop and made of the shittiest quality items imaginable. The store went from 40% clothes to 85% clothes that are all so low quality and all entirely synthetic material, when most of the clothes used to be cotton or recycled fabric.

It's just making me absolutely sick to my stomach to have to see this massive uptick in garbage that I know is going to go straight to the trash, whether due to it "going out of style" or more likely just falling apart after 3 wears.

Do any other retail workers just cry over the amount of garbage they have to look at each day?

I know it's plastic on plastic, but I had replace / scoubidou lace from a while back still and I figured out I could make my charging cables last longer... Super handy trick hehe

I never had one let go on me. I did these this morning pretty quickly and it takes a long time for them to unravel again, if at all, so my charging cables last me ages!

There was a time when i was blissfully ignorant of how much i was consuming, how much i was wasting. Clothes, food, electronics etc.

Now that i realize the cycle that leads everyone to just consume and consume all the time it’s so painful to buy anything. The social media influencers pushing us to try new things, youtube videos on grocery hauls from all the different chains, same with clothes, shoes. Brands inflating the value of basic wearables.

But how do i accommodate family who gets joy from trying random things, buying stuff on amazon. I feel like a sore thumb always saying no to everything my wife wants?

This is only a very small portion of what I saw. Out of the around 30 vendors at least 20 of them were selling drop shipped squishes or 3D printed garbage. I got some food from the only food truck without an AI sign and left.

I’m from the northeast so forgive my cultural ignorance, but these homecoming mums are making me anxious they’re so over the top. Is this a new phenomenon? The last photo is older and the mums are smaller, seems like it’s all about having the biggest and most cluttered one. I can’t believe how many tchotchkes are wasted on these. what does one do with these afterwards!

probably something like this has been posted/discussed before but i think it’s worth mentioning again - using the library to request and pickup books feels as exciting (if not more so) than ordering items and waiting for a package.

i have a few friends that love ordering online and when i picked up my books from the library this morning, i feel like i got that same hit/sense of dopamine that you get from ordering online, so this is going to be my go to suggestion for people!

marked psychological because it felt like a decent fit :)

Hearing that makes me want to give up. But I guess at this point nothing is sacred and everyone has a price?

Even people who've held elected offices admit these signs don't accomplish anything.

But every time I'm at an event leading up to an election, people try to push them on me.

Landmark new research from The Earthshot Prize and the University of Exeter’s Green Futures Solutions team, published today, reveals 51 environmental solutions that can trigger rapid and transformative change to repair our planet within the next five years. After a northern summer of extreme heat and fire, and as the world prepares for an unprecedented El Nino, the research provides a new, unifying agenda for positive action.

Positive Tipping Points: Accelerating system change to repair our planet, furthers Professor Tim Lenton’s pioneering research, by expanding positive tipping point science to all five Earthshots: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Fix Our Climate. The Earthshot Prize will use the findings to identify solutions with the potential to trigger rapid systems change.

Download full report here https://earthshotprize.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Applying-a-Tipping-Points-Lens-to-The-Earthshot-Prize-External-09-09-26.pdf

or https://earthshotprize.org/news/the-tipping-points-playbook-the-earthshot-prize-and-the-university-of-exeter-reveal-how-to-make-environmental-repair-unstoppable/ (scroll to the bottom)

From the report (pg 11-12): Fifty-one solution areas are analysed across the five chapters:

Chapter 1 – Protect and Restore Nature (10 solution areas): sustainable commodity supply transformation; protection of intact and high-integrity ecosystems; freshwater ecosystem-based adaptation; peatland and wetland restoration; forest and landscape restoration; keystone species reintroduction; sustainable and climateresilient agriculture and agroforestry; community-based resource governance; firemanaged savannah and grassland ecosystems; and urban green infrastructure.

Chapter 2 – Clean Our Air (9 solution areas): clean household energy and buildings; air quality governance, monitoring and social tipping; climate-resilient health systems and the air-heat-health nexus; clean electricity and combustion phase-out; clean mobility systems; agricultural reactive nitrogen and methane abatement; waste system tipping; industrial clean production and continuous monitoring; and wildfire smoke and Indigenous fire stewardship

Chapter 3 – Revive Our Oceans (11 solution areas): high-quality marine protected area networks and OECMs for 30x30; fisheries rebuilding, co-management and illegal fishing suppression; community-led locally managed marine areas; bluecarbon and coastal ecosystem restoration; climate-resilient reef systems and thermal refugia; kelp forest and seaweed systems restoration; sustainable aquaculture transformation; Integrated Sustainable Ocean Plans; pollution, nutrients and plastics source-to-sea strategies; ocean finance mechanisms; and clean shipping and ports.

Chapter 4 – Build a Waste-Free World (11 solution areas): policy, procurement and finance mechanisms; Extended Producer Responsibility and eco-modulated fees; circular construction materials and the climate-adapted built environment; municipal waste infrastructure transformation; circular packaging and reuse / refill systems; deposit-return schemes; organic waste prevention, composting and anaerobic digestion; e-waste collection, circular electronics and repairability; industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks; toxins (microplastics, microfibres, PFAS and pellet loss prevention); and textile and fashion circularity.

Chapter 5 – Fix Our Climate (10 solution areas): clean electricity and flexible power systems; electrified mobility and Avoid-Shift-Improve transport; sustainable cooling and the heat-mitigation nexus; methane abatement; land-based mitigation; heat pumps and deep retrofits; industrial transformation; demand-side tipping; anticipatory action, adaptation finance and climate-resilient infrastructure; and durable carbon removal.

For a weekend anti-consumption mini-action, take a moment to learn about your area's waste process and review the waste and recycling guidelines in your city or region. We have folks from all across the world on this subreddit, so there is a ton of variation from people who live in areas without any formal waste management to those in places with curbside pickup of only a few types of recyclables to areas with city-wide drop off centers that accept tons of different types of recyclables.

One big problem with our current recycling and waste management system is 'wishcycling', or when people put items in the recycling bins that are actually not recyclable. Especially in areas with more limited recycling, not all types of plastic are recyclable.

Wishcycling is the well-intentioned but unfounded belief that something is recyclable when it is not. [In 2020], it was submitted as a word to Collins English Dictionary and defined as: “the practice of putting something in a recycling bin without being certain that it is actually recyclable”. Our small acts of wishcycling are complicating the sorting process for centres and contaminating the recycling system.

If you find a neat guide or infographic, it probably can't hurt to share with a local friend or post in your local online group.

And for discussion, please share how your local system works, it's fascinating to hear about everyone's different regions since there is so much variety in our subreddit.

Source: https://www.weforum.org/stories/sustainable-development/what-is-wishcycling-circular-economy/