The US government runs a prominent advertising campaign on the theme "if you let your baby sleep with you, you are a bad mother".
I mean, infants are typically warmer than adults and they wriggle around a lot - it's hard enough to sleep next to them, much less within suffocation distance.
This part of the reply to my SO's question about this. Later he explained that it's mainly drunk/high people who suffocate their children like that.
You only need a sufficiently wide bed and separate covers for the parents - that's it.
That's a lot of people!
> You only need a sufficiently wide bed and separate covers for the parents
Why even take the risk.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37796452
> they got into a weird position between a very very drowsy mum and some cushions and we didn't notice.
> parent is not sober and essentially knocked out unconscious.
Parent of newborn sleep deprivation is extreme.
Try watching some documentaries about Tiananmen Square or Uyghurs. I am curious if this statement will still hold.
But, the fact that I have a problem with this relativization of everything does not mean I think problems people do not consider "the most disgusting" should not be tackled.
Look at my country for example. Corruption in local government affects me more that what is going on in China. I can also fight it more that what is going on in China. And, in the end, I care about it more in the "daily on my mind" sense of the word. That does not mean I should label it as being objectively worse or "most disgusting ever".
Let's be real here, if you object to youth directed marketing you should have been up in arms loooooong before now. Fact is targeting kids has been basic corporate strategy 101 for decades.
Tobacco in media. Coke/Pepsi. Cool cars, women, selling kids on "the Police are the good guys". In fact, your opinions about what is appropriate to shoehorn into children's formative years tends to say volumes more about what you are about than about anything else.
That being said, I agree the gas vouchers telegraph a blatant desperation move.
Pick a lane ;).
That's a pretty bold statement to make. I don't know what kind of isolated world you live in if you think that a Shell ad is the most disgusting thing you ever saw in your life, but I can give you a hundred examples off the top of my head.
One example that might be related to this subject are working conditions in a lithium mine and the purification process. If people knew the price we pay to drive EVs I'm convinced they would stick with oil. Just because it all happens in China and it doesn't affect us directly, doesn't mean it's any less disgusting.
I am also getting seriously tired of this constant need for censorship which is a contradiction in an open-market economy. You should compete, not sabotage. Instead of looking for ways to ban Shell ads on TV, why doesn't the EV industry offer vouchers too?
As for your comment about EVs, I don't necessarily disagree. My main outrage is that they used children to sell oil.
As for your comment on competition, how can you expect to compete against big oil without regulation, possibly the biggest most powerful industry in the world? The problem is that there is nothing better than oil for what it does, which extends to the other problem that open markets don't care about externalities or planetary boundaries. Which is where people need to come in and put restrictions.
I'm curious, but would you have been against the breaking up of Standard Oil back in the day?
On the contrary, oil is what's primarily funding the invasion of Ukraine. Think of all the people being killed as a result of that conflict. Or for the civil wars that oil ends up creating i.e. Sudan.
I think ultimately the point is that the 3rd world always loses in the end. They're the ones who suffer most from the ambitions of Western nations, irrespective of their intentions.
I'm not quite sure I get your counter-point to competition. We already heavily regulate the oil industry and subsidise EVs. We tax fossil fuels, we tax ICE cars, we favour EVs in city centres and we even brought in a law to completely ban purchasing new ICE vehicles by year X. If your product is so great, it shouldn't need government intervention to promote it; and Musk's Tesla company is a great example of that.
My original comment addressed the illusion that most Westerns live in and downvoting just proves that. Service-based economies seem to be removed from reality and don't understand the "disgusting" things that have to take place in order for them to function. Like someone said in another thread, if you're really concerned about morals then you will probably have to throw your entire PC out the window.
EDIT: > I'm curious, but would you have been against the breaking up of Standard Oil back in the day?
Sorry I am not aware of that so can't comment.
It was the build up to the AFL grand final and there was a presenter on a football field with kids kicking footballs in the background.
Anyway, he introduces the segment and it turns out it's a paid promotion for Shell. The show then cuts to a 2 minute promotional video for Shell fuel.
Once the promo ends, he tells the kids that whoever kicks a goal gets a $1000 petrol voucher, as he waves a stack of these petrol vouchers in front of the camera.
I don't get easily offended, but I've honestly never seen anything more disgusting in my entire life.