Everyone here has better answers but I've gotta mention Twitter. What an absolutely idiotic way to buy a company. Acquire because someone told you you can't, fire 80% of the staff, abolish the branding completely, remove mod support, offer worthless utilities that used to be free as part of a "premium service," then force push notifications to every single user that are really just your personal tweets, and when people still won't listen to you masquerade as an anonymous user on your own app/company, artificially inflate your own follower count, and be your own biggest supporter.

Bailing out billion dollar companies during COVID like Delta Airlines that charges me $50 to bring a bag on an airplane. Instead of, you know, training new doctors or fast tracking those already in med school, or paying off their student loan debt.

The banana with duct tape.

New Zealand spent about 25 million dollars (NZD) on a flag referendum, before it started the public were against it saying we would never change the flag, the government persisted anyway, two years later the public voted to keep our current flag, so we did 😅 massive f**king waste of time and money for a result they should have been expecting from the very beginning.

Can’t believe nobody has mentioned world war 1..

Literally all of the world’s most wealthy nations completely financially ruining themselves and slaughtering a large proportion of their young men and all of the historical consequences that followed over essentially nothing and achieving nothing except for a massive geopolitical regression with costs which we are arguably still reeling from today.

I gotta go with Nanni for buying that sub-standard copper from Ea-nāṣir bank in the 1700s BCE. Just a terrible decision all around, from what I've read.

The CIA putting a microphone into a cat to spy on commies only for that cat to get hit by a car, I think it was like 6 million dollars and countless years of preparation and training only to be lost under some tires.

Me forgetting to turn off the lights, according to my dad.

Got to be that person who bought the first ever tweet as an NFT, purchased for $2.9million, now worth about $4.

The Swedish ship Vasa.

The Vasa was built in the 1620s to take advantage of the very newest in warship technology, a second row of guns. It was to be a symbol of Sweden's might, and thus was decorated with beautiful statues and carvings. This ship took three years to build and cost roughly 5% of Sweden's GDP.

Unfortunately, the effect of a second row of cannons on seaworthiness was poorly understood. With great fanfare, the ship set off, experienced its first breeze, and still within full view of the city of Stockholm, capsized and sank.

Holding bake sales to pay for your kid’s chemotherapy. This is unheard of in all civilized countries.

Having a felon for a President.

Saying "thoughts and prayers" after every mass shooting.

Not letting cashiers sit the f**k down. Blows my mind.

A judicial system where judges ae put in place by politicians.

Here in the UK 🇬🇧

100 miles is a long way,

In America

100 years is a long time !

Pledge of allegiance every morning in school. Bizarre.

How they get more pissed off at abortions than school shootings.

The sheer amount of guns in domestic ownership. Absolutely crazy.

The absolute emptiness of wilderness areas. We were on a week hike and ran into a Frenchman hiking the other way who had been living on a packet of soy beans for the three days since he began his hike. Based on his European hiking experiences, he had planned to buy food when passing through villages or by farms throughout each day. He was like, "Where are the farmers? Where are the sheep? Where are the villages?"

We let him know that in the US, when the trails ran though wilderness, national parks, national forests, or even state parks that there was nothing there. He could go days without happening across civilization. We fed him a good meal and gave him enough supplies to get him the few days to the next place to get supplies, so it turned out okay for him. He simply couldn't comprehend the vast emptiness of it all.

Half-ton pickup trucks as daily drivers.

The absence of sidewalks. And the absence of a walkable city center that is not just one mall.