this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
146 points (100.0% liked)

Mildly Interesting

22600 readers
261 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This is the Église Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Pléneuf-Val-André, France

top 18 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 15 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I always love these well camouflaged ones:

Cell phone tower with very obviously fake vegetation glued to it

There's one in my home town with about one tenth of the effort made to camouflage it in the same way. That one's not even next to any trees.

[–] floo@retrolemmy.com 44 points 13 hours ago

It’s nice that a church has found a way to be useful

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago

Église Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Pléneuf-Val-André

Well that's a fucking mouthful!

Sometimes I expect people make up these names just to make it impossible for non-native speakers to get by.

Like how the only way to know whether any given Danish definite noun has an "et" or "en" suffix is to know already.

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

One of my hobbies as a stupid young man was breaking into roof spaces connected to my city's skywalk system, which I lived in.

You would be surprised how many buildings have these inside them, where you can't see them at all. If it's too difficult to get them rooftop or there's a code against them, or they don't want residents complaining about 5G in their buttholes, they just go inside the elevator room or somewhere tucked away.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 31 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

This is actually not uncommon.
Churches are often in good locations for mobile coverage.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 19 points 14 hours ago

They're connected to God already

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

I'm not religious, but it seems like a fair deal. The phone companies like to install their antennae on tall towers, they usually make them or have them made by contractors, I suppose. Having them affixed to an existing structure just makes sense. It doesn't particularly matter that it's a church, except the phone companies whose networks are served by those antennae (which I admit I can't see in the photo) would be paying the owner of the building/land, and we left-leaning folks generally don't like money flowing into churches and whatnot, but it still makes good business sense. Tall buildings come with costs, and if those can be mitigated by leasing the height to cell phone companies, I don't see a problem. It's not like the church is censoring (or even monitoring) cellular communications routed through those antennae. Most likely they don't even have access to the data.

[–] darkdemize@sh.itjust.works 21 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

which I admit I can't see in the photo

[–] kubica@fedia.io 8 points 13 hours ago

Nah, that's a dual exhaust.

[–] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago

Thanks. Seeing the writes helped. They blend in well.

[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 8 points 13 hours ago

I don't think that there's a problem with private money flowing into churches. It's the public money and lack of tax payment that ikrs me, personally.

[–] Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 4 points 12 hours ago

They look a helluva lot better than those fake trees I see a lot of. One of those in my front yard.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Holy shit, finally, a use for this skyline clutter. A normal tower would cost less to maintain though.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 4 points 10 hours ago

I think from all the stuff that makes a skyline look awful, I feel that a beautiful Gothic style church is not one of them.

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

A normal tower would also cost more to put up than it would to rent out the church spire.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly why I mentioned maintenance costs, somebody's still paying to keep the church from falling apart. Also don't see too many stories in the news about radio towers providing a sanctuary for child molesters so they've got that advantage over churches too.

[–] Zahille7@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I think that almost everyone's point of view (including mine) in this situation is "it's already there, it's the height we need, why not use it?"

Your last point, while true, was entirely unrelated to the discussion so I'm not sure why you felt the need to bring that up.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world -1 points 12 hours ago

Because it's a downside of churches that doesn't come with radio towers. Something to consider while evaluating pros and cons.