Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

thetravellingcheetah.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–58 of 58 posts

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#51

Post by PlatonicSkittle »

msrenee wrote: post #49
PlatonicSkittle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but most breeds I know of live 5-8 years. Yeah up to 12 was meant to communicate a rough upper bound, not typical lifespans. Same for the 4 years or regular egg production figure, upper bound. The important part is that hen lifespans are significantly longer than their egg laying years, and all commercial and many individual farmers don't want to spend money on a hen that doesn't lay eggs. > I'm not sure what you w…

If you had said 8 or 9 years, that would have been a reasonable way to communicate that they live longer than they lay eggs. When you pull out a number like 12 years for an animal that can die of old age at 6, you're either misinformed or exaggerating to make your argument stronger. I think we're going to be at odds with each other on livestock no matter what because of different views on death. If an animal lives a…

I'm going to drop the age point. You're assigning more significance to the specific number than I intended.

> Death in itself is not a tragedy. Living in poor conditions or past the point where you can function without pain absolutely is.

Do you hold the same stance when it come to human life?

Or what about the penguins in the article? They lived typical penguin lives and were presumably killed relativly quickly.

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#52

Post by msrenee »

PlatonicSkittle wrote: post #51
msrenee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had said 8 or 9 years, that would have been a reasonable way to communicate that they live longer than they lay eggs. When you pull out a number like 12 years for an animal that can die of old age at 6, you're either misinformed or exaggerating to make your argument stronger. I think we're going to be at odds with each other on livestock no matter what because of different views on death. If an animal lives a…

I'm going to drop the age point. You're assigning more significance to the specific number than I intended. > Death in itself is not a tragedy. Living in poor conditions or past the point where you can function without pain absolutely is. Do you hold the same stance when it come to human life? Or what about the penguins in the article? They lived typical penguin lives and were presumably killed relativly quickly.

Yes. At least my own for sure.

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#53

Post by msrenee »

PlatonicSkittle wrote: post #51
msrenee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had said 8 or 9 years, that would have been a reasonable way to communicate that they live longer than they lay eggs. When you pull out a number like 12 years for an animal that can die of old age at 6, you're either misinformed or exaggerating to make your argument stronger. I think we're going to be at odds with each other on livestock no matter what because of different views on death. If an animal lives a…

I'm going to drop the age point. You're assigning more significance to the specific number than I intended. > Death in itself is not a tragedy. Living in poor conditions or past the point where you can function without pain absolutely is. Do you hold the same stance when it come to human life? Or what about the penguins in the article? They lived typical penguin lives and were presumably killed relativly quickly.

I don't know how replies and edits work on this site. I didn't see most of your post when I replied.

The problem I have with what happened to these penguins is how wasteful it was. Relatively little was produced and everything else was wasted. And using a living creature as fuel to render its compatriots into a low-quality, low-yield product. The fact that they died isn't really the upsetting thing to me here. It's the wasteful nature of the process and the impact on the species and the environment.

I'll happily, very happily in fact, eat bison. They're delicious. I would have no problem killing and butchering one myself. Shooting them en masse and leaving the carcasses to rot as happened early in the history of the US is beyond repulsive to me.

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#54

Post by finlake »

seszett wrote: post #10

The article lacks IMO the most gruesome tool that was used for processing penguins, the penguin press : https://ssz.fr/brdl/presse-manchots.jpg I took it on Kerguelen island, that's not a very good picture but you get the idea, a nice engineering detail is that the handle that turns the spiked rollers also has a blade and slices the pressed penguins into smaller slices. Most of the time though (at least on Kerguelen)…

I think you are mistaken, this just an old iron hay cutter. I have exactly the same thing in my backyard.

https://somersetshop.co.uk/old-vintage-cast-iron-chaff-cutte...

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#55

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

finlake wrote: post #54
seszett wrote: post #10

The article lacks IMO the most gruesome tool that was used for processing penguins, the penguin press : https://ssz.fr/brdl/presse-manchots.jpg I took it on Kerguelen island, that's not a very good picture but you get the idea, a nice engineering detail is that the handle that turns the spiked rollers also has a blade and slices the pressed penguins into smaller slices. Most of the time though (at least on Kerguelen)…

I think you are mistaken, this just an old iron hay cutter. I have exactly the same thing in my backyard. https://somersetshop.co.uk/old-vintage-cast-iron-chaff-cutte...

I did some googling for the phrases "presse manchots" and "penguin press", combined with "Kerguelen". I couldn't find any reference, anywhere, to this device being a penguin press- though of course the phrase "penguin press" is difficult to google because of the publishing house.

I did find another, very different, device in this French news article which is a peat press in a Paris museum exhibit about Kerguelen, which was mistakenly called a "penguin press". It was actually used to make peat bricks, either as building material or as fuel.

So is there some myth that means that any press-like device on Kerguelen is assumed to have been used on penguins?

https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/2015/04/06/la-decouverte-des-...

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#56

Post by PlatonicSkittle »

Robotbeat wrote: post #38
sneak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most animal-derived products sound pretty gnarly when you consider them somewhat dispassionately, even the ones that don't harm the animal by default: cheese is an opaque pregnant cow nipple fluid, curdled into solid chunks with intestinal enzymes, strained and squished, and tossed in a cave for a bit to get the mold and bacteria goin'. Best served drizzled with bee vomit.

That still sounds good to me, actually! :) I like the idea of animal products as a delicacy with the animals treated kindly the whole time, as pets.

I swear, I'm not just trying to ruin your day, but dairy can't really be produced without killing cows.

Cows, like all mammals, need to have just given birth to lactate. In practice, this means cows must be impregnated and give birth roughly yearly to continually produce milk. Obviously, it's not economically realizable to raise 3 to 5 times the number of cows but get the same amount of milk, so the calves are sold to be killed for veal.

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#57

Post by adamcstephens »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #39
adamcstephens wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you teach an entire civilization that nature is for man’s exploitation, other living creatures have only the value that can be extracted.

If you think this is gruesome, or that it's only other living creatures that get treated this way, I'll point you to King Leopold 2 of Belgium and his treatment of the congo. https://www.amazon.com/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/... Warning: this book will probably give you mental trauma.

Sadly I also realize how cruel humans can be towards each other. It’s amazing what ideology can drive people to do.

Thanks, I’ll check the book out. I’m currently reading the Jakarta Method though, so I’ll need a break with something a bit less bleak.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method

Re: The Penguin Oil Industry (2019)

#58

Post by seszett »

Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #55
finlake wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mistaken, this just an old iron hay cutter. I have exactly the same thing in my backyard. https://somersetshop.co.uk/old-vintage-cast-iron-chaff-cutte...

I did some googling for the phrases "presse manchots" and "penguin press", combined with "Kerguelen". I couldn't find any reference, anywhere, to this device being a penguin press- though of course the phrase "penguin press" is difficult to google because of the publishing house. I did find another, very different, device in this French news article which is a peat press in a Paris museum exhibit about Kerguelen, whi…

That's quite possible, a lot of myths get invented and distorted along the years in such places.

It was "common knowledge" but I'm not that surprised either to hear that it's wrong.

Post reply on HN