Live data from Hacker News

Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

nytimes.com

181–190 of 261 posts

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a freaking fish, man. Of course we should all hope that humans don’t go through the same thing. It’s like looking at salmon and being “I hope you, guy eating the salmon, never experiences being filleted and then cooked into a delicious dish in an oven, with some sliced lemons on top of you and some asparagus on the side”. No shit! Humans are different! This is just one of those pity parties that people throw pos…

I also hope you never experience being filleted and cooked.

You and me, brother. I pray this every day. But I’m still gonna eat the fish, and may the day never come that our roles are reversed.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy, first step just stop watching the news. There is no FOMO or if you really need your dosage keep it to end of the week roundup. Because in reality there is nothing you can do. You can't have a shot of vodka with Putin and ask him to stop war. You can't stop Twitter and Elon from raging, nor can you can't Isreal. What you can stop is giving these puppets headspace time and hold compassion to those who are in…

Don't you want to watch before the end of the week roundup? To know if you need to lay low?

Either, I wake up dead, wake up conscripted or wake up in to another shite day of the same of what happened yesterday.

Anything else? I'm sure I will be told by my peers.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eggs could easily have multiple arguments for it, honey i’ve personally never met someone who was vegan who didn’t have honey

At the risk of this devolving into a typical online veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3 chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to produce unfertilized eggs that will just go to waste

There is a summary of veganism that follows the principle that we shouldn't take sentient things and change their lives for our own ends. There are several important bits and nuances but the overarching point is to not have a world view where you see anything and prioritize what you can get out of it, regardless of the suffering you cause. Sometimes you hear it summarized as "they arent here for us".

It is an interesting philosophical bit and it combines pretty standard modern morality with a pointed concept of not discriminating by species and instead trying to use the ability to suffer as when you decide if you should exploit something. In this paradigm the reasons not to rape or enslave people are the same as the reasons not to rape or enslave other animals.

This still has plenty of inconsistencies and weird bits, both theoretically and practically. Silly questions like eating braindead people stymie both sides until you get into the weeds about stuff like dignity. Would the theoretical cows in the hitchhikers guide that WANT to be eaten be ok to eat? Is it ok to have second hand animal products, especially if they are high quality and will prevent additional exploitation/consumption?

One of the most sticky conundrums I personally chew on is if this means we should actively try to prevent suffering, not just choose to personally try to avoid causing it. If the former, that means trying to make other people change their beliefs and behave in a way that is pretty objectively worse for them in society, which starts to edge toward causing suffering if you squint. It is easy to fall into trying to reason about which suffering is worse which is a terrible minefield where everybody loses. It's easy to SAY I value something no longer being tortured over my taste preference but is there a logical framework for that that can ever be objective and applied to harder problems? If it is only subjective then what makes it better than any other decision - people decide to eat pigs but not dogs every day but there is no more OR LESS reason behind that than the claim above. There might be answers but I haven't found them to be easy to pin down which is especially interesting because of how strongly I feel that not caring any hurting things is bad.

tl;dr being vegan sucks

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#184
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you met the average person? I would highly contest this claim. Let an average person alone in nature and they’ll starve within a month

That's longer than an Orca will live in a Wal Mart.

I've seen plenty of orcas in Walmart

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#185
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently taken up hunting, mostly because my rural family prioritizes it. The natural world is full of unimaginable cruelty. Wolves will take down young deer and eat them alive while parents watch. Bears will pin down whatever they can catch and who cares if it is alive. On and on, the amount of bloodshed required to support an omnivore/carnivore is simply bananas. Killer whales are hyper-intelligent aquatic nig…

> We will drive away the predators that keep you in constant alert and savage your children, and in exchange we will determine how and when you die (quickly, but perhaps also fearfully). Maybe once in the past, or in places that still graze their animals. I don't think the average factory farm situation can be framed as mutually beneficial for the animals.

I interpreted that as being about deer more so than livestock. If humans didn’t harvest deer to manage the population, there would be mass starvation deaths every winter.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#186
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will drive away the predators that keep you in constant alert and savage your children, and in exchange we will determine how and when you die (quickly, but perhaps also fearfully). Maybe once in the past, or in places that still graze their animals. I don't think the average factory farm situation can be framed as mutually beneficial for the animals.

I interpreted that as being about deer more so than livestock. If humans didn’t harvest deer to manage the population, there would be mass starvation deaths every winter.

And wasting disease - that's not a pretty way to go.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My assumption is that the weight of including vegans socially is too much to bear for some. On the extreme end, you can't use store pasta because it was made in a facility that processes eggs and dairy. But even on the lighter end, social eating modification is pretty extreme: don't use butter when cooking, or eggs, or honey, etc. It's a lot easier to accommodate vegetarians than vegans. Though I do have a vegan frie…

butter is one of the most easily substituted things around and most vegans i know don’t care about honey. definitely more restrictive but i think the dairy/cheese thing is the big one people also feel that vegans are judging them morally and people are very defensive about their eating habit, hence the dislike

depends what you’re trying to do. there are plenty of alternatives for spreading on toast or frying/sauteing. but it’s still a pretty central ingredient for western cuisine. I have no idea how I’d make a vegan roux, just for example. my guess is that would break the illusion of whipped margarine pretty quickly.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#188
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shark is often killed already prior to the liver being eaten. If it isn't, then it would certainly die very soon after. The shark liver is one of the most calorie dense things in the animal kingdom and accounts for a quarter of the shark's weight. Orcas eat it because it's fairly easy for them to kill sharks and the calorie intake. Orcas are much bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter than sharks. They do it for s…

I've never heard of anyone eating live cow. And if I go shoot a cow and walk away, all parts will be perfectly recycled by the ecosystem. I don't really understand how what you said relates to taste, convenience, or cruelty.

What options does an orca have? How is it cruel that they eat a shark? Have you ever even seen the cow, chicken, pig, etc. farms that are in use today? It's not like these animals are living in fairy-tale meadows all their life before they're killed.

And no, if everyone ate cows that way, they would not be perfectly recycled by the ecosystem. These out of context arguments are never useful because they sideline the facts, the scale and population of humans being the relevant ones here.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of this devolving into a typical online veganism argument: why are eggs bad? Say I keep 3 chickens in a coop in my backyard. They're going to produce unfertilized eggs that will just go to waste

1. I have personally never met someone who only eats backyard eggs. The conditions of commercial egg producers are well documented. 2. You are still essentially using another living being for resources. Why keep the chickens in the first place? They are only going to waste because you bought the chickens in the first place, probably also from an industrial breeder, essentially subsidizing the industry. 3. If your way…

1. how? healthy chickens lay an egg every 1-2 days. a small number of chickens produce more than enough for an entire household. everyone I know who keeps chickens gives most of the eggs away.

2. chickens are the ultimate garbage disposal. you can feed them any excess food from your household and they turn it into fresh eggs.

3. see 1. the volume of eggs gets out of control fast, but not quite on the scale that it’s viable for random people to build an FDA compliant business out of it. it’s hard to get rid of all of them, even for free.

Re: Orca that carried dead calf for weeks appears to be in mourning again

#190
post #92
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> going against every bit of our human evolution, without guilt-tripping the rest of us for doing what nature designed us to do If nature designed for this, then why do people feel any guilt at all?

Do they? It’s city dwellers who never seen prey and feel guilt. Regular hunters just skin the carcass and think where to store it. Guilt is a social emotion that leaks into areas which are not clearly separated in an experiencing mind.

> do they? Yes, it's plainly obvious that some people feel some guilt for eating meat.

Regular hunters != industrial-level slaughtering. There are plenty of "regular hunters" who only eat meat they kill themselves. This is like saying if I cut down a single tree on my property I should also support the clear-cutting of the rainforest.

Post reply on HN