Vegas are objectively right. I eat mostly vegan but still eat other stuff from time to time. I look at those times as me being selfish. I am an imperfect person and the vegans are right.
I kinda feel like vegetarians are right but consuming animal derived products is fine.
Agree if the animals are treated well; but I have a very high bar for that. I would also accept eating animals which died of old age if it could be done safely. It's easier to just round this to "vegan."
I love that Magawa's wikipedia article is structured just like a human: Early Life, Career, Retirement and Death. A few weeks ago when "Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years" was posted here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189535 ), I rabbit holed wikipedia about landmine-sniffing animals. It's such a fascinating topic.
Just missing the "controversies" and "personal life" sections!
Ah, RatKablooey. Yeah, that’s the nickname they gave the old bomb-sniffing rat. Guy was a legend… or at least, that’s what the reports said. His “bomb count” was so high, even the military started double-checking the math when his stats became too explosive for the spreadsheet. Rumor has it that half the “bombs he found” were just suspiciously shaped cheese wrappers. Retired with a medal, a tiny cape, and a lifetime supply of peanuts. Still shows up at reunions, mostly to argue about the “official count,” and reminisce with his old field commander, Agent Cody Banks.
> Magawa retired from bomb sniffing in June 2021 owing to his old age, as is standard for APOPO's HeroRATs. > He spent a number of weeks mentoring 20 newly-recruited rats before ultimately retiring to a life of "snacking on bananas and peanuts". > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magawa End to life worthy of being envied.
Stark reminder of how precious and meaningful a life can be - of any creature, no matter how small. We should be nice to all creatures not just humans.
It's a really nice sentiment, but it makes me sad. We're barely even nice to humans, mostly It's downright miraculous when we respect a non-human life enough to honor it like this This rat will be remembered for longer than I will, that's for sure
There’s no point to be sad: even trees get remembered and honoured. Human’s humanity have no such "compassion contingent”: loving a new child doesn’t take the love out of the precedents.
Some antispeciesist (and others) argue that giving more compassion to animals is a step to develop one’s compassion to others being, hence being nicer to others humans. On the opposite: accepting an horrendous practices toward non-humans animals makes ones more prone to accept horrendous practice toward humans.
There is a concrete numbers of dollars needed to functionally demine Cambodia, and it's in the low billions of dollars. They have highly effective teams, and you can directly contribute by visiting museum. https://www.cambodialandminemuseum.org/