Live data from Hacker News

Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

bbc.com

81–90 of 141 posts

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With an expansive Russia next door it's hard to forego effective defense measures.

I'm in Finland and I would have forgone this measure. It is not a critical, or even an important, part of the defence strategy.

You couldn't be more wrong about that.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#82
post #69
post #53

If you're into rats, here is a playlist with 6+ hours of rats doing tricks: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGThSDBAdLEKFkcKeHc0D... Rats are so awesome, we just need to GMO them to live longer.

I just can't help but imagine those long lived rats escaping and taking over our cities. We already struggle with the rat population and they only live 3 years, imagine if they lived 15. Also I love rats and totally agree they're tough pets because they don't live long enough. We had many of them growing up and spent a fortune removing tumors.

Some of the rats live to 80, sometimes 90 years old.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#84
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. However, you get insane push back the second you start to mention veganism. And yes, that is a luxury and there large parts of the world where that's not an option, but if you're reading this comment you probably could survive without eating meat.

Hot take: people get angry about veganism because they suspect, deep down, that vegans are right and feel guilty about eating meat. (Not taking the moral high ground here - I have put approximately zero effort into reducing meat intake at all.)

You might enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEHuNrC8yU

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#85
Donations to APOPO can be made at apopo.org. I was at the APOPO Visitors Center in Cambodia last year when the Trump administration eliminated all USAID funding for APOPO. The bombs being removed by APOPO in S.E. Asia were dropped by the U.S. during the Nixon and Johnson presidencies.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#86
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: people get angry about veganism because they suspect, deep down, that vegans are right and feel guilty about eating meat. (Not taking the moral high ground here - I have put approximately zero effort into reducing meat intake at all.)

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.

[deleted]

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda feel like vegetarians are right but consuming animal derived products is fine.

So long as they're humanely harvested? Some argue that cows are mistreated when kept producing milk as much as they are, but I haven't looked into it because I'm selfish too.

Cows are mammals. They produce milk for their young for a period after giving birth then stop, just like a human woman. Which means that for us to take their milk we have to keep them constantly pregnant.

Ask a woman (or think about it if you are one) how they would like being forcefully impregnated then having their tits constantly milked, year after year. As a bonus, the born kids are separated into girls to be milked in the same cycle and boys to be killed and eaten.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#88
I recently visited the facility near Angor Wat Cambodia. Its a facility with a lot of promotional matetial and have greatbway of presentong themselves. I had a demo presentation with a rat doing demining so some observations: The rats are big. The idea is that they smell mines and are more useful than dogs since they are less than 5kg which detonates the mines. They are also better than human since they can smell old mines that are under soil or plants after so many decades. Unfortunate that is very labor intensive since there are two people escorting each rat and handle it with tethers.

For those reasons their effectiveness is limited.

A few km up the same road is the Cambodian Landmine Museum that has a couple of demo gardens where one can spectacularly fail find Lamdimes Found like 10 amd they were like one hundred, 2 right next to me…. Unfortunately that place which is run by a person called Aki Ra although having done a lot more work gets less financing.

Re: Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Finland and I would have forgone this measure. It is not a critical, or even an important, part of the defence strategy.

You couldn't be more wrong about that.

Better a diplomat than a warmonger. Lets hope there are saner heads in Finland as such methods become more and more relevant.
Post reply on HN