#Human welfare

[unbfacts]

Chuck Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, donated over $8 billion to various causes, including health science and human welfare. He spent his final years in a rented San Francisco apartment, with remaining assets of $2 million.

[mrkmciver]

#Predatory Capitalism

[jesse-pinko]

As someone who works w animals “animals are not mindless automatons, they actually do have feelings and individuality and are capable of feeling acute physical and emotional pain and of forming deep attachments with other animals and people” and “animals are not human infants and have a limited capacity to communicate with humans so you have to familiarize yourself with their boundaries bc if they feel threatened or overstimulated they will fall back on their basic instincts and if you fuck around you are going to find out” are statements that can and should coexist

[theguardianvoice]

HCA Healthcare Hospitals: Data Breach

So someone breached security and posted patients information on a public forum. That patient information includes addresses, phone numbers and more. Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/2023/07/10/medical-citys-parent-company-discloses-data-breach-involving-11-million-patients/?outputType=amp 11 million patients… Seriously? And they say nothing important was divulged? I’m…

[wanderingcritter]

Massive gripe ive been having with primarily the therian community lately, I really dont feel like we focus enough on animal rights causes considering how "connected" we're supposed to be to nonhumans.

Like I see it around for sure, but when I do it usually isn't more than just "hunting for sport is bad👍" or "dont beat your dog 👍" and that's it. The main focus of the community is still very much on biologically human individuals rather than on bio nonhumans, who are very literally treated like garbage in society and it's frustrating because i feel like we should be right there on the front lines when it comes to animal liberation.

Im not saying all of us need to be members of ALF or anything, im not even vegan and have no plans to be, but as of rn the community's overall acknowledgment and support of animal rights causes is pretty pathetic. Hell, I still hear therians confidently and proudly infantilize adult/highly intelligent nonhuman species ("animals have the intelligence of human toddlers") and spread blatant misinformation about them. Shit just annoys me

[batcavescolony]

A Batfam AU where instead of going to get Dick to be Robin again Tim uses necromancy to bring Jason back from the dead. He just leaves Jason on the Wayne doorstep with a 'do better this time' sticky note. Batman can't find out who did it and Tim stays his little latchkey self with semi ok but distant parents (cus canonical they weren't really abusive just not there which isn't good but they could be worse). His parents bring him along on trips but again they love him but they just leave him to do as he pleases. so in Paris he ends up still getting trained by Lady Shiva. This keeps going and Tim just keeps reviving batfam members, if they fake their deaths and Tim tracks them down to check on them. They still have no idea who their shadow is, they can't find him, Tim likes it this way. Bruce goes MIA and Red Robin happens just minus Tim actually being Red Robin. The JLA doorstep gets a passed-out Batman with a 'I can't believe I have to keep doing this shit' sticky note on his head.

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

I’m by no means any sort of expert on any animal’s behavior so please feel free to ignore this random observation/ opinion.

But something I find interesting about people defending Moo Deng’s treatment is the frequent assertion that her keepers love her, as if that excuses everything. I honestly don’t doubt that her keepers love her, but that doesn’t mean their actions are appropriate.

To me it’s reminiscent of someone cornering and petting a dog against it’s will because “I just LOVE dogs!!!”. Loving the animal doesn’t mean you can’t inadvertently harm them with your actions.

Idk, I just have a lot of feelings on this and this was my attempt to sum them up. Hope it makes some sort of sense 😅

Oh yeah tell me about it! I appreciate you sharing this because I feel like I'm going insane when I see people being given the same information as I have and drawing a totally different conclusion from it.

Like... it's not okay just because they harass her a little bit. That's... not how that works.

Also I find the "trust the keeper" argument super ironic coming from someone who worked with dolphins - the species in human care that EVERYONE has an opinion on. And you'll tell people "hey, trust me on this. I see these dolphins every day. They participate in their own health care and don't do something if they don't want to. They are objectively in good welfare based on all the current data we have of what that looks like. I do behaviour records every day to prove this. And if I didn't think they were doing well, I'd be fighting tooth and nail to improve their lives or I would leave my job." (which I have done, btw)

And I'll still be told I'm enslaving dolphins and I do it for the money (when it was free labour - yay for animal industry exploitation - or absolutely bugger all). Trust the keeper... unless I watch a biased documentary packed full of misinformation. Then I know *more* than the keeper will and the keeper is just a moron who doesn't need a science degree and years of unpaid internship experience for this job!

But if it's a cute animal that has no preconceptions established of their welfare in human care? It's free game to coo over. Sure the keeper just dropped that squirming, panicking baby hippo he was trying to force into a tub! But he has so much experience because someone on reddit said so! It's actually all just desentisation! (not how desensisation works ever)

Can you tell I'm frustrated? Yeah...

Anyway I am usually the first in line to defend a zoo and their keepers - I know it's not easy to work in a zoo that's underresourced or in an education vaccum. But I'm going to call out bad handling when I see it. Especially when it's reinforced by social media clout and is being encouraged to continue by people justifying it as "desenitisation" or "actions of an experienced keeper."

[proteusolm]

Okay pardon my wild horse rant, but I'm going to rant about wild horses. The debate over if feral domestic horses should be left to their own devices to "fulfill the role ancient horses did" drives me nuts. I keep seeing people claim that North America had wild horses until as recently as 6000 years ago as justification, which isn't entirely untrue, but it's entirely irrelevant to the conversation of modern day feral horses. If you actually read the eDNA studies, it is abundantly clear that this isn't when the wild horses died out where feral horses are now. The 6k figure is specific to the what were once mammoth steppe ecosystems in Alaska and the Yukon, a refuge in which many Pleistocene mammals lingered much longer than they did elsewhere. This does not indicate that the rest of North America aught to have the same species as it did in the Pleistocene. Our ecosystems are not the same as they were then. Our ecosystems were already not the same as they were then well before european contact. There isn't evidence of wild horses being present anywhere near that long in the continental US.

Regardless, horses that have been domesticated for thousands of years from Spain aren't the same thing as the wild horses which roamed North America even if they're technically the same species. If you want to reintroduce megafauna, an actual extant wild animal called the bison is right there. Trying to replace wild horses that largely died out naturally in the early Holocene (yes, I know indigenous subsistence hunting was likely a factor along with the major climactic shifts at the time. No, I don't especially consider that to be an unnatural cause.) with domestic horses is silly. That isn't the same animal, and they don't need restoring. We need to focus on conserving and rehabilitating modern ecosystems, not restoring Pleistocene fauna.

In Europe there are rewilding projects using domestic horses and cattle, but they have so thoroughly decimated their ecosystems and wiped out so much of their wildlife that they're basically building from scratch. It's a very different context to North America. We don't need to be leaving domesticated horses out on their own so people who feel romantic about the idea of the freedom of a "wild" mustang can see a foal get ripped apart by coyotes or whatever. I don't view it differently than if someone was advocating for releasing dogs into the woods to fulfill the role their wild ancestors did; We don't need to do that, wolves are right there and make a hell of a lot more sense to conserve. We shouldn't be skipping over animals that lived in an area 100 years ago in favour of ones that lived there 10,000 years ago.

[uncanny-tranny]

I just find it very interesting that all the labour classed as lesser (most often seen as "women's labour") becomes indispensable in moments of crisis. It's just interesting to see how quickly people turn to that labour and then discard it in moments of peace or prosperity, devaluing it until another crisis hits.

[jacob-blogs]

I mean, there is no point in internalizing my hatred and contempt for society at large anymore.

But.

I can't pretend that my hatred is what motivates me to continue living in this life.

I love my community. I love the voters that voted to protect human rights. I love my (metaphorical) trans siblings.

I love you all more than I hate them.

And it's worth fighting to protect what I love, rather than fighting against what I hate.

[without-ado]

Pro-Life! (x)

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Sometimes I think about how when I was a little kid, I got an advertisement in the mail from HSUS asking people to write their state congresspeople about banning horse slaughter in the United States. Had a beautiful picture of a horse running wild and free on the envelope and provided a template to follow.

Little me wrote my representative, and I even got a response assuring me that they would support the bill. It ended up passing, and yay we saved the horsies!

Then I grew up and got a job in vet medicine, and was told by an experienced equine vet how because of that bill, horses whose owners either can’t or won’t have them euthanized will be sold to slaughter operations in Canada or Mexico, necessitating them to be transported sometimes hundreds of miles by trailer instead of being granted a swift, merciful death—which they often desperately need. One they would have if humane slaughter of horses was still legal in the United States.

So when I think about the HSUS backing the SWIMS Act, I get scared. Because somewhere out there, there’s going to be a sweet little kid who just loves animals writing their representative, asking them to save the whales. Without realizing they’re only making things worse.

[acti-veg]

Researchers for the Animal Law Foundation found that only 2.5% of the more than 300,000 UK farms were inspected at least once in 2022 and 2023, a marginal decrease from 2018-21 when Covid-19 might be expected to have affected inspection rates.

When inspections did take place, 22% of farms were found not to meet animal welfare law standards but only 1% of non-compliances were prosecuted, a slight increase from 2018-21.

[sharkapology]

Heavily inspired by this post.

Your fear/disgust for an animal does not determine it's worth. All animals exist for a reason.

[reportwire]

Minnesota board accepts anti-drug aid for minority students

Minnesota board accepts anti-drug aid for minority students

FARIBAULT, Minn. — A southern Minnesota school district voted Monday to accept a $1.1 million state grant meant to help curb drug use among students of color, after a pair of board members had delayed accepting the money last month by arguing it could discriminate against white students. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that only one member of the seven-person Faribault school board voted…

[ihazyourkitty]

Some advice

If you're trying to get into the Zoo/Aquarium industry, you'll often hear people tell you to have a backup plan. This often sounds patronizing and discouraging. But in and of itself, it's not bad advice.

The truth is that these jobs are highly competitive, and sometimes few and far between. By all means, pursue your dreams. Don't let this discourage you if this is what you really want to do. This field needs dedicated and talented people.

But I've also learned that it is valuable to have a diverse skill set (regardless of what kind of field you want to go into tbh). This can give you something to fall back on if you suddenly find yourself without a job like I have (it's a long story, don't ask, I'm not interested in airing this dirty laundry).

More than that, however, it's really easy to become singularly absorbed in the animals you care for that you lose your sense of self. This is part of what happened to me. Trust me, you can only go on for so long like this before you burn out, and when you burn out, your quality of work drops.

Being separated from my aquarist job has been really hard, but it has also given me the opportunity to reconnect with some of the hobbies I used to enjoy (and monetize somewhat). In hindsight, I should have been doing more of this to begin with, not just for monetary reasons, but for my own sanity's sake. Yes, your time and energy will be much more limited when you're working full-time in animal husbandry. But do what you can to take care of yourself, and explore other interests outside of the animals.

This will both give you skills to fall back on should you become unemployed, and improve your own mental welfare.