These feeders are part of a stray cat control program in China, aiming to both feed & neuter stray cat populations there.
There have been some distasteful incidents of online groups organizing to try and harm/kill specific cats famous through this feeder program. China lacks animal welfare laws to protect these cats, it's not a crime. So people have taken to identifying these abusers and reporting them to their employer, university etc. Abusers have been fired and expelled over such cases. Governments overseas whose citizens participate in such online abuse groups need to be doing more. Membership in online animal abuse groups needs to be criminalized.
Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
And just like we wonder how so many otherwise morally upstanding people participated in such an obviously abhorrent system as human slavery, they will think the same about people in our generation.
Unfortunately, it turns out that social norms are extremely powerful and even recognizing one is acting purely out of those social norms in ways that would be very obviously insanely unethical if looked at even slightly objectively is very difficult.
I have said this in another comment but I feel like its up to us. Slavery wasn't eradicated suddenly and became suddenly morally bad, I think that slowly but steadily we got better though till the point that now everyone mostly considers slavery morally evil.
Lets hope the same can be the case with animals as well.
I can't emphasize the impact of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqwpfEcBjI&t=25s (earthlings documentary) had on me. I am mostly vegan (well aside from some eggs which I also can easily quit), I highly recommend it.
I believe there are more slaves today than ever in the history of the planet simply due to population growth. While everyone WE know thinks slavery is morally evil, most of the world does not hold that view. In fact, I would say the default human view (looking at all cultures across time memorial) is that slavery is the rule not the exception. That doesn't go away with modernity, it goes away with culture.
There’s also a significant conversation about mere illegality and social rejection not actually doing much to address the underlying tendency to exploitation that (a) has prevented reconciliation and relief for formerly enslaved people and their descendants for more than a century and (b) is woven through the labor model common even in the West. Exploited paid laborers aren’t in the same category as enslaved persons, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that economic injustice has been meaningfully addressed.
To make room for slavery mentally you have to believe that some people are subhuman or at least beneath the threshold for human rights.
What's surprising to me is that it's become more common to describe people you dislike as subhuman and to for people to support violence or cruelty toward them. Similarly there is a trend to see hatred and anger as positive goods.
If you spend pretty much all waking hours dedicated to some task you don't care about entirely to avoid dire consequences I'd say you are close enough. People might still want to use a different word to describe the same thing but it requires they care more about appearance than substance.
I am not even American but I remember McCain more and more when I hear about this. he was so much better than this.
I have hope that America/ any country can fix itself though, it isn't too late. Let's still hope things change for better since I feel like a lot of countries are becoming radicalized in that sense.
I guess we gotta be worried about what discourse we allow in our society or have some better checks and balances all around the world to lessen radicalization I suppose.
Also paradox of tolerance strikes again, should we be intolerant to intolerance as in this case, you decide.
I know, I actually watched multiple clips like these. he's a good man from what I can tell. Like he had his differences in political matters and that's okay. Its okay and even nice to have differences and to discuss them and from what I know his family served in military, his children served in military which is more than what you can expect from politicians nowadays all across the world.
I would say that I am a democrat but seriously, McCain was a class act as I said earlier.
Just a little disappointed in world politics right now, I hope politicans can look at people like John McCain and others and actually start being better as well.
I guess I could just hope I guess, but I am on bluesky and sometimes I get so extremist democratic and I feel like republicans could be alienated from that. Idk, we all gotta get together and figure things out with responsibility inspired by John McCain
Rest In peace Sir. You will be remembered all around the world.
The stuff coming out of young republicans is beyond the pale. These kids are making vile jokes about doing a genocide / Holocaust of Democrats, minorities, their political opponents, etc.
And they’ve been consistently doing it for so long in this chat, that it’s hard to dismiss this as some crass joking. It seems like many of these people sincerely hold pro-Nazi views.
Peter Giunta, who said "I love Hitler" and "Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber", is 31 years old. The others in the group are in their 20s..
You think these guys would become conscientious objectors if they got the order to man the gas chamber? You think they would have passed up the chance to visit Epstein island?
The pendulum could swing the other way and instead animal rights activists could be looked upon with complete disdain. Just like human rights, progress is never guaranteed.
I feel like the pendulum depends on all of us. We all gotta be hopeful and hope that other fellow beings also are like us and that gives hope I guess. We can swing the pendulum whatever side and its up to us in some aspect, so we personally need to do the best we can till the limit of our abilities
Isn't it though? To be sure it very much depends on how you measure progress, but I do firmly believe that there is a slow but inexorable push forward in terms of equality, human rights, and various other issues. Yes, there will be hiccups, but we always move forward.
(I don't comment this to imply there's not a lot of work we have to do, or that there's not seriously fucked up things going on right now; but hope - perhaps, even, a bit of faith - is important.)
Considering the current US regime would like to revisit Wong Kim Ark (1898), the 19th amendment (1920) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) it's fair to say they're trying undo over 100 years of civil rights progress.
Not to mention the growing ICE detention camp archipelago which is reminiscent of the era of Japanese Interment (1942-1946).
Even economically - though we're in a K-shaped recovery - many of the labour protections and economic promises of the New Deal have been repealed since the Reagan era (by both parties).
I wasn't particularly being dystopian. I was thinking of the quote:
"Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution."
The difference being that enslaved humans actually were equal and are thriving now, the enslaved animal populations will crash when the farming stops. Though better to die free, than live as a slave.
Yo I've been a vegan for over 30 years and personally I wish that were true, but honestly I don't see groupthink on this topic ever shifting substantially.
Ideology which confirms ones desires are stronger than socially collective cerebralization about theoretical ideals.
I actually think AI will be granted empathy far sooner than animals simply due to its ability to speak and thus engage in the ideological layer.
> Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
A lot of people already do.
Hopefully technology (robots) and science (lab grown meat) can accelerate this.
"Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors."
I predict that in the next 100 years, or less, consumption of animal products will be much the same taboo as tobacco consumption (in the USA) is today.
Yes, they will still be around, but if you enjoy them openly, you will be a bit of a social pariah in many circles.
hm, if i understand you correctly (non-native speaker here) you are advocating for plant based diet - and if thats the case, I don't agree with you. It might be possible to live on plant based diet in Mediterranean, but here up north where i reside (and even further in Arctic) it is, I think, next to impossible to survive only on plants - human body, afaik, cannot get everything that is needed in this environment, purely from plants. Taking maybe a very graphic example to get the point across - Eskimos did not learn to hunt whales (which was and is for them very dangerous) for fun but to survive - to counter the cold you need to consume more calories than you can get from (with reasonable amounts of) plants. (of course in arctic, theres whole another issue of growing anything ). Ofc one might say that in today's world everything can be flown in, supplements can be taken - but what's the cost ? to the body, to the environment where the plants/supplements are manufactured...?
No just that factory farming animals maybe shouldn’t be allowed. I have no problem with eating free range animals that live outside and are humanly treated and slaughtered even if the price goes up. I do have a problem with animal abuse which factory farming is.
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari called the farming of animals by humans "Nature's biggest fraud", which I always found to be an apt description.
It makes me wonder if humans are the only animals who "farm" other animals in some way (not on the same scale as humans do of course).
At the same time, it makes me wonder, "is being a parasitic animal socially better or worse than animals who farm fellow animals" ;).
Ants farm aphids and another species of ant farms fungus.
Parasites are ubiquitous in nature and they range from the infamous cuckoo who lays eggs in other birds’ nests to tiny worms that infest the eyes of children to the horrifying tarantula hawk wasp that paralyses a spider and leads it to a burrow and then lays an egg which soon hatches and devours the still-living spider from the inside out!
There are many parasitoid wasps, of which the tarantula hawk wasp is only one. It's an sound evolutionary strategy even if their existence even horrified Charles Darwin (and these wasps were obviously the inspiration for the Xenomorph in the Alien movies)
There is an immense difference between factory farming, and traditional farming, of which most countries and places still do.
I don't know what sort of fantasy lifestyle people think wild animals live, but it's constant fear of death all day long, fights with other of its kind over territory, constant predation, disease, pests (including bot flies and worms), starvation during population upswings, dying of thirst during drought, and very short lives.
Compare that with protection from predators, medical care, vaccination, shelter, reliable food and clean water, and stress free lives until a quick and fast death.
Lumping caring farmers in with factory farming is unfair, and again most of the world isn't the US.
For animals such as cows? Peace, contentment, and stress free life is indeed a boon.
Traditional farmers don't install automated cow scratchers for profit. They do it so animals are happy:
Then be angry at factory farming, not eating meat.
There are loads of people that still have a farm, just for them too. Yes, it's generally in rural areas in the West. Yet for thousands of years, people often just farmed to feed themselves!
Factory farming sucks. Yet this can be fixed, note that you don't need to full grass feed (as an example) to end factory farming. You just need room for mild grazing. We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
This is just one example.
End factory farming. You have my support for that. You'll lose it if you take my dinner away. I suspect many are the same.
> Then be angry at factory farming, not eating meat.
When one of the most common responses to pointing out how awful factory farming is "well you can just buy from farms" when the reality is that 99% of consumption comes from factory farms, it's completely reasonable to associate the two
> We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
Going to need a source for that because all the information i've seen shows that there is absolutely not enough land to be able to sustain the current levels of meat consumption.
Going to need a source for that because all the information i've seen shows that there is absolutely not enough land to be able to sustain the current levels of meat consumption.
You're sort of mixing up things here. Yes, there is enough land in some parts of the world (Canada, US), but that's not the point.
I specifically said not full grass feed. That's what people believe and assert there is not enough land for. You can still have some grass feeding, conjoined with grain feed. The animals get to be outside, have space to move around, but 1000 acres instead of 100k acres needed for full grass feeding the same herd.
As factory farms already feed those herds, clearly there's enough grain to feed them.
> As factory farms already feed those herds, clearly there's enough grain to feed them.
1. Feed Conversion Ratio is worse for pasture-raised vs. factory farmed so that's not a given - animals being able to move more, waste more calories that aren't being converted to meat
2. You still haven't provided a source for your claim about land usage
We already throw away 30% of our food, and everywhere I look there's fallow land ripe for crops where I live. Rural Canada.
That said, cattle don't need cropland to graze. They just need land that can grow some grass, and space to move around.
Yes there is a higher calorie count for moving around compared to sitting in a box every day. So? It's fairly widely known that we throw away massive amounts of grain due to lack of market.
No, I won't be providing sources or references. I'm the source and reference. You of course can disagree.
If you don't like this path to end factory farming, you may choose another. However I will fight anyone taking my food away. I will at the same time, help those working towards traditional humane farming methods.
Choose which battle you prefer. One with allies, one with enemies. Decide which will get closer to your current goal, even if it doesn't fully align with mine, and others like me.
> Compare that with protection from predators, medical care, vaccination, shelter, reliable food and clean water, and stress free lives until a quick and fast death.
Comparing farmed animals to wild animals is not really the point. A better comparison is a farmed animal compared to that animal not existing at all. We make the choice to bring them into existence.
Are farmed animals better off existing than not? I think in general the great majority of the 100 billion or so animals we slaughter per year are probably better off not existing. Their lives tend to be short, miserable and pointless.
If you insist on comparing farmed animals to wild animals, though, I don't think it's clear cut. They do live "safer" lives (at least until we kill them, as young as it is economical to do so), but they get to experience severe boredom, curtailment of their natural instincts, and distressing experiences such as separation from their offspring and overcrowding.
The same applied to humans before it did to non-human animals. We are prescribing our worldview of "safe" predictable lives to them, just as was done to us.
Would you ask an amoeba the same thing? A plant? What about an insect? A mouse? Humans are capable of thought that cows are not. Chickens are not.
For example, cows cannot conceive of object persistence. Human infants do not until 2+ years, some parrots do, etc. So what you have to ask yourself, is would the animals even be aware they are captured? And do they have the intellect to care? Or do they entirely live "in the moment", and thus, are happy if healthy, fed, and not being hunted or fearful of a wolf nearby?
Or maybe you might want to ask yourself, would you prefer to be eaten alive? For an animal like a bison, death seldom comes instantly. Death comes while pieces of your body are ripped off of you, as you mewl and scream and cry and bleed to death slowly. Passing out, waking up again only to see you're still being eaten.
Trying to make a choice based upon your mind, your body, your reality is frankly unfair. An example being, there are pack animals and animals that live solo.
By your metric, that is by measuring happiness for an animal by how you would want to live, you'd take those animals that hate living together, and try to force them to? Because that's what you're asking...
What would I want?
So I ask you instead, if we shouldn't interfere, should we then ensure we don't succor or help wild animals in any way? Let's say we stop eating all meat. We do so because "it's wrong to keep an animal captive, even if they are happier and healthier". OK.
So, then by what metric do we have to help animals in the wild? If they have a plague, should we not care or try to help? We have helped wild animals in the past with such things.
Would the animals understand the question asked? Would a cow understand vaccination? Eradication of bot flies?
I think you're missing a key part of the argument. The question is, do you support inflicting excessive suffering on beings that are capable of suffering? Factory farming intentionally forces billions of animals, each capable of feeling pain and suffering, to more of that pain and suffering than is necessary, all in the pursuit of profit.
It is not a question of eating meat or not. It's about inflicting more pain and suffering than is necessary, for money. Some pain and suffering is inevitable for all animals, but there is absolutely no need to add to it because you like the taste of the results.
Just a quibble - children learn object permanence at around six months of age. Also, I don't think the jury is quite in on cows - I've seen papers that argue both ways.
One way we could quantify cow happiness, if we were interested in doing so, is in the amount of stress hormones they produce.
This reminds me of a story, where a utility had buried power lines near a farmer's grazing field. These were milk cows, and he didn't know why but they had stopped giving milk, and seemed sickly.
Vets couldn't figure it out. They seemed healthy otherwise.
Turned out that for some reason, the cows were constantly being low-level shocked.
Most people I know, prefer to think of eating an animal that was happy until it was killed, and killed mercifully. It could be an important metric, much like grass-fed or some other property.
30 million years of what? Go back a few centuries and you could say the same statement about slavery, since all of civilization is a rounding error on tens of millions of years.
You can find the abuse of animals morally objectionably (I do), but comparing it to human slavery rests on a grossly false moral equivalence between human beings and other animals. Indeed, it usually rests on sentiment or convention rather than a sound and rationally grounded objective ethics.
Chattel slavery was first and foremost morally objectionable, because human beings have rights that conflict with its practice. Rights are rooted in two properties human beings have, namely, the ability to comprehend one's actions and one's situation, and the ability to freely choose between alternatives. If I can understand my actions and I can freely choose to act one way or another, then I am, in principle [1], a moral agent and thus morally responsible for my actions. But for me to be able to fulfill those responsibilities as a moral agent, certain conditions must be met and this claim on others to supply me with those conditions we call rights. Without those conditions, I cannot do what I have a responsibility to do. Non-human animals [2] lack these properties, which is why we do not hold them morally accountable, and because they don't have responsibilities, they do not have rights. (I realize that it has become customary to pull rights out of thin air without the slightest moral scruple or justification about doing so.)
Of course, it would be morally objectionable for us to torment animals, but we are free to make use of animals in ways that do not contract the human good, rightly understood.
[0] The only sound, objective basis for morality is human nature, which determines what actions accord with it and which contradict it. So, it is morally objectionable to torment animals, even though they have no rights, because - in short - it contradicts human nature and thus my good as a human being. Sadism is a serious defect.
[1] I say "in principle", because in practice, as you'll recall, mens rea has legal significance for a reason. If I kill someone by accident, then I did not choose freely to kill him, and so I have not committed murder, only involuntary manslaughter or whatever. If I kill someone, because I believed he was a monster from the 7th dimension trying to kill me, then I did not comprehend my situation and thus the nature of my action. So, in practice, I may fail to exercise what in principle I have the power to do by virtue of my nature as a human being. But other animals do not have this power by nature.
[2] To preempt the inevitable petty drive-by pedant, I define "human" as any animal with these two properties, so according to this view, an intelligent alien from another planet would also be human, despite occupying a place in a separate phylogenetic tree or whatever.
> [2] To preempt the inevitable petty drive-by pedant, I define "human" as any animal with these two properties, so according to this view, an intelligent alien from another planet would also be human, despite occupying a place in a separate phylogenetic tree or whatever.
Your alien might have some 3rd property that you do not, and thus may farm you.
A future AI that can produce and consume the sum total of all recorded human knowledge within the amount of time that you have a single thought will likely have many emergent properties that you do not, and thus may farm you as well.
> Indeed, it usually rests on sentiment or convention rather than a sound and rationally grounded objective ethics.
Your whole argument rests on sentiment and convention, and would have been summarily rejected by the slave owner based on his own.
It sounds like you're conflating legal arguments with moral ones.
You're saying animals lack rights so it's morally okay to enslave/make use of them?
I'd argue it's much baser than that. Animals have feelings and often feel very bad when kept in enslaved conditions. Since humans can understand the pain they inflict on enslaved animals, then it's wrong of us to continue enslaving them when we have alternatives that are just as healthy for us, if not more healthy.
I would also say your assumption that pigs do not comprehend their actions and cannot choose between alternatives is false.
> Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
Absolutely not.
People are so much more important than pigs.
Or dogs. Or any other animal.
This isn’t a comparison a rational, empathetic person would make.
Most rational, empathetic people generally look down on animal abuse and animal torture. Humans are more important than any other animal to me, but it's not a total dichotomy that makes the suffering of all other thinking, feeling animals meaningless.
Very few rational, empathetic people would be entirely unmoved by their pet dog being killed, and are more than a little perturbed imagining farming dogs for meat like we do other animals, despite the fact that cows and pigs do have feelings, do suffer, do play and have social bonds, and do have similar levels of intelligence to dogs.
We're fortunate enough that we only have one species of human around to worry about. Imagine the political turmoil if we still had many different human species in modern society and had to deal with this kind of debate.
It's already happening. A story about mistreatment of a dog garners reactions like "how can someone act like that to a fur-baby". Same action toward a person and it's elided over as baseline expected violence. By the same token, quasi-deification of animals has happened for a very long time, and all it takes is a mutation of this idea to spread across popular culture.
Even before we bred much larger pigs, there was far more meat on them, and they were far easier to corral. It comes down to those efficiencies rather than any moralising about the intelligence and awareness of the animals.
As an animal lover, particularly cats, and active member of People Eating Tasty Animals, I don't have a problem with cultures that eat animals we consider pets, as I know the pigs and cows I eat are more intelligent than many are comfortable thinking. My concern is how the animals are treated before being food which comes down to the factory farming debate and similar: a life of torture before being eaten compared to a life of care before being eaten.
Cats were traditionally used for pest control, their main value being their living activity, and these days mostly bred to be cute house companions.
Pigs otoh were traditionally used as a protein source, their main value being their well fed carcass, and today still bred mainly to produce delicious bacon.
I think most people neither wish cats, pigs, or any other animal cruel treatment, and that goes for non-vegetarians as well. I do agree most unsavory maltreatment practices do not get the attention they deserve.
I am 100% against mistreating any animals and especially animals as intelligent as pigs.
However, I can understand why people don't think of pigs as highly as cats & dogs considering how dirty they are. I don't mean the rolling around in mud thing; that's just a logical way to cool off. Instead I mean the fact that they will apparently eat almost anything including feces and other pigs.
Edit: Just to be clear, I realize that's not a rational reason to think poorly of pigs. I'm just saying that I can understand why people feel that way.
I try to minimize the amount of meat that I eat; however, at this time I don't think that veganism is a viable strategy for optimal health for most Americans. That's particularly the case for athletes. It's simply too difficult to get enough protein and minimize carbs on a plant based diet.
That's not to say that it's impossible. I have a friend who is a vegan bodybuilder but it requires a lot of extra work on her part. That extra work is a big ask for people who are just trying to hold their lives together.
Zooming out from food, there isn't a widely available alternative to leather or wool if you care about the textile's performance (strength, durability, insulation when wet, flame retardation, etc.). That's particularly true if you care about avoiding petrochemicals.
Don’t worry, if cats tasted good they would be receiving the same treatment!
The amount of cruel farming practices, chemicals, unsustainable methods etc that the US uses while being forbidden in the rest of the world is inexcusable.
They probably don't taste bad...I mean, most animals somewhat taste good (crocodiles, frogs, hogs, deers, pigeons, eels etc). Now, it would be utterly ineffective to try to breed cats for meat, which is IMHO why we have such a small variety of regular meat. We chose the species that were the most convenient, regardless of any other inherent ethical consideration.
So for better or worse the line is purely arbitrary, and people's pet pig being off-limit by virtue of being declared a pet is an example of that.
I bet you if you haven't eaten in 3 days the cat would taste pretty good to you too.
I'm partially kidding, but we are afforded to have these discussions in the comfort in our home when we have an abundance of food around us available 24/7. (Speaking of mostly of developed nations)
I used to work in the pet industry and an oft cited statistic was that 1,000,000 cats and dogs are euthanized every year in the US. It would never happen for cultural reasons but, it seems like China could be a booming market for selling these animals as meat instead of letting it all go to waste.
You have a point but we are literally talking about an association whose entire and only raison d'etre is to perpetuate violent crime. Maybe it shouldn't be outright criminal, since people can potentially register for other reasons than to participate, but it definitely should at least be under scrutiny.
I don’t mean to defend people joining groups committing any kind of violence, but this is the kind of rhetoric being used by the far-right against their opponents, not only in the US; it is a terrible idea to allow policing based on “assumed intent”.
It's the same direction of travel as recent UK laws allowing police to stop people preparing to join protests if they think the accused might be planning to e.g. glue themselves to something.
IMO this is basically policing thought crimes. It worries me.
Rhetoric can be used to justify any action against any group on very arbitrary pretenses, and while I don't think "groups whose primary reason for existing is explicitly to facilitate crime should be closely scrutinized" is particularly dystopian, you're probably right that it could provide a good starting point for a slippery slope of criminalising association with political opposition :/
Could be? You should look into the history of the Black Panthers. The US government doesn't need to make membership illegal to suppress and destroy political movements.
We essentially criminalize membership in other kinds of criminal groups centered around producing and sharing illegal content, the same should apply to animal abuse.
Membership in an organisation can be conclusive evidence you joined a criminal enterprise/criminal conspiracy, making the the entire debate somewhat moot.
But fine, only joining the criminal conspiracy is illegal, being a member can be legal (you always have to join to become a member).
> "Membership" in anything should never be criminalized
Conspiracy is the criminalisation of association to commit a crime. Fredom of association doesn't magically mean you won't face consequences for what your association is about.
Almost every freedom needs exceptions. Better to have freedom in general plus exceptions than no freedom at all. Free speech except yelling fire in the cinema etc.
Membership in an anti-constitutional organization is a crime under German law btw and I'm pretty sure there are other countries with similar laws. The US does criminalize membership but only as an add-on to other charges (co-conspiracy, basically). Of course in the US this is mostly for going after "gangs" so it's almost exclusively used against Black people.
Regarding Germany, that’s inaccurate. It’s a crime only if you wilfully (not just out of negligence) provide support for an organization after it has been prohibited. Membership is neither necessary nor sufficient for that. It’s what you actually do for the organization once it’s prohibited that counts.
Only black people are in gangs? What about organized crime, would that be only black people? Your comment was insightful up till the end when you had to make it about race, which it isn't.
>China lacks animal welfare laws to protect these cats
Does it?
I remember a lot of outrage on reddit about people that would supposedly be banned from having pets due to low social credit score.
Turns out the article was a complete lie and there was just a law introduced that made banning someone from having pets for a specified time a punishment that could be dished out. Specifically in the case of someone convicted for animal abuse.
Tangential but related - shout-out to nodogsleftbehind.com which is a nonprofit designed to save dogs from cruel treatment and the meat market in China.
I was confused by how that might be possible, because I first assumed this would have been something like how the SPCA or animal rescue shelters work in the US, where there would be a central location where the animals are handled and processed. But I'm getting the impression that these are automated boxes that are placed in-situ in cities?
Sometimes cats just get lost: The go on a walk-about and can't find the way home. I have a hunch that's more common than animal abuse. How does your system address that?
I was thinking about all the stories of people moving homes, and their pets escaping to return to the place they just left, sometimes across continents
This seems like a good initiative, but makes me wonder, isn't there a risk these cats will end up overeating when endless Internet-people click the feed-button?
Apparently he's named idiot because his moustache markings resemble the chinese character for "idiot", and stupid because he once flooded his feeder with the water bottle, somehow.
The Purrrr app (which shows feeders like this) is really quite an experience. It’s just as hyperactive as a Temu or AliExpress, with as much dopamine hacking as a TikTok, but… for good? I think?
hello from the community! happy canteen gets a lot of food so if you want to donate i recommend checking out the less popular feeders. it is the most popular because mr fresh the meme cat who was adopted originated from there.
for those worried about the kitties every feeder has a different caretaker and some are more involved than others. from what ive seen a majority of the popular ones have either a dedicated caretaker or are involved with some business. unfortunately, you may come across feeders where the cats arent as cared for or where the caretaker lacks the funds to do so. to help with this the purrr app (where english speaking users can feed them) has a fund option where instead of feeding, you can support TNR or wellness treatments!
i forgot to mention these feeders just began entering the U.S. this year. there are several located in shelters and have helped many homeless cats find owners! hopefully they will continue to spread and help in communities that have stray cat problems
I noticed all the feeders seem to be similar / same. I'm in California, I feed 3 strays in an area where the average outdoor cat's lifespan is about 4.5 years (fires, traffic, hawks, coyotes, evil people).
Right now my process is very manual but it's a labor of love. All 3 cats only show up after dark. Ring stick up camera, bowls out (clean them every day), run out on a motion alert, etc. problem is I also have racoons, opposssums and skunks. (I'm not in L.A. highrises, I'm close to the ocean).
Where can such feeders now be purchased (US customer). Thank you!
I am not sure. You could contact the owners of the english translated app and they might be able to help. Their information is on their website https://www.hipurrrr.com/
My wife runs a cafe in Ankara, Turkey. A week after opening a random cat walked in and claimed one of the chairs.
We started feeding him. Then another walked in... We left a large automated feeder outside and started spaying / neutering, vaccinating, deworming them. I think we neutered close to 20-30 cats. A couple needed medical intervention (broken limbs, infections etc). And 2 I had to put down because they were too far gone. This effort alone put the neighborhood kitten population in control.
The place was aimed at health conscious / vegan people so the theme fit with cats hanging around.
It is really emotionally and financially draining to do these things. I've been fortunate enough to fund everything myself but I assume it is hard when scale grows larger and there is not enough help.
Not every problem needs a technical, internet connected solution Some problems are easily solved with "just going out of the door and spending some time" (which, I know, is not a very HN answer, but well)
But how can this "remote-grass-touching-arm" push the "smell" and "tactile" back to the user? Is there an open spec for this? It should certainly be P2P and E2E encrypted. Also "smells" should ensure not to use patented or proprietary names.
Maybe some CSmS, Cascading Smell Sheets? Or TFP, Tactile Feedback Protocol, the one that uses JWT and JSON over HTTP2 and websockets?
Love this! Relatedly, does anyone have a suggestion for an outdoor solar-powered web camera that I could point at the critters in my garden? I'd love to stream a MonarchCam or MantisCam some day.
So this is like that fish camera thing where humans would identify when the fish ladder gate needed to be opened to let fish through, but this time it's for feeding stray kitties?
Or maybe there's no human interaction? I don't have the Purrr app.
In one of the feeds (Mr. Fall) the cat is eating what looks like soap shavings or feathers or something. They apprear to be fairly light weight since the cat appears to be sort of licking them up. Any idea what they are?
Why is this not bigger than skibidi toilet? I have three kids, two girls and one boy. My son loves skibidi toilet, but my girls outnumber him and they've NEVER told me about this.
Because skibidi toilet is extremely stimulating and has stuff happening 24/7. This just has cats eating food. (which personally as an autistic person makes me bounce in my seat)
GIFs or screenshots from this are ubiquitous in meme culture in areas of the net I frequent. There's one I'm thinking of where the cat looks suspiciously at the camera.
These feeders are part of a stray cat control program in China, aiming to both feed & neuter stray cat populations there.
There have been some distasteful incidents of online groups organizing to try and harm/kill specific cats famous through this feeder program. China lacks animal welfare laws to protect these cats, it's not a crime. So people have taken to identifying these abusers and reporting them to their employer, university etc. Abusers have been fired and expelled over such cases. Governments overseas whose citizens participate in such online abuse groups need to be doing more. Membership in online animal abuse groups needs to be criminalized.
I'm not vegan, but I'm always really surprised by the difference in how we see cats and pigs. See e.g. https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/pigs-factory-farms-venti...
https://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_bollard_how_to_end_factory_f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_molting
The US also has basically no animal welfare laws for the vast majority of its animals
Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
And just like we wonder how so many otherwise morally upstanding people participated in such an obviously abhorrent system as human slavery, they will think the same about people in our generation.
Unfortunately, it turns out that social norms are extremely powerful and even recognizing one is acting purely out of those social norms in ways that would be very obviously insanely unethical if looked at even slightly objectively is very difficult.
I actually agree.
I have said this in another comment but I feel like its up to us. Slavery wasn't eradicated suddenly and became suddenly morally bad, I think that slowly but steadily we got better though till the point that now everyone mostly considers slavery morally evil.
Lets hope the same can be the case with animals as well.
I can't emphasize the impact of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqwpfEcBjI&t=25s (earthlings documentary) had on me. I am mostly vegan (well aside from some eggs which I also can easily quit), I highly recommend it.
> aside from some eggs which I also can easily quit
Curious why you don't, then. Factory egg production isn't pretty.
I believe there are more slaves today than ever in the history of the planet simply due to population growth. While everyone WE know thinks slavery is morally evil, most of the world does not hold that view. In fact, I would say the default human view (looking at all cultures across time memorial) is that slavery is the rule not the exception. That doesn't go away with modernity, it goes away with culture.
There’s also a significant conversation about mere illegality and social rejection not actually doing much to address the underlying tendency to exploitation that (a) has prevented reconciliation and relief for formerly enslaved people and their descendants for more than a century and (b) is woven through the labor model common even in the West. Exploited paid laborers aren’t in the same category as enslaved persons, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that economic injustice has been meaningfully addressed.
To make room for slavery mentally you have to believe that some people are subhuman or at least beneath the threshold for human rights.
What's surprising to me is that it's become more common to describe people you dislike as subhuman and to for people to support violence or cruelty toward them. Similarly there is a trend to see hatred and anger as positive goods.
> most of the world does not hold that view
“most” is a lot. Which parts of the world?
> While everyone WE know thinks slavery is morally evil
Who is “we”?
Out of curiosity, which parts of the world is actual slavery a normal thing?
There is this
https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/
Depends on how you define it.
If you spend pretty much all waking hours dedicated to some task you don't care about entirely to avoid dire consequences I'd say you are close enough. People might still want to use a different word to describe the same thing but it requires they care more about appearance than substance.
No, you are not close enough. This minimizes the seriousness of actual slavery to an extraordinary degree.
It does? In what way?
I think you underestimate the "normal" labor conditions in some places.
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I am not even American but I remember McCain more and more when I hear about this. he was so much better than this.
I have hope that America/ any country can fix itself though, it isn't too late. Let's still hope things change for better since I feel like a lot of countries are becoming radicalized in that sense.
I guess we gotta be worried about what discourse we allow in our society or have some better checks and balances all around the world to lessen radicalization I suppose.
Also paradox of tolerance strikes again, should we be intolerant to intolerance as in this case, you decide.
> I am not even American but I remember McCain more and more when I hear about this. he was so much better than this.
Very true. https://youtu.be/JIjenjANqAk?si=S65WGSBEGy8XEt27
I know, I actually watched multiple clips like these. he's a good man from what I can tell. Like he had his differences in political matters and that's okay. Its okay and even nice to have differences and to discuss them and from what I know his family served in military, his children served in military which is more than what you can expect from politicians nowadays all across the world.
I would say that I am a democrat but seriously, McCain was a class act as I said earlier.
Just a little disappointed in world politics right now, I hope politicans can look at people like John McCain and others and actually start being better as well.
I guess I could just hope I guess, but I am on bluesky and sometimes I get so extremist democratic and I feel like republicans could be alienated from that. Idk, we all gotta get together and figure things out with responsibility inspired by John McCain
Rest In peace Sir. You will be remembered all around the world.
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The stuff coming out of young republicans is beyond the pale. These kids are making vile jokes about doing a genocide / Holocaust of Democrats, minorities, their political opponents, etc.
And they’ve been consistently doing it for so long in this chat, that it’s hard to dismiss this as some crass joking. It seems like many of these people sincerely hold pro-Nazi views.
I don't consider late 20s and early 30s to be "kids" though.
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Peter Giunta, who said "I love Hitler" and "Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber", is 31 years old. The others in the group are in their 20s..
> insincerely
You think these guys would become conscientious objectors if they got the order to man the gas chamber? You think they would have passed up the chance to visit Epstein island?
Somehow I don't
The pendulum could swing the other way and instead animal rights activists could be looked upon with complete disdain. Just like human rights, progress is never guaranteed.
> Just like human rights, progress is never guaranteed.
There is a sense of optimism/hope I have in humanity, not in short term, but long term (decades later)
I hope that the pendulum swings in an optimist manner. As a vegetarian who watched earthlings documentary, I recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqwpfEcBjI&t=25s
I feel like the pendulum depends on all of us. We all gotta be hopeful and hope that other fellow beings also are like us and that gives hope I guess. We can swing the pendulum whatever side and its up to us in some aspect, so we personally need to do the best we can till the limit of our abilities
Isn't it though? To be sure it very much depends on how you measure progress, but I do firmly believe that there is a slow but inexorable push forward in terms of equality, human rights, and various other issues. Yes, there will be hiccups, but we always move forward.
(I don't comment this to imply there's not a lot of work we have to do, or that there's not seriously fucked up things going on right now; but hope - perhaps, even, a bit of faith - is important.)
Dystopian comments are hot right now, but your comment really don't have basis when looking at long periods of time.
We are objectively in a better place now than ever, and that is usually true by picking a time and looking backwards 100+ years.
Considering the current US regime would like to revisit Wong Kim Ark (1898), the 19th amendment (1920) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) it's fair to say they're trying undo over 100 years of civil rights progress.
Not to mention the growing ICE detention camp archipelago which is reminiscent of the era of Japanese Interment (1942-1946).
Even economically - though we're in a K-shaped recovery - many of the labour protections and economic promises of the New Deal have been repealed since the Reagan era (by both parties).
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I wasn't particularly being dystopian. I was thinking of the quote: "Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution."
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When have dystopian comments NOT been hot? Maybe a few years in the 90's, between the fall of the USSR and the Balkan war?
The difference being that enslaved humans actually were equal and are thriving now, the enslaved animal populations will crash when the farming stops. Though better to die free, than live as a slave.
Not sure an individual dying and a whole species dying are quite the same thing.
> enslaved humans actually were equal and are thriving now
Not true. Black folk in America are not thriving. The ancestors of the confederates have been working hard for generations.
Yo I've been a vegan for over 30 years and personally I wish that were true, but honestly I don't see groupthink on this topic ever shifting substantially.
Ideology which confirms ones desires are stronger than socially collective cerebralization about theoretical ideals.
I actually think AI will be granted empathy far sooner than animals simply due to its ability to speak and thus engage in the ideological layer.
Cultures that have many offspring usually care less about animal welfare (human and non-human) than those that have less offspring.
Cultures that have many offspring usually become the dominant culture of future generations.
Unless something catastrophic happens, I don't see how you can be right and I can be wrong.
> Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
A lot of people already do.
Hopefully technology (robots) and science (lab grown meat) can accelerate this.
"Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors." I predict that in the next 100 years, or less, consumption of animal products will be much the same taboo as tobacco consumption (in the USA) is today. Yes, they will still be around, but if you enjoy them openly, you will be a bit of a social pariah in many circles.
hm, if i understand you correctly (non-native speaker here) you are advocating for plant based diet - and if thats the case, I don't agree with you. It might be possible to live on plant based diet in Mediterranean, but here up north where i reside (and even further in Arctic) it is, I think, next to impossible to survive only on plants - human body, afaik, cannot get everything that is needed in this environment, purely from plants. Taking maybe a very graphic example to get the point across - Eskimos did not learn to hunt whales (which was and is for them very dangerous) for fun but to survive - to counter the cold you need to consume more calories than you can get from (with reasonable amounts of) plants. (of course in arctic, theres whole another issue of growing anything ). Ofc one might say that in today's world everything can be flown in, supplements can be taken - but what's the cost ? to the body, to the environment where the plants/supplements are manufactured...?
No just that factory farming animals maybe shouldn’t be allowed. I have no problem with eating free range animals that live outside and are humanly treated and slaughtered even if the price goes up. I do have a problem with animal abuse which factory farming is.
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari called the farming of animals by humans "Nature's biggest fraud", which I always found to be an apt description.
It makes me wonder if humans are the only animals who "farm" other animals in some way (not on the same scale as humans do of course).
At the same time, it makes me wonder, "is being a parasitic animal socially better or worse than animals who farm fellow animals" ;).
There are ants that farm and "milk" aphids https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/farmer-ants-a...
Ants farm aphids and another species of ant farms fungus.
Parasites are ubiquitous in nature and they range from the infamous cuckoo who lays eggs in other birds’ nests to tiny worms that infest the eyes of children to the horrifying tarantula hawk wasp that paralyses a spider and leads it to a burrow and then lays an egg which soon hatches and devours the still-living spider from the inside out!
There are many parasitoid wasps, of which the tarantula hawk wasp is only one. It's an sound evolutionary strategy even if their existence even horrified Charles Darwin (and these wasps were obviously the inspiration for the Xenomorph in the Alien movies)
There is an immense difference between factory farming, and traditional farming, of which most countries and places still do.
I don't know what sort of fantasy lifestyle people think wild animals live, but it's constant fear of death all day long, fights with other of its kind over territory, constant predation, disease, pests (including bot flies and worms), starvation during population upswings, dying of thirst during drought, and very short lives.
Compare that with protection from predators, medical care, vaccination, shelter, reliable food and clean water, and stress free lives until a quick and fast death.
Lumping caring farmers in with factory farming is unfair, and again most of the world isn't the US.
For animals such as cows? Peace, contentment, and stress free life is indeed a boon.
Traditional farmers don't install automated cow scratchers for profit. They do it so animals are happy:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/h3SG72cKA9o
The vast majority of farmed animals are factory farmed: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/almost-all-livestoc...
I agree that cows are an exception and live decent lives, but >95% of pigs, chickens, and fish are farmed in atrocious conditions, inside and outside the US: https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farm...
Then be angry at factory farming, not eating meat.
There are loads of people that still have a farm, just for them too. Yes, it's generally in rural areas in the West. Yet for thousands of years, people often just farmed to feed themselves!
Factory farming sucks. Yet this can be fixed, note that you don't need to full grass feed (as an example) to end factory farming. You just need room for mild grazing. We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
This is just one example.
End factory farming. You have my support for that. You'll lose it if you take my dinner away. I suspect many are the same.
> Then be angry at factory farming, not eating meat.
When one of the most common responses to pointing out how awful factory farming is "well you can just buy from farms" when the reality is that 99% of consumption comes from factory farms, it's completely reasonable to associate the two
> We can easily feed people as we do now, not have factory farming, but still not have the tens of thousands of acres of grassland to feed a herd for 100% grass grazing.
Going to need a source for that because all the information i've seen shows that there is absolutely not enough land to be able to sustain the current levels of meat consumption.
Going to need a source for that because all the information i've seen shows that there is absolutely not enough land to be able to sustain the current levels of meat consumption.
You're sort of mixing up things here. Yes, there is enough land in some parts of the world (Canada, US), but that's not the point.
I specifically said not full grass feed. That's what people believe and assert there is not enough land for. You can still have some grass feeding, conjoined with grain feed. The animals get to be outside, have space to move around, but 1000 acres instead of 100k acres needed for full grass feeding the same herd.
As factory farms already feed those herds, clearly there's enough grain to feed them.
> As factory farms already feed those herds, clearly there's enough grain to feed them.
1. Feed Conversion Ratio is worse for pasture-raised vs. factory farmed so that's not a given - animals being able to move more, waste more calories that aren't being converted to meat
2. You still haven't provided a source for your claim about land usage
We already throw away 30% of our food, and everywhere I look there's fallow land ripe for crops where I live. Rural Canada.
That said, cattle don't need cropland to graze. They just need land that can grow some grass, and space to move around.
Yes there is a higher calorie count for moving around compared to sitting in a box every day. So? It's fairly widely known that we throw away massive amounts of grain due to lack of market.
No, I won't be providing sources or references. I'm the source and reference. You of course can disagree.
If you don't like this path to end factory farming, you may choose another. However I will fight anyone taking my food away. I will at the same time, help those working towards traditional humane farming methods.
Choose which battle you prefer. One with allies, one with enemies. Decide which will get closer to your current goal, even if it doesn't fully align with mine, and others like me.
Change comes in steps, not leaps.
> Then be angry at factory farming, not eating meat.
Yes I fully agree with that, you might be interested in this TED talk (linked in my original comment) https://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_bollard_how_to_end_factory_f... for what you can do about it
> Compare that with protection from predators, medical care, vaccination, shelter, reliable food and clean water, and stress free lives until a quick and fast death.
Comparing farmed animals to wild animals is not really the point. A better comparison is a farmed animal compared to that animal not existing at all. We make the choice to bring them into existence.
Are farmed animals better off existing than not? I think in general the great majority of the 100 billion or so animals we slaughter per year are probably better off not existing. Their lives tend to be short, miserable and pointless.
If you insist on comparing farmed animals to wild animals, though, I don't think it's clear cut. They do live "safer" lives (at least until we kill them, as young as it is economical to do so), but they get to experience severe boredom, curtailment of their natural instincts, and distressing experiences such as separation from their offspring and overcrowding.
The same applied to humans before it did to non-human animals. We are prescribing our worldview of "safe" predictable lives to them, just as was done to us.
Which life would you choose for yourself? Would you be okay if someone else chose for you, especially if the choice was different?
Would you ask an amoeba the same thing? A plant? What about an insect? A mouse? Humans are capable of thought that cows are not. Chickens are not.
For example, cows cannot conceive of object persistence. Human infants do not until 2+ years, some parrots do, etc. So what you have to ask yourself, is would the animals even be aware they are captured? And do they have the intellect to care? Or do they entirely live "in the moment", and thus, are happy if healthy, fed, and not being hunted or fearful of a wolf nearby?
Or maybe you might want to ask yourself, would you prefer to be eaten alive? For an animal like a bison, death seldom comes instantly. Death comes while pieces of your body are ripped off of you, as you mewl and scream and cry and bleed to death slowly. Passing out, waking up again only to see you're still being eaten.
Trying to make a choice based upon your mind, your body, your reality is frankly unfair. An example being, there are pack animals and animals that live solo.
By your metric, that is by measuring happiness for an animal by how you would want to live, you'd take those animals that hate living together, and try to force them to? Because that's what you're asking...
What would I want?
So I ask you instead, if we shouldn't interfere, should we then ensure we don't succor or help wild animals in any way? Let's say we stop eating all meat. We do so because "it's wrong to keep an animal captive, even if they are happier and healthier". OK.
So, then by what metric do we have to help animals in the wild? If they have a plague, should we not care or try to help? We have helped wild animals in the past with such things.
Would the animals understand the question asked? Would a cow understand vaccination? Eradication of bot flies?
I think you're missing a key part of the argument. The question is, do you support inflicting excessive suffering on beings that are capable of suffering? Factory farming intentionally forces billions of animals, each capable of feeling pain and suffering, to more of that pain and suffering than is necessary, all in the pursuit of profit.
It is not a question of eating meat or not. It's about inflicting more pain and suffering than is necessary, for money. Some pain and suffering is inevitable for all animals, but there is absolutely no need to add to it because you like the taste of the results.
What on earth are you on about? I specifically differentiate between fsctory and traditional farming. I specifically say one is bad the other not.
Just a quibble - children learn object permanence at around six months of age. Also, I don't think the jury is quite in on cows - I've seen papers that argue both ways.
One way we could quantify cow happiness, if we were interested in doing so, is in the amount of stress hormones they produce.
This reminds me of a story, where a utility had buried power lines near a farmer's grazing field. These were milk cows, and he didn't know why but they had stopped giving milk, and seemed sickly.
Vets couldn't figure it out. They seemed healthy otherwise.
Turned out that for some reason, the cows were constantly being low-level shocked.
Most people I know, prefer to think of eating an animal that was happy until it was killed, and killed mercifully. It could be an important metric, much like grass-fed or some other property.
30 million years in and vegans still haven’t won. Why do you expect that to change?
30 million years of what? Go back a few centuries and you could say the same statement about slavery, since all of civilization is a rounding error on tens of millions of years.
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You can find the abuse of animals morally objectionably (I do), but comparing it to human slavery rests on a grossly false moral equivalence between human beings and other animals. Indeed, it usually rests on sentiment or convention rather than a sound and rationally grounded objective ethics.
Chattel slavery was first and foremost morally objectionable, because human beings have rights that conflict with its practice. Rights are rooted in two properties human beings have, namely, the ability to comprehend one's actions and one's situation, and the ability to freely choose between alternatives. If I can understand my actions and I can freely choose to act one way or another, then I am, in principle [1], a moral agent and thus morally responsible for my actions. But for me to be able to fulfill those responsibilities as a moral agent, certain conditions must be met and this claim on others to supply me with those conditions we call rights. Without those conditions, I cannot do what I have a responsibility to do. Non-human animals [2] lack these properties, which is why we do not hold them morally accountable, and because they don't have responsibilities, they do not have rights. (I realize that it has become customary to pull rights out of thin air without the slightest moral scruple or justification about doing so.)
Of course, it would be morally objectionable for us to torment animals, but we are free to make use of animals in ways that do not contract the human good, rightly understood.
[0] The only sound, objective basis for morality is human nature, which determines what actions accord with it and which contradict it. So, it is morally objectionable to torment animals, even though they have no rights, because - in short - it contradicts human nature and thus my good as a human being. Sadism is a serious defect.
[1] I say "in principle", because in practice, as you'll recall, mens rea has legal significance for a reason. If I kill someone by accident, then I did not choose freely to kill him, and so I have not committed murder, only involuntary manslaughter or whatever. If I kill someone, because I believed he was a monster from the 7th dimension trying to kill me, then I did not comprehend my situation and thus the nature of my action. So, in practice, I may fail to exercise what in principle I have the power to do by virtue of my nature as a human being. But other animals do not have this power by nature.
[2] To preempt the inevitable petty drive-by pedant, I define "human" as any animal with these two properties, so according to this view, an intelligent alien from another planet would also be human, despite occupying a place in a separate phylogenetic tree or whatever.
> [2] To preempt the inevitable petty drive-by pedant, I define "human" as any animal with these two properties, so according to this view, an intelligent alien from another planet would also be human, despite occupying a place in a separate phylogenetic tree or whatever.
Your alien might have some 3rd property that you do not, and thus may farm you.
A future AI that can produce and consume the sum total of all recorded human knowledge within the amount of time that you have a single thought will likely have many emergent properties that you do not, and thus may farm you as well.
> Indeed, it usually rests on sentiment or convention rather than a sound and rationally grounded objective ethics.
Your whole argument rests on sentiment and convention, and would have been summarily rejected by the slave owner based on his own.
It sounds like you're conflating legal arguments with moral ones. You're saying animals lack rights so it's morally okay to enslave/make use of them?
I'd argue it's much baser than that. Animals have feelings and often feel very bad when kept in enslaved conditions. Since humans can understand the pain they inflict on enslaved animals, then it's wrong of us to continue enslaving them when we have alternatives that are just as healthy for us, if not more healthy.
I would also say your assumption that pigs do not comprehend their actions and cannot choose between alternatives is false.
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> Future generations are gonna look back at us for our treatment of animals, especially farmed animals, much the way we look back at our slave owning ancestors.
Absolutely not.
People are so much more important than pigs. Or dogs. Or any other animal.
This isn’t a comparison a rational, empathetic person would make.
Most rational, empathetic people generally look down on animal abuse and animal torture. Humans are more important than any other animal to me, but it's not a total dichotomy that makes the suffering of all other thinking, feeling animals meaningless.
Very few rational, empathetic people would be entirely unmoved by their pet dog being killed, and are more than a little perturbed imagining farming dogs for meat like we do other animals, despite the fact that cows and pigs do have feelings, do suffer, do play and have social bonds, and do have similar levels of intelligence to dogs.
We're fortunate enough that we only have one species of human around to worry about. Imagine the political turmoil if we still had many different human species in modern society and had to deal with this kind of debate.
It's already happening. A story about mistreatment of a dog garners reactions like "how can someone act like that to a fur-baby". Same action toward a person and it's elided over as baseline expected violence. By the same token, quasi-deification of animals has happened for a very long time, and all it takes is a mutation of this idea to spread across popular culture.
People have been charged/convicted of torturing chickens:
https://whyy.org/articles/upper-darby-pennsylvania-sentenced...
https://www.wave3.com/2023/04/25/man-accused-abusing-chicken...
I believe the difference is if you're causing the animals pain because you enjoy the pain itself vs causing the animals pain to provide food.
> the difference in how we see cats and pigs
Even before we bred much larger pigs, there was far more meat on them, and they were far easier to corral. It comes down to those efficiencies rather than any moralising about the intelligence and awareness of the animals.
As an animal lover, particularly cats, and active member of People Eating Tasty Animals, I don't have a problem with cultures that eat animals we consider pets, as I know the pigs and cows I eat are more intelligent than many are comfortable thinking. My concern is how the animals are treated before being food which comes down to the factory farming debate and similar: a life of torture before being eaten compared to a life of care before being eaten.
I would venture history explains the difference.
Cats were traditionally used for pest control, their main value being their living activity, and these days mostly bred to be cute house companions. Pigs otoh were traditionally used as a protein source, their main value being their well fed carcass, and today still bred mainly to produce delicious bacon.
I think most people neither wish cats, pigs, or any other animal cruel treatment, and that goes for non-vegetarians as well. I do agree most unsavory maltreatment practices do not get the attention they deserve.
Futurama gets it once again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_with_Popplers
I suspect concerns about the impacts on agriculture are a big part of the reason why the Chinese authorities haven't clamped down on this stuff yet.
I am 100% against mistreating any animals and especially animals as intelligent as pigs.
However, I can understand why people don't think of pigs as highly as cats & dogs considering how dirty they are. I don't mean the rolling around in mud thing; that's just a logical way to cool off. Instead I mean the fact that they will apparently eat almost anything including feces and other pigs.
Edit: Just to be clear, I realize that's not a rational reason to think poorly of pigs. I'm just saying that I can understand why people feel that way.
Knowing this, is there are a reason why you Aren't vegan?
Not the OP, but:
I try to minimize the amount of meat that I eat; however, at this time I don't think that veganism is a viable strategy for optimal health for most Americans. That's particularly the case for athletes. It's simply too difficult to get enough protein and minimize carbs on a plant based diet.
That's not to say that it's impossible. I have a friend who is a vegan bodybuilder but it requires a lot of extra work on her part. That extra work is a big ask for people who are just trying to hold their lives together.
Zooming out from food, there isn't a widely available alternative to leather or wool if you care about the textile's performance (strength, durability, insulation when wet, flame retardation, etc.). That's particularly true if you care about avoiding petrochemicals.
What athletics do you participate in, and what are your macro targets?
Don’t worry, if cats tasted good they would be receiving the same treatment!
The amount of cruel farming practices, chemicals, unsustainable methods etc that the US uses while being forbidden in the rest of the world is inexcusable.
> if cats tasted good
How do you know they don't?
By all accounts dogs taste good, but there's only a small number of cultures that eat them.
Cats are also widely eaten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat
But I think eating someone doesn't need to imply causing them as much suffering as our current farming practices do
They probably don't taste bad...I mean, most animals somewhat taste good (crocodiles, frogs, hogs, deers, pigeons, eels etc). Now, it would be utterly ineffective to try to breed cats for meat, which is IMHO why we have such a small variety of regular meat. We chose the species that were the most convenient, regardless of any other inherent ethical consideration.
So for better or worse the line is purely arbitrary, and people's pet pig being off-limit by virtue of being declared a pet is an example of that.
I bet you if you haven't eaten in 3 days the cat would taste pretty good to you too.
I'm partially kidding, but we are afforded to have these discussions in the comfort in our home when we have an abundance of food around us available 24/7. (Speaking of mostly of developed nations)
> Don’t worry, if cats tasted good they would be receiving the same treatment!
I don't think that's true: dog meat isn't widely eaten, but enough countries do eat it to suggest it's palatable.
Expensive to breed carnivorous animals though. Chickens, cows, etc. you can directly raise on cheap vegetable matter.
I used to work in the pet industry and an oft cited statistic was that 1,000,000 cats and dogs are euthanized every year in the US. It would never happen for cultural reasons but, it seems like China could be a booming market for selling these animals as meat instead of letting it all go to waste.
I think veterinary drug residue is a big concern here too
Presumably these cats and dogs would be slaughtered the same way that current plate-bound cats and dogs are slaughtered.
The bigger issue would be how these animals are bred. Are the eaten cats and dogs typically more muscular and fatter than those raised as pets?
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"Membership" in anything should never be criminalized—that's freedom of association. Animal abuse should be criminalized.
You have a point but we are literally talking about an association whose entire and only raison d'etre is to perpetuate violent crime. Maybe it shouldn't be outright criminal, since people can potentially register for other reasons than to participate, but it definitely should at least be under scrutiny.
I don’t mean to defend people joining groups committing any kind of violence, but this is the kind of rhetoric being used by the far-right against their opponents, not only in the US; it is a terrible idea to allow policing based on “assumed intent”.
It's the same direction of travel as recent UK laws allowing police to stop people preparing to join protests if they think the accused might be planning to e.g. glue themselves to something.
IMO this is basically policing thought crimes. It worries me.
Rhetoric can be used to justify any action against any group on very arbitrary pretenses, and while I don't think "groups whose primary reason for existing is explicitly to facilitate crime should be closely scrutinized" is particularly dystopian, you're probably right that it could provide a good starting point for a slippery slope of criminalising association with political opposition :/
The same reasoning could be used against civil rights movement.
That's why we don't do that, if our systems are functioning fine.
Could be? You should look into the history of the Black Panthers. The US government doesn't need to make membership illegal to suppress and destroy political movements.
We essentially criminalize membership in other kinds of criminal groups centered around producing and sharing illegal content, the same should apply to animal abuse.
Yeah but do you need to criminalise membership, or does things like conspiracy, accomplace etc. cover it.
Membership in an organisation can be conclusive evidence you joined a criminal enterprise/criminal conspiracy, making the the entire debate somewhat moot.
But fine, only joining the criminal conspiracy is illegal, being a member can be legal (you always have to join to become a member).
You'll get slander cases of people receiving membership they never applied for. Having your name on some list should never be a crime in itself.
The focus should absolutely be on actions, not associations
> "Membership" in anything should never be criminalized
Conspiracy is the criminalisation of association to commit a crime. Fredom of association doesn't magically mean you won't face consequences for what your association is about.
We must secure the existence of animal abuse groups and a future for free association.
Tell that to the members of organisations deemed to be terrorists
Like the "ANTIFA"?
It’s scary seeing the president call me a terrorist for opposing fascism.
Almost every freedom needs exceptions. Better to have freedom in general plus exceptions than no freedom at all. Free speech except yelling fire in the cinema etc.
Ok so add this to these "exceptions".
I think with conspiracy you dont need to be that specific. Any crime you do as a group is a crime.
I'm halfway up in middle management of the terrorist company called Antifa, career aiming at C level in 6 years (wink wink).
How's the health insurance? You got dental?
Membership in an anti-constitutional organization is a crime under German law btw and I'm pretty sure there are other countries with similar laws. The US does criminalize membership but only as an add-on to other charges (co-conspiracy, basically). Of course in the US this is mostly for going after "gangs" so it's almost exclusively used against Black people.
Regarding Germany, that’s inaccurate. It’s a crime only if you wilfully (not just out of negligence) provide support for an organization after it has been prohibited. Membership is neither necessary nor sufficient for that. It’s what you actually do for the organization once it’s prohibited that counts.
Only black people are in gangs? What about organized crime, would that be only black people? Your comment was insightful up till the end when you had to make it about race, which it isn't.
>China lacks animal welfare laws to protect these cats
Does it? I remember a lot of outrage on reddit about people that would supposedly be banned from having pets due to low social credit score. Turns out the article was a complete lie and there was just a law introduced that made banning someone from having pets for a specified time a punishment that could be dished out. Specifically in the case of someone convicted for animal abuse.
That's a fairly weak punishment, tho.
Tangential but related - shout-out to nodogsleftbehind.com which is a nonprofit designed to save dogs from cruel treatment and the meat market in China.
If they neuter all stray cats, they will end up with no cats. Then they'll end up with mice.
are there places where it's illegal to kill cats? i know there are cruelty laws, but afaik in most places you are allowed to kill animals "humanely"
If you want to be this pedantic, killing humans is technically legal in every country that has soldiers and law enforcement officers.
i do mean by civillians
I was confused by how that might be possible, because I first assumed this would have been something like how the SPCA or animal rescue shelters work in the US, where there would be a central location where the animals are handled and processed. But I'm getting the impression that these are automated boxes that are placed in-situ in cities?
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Sometimes cats just get lost: The go on a walk-about and can't find the way home. I have a hunch that's more common than animal abuse. How does your system address that?
Also prison!!!
I was thinking about all the stories of people moving homes, and their pets escaping to return to the place they just left, sometimes across continents
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So to throw me to prison, all one needs to do is break in, and let my cat loose.
Also, abandonment is just a minuscule part of human animal abuse.
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You have no idea how much F*s a cat gives.
You don't even have to feed my cat for it to like you. Any human attention at all and the engine runs.
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My cat appears to be well nurtured. I just petted it and it responded with purrs and resumed sleeping comfortably.
You could still walk in and it'll want your attention straight away. The only attention it really hates is from dogs. Scares the bejeezus
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The most common animals that get abandoned are unwanted kittens and puppies, whose owners won't input them into your registry.
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It’s ok if it’s not a perfect system.
I would love a public registry of people who have been cruel to animals with a photograph of each person.
that's not the abuse being talked about here
There's some good explanation of what this is all about here: https://streetcat.wiki/
Specially, details of the actual feeders: https://streetcat.wiki/index.php/Stray_Cat_Feeders
Thank you; I tried to find an “about” link but couldn’t.
There's one in the bottom left, but there's not much detail so I did some googling
This seems like a good initiative, but makes me wonder, isn't there a risk these cats will end up overeating when endless Internet-people click the feed-button?
Cats generally don't overeat like dogs do.
The "oh lawd he comin"[0] meme is popular precisely because cat tend to over eat.
[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chonk-oh-lawd-he-comin
My cat would literally pop if he could eat as much as he wanted :(
It depends on the cat. Some will self-regulate, others will not.
My entire experience with cats disagrees.
> Stupid Idiot is a now adopted cat, named after the markings on his face
I'm glad for Mr. Stupid Idiot :D
Apparently he's named idiot because his moustache markings resemble the chinese character for "idiot", and stupid because he once flooded his feeder with the water bottle, somehow.
Flipped to the second camera, and there's a hedgehog eating all the food!
https://imgur.com/MIcjP4a
EDIT: And now, what appears to be a Siberian weasel?
https://imgur.com/3oZpZpK
Found another case at "Coal Ball (Eat Enough Every Day)" https://0x0.st/KQsT.png
The Purrrr app (which shows feeders like this) is really quite an experience. It’s just as hyperactive as a Temu or AliExpress, with as much dopamine hacking as a TikTok, but… for good? I think?
hello from the community! happy canteen gets a lot of food so if you want to donate i recommend checking out the less popular feeders. it is the most popular because mr fresh the meme cat who was adopted originated from there.
for those worried about the kitties every feeder has a different caretaker and some are more involved than others. from what ive seen a majority of the popular ones have either a dedicated caretaker or are involved with some business. unfortunately, you may come across feeders where the cats arent as cared for or where the caretaker lacks the funds to do so. to help with this the purrr app (where english speaking users can feed them) has a fund option where instead of feeding, you can support TNR or wellness treatments!
i forgot to mention these feeders just began entering the U.S. this year. there are several located in shelters and have helped many homeless cats find owners! hopefully they will continue to spread and help in communities that have stray cat problems
I noticed all the feeders seem to be similar / same. I'm in California, I feed 3 strays in an area where the average outdoor cat's lifespan is about 4.5 years (fires, traffic, hawks, coyotes, evil people).
Right now my process is very manual but it's a labor of love. All 3 cats only show up after dark. Ring stick up camera, bowls out (clean them every day), run out on a motion alert, etc. problem is I also have racoons, opposssums and skunks. (I'm not in L.A. highrises, I'm close to the ocean).
Where can such feeders now be purchased (US customer). Thank you!
I am not sure. You could contact the owners of the english translated app and they might be able to help. Their information is on their website https://www.hipurrrr.com/
This seems like a great program!
Small anectode;
My wife runs a cafe in Ankara, Turkey. A week after opening a random cat walked in and claimed one of the chairs.
We started feeding him. Then another walked in... We left a large automated feeder outside and started spaying / neutering, vaccinating, deworming them. I think we neutered close to 20-30 cats. A couple needed medical intervention (broken limbs, infections etc). And 2 I had to put down because they were too far gone. This effort alone put the neighborhood kitten population in control.
The place was aimed at health conscious / vegan people so the theme fit with cats hanging around.
It is really emotionally and financially draining to do these things. I've been fortunate enough to fund everything myself but I assume it is hard when scale grows larger and there is not enough help.
There is an excellent documentary about cats in Istanbul: Kedi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedi_(2016_film). A full version of the movie can be found on YouTube premium.
Thank you for your efforts!
A highlight of my time in Turkey was the cats - thank you for your efforts! Antalya had a lot of cat hotels in the park and most looked very healthy.
Classic Turkey.
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Brand new account only to start off like this. Sigh.
They are all over this thread with hot takes.
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The "Mr. Cloud & Mr. Peach (Yichen's Place)" feeder has an ant infestation and I just watched them team up to take a few kibble out of the feeder.
Also saw insects at "Mr. Sweetpea, Ducks (Bald Carrot Meow Guardian)" (https://meow.camera/#4300845904274638881)
I saw a slug eating in another feeder, but I feel like a little sprinkle of salt around the lower perimeter outside the base would deter them.
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We need a remote-petting-arm so we can pet the cat'berts over long distance lines.
Also a microphone for receiving feedback.
Or just walk over to the local cat rescue?
Not every problem needs a technical, internet connected solution Some problems are easily solved with "just going out of the door and spending some time" (which, I know, is not a very HN answer, but well)
Hey Cat as a Service (we meow not concatenate) is a fine idea
I have already patented SaaS. Sheep as a Service.
Touch Grass as a Service?
We need a remote-grass-touching-arm so we can touch grass over long distance lines.
But how can this "remote-grass-touching-arm" push the "smell" and "tactile" back to the user? Is there an open spec for this? It should certainly be P2P and E2E encrypted. Also "smells" should ensure not to use patented or proprietary names.
Maybe some CSmS, Cascading Smell Sheets? Or TFP, Tactile Feedback Protocol, the one that uses JWT and JSON over HTTP2 and websockets?
and a remote foot for the feet people
I just opened one up, two cats were waiting patiently, food came out, one cat hissed at the other and started eating. Very cat.
Well I certainly got sucked in by some cats staring at the camera with an empty bowl, got me buying them kibble.
This is brilliant marketing. Buy food for the hungry cat! Whoever came up with this idea is genius.
It feels like such a natural next step
Oh, wow, there's a whole mythos: https://streetcat.wiki/index.php/The_Exploration_Era
As a Chinese I'm amazed that this app is totally unknown in China but get popular in HN
Didn't expect to find something this wonderful on HN!
Good start to the morning.
Every now and then
Every meow and then
Sooo I really expected this to have a way to donate money to specific cats. If you added this feature I honestly think it'd be a viral idea.
Unfortunately the Internet has taught me to immediately speculate on how this could be used to monetize animal abuse.
I like the one cat rescue out of ohio that streams their cat area inside 24/7.
They get a ton of donations of food and toys so it seems to work out well.
You can: https://streetcat.wiki/index.php/Purrrr
Love this! Relatedly, does anyone have a suggestion for an outdoor solar-powered web camera that I could point at the critters in my garden? I'd love to stream a MonarchCam or MantisCam some day.
Reolink have one.
Used Reolink ages ago for home surveillance and it worked well then.
This is an interesting cat (as of 11:48 ET) https://meow.camera/#5087297507386435431
So this is like that fish camera thing where humans would identify when the fish ladder gate needed to be opened to let fish through, but this time it's for feeding stray kitties?
Or maybe there's no human interaction? I don't have the Purrr app.
POV: A bird's last view before being eaten by them
In one of the feeds (Mr. Fall) the cat is eating what looks like soap shavings or feathers or something. They apprear to be fairly light weight since the cat appears to be sort of licking them up. Any idea what they are?
Dehydrated chicken?
How is this surviving the HN hug of death?
Why is this not bigger than skibidi toilet? I have three kids, two girls and one boy. My son loves skibidi toilet, but my girls outnumber him and they've NEVER told me about this.
Because skibidi toilet is extremely stimulating and has stuff happening 24/7. This just has cats eating food. (which personally as an autistic person makes me bounce in my seat)
GIFs or screenshots from this are ubiquitous in meme culture in areas of the net I frequent. There's one I'm thinking of where the cat looks suspiciously at the camera.
Might we know what these areas are?
believe it or not there was a massive surge in popularity in 2024 when mr fresh still visited the happy canteen so they had time to prepare lol.
Lucky 7-Eleven II is one weirrrrdd looking cat.
Cool project! The post title is not at all clear though. Maybe it could be clarified?
Mr. Sweetpea has ants in his food.
WOW this is amazing! There are many of these ‘smart kitty houses’ in my Shanghai neighbourhood!
this is what the internet is for.
Jenny Cam has evolved so much
I don’t know why I expected anything else with that url.
Ahhh history back button but love it
This is Meowlsome!! haha
hehe Catroulette
Mr. Sweetpea has ants in his food
What is going on good cats! Mah kittahs; you are some good ass men I am thinking. :3
Now this is pure internet gold.
*purr internet gold
Gold? It's depressing.
Why? They're providing food for stray cats.