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Greenland is a beautiful nightmare

(matduggan.com)
625 points zdw | 2 comments | 27 Sep 25 15:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.413s | source
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noduerme ◴[28 Sep 25 07:23 UTC] No.45402399[source]▶
This was some great travel writing. You don't hear good metaphors thrown around these days so much; LLMs suck at metaphors. Some choice bits:

>>like being stuck behind a school bus in your own driveway.

>>like some sort of prehistoric parking lot

>>like nature's sculpture garden

>>like being grounded by an airline

>>like a very expensive, very slow merry-go-round

>>like being trapped in a meteorological mood swing

These are each couched really nicely as references to everyday life, not over the top Hunter S Thompson style parallels, but at the same time very visual and conjuring experiences everyone can relate to. Good writing.

I'm really disturbed by the throwing of frozen sled dogs off a cliff. Frozen wasteland or not, they should do something to enforce laws against cruelty to animals.

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1. LarsKrimi ◴[28 Sep 25 23:38 UTC] No.45409037[source]▶
> Frozen wasteland or not, they should do something to enforce laws against cruelty to animals.

There are animal welfare laws, as well as a special unit responsible for specifically sleddogs. People are told to call snitch lines if they see animal cruelty

What is animal cruelty? The sleddogs talked about in the post were dead, you don't know how they died. In the wild or on trips sled drivers will often kill sleddogs themselves if they notice one slowing the pack down. It's a different world

Or is it just the part about throwing them off a cliff you don't like?

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2. noduerme ◴[02 Oct 25 09:36 UTC] No.45447745[source]▶
It's the part about chaining them to rocks and letting them freeze to death which I don't like. Someone who takes decent care of their animals would not allow that situation to occur in the first place. How they dispose of the dogs after allowing them to die at home is not really the issue. We aren't talking about the middle of a sled ride, or a death by hazard or necessity. The definition of cruelty, if you don't understand that, is that this creature is under your control, serving you, and the minimum you can do is to respect it. If you don't, then you disrespect life. And if you disrespect life then you disrespect your own.

Yes, we kill animals for food or for fur. But disrespecting them is a completely different, very ugly and disgusting thing. Because we are like them.

One mark of a psychopath, btw, is cruelty to animals..And the reason is not simply a lack of empathy. It's a desire to do to other humans what you can do to animals. What you're missing is the fact that this can be done to you. You can be skinned alive, for example, or vivisected. You could be left to die somewhere frozen. No one would even care for your corpse. They'd just chuck you off a cliff.

For normal human beings, hearing things like that make them empathize with themselves. Therefore they don't want to inflict torment on anything else.

You're new here and maybe you're a psychopath. But I'm wasting my time trying to explain something anyway. What defines "cruelty" is not about life and death. It's about respect for the living and the dead, and essentially respect for yourself as a fellow animal.