InternetWeakGuy

When asked about this recently:

Mongabay.com: During your press conference, a reporter asked for your view of modern zoos, to which you replied that you’d rather be a chimpanzee in one of them vs. how they sometimes have to live in the wild. Can you say more?

Goodall: It’s just that I know so many places where chimpanzees must try to survive in forests that are being illegally logged, or logged by the big companies with permits. When chimpanzees try to move away, they are more than likely to encounter individuals of another community: as they are highly territorial, this means the interlopers will be attacked and such attacks often result in death. Moreover, hunters set wire snares for antelopes, pigs, etc, for food, and although the chimpanzees are strong enough to break the wire or pull a stake from the ground, the noose tightens around a hand or foot. Many individuals actually lose that hand or foot, or die of gangrene.

And then there is the bushmeat trade – the commercial hunting of animals for food. And the shooting of mothers to steal their infants for the illegal trade that has started up again as a result of a demand from China and other Asian countries and the UAE. Finally, as people move into the forests, they take disease with them, and chimpanzees, sharing more than 98% of our DNA, are susceptible to our contagious diseases.

Now think how the best zoos today not only have much larger enclosures, but well-qualified staff who not only understand but care about the chimpanzees, as individuals, and not just species. And great effort is put into enrichment activities, both mental and physical. Counteracting boredom is of utmost importance in ensuring a well-adjusted and “happy” group. This, of course, applies not only to chimpanzees, but all animals with even the slightest amount of intelligence. And we are learning more and more about animal intelligence all the time. The latest buzz is the octopus!

A final word: there is a mistaken belief that animals in their natural habitat are, by definition, better off. Not true, necessarily.

If you read the article he wrote about his involvement in breaking a "drug ring", it was people who were smuggling PCP into prisons. The issue they were dealing with wasn't teenagers smoking pot, more criminal enterprises (likely gangs) smuggling items into maximum security prisons.

I mean when you talk about "preventing people from receiving helpful medical care", you're pretty obviously talking about the government stopping people getting access to weed to deal with glaucoma etc etc - which I agree is nonsense. Anyone with half a brain thinks weed should be legal. Does that mean people who work trying to stop gangs from killing each other are assholes?

The war on drugs is bullshit, has always been bullshit and will always be bullshit, but you can't just boil it down to "anyone who does anything that deals with any form of law breaking that is in any way linked to drugs is an asshole".

If someone arrests a mexican gang member for beheading members of another mexican gang, is that person also "participating in the devastating war on drugs that has ruined thousands of lives, made the US a leader in prison population and prevented people from receiving helpful medical care"?

I listen to WTF religiously but this is kind of how I'd expect a Marc Maron AMA to go. He's kind of crotchety and I can't see him being comfortable getting faceless questions from a website that I believe he generally thinks is full of assholes.

I mean, I'm bummed because there's loads of great questions here that he would likely answer SIGNIFICANTLY better if, oh I don't know, Victoria was reading to him and then typing his answers.

So it goes.

Some friends of mine are anarcho-punks in Ireland, which largely involves living in squats, drinking cider and ranting about capitalism. One of their mates from the UK that they knew for five or six years turned out to be an undercover polis.

So fucking weird.

This isn't a big band with a following to descend on reddit. They have less than 2k followers on Twitter (which is fuck all) and their YouTube videos are all around the 5k mark.

This number of new accounts for an AMA you only see for established popular acts.