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animal rights

Image via Pixabay.

A total mind expanding experience is a click away.

I found a hidden gem on the Internet this week: NPR has a Soundcloud set of "binaural soundscapes." Strap on your headphones — it's going to be a surreal ride.Important note: If you have hearing loss, this may not work well for you.

Maybe you don't know what a binaural recording is.

Basically, the deal is, you have two ears.

They are the width of your head apart. And there's a big lumpy meatball in the middle. So your ears hear different things. Then your brain processes these two distinct streams of information and uses them to position stuff in space. Standard stereo recording often uses a couple of mics, but it's not trying to position them in a way that mimics your ears.

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via Horses in Our Hands

More than 60,000 American wild and domestic horses were needlessly slaughtered for human consumption in 2019. Although they aren't killed in the U.S. due to a ban passed in 2006, horses are often purchased or rounded up by middlemen and taken to Canada or Mexico where they are slaughtered for their meat.

While the idea of eating horse meat sounds disturbing to most Americans, it's considered a delicacy in Mexico, Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Poland, and China.

The horses are killed or rendered unconscious with gun bolts to the brain before they are bled out and then processed to be shipped out for food.

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In a show of solidarity with man's best friend, football star Tyrann Mathieu climbed into a car to find out what it's like for dogs when someone leaves them in locked inside for an extended period of time. What he found out is nothing short of stroke inducing.

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The 2013 documentary "Blackfish" shined a light on the cruelty that orcas face in captivity and created a sea change in the public's perception of SeaWorld and other marine life parks.

This "Blackfish" backlash nearly deep-sixed SeaWorld and led Canada to pass a law that bans oceanariums from breeding whales and dolphins or holding them in captivity. Animals currently being held in Canada's marine parks are allowed to remain as well as those taken in for rehabilitation.

Podcaster and MMA announcer Joe Rogan saluted Canada's decision on a recent episode.

"First of all, what assholes are we that we have those goddman things in captivity? A big fucking shout out to Canada because Canada, mostly probably through the noise that my friend Phil Demers has created in trying to get MarineLand shut down, Canada has banned all dolphin and all whale captivity. It's amazing. I hope the United States does it well, I hope it goes worldwide," Rogan told his guest, economist and mathematician Eric Weinstein.

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