And yet, unhitched from the menial task of transportation, the average horse today enjoys a far better quality of life than the average pre-car horse. Why? Horse girls. You see, now that the market demand for horses is no longer based on actual horsepower, horses can render the service of "just being themselves" for those who appreciate that most (in much more forgiving circumstances). In this way, horses truly are forever... and the real losers really are mankind. And its machines. In this essay, I will
This literally happened to my great grandfather in the late 1920s. He bought a car, got distracted by the sight of a pretty lady, and drove into a swamp. He was yelling "whoa! whoa!" and pulling back on the steering wheel while the car went off the road. That is what he had done his whole life to stop a horse drawn buggy in an emergency. He told my grandfather, who was riding with him at the time, that he could have the car if he could get it out of the swamp. He said he was going back to his horse and buggy because a horse wouldn't have run off the road into a swamp no matter what he looked at. He continued to use a horse and buggy for all of his transportation needs until he died in the mid 1960s. #FuckCars
It doesn't make sense to use automobiles. Imagine having to build out paved roads everywhere and also set up stations along these roads to refuel. Just completely impractical.
Right? It would be so much cheaper if we just used to the reinforcing steel to create thin tracks which we could put much more thermally efficient and eco-friendly wheels onto. In turn, we could carry exceptionally large loads of cargo or people over vast distances for a mere fraction of the cost (monetary) and a fraction of the cost (to the world) by creating long, highly aerodynamic vehicles capable of moving at ridiculously high speeds that would be uncontrollable for the average joe on the road.
Wait, haven't I heard of something like this before?
Fun fact, there are more domesticated horses now then there were at the hight of horses being used as transportation. I found this out when a reporter asked Jay Leno, an avid classic car collector, if he was upset about the CA law that makes only EVs legal to sell as new cars in CA by a certain date. He said he totally approved of the measure, and that there was nothing to worry about for classic car collectors, and citing horse ownership rates.
Hello, I am an internal combustion car. I can't go very fast unless the road is all paved, or very far unless you spend billions bringing fuel from thousand of kilometers to feed me. And if you drive me, people will think you're NOT gay!
I keep telling my wife the auto functions in my A3 are like having a horse. Including the odd "oh I'm gonna brake for no reason because I got spooked, now".
I fucking love it!
In Italy we eat horses, so they are also farmed for food. I bet all the horses that end up on a slice of bread or a pizza would rather have pulled a carriage. Still they are a much less popular meat, I don't think horse farming is as bad as, say, pig farming, (for the horse I mean) because there's much less demand.
"Frayed threads" (lack of better translation) of horse are pretty good with olive oil btw.
Horses are only fast because of the shape of their four long legs. You can't just give someone a carrot and long ears and expect them to be a horse. That just makes them a cat rabbit.
Because it's being used as pro-AI hype BS. No idea what it's referencing here and now on lemmy where most people here are far less accepting of AI hype, but I've seen it used on the highly delusional Singularity subreddit. Usually followed by hundreds of comments from people making actual real-life plans for what they're going to do when the "artificial super intelligence" makes them wealthy.
What are you going to do, just destroy an entire farrier industry? Think of the economy we can't build roads to other cities when we need to take care of <insert things we can work on fixing today without ignoring new frontiers and technologies>.
now that the market demand for horses is no longer based on actual horsepower, horses can render the service of “just being themselves” for those who appreciate that most
hmmm... contradicting the corporatist theory that technology/automation/AI has always resulted in more employment, the employment level of horses has decreased significantly... so let us all welcome those who will appreciate our use as glue ingredients.