I just joined substack to follow a podcaster I enjoy and all of my suggestions for more "channels" (idk what they're called) were all right wing nutjobs, I had to actively search for content in line with my views/at least neutral. It was pretty nuts actually, all hardcore insane boarderline fascist content just firehosed right into my face as soon as I signed up. I can see why this is such a problem, they're absolutely winning the disinformation war. no one has critical thinking skills anymore, they bombard their viewpoints and get kids/first time users hooked early and for life. I don't know how you counter that.
Mice are excellent models for many diseases but not all. When possible we study cell culture, then mice, then humans and there are rigorous ethics committees that require justification for the study, we don't just do these studies for no reason. Their metabolism and physiology is pretty similar to ours, which makes them useful to study inflammation, cancer, diabetes and other malignant/metabolic/genetic disorders. They have a 21 day gestation period and research mice are essentially all clones which eliminates genetic variability as a factor (making them excellent for reproducibility in a timely manner)
some drawbacks include the spine, they're haunched which makes it difficult to study something like scoliosis, we do this in zebrafish actually. Also I believe they have some mild immunological differences like ratio of circulating white cells and bone marrow differentials and minor differences in some proteins. Basically anyone doing these studies has years of training and really knows what they are doing, they would not be allowed to conduct them unless it was absolutely necessary to answer a specific question. Mouse work is a lot more complicated/interesting than this but I think I've made my point for now.
Source: wrote a portion of my thesis on justification of using an animal model for obesity research, then an 8 year career in a pathology core/phenotyping lab.
For what its worth my experience wasn't a giant cruise ship it was a small yacht with maybe 10 of us on board, we only used it to get from island to island overnight.
Its not a giant cruise ship, it was a super small yacht that fit 10 of us all done as sustainably as possible. In general I agree with you I wouldn't touch a cruise ship with a 10 foot pole, they are definitely terrible.
11/10 recommend. We did a cruise that hopped between islands and I'll never forget it. swimming with sea lions, hanging out with boobies (blue footed, nasca), really cool hawks, crabs, iguanas, and my favourite the frigate birds! They look like dinosaurs and have nearly a 6 foot wing span and will hover inches above your head near your boat, they're so cool!
Animals are so much more chill when there are no predators. I took a vacation in Galapagos a few years back and most of the wildlife is like this, they just kind of stare at you for a second and go about their day.
masters of malicious compliance.