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[personal-blog-thing]

Whales and Dolphins in Captivity

Dolphins and whales are two species of aquatic mammals that are regularly seen in aquariums (although dolphins are far more common). However, throughout the years there has been a lot of debate as to whether this is ethical or not. Today, I will be covering the good, the bad, and my personal opinion of the topic.

First, let's go over the good. Sometimes, when an animal is wounded or sick and someone notices, they can alert the local animal authorities and they might be able to deliver the animal to an aquarium where some veterinarian can take care of it until it recovers and is rehabilitated, after which they release the animal back into the wild. Whilst the animal is recovering, they can also display the animal for customers to see, and make money from people visiting, overall resulting in a win-win for every party involved here. The dolphin or whale can recover, the visitors get a new attraction, and the aquarium makes money off the tourists. 

However, sometimes, this isn’t the case, and dolphins or whales are taken from their natural habitat and forced to perform all sorts of stunts and tricks for tourists so that the person (or people) running the show can make more money off of tourists who pay to see the dolphin/whale do tricks. This is a much more controversial and amoral method of keeping dolphins or whales (although much more often dolphins,) in captivity due to the fact that they are taken from the sea and then abused and exploited for as much profit as possible. This is an abusive and amoral way to treat animals, and on top of this, the animals are more often than not mistreated and abused even further if they do not do as told.

So in conclusion, if done right and morally, keeping dolphins and whales in captivity can be a positive. However, there are also times when it is extremely abusive and cruel. But if done right, it can result in a benefit for the animal, the aquarium, and the tourists that visit.

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Wall-E Movie Summary

Wall-E is an action-adventure movie set 100 years in the future in a post-apocalyptic earth where the planet is covered in garbage so humans have left earth on a space cruise ship where they have been flying for 700 years, waiting for the millions of cleaning robots that are left behind to clean up the planet. 

The movie follows Wall-E, the last remaining cleaning robot, who goes on his daily routine of going around cleaning garbage, collecting things, and avoiding the occasional dust storm. One day while going through his usual routine, he finds a plant. Not knowing what it is, he keeps it However, eventually, the robot known as EVE goes to earth on a mission to find life. After she attempts to kill Wall-E due to her thinking that he is hostile, they befriend each other and soon enough Wall-E shows EVE the plant. This causes her programming to automatically take the plant, put it inside an internal storage compartment, and go into sleep mode until she is collected by a rocket ship later. 

Wall-E, who had fallen in love with EVE, grabs onto the rocket ship where they are brought to the mothership where all the humans (who have since become so accustomed to moving chairs that they can barely walk) are. EVE is brought to the cockpit to show him the plant, but Wall-E, not knowing that she was supposed to give him the plant, steals it and so the captain thinks that she has malfunctioned so he sends her for repairs and sends Wall-E to be sanitized. However, Wall-E, not knowing what is happening and likely feeling scared, escapes with EVE and gets back to the cockpit with the plant. 

They show him the plant and are set to go back to earth, but Auto, the AI autopilot, prevents this by showing the captain a recording from 700 years prior stating that earth was now unfit for human life. However, he is insistent on going back to earth and attempts to do so nonetheless, so Auto locks him in his quarters. He manages to get out and start the process where the plant is analyzed so that they can go back to earth, but it is now up to Wall-E and EVE to deliver it to the analyzing area, all while Auto fights to turn it off. 

In the climax of the show, the captain gets up and walks once again, and shuts down Auto manually, allowing EVE and Wall-E to deliver the plant and head to earth. However, Wall-E is damaged in the process, and as soon as they go back to earth EVE flies Wall-E to his home and uses the spare parts that he had collected to repair him, but removing his memory in the process. However, a few minutes later he manages to get it back after hearing and seeing things from before he lost his memory. The movie ends with humans beginning to replant and restore life on earth.

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Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Summary

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie is a fictional story based on the Sonic the Hedgehog games by SEGA. it follows the character of Sonic the Hedgehog and his quest to defeat the antagonist, a scientist named Ivo Robotnik, who seeks to capture him and steal his power to run at unbelievable speeds.

The story begins on Sonic’s home planet. It explains that because of his powers, all sorts of people constantly try to capture him in an attempt to steal them. Eventually, he and his caretaker, a large owl named Longclaw, are cornered by bandits, and Sonic is given a bag full of magic rings to escape to another world. Sonic leaves while Longclaw stays behind to distract the bandits. Her last instructions to Sonic are to stay hidden and to travel to another world using the rings should he be found.

He ends up on earth where he lives in a small cave in the woods next to a small town named Green Hills in Montana. He stays hidden as instructed and observes (read, stalks) the people of the town, even coming up with nicknames for them. Eventually while running around a baseball field out of anger at his loneliness, this causes a massive power outage which draws the attention of the government, who has no idea what could have caused it, so they send their leading technological scientist Dr. Ivo Robotkik to find its source. 

Meanwhile, Sonic is panicking and flees to police officer Tom Watchowski’s (who is days away from a new job in San Francisco) shed to use one of his rings to leave, but Tom sees him, panics, and shoots him with a tranquilizer dart, knocking him out and causing sonic to drop the rest of his rings into a portal to San Francisco. He then puts him inside a dog cage and calls his wife (who is a vet) to ask what he is. Sonic then woke up and asked Tom for help to get his rings back. Tom refuses, as he is about to get promoted to a cop in San Francisco, his dream job.

Eventually, Dr. Robotnik comes across a quill and a footprint that doesn’t match any animals on earth. He then goes to Tom to question him. Tom doesn’t answer and they later manage to escape in Tom’s truck. Tom then agrees to take Sonic to San Francisco via a road trip, along the way being chased and pursued by Robotnik and his drones. 

After a long road trip where Sonic is nearly killed in an explosion, they arrive in San Francisco where they have a moment to let Sonic rest and recover at Tom’s wife, Maddie’s sister. Rachel’s house. Where Sonic recovers and receives a new pair of shoes before going to the Transamerica Pyramid to recover his rings.

While this is happening, Robotnik has learned to harness the power of Sonic’s quill to go at speeds comparable to Sonic himself, and as Sonic is about to leave with his rings, Robotnik attacks, resulting in an epic battle between him and sonic where they travel the world using his rings. Eventually, they end up back at Green Hills where Sonic is nearly defeated but in a cliche “power of friendship” moment he manages to defeat Robotnik. He and Tom decide to stay in Green Hills instead of leaving to their respective locations, and Sonic becomes a member of the town and lives with Tom and Maddie.

[personal-blog-thing]

Reflection 2022

These past two weeks, I have made a bad habit of staying up late on Discord and Twitter. This has caused me to suffer from a variety of things such as loss of sleep due to me being up until around eleven o clock some nights, and it being bad for my eyes, which are already really bad, having gone up 200 degrees over the past two years, and meaning that I have had to get better glasses. On top of this, my school is entirely online, meaning that I spend a large amount of time on a screen nonetheless. 

There is also the matter of sleep. When I go onto a screen up until eleven o clock, I often still end up staying up for a little bit longer as my brain needs to calm down after hours of looking at a screen, meaning that I end up falling asleep at around eleven fifteen, which is even worse. In order to try to compensate for this, I end up staying asleep for longer and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning as I haven’t been sleeping enough. Me not sleeping enough can also cause some other issues such as me not being able to focus as much on my work, me not wanting to go out and do things during the day, and my performance in activities such as tennis and drums decreasing. 

Now, my end goal is for me to have none of these issues. I want to reverse the damage to my eyes as much as possible and get a healthy sleep schedule. The part about sleep is definitely achievable as thankfully I have not caused too much damage to it yet. I can definitely fix it within one or two weeks of going to sleep earlier and putting my devices downstairs every day from six in the evening so that I am not tempted to get them before bed. I will also make sure that I get up from bed every day by six-thirty in the morning so that I do not stay in bed for so long that it becomes unproductive.

My eyesight, however, is a different story. Repairing and preventing further damage to my eyesight is something that is going to take months of work and a lot of effort, but it is something that is going to be necessary for the sake of my eyes.

Fixing my eyesight is something I will have to do via months of new, better micro habits. These include things such as limiting the time I spend on the screen as much as possible. This will be difficult as I spend a few hours a day on a screen nonetheless due to school, but I will have to try to limit my screen time during breaks and outside of school as much as possible. On top of this, I will have to spend fourteen hours a week outdoors and looking for so that I can help my eyesight and take a break from the screen. This will be difficult with my school being online as I may not be able to go out as much as I may like on the weekdays, but I can compensate for this by spending more time outdoors during the weekend. Doing things such as going to the beach, going to the pool, going to Blue Tree, and more. I will plan my outdoors for the week on Sunday evening every week with some input from my parents to check if the time I want to do certain activities will work. 

Another few micro habits I would like to work on, although (arguably) not as major as my eyesight or sleep schedule, are brushing and flossing my teeth every morning and evening, something I have been slacking off on for the most part, and working on my Tabata exercises every morning so that I can get into better shape and become stronger.

These are all things that I will have to consciously do every day for days, weeks, even months to achieve some of these goals, and my instincts will tell me not to do it and to be lazy, but I will have to constantly fight those instincts and do what is good for me instead of what I want to do. As if I only do what I want to do, I will end up becoming an unproductive human being who is out of shape and with terrible eyesight, which is something that I want to avoid at any cost.