I figure with all the doom and gloom, maybe I should bring you a story that elevates your opinion of humans a little bit.

In 2016, a dog somehow managed to get into one of the feedways for a reservoir in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The dog was probably doomed since the water was very high. But a man jumped down the slope and ran to the dog, then ungracefully hauled it to the side of the feedway, then discovered that neither of them could get up.

Onlookers instinctively saw the danger and, though they were strangers, formed a human chain and extended a hand to the man, who retrieved himself and the dog. This was a perfect example of a great victory against dangerous odds. Everyone did great and the outcome was also good.

One thing I find particularly interesting about these sorts of stories is that they indicate the basic intelligence of dogs (or sheep or goats or whatever it is) In these kinds of situations, animals you’d expect would be pretty dangerous to handle, will generally allow the ape-people do use their thumbs and brains and stuff, effectively. There are many many such incidents. Another favorite of mine is an elephant rescuing a deer-oid from mud. The elephant’s strength and surety is such that it kind of launches the deer-oid out of trouble, but nobody complains. There’s a lot going on in there that we don’t tend to confront: for one thing, it’s obvious evidence that animals that are “less advanced” than humans are able to build predictive models of situations, that take into account physics, causality, and time. Is this intelligence? Because AIs can do that, too… Anyhow. [Elephant rescues drowning antelope, youtube] I particularly love the elephant’s body language – you can hear it mentally yelling at the stupid antelope.

Anyhow, the rescue has been commemmorated with a statue.

See? Humans can celebrate the stuff that makes the world a bit better. We don’t have to celebrate the political divisions created among us.

There, that’s the upbeat message. Next up: Conspiracy Theory.

Wait, what? There are other images that appear to be the same thing except it’s clearly a different dog. This is a golden retriever-oid and the other dog is a black lab-oid.

Even the poses are the same. Did some shitbird decide to throw a golden retriever in a sluice in order to re-enact them being good guys? Is this a CIA op?