So... it seems I accidentally deleted an ask rather than answering it. To whoever asked "is it okay to visit SeaWorld? Does the money go to giving the orcas good care?"... here is your answer!
The SeaWorld parks, as well as Busch Gardens, Discovery Cove, and a few others, are operated by the recently renamed United Parks and Entertainment, a for-profit theme park company. Like any other corporation, their first goal is to remain profitable. Obviously, a large portion of that goes to corporate leadership and shareholders. But that's far from unique to United, or theme parks in general. It's a byproduct of the greedy world we live in. If you're willing to buy a ticket to Disney or Six Flags, then buying a ticket to a SeaWorld or Busch Gardens is no more immoral.
According to the AZA, approximately 77% of their members are for-profit. And while AZA zoos certainly vary in quality (anywhere from "acceptable" to "exceptional" in my opinion), for-profit status does not cheapen or detract from the work they do. In fact, for-profit institutions often have more financial freedom for animal care and conservation efforts than their non-profit counterparts. Non-profit zoos and aquariums are wonderful places, but believe me when I say there's a startling amount of politics in every aspect of their management. Non-profit status does not automatically make a zoo better, and for-profit status does not automatically make a zoo worse.
Now... do SeaWorld ticket sales go toward giving their orcas (and other animals) good care? Yes.
While it's certainly simplistic for parks to claim, as they do, "just by buying a ticket today you're helping save animals in the wild!"... it's not exactly a lie. Being for-profit, SeaWorld doesn't ask for donations to fund park operations or outreach endeavours. That revenue is generated by selling tickets, merchandise, food, etc. The same goes for their wildlife rescue and rehab program, Rising Tide conservation program, Coral Rescue Center, and the SeaWorld-Busch Gardens Conservation Fund, as well as partner organizations like OCEARCH and the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
Take ticket sales away, and they can't care for their animals, or continue to fund conservation projects. While I don't know the whole story of what exactly is going on with Marineland Antibes, it appears that the park is in a dire financial situation due to plummeting attendance, to the point that they can no longer maintain their killer whale habitat and are trying to offload their animals onto an Asian aquarium or, potentially, an as-of-yet non-existent third party sea pen. While certainly well-meaning, years of boycotts against Marineland ultimately put their animals in a position where they are not being properly cared for. And it would be horrifying if the same thing happened to SeaWorld. I don't think many people, in their fervor to punish the parks for their perceived misdeeds and save the animals, thought about what the reality of driving a zoological facility into financial ruin would look like.
Don't get me wrong, SeaWorld's shift toward promoting itself as a thrill park that also does conservation rather than a marine facility that happens to have roller coasters annoys me. I would have rather they built a separate, neighboring park for the rides, or at least integrated them into the existing park less obtrusively (Disney's Animal Kingdom, for example, seemlessly integrates the theme park and zoo elements, although they have the benefit of the incredibly talented Imagineering team behind them). But as tiresome as the constant roller coaster announcements are, they are what kept the company afloat financially in the years immediately following Blackfish, drawing in a crowd that previously had no interest in the parks, and for that I'm grateful. Thankfully, SeaWorld is in a better spot nowadays. But the only way to convince them that their animals, not their roller coasters, are what people want to see... is to visit and see the animals.
In short, yes, part of your SeaWorld ticket funds care for their orcas and their many admirable projects. Now if only more of it went to giving their staff better salaries.
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A lightee ask than usual but do you have any food or eating habit thoughts?
Ooohooohh, I did a whole ass seminar on the history of food. Failed it because I almost bled to death but I got to keep all the material! I've got.... a lot of thoughts and feelings about food culture. Too goddamn many, tbh. This got really long so I'll have to do a part two for other characters if wanted but lol enjoy.
Alfred:
—Actually pretty gourmet little shit when he's got time and effort. He's made food Maria loves so often she has to give up on pretending she didn't enjoy it because fucking hell, he makes good chilaquiles after they've been drinking and fucking. There is, however, a non-zero chance he hasn't eaten a vegetable since the Nixon administration.
—With that combustion engine metabolism, he's also perpetually hungry, so he eats whatever is around him. His guts do not like this, especially when it's a lot of dairy.
—He has that kind of lactose intolerance that's tied to his health and stress, so if he's been particularly freaked out lately, he'll remind the world of his nuclear arsenal when he's got to use the toilet after that triple cheeseburger with a side of deep-fried cheese curds.
—He's a stress eater too. He eats every negative emotion he's ever had especially when he's trying not to binge drink or do drugs.
—He’s exceptionally food-motivated. They didn’t call one of his first major historical eras ‘the starving time’ without reason. He has preferences, but food is also food, and he’ll genuinely enjoy it in most forms as long as it's not rotten or otherwise godawful. Cowboy coffee and beans for ten days straight, and he will genuinely be the only man on that cow trail not sick of it by the end.
—This also goes into why he’s so generous with food. He’s big on homemade food. He’ll make a whole big ass batch of like some sort of mac and cheese, and all the neighbours will get a big ol’ bowl of it with an ‘oh just return the Tupperware whenever,’ and it will genuinely be one of the best things they’ve ever eaten in their lives. Europeans recoil in horror, but our portion sizes are almost never single servings. It’s a generosity and hospitality practice except drinks. He really will down like a 2 liter of Slurpee in a single sitting.
—He doesn’t mind eating alone. Actually prefers it sometimes. He loves eating in his car. American frontier culture, especially mountain men, had an often hyper-individualized, almost mythic culture of spending long periods alone in the woods and not being very sociable; thus a lot of situations where single servings were a thing, eating alone in quiet without something to do can be a real goddamn luxury.
—He’s a really big protein guy with his metabolism. Sometimes exists on protein shakes but is more often a beef or barbeque or ham or alligator jerky. And a somewhat chunky Alfred is a healthy Alfred. A perfectly cut no flab Alfred is an Alfred who might be severely dehydrated and on several kinds of uppers.
—He has better tastes than Arthur who didn't really realize food was supposed to taste good until like ten years ago but his combinations can be equally wild and unappetizing as they are batshit tasty.
—He loves spicy food. He's got so many opinions about hot sauces.
—He’s always hungry. If he isn’t hungry or turns down food, its genuinely a bad sign. If he turns down anything or just is just picking at it his food alarm bells should be sounding. He’s either about to declare war or puke all over the table or keel over dead. Peckish or food coma is his default state. Like if he was a smaller guy someone would say he’s got a binge disorder but he’s tall and beefy so he’s pretty okay.
—Incredibly adventurous eater too. People will assume since there’s that old school culture of Anglo-American who eats the same 7 meals every week and might keel over dead if the meatloaf is slightly different he’ll be a bit hard to please but then he’s absolutely charmed by everything from Korean kimchi to Lithuanian Lašiniai.
—He loves anyone who feeds him, just got to be a bit careful because he’s got surprisingly delicate stomach for the world superpower.
—That American obsession with authencity means he’s surprisingly good at remembering people’s food culture or eating norms. He figured out chopsticks in ten seconds and quickly picked up the cues and manners of eating in any given culture. Still struggles with modulating his voice and personality, so he can often come across as rude, but he's so excited to do so. It's almost frustrating how happy he is to try and adapt to people around him and how happy he can be to fit in.
Matt:
—He's a very good cook when he's putting in effort for other people, but he's not really like Alfred, who he'll make a whole ass meal for one just to relax on a Sunday.
—He does tend to eat more vegetables than Alfred, but only because his northern vitamin deficiency has him binging them when he can afford them or they're available during the summer.
—He can be weirdly picky on his own, but no one ever really needs to ask about his favourite food or how he likes anything because he always just goes with the flow around other people. “Just get me whatever you’re getting.” comes out of his mouth often.
—There's a lot of sour cream/crema and yoghurt/coconut milk involved when he eats Mexican or Indian food for as much as he loves it.
—Katya was singlehandedly responsible for his ability to maintain a normal weight during the 20th century by adding rye bread and perogies/vyrenki to his diet. He craves mushroom-umami flavours when he misses her, which is most of the time.
—When he’s normal and eating the Anglo-North American diet, but he isn’t always eating it, he gets some strong sugar cravings, especially when he’s west of Manitoba. He’s as fond of birch syrup as a flavour as he is maple; there’s just less production. But the kind of deprivation he got and his own tendencies to not eat sometimes cause white sugar to just straight-up burns.
—There's very much something of François to Matt's dietary habits, but less in his personal tastes and more in that he might be more sensitive to flavours. He has that kind of discerning and slightly oversensitive palate, but he’s a shitty perpetually broke frontier settler colony. He knows better/feels too guilty/is too embarrassed of himself to really indulge it.
—He kept too much of his peasant communalism in his eating habits. Where Anglo-American communities did have a lot of cooperation, communal eating was a special occasion. The norm was based on the individual household. In contrast, French Canadian habitants still technically lived on medieval land plots and owed labour to a lord while also having a culture of seasonal male work, so Matt grew up used to communal ovens and eating most of his meals around others. Later, in Arthur’s jurisdiction, it was usually the same. He got a plate of whatever he was given, and it wasn’t something he had ever had to initiate himself.
—Partially, he's sometimes exceptionally bad at eating when he has to choose to do it himself. Especially since the Americanization of the food culture took hold in the '80s and '90s. Whereas Alfred is food motivated from going without when he was little, Matt learned how to block out physical sensation until he collapsed because it was rare that someone, including himself, cared about what kind of state he was in. He just doesn’t eat at all when he’s stressed or anxious. And now it's his sole responsibility to do so as there aren’t the same community structures. He has a lot of Alfred’s abundance now, all the brunch and BBQ places anyone could ask for, but it hasn’t meshed with his eating habits. His people gave up so much of their communal eating in exchange for various choices and then wondered why they were so lonely. So he’ll just microwave a potato or a packet of Kraft dinner a day for a week straight and wonder why he feels dead because, technically, he did eat something. It’s seriously a miracle he got as tall as he did.
—Feed him nothing but hardtack for three years, and he won't complain until he's dropped dead of scurvy. If Arthur puts some sort of godforsaken mixture of plum sauce or gin-infused spag bol in front of him, he’ll compliment it before he disassociates to get at least some of it down.
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