If I had to choose (which I don't) between the life of those cows and the ignorant dirt bags that have by any definition tortured those cows. I would still preserve human life. That's not to say those people don't deserve to be in prison. But in the culture I was raised in, the same culture that you yourself live in (whether you like it or not) considers taking a human life to be taboo. We're a complex society, so we have a lot of exceptions to that taboo, but cows are food and humans are my peers.

We should be very careful about killing even the worst human beings. And I can't think of any situation today where it would be acceptable to execute a person to punish them for torturing an animal. Nor can I think of a situation where a snap decision between saving an animal and a human being would allow you to evaluate a human's worth in a nuanced enough way to choose the animal's life first.

As for your final comments. You need to be a little more rigorous on the accurate of your information sources. Perhaps diversify. As there are plenty of examples where animal experimentation are a vital training tool.

having a 20hr/wk job is better than having a 0hr/wk job!

having one person with a 60hr/wk job and another with a 20hr/wk job seems unfair to me as well. (assuming both people would prefer to move close to 40hr/wk)

The ideal from the point of view of the masses would be for maximum choice. To work any amount of time they chose, without concerns if a company is hiring or not. But I don't know how to get to fantasy land, so I believe a reasonable compromise from maximum choice is for most people to have some kind of job. And other people to not have to commit to too much of a job to survive.
(obviously not a problem that can be fully solved in a dozen posts)

Right now most people don't get a choice. You work the hours, maybe some people like working extra hours, I know some people (myself) don't like working the extra hours.

If you're such a workaholic you can find a second job. If the state has non-compete laws to prevent this, then we should address that barrier.

I work on multiple software projects. But I could work more on fewer projects if we had more people.

9 hour days, 5 days a week was sort of the perfect amount of OT at my factory job (so 45 hours / week). For me it was an extra $70 in my paycheck every week, which is nice.
Obviously I'd rather get paid that same total amount and work fewer hours.

But when OT becomes a big percentage of your daily life and the bulk of your paycheck I strongly suspect that the employer has being paying too little for the base wage and is abusing a situation that employees have little control over.

citation please. I'd be interested in that.

The overhead for employees is almost exactly 50%. It's not much cheaper, it's a wash really. This assumes employers aren't paying for healthcare, which they don't for part time workers today, and won't for most full time works under ACA.

Having worked blue collar jobs (construction, iron foundry), and growing up in a mixed semi-rural community of mostly blue collar and some white collar families, I can say that OT is very much a double edge sword for us. Most of my peers didn't want to work OT too much except around Christmas where the extra money can be used to keep debt off their credit card. (We still bought gifts for our families even if we didn't have the money)
You never seem to get ahead working OT, you end up home less, buying take-out more, and when the OT dries up then the income you used to count on disappears in a week. Working OT and living paycheck to paycheck tends to result in not being able to pay most of your bills.

To me, OT never felt like I was being rewarded. I did the exact same job, sometimes I was paid more than others. My normal pay started to feel more like I was being paid a discount rate. And OT felt more like what the job was worth.

Getting bulk rate prices on the first 40 hours seems kind of backwards.

You shouldn't be encouraged to work overtime.

Overtime of 1.5x or 2x discourages employers from having overtime, and instead hire more people. It's generally better for unemployment numbers to employe more people full-time than it is to over-employ fewer people by having them work lots of overtime.
Employees are somewhat discouraged to work overtime long term because usually the extra money is not worth it. But let us not pretend that employees have much say in when and how they work. They don't usually have a lot of bargaining power.
But labor unions do have a lot of bargaining power, and they have consistently pushed to have lots of overtime hours at a high pay so that union members can effectively net higher incomes. Higher incomes are usually good for individuals, unless they are doing it just to scrape by or have no choice in finding a good work-family balance. Higher incomes are almost always better for unions as it can increase the dues they collect without diluting their voting blocs with the introduction of a lot of new members.
The system of employers and unions is quite corrupt, I hope that isn't a surprise to any of you.

I think employers should pay 3x overtime, but only give 1.5x to the employees and 1.5x goes into a social program. I don't really care which one, but best to pick one that has the right poetic justice. Like financial support for the unemployed, or healthcare for the poor. If you're force to work 10 hour days, might as well force you to send the money to someone who can use it rather than line the pockets of your union reps. I was tempted to suggest that it would be 1x to the employee and 2x to a fund, but I know that it would make it easier for people to collude to work off the clock if there is zero benefit to whistle-blowing. (not that 50% of your hourly rate is much payment for something high risk like reporting your company for fraud)

The other advantage of having the overtime go to a fund is when a business tries to commit fraud it becomes a type of tax fraud. The IRS is way more aggressive at pursuing tax fraud than the various state agency that handle prosecution of compensation that violates state code.

Aye! This scotsman agrees.

I lost my voicemail password about 2 years ago, I quit checking voicemails. I figured out how to make the message light solid instead of blinking so I can comfortably ignore voicemail for years to come.

That's right everyone. Give up, quit trying.

hyperbole. I don't recall the TSA using slaves or enslaving me when I visit the airport. They may have treated me unjustly though.

Why would you say we don't have time to tackle them all?

Why can't a 4 year old, girl or boy, play with a fantasy? Most little boys I've met aren't playing at realistic roles like scientist or engineer either. They want to be a pokemon master or a super hero or an "army guy". It isn't any different for a girl, a princess is a common fantasy for little girls. And the girls I've met sometimes had super powers or were princesses AND doctors at the same time. A four year old should be encourage to explore whatever fantasy they want and use their imagination freely without judgement.

Because when they get older, some asshole is going to start judging them and a little something is going to die inside of them. Then they'll be free to become the scientist, engineer, kindergarten teacher or stripper they were meant to be.

Anything over 2 billion is lost in the noise of automatic page refreshes and accidental clicks.