I don't think so. It doesn't look like the ones living in my backyard anyway. I think it's an up close photo of a spider which makes it look really big. Although it does look a bit like one of those jumping spiders, which might mean it could jump out of the urinal.
I'm surprised no one aimed directly at the spider to pressure splat him. Or that the cleaning chemicals didn't take him out. Seems like he would have been in pretty bad shape by Nagel's intervention.
I know, right! I can't believe the spider lived for so long. I find this story memorable because it's one of those things I think we've all experienced before but never talk about; those times we notice spiders and other insects stuck in the bathtub (I have less experience with urinals, as you can imagine). I have wondered what it must be like to live in some shiny white porcelain prison with nothing in it but slick unclimbable walls. Now, I'm not one to let the poor creature suffer, though that's less out of concern for them and more that I just don't want to look at some ugly creature with too many legs tooling around in my bathtub. Into the vacuum or down the toilet you go!
Lovely. When I lived in Taiwan, a subtropical country, I found all manner of creatures in and around the often-exposed indoor-outdoor places where I lived. One time there was a huge spider on my bathroom wall that suddenly appeared. It was enormous and basically was built like one of the face huggers from Alien. I started to get something to contemplate squishing it...and then I literally saw it leap from one wall to another. I closed the door and left the room.
My favorite Wittgenstein quote is: "“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
Which also reminds me of the penultimate lines of the Diamond Sutra:
"As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space, an illusion,
a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this"
Thanks for following me on Youtube! Not that I have much to post there usually. Since you're a fellow flamenco-ista, maybe you'll appreciate this little guitar recording I did the other day, testing out a new microphone: https://soundcloud.com/chao3nick/guitar-pretend-tape-hi-fi-vibe
Be glad I didn't see that spider leaping from wall to wall. I would've screamed one of those ear-drum popping screams that makes me see stars.
That's a great Wittgenstein quote! I can't believe I can read it. :)
Fantastic recording! I like that effect (or those effects) you're using. There's a dream-like quality to it, but not overdone. Have you thought about posting your songs on Substack?
Haha. But when you perceive your own mind fully, then you can see that the scream is a reaction, and the reaction is based on a false idea of threat and “the other,” as both Wittgenstein and the Buddha would probably agree ;)
Thank you. Almost all analog, just a little addition reverb and stuff in the computer post recording. Yes, I’d say my music is dreamy in some ways, as is the album I previously sent you. I actually had an idea this morning that I should start including some clips of things like this at the beginning of some of my entries..sort of like self curated suggested listening to accompany my thoughts. But as far as posting for the purpose of sharing music, well, substack is really not designed for that, whatsoever. Certainly virtually no one is coming on here to discover music or find it..it’s a bad time for musicians basically, anywhere, and the internet etc. Mostly has mostly subverted all attempts that are in favour of actual artists at this point. I already see lots of complaints about Substack by people who actually make a semi or full living at it that that’s already the case for writers on here, and possibly another doomed exercise in big tech scooping up everything for its own purposes and profit..but I digress.
Oh it is totally a false idea of threat, since I don't seem to have an outrageously irrational fear of snakes. I don't love them or anything, but I've held one once. With spiders, it is definitely an "other" thing for me. Too many legs and eyes. Horrid. I would never ever ever ever hold a spider or tarantula. Ever. I would literally run away if anyone even suggested it to me.
"Certainly virtually no one is coming on here to discover music or find it."
That might actually be a good thing. No competition! Seriously, though. You could post songs and maybe "behind the scenes" videos, or talk about the process or whatever, and then provide links to buy your album. You mentioned having your music in soundtracks, so you could even post those videos and give people the idea about using your music for moviemaking. You never know. Anyway, people might check it out as a break from reading the usual "how I got a bazillion subscriber" posts.
I'm curious about the complaints from people making a living here on Substack. What are they saying? Didn't they get advances from Substack to bring their work here?
There’s no competition if I try to sell my music at a butcher shop either, but I don’t think that will be likely to yield many results either :)
Which only makes me think of the film, Fallen Angels..highly recommended.
Advances? Not that I’m aware of. Same complaint as all the things I just referenced—any and all technologies these days, even when they appear to be about helping X human do Y thing, is ultimately a charade, and the vast majority of net profits end up to the tech firms that view it all as aggregating/selling data and selling ads as the real business behind everything. In other words, the few people making a living at it currently will likely be making less in the future, and fewer of them doing so. That’s exactly what happened to YouTube etc. And simultaneous, the invisible hands pushing the content that is rewarded more that does pay, ends up shaping the entire nature of said content, thus entire experience for users changes, usually to the creative and true expressive detriment of most people. Rinse and repeat.
Well I don't know about butcher shops, but I used to make at least $25/hour playing guitar in front of Whole Foods. That was a long long time ago, when that was a lot of money, especially for me. I actually got that tip from a homeless guy who showed me how it's done..."Don't play on the streets downtown dressed as a scroungy loser. That's expected. Play where the rich liberals go." He actually talked to the manager for me and got permission, then he showed me where to get free Mexican food. A real pro busker.
I'll have to look for Fallen Angels. I haven't even heard of it. Hope it's on one of my streaming channels.
"Any and all technologies these days, even when they appear to be about helping X human do Y thing, is ultimately a charade, and the vast majority of net profits end up to the tech firms that view it all as aggregating/selling data and selling ads as the real business behind everything. In other words, the few people making a living at it currently will likely be making less in the future, and fewer of them doing so. That’s exactly what happened to YouTube etc. And simultaneous, the invisible hands pushing the content that is rewarded more that does pay, ends up shaping the entire nature of said content, thus entire experience for users changes, usually to the creative and true expressive detriment of most people. Rinse and repeat."
Oh yeah, that. :)
I think once Substack starts putting up ads, it's time to jump ship.
I've actually been curious about whether their algorithms prefer blogs that turn on paid subscriptions over those that leave everything free. Now I know they prefer the mega popular blogs where they actually make a lot of money, which is understandable, but I wonder if it makes a difference whether someone with not that many subscribers (like me) turns on paid. I suspect it does. I noticed a bit of difference after I turn on paid to conduct a private writing group, although that could just be a coincidence. I asked Jane Friedman about it (she has a popular blog about the publishing industry) and she didn't know. Googled it, found nothing. I'm surprised. Usually someone out there has all this stuff figured out by now.
What an interesting short story! Though I can't help but wonder if it's apocryphal. Hard to believe the spider could survive for the months Nagel describes. Or that no one would have dealt with it in all that time. But it's interesting to ponder its meaning, especially from the spider's point of view. Was it happy in its perilous environment? Did it even, in some fashion, thrive? Only to quickly die in a "safer" one? It took the proffered rescue, but was it so exhausted by then that surrendered what life it had left? The story raises so many questions!
FWIW, I have Nagels /Mind and Cosmos/ on hold at the library. Should become available in two weeks or so. It was the only book of his they had (in ebook format). I'm looking forward to it. (I think I mentioned I'm reading John Searle's /Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World/. Still enjoying it but not finding his chapter on society as compelling as what he says about mind and language.)
Let me know what you think of Mind and Cosmos when you're done. That spider quote opened the chapter called "Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life" in the View from Nowhere:
What I mean is that I assume the spider rescue was motivated by the desire to lessen the spider's suffering. There seems to be the implication, at the very least, that this was a bad thing to do.
Ah yes, I think this was a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of story, but it's not as clear as that. I think you're right, though. That's what Nagel intended it to mean. I'm not sure he's right, but it certainly sticks in the mind.
It's funny to hear everyone's reactions ranging from "What took him so long to save the spider?" to mine: "Why didn't someone flush it sooner?" :)
In preparing my next blog post I've had occasion to think about Nagel's anecdote.
I would have done much the same, only I would have carried the spider, nestled gently in the wadded tissue, somewhere more accommodating to life -- probably outside the building, near the soil, by a crevice or a rock. At least from there it might have had some real opportunities. Perhaps by leaving it on the desert of the washroom tile, surrounded by giant shoes, Nagel crushed its hope that there might be somewhere significantly better in this cruel world than the drain.
The story is meant to persuade us of the hazard of thinking we can understand a spider -- but perhaps Nagel could have understood the spider more fully.
Well put! And I certainly would have no problem with getting the spider out of the bathroom and out of sight, in whichever way anyone other than me deems best. :)
I don't think so. It doesn't look like the ones living in my backyard anyway. I think it's an up close photo of a spider which makes it look really big. Although it does look a bit like one of those jumping spiders, which might mean it could jump out of the urinal.
I'm surprised no one aimed directly at the spider to pressure splat him. Or that the cleaning chemicals didn't take him out. Seems like he would have been in pretty bad shape by Nagel's intervention.
I know, right! I can't believe the spider lived for so long. I find this story memorable because it's one of those things I think we've all experienced before but never talk about; those times we notice spiders and other insects stuck in the bathtub (I have less experience with urinals, as you can imagine). I have wondered what it must be like to live in some shiny white porcelain prison with nothing in it but slick unclimbable walls. Now, I'm not one to let the poor creature suffer, though that's less out of concern for them and more that I just don't want to look at some ugly creature with too many legs tooling around in my bathtub. Into the vacuum or down the toilet you go!
Lovely. When I lived in Taiwan, a subtropical country, I found all manner of creatures in and around the often-exposed indoor-outdoor places where I lived. One time there was a huge spider on my bathroom wall that suddenly appeared. It was enormous and basically was built like one of the face huggers from Alien. I started to get something to contemplate squishing it...and then I literally saw it leap from one wall to another. I closed the door and left the room.
My favorite Wittgenstein quote is: "“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
Which also reminds me of the penultimate lines of the Diamond Sutra:
"As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space, an illusion,
a dewdrop, a bubble, a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this"
Thanks for following me on Youtube! Not that I have much to post there usually. Since you're a fellow flamenco-ista, maybe you'll appreciate this little guitar recording I did the other day, testing out a new microphone: https://soundcloud.com/chao3nick/guitar-pretend-tape-hi-fi-vibe
Be glad I didn't see that spider leaping from wall to wall. I would've screamed one of those ear-drum popping screams that makes me see stars.
That's a great Wittgenstein quote! I can't believe I can read it. :)
Fantastic recording! I like that effect (or those effects) you're using. There's a dream-like quality to it, but not overdone. Have you thought about posting your songs on Substack?
Haha. But when you perceive your own mind fully, then you can see that the scream is a reaction, and the reaction is based on a false idea of threat and “the other,” as both Wittgenstein and the Buddha would probably agree ;)
Thank you. Almost all analog, just a little addition reverb and stuff in the computer post recording. Yes, I’d say my music is dreamy in some ways, as is the album I previously sent you. I actually had an idea this morning that I should start including some clips of things like this at the beginning of some of my entries..sort of like self curated suggested listening to accompany my thoughts. But as far as posting for the purpose of sharing music, well, substack is really not designed for that, whatsoever. Certainly virtually no one is coming on here to discover music or find it..it’s a bad time for musicians basically, anywhere, and the internet etc. Mostly has mostly subverted all attempts that are in favour of actual artists at this point. I already see lots of complaints about Substack by people who actually make a semi or full living at it that that’s already the case for writers on here, and possibly another doomed exercise in big tech scooping up everything for its own purposes and profit..but I digress.
Oh it is totally a false idea of threat, since I don't seem to have an outrageously irrational fear of snakes. I don't love them or anything, but I've held one once. With spiders, it is definitely an "other" thing for me. Too many legs and eyes. Horrid. I would never ever ever ever hold a spider or tarantula. Ever. I would literally run away if anyone even suggested it to me.
"Certainly virtually no one is coming on here to discover music or find it."
That might actually be a good thing. No competition! Seriously, though. You could post songs and maybe "behind the scenes" videos, or talk about the process or whatever, and then provide links to buy your album. You mentioned having your music in soundtracks, so you could even post those videos and give people the idea about using your music for moviemaking. You never know. Anyway, people might check it out as a break from reading the usual "how I got a bazillion subscriber" posts.
I'm curious about the complaints from people making a living here on Substack. What are they saying? Didn't they get advances from Substack to bring their work here?
There’s no competition if I try to sell my music at a butcher shop either, but I don’t think that will be likely to yield many results either :)
Which only makes me think of the film, Fallen Angels..highly recommended.
Advances? Not that I’m aware of. Same complaint as all the things I just referenced—any and all technologies these days, even when they appear to be about helping X human do Y thing, is ultimately a charade, and the vast majority of net profits end up to the tech firms that view it all as aggregating/selling data and selling ads as the real business behind everything. In other words, the few people making a living at it currently will likely be making less in the future, and fewer of them doing so. That’s exactly what happened to YouTube etc. And simultaneous, the invisible hands pushing the content that is rewarded more that does pay, ends up shaping the entire nature of said content, thus entire experience for users changes, usually to the creative and true expressive detriment of most people. Rinse and repeat.
Well I don't know about butcher shops, but I used to make at least $25/hour playing guitar in front of Whole Foods. That was a long long time ago, when that was a lot of money, especially for me. I actually got that tip from a homeless guy who showed me how it's done..."Don't play on the streets downtown dressed as a scroungy loser. That's expected. Play where the rich liberals go." He actually talked to the manager for me and got permission, then he showed me where to get free Mexican food. A real pro busker.
I'll have to look for Fallen Angels. I haven't even heard of it. Hope it's on one of my streaming channels.
"Any and all technologies these days, even when they appear to be about helping X human do Y thing, is ultimately a charade, and the vast majority of net profits end up to the tech firms that view it all as aggregating/selling data and selling ads as the real business behind everything. In other words, the few people making a living at it currently will likely be making less in the future, and fewer of them doing so. That’s exactly what happened to YouTube etc. And simultaneous, the invisible hands pushing the content that is rewarded more that does pay, ends up shaping the entire nature of said content, thus entire experience for users changes, usually to the creative and true expressive detriment of most people. Rinse and repeat."
Oh yeah, that. :)
I think once Substack starts putting up ads, it's time to jump ship.
I've actually been curious about whether their algorithms prefer blogs that turn on paid subscriptions over those that leave everything free. Now I know they prefer the mega popular blogs where they actually make a lot of money, which is understandable, but I wonder if it makes a difference whether someone with not that many subscribers (like me) turns on paid. I suspect it does. I noticed a bit of difference after I turn on paid to conduct a private writing group, although that could just be a coincidence. I asked Jane Friedman about it (she has a popular blog about the publishing industry) and she didn't know. Googled it, found nothing. I'm surprised. Usually someone out there has all this stuff figured out by now.
What an interesting short story! Though I can't help but wonder if it's apocryphal. Hard to believe the spider could survive for the months Nagel describes. Or that no one would have dealt with it in all that time. But it's interesting to ponder its meaning, especially from the spider's point of view. Was it happy in its perilous environment? Did it even, in some fashion, thrive? Only to quickly die in a "safer" one? It took the proffered rescue, but was it so exhausted by then that surrendered what life it had left? The story raises so many questions!
FWIW, I have Nagels /Mind and Cosmos/ on hold at the library. Should become available in two weeks or so. It was the only book of his they had (in ebook format). I'm looking forward to it. (I think I mentioned I'm reading John Searle's /Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World/. Still enjoying it but not finding his chapter on society as compelling as what he says about mind and language.)
As an aside, I kinda like spiders: https://logosconcarne.com/2020/05/14/spiders/
"The story raises so many questions!"
I know, right!
Let me know what you think of Mind and Cosmos when you're done. That spider quote opened the chapter called "Birth, Death, and the Meaning of Life" in the View from Nowhere:
https://personal.lse.ac.uk/ROBERT49/teaching/ph103/pdf/nagel1986.pdf
Nice to have that PDF link, thanks!
The paragraph following the part you quoted starts: "It illustrates the hazards of combining perspectives that are radically distinct." Yes, exactly!
I wonder what Nagel's larger philosophy has to say about the reduction of suffering.
I’m not sure what you mean, but I wouldn’t know much about Nagels larger philosophy since this is the first book of his that I’ve read.
What I mean is that I assume the spider rescue was motivated by the desire to lessen the spider's suffering. There seems to be the implication, at the very least, that this was a bad thing to do.
Ah yes, I think this was a "road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of story, but it's not as clear as that. I think you're right, though. That's what Nagel intended it to mean. I'm not sure he's right, but it certainly sticks in the mind.
It's funny to hear everyone's reactions ranging from "What took him so long to save the spider?" to mine: "Why didn't someone flush it sooner?" :)
Hahahaha, well put mine down as "leave it alone."
In preparing my next blog post I've had occasion to think about Nagel's anecdote.
I would have done much the same, only I would have carried the spider, nestled gently in the wadded tissue, somewhere more accommodating to life -- probably outside the building, near the soil, by a crevice or a rock. At least from there it might have had some real opportunities. Perhaps by leaving it on the desert of the washroom tile, surrounded by giant shoes, Nagel crushed its hope that there might be somewhere significantly better in this cruel world than the drain.
The story is meant to persuade us of the hazard of thinking we can understand a spider -- but perhaps Nagel could have understood the spider more fully.
Well put! And I certainly would have no problem with getting the spider out of the bathroom and out of sight, in whichever way anyone other than me deems best. :)