One half of me is fascinated by this as spiders are such amazing creatures. So long as they don't break our house rules they're welcome to stay, especially the spindles! The other half of me didn't scroll far enough down and a a slither of the video played at the bottom of the screen making me think a spider was running across my arm and made me jump!
Yeah same, we do not bother spiders in the house unless they jump into bed or on food or whatever, and then we just take them outside. With spiders and cats in the house we never see any flies or other insects.
I have a rule with the spiders where if they get too bold they get the vacuum. I don't mind them lurking in the corners but I don't want them crawling across my desk. I think most of them understand the arrangement by now. Only occasional enforcement is necessary.
I tried this with a yellowjacket and a screamer of a Shop Vac that has a six-foot hose. I was sure it would have suffocated from the dust inside the vacuum bag clogging its spiracles.
Next morning, the wasp (now with tattered wings) was sitting in the corner of a window. I have no idea how it made it out.
It's probably a pretty natural path for the wasp assuming it survived the initial time you were running the vac. The shopvac is just a big container with at the top an exit path following the wall naturally out the tube. They don't even tend to have a flap like smaller hand vacs might have to keep dust from falling out during use.
I feel guilty when I take down the webs. Wool dusters work as well as the vac.
Lately I have been trying to get macro photos of spiders hanging on their threads and so far failing because they see the camera and drop down a foot before I can set up the shot.
Incidentally, this method cured me of arachnophobia. Having it trapped inside the glass, yet in my hand and up close to take a closer look, allowed me to gradually see them as not all that scary. It's like that therapy where you gradually get closer to the thing you're afraid of (desensitization?).
I deal with trespassing flies this way. They spend some time in fly jail (butterfly net, twisted closed and propped against the door frame through which they entered) pour encourager les autres, then they go free outside at dusk.
Pheromones, interpretive dance, telepathy,—I don’t know exactly how the others get the message but I know that they do, and they stay on the correct side of the doorway.
I've never really understood the "spiders protect you from pests" argument. Yeah, sure they eat flies. But I'd much rather have a fly buzz past me and get stuck to some fly paper than have a spider drop from the door frame on an invisible silk thread and slam into my face, or run across my pillow. Maybe I have arachnophobia, but they're freaky little creatures that I don't want in my living space.
> than have a spider drop from the door frame on an invisible silk thread and slam into my face, or run across my pillow
Rare if ever happens. Maybe 5 times in your life time. I will pay that cost any day. I have made friends with spiders. Flies spread diseases, spiders eat them. Spiders seldom bite humans and when they do, it’s nowhere near as bad as getting scratched by a cat.
For what it's worth, it happens to me about 5 times each summer. But I also welcome spiders as pest control, so it's not a surprise, and I forget all about it 5 seconds later.
Suit yourself, I'd much rather have the latter. One of the best features of spiders is that they can't fly. If a bug can fly, all bets are off. Who knows where that thing is going to end up. Spiders are at least more predictable.
I've never been prevented from sleep by a spider buzzing around the room, either.
I saw a butterfly get stuck to a web once. It immediately started hurling itself violently away, trying to shake itself free. The spider was not immediately in evidence.
I managed to take the web off it, but not without tearing off the part of the wing that made contact. I assume that in the butterfly's best-case scenario, that would have happened anyway. It was able to fly afterwards.
I don't mind spiders at all, they mostly stay out of my way. Flies, on the other hand, land on my food, buzz around the room when I want to sleep, and are generally a nuisance.
That's how I feel about dragonflies. Spiders are, to me, equally interesting but less enjoyable. I tolerate a few spiders in our house, but not in bedrooms or the kitchen.
The best way to get rid of spiders it to get rid of the files yourself then.
If there is nothing in your house for the spiders to eat, you won't have spiders. If you remove the spiders but not their prey (flies, etc...), you will have more flies, and spiders will keep coming back.
The reason the spider web in the article is so huge is that there is a huge amount of flies to feed the spiders.
It's actually spider webs that protect you from pests. The webs keep catching bugs as long as they are there, the spider just eats what it wants then moves on.
My house has a problem with little black ants that pest control services never could quite take care of. Spiders kept trying to set up shop near a window, but I would always knock the web down. Once I relented and let the spiders do their thing my ant problem went away. All I need to do is clean up a few ant corpses in the fall, which is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.
I feel like a lot of the pro-spider replies have never accidentally disturbed or stepped on a momma wolf spider carrying her babies on back and witnessed the pure terror that ensues as hundreds of babies swarm out across your floor.
my partner and I have a long running joke that I as the techy person who pretty much just uses the camera, WhatsApp and Safari on my phone has so many bugs and issues while my partner who bought the same phone on the same day as me has none of these issues but has and uses every app plugin etc under the sun. and let's face it iOS isn't really that 'customisable'
I just want Safari to work again. The rest I'll wait. I'm checking for software updates daily. it's gotten so bad that I looked up how to report bugs to Apple but I can't submit screenshots!?
I'll settle for just being able to enter data into a form in Safari without needing to reload the whole page.
just to add I had to cut this comment, reload the page, paste it in in order to be able to submit it
This is one of those things that you don't really tend to think about (pun not intended!) until you experience a change in your thinking or meet someone who thinks like you do!
> If we can avoid the compression step, and do the manipulations directly in the high-dimensional, non-linguistic, conceptual space, we can move much faster
With my neurodivergent brain I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed format" and then eternally struggled to confine it all into words. Only then for people to misinterpret and question it. They might get caught up in the first sentence when the end of the paragraph is where you need to be!
That's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way.
Since becoming ill I've suffered badly with brainfog. The cutesy name for a cruel experience. Sometimes there's no memories to draw on when your thinking, the cupboards are bare. You can't leap from thought to thought because they disappear before you get there or after like a cursed platformer. You might be able to grab hold of the thought but you can't reach inside or read it. It's all wrong somehow like when your suddenly convinced a word is spelt wrong even though you know it's right. You can't maintain focus long enough to finish your train of thought.
Even that subconscious processing is affected I used to prime my brain with information all day and instead of waking up with the solution I'll wake up frustrated but not knowing why. Just the vague notion that I failed at something that used to come so easily.
> I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed format" and then eternally struggled to confine it all into words. Only then for people to misinterpret and question it.
This resonates so much with me. To a point where I don't write/contribute in public forums out of fear for this misinterpretation.
Strangely, your post has made me push through that exact fear to write this, so any perceived misinterpretation has positively impacted at least one stranger. This is a good reminder for me that focusing only on negative consequences misses the unintended positive ones of still putting something out there, even if its not a perfect representation of the "uncompressed format".
Thank you for sharing, and I wish you a speedy recovery.
That description really resonates with me, it feels a lot like what I've been experiencing on and off for several months. I sometimes describe it like being able to see and examine an idea sitting in front of me on the table but having a hard time picking up and being able to manipulate it enough to write it out. Or like your fingers are working poorly like when it's very cold and you're not wearing gloves.
It only takes some practice to get better at it even if it doesn’t come naturally to you. I think it’s worth working on our weakest skills, over time it compounds quite nicely.
I've too often made the experience of having something that feels significant and whole in my head, and in the process of trying to articulate it to another person, it becomes almost completely lost. What comes out is a two-dimensional, crippled shadow of the original idea, and it (this is the worst part) cuts off my connection to the complex form.
This is why writing is important. it gives you the time to actually thinking about the best words to represent what is in your head. you may still fail, but it will usually be better than whatever comes dribbling out of your mouth.
unfortunately, if knowledge isnt written down in some form, (code, english etc) then it doesnt really exist in a civilization sense, so you need to get good at writing.
I fully agree. I think of it as exercising the muscle in the mind that acts as the "translation layer" between abstract concepts and human language. It is tough to convey complex ideas in word, but you can grow that skill with practice.
> That's why when you meet someone who thinks like you the depth of conversation and thinking you can achieve together is vast and also incredibly liberating! Your no longer limited by words in same way.
Hmm.... I have to say, while I like the idea of being unlimited by words - the state of 'purer communion' is one I have frequently sought - I think it is far more likely that what is going on is that you mind is projecting 'likeness'. Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption. After all, no one knows what goes on in another's mind - we simply don't have access.
I think talking is our means of 'ideas exchange', and that the greatest connections comes after lots of conversations, where one can (rightly) assume a shared understanding because one knows the terms are more-or-less lined up.
Language is an unavoidable throttling valve to me. And additionally, it's not the brain that's actually registering value/meaning either for me. You can call it the subconscious if you like, but I prefer 'soul' as that sense of oneself that is always there, has innate knowing, etc. Which is to say, there really is no way to express the depth of experience to another. But this is fine.
If it’s projection, wouldn’t they get the same experience with anyone? Or maybe only with someone that’s also projecting that you also “get it”. The proof is in the pudding, though, I think. Collaboration with someone who matches your wavelength like this seems to be very productive in terms of concrete results.
> Both people in the conversation imagine that the other 'gets it' - a delusory and false assumption
'getting it' isn't an all or nothing thing. It would be an illusion to take it to an extreme.
The idea of some people in your life being able to get you better than others, more quickly and with fewer words, is a fact of life. Comparative human connection bandwidth can be estimated by vibes, history, outcomes.
But what I do not get is how you would convey these thoughts to someone else that thinks the same way as you, seeing as these thoughts don’t neccesarily seem to be contained to words or sentences.
I believe the idea is that people who think the same way will find it easier to interpret the true nature of the thoughts behind forms of words which may be less comprehensible to people thinking in other ways.
This is easiest to recognize in the creative arts, but really you see this in every domain. A musician tapping a rhythm or humming a tune might make no sense to a layman, but another musician often understands what they mean right from the get go. Not because they necessarily know the piece, but because they think about music in a similar way.
All language is referential. Even in everyday speech the meaning is not in the words themselves, in so much as they are pointers to concepts that (hopefully) exists already in the brains of the people we are conversing with. So when someone is very well aligned, one can convey ideas that go much further than conventionally expressed in the "general" language which is mutually intellible with most speakers of the same language. It is a rare experience though, at least for deep or personal topics.
I'm curious about some specific examples. Like can you explain a thought that came to you without words and then try to explain how you tried to explain it.
I feel like my thoughts are entirely monologue reasoning based kind of.
The GP comment really resonated with me so here's my best shot at it.
When I'm searching my pockets with my hands, I might have just had a verbalized thought like "where did I put my keys?" This is followed/accompanied by the physical sensations of my hands searching my pockets, and if they don't find the keys there, I might reach out with mental "hands" to the places I might have left my keys, recalling what I've been doing, summoning the sense memory of placing the keys down. During the process, I might think things like "oh, I was in the garage earlier..." but parts of the thought are much less like talking and much more like tracing my fingers along grooves.
This is true of thoughts about the physical world, but I do it with abstractions too. When I'm considering the architecture of a computer application, every memory or bit of reasoning might not be verbal, but more akin to feeling different parts of a shape or trying to call to mind a sensory experience. I'll then very often, when speaking aloud, have to wrestle my way back into English. "The thing that connects to the other thing with the... options. Sorry, no, I meant, in the body of the POST there's a field named..."
This is partly why written communication has always been much better for me than talking out loud. I can edit what I said to more closely match what I meant. I can recognize and edit out extraneous thoughts that were necessary for me to find the right words but muddy the waters too much if I say them without explaining all the thought behind it.
I am much better with written too, but more so I feel because my monologue under pressure from scratch wouldn't be as focused or systematic since in social situations there are so many random questions, factors, and things to process. While on my own I can let my monologue systematically work in its specific tempo without being interrupted.
Searching physical items is something I am terrible at, usually because my monologue doesn't care for it and rather would do something else or think about something else. So I tend to have monologue about something entirely other than searching and I walk randomly hoping I find the keys as a background process. Sometimes my monologue will get to a really interesting idea for me and then I just have to try it out and forget that I had to go outside in the first place.
It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.
> It is really, really hard for me to direct my monologue to everyday routine activities.
+1 to that, I would say it's virtually impossible for me, and I really entirely on nonverbal/muscle memory for said things, and that's the only reason I'm able to function at a "bathes and eats" level, much less gainful employment. It might not be neurologically accurate, but it sure feels like I have a verbal hemisphere and a nonverbal hemisphere.
Yeah, I'm a huge mess at home, I'm pretty sure I must be 99th percentile in terms of messiness and organization at home. It kind of causes me constant feeling of shame, but I'm not sure how to handle it either. Of course I've tried various ADHD medication etc. I'm getting mid 30s and still don't have a solution for this. I have done rushes of clean up/organization of 4+ hours, but I can never keep it up daily or weekly. In a way I feel like I'm an impostor of a functioning adult, trying to get things organized at last minute when it's truly required, I've tried to embrace it, but there must be a limit to what people are willing to accept. I'm kind of like a slave observer to what I'm interested in.
I don't think its the same thing as whats described in the article.
When i talk with someone very aligned with my thinking and knowledge (fellow it collegues/friends with simiiliar skill level) we do not a lot of words to be aligned and convey complex thoughts.
We reference and use words which we both know, we read and reference similiar news stories etc.
But the way they describe it with colors, vibrations etc. is probably somethig you can't just convey.
this is incredible! I've managed to get an error in one of my attempts though. I'm on mobile so unable to look at the console, it would be great to be able to mark it as broken
interesting to see that the first app I created allowed user submissions and within seconds there was a slur submitted but now that submission has been removed!
fwiw I (a YouTube premium subscriber) recently enabled restricted mode myself due to the app showing me completely unrelated and 'scary' videos in searches.
After some searching I found a few threads where others had encountered this and restricted mode was the only thing that seemed to stop these videos and honestly they're jarring and unwanted enough for me to warrant enabling restricted mode and all the features it disables - YouTube please please stop these unrelated 'jump scare' videos!
as an example I'm scrolling through videos on how to fix a leaky tap at 10pm I'll come across a thumbnail 5 videos down with a ghostly face or trypophobia type thumbnail then another 5-10 videos down. in no way are they highlighted as sponsored and I find it hard to believe that Google with it's search skills and other far more relevant videos in the results can be returning these videos as results!
TV channels have been forced to produce TV shows that will draw the biggest audiences. they've not innovated online either.
Streaming services make great shows then stop them after one season or force one episode a week. they also drop then pick back up shows constantly.
YouTube let's people watch the kinds of shows they want to watch and let's people create the kind of shows they want to create. everyone wins, including YouTube! plus they do music, smaller artists, bigger artists and mashups in between. it's all just there fairly reliably and it works on every platform.
so did I until I found myself using YouTube music over Spotify more and more. it has all the standard music but also includes more remixes and smaller artists. the most important thing is that it doesn't mix podcasts in with music and you can easily view your own playlists!
haven't used Spotify in any meaningful way in a few years now.
Same. Also, my Spotify auto generated playlists hadn't changed for several years. I finally got fed up and googled around only to find it was a known issue. Clearly somebody realized they could just turn off those expensive GPUs...
I'm wondering why accessibility isn't listed as one of your goals when your building a "standards first" library? It's not even mentioned as a feature.
I do realise your using the term standards to refer to web standards but inclusive design should be a core part of any standard so I feel it should be highlighted more somewhere!
I have a slight
y different issue on Spotify and YouTube music. during the day I listen to lo-fi and at night sometimes as background music. this has lead to my entire suggestion list being 4 hour long tracks and nothing related to my actual music I like! I guess most of that lo-fi stuff is now AI generated as well.
