(no subject)

Tool using octopi

Octopuses have been observed carrying coconut shells in what researchers claim is the first recorded example of tool use in invertebrates.

There is a growing record of tool use in animals and birds, from musical "instruments" made by orang-utansMovie Camera to sponges used by dolphins to dislodge prey from sand.

Now veined octopuses, Amphioctopus marginatus, have been filmed picking up coconut halves from the seabed to use as hiding places when they feel threatened...


How cool is that?

explicitly

I've been thinking a lot lately about what people want, what they ask for, and maybe the space between them. For me, I think a large part of some challenges I've had is that I've taken what people ask for as what they want. I think it's a frustrated empiricism, with an emphasis on frustration; I get very wound up when people appear to be getting what they ask for but still hold others accountable for it not being right, or sufficient, or ... something. I can't know what's in people's heads (yet), so I have to listen to what they tell me, and if I do that but get judged by standards to which I am not privy, goes the internal (frustrated) monologue, it's just unfair. That makes it about me and my reaction, which takes it to a very different level than perhaps it should be engaged.

But since I'm an experimental solipsist, I turned that situation on myself. I have not always been the best about asking for what I really want; I know that. I'm trying very hard to get better about that, but part of the problem is that I don't always know what I want, and/or feel like I'm not supposed to want anything more than what people are willing to offer or give me. Honestly, I'm afraid of what it might mean if I locate the knowledge of something I want, ask for it, and then have it denied me.

As is often the case when I'm deep in my head, one part will take on the perspective of a more objective outsider and speak. In this case, it went like this:

"What do you want?"

"I want you to help me change the world."

Yeah, it kind of surprised me, too, but it has the feel of truth. I don't know the details, but that's what I want, explicitly and from as close to the heart as I can come.