Spermaceti | Hacker News Reader

Spermaceti

en.wikipedia.org

38 pointsgraderjs22 comments

> Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Chapter 94, A Squeeze of the Hand, Moby Dick. https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/42/moby-dick/775/chapter-94-a-squ....

Unforgettable passage about the hand processing of this substance.

Came here to post this. Such a fun and mischievous passage, and of course one with deliberate and heavy homoerotic overtones.

of course one with deliberate and heavy homoerotic overtones

Is it? Or was platonic affection more socially acceptable at the time?

I don't have an answer, but I've seen solid arguments in lit crit circles for both.

The answer is what you make of it. Lot of people are dirty minded at some level, but Melville seems to simply be a person who was not very concerned with what the world thought of him.

I would side on the platonic affection, and the creepiness of the passage seems to me to come more from the desire to communicate the madness of the situation rather than some sort of homoerotic play on words.

Of course there certainly arguments in both directions but as I understand it this and some other passages are intended to subvert ideas of and normalize the same-sex relationships that developed in the then entirely male seafaring world.

It's like, when Ishmael bunks with Queequeg and they are spooning, well why shouldn't a couple guys cuddle, sure, that emphasizes platonic intimacy between men in a way you didn't often see in the literature of the time.

But then you have this passage. Like of all the things to discuss closeness with the other men, it's a bunch of sperm they're gently squeezing and caressing and becoming close with one another, breaking down boundaries between the globules and each other... "let us all squeeze ourselves into each other" - yes it could be referring to platonic affection but my feeling is Melville knew exactly what he was doing here and it's massively and happily gay. As far as who might be "canonically" gay in the book that's all down to interpretation but I think it's hard to argue against the erotic tone of the sperm squeeze.

Call me Ishmael.

TIL why sperm whales are called sperm whales:

Spermaceti is derived from Medieval Latin sperma ceti, meaning "whale sperm" (from Latin sperma meaning "semen" or "seed", and ceti, the genitive form of "whale"). The substance was initially believed to be whale semen, due to its appearance when fresh. The substance is also the origin of the name of the sperm whale.

Could someone explain me why simultaneously with this an article about a whale-oiled machine [1] and a video of an exploding whale [2] are on the front page? Is it world whale day?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35217945 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245784

Let's see if we can get the front page tiled in all whales

The first article about the lubricant company included references to Spermaceti and included the exploding whale video. Many people on HN like to grab a link from an article on the front page and post that in hopes of also getting on the front page. It often works

I didn't do that. I went looking for this somehow...after chatting to ChatGPT about whales for some reason.

Sometimes, detail posts will offshoot from popular posts when people think the "side information" warrants its own post.

Sperm whales are incredible amazing animals. They have a large skeletal structure at the back of their head, shaped like a huge concave radar dish. This helps focus and direct the sounds they make for purposes of echolocation. I believe they make the sounds with their immense nasal organs, directed backwards toward the the "dish". The echoing sound passes through the spermaceti organ, which can manipulate and direct the sound waves. Vision is impossible at the depths they hunt at, and so they have adapted an insanely sophisticated system to "see" and hunt prey at depth. Another fun fact: Related females (moms, aunts, adult cousins) babysit babies when mother sperm whales go to the depths for up to 45 minutes to hunt for food.

I wonder if this is what the whaling in Avatar 2 was based on??

That's ambergris, often called "floating gold" which also comes from sperm whales.

The whaling in Avatar 2 was exceptionally well done IMO. Everything from the hunt (complete with the "nantucket sleigh ride") to a new "liquid gold" and the incredible waste after harvesting are all in line with actual whaling practices.

Ambergris derives from the French “ambre gris”, meaning grey amber. It’s has been an important ingredient in perfumes for centuries.

A bunch of dudes cooped up for months at a time. It's no wonder they immediately thought of spunk.

Thought it was new Italian dish

What Chris Elliott referred to as "baby batter on the brain."

Isn't this the whale equivalent of ear wax?

Not really?

Whales also have earwax: https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-mammals/whale-earwax-...

There are other differences too:

Earwax is open to the outside world, while spermaceti is enclosed in an organ.

Earwax is usually solid at body temperature while spermaceti is liquid.

A single whale can have as much as 1900 liters of spermaceti, while usually people have much less than a liter of earwax.

Just the other day ChatGPT flubbed a question I asked because of spermaceti. My girlfriend and I were talking about the economics of whale oil so I asked it how much oil you'd get from a typical sperm whale, and it gave me how much spermaceti it produces and entirely ignored the bulk of the (less valuable) oil rendered from its fat.

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