Relevant to your use case: Lucky Satellite Pic [1]
Super minimalist and Sentinel-2 imagery only, but simple to use and allows for easy download of full resolution satellite images without requiring any account creation.
An article like this that makes no mention of Tardigrades?
"They are among the most resilient animals known, with individual species able to survive severe conditions – such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation – that would quickly kill most other forms of life. They have survived exposure to outer space." [1]
It's a way bigger leap to go from "non-human animals have degrees of consciousness" to "and we'll see that it's possible for machines too" than it is to go from "humans are conscious" to "non-human animals have degrees of consciousness".
The latter is a comparison of biological organism : biological organism, both of which are the outcomes of hundreds of millions of years of evolution; the former is biological organism : inanimate object.
There's the "always on" type of birdwatching as well, that allows you to recognize the birds you see and hear in the course of ordinary life. No patience required, just practising staying aware of peripheral vision and sounds, but equally rewarding when you are lucky enough to have a chance encounter.
Classic joke at university was to sprinkle cress seeds on the carpet of someone's room and water it with a fine mist from a plant sprayer. In the morning the inhabitant would wake up to a neat lawn that had appeared overnight by magic.
OK, now I'm having flashbacks of astronomy Macintosh lab, late at night, too much homework (early 90's).
Fell asleep in front of keyboard, woke up to "Can of Worms" screensaver (never seen it before), had a heck of a start, wondering what the sound was, and what all those things were crawling all over the screen???
I don't know that it risks killing it, but I generally agree with your sentiment. Why can't we just be satisfied with the fact that we enjoy it? Why do we need an explanation for everything? We've removed so much mystery and awe from the every day already...
Well don't read anything related to music analysis, or something I discovered this week https://cklixx.people.wm.edu/teaching/math400/Chris.pdf
or for some books : "Exploring Musical Spaces. A Synthesis of Mathematical Approaches" or "Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformation"
I don't really experience it with music, because there it just makes me understand it better and create it, but I used to like reading before we started dissecting it in school, so I can see how it can be similar for people with other pleasurable experiences, like music or a painting.
There's a documentary, "The Last Mountain", about the sister and father of Tom Ballard, who died on Nanga Parbat, going out there to see where he did his final climb. It gives an idea of what it is like to visit.
Incidentally, Tom Ballard was the son of Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2.
Super minimalist and Sentinel-2 imagery only, but simple to use and allows for easy download of full resolution satellite images without requiring any account creation.
[1] https://luckysatellitepic.com/
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