💡 An Artful Seduction

The latest from Nautilus, the best things we learned today, and more. [View in Browser]( | [Join Nautilus]( Did a friend forward this? Sign up here Together with Are you still reading? We noticed you haven’t clicked anything in this newsletter for a while, and clicking on links is the only way for us to know you’re still enjoying the Nautilus newsletter. Click on at least one link by next month, and we’ll keep you on the list. [Keep me subscribed]( Hello there Nautilus readers, and thanks for joining us. Today we get a powerful look at changing settlements along the Louisiana bayous, through the lens of veteran photographer Kael Alford, who first started capturing the life of these communities nearly two decades ago. Plus, we come away impressed by the decorative feats of the male bowerbird. Also, some of the best things we learned—the Webb Telescope offers a new view of the stunning Sombrero galaxy, a clever centipede can dish out different venoms to prey and predators, and more. Thanks for sharing, in response to our previous question, how your ideas about consciousness have changed. What altered my perspective on consciousness was learning about philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept of the ding an sich, or the “thing in itself”—it refers to the nature of an object independent of our perception of it. Consciousness can only show us how the world appears, not how it really is. Check out today’s question (on healing music) and free story (on Jupiter’s big storm) below. Until we see you again! — Brian Gallagher The latest from Nautilus The Vanishing Coast of Louisiana Timelapse photographs documenting life on the bayou. [Continue Reading→]( An Artful Seduction Bowerbirds arrange flowers, dung, and shotgun shells to create elaborate love shacks. [Continue Reading→]( Don’t limit your curiosity. Enjoy unlimited ad-free Nautilus stories every month for less than $5/month. 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The best things we learned today • An arresting new view of the brightest galaxy near us, Messier 104, otherwise called the Sombrero galaxy, courtesy of the Webb Telescope, shows the outer dust ring in finer, more rugged detail, revealing the supermassive black hole at the center gobbling gas. [Read on Big Think→]( • The redheaded centipede can change up the venom it deploys depending on the context—one causes its attackers pain, the other paralyzes its prey. [Read on The New York Times→]( • It’s not uncommon for bowerbirds—which decorate elaborate, artful nests to attract mates—to pilfer valued items from other birds’ nests. [Read on Nautilus→]( • A test that probes your ability to think reflectively can predict traits and outcomes like religiosity, job performance, and patience, among other things, according to new research co-authored by the now-late Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. [Read on PNAS→]( • Land along the bayous of southeast Louisiana is being lost at about a football field’s-worth of terrain every 100 minutes. [Read on Nautilus→]( WE ARE CURIOUS TO KNOW... What music has the most healing power for you? Send us your answer! Reply to this newsletter with a brief explanation of your response, and we’ll reveal the top answers in a future newsletter. This question was inspired by “That Healing Sound” [Read on Nautilus→]( Top answers to our previous question: On an Experience That Changed Your Thinking About Consciousness I think we are too anxious to make our consciousness special and unique. Our origin stories have culturally imprinted us with the notion we are special, and we are eager consumers of concepts and ideas that validate that belief. Objectively, however, we are mammals with all the same characteristics as the other mammals, but with a more powerful processor. Consciousness is just a word we invented to describe our more elaborate processing capacity. – John P. When I started practicing transcendental meditation in 1970, it changed how I thought about consciousness. I'm not finding this easy to put into words: I experienced, without effort, an expansion within consciousness. It was beyond thought. I don’t feel this all the time, but it changed me. It was like a new angle. I know—because I’ve experienced it, at least briefly—that there is a consciousness within that is unbounded. – Betsy M. One time on psychedelic drugs, the difference between being lost in thought about something (a memory or future plans, e.g.) and being present became extremely vivid, as though I was repeatedly dreaming and awakening. I realized that ordinary daily consciousness continually fluctuates between these dramatically different states and I tend not to notice. – Danylo Z. What THIS Solo Vitamin Does for Your Brain, Bone, & Heart Health In 1 study, 5g of collagen/day caused a 7% increase in bone density in 1 year! Add 2 flavorless NativePath scoops for [18g of protein](! [Read more]( Today’s unlocked free story ASTRONOMY Jupiter Is a Garden of Storms Why the Great Red Spot refuses to die. BY BRIAN GALLAGHER “It’s always a mistake to read,” Philip Marcus, a computational physicist and a professor in the mechanical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, tells me in a coffee shop near campus. “You learn too many things. That’s how I got really fascinated by fluid dynamics.” [Continue reading]( P.S. The NASA space probe Pioneer 10 made its closest approach to Jupiter on this day in 1973. It sent back the first close-up images of the gas giant, which included Jupiter’s [Great Red Spot, a storm possibly as old as the 1666 Great Fire of London, and the solar system’s largest](. (The United States would fit into it around 200 times.) But it was only in the past several decades that astronomers realized the Great Red Spot was a storm. “People used to say, ‘Oh, it’s clouds hanging around a mountain top.’ Or ‘It’s an iceberg in a sea of hydrogen.’ Those theories pretty much stopped around 1979, when Voyagers 1 and 2 flew by the planet,” computational physicist Philip Marcus told Nautilus. Those probes, continuing the work of Pioneer 10, snapped hundreds of images of the Great Red Spot’s clouds. “We could finally see the whole thing swirling around, and that’s how we knew for sure it was a vortex. Nobody knew it was really spinning.” Thanks for reading! What did you think of today's note? Inspire a friend to [sign up for the Nautilus newsletter](. Copyright © 2024 NautilusNext, All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from [nautil.us](. Our mailing address is: NautilusNext 3112 Windsor Rd, Ste A-391 Austin, TX, 78703 Don't want to hear from us anymore? [Unsubscribe](