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  • H.P. Lovecraft on the truths the Webb might find.

    From RichA@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jul 21 13:56:12 2022
    HP Lovecraft warned us about this…

    “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position
    therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.“

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Quadibloc@21:1/5 to RichA on Thu Jul 21 14:42:04 2022
    On Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 2:56:13 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
    HP Lovecraft warned us about this…

    “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate
    all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such
    terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad
    from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.“

    Thanks to Donald Trump on the one hand, and his buddy Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine
    on the other, we may indeed find ourselves in a dark age...

    But that the JWST is going to find out things that will be frightening, rather than simply
    enlightening - helping enlarge our understanding of the Universe - seems to me to be
    highly unlikely.

    I know that even before the JWST returned its first pictures, some guy put up a video on
    YouTube claiming it had found "proof" of an alien civilization - terrifying proof of an alien
    civilization even - but that was just silly clickbait.

    And the quote is from a story in which Pluto was really Yuggoth, the home of a race of
    intelligent fungi, the Mi-Go. Whose link to Earth was intensified by our discovery of it.

    But the discovery of Pluto did not have terrifying consequences, even if the discovery
    of the similar body Eris had the terrifying consequence that Pluto stopped being classed
    as one of the major planets.

    Well, sort of terrifying. But not in the sense required...

    John Savard

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From RichA@21:1/5 to Quadibloc on Thu Jul 21 15:40:59 2022
    On Thursday, 21 July 2022 at 17:42:05 UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
    On Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 2:56:13 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
    HP Lovecraft warned us about this…

    “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate
    all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such
    terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad
    from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.“
    Thanks to Donald Trump on the one hand, and his buddy Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine
    on the other, we may indeed find ourselves in a dark age...

    Actually, Putin's greatest friends are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
    in 1993, Bill Clinton convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes to Russia with some vague assurances of "having their backs."
    In 2015, Barack Obama convinced Ukraine to give up over 50,000 small and medium arms because "It will make it safer there."

    Had either of these not been fulfilled, Russia would not likely have invaded.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Quadibloc@21:1/5 to RichA on Thu Jul 21 16:15:09 2022
    On Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 4:41:00 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
    On Thursday, 21 July 2022 at 17:42:05 UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
    On Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 2:56:13 PM UTC-6, RichA wrote:

    HP Lovecraft warned us about this…

    “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate
    all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such
    terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad
    from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.“

    Thanks to Donald Trump on the one hand, and his buddy Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine
    on the other, we may indeed find ourselves in a dark age...

    Actually, Putin's greatest friends are Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
    in 1993, Bill Clinton convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes to Russia with some vague assurances of "having their backs."
    In 2015, Barack Obama convinced Ukraine to give up over 50,000 small and medium arms because "It will make it safer there."

    Had either of these not been fulfilled, Russia would not likely have invaded.

    Oh, there's plenty of blame to go around.

    Between April and June of 2014, the United States should have basically extended full Article 5 protection to Ukraine bilaterally. Just because
    the United States can't speak for the rest of NATO doesn't mean that
    it couldn't have lined Ukraine's borders with American troops the way
    West Germany's border with East Germany was lined with American
    troops during the Cold War.

    And then there was a second chance, going from 2016 or so to 2021.

    With that in place, nothing would have happened, because it would
    be Putin invading Ukraine, and not the U.S. responding to Putin's
    having invaded Ukraine, that would have started World War III.

    John Savard

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)