Solemn Stanislav Petrov Day, all.
@fox_news I think about him a lot. How dirty the USSR did him. Today I'm wondering if he chose wrongly; if maybe he should have let the world destroy itself.
Are we worthy of healing, if all we as a species will ever do is squabble and despoil the commons and limp along until something finally kills us?
And no, I don't know that for certain. But you have to admit, even a cursory glance at the history of the world is decently compelling evidence.
Genocide after holy war after mass famine after plague after invasion after enslavement after nearly melting the crust into trinitite, with some occasional kindness thrown in for spice and contrast. Tell me I'm wrong. Genuinely please.
Anyway what I guess I'm saying is definitely don't let me end up with the power to allow the world to be destroyed.
Anyway what I guess I'm saying is ashcans and unobtainable dollars, young men weeping in the armies, old men sobbing in the park.
I think a lot about the fact that few people know who Norman Borlaug, or Dowager Empress Cixi, or Shaka Zulu, or Robert Kaguja, or Abu Ali al Hasan ibn al-Haytham, or Gerhard Domagk are.
@Felthry Kaguja: presided over the brutal Rwandan genocide.
@Felthry al-Haytham/Alhazen: mathematician and founder of the field of optics.
@Felthry Domagk: discovered the sulfa class of antibiotics, massively improving health outcomes.
@fox_news Ahh, I knew al-Haytham's name sounded familiar, we have heard of them before, just a rather distant memory
-F
@fox_news Well that's someone who deserves more respect than they get
...why do people know about fritz haber, a literal nazi whose development of the haber process only incidentally led to better fertilizer, and not borlaug?
-F
@Felthry Because no one cares if you save billions, but they're impressed if you kill millions.
@Felthry Borlaug: figured out modern wheat strains to improve crop yields, feeding millions. If Koch and Snow slew Pestilence, Borlaug slew Famine.