"Don't take away people's hope"

[WinterHold]

Without the efforts of many western scientists that resulted from the competition with the Ottoman empire, that ascendancy would've never got achieved. I agree with you but it is not violence and ruthlessness alone that ensured the victory of the west over the east: the Mongols were more ruthless but they didn't achieve anything notable aside from eating civilizations.

Actually, the trans-Euroasian route of historically unprecedented ease of commerce and trade that the Mongols created  contributed at least as much to later rise of the west as did the later competition with Turkish east.   The fact that Mongol's almost squashed Islam like a bug (from which the Islamic world is still smarting) and the fact that Islam proved less able to profit in the long run from the brief freedom of transcontinental trade, commerce and flow of techniques and ideas than the westn does not give Islam the right to minimize the enormous positive influence the Mongols for all their brutality was able to exert on the world in general in the long run, nor the the vital role the Mongol played in putting the west onto the path of modernity several centuries later.

---

Nothing can mask the savegry and ruthlessness of the Mongols; their campaigns emptied whole cities of their citizens, and nothing grew in their empire of death. They brought sickness and plague that literally killed 50% of the earth's population (the plague was called the Black Death):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders or it could have come via ship.[18] By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies".[19]
.
.
.


During a protracted siege of the city by the Mongol army under , whose army was suffering from the disease

The Mongols were a walking nightmare. Though Islam was not about to end; but it actually saved the whole world from them after Muslims beat the Mongols in the famous battle of Ain Jalut:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ain_Jalut

---

---

It doesn't reflect light or emit it; so you're forced to picture it as a "void" until we discover a way to see it.
In other words:you can't imagine it.

Only ignoramus divorced from the illuminating influence of 4 centuries of modern science can believe what one could see with his eyes takes precedence over what one can measure with one's instruments, or visualizing the behavior of a substance some of whose properties can be pinned down requires a sight picture of it.


We can imagine dark matter because we can measure its mass and distribution with our instruments.

Dark Matter doesn't interact with regular matter in anyway, so no, we can't imagine it.

---

If it’s any consolation, Atlas, the west’s cdg in the Middle East, enabling the mujahideen to destroy the regions stability while dealing a crippling blow to the soviets is, essentially....the same play that’s being run on us right now.

What makes you think that the Islamic terrorism cow is still producing milk? I think it became old news; a burned card