After-Orts #117
The only typical place [in the Cosmos] is within the vast, cold, universal vacuum, the everlasting night of intergalactic space, a place so strange and desolate that, by comparison, planets and stars and galaxies seem achingly rare and lovely. If we were randomly inserted into the Cosmos, the chance that we would find ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion… Worlds are precious.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.… Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
- from the News-From-All-Over department -
Ice Carousels!
https://apnews.com/article/world-largest-ice-disk-carousel-c253d7551e966c5b7de81dff8ee711b2