Archaeologists Find Oldest Known Mayan Calendar 185
sciencehabit writes "A team of American researchers has discovered a small trove of ancient Mayan texts in a surprising place. In a paper published online today in Science, researchers report finding Mayan astronomical tables and other texts painted and incised on the walls of a 1200-year-old residential building at the site of Xultún in Guatemala. The newly discovered astronomical tables are at least 500 years older than those preserved in the Maya codices, giving researchers a new glimpse of science at the height of the Maya civilization. 'I think we are all astonished by this find,' says Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team."
Go Figure! (Score:1)
Re:Go Figure! (Score:5, Funny)
But which time zone?
Re:Go Figure! (Score:4, Funny)
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I can't tell if this is a joke or if it's serious.
It is seriously a joke...
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Re:Go Figure! (Score:5, Funny)
Rolling apocalypse
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Re:Go Figure! (Score:5, Funny)
Chocolate (Score:2)
The source of the drink of gods, the currency of ancient mayan people now used for making cookies. This is why the human world will be destroyed, we are deliciously cursed.
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Right above the calendar is an ad from an insurance agent.
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But which time zone?
Mayan central time
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But which time zone?
Mayan Standard. But it's a leap year, so it can't happen anyway.
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That would be a big fat never then, yes?
The plane of the solar system, and therfore the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, is inclined at a substantial angle to the plane of the Milky Way. That's why the ecliptic isn't even approximately close to the plane of the Milky Way. Well, it's just two ways of saying the same thing.
So, the only time that the Earth, Sun and S
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There's a 0 in 12?
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Pity (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Pity (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me cowardly start this one
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--1-of-3
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math-class--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--2-of-3
http://www.khanacademy.org/math/vi-hart/v/doodling-in-math--spirals--fibonacci--and-being-a-plant--part-3-of-3
What if these numbers natural numbers are simply how nature works and anything else would be a conspiracy!
Smart people still lurk here.
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That renewed my faith in teaching....Wonderful. Also proves the point that you're never to old to learn for I had not known that about plants. Thank you.
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Back to square one we go
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Thinking that the Mayans predicted the end of the world on 12/21/2012 is like thinking that Cobol programmers predicted the end of the world on 12/31/1999.
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That's because everyone else is part of the conspiracy. Now hush, before you give the game away!
just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
if those franciscan pricks hadn't torched all of the maya records we wouldn't have to try and decipher this shit off some half-buried wall. all of it was well preserved on codices but the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
What? Was the church wrong? Was it harder to convert them without their cultural history?
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Wrong about... it being easier to convert a people after destroying their culture? Well.. probably not.
But... wrong about destroying a people's culture in order to convert them to a different opinion? Yeah. Fucking wrong.
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Informative)
the mayans killed themselves long before the europeans came over. they weren't one people, but a group of city states always fighting each other and destroying neighboring cities
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Informative)
He was talking about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices [wikipedia.org]
“[...] recorded their history for more than eight hundred years back, and that were interpreted for me by very ancient Indians.” (Zorita 1963, 271-2). Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas lamented that when found, such books were destroyed: "These books were seen by our clergy, and even I saw part of those that were burned by the monks, apparently because they thought [they] might harm the Indians in matters concerning religion, since at that time they were at the beginning of their conversion."
And this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Inquisition [wikipedia.org]
"[...] The failure of this movement prompted more aggressive evangelization, with the Franciscans finding out that despite their efforts much of traditional beliefs and practice survived. They, under the leadership of Fray Diego de Landa, decided to make an example of those they considered back-sliders without regard to proper legal formalities. Large numbers of people were subjected to torture and as many of the Maya sacred books as could be found were burned."
The emphasis on the "good" actions of the church is mine.
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The Mayans are still around. Sheesh.
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Well if you read TFA and looked at the pictures taken of the calendar, you'd see that after the last date there is a pictograph of a pulpy, tentacled head surmounting a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings.
So really it's no surprise they constantly fought each other and destroyed neighboring cities.
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Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Conquerors generally don't give a damn about your new world order views, they tend to implement their own.
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Will you be mad if I mod your post 'depressing'?
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean the Buddhas statues in Afghanistan [wikipedia.org]? I know that this is a pathetic troll, but figure I should nip this in the bud right here:
Most muslims were opposed to the action, even high ranking officials in the Taliban.
In July 1999, Mullah Mohammed Omar issued a decree in favor of the preservation of the Bamiyan Buddha's statue. Because Afghanistan's Buddhist population no longer exists, which removed the possibility of the statues being worshiped, he added: "The government considers the Bamiyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected.
According to UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, a meeting of ambassadors from the 54 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was conducted. All OIC states – including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three countries that officially recognised the Taliban government – joined the protest to spare the monuments. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates later condemned the destruction as "savage".
Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf sent Moinuddin Haider to Kabul to try to prevent the destruction, by arguing that it was un-Islamic and unprecedented. According to Taliban minister, Abdul Salam Zaeef, UNESCO sent the Taliban government 36 letters objecting to the proposed destruction. He asserted that the Chinese, Japanese and Sri Lankan delegates were the most strident advocates for preserving the Buddhas.
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I mean the ancient statues in Egypt. Before you call people "pathetic trolls" maybe you should learn basic history. You do realize Egypt was not originally an Arab country? They are colonizers just like the Spanish Catholics in Mesoamerica. When the muslims conquered Egypt they smashed the faces off any "idols" they could find in an iconoclastic orgy. Monotheistic fanatics are authoritarian and violent no matter which brand or logo they operate under. Deal with it.
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. I was not aware that there was any significant number of such statues left outside of tombs after the Christian fanatics smashed the faces off the idols, dragged the priests out into the streets, and killed them, centuries before Islam was even founded.
To put it more plainly: I think you might be confusing christians and muslims.
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Interesting)
It's useful to examine history, but also worth remembering that history isn't what's happening right now. Some cultures have moved past medieval theo-thugocracy, and other cultures are reaching backwards towards it as an ideal, and actually acting on that, killing people every day with that in mind.
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Unless you are gay or are performing abortions... Ok, actually not even then at least mostly. There used to be a time when Islamic countries where the sanctuaries of science and enlightenment whereas christian Europe made an excursion into a dark age that would make even the Taliban shudder with disgust.
It's a lot easier to fall into ignorance when knowledge is dificult to obtain; held by priestly castes. What's Islam's excuse today? It takes real discipline and conscious supression of critical thinking to avoid the obvious these days. Even just 100 years ago, ignorance was much easier. Oh, and btw, if you're gay or need healthcare, you might not be so glib.
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Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Muslims weren't always extremists, that happened after Brittian, France and US decided to chop up the Ottoman empire "so it didn't pose a threat". That backfired didn't it?
You're right. When a Taliban enforcer drags a school teacher out into the town square that used to be a soccer field before they banned playing soccer, and shoots her in the head because she has offended Allah by encouraging girls to think, that is definitely the fault of western civilization. No question.
What the hell is wrong with you?
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Actually, beyond personal responsibility, that's right
So, what you're saying is that Muslims aren't capable of personal responsibility? That they're just too dumb to act rationally? That someone from that region who used to respect a woman's right to read a book got so angry about western civilization that he now thinks women should be killed for being able to read? Just trying to follow your incredibly condescending, patronizing, racist thinking. Thanks for helping to clarify! Keep it classy.
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No dumbass that's not what he's saying
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Indeed it is the fault of the U.S
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.
Spoken truly like someone who is blissfully ignorant of Indian history, and even Islamic history at that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Decline_and_end [wikipedia.org] is just one of the innumerable massacres carried out by "pacifist" muslims, long long before Ottoman empire.
Nice try anyways!
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- That the turks during the middle ages preserved for the occidental culture the knowledge of the greeks
Isn't that rather praising them for not destroying everything they could have destroyed, as opposed to saving everything they could have saved?
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that's not what he's saying
That's not what he thinks he wants to say, but that's the actual substance of his point. A guy who decides that he will spend his day killing school teachers for teaching girls to read can't help himself from being like that because Eeeeevil Westerners promote Eeeeeevil things like... reading. And do Eeeeeevil things like go after people planting bombs to destroy school buses, and use lethal force when they do so. And do Eeeeeevil things like remove the Taliban from power when they showed their delight in
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Whatever you're arguments are, you can't disregard the fact that Muslims preserved most of the greek and roman texts that we have available today, they held on to knowledge when Europe destroyed itself.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with jihadists wacking people for not being sufficiently similar jihadists, and Muslims from multiple countries sending them cash and weapons to do more of the same. That ain't about preserving ancient not-written-by-Mohammad texts. Not any more.
"Better dumb in heaven than smart in hell" (Score:2)
In Mexico currently in theaters there is a picture called "La Cristiada" english name "For Greater Glory" about the religious civil war that ran intermittently from 1926 to 1937. Aside being a whitewash for those mexican taliban, these bastards, specially in the 30's engaged in a campaign to mutilate and murder school teachers. The most egregious example that I remember that happened in a town close to the place I was born in that the "Cristeros" gang raped and mutilated a female teacher, Maria R. Murillo,
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.
I would readily except that muslims were not ALL extremists. Although history shows us that muslims in general(i.e. majority of them) *were* indeed extremists originally, due to their very origins starting in warfare waged by their prophet. I mean religion like Christianity which essentially consisted of love and acceptance was subverted by the Jewish Torah(Old testament), so imagine
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That really doesn't happen any more, and no leaders in any numbers or of any consequence within that broad swath of culture either call for or defend religion-based aggression for its own sake.
Are you fucking kidding me? A pastor the other day was just all over the news calling for parents to beat their gay kids.
Christianity is just as primitive and barbaric as Islam.
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Yes, let's look at History a bit shall we. Current Christian theology doesn't countenance any sort of the atrocities to which you are referring. They reformed. Islam has never been reformed. Don't believe me? Any Muslim converting to anything else is under a death sentence. Many Islamic leaders aren't multi-culti pious men singing Kumbaya, they are enforcers in a gang of like-minded thugs. This is why we hear very little from Muslims in general about Muslim atrocities, many are too scared to speak. Listen t
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You must have read another version of the history than I have. After the muslim conquest of Egypt, Coptic christians got their freedom, which they've previously lost. Their churches were returned after being seized by earlier conquerors.
The only option they received were to either convert to Islam, or pay taxes. They choose to pay...
Threadjack (Score:2)
I have to wonder what the majority reaction would be if every US citizen was read that little snippet. And Lo and Behold: there's good ole 15 of 19 Saudi Arabia again!
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet extreme Muslims still went ahead and started destroying these artefacts contrary to world and Muslim leaders. Granted, the P got the origin wrong, but the essence of the statement still has merit. Leaders, from whatever group, eventually reap what they sow. There is enough Muslim radicalism that at some point, it will be taken so far that the same leaders who condemn are the one's responsible for feeding that type of action (I wanted to say hate...maybe).
Look at the US and the current Republican party. The leaders set about to make Obama a one term president which was fertiliser for the budding Tea Party. 2010 was the storm clouds on the horizon of the Grand Old Party, 2012 may be the storm that does major damage for seat after seat is going to TP candidates and their extreme, almost destructive action in congress. So now leaders try to say one one hand "Stop, this is not the way to govern", yet continue the fan the flames by exclaiming provocative statements to the press, even on area of agreement.
Once you start a ball rolling downhill, the path is out of your control. You cannot stop it by crying "Please, don't roll any more", but only by destroying the ball or getting directly in its way...even then you'd most likely be crushed.
Why is that? (Score:2)
Because Buddhism in Afghanistan was wiped out by the Muslims.
There is another Mullah Omar quote for you: "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them."
Re:just another reason to hate jesus freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
It is quite OK to destroy statues of Stalin and Lenin in the eastern parts of Europe as there are still people around who suffered from those bastard's reign. However, it would not be OK to destroy them if they where 2000 years old. Whatever you think, it is not OK to destroy 2000 year old statues of Julius Caesar in France, even though the guy was responsible for killing off something like a quarter of the local Gauls.
It may also be understandable if the statues where old, but symbolizing an oppressor that just left. If the Buddhists would have ruled and oppressed the Afghans until say 20 years ago, it would be understandable that the statues where destroyed during the processes of liberation (not nice, but understandable). As it stands however, Afghanistan has been islamic for a very very long time. Destroying the statues this long after, is thus just simply put a crime against our common cultural heritage.
It is not so much about priorities, being poor is no excuse for actively ruining such a site, it would be an excuse for letting it slowly crumble due to the lack of maintenance however.
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So they weren't getting enough aid given to them, so that makes the one thing that could potentially bring them money oppressive? That doesn't make any sense at all, in fact it's a stunningly foolish thing to do. They did have active power, and that power could have helped them build a tourism industry while simultaneously helping bring attention to the countries problems.
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Archeaologists Find Oldest Known Mayan Calendar
... we wouldn't have to try and decipher this shit off some half-buried wall. all of it was well preserved on codices but the church figured it would be easier to convert them all if they incinerated their cultural history.
I think its common for people to keep old calendars around... I worked at a woodshop two years back, and the Hooter's calendar they had was from the late '90's. If the calendar is a good one, then it doesn't matter how old it is. Even if the dates are wrong, the pictures may still be quite compelling. [cpcache.com]
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Those Franciscan pricks as you call them were actually doing the aliens' work for them. Watch shows with Giorgio Tsoukalos, he knows everything about those sneaky aliens and how they've stacked to deck to make us all disappear on 12/21/12. The Hair Ball knows all!
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No Doomsday (Score:5, Informative)
More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
Notably absent was the Thirteenth Crystal Skull and ancient UFO instruction manual.
Re:No Doomsday (Score:4, Funny)
More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
But the cycle is Region 4 only, so it doesn't help us in the US. (Unless you are a dirty Pirate)
Re:No Doomsday (Score:5, Informative)
More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
Notably absent was the Thirteenth Crystal Skull and ancient UFO instruction manual.
I was so terribly disappointed when I googled for the Bad Girls of Linux calendar and didn't find anything. Sadist.
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More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
Notably absent was the Thirteenth Crystal Skull and ancient UFO instruction manual.
I was so terribly disappointed when I googled for the Bad Girls of Linux calendar and didn't find anything. Sadist.
I hate it when I forget to log in. Also, I narcissistically want credit for my (incredibly) clever comment, which I will never be able to truly have. Now my post becomes a zen exercise to focus on "not grasping". Also, if a post is never read by a human, does it make a point?
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More importantly, the records they found at the site indicate that the Mayans viewed the calendar as CYCLICAL and just like our Bad Girls of Linux Wall Calendar, the world doesn't end when the last day of the Calendar is reached.
Notably absent was the Thirteenth Crystal Skull and ancient UFO instruction manual.
I was so terribly disappointed when I googled for the Bad Girls of Linux calendar and didn't find anything. Sadist.
Well there is your business idea.
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Are you suggesting the world didn't end in Y2K?
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> and ancient UFO instruction manual.
That's because an instruction manual isn't needed, who would read it anyway?!
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Which was something we already knew, and have known for decades.
Well, yes and no. They didn't believe that the world would positively end at the end of a given cycle. They *did* believe that when the world ended (and they were as certain that it would eventually end as Chri
500 years..older?? (Score:1, Funny)
Holy shit! Does this mean we actually all died almost 500 years ago??? Damn, life is like a really bad Voyager episode.
So I do have to... (Score:4, Funny)
Plan my New Year's Eve party?
Pay my taxes?
Vote?
This sucks...
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Aside from voting, you can do all of those after December 21st. I know lots of people that do that already.
After 12-21-2012, everyone will be a registered voter.
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Don't blame me, I voted for Bill and Opus.
What did the cleaning lady said? (Score:4, Funny)
'I think we are all astonished by this find,' says Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brown University who was not part of the team."
What an insightful comment by someone related with this find. Oh wait...
Turns out that that Harold Camping... (Score:2)
So .... (Score:4, Funny)
to late (Score:2)
we only have so few months before the end of the earth to study the new finds.
Leap year (Score:2)
Maybe someone who knows this stuff can chime in. I've heard it said that since the Mayan calendar had no leap year it loses a day every 4 years. So if you add up all the missing leap years the end of the world would have came around the middle of 2011.
Others claim this is incorrect. Which is it?
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New civilisation end date (Score:5, Funny)
According to my iPhone there is no calendar beyond Wednesday 2nd April 2149. It won't even let you book an all day event, so the end must come sometime during that day.
139 comments ... (Score:2)
139 comments and nobody has bothered to ask who their decorator was??
No Mayan said "apocalypse" (Score:2)
No one with a basic understanding of Mayan mythology would say that the Maya were predicting "the end of the world" in 2012, unless by "end of the world" (actually, "end of time") you mean the end of the world as we have thus far known it. The Maya were tuned in to the baktun cycles reflecting major evolutionary shifts on the planet. And it's not a major singular event, the end date marks a mid point within a slightly larger time cycle that denotes a gradual shift. It is an accelerated shift, but not a sudd
Re:When does it end? (Score:5, Funny)
According to my calculations, the world ended about three years ago when a black Kenyan Marxist anti-colonialist Nazi with a fake birth certificate seized power in the United States in order to arrange the theft of the Anglo-Hungarian Crown Jewels which were stored inside Lincoln's memorial.
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I saw that movie. It's the one where you can only see the treasure map if you wear Ben Franklin's spectacles, right?
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It doesn't end as such. The Mayan had epochs. Sort of like if our dates got to the year 999, then instead of moving to 1000, they moved to 1 again, but called it the millennium of [something].
The first age was where the gods created the world, but the animals and humans could not speak and so were unable to worship the gods. In the second age, the gods created humans out of mud, then in the third, out of wood. The gods were not pleased with either of these, so they wiped them out and started over - in the f
Re:When does it end? (Score:4, Funny)
So, in either case, we're still getting wiped out. Good to know!
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Cool! So we're going to get wiped out, but also get a major upgrade? This sounds
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This is the part where the four elephants get tired of holding up A'Tuin and decide to come back as the four steeds of the apocalypse in time to remove the 8 seals guarding the dimensional weak spot between earth and the universe of Mordor, right? And then A'Tuin panics when she realizes nobody's holding her up anymore, and decides it's time to swim home to lay her eggs?
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If it makes you feel better, I use YYYY/MM/DD
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Are we all going to die?
No, not all, certainly not.
Some of us will simply miss the boat, like always.