go_kartmozart

I think that Ted talk, being so spot on with its prediction of what a corona virus outbreak would look like, that a lot of conspiracy nuts took it as "evidence" that the whole thing was planned.

That's complete bullshit, of course, but no matter how correct science is with its predictions and prophesies, those lacking critical thinking skills, and others with their stupid, conspiratorial mindsets will find a way contort those facts into some Qshit level fuckery.

"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man"

• Blue Oyster Cult, "Godzilla" 1977

Like so many people in the ME, the Kurds had their historical homeland divided among several countries with lines designed to split up the oil between the warring powers of the day, without consideration of the will of the people who actually lived there.

within your borders.

That's the thing though. When those borders were drawn by the imperialists after the fall of the Ottoman empire at the end of WWI, they didn't bother to consider the differing cultures of the local natives. The Kurds are a culturally unique people in the region, who had the land they have occupied for hundreds, if not thousands of years divided up arbitrarily by outside forces who drew those lines and split these people's homeland up between Iraq, Turkey (the last remnant of the Ottoman empire), Iran and Syria.

The situation is a little like the old Yugoslavia with the Croatians and Bosnians et. al.

Something to add; I had my right ear torn up in an accident and needed reconstructive surgery. The doctor said the inner ear and eardrum and everything were fine after the operation, but I struggled for years with not being able to tell sound direction very well.

Seems the little folds and twists in your outer ear affect how sound gets channeled into the eardrum, and when they put my ear back together, those ridges and stuff ended up a bit altered, so my brain would misinterpret the tiny differences in the time between a soundwave's hitting one ear at a slightly different moment than the other. The result was me looking to my left for something I heard that was actually behind me or something.

Gradually, over the course of several years I've adjusted, and although not as acute as before, I'm not looking in the complete wrong direction anymore when someone calls my name.