Having a lot of resources is a curse. Countries that have natural ressources (Iran, Algeria, Nigeria, Russia) tend to be highly corrupt and exploited by a small elite. It’s simple. The elite can take control of the oil fields, the gas fields, the mines. Just sell ressources. Shoot protesters. No need to invest in anything else. It’s much better to live a country with limited resources (Taiwan, Japan, Switzerland). Lack of resources force the elites to invest in science and education. The most unlucky country in Africa is Congo. It’s full of diamonds, forests, oil, gas, lithium, cobalt, rare earth. So Congo has suffered horribly because of that. In fact, it’s still being looted.

This isn’t actually true. You can look at the Nordic countries which are very oil rich and owe a lot of their prosperity to that. The United States is pretty resource rich as well. What is a curse is imperialism, and having lots of resources attracts lots of imperialists. The “oil curse” or “resource curse” is a myth made up to whitewash imperialists and absolve them of guilt.

Strap in and let me tell you about my special interest, Iranian history. In the 1800s, before the discovery of oil, Iran was ruled by an extremely corrupt line of shahs who sold out every part of the impoverished country to fund their lavish lifestyles and massive harems - to the point that other countries had to step in and say that they weren’t allowed to sell out that much of the country. But the Iranian people were upset by this state of affairs, and staged a massive boycott, which set the stage for a mass movement in 1905 that established a democratic parliament and a constitution, with the support of an overwhelming majority, including the clergy (a fatwa was actually issued declaring violating the boycott to be haram). Iran was well on it’s way to becoming a peaceful, prosperous, democratic society - but then the Fire Nation attacked, in the form of the British and Russian Empires moving in, shelling the parliament building and dividing the nation between themselves, like a pack of wolves.

The Iranian people suffered tremendously in the following years, with major plagues, famines, and genocide conducted by the Ottoman Empire. Of course, the Russian Empire collapsed, the British took the opportunity to unify the country, propping up a shah of a new dynasty as their puppet. That shah proved uncooperative during WWII, and the Allies invaded to set up supply lines between the Eastern and Western fronts and to secure the Iranian oil (which had now been discovered), and the shah was forced to abdicate to his son, who the British found more amenable.

The British technically owned the rights to Iran’s oil, but the deal they had made was with the previous dynasty (Qajar). The one that had been selling out their country to an absurd degree, the one that had been overthrown by the people precisely because they were selling out the country, and so naturally the deal they had struck with the British regarding oil (which had been made before oil had even been discovered in Iran) gave them extremely lucrative terms. But it actually didn’t matter how lucrative the terms were because the British were just straight up stealing it. They falsified their records and forbid any kind of inspection of their facilities.

This led the Iranian people to once again mobilize in support of democracy and self-rule. As outrage over the exploitation grew, the shah, who had previously rubber-stamped anyone the British picked, began to fear his own people more than the British and appointed democratic reformer Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister. After the Iranians had watched the British stonewall them for decades, Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry with overwhelming public support. Iran was once again on track to becoming a peaceful, democratic, independent country.

But the British set up a naval blockade that crippled their economy. Iranians, at this point, had a neutral to positive view of the US, and hoped that it would live up to its stated ideals and support them against the British. The British, meanwhile, expected the Americans to back up their “property rights.” President Truman threw up his hands in frustration, seeing both sides as intransigent. But Churchill simply waited him out, and offered his successor Eisenhower British support in Korea and NATO in exchange for the CIA launching a coup, and so Iran was passed around like a bargaining chip. Mossadegh’s commitment to democratic ideals allowed the CIA free reign, he didn’t crack down on the press despite the CIA controlling virtually all the newspapers, he didn’t crack down on protests while the CIA was hiring protesters on both sides, etc. Naturally, he was ousted (although the CIA denied it/covered it up for decades), and the shah was given much more power (which he used to hunt down and exterminate the Iranian left) and the oil kept flowing.

But after a few decades, once again, outrage over the exploitation came to a head, and the shah, seeking to appease his people, participated in a multinational oil boycott. But as a result, his foreign support was withdrawn, which set the stage for the Islamic Revolution. President Carter, against the advice of his state department, allowed the shah to take refuge in the US. Naturally, this outraged the Iranians, because the US had previously staged a coup to install the very same man as a dictator. In retaliation, some of the revolutionaries seized the US embassy and took hostages. This of course led to a breakdown in relations between the US and Iran.

And so, Iran is often held up as an example of this supposed “resource curse” that leads to political instability (not to mention the old line about “Islam is incompatible with democracy”), but the reality is that the country had multiple times in its history where it could’ve become stable, peaceful, democratic, and independent, but those chances were destroyed, not by Iranians, but by foreign imperialists, the vile colonial empires of the British and Americans. Had they simply been left alone, they would not have suffered from this supposed “resource curse.” If you look into the history of any similar country, you will find a similar story. But the history of these countries are simply not taught and not known in the imperial core, and so other explanations are invented.

You can clean dirty/corroded electronic edge contacts with a pencil eraser. Also helps equally as cleaning preparation before soldering.

Go ahead and try it yourself on an old penny, it’ll clean up and look shiny as new. Same principle for electronics.

This feels well known but…

Adding split screen to games is actually a very funky process.

It changes how the UI works, input setup, how sounds are handled, how some effects are done, how optimizing is worked on, it significantly increases testing and QA time because split screen may have its own unique bugs, and other quirky problems due to either the game’s or engine’s design (most of the time split screen is not a high priority focus compared to other features)

All that for something a very small percentage of players will even look at.

I often see people lament the lack of split screen games, and I do wish there were more, but its a hard sell and I can see why many games abandon it completely.

(Save for a few that made it entirely their focus, like split fiction)

You know how sometimes when you stand up you get lightheaded? If you squeeze your buttcheeks as hard as you can, that immediately stops.

I know more than I ever planned on knowing about audio equipment.

The first thing you need to know is that you cannot defeat physics with marketing hype. I don’t give a flying fuck how many wave guides Bose talks about or all the technology under the sun, you need a big speaker to make deep bass. There is nothing anyone can say or do to change this.

And when you look up audio equipment, ignore the “music power” because they will state what is the momentary maximum power the speaker can handle… but we don’t play micro seconds of MAX power music, we play steady audio… what you need to know is the RMS power the device can handle or output.

Furthermore, audio cables are a complete sham. You can take any power cable from a discarded vacuum, boom, you’ve got speaker cable. But but gold connectors… Yeah no.

It currently costs $500 USD to live in most countries (rent, food, wifi, groceries) and $1000 to live in the rest.

Speaking fluent English is currently an incredibly valuable and valued skill that adult English speakers have been practicing their entire life, at least a couple decades; a skill in the same way engineering expertise, ballet proficiency or any other well-executed ability is a skill, with the added bonus that speaking fluent English guarantees employment.

US Americans can travel visa-free or visa-on-arrival to 180 countries.

I’ve been traveling 15 yearsish and owned a couple English schools in China.

Amethyst, citrine and tigers eye are all Quartz they just have various impurities and structural differences that create the differences in color/appearance. Some can even be irritated or heated to change their color.

The Orion nebula can be seen with binoculars depending on the lighting and the famous horse head nebula is actually located very close to it in the sky (visually from our perspective, not physically)

This might not be uncommon around here, but…

Between D&D and video games, I can identify most medieval weapons and armor.

Mythological beasts as well.

People really misunderstand a lot about diving.

1

• SCUBA is an acronym that stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus
• SCUBA specifically refers to the gear with a tank, and not gear that uses an air hose connected to a boat
• Tanks are usually filled with just regular air, nothing special about it
• Oxygen becomes toxic at depth, so if you were to dive with 100% oxygen, you’d die at a fairly shallow depth

2

• Your flesh and blood absorb nitrogen from the air
• The amount it absorbs is based on the pressure of your environment/the air you’re breathing
• When you come back up to one atmosphere (1 bar) of pressure, your body slowly releases the nitrogen it has absorbed at depth
• This is a physical process, not one your body has any control over
• If you stay down for too long or come up too quickly, the nitrogen will become bubbles in your flesh and blood (the bends)
• That’s painful and can kill you
• A hyperbaric chamber (hyper-more than normal, baric-atmospheric pressure) can help by forcing the nitrogen bubbles to dissolve back into your flesh and release slowly
• You can use a special mix of air with more oxygen and less nitrogen than normal to increase safe dive times, but this also decreases maximum depth, because of oxygen toxicity

3

• Another danger is if you ascend without breathing out, your lungs can pop
• Humans don’t have any sense to tell us our lungs are too full
• This is called lung over-expansion and can also kill you
• It is also treated with a stay in a hyperbaric chamber

4

• Another danger is nitrogen at depth can induce an intoxicating effect like alcohol
• This is called nitrogen narcosis and can cause you to act carelessly and get yourself killed
• If you experience this, the correct course of action is to ascend a bit (like 15 feet) and wait until it subsides before you attempt to descend again
• You can use a special mix of air with helium or a special mix of just helium and oxygen to reduce the risk of narcosis on deep dives

5

• Regular diving gear has two second stage regulators, your main and your octo
• The name octo comes from how it makes your gear look like an octopus
• It’s a backup for you and for anyone who might need it
• The hose is yellow to make it easy to see

6

• The vest you wear (not everyone uses one, but most divers do) is called a Buoyancy Control Device, or BCD, or just BC
• It fills with air from your tank when you want to ascend to increase your buoyancy
• In an emergency, you can drop your weights, which should make you positively buoyant and cause you to ascend

And last, but not least:

• Diving is incredibly fun and an experience I’d recommend to everyone who is even remotely interested

I sat here for a couple of minutes, trying to think of something I was willing to reveal.

If you want to design and build large-scale industrial plant infrastructure like pressure vessels, piping, pumps, turbines, etc., most of the codes and standards you have to meet cost money to even see -and they are NOT cheap (in the tens of thousands of dollars for a full set).

In several jurisdictions, the standards are incorporated into law by reference. Most people think that you should have free access to read the text of the law that you’re beholden to, but what happens when a copyrighted work is incorporated into the law?

archive.org asserted the law should be free to access. However, they lost a copyright lawsuit brought by the American society of mechanical engineers because they were hosting copies of these standards.

So, to read the law you are beholden to in this sector of manufacturing, you must either pay a private organization ($$$) or memorize it (impossible); you cannot make copies for yourself to reference at your leisure

Apart from some episodes of violence, it was stable. But when imperialism ended, it was basically a mess.

Not directly relevant to your question, but for starters you should read about Sykes-Picot. The destabilizing impact of imperialism simply comes after the imperialist force and its vastly superior military leaves. Also you’re thinking of colonialism; imperialism never ended.

Now to directly answer your question, I’m a politics and history guy and the Ottoman Empire doesn’t get nearly enough hate for its role in shaping the modern Middle East. The stagnation they caused that allowed the region to be so easily swallowed by Western imperial interests is a direct result of centuries of Ottoman stagnation and authoritarian incompetence. The janissaries in particular deserve a special place in hell for their role in obstructing any and all progress in the Empire until it was too late. Those fucks are the reason there’s no Ottoman Catherine the Great or Frederick the Great.

Almost every song you’ve heard has included at least one sample from the Roland TR808 drum machine.

You really do just need to turn it off and back on again 99% of the time.

Almost all of the internet utilizes akamai, Amazon, or cloudflare for some piece of vital infrastructure.

If properly made, furniture made of solid hardwoods will last multiple lifetimes.

I look up everything interesting that occurs to me on Wikipedia so I know a lot of shit about random topics.

Not sure the Guardian has enough readers to be so influential in British politics tbh, though it does try

in the open source multiplayer game Space Station 14, you can swab pollen from cannabis plants to egg-plants (as in, plants that grow eggs, distinct from eggplant) and have a chance to grow eggs full of pure THC