
Yeah so the lore is the Soviet Union wanted to produce more cotton, so they diverted basically the entire inflow to cotton farms. For a time, this worked, but the dioxin pesticides being used and the soil degradation caused their own environmental problems. The Soviets actually realized this level of diversion would completely destroy the Aral Sea, and approved the 5-year plan regardless. It’s now saltier than the Dead Sea and only 25% of its original size
It’s just a bad habit and I think we should all put in a tiny bit of energy to just not do it at all, even with small things. Start trusting it for small things then you begin to verify less and less and at some point you’ll be thinking something is true when its not bc you didn’t want to spend an extra 10 seconds verifying, just seems like a slippery slope