…

You’re right. My fault, I looked it up and don’t know where that came from but the evidence doesn’t seem to exist at all and I’m not sure why I remembered that as being a thing.

It might not be a mere country by a long shot but the one thing I find most interesting about Africa (IIRC) is that despite the linguistic variation and the number of nations being no less than any other continent has ever had, every precolonial culture in “Africa” referred to it as Alkebulan (I think that’s the romanized pronunciation) with the possible (partial?) exception of Egypt.

That said, my memory about that feels sketchy. Can anyone confirm or dispute if Alkebulan is the actual name used by the local languages? Claiming I’m sure about this without actually checking feels disrespectful, but I no longer trust DuckDuckGo or Startpage because their use of Google’s algorithm means NewPipe is censored from all search engines except Bing and Ecosia and search results have been uninspiring since ~2017 thanks to enshittification.

Hold on, checking Wikipedia…

Edit: No trace of the word itself on wp, but it did bring up the Akebu language when I searched it. Anyone know how much I was wrong? Or is this just survivorship bias due to me only knowing how to speak/read English?

Surprisingly it’s not the only one. Dubai is honestly the center of (what remains of) the hub-and-spoke air travel network because it’s the closest point to every other landmass on Earth. Middle Earth was supposed to be Tolkien’s locale for a hypothetical creation myth of modern (well, then-modern) Britain. Alkebulan (the native name for Africa) is the cradle of humanity and the only continent where everyone there agreed what said continent was called for all of recorded/known history. I’d say being in a geopolitically central location, even if that’s really just dumb luck, is something cultures have taken pride in for a very long time.

Tell that in respect to (ha) Southern Ontario and Montreal to a British Columbian, Albertan, Saskatchewanian, Manitoban, Yukonite, any First Nations Canadian or any resident of Atlantic Canada or the Northwest Territory, and see if they think differently about Ontario-Quebec than most Americans think about the Republican party.

Oh, did you know 90% of Canadians are well-to-do or upper-middle class residents of Southern Ontario or Montreal who produce less than 10% of Canada’s GDP and vote for anything that lets them continue to take advantage of the rest of the country? Yeah, our population density is horrifyingly low AND yet we have a profit-off-of-artificial-scarcity-induced housing shortage? Fuck you for supporting tyranny by majority, it’s still possible for the majority to all be in with the rich pricks, whether the minority is 49% or <10%.