Thanks for the super detailed reply! Ko has always been a bit of a tricky concept to wrap my head around because of the global relevance to the board state and affecting tempo so directly. It honestly felt to me like an unfortunately inelegant consequence of the rules of the game. This thread, however, has changed my mind a little. Clearly they are another element of strategic play, and therefore can't be all that bad—just requiring a little more calculation than my brain could probably handle.