As for the Insorum thing, I have been biting my tongue every time a Minmatar player gripes about Ishukone. We lost our leader, our golden ticket, and much more for the Matari people... and I can't seem to use it IC at all. I just want to have Kat slap their tribal faces silly and say, "YOU FOOLS!"
But then, it could be argued that Insorum was a deviously wonderful idea to remove TCMC's biggest competitor for slave control - Vitoxin. Bleh.
I've just made it about 65% (My kindle tells me so) through TEA (someone told me I should read it before Templar One) and frankly, I share your pain. I really dislike the amount of stuff in that book that is not known IC.
(Although thinking of the Broker as Istvaan really does help with my SOD. )
I asked Hjalti and Gauti (Who's CCP names I can't remember) to consider fewer (or no) stories with stuff in them that couldn't be known to people IC, but they didn't want their story telling to be constrained that much (which I guess is fair). I also asked for stuff that was subjectively true in character, but not necessarily objectively true (i.e. different sides had different "truths") but they seemed to think that was buying a lot of extra work and would just confuse people (which I guess is also fair).
One question: Would you prefer to know that stuff OOC and rage that you can't use it, or not know OOC and just be confused about WTF is going on? (Not that we're necessarily less confused for having that stuff revealed to us)