Time to take a look in the mirror. Especially before pointing out biases of others.

Sounds like Snow Crash becoming slowly a reality.

And it's always waiting for the verb to arrive.

This is generally a great article. I just wish the author would also mention how Poland (among other EU countries) is also hyper focusing on populist policies that benefit the older generations while heavily burdening the younger generations with a cost of these policies. This is even a bigger problem than all these named external dependencies (which may or may not hurt us).

I think that's a problem in almost every European country. The politicians are creating policies to make their voter base happy so they would get elected on the next term and due to the aging population and low birth rates for decades the biggest voter base is the older, mostly boomer generation.

And worldnews is still quite tame with it. Other news subs are much harsher in their moderation, especially the EU local ones.

Tastes are interesting. I sprinted through Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon because they were so good. I struggled to get past the first few chapters of Reamde. Didn't engage me at all.

The 'sequel' that does lean on some of Reamde's worldbuilding, 'Fall; or, Dodge in Hell' is much more oddly ambitious. But it is a very strange work. You have to be on board for the literary direction.

It's also concerningly prescient, as he often has been, especially in an early scenario in the book that shapes the world so the rest of the book can happen.

"Remember Moab" has become a sort of in-joke/shibboleth/curse for my close friend group as a reaction to (or identification of) the sort of FB/Instagram things that make real, normal people lose their minds forever.

Our car industry (among others) showed we're quite capable of shooting ourselves in the foot. No need for external "big events".

> We

Get out of Belgium, then - if it was you and your people.

There are clear ideological, decadent faults in the eu administration. They are responsible for the destruction of one of the main continental industries, transferring (even reduced) pollution to Africa, where decent old cars go (with again no effect on global warming), and transferring the enterprise to China.

"The swan's shriek".

It's all because of protectionism. Business got lazy.

Don't forget the airlines taking the longer more expensive route!

One must imagine Mark happy, living in his metaverse.

i kinda wish he would do that and then forget this reality. it did dawn on me that when he was talking about how great it would be to meet AI friends that this guy is just desperately trying to escape a world he feels rejected/hated at large in and get to one where he can feel beloved and accepted. All of these billionaires seem to have a similar weirdly sad story where they just want to haul everyone off to follow some dumb idea of a new world, buncha broken people.

I always wondered what happens if police forcibly enter someone's flat in these places. Do they ram the doors and then politely take off their shoes before entering? I see a comedy potential.

It's a great story teller. Not really a good expert though.