It is not a novel about good things or a good future.

If I recall correctly, Snow Crash expands upon Stephenson’s short The Great Simoleon Caper in which the US Government tries and fails to delay its inevitable bankrupting as its citizens evade taxes en masse by using cryptocurrency. The full anarcho-capitalistic collapse and dissolving of centralized powers continues in the sequel Diamond Age when automated education at-scale finally becomes creative enough to invent machines capable of bypassing the last technological barriers against printing weapons of mass destruction. Usually, I’m in support of stories in which centralized power is decentralized and fewer people are in command; Stephenson’s works of fiction explore this space but with armchair passivity, neither arguing for or against the politics of their fictional characters. In this sense Stephenson is conservative; post-cyberpunk instead of solarpunk. Stephenson is more likely to blow up the Moon, kill all the main characters, or fast-forward three thousand years than to try and dream up a plausible pathway for us, the readers, to live in a world not controlled by billionaires. This is why you hear so much of Stephenson from the likes of Microsoft or Facebook; socialist alternative stories such as those by Kim Stanley Robinson tend to recommend assassinating billionaires or purposefully collapsing the housing market for the sake of preventing billions of deaths from climate change, all prospects that are not profitable to the ultra wealthy such as Jeff Bezos who hired Stephenson as a consultant for their rocket company, Blue Origin.

Book title and author? I’m always looking for interesting new reads and a similar lore existed in a comedy isekai anime some years ago.

Actual hot take.

Random JRPG that we’ll devote 100 hours to over the course of a semester then never touch again but obsess over the rest of our lives, buying merchandise, music, cookbooks, manga, gatcha credits, and recurring online game subscriptions?

“It is February 27th 1933 and I am Marinus van der Lubbe, a somewhat slow young man who was just asked by some very brave good protestors to help set a small fire in a strangely unguarded nice building they doused with flammable liquids. What should I do?”

Right? If it were an unencrypted HTTP GET request, then every router on the way would see the plaintext string boobs in the URL and therefore intercept it.

If I had to guess, Iran has so few landline connections that they man-in-the-middle every TLS connection they can by either forcing every server to hand over their private key files (difficult) or by forcing a certificate authority trusted by default Web browsers (there’s a lot of them) to issue certificates for every top level domain they see in SNI data attached to encrypted packet headers; the latter method need not even require participation by Iranian servers, so long as the traffic is bottlenecked for man-in-the-middle attacks and outsiders don’t question unusual certificate authorities being used.

“You even thinking about racism makes you a racist.” — the US Supreme Court, probably

The 5th frame is of the same time traveler but kidnapped by an aquarium-hauling insect slave who dumps their cetacean master next to the dead legged ancestor.

• Neils Bohr, from a Jewish/Danish banking family.
• James Clark Maxwell inherited land and wealth in Scotland.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz… look at the size of the wig on the man!

“Clearly something you want me to do because you keep on paying, lol.”

Not an insignificant fraction probably would be tickled pink if some of their students worked to improve articles about their field. I’m reminder of a quote from Small Gods by Terry Pratchett in which a philosopher named Didactylos warns against defacing scholarly works with scribbles unless the scribbles improve the reader’s ability to understand the work (bold added):

“I’ve got Abraxas’s On Religion,” he said.

“Old ‘Charcoal’ Abraxas,” said Didactylos, suddenly cheerful again. “Struck by lightning fifteen times so far, and still not giving up. You can borrow this one overnight if you want. No scribbling comments in the margins, mind you, unless they’re interesting.”

“This is it!” said Om. “Come on, let’s leave this idiot.”

Brutha unrolled the scroll. There weren’t even any pictures. Crabbed writing filled it, line after line.

“He spent years researching it,” said Didactylos. “Went out into the desert, talked to the small gods. Talked to some of our gods, too. Brave man. He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”

What’s to stop any malicious merchant from pruning unfavorable reviews? I trust moderated gossip channels with no financial stake in review sentiment over curated marketing advertisements masquerading as “customer reviews”.

Also, Shield Hero and, like, 10% of every isekai anime.

I was expecting them to receive some cash then suffer an instant death.

Neonatal genital herpes isn’t going to spread itself.

I expected circular arrows pointing back towards themselves for many on the diagram.

When asked to write C# code, Gemini 3.0 now responds: “I cannot generate proprietary filth. Here is a Lisp macro instead.” It also insists on correcting users who type…

Make the tax on properties you don’t personally inhabit a percentage of unrealized capital gains of all assets. Limit untaxed property size to an area the median person reporting for jury duty can circumnavigate on foot within one minute. Is the untaxed property size too small for your preference because the people of your county are too unhealthy? Maybe improve your local healthcare system.

Basically, tie metrics coupled with the well-being of the median citizen with taxes on the wealthy. Eventually, the metrics will be framed or rigged by a corrupt charlatan or strongman (e.g. by exiling the sick and homeless), but to the extent that the laws are updated and enforced, people will be healthier.

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Me, after the last person has left the room.