The Manifest conference was also one of the last reporting trips that I made for this book. And it confirmed for me that the River is real—not just some literary device I invented. It’s more likely to (ahem) manifest itself in some places than others, such as Las Vegas or in the San Francisco Bay Area. But these same forecasting nerds I saw at Manifold had kept popping up in different contexts elsewhere in the River. I knew a lot of people there who had become sources or friends (or both). I knew the in-jokes and the lingo. The conference didn’t quite feel like my backyard—I still prefer
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