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Sinjin nodded. “What’s the point? The mass of people are so stupid, so gullible, because they want to be misled. There’s no way to make them not want it. You have to work with the human race as it exists, with all of its flaws. Getting them to see reason is a fool’s errand.”
Smart people get normal people so so wrong.
But nothing really happened; there was no one moment when they definitely crossed over into Ameristan. The closest thing to a formal ceremony was when Tom pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of a two-lane road between cornfields and turned on his four-ways.
Ameristan
Anything that originated from the likes of Tom would be fastidiously pruned by the algorithms used by Sophia’s editor before human eyes ever reviewed it, and anything that came from Princeton or Seattle would never reach Tom’s feed until it had been bent around into propaganda whose sole function was to make Tom afraid and angry.
Assumptions.
The sign was a quote from the Bible, set in Comic Sans:
Okay, Neil Stephenson, now you're just being rude.
Sarak and 1 other person liked this
“Remember POW/MIA” flag, which was also ubiquitous around here even though no American POWs or MIAs had existed for decades.
That's why the remember part.
Speech is aggression Every utterance has a winner and a loser Curiosity is feigned Lying is performative Stupidity is power
I groan for both sides, both sides.
Pete tried to explain it. “People like that,” he said, cocking his head in the direction of the Leviticans’ cross, “claim to believe certain things. But obviously if you spend ten seconds looking for logic holes or inconsistencies, it all falls apart. Now, they don’t care.” “They don’t care that their belief system is totally incoherent?” Phil asked. Not really asking. Since this much was obvious. Just making sure he was following Pete’s line of argument. “That is correct.” “Explains a lot!” Julian said. “They can go a surprisingly long time without bumping up against reality,” Pete said, “but
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Brilliant insight in the way only Neil Stephenson can.
“The names of girls,” Pete informed her. “He would, I’m told, become very attached to certain young ladies, and then a breakup would occur for one reason or another, but they stayed on his mind for a long time after. He felt things deeply but didn’t always show it, your uncle Richard.”
Just like me; just like I do.
Apparently the sole point of all this was to make everyone in their vicinity aware that they were a hard target.
Use this on ORM copy
“It’s . . . disarming to be armed?”
Neil Stephenson is surely not gun or carry native speaker. He's a foreigner with good guesses.
Heraclitean fire.
Interesting
He became conscious.
Eureka!
To fix them in their places, he created the ground.
Love this book! Genesis-city!
By its nature, the ground did not alter its shape once he had brought it into being. For its purpose was to keep the trees and other things in a fixed relationship to one another. To serve that purpose it had to be much larger than the trees and the other things that it contained. Therefore it required the conversion of a vast expanse of static into something of an altogether different nature.
Let there be Ground!
motes
So Mote it be.
Eschatology,
The very name “California” came from a phantasmal Spanish novel about rampant Amazon Negresses.
Is this true, California? For shame!
Fastness.
Great word. New to me.
Alone, he had the freedom to make changes at will and with as little effort as it took to imagine the desired result. When other souls were watching, however, it became much more difficult. He guessed it was because any changes that he made, for example in raising a tower, were wreaking concomitant changes in the minds of all of the souls that were perceiving it.
Some very fine concepts I've had many times before, brilliantly stated.
eschatology
A favorite word. Love its similarity to scatology.
“Stable is good, right?” “Except when it’s bad. Totalitarian regimes, corrupt systems are stable. I was afraid this was one of those. And maybe it was—but now, among the late-arriving processes that constitute the vast majority of working souls, we are seeing an accumulation of power and resources that rivals that of the old guard. Getting ready for a Titanomachia, I believe.” “The word rings a bell but you’re going to have to help me out,” Corvallis said. “When the gods of Olympus overthrew the Titans. Replaced them with something new, more brilliant, more perfect.” “Chained the Titans to
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Egdod flew up above the Palace holding it in his right hand. The heat of it burned him and the brightness of it blinded him. He hurled it at the Tower and struck it in its midsection, which was destroyed in an instant, and the top part of it fell down upon the bottom and smote it to dust all the way down to its stone foundations, which after that were no longer visible, being buried under a heap of pulverized mud.
Extremely Tower of Babel.
“They do not all speak in the same tongue, of course,” Speaksall pointed out to him later. “They will clump according to their manner of talking; and the new houses that they build for themselves may be sown far and wide across the Land rather than being together in a single Town that lies within your view and beneath the threat of your terrible weapons.” “So be it,”
Babel out the wazoo.
