Forget "Smart Cities;" We Missed The Biggest Nightmare Imaginable, Rising Out Of Saudi Arabia: "This Is Neom" 100 Times The Size Of Paris, People & Robots Living In A Mirrored 170 km "Line" Structure

25 Times The Annual Saudi Budget, Executions For Those Who Resist Evictions, 20,000 Forcibly Relocated, Israel Plays A "Major Role," "Plans To Use Data As A Currency," Giant Artificial Moon?

“This project would need at least 1.5 billion tons of concrete, generating at least 1 billion tons of CO2. That's 3 times as much CO2 as entire France during 3 years. So much for "saving the planet" or something. That's not counting the huge energy draws required to desalinize water (anywhere from to . The energy quantity to provide 9 million people with 5 m3 of clean desalinized water is anywhere between 400GWh and 800GWh. This also doesn't count the energy required for climatization under a scorching sun. It would also destroy the fragile desertic ecosystem, by cutting animals territory. The mirrors would kill millions of birds every year, and make life completely impossible by heating the soil to deadly temperatures in a band of over hundreds of meters around the walls. The walls would have to sustain the sand storms and the sand would accumulate. It's likely that there would be some very strong winds tunneling between the two walls (like in NYC, just far worse). The cost of the project is severely underestimated and $500BN is nowhere near the real cost which would be several trillions $. But it doesn't really matter, because who wants to live in a giant prison ? If you are super rich you'll live near the sun, while if you are poor, you will almost never see the sun, you will be at the very bottom of this dystopian project. Your only way out will be the east end, which may very well be blocked if the government says so. The government will also be in control of your water, electricity, and basically your liberty. So it's a giant open air prison. And just to see the outside, you will have to take the elevator to go to the top. But will you have the right to go to the top ? Will it be privatized by the billionnaires ? Noone knows, but the entire project allows that. In a normal city, anyone can leave, not here.”

—YouTube comment, 2 years ago

“Great idea. Let’s forget it.”

—Barry Farber

I have been studying Saudi Arabia, which fell on my psyche in recent days, seemingly out of nowhere, finally making “sense” of the last week, which caught me, perhaps you as well, in a colossal blind spot which I wish could go blind again.

I guess it all “makes sense” now. And there’s no point being appalled, it’s the inevitable, “future,” barreling toward us, powered by global “money” that is no longer, “money,” it’s something else, infinitely infinite, like the sky.

None of the players are really enemies. They’re building a world in which we are obsolete.

A city is a living thing, each city is alive and unique. This thing is not alive, it’s a tomb.

I’d rather live in Newark.

How was I so unforgivably ignorant of all this?

Next up—a documentary about MSB, the Trump of Saudi Arabia, who out-scales even Trump by a wide margin, makes Trump look like a bumpkin by comparison.

I thought the big threat was that “radical Islam” was going to put us all back in the stone ages. Instead, it’s reformist, oil-wealthy moderate Islam that’s going to take the most feverish dreams of the entire technocracy movement since its inception and make them seem quaint.

Am I being unduly histrionic?

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