Yesterday I was on a train bound from Beijing planning out New World Notes posts by e-mail with Iris Ophelia, and the outside seen at 150 miles per hour largely looked like this:

We passed at least three nuclear power plants along the way, and several construction sites where whole high-rise city blocks were being built in the flat and barren Chinese countryside, seemingly for no one. I was coming back from Beijing where I consult for a mobile game publisher, and then it hit me all at once: