Really great book (and series). Though it's not "hard sci-fi" by any means, the technology feels real enough to keep my brain from focusing on the holes and enjoy the fun philosophical and ethical problems that Scalzi comes up with
IIRC, it started out as a reimagining of Space Cadet by Heinlein but instead of the young it was with the old.
After the first book, he then goes to explore all the questions that it brought up. The question of identity (to me) seems like the most reoccurring question.
Btw, there's a new book in the series. The Shattering Peace was released in September.
The other side to the localizers is the communication / mesh networking, and the extremely effective security partitioning. Even Anne couldn't crack them! It's certainly a lot to package in such a small form
I'm from the area, so I feel I might be qualified to give you an answer. The short story is that some people here do still speak dialects of French [1]. The number of native speakers is rapidly declining (and will soon diminish completely), but many residents of Louisiana have grandparents or other family members who did grow up speaking it exclusively (or more commonly now, grew up speaking it with their exclusively-French-speaking parents/grandparents).
There are probably several reasons that it has held on for so long here, but predominantly it's because of multiple waves of influx of French-speakers (from when Louisiana was owned by the French, then from people of the Acadia region of Canada who were forced out of their region and migrated here in the mid-18th century) combined with persistent poverty resulting in poor education and low travel into and out of Louisiana (so not a lot of mixing with the rest of the US).
Strange seeing not just my state, but my hometown, rising on HN. Sad, too.
Related: For those interested in point-and-click / text-based games, check out the game NORCO, which is about the city Norco (named for the refinery that graces its skyline), a suburb of New Orleans. It's actually an extremely accurate representation of the socioeconomics of the area (which is painful to admit), and has some truly gorgeous pixel art.
Obviously, we should try to figure it out and learn from our mistakes, increase security, etc., but what accountability can we really expect from knowing that the pandemic started due to a lab leak? Accountability is almost meaningless compared to the scale of the total global loss.
I'm reminded of a line from an episode of Star Trek TNG where a very powerful alien destroys an entire race by thinking them out of existence in a momentary lapse of judgement, and Picard simply says "We're not qualified to be your judges -- we have no law to fit your crime."
>We removed 1.5 million plants at 21 events in seven state parks this year.
I have been involved in Ardisia and Tallow removal efforts here in the US south. When the infestation is this bad, you're not going to solve it with mechanical methods, no matter how hard you try and how many people you have doing it. Chemicals can definitely help, but they often have unexpected detrimental side effects to other native plants and animals (though sometimes they have unexpected beneficial effects on other native plants - I've seen rare prairie natives pop up in Louisiana after Triclopyr killed off overcrowded baccaris under power lines).
I wonder, could we develop a "gene drive" for plants?
And be prepared to interact with many other animals. This includes the ones we all seem to love, like birds and bees and fireflies, but also those that are typically considered vermin, like spiders, snakes, mice, wasps, roaches.
Not that there's anything really bad about that. It just requires a change to how you approach your outdoor spaces.
Friend of mine has 2 neighbors who have gone full don't mow back to nature and all that. No, it doesn't look 'natural' or anything else nice. It looks like what is: overgrown weeds, sprawling vines (kudzu, poison ivy), several years of desiccated branches and stems (glad we aren't in a fireprone area), and scraggly, non-native trees trying to take hold.
But the best thing for my friend is how much rats like it. Not mice, rats. Lots of rats.
