I threw my hat into the ring that Amazon would choose Las Vegas for their second headquarters. My hat was blown away, flown into a wood chipper, minced and then incinerated into burnt ash which the wind mockingly blew away again.

It’s down to 20 cities and not one of them is in Nevada. I was wrong.

I thought this was about virtue of growing a new technopolitan garden but now I realize this game is about virtue signaling. Vegas does not have mainstream cachet yet. Or it may have even been disqualified with the massacre a few months ago?

In any case, black swan or not, based on the remaining contestants in the pageant, I would choose Philadelphia. I came to learn it has the richest historical legacy in the country with an honorific time-stamp of a world-historical occasion,  of a modern nation of people declaring their right to self-rule in forming: The United States of America. I’ll have to share photos another time.

As for my remaining hat-dust, I sprinkle it over the squares “Dallas”, “Toronto”, and “New York”. If this is about a popularity contest and keeping Amazon in the front of everyone’s minds speciously forever, New York. For long-term business horizons, Dallas. For being a big fish in a small pond, Toronto. Immigration is also far easier for South Asian software engineers to Canada.

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