Amazing article and great persistence and research. Can’t wait to hear how it ends.

My only gripe is the writing style, which I’ve started seeing on major news sources that reads more like stream of consciousness or friend to friend rather than reporter to reader:

> Whew. It’s been quite a journey, but here we are at last at the real jumping-off point of this flooring company’s long transformation into a, ah, metaverse.

Take out the “Whews” and the “ahs”, etc., and it’s a really well written piece IMO.

To be fair, this is not the New York Times. It is a blog where the above-the-fold post today is "What did we get stuck in our rectums this year?"

That's how The Register[0] rolls. I really enjoy their style. They are also very sharp geeks.

[0] https://theregister.co.uk

If you literally just took out the "whews" and "ahs" from that sentence, you would completely change the meaning by removing the intended level of skepticism.

Every sentence in the article is dripping with skepticism, those quips just put it over the top unnecessarily. The tone puts attention on the author, when the story is profound enough and makes a better focal point.

Honestly, I prefer my writing to be opinionated. Every author has an opinion, which means I'm going to waste energy trying to decipher their opinion from their facts if they present too neutrally.

Yeah, I was really blown away by it. This is an amazing example of quality journalism. Not only was the investigative work impressively thorough, but the quality of the writing and tone came together to make this one of the most compelling things I've read in a long time.

The story itself is absolutely wild.