The MacBook Pro used to be the best laptop you could buy at any price.

Now it’s a below-average machine in a sea of not-that-good competitors that are still better than it by wide margins.

Great job, Apple.

Rick Yancey’s The Fifth Wave is an extended allegory about the depredations and immorality of hypercapitalism as we currently practice it.

Once I realized that, I began liking the series better.

It is not a great series, but it’s a pretty accurate representation of how our form of capitalism (and perhaps all capitalism) leads to a war of all against all, the destruction of communities, the viewing of humans as interchangeable cogs, and the extreme power of mind-controlling propaganda.

I wouldn’t quite recommend any of the novels, but I thought this allegory was handled well.