A tossup between books 7-10 of the Wheel of Time series. I gave up half way through book 10 and resent the time that I wasted on the series. 20 years later I still recall the desperate hope that the next chapter/book would advance the storyline, only to be greeted with more subplots, stupid things happening because of characters inability/unwillingness to communicate, and overly verbose descriptions of every little thing.

I hear the final books, written by a different author, were much better.

Pizza Napoletana (usually margherita DOP or marinara when at home.)

One of my local Neapolitan pizzerias makes a fantastic pizza melanzane too.

High quality ingredients, carefully selected; less is most definitely more!

This just seems like hand-wringing for the pitiful state of the rail system in the USA. A country can have many dense population centres separated by large distances, making HSR viable and worthwhile, but still have low population density overall - just like the USA. The only real obstacle is political will/public support.

Western China has around half the population density of the USA but is already served by a 1,900km HSR line.