[smoe]

Interesting, newer knew the word is of biblical origin. In German the word Moloch is in somewhat common use to refer to an abstract merciless, all-consuming or all devouring power.

E.g big cities might get referred to as molochs the way they eat into nature around it or suck people into its anonymity

[woodpanel]

I was thinking the same. In German Moloch is mostly used for groteskly big/growing cities. But thinking about it, the "eating into nature"-theme aligns well with the biblical "eating into kids"-theme.

For me at least, because of the city-context, Moloch matches: The moloch could stand for the amount of activity in a system that is humanly insurmountable to get a better-than-superficial understanding of.

[smoe]

Ha, so I learned two things about Moloch today.

I didn't have that strong of an association of Moloch with big cities as it felt like when I looked it up for the above answer, so I googled a bit of its usage on news sites and it looks like in Germany it is almost exclusively used for big cities, whereas in Switzerland, cities is the most common usage but it is applied way more liberally.

Within a minute or so I saw it used to refer to: The EU, a government bicycle program, a 2km long tunnel in Zürich, iTunes, the Tour de France, Goldman Sachs and fashion.