[diarrhea]

Concur. In large parts, the book feels like it's making the forest of fundamental research papers, published across decades, accessible by putting them into context, ordering them and "dumbing them down" for us mere mortals.

Most of that research is decades old. I specifically remember Lamport timestamps. Not only has that held up, it's unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. Most topics covered are as fundamental as the two generals problem; almost philosophical.

No database vendor can solve the issues around two concurrently existing write masters. Sync will be necessary, conflicts will occur. A concrete vendor could only hope to make that less painful (CRDTs for automatic conflict resolution, ...). That's kind of the level that book operates at.