Nitpicking

That's why I posited futuresight. I did forget that Autonomy was blocking Harmony's futuresight, though.

What is cheese but the cultivation of ruin?

If one Vessel took up both Cultivation and Ruin, I think you'd get something weird (to us humans) like Fermentation. (And that's my Crack Theory of the Day.)

Contrariwise, I think Cultivation and Preservation would also be opposed. Cultivation wants to change things constantly. Preservation wants (at its base level) to freeze everything into perfect stasis forever.

Hoid isn't a Shard, but he is a Dawnshard, and he definitely has a connection to Fortune. He might have had a sense of what was going to happen.

There has been some discussion of it. Certainly, that's what Brandon was hinting at with the storm in her eyes. See

I said it before and I'll repeat myself. Frost. Frost is older than the Shattering. Dragons are known to have the ability to communicate across the Cosmere--Hoid mentions it in WaT.

Either one would work. Because the goal is to write something Cosmere-plausible and funny.

OK, but you have to consider special relativity. No, really. (Well, not really, but in this context ...) See, each clump of cells thinks it's the only way to resurrect Hoid. I mean, not "thinks", but the Dawnshard's influence in the Cosmere is limited by speed-of-light (within the Cognitive Realm). The chunk of Dawnshard near Scadrial looks around for a few seconds, finds no other living pieces of Hoid, and resurrects him. Meanwhile, the chunk in Silverlight looks around and says, "No, no more living pieces of Hoid here," and also resurrects him. Then they both use the Spiritual Realm to un-archive Hoid-As-He-Was from just before his death, including his Breath. The Dawnshard is perfectly capable of supplying enough Investiture to create a few thousand Breaths, and the SR supplies the memories. Eventually, in actual Cosmere stories, Hoid will realize he can use the SR to get back his missing memories.

He himself disagreed with you, in Dawnshard.

Just as an exercise, can you name any well adjusted people in the books? Or real life?

Brandon won't do this: Hoid had two backup plans in the event he got vaporized. They both worked. There's Hoid on Scadrial, from that cell culture. There's also Hoid in Silverlight, reconstituted from a flash-frozen amputated limb, which is secretly under the protection of a Dragon he knows from Yolen. Neither of them even considers the possibility that the other backup plan worked, until they meet, say at a peace conference in the Roshar/Scadrial war, where one Hoid is advising each side.

Through the Tribunes and Tribal Assemblies, the Roman Republic actually came fairly close to popular democracy.

That was my first thought, but now it's my Crack Theory of the Day: Dalinar died desperately trying to preserve Roshar and the greater Cosmere. So Sazed-as-Preservation claims him. He's looking for a sword, and his futuresight tells him Wax will be retiring from that job soon. Wouldn't a Sliver of Honor be a useful sword for Saze? And wouldn't that be a fun surprise for Harmony to pull out of his back pocket when the Space War starts, that he stole Odium's idea and did it better? And wouldn't a Dalinar who is a Sliver of both Harmony and Honor be something to pit against Retribution (or whoever the real Big Bad is)?

We did stop in mid-action, because that's where we are structurally: the middle of a single 10-book story. I also wish there had been a satisfying conclusion, but I think it was inevitable we'd really get what we did: setup for another five books. Back when he used to be on Writing Excuses, Brandon would talk about try-fail cycles. The SA is a complicated plot, but he needed most of the plotlines to be in "fail" phase here.

They stabbed the crystal spikes into some white sand from Taldain.

You just gave me my Crank Theory of the Day! Shallan recombining with her alters is foreshadowing of various Splinters rejoining with Honor, bringing back all the lessons they learned as spren. The new, less rigid Honor will be the combination of all those spren with the new consciousness that is now part of Retribution. And that is foreshadowing of the Iriali being right, and all things recombining to create their One.

May I hope that it's Khriss? She's the most interesting character in the Cosmere to me, personally, and it's way past time to learn more about the Seventeenth Shard.

Supporting @Fractalfire, in the 13 Colonies that became the United States, each colony had an elected legislature, and also most cities and towns had elected officials. People were used to the idea of a government that worked for and answered to the people. Alethkar has Vorinism. Not that similar.

The visions do take place in the Spiritual Realm. That's how Rayse was able to tear them apart, once he finally noticed them. You can conceal stuff in the SR, at least for a while, like Retribution is doing with Fake Kharbranth. If/when the other shards notice it ... it may not exist much longer.

Remember that spren are Cognitive entities. There are no Wind spren on the gas giants because there's no mind there to think about winds.

[Humor] He can be funny, but rarely in dialogue. (Exception: occasionally Lift.) I thought Jasnah restoring her notebooks from encrypted cloud backup was very funny. It was so subtle that almost nobody but me even noticed it, apparently.

I believe there are hints of another magic system on Taldain, on Nightside, but for some reason Brandon wants to rewrite White Sand again instead of actually writing the Nightside book.

It occurs to me, the entire "Szeth's quest is formulaic and repetitive, and feels imposed" problem could be fixed by hanging a lampshade on it. Just have Kaladin or someone call out Ishar for insisting on this weird, pointless, arbitrary series of trials, and after the Big Revelation it turns out that it's because of his insanity that he did something so bizarre.

The new Oathpact protected the spren from reabsorption. Taravangian refers to the Blackthorn thing as a spren.