No i dont think there are neon commie blocks anywhere else in the game.
It's also in the lore forum race name page for Xaela:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ng-Conventions
No one knew about the highly advanced airship, research facility, and museum for the thousands of years it was hanging over the mountains in Northern Aldenard.
No one had contact with the New World until this century. That includes Thavnair. Thavnair is only a trading hub for the Three Great Continents unless it's later retconned to include Tural, which is not included in that. It's likely Sharlayan may know but they don't tell anyone anything. And then the lore book goes on to say that "distance prevents much modern-day interaction between the New world and Eorzea" and Thavnair is even further away. Limsa is the main hub for western travel anyway and that's where the Mamool Ja mercenaries went.
Apparently a Limsan mapped Tural 80 years ago and Merlwyb 20 years ago restablished contact but if we don't know about Solution Nine from back then, then I guess he never saw it. We have no context for any of the situation there though.
But there's no reason they HAVE to make contact with the rest of the world. If they want to remain secret for whatever reason, they have the capacity and they're in the middle of nowhere on a continent on the other side of the world.
My WoL helped build up a cafe with a bunny and a robot at the edge of the universe... If it's possible to jump the shark in this game, we've done so a long time ago.
I'm another one of the people who grew excited about the expansion for the first time after seeing Solution 9.
Solution 9 was the best part for me.
Im waaay past to be excited about more trees and sand im bored of them.
I was meh about the entire expansion since the 1st annuncement UNTIL i saw Solution 9 NOW im excited.
While I agree that lore books should basically just cover information that was available in game and essentially be just a way to have it all in one convenient place, they are no longer limited edition. Anyone can go out and buy them now, anytime they wish to. Still agree that all the info in them should be in game somewhere, though.
This is the kind of thing I would've preferred to stumble across organically in-game and the sort of the thing they'd normally keep under wraps, so I feel like it was a rather forced attempt to kindle interest in the plot/expansion to disclose information about it this early on.
It has already been covered that the text is also available outside of the book and that the book is not actually limited edition, but an even more important thing to note is that it is highly unlikely to have been important information at the time it was written, simply a throwaway joke to pad out the long list of trivia about each non-story-important tribe.
I was always half-expecting it to turn out to be a subversion if it ever came up, written so we'd interpret it as a primitive description of a modern city but they actually found something more like Stonehenge inhabited by metallic-scaled dragons.
The Ascians turning out to be an ancient race of godlike beings who created everything was a jump the shark moment. Meteion was a jump the shark moment. Building a spaceship was a jump the shark moment.
This is a normal Tuesday in comparison.