While my farts can also be trusted, the few times I doubted them I still went to the toilet just to be sure. It never turned out to be necessary but I’d rather take 20 seconds to go to the toilet and be safe than having to deal with the aftermath of a misjudgement.
There is no better alternative than turning these offices into housing. Forcing people to work in offices again is worse and keeping them empty is also worse.
A big advantage of converting them is there is already a lot of desirable infrastructure in place. Public transportation, shops, restaurants, everything is there already. Building apartment complexes at the edge of town might be cheaper but there usually is nothing there.
I also doubt that it’s actually cheaper to raze and rebuild for that many buildings. The only real trouble is upgrading the plumbing. Everything else is definitely offset buy using the existing shell.
Some buildings have a floorplan that doesn’t really work for residential but there is also no need to convert all offices. Pick the ones that are best suited and keep the remaining to satisfy the reduced need for office space.
The only real issue is that the current owner of the building obviously prefer just forcing people back into office since that’s more profitable. So it would take government subsidies and incentives for them to make the switch more profitable. And then we are once again putting hundred of millions into the pockets of already rich people. But it’s cheaper for the city and better for the people so while a tough pill to swallow, it’s still beats any alternative.
They aren’t comparable. Autodesk is a business product, not for consumers. The product makes you money and the price for it is a business expense and tax deductible. While subscriptions to Spotify, Netflix, etc. aren’t.
That one somehow isn’t as weird. I guess it’s because the 100 years since WW1 was fairly recently and obviously everyone who was over 50 at the time was born closer to WW1 than today.
That’s only 3-4 hours. I think most of us would be fine doing that for our job. I certainly would watch 3-4 hours of TikTok and write down some statistics for getting paid.
No, not really. But that’s more because the government and economy of China and the USA works fundamentally different. The US does a lot of foreign investment. But it’s done by the private sector. Chinese companies aren’t allowed to do foreign investments without approval of the Chinese government. So everytime a “private” Chinese company does an investment abroad, the Chinese government is directly involved.
The closest would probably be the landlease to Ukraine. All/most of the aid packages have to be paid back. Not necessarily with direct payments but by awarding (re-)building projects to US companies.
And obviously there is the IMF where the US pays the highest quota to and therfore has the highest voting power in how the money of the IMF is distributed.
A lot of users are also from poorer countries that lack the means to create their own web infrastructure. Using Facebook to run your business account is easier, cheaper, and more reliable than most alternatives there. Phone carriers and ISP often also have “free”-data for certain social media platforms. You get 1GB+1GB for Facebook/IG/YT/Some Game. So you are stuck in this loop where everything reinforces itself to use Facebook.