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USA Today has an article about Amazon.com's new Seattle headquarters, which consist of "three gigantic glass spheres," and about other unusual buildings in the city.
Americans tend to think of brown shipping boxes when it comes to Amazon. But in Seattle, the company is increasingly known as a real-estate owner. That's especially true downtown, where Amazon employs more than 24,000 — some of whom will soon hold meetings and take lunch breaks inside three gigantic glass spheres that add a geodesic flare to the urban grid.
The tallest of the glass and metal Spheres rises 90 feet and is more than 130 feet in diameter, with two smaller spheres to each side. In a city that gets 152 days of rain a year, they will provide a warm, dry, plant-filled space for meetings, meals and mingling for up to 800 Amazon employees at a time.
"It's kind of fantastic," said Thaisa Way, an urban landscape historian at the University of Washington in Seattle.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @12:05AM (14 children)
Must be fun to be homeless in Seattle where you can look at the gigantic glass spheres full of rich people who got rich by fucking over the poor. Almost makes you want to take a fucking sledgehammer to their gigantic glass spheres. In fact there's no "almost" about it. Justice will be done when Amazon is shattered and looted.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Friday May 12 2017, @12:16AM (1 child)
Well, it's three spheres right in front of a rectangular building, not two beneath a cylindrical one, so it's pretty clear that you're being fucked by automation.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday May 12 2017, @04:45AM
A virtual "insightfunny" mod for you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @12:19AM
Yeah let's train the homeless to code! Train the homeless to train the H1Bs who will do their jobs! We can have a revolving door from homeless to training and back to homeless again! It's just brilliant enough to work! Quick somebody twit a tweet to Bozos about the brilliant plan!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 12 2017, @12:22AM (1 child)
You're not gonna smash shit, limpdick. Glass technology has advanced in the past 40 years.
Of course, the only glass you care about is that glass dick you're smoking for your Pozz party.
Also, Seattle sucks ass and is boring. Fuck off Hipster Nancies, go to Austin instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @12:36AM
Be very afraid for all that terrorist shit you have stashed in the GovCloud, bitch.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 12 2017, @12:42AM (5 children)
This is stupid. How on earth did a bunch of software developers "fuck over" the poor? By building up a website that out-competes Walmart, and offers lower prices? (Or, by building up a website that lets Chinese counterfeiters sell more easily here?) You might be able to claim that Amazon has fucked over Walmart, various other brick-and-mortar retailers (like Borders, Circuit City, etc.), or other online retailers, by out-competing them, or even customers and various sellers with their counterfeiting problem, but none of those parties qualify as "poor".
There's some real economic problems in this country, and a big problem with poverty and homelessness, but Amazon isn't to blame for that one. The blame lies with the American voting public for choosing shitty politicians who do nothing to address the problems, and usually make them worse with the terrible economic policies they pursue.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Friday May 12 2017, @12:53AM (2 children)
One could point out that retail does employ millions of people with little education, and that killing retail (not just Amazon's feat, but the Web in general) is putting them out of a job.
Being too efficient at retail, and concentrating the jobs in a few warehouses and distribution companies, is pretty bad for the poor, who also got squeezed out of manufacturing by automation and outsourcing...
Stuff's cheaper, if you can still afford it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 12 2017, @03:21AM
One could point out that retail does employ millions of people with little education, and that killing retail (not just Amazon's feat, but the Web in general) is putting them out of a job.
Maybe, but Amazon itself also employs a LOT of people with little education, to pack boxes in those warehouses. By the same logic, the OP should be bitching about Walmart, because they did the same thing, but again they employ a lot of poor people.
It's not like all these big online retailers are operating without any employees....
Being too efficient at retail, and concentrating the jobs in a few warehouses and distribution companies, is pretty bad for the poor, who also got squeezed out of manufacturing by automation and outsourcing..
Wrong, it's bad for the middle class. Poor people haven't worked in manufacturing jobs in many decades; those were solidly middle-class jobs. Poor people are those below the poverty line, which I think is currently $12k/year. Even minimum wage pays more than that for full-time work. Poor people are generally people who have no job, or some really lousy part-time work, and are on government assistance. Having stuff be cheaper (esp. in Walmart, not as much on Amazon since poor people don't do that much online shopping since you can't pay with cash) helps poor people with lower prices for stuff they need to survive, at the cost of putting more lower middle class people out of work, plus a lot of mom-and-pop shop owners (who themselves were not generally great employers, contrary to popular romantic notions).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @03:41PM
Retail doesn't require traditional education (college degrees, etc.) for front-line employment, but they are educated in other ways: fashion, style, social grace, etc. WalMart lowered the bar below ground in those areas, but upscale retail (which Amazon is hitting pretty hard) is actually pretty selective about who they hire and keep.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @01:03AM
The blame lies with the American voting public for choosing shitty politicians who do nothing to address the problems, and usually make them worse with the terrible economic policies they pursue.
Tell us more about how you were With Her right up until the moment Hillary lost. It's clear that political tribalism is of supreme importance to you as an entitled moneyed elitist who can't even conceive of the little people who aren't corporations.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday May 12 2017, @08:12PM
If you work for Amazon and live near Seattle then you probably have a good job. If you work for Amazon and don't live near Seattle [stallman.org] then you probably have a really terrible job [bbc.com] to the extent that it would probably be preferable to work for WalMart [bbc.co.uk]. That's bad.
1702845791×2
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Friday May 12 2017, @03:10AM (2 children)
> Must be fun to be homeless in Seattle where you can look at the gigantic glass spheres full of rich people who got rich by fucking over the poor.
Amazon.com have a conventionally shaped building under construction too:
In 2016, Amazon bought an old motel in downtown Seattle, Washington, and turned it into a temporary shelter for the homeless.
The lease only extends through October 2017, when the building will be demolished to make way for two new Amazon office towers. But now, Amazon will give the shelter a permanent home.
-- http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-homeless-shelter-office-seattle-2017-5 [businessinsider.com]
Amazon will give roughly half of the six-story building to the shelter, providing it with 47,000 square feet of space with private rooms that can hold 65 families, or about 220 people and their pets. The facility, expected to open in early 2020, will have its own entrance and elevators.
-- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/technology/amazon-homeless-shelter-seattle.html [nytimes.com]
press release:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170510005592/en/Amazon-Build-Permanent-Marys-Place-Family-Shelter [businesswire.com]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday May 12 2017, @05:01AM
I quoted out of context: the shelter will take up roughly half of the smaller of two buildings. The Seattle Times has drawings that show it clearly.
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-creating-a-place-for-hundreds-of-homeless-on-its-shiny-new-seattle-campus/ [seattletimes.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @03:39PM
200 square feet per person, plus pets, in family units. Seems pretty luxurious for a homeless shelter.
🌻🌻 [google.com]