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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the dot-com-bubble dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Uncle_Al on Friday May 12 2017, @01:37AM (6 children)

    by Uncle_Al (1108) on Friday May 12 2017, @01:37AM (#508422)

    who hate working there.

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    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 12 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 12 2017, @01:48AM (#508424) Journal

    Lol. Better to work at Amazon in Seattle than to be homeless with no Universal Basic Income, or turning tricks for heroin/fentanyl in a dilapidated building.

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    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @03:44PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:44PM (#508666)

      I always thought it was an interesting question: are heroin addicts less, or more happy than non-heroin addicts?

      Sure, they've got short life expectancy, minimal productivity, negative social integration value in the bigger picture, but if you're just measuring happiness....

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @01:55AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @01:55AM (#508426)

    Speaking of "awash"...don't the three spheres remind you of anything?
    How about chemistry models of H2O (Bohr atoms, represented by spheres). Polar molecule, symmetric about the larger Oxygen atom.

    Tfa doesn't say anything about the joke or pun, but putting a giant water molecule in rainy Seattle must have a back story.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday May 12 2017, @03:22AM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:22AM (#508446)

      I could certainly be wrong, but the plant those guys are planting in the first picture looks an awful lot like a Punga or New Zealand Tree fern.

      If it rains a lot in Seattle they would probably quite like growing there, as New Zealand has some of the wettest places on the planet. [doc.govt.nz]

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 12 2017, @04:49AM (1 child)

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:49AM (#508475)

      Vaguely, in the sense that almost all three-atom molecules look vaguely the same. But it lacks the two most iconic features of a water molecule: the large size difference between oxygen to hydrogen, and the 105* angle they form.

      Really, it looks a lot closer to carbon dioxide, with its two slightly smaller oxygen molecules in a straight line with the central carbon.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @03:47PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:47PM (#508667)

        And, there's a question: what produces more CO2, UPS trucks delivering cardboard boxes direct from warehouse to customer, or individuals in private cars driving to multiple brick and mortar retail locations browsing, purchasing, and driving home?

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