The type of building is irrelavant to the problem. Anything that works for apartment complexes works just as well for a single family house. It’s always the land underneath that’s the issue.

And at the ond of the day any solution that include getting rid of landlords comes down to the government seizing “unused” or “inappropriately used” land more aggresively. Something that just doesn’t sit right with most people.

Sport is such an unfair world, trying to find equality and justice in it is futile. We don’t want kids taking growth hormones to boost their chances of making it into the NBA. But that also means we crush the dream of plenty of people. Athletes with asthma can’t use their inhaler under certain circumstances. A few years ago an UFC fighter with Asthma got his win overturned because he used an inhaler inbetween rounds.

There was a huge discussion about allowing prosthetics in “regular” competition. Turned out at the time that proshetics weren’t advanced enough to give an advantage. But I think we all know that this is only a matter of time. And eventually a hard ruling needs to be made that dictates in which direction sport goes.

Banning athletes who take as many hormones, hormone blockers, and other mediaction as transwomen usually take is 100% something that needs to happen. Especially considering that in certain leagues the usage of these substances is the only reason that transwomen are allowed to compete. That feels against the spirit of sport and TUEs. But untill more data exist, I doubt a useful ruling can be made.

What I don’t like about the whole discussion is going for the “They aren’t real women” argument. That feels degrading and hurtful for everyone involved. I don’t want cis or transwomen to have to undergo inspections to determine their gender.

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.

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.

I don’t like this kind of ambition. It can only fail. BG3 was already big enough. Just make a game in similar scope and everything would be fine.

Phrases like:

I think there is some tech that we don’t have yet,

And I don’t know what the specs are on the next gen [of gaming systems] yet, but I hope that it’s going to bring us closer.

Are very discouraging. And this easily could become the next Star Citizen.

No, there is too much content for that nowadays. YouTube has over 3 million new videos each day. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram also has ridiculous amounts of new posts every day. Browsing Reddit on New was a terrible experience on r/all or even many of the bigger subs. Even on the fediverse sorting by new is not enjoyable. You are swarmed with reposts, and content that’s entirely uninteresting to you.

It works in smaller communities but there it isn’t really necessary. You usually have an overview of all the content anyhow and it doesn’t matter how it’s ordered.

Any social media that plans on scaling up needs a more advanced system.

You limit the hotel licenses. You then go hard on hotel inspections and revoke licenses or don’t renew it from hotels that aren’t up to code/standard. That way the available hotel rooms will go down. The number of licenses is limited by hotel category. That way you ensure a healthy mix of available room types and can still have all kinds of tourists in town. There won’t be an issue with “big chains snatching up all the licenses”.

Then for a time only people with a valid reservation are allowed to enter. You place checkpoints at the most common points of entry. That way you limit the number of potential tourists by limiting the available hotel rooms. It would also fix the issue of unregistered AirBnBs. It won’t be perfect but you don’t want to kill tourism just reduce it.

Locals and family of locals would be exempted from the limit. You just put some system in place to apply for that exemption for family. Since the checkpoints are only temporary (maybe around 6 months) the impact on locals and their family isn’t too bad before it goes back to normal.

There will be a lot of media coverage about the closure and fewer tourists will come. The lifting of the checkpoints will barely make the news so things won’t go back to how it was before. And the limit on hotel licenses is still in place, so the available rooms are limited anyhow. Naturally reducing tourism because fewer peope can book a room.

I grew up in Austria, so while we aren’t bordering Russia there is no oceans between us either.

My issue with the mandatory military service is just, I do not belive that the training is actually effective. You aren’t training soldiers that you can call up and expect to peform. You are artificially inflating your military number by having “reservists” that are just as effective as untrained people picked up from the street. The 6 months of training your rank-and-file soldier gets is just not helpful anymore. It might have worked 150 years ago when we were fighting with muskets and basic cannons.

Maybe the Finnish military is different and prepare you better in the 6 months. I doubt it. The more usefull training is already voluntary and comes with a longer commitment time (both in Austria and Finland). In Austria you don’t even get any training after your 6 months without opting in. Finland gives you an additional 80-150 days over 50 years according to google. Which is at least a little bit usefull.

If countries with mandatory military service bump up their current active standing military by a few thousands and offer a voluntary reservists program, that would provide a military just as if not more effective as the current system. And wouldn’t force thousands of people to spend months doing something they aren’t interested in.

If you really think mandatory service is necessary for the security of the country, then go the way of Singapore or South Korea where the service is around 2 years. Then the people actually are trained and spend long enough time in active duty to be ready in case of a war. But again, this 6 month mandatory service is nonsense in my opinion.

In 2013 Austria had a vote to get rid of the mandatory military service. 60% were in favor of keeping it (only 52% of people voted). The main arguments of people in favor of keeping: The civil service is essential for Hospitals, Nursinghomes, Schools, etc. as “free” labor. They aren’t really free because the state is paying them. The second most common argument was “I had to do it, so they should also have to do it”. Which is just stupid. A very small percentage of people actually cared about the military aspect of it.

The alternative is to have a standing professionall army. Then you have people who are actually trained and “combat ready”. I wouldn’t say that’s worse at all. It allows people who want to be in the military to be in the military and people who don’t, won’t have to.

Mandatory military service isn’t doing your bit, it’s sitting around for a few months doing nothing useful. Even if war breaks out during your time, you are barely better prepared than someone just picked off the street. And after 2-3 years all the “training” you went through is forgotten anyhow.

I understand the need of drafting people during a time of war. That makes sense. But all mandatory military service does, is waste a year of your time.

The situation is way more complicated, it isn’t a simple scam. It certainly didn’t start out that way. The developers fully inteded on building these homes (at least until recently). And the business model was sound and generally works.

Pre-selling of units in apartments/condos is common around the world and a key part of securing the cashflow for the project. Chinese developers were operating just as anywhere else. The model is - use internal funding + pre-selling to build the project, then sell the remaining units once done. Use the money from selling the finished units to pay for the next project. Since demand for homes was super high, they started planning the next project before the first one was finished. Same as anywhere else in the world. The issue started that finished projects didn’t sell the remaining empty units at the expected rate. Eventually the capital of the development company was mostly used up and the cashflow from finished projects dried up. So they had a lot of half built projects and the only money available was that from projects even further in the future. And that’s not sustainable and here we are now.

There are three big factors why the finished units didn’t sell.

• Pre-selling is cheaper. So homeowners opted for that. You usually are given a decent discount and have much easier payment terms. You often have a few years of monthly payments before the lump-sum is due. So by the time you need that mortage you already have 10-30% equity in the unit. Making the mortage lower and easier to get. And if your financial situation changed, you can even sell the unit before the lump-sum is due.

• China has rather restrictive rules on owning land. In many muncipialities, and especially in big cities, people are only allowed to own 1 or 2 residential homes (there are ways around it). Foreign entities aren’t allowed to own residential properties for investment purposes in general. So unlike in the west where you have a conglomerate of investors buying up all the homes with the plan of making their money back by renting them out, Chinese investors have to rely on people buying their own home for personal use. Which means there is no real option of selling empty units on mass for a lower price.

• The rate of rural to urban migration slowed down. In the past few decades China experienced some of the fastest growth of urbanization ever. Tons of people coming from the countryside to live in the city. This created the illusion of near limitless demand for homes. But now it’s very likely that the Chinese government lied about their population. So the demand for homes can’t be as high as expected but on top of that, migration to urban areas has slowed down.

Now a lot of these things have been known for years. And nobody really did anything. So I personally think calling all of this a scam is fair at this point. But the Chinese government could step in and help out their population. If these developers really go bankrupt, the government could just seize all of the empty unsold units and redistribute them to people who got fucked over. It isn’t perfect but it’s better than not having a house. The big question is just, how many of these units are actually habitable. China has questionable building methods to begin with and on top of that many of the buildings were so empty that there was no money to pay for maintainance. So alot of these homes are death traps. And I suppose no home is better than a death trap.

It sounds good because it sounds like the developers are the ones getting fucked over. But that’s not really the case. They already made bank.

Chinas real estate development sector is mostly funded by pre-selling future projects. So the people who bought a unit that now never will be built are the ones truly getting fucked over. And while some of these people are other rich people planning on renting out these units, a big part are just regular people. Only about 25% of the population in China are renting. In some cities the percentage is higher but even in Shanghai and Beijing it’s only around 35%.

So a lot of the people who are getting fucked over by this are people who bought their own home that now will never be finished. On the bright side they probably haven’t paid the full amount yet but for many their entire lifesaving are still gone and saving up enough money to buy a new home will take a long time.

Sure the developers may lose a lot of net worth because their company isn’t worth anything anymore. But they still have way more assets in their possession then they need.

The EU granted all people fleeing from the war a 2 year stay until March 4, 2024. So it was addressed and they were allowed to stay and shouldn’t have been home 2 years ago. Many people lost access to their documents and given them enough time to get everything in order was the right decision.

But the article is mostly about the shortcomings of the Nigerian government/embassy. Who failed to provide sufficient support and resources to the Nigerians affected by the war. It took them 4 months after the war broke out to evacuate people from Ukraine. And then didn’t help Nigerians in Europe obtaining new visas or residence status for the EU at all. Allegedly not even issuing new Passports except temporary ones to go back to Nigeria.

The stories of affected people are odd choices and won’t create any sympthay from people that are opposed to them staying in the first place, probably making the feelings even worse. A 30 year old woman who left Nigeria at 17 and now “cannot imagine rebuilding her life again, especially as Nigeria experiences a steep economic decline.” And a guy who went to Nigeria, then came to Portugal and is working in customer service. He doesn’t have time to study portuguese to study in portugal, and the embassy isn’t helping them.

I personally still think that number of people affected is so low, that the EU could be more lenien in granting new visas but I suppose there is no legal basis for that.

There is no sudden change, not sending troop was the default stance for most people from day 1. And most politicians agreed with it, so there wasn’t much need to speak up against it.

But now that Macron isn’t ruling it out, voices against it need to speak up.

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.

The reason why it took so long: The card machine to pay the tax was broken. Banks were closed, ATM limits too low, so he had to wait for a replacement card reader to arrive.

It’s unclear if he actually failed to declare it or if there was some other kind of mistake. It’s also unclear if he had to pay a penalty or just the tax.

However, a source told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that Schwarzenegger was not asked to fill out a declaration form.

So yeah, the headline and article are making a big thing out of no information.

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.

He is not a currently elected official. He hasn’t been in office since 2014. He isn’t even running for any office. He is retired and “active” as a lobbyist for the ‘National Council of Resistance of Iran’ and ‘European Friends of Israel’.

While no motive has been established, I doubt it’s related to spanish politics since he is basically irrelevant there. If the attempt was politically motivated, it’s way more likely to be related to the current events in Israel and Gaza. Or his general stance on the current Iranian government. He is considered a terrorist by the Iranian government.

So there is no threat to democacy and people cheering at this are just happy that a shitty person got hurt. Which still isn’t the best mentality.

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.