Thank you for the clarification.

In what sense is he correct? It’s not because he’s not black, you’ve just cited the workaround—and it’s not like he’s a guy who takes a principled stand against nepotism. The idea of the state taking partial ownership of a company that is operating in their country also doesn’t give me too much pause, free trade is extractive—and I’m simply not sure that Elon Musk deserves that money more than someone in the South African government, lol

Understandable to disagree with whether or not restoration preserves the history and soul of an architectural wonder but I have to ask—what’s the alternative? Leave it as ruins? Build something truly modern and uninspired?

Would start by looking up how plants interact with each other and with mycelial networks—monocropping deprives the farm of an important support network, and the soil and plants’ subsequent underperformance leads to unsustainable use of pesticides, additional water supply etc. to compensate. Monocropping to simplify the field layout and crop gathering makes plenty of intuitive sense, as does cutting down all your trees so you can plant more crops. It’s also not a good long-term plan to treat these unfathomably complex systems that have evolved over millennia as something we’re going to improve using our intuition.