Or we could look at the utterly stupid things, like maybe stop having a failed war in Iran, and just not pay for those? Thats a very big chunk of budget. As a bonus it would bring gas prices down, reduce future spending in VA and other combat veteran costs, and just possible help make the case for reducing the size and expense of our military (while still maintaining the 2 largest air forces in the world).
What makes you think the poster you responded to agrees with the Iran war expense? He simply commented on how difficult it is to cut anything from the Federal budget. He's right. Remember when all the lunatics were out keying Teslas a few short months ago?
No, its not a strawman. Cutting tiny things from the budget to save money when there are big obvious wastes right out in front is fucking stupid. Complaining about how hard it is to cut tiny things from the budget when there are giant obvious wastes out in front is equally as stupid.
If you want to seriously affect the budget, go for the things that burn large piles of money first.
> McConnell would never be allowed to drive a car, babysit young children, or file his own taxes. Why, then, should a cognitively incapacitated 82-year-old retain one of the most important positions of power within the national government?
One Prague branch I frequent is hang out spot for kids to be hooked on free wifi and stare at smartphone, there is no better place to stare at your smartphone than in library full of books! I even complained* why they won't set some time limits per connection to make it annoying enough to be useless for kids (but still usable for someone for few minutes to look up some book reviews/database), but seems everyone including management is addicted to smartphones.
It's nice that library is welcoming young people, though not sure if encouraging their smartphone addiction is the right way to attract someone.
*main reason for complaint wasn't kids staring at phones and playing games, but shouting swear words during gaming on phone and playing it loudly without earbuds, when I am visiting with small kids who are interested in actual books
This must be global since I had a similar experience on the east coast of the USA. It seems reasonable to expect a public library not to functionally be an Internet gamer café.
If you saw a homeless person in a library, would you be able to tell them they smell to their face? Do you have that kind of "bravery"? Or is it just here, amongst your "peers."
It really shouldn't be. We should have dedicated shelters for that.
Relying on libraries to be de facto homeless shelters is bad for everyone compared to the alternative of dedicated facilities. It's worse for homeless people, worse for the library and staff, and worse for patrons.
The problem is that we’ve wound up in an unhappy place due to the weird perverse incentives of ideology. Taking homeless people off the street, whether to a hospital or jail, costs a lot of money; so we lack something to do in a climate where a good chunk of the populace is rabidly against paying more money for anything.
I say this because this country has a history of dismantling systems and then not paying for replacements.
We did it with state institutions, which were supposed to be replaced by community mental health centers but that never happened. And then we did it with jail overcrowding reduction, where we didn’t set up adequate recidivism reduction programs.
Before the recent pivot to tough on crime, a lot of sentencing reform was started by Republican led states, simply because jail costs a lot of money.
Don't we already have rehabilitation centers? I definitely think that you have to take homeless people being a nuisance off the streets against their will.
There's already plenty of invisible homeless people living out of a car that shower in the gym. They aren't a public nuisance and there should be structures where someone like that can get help from.
But the actual homeless problem are the drug addicts and beggars that are a public nuisance. There's no solution to that problem other than moving them against their will, is there?
I totally agree. If homelessness is causing you to become a public nuisance (meaning lawbreaking) then clearly something has to be done. It should be a choice of help or jail, where obviously we'd prefer they get help, but jail is the stick.
It shouldn't be a crime exactly to set up a tent in a park because you're homeless, but if you then refuse to get help from society to fix the underlying issue, that's not acceptable. Can't have it both ways.
If you wanted to find a shelter bed for every single person on the street in a major city like San Francisco right now, that’s not possible. And that’s just the physical space, not even the medical staff or caseworkers you would want to handle those. And you need those in jail too, because corrections officers can’t and don’t want to manage mental health episodes.
Californian jails were at 200%+ capacity as recently as ten years ago until courts ordered that constituted cruel and inhumane punishment. Now most counties are around max capacity.
In some states like Washington, mental health is so under capacity that even the willing do not have spaces to be admitted into, even accounting for the people whose insurance would pay for something like that.
I don't mean it's a shelter for them in the literal sense. As in a place to sleep. It IS however meant to be a safe harbor - a place they are welcome to simply EXIST.
Ask google "is the ethos of libraries to help the homeless"
Here's what it says: The core ethos of libraries is to provide universal, equitable access to information, resources, and safe spaces for all members of a community, including people experiencing homelessness. While public libraries are not specifically designed to be homeless shelters or social service agencies, their foundational commitment to inclusivity means they naturally serve as a vital lifeline for marginalized populations.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ethos of libraries", but this was not the original intent of libraries, or the "ethos" that most voters would use when deciding whether to fund a library or not.
The problem with reimagining the role of publicly funded institutions and ascribing a new "ethos" to them that is not supported by the public is that funding gets cut and libraries get shut down.
If you want to know the original ethos of libraries, it was to disseminate knowledge at low cost to members of the community. Not to be socially inclusive. Not to make people feel welcome. Not to provide "safe spaces". But to provide access to knowledge. By subverting this ethos, we have also subverted a lot of the funding model and political support, which is why libraries are having a difficult time right now.
Ancient Rome had libraries already, I'm pretty sure their "ethos" wasn't about inclusivity and safe spaces. Somewhere along the line from then to now, it got subverted.
Here is Andrew Carnegie, the father of the US Library movement:
* "When I was a boy in Pittsburgh, Colonel Anderson... opened his little library of four hundred books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon he was in attendance himself at his house to exchange books... I resolved, if ever wealth came to me, that it should be used to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble man."
* On why libraries are the ultimate philanthropic investment against dependency: "I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They never pauperize. They reach the aspiring and open to these chief treasures of the world—those stored up in books."
* On the democratic and community-elevating value of a library:"The best gift which can be given to a community is a free library, that outranks any other one thing that a community can do to help its people. It is a never-failing spring in the desert." On how they function as instruments of self-advancement:They act as "ladders provided upon which the aspiring may climb."
Part of Carnegie's self-help and meritocratic philosophy required that the local communities pay for the upkeep of the library, funded by community taxes, equal to at least 10% of the value of the land. He never gave away a library unless there was this matching commitment from the community, since he wanted it to be clear that this is a community investment in providing free access to books for the local population.
Look, this isn't hard. Books were historically expensive. It made sense for communities to pool their resources so that they can get common books for every community member, rather than having each person buy their own book. We don't need to pretend that there is some mystery as to what the foundation of libraries was. It was cost-reduction, making the benefits of books (knowledge) available to the community via a public subsidy. It was never intended to be a campground or to be a housing service.
It requires an extremely ahistorical and uninformed person to think that this was about "safe spaces" and not "let's pool our money so our community can have these expensive books". Unfortunately such an uninformed and distorted view of libraries is not uncommon among the "libraries were always safe spaces" crowd.
The ALA is the canonical answer as to what is official policy of American libraries. Whether you agree with its politics or not, those policies and the ethos underlying them are not something new.
You're clearly a right wing nut (since "libraries are more than buildings with books" is something you find "poltiical" and facts are something to be rejected), just come out and say it.
Then don't call it a library, call it a homeless support center with books. i see the same thing here in austin, the central library is full of homeless people, shouting in silent room, shooting guns in restrooms. I love books and libraries more than anything but it saddens when place for knowledge are converted into daytime homeless shelters.
You can always spot the Americans because any talk about libraries will turn into whining about homeless people existing. You should fix your social system.
There's definitely some of it happening in Australia. I wouldn't regard libraries as the safest of places. I had a period where I tried working from there on my laptop, before realizing I was incredibly naive and there were a lot of homeless and mentally ill people there. Took me a while to realize why people would tell me to avoid the men's toilets in the library as well.
People sleeping in every car park at parks and beaches etc
I'm a night person with bad insomnia so I often go for drives or walks at night and a lot of my favourite places to go are now heavily populated by people sleeping in their cars
Night person here too - midnight walks during an Australian summer are excellent.
The homeless situation isn't quite that bad where I am in Perth's suburbs, but there was a guy living out of his 4WD in a local shopping center carpark for a while. He had a prominent sign about his situation asking for money, but to his credit he was offering to do things in return (he helped a family member with a deflated tire once). Many of the homeless in Perth city seem to be mental health cases though, where a skilled job providing an income that could support themselves is unlikely.
Right, libraries should be safe spaces for children to go by themselves and read books, like I did was 8 and 9. I rode my bike and looked for computer books, and found a book that was a compilation of Dr. Dobb’s Journal.
It is unreasonable to allow library patrons to make it unsafe for anyone, particularly children, but that has become the de facto standard in many areas. There are a lot of libraries I would not allow my kids to be in by themselves.
There's often smelly people napping in Sweden. I presume their housing situation isn't the best. Or they are not mentally capable of cleaning themselves.
Even weather was/is comically bad. Ask it anything specific and it would fall over, repeating the broadest, least helpful version of weather data, even if all that data is clearly available in the ios weather app. Specifics on wind, precipitation hourly, etc.
So no, you can't really ask a homepod for the weather either - Homepod's weather was more like a shitty version of sticking your head outside and looking up at the sky.
Year, day, month in that order written all together? I have seen both day-month-year (12-09-2026) and year-month-day (2026-09-12), but _that_'s a new one.
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