This what happens when you elect a cop.
As the cousin of a NY public librarian, fuck mayor Adams, but for so many more reasons than this.
Stop voting cops in as mayor’s, because at the end of the day they’re still just corrupt cops.
Oh no. You know shit is really terrible when they cannot even afford to communicate at 8 bits. It’s 5 bits Baudot code. Capital letters only. They actually had to pay extra for @, #, and $. Thankfully, by 1870s, % was part of the character set. My heart’s with anyone who can’t just blast UTF-8 out wherever they can.
(Edit: In case you’re wondering why it has a weird gif attached to it: The Memelord, Musky Elon, has decreed that you can actually attach a shitty random gif FOR FREE. So of course any cash strapped institution will do so.)
I always only see this, when i encounter that image:
Sorry for the distraction.
I like the idea of public libraries, but honestly I just don’t have a lot of use for them in my life personally. Unfortunately the books I read are primarily published under Kindle unlimited, so they can’t be checked out of a library either in digital or paper form (not that many of the titles ever even have a paper copy). I don’t really watch that much TV or movies, and the ones I do watch are generally acquired from the high seas anyway, which is honestly easier than checking them out of a library. I support the concept and want them to be available to others, I just don’t personally feel like I get any value from them.
It’s not always about you, mate. It’s a public service for all the other folks you can’t afford that shit otherwise.
Which is why I said I support them and want them to be available to others?
My condo building has three stations where people can get a doggie bag to pick up their dog shit.
Two are outside the gate and can be used by anybody.
I benefit from people picking up their dog shit even if they don’t live here, so it’s worth it that my HOA dues go to keep those stations filled.
Same difference. Even if you don’t use the library you benefit from people in your city having access to the services that libraries provide. You also benefit by NYPD having $53,000,000 less to spend on weapons.
Yes, which is why I specifically said I support libraries and want them to be available to those of use.
The tenor of your comment was largely dismissive and negative, though. Regardless, apologies for the misunderstanding.
Cool story bro
Does your local library support Libby?
Libby is an app that allows you to use your library card to check out ebooks, audiobooks, and digitized magazines. Free to anyone with a library card (at a participating library).
That’s one of several resources that a lot of libraries provide. Hoopla, as well, for shows and movies. And some have maker spaces, or 3d printers, or loan tools. And they usually have discount passes for local edutainment attractions (museums, aquariums, zoos, etc).
Some give you a month subscription to genealogy sites. Lots of stuff for little kids and families, usually activities or story times or craft classes. Classes for grownups too.
Tons of stuff at/from your local library. More than just books.
Most of my Kindle books are checked out from our library system, and if they are missing one book in a series or don’t have something available I can request and results have been pretty good.
There is a LOT of content for the Kindle at the library and I’m in Florida, can’t imagine we lead in this.
Amazon keeps pushing the Kindle unlimited but I can’t see the value yet. You like it?
It’s shocking to see the assault on libraries across Appalachia. Sad to see it’s a broader problem. For as little finding as they require they provide critical services. So many nasty politicos trying to win some points with the lowest common denominators of humanity must see them as an easy target.
It’s happening in Oregon too. An attack on education.
Yeah, across the whole country even, I think people have been discouraged from reading in general. (Heck, it’s hard to feel like you have time to just sit and read a book…Audiobooks FTW…)
But I’m convinced this recent anti-library culture-war push is absolutely just a big PsyOp by private and public owner-class types.
Making it about drag queens and racy books on the surface is an easy way to rile up the uneducated, to remove public free access to information without commercial motive.
Further discouraging education by cutting off access to cultural and community events, outreach, and collections is a great way to isolate people back down to consumer-individuals and grow the hate-base.
Libraries are absolutely under attack for being easy targets too, you’re right. And often from the inside! Our local library district has an immensely corrupt board and executive staff. It’s likely seen as an easy stepping stone to pad a resume for big CEO jobs or public office. They can get away with a lot without many people really looking too hard…
is absolutely just a big PsyOp by private and public owner-class types.
Bro, I think people just don’t ready physical books anymore lol
Libraries offer far more than just books. They often double as community centers and offer lots of free services that could really help lower income demographics. They actually also offer audiobooks a lot of the time.
Besides all that, of all government services that are available, they’re cheap as fuck to operate comparatively speaking. The only reason to target libraries is because it gets the mouth breathers thumping. Nobody burning books (metaphorically and literally) has ever been on the right side of history.
Nah they definitely still do. But reading stuff takes time, and many people in the US just don’t have that time to dedicate. So many people have to work long ass hours, and then they come back home and do you think they want to read? If they have a family or have a significant other, I think it far more likely that they would think it’s the best usage of their time to spend time with them, and in alot of ways it is. Lack of leisure time is the problem.
That’s why a lot of libraries let you check out ebooks and audiobooks through apps.
Properly funded libraries keep up with technology to better serve the community.
Bro, I’ve only heard this line from people that don’t read
why is it called ‘new york public library’ if it only serves downstate new york
that is less than half the state, I live in new york and there are no new york public library locations near me
are you really going to let us be beaten by new jersey? new jersey?
disclaimer
I have a public library 5 minutes away, (though I guess not a ‘new york public library’) this comment was made mostly for the funny and more importantly to shit on new jersey
this comment was written after staying awake over 30 hours and I am (very faintly) hallucinating the factorio express belts moving on my screen
As a general rule of thumb, “New York” refers to the city, unless otherwise specified such as “New York State”, or in a list/map that’s obviously only listing/labeling states.
Because it’s the public library system for the City of New York.
ah I probably should have realized that when writing the comment
Killing libraries is not about saving money, it’s about restricting knowledge. Beware the leader that doesn’t want the people to read.
If the city cares about aaving money theu would be buying useless military hardware for the NYPD. Tokyo, Seoul, Jakarta, and Osaka all do fine without blowing massive amounts if the municipal budget on military gear for their police departments. The NYPD "officially’ had a 2022 budget over $5billion with aroind 36,000 officers. That’s comparable to the entire military budget of Romania. Hell, the NYPD has field offices in 6 foreign countries.
If the city cared about saving money they would not spend millions of dollars to recover tens of thousands of dollars lost to turnstile hopping.
and they hire pretty much any joe schmo off the street to be a cop. I’ve seen NYPD officers and good lord they make Uvalde cops look like navy seals.
I mean, I dunno, ACAB and fuck tha police and all that jazz, but 5 bil for 36k is 138k/each, and that’s not too unreasonably bad for NYC cost of living vs the inherent danger and work regime of the job as a police officer in such a populous city.
They’ve got 55 police per 10,000 residents. That’s more than twice as many as LA per capita with a 3% decrease in violent crime per capita. That tells me we could, but definitely shouldn’t, grind up one fifth of them into a fine powder freeing up a whole bunch of money in the budget. NYC does seem to have a significantly smaller property crime rate than the national average but that number is suspect. How much of that is them just not dealing with property crime and not filing the paperwork?
And that $5b? That’s not their whole budget, that’s their personnel budget. Total budget for FY2025 is closer to $11.9b/yr. Their salary is closer to 80k/yr/officer on average.
Can… can you run for governor of Texas? Grinding up 1/5 of our police force is 1000x the platform Abbott is rolling on.
Note: no harm meant to differently abled people. I just hate Abbott, among a litany of other reasons, in that he got paralyzed by a neighbors tree limb falling on him, sued his neighbor for 10 million dollars, got elected, then helped pass legislation to make sure none of us Texan’s could ever sue for that amount again. Max is now 250k per person, up to 3 people can sue one asshole, so max 750k for non medical suits. Even fully limiting the types of suits that can be brought. The epitome of “Fuck you, I got mine!”
They won’t have me, friend. I can stand on a stage and sound like a Pentecostal preacher. I’m not inbred but I dress like I am. With exactly the right amount of alcohol I’m pretty likable (too little and I’m weird, too much and I’m over the top, and the difference is razor thin). And there’s pictures of me at a whole bunch of Pride events and taco trucks. I support the gays and the immigrants.
It’s an uphill battle that I’m not prepared for, don’t really have time for, and have no desire to get into. But we’ve got 2 years to find someone who hasn’t said “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47”. There are a lot of single issue firearm voters in Texas, as stupid as that is. I like Beto but pragmatically there’s no way back from that statement here at this time.
There may be enough cop hate here to run on a platform of grinding 1/5th of them into a fine powder. Even the staunchly red area I come from hates the cops, who are at best thought of as meddling piles of shit.
So you’re telling me that if we just started grinding cops into a fine powder we’d not only save on their salaries and benefits, we’d also save on the amount of equipment they need and could fund things like libraries and social safety nets? And that we could sell that fine powder for uses such as food for heads, surgery, delousing, cosmetics, bomb disposal, firepower, and head transplants and fund even more things?
I’m not saying we should be grinding cops into a fine powder. I’m saying let’s take a look at where we could save more money while helping more people.
Torgo’s Police Powder is certainly not a thing we should turn those fucking pigs into. No sir. And if someone tries laying this at my feet I’ll deny it.
You’ll have to spend some of those savings on industrial dehydrators though. It can be very difficult to get the texture of the powder right when you start grinding all willy nilly.
This is why you freeze dry them first and use a burr grinder.
The trick is to license private companies to produce the powder. You still get the budget savings, and you get reasonable license fees from the private companies, but you offload the risk of having to invest in the industrial dehydrators.
I know this is a joke, but reading that line of thoughts triggered me.
Lay em out in West Texas and they’ll be good as dust in two shakes of a fat lambs tail. Just don’t let the coyotes get to em. Or don’t. Whatever. I’m not a cop.
I know it’s a bad situation but they could cool it with the caps. Worse legibility and readability.
If you have trouble reading capitalized versions of letters, the meme isn’t the problem.
People don’t like reading things that don’t look appealing. For example, people could read a paragraph in Jokerman, but it’ll be more difficult and they might decide it’s not worth the effort.
Also capital letters are less legible because we don’t just read letters, but rather their shape. And when in all caps, the letters all have the same rectangle shape.
ROFL.
It’s part of the meme, tho.
This is incredibly sad. Dammit.
Good! How else are we supposed to fund POLICE OFFICERS who get to PICK and CHOOSE what crimes or people to Investigate if we don’t defund School and Libraries?
Idk about NYC, but my local library might as well rebrand to a homeless shelter. I love the concept of libraries, but if they aren’t going to throw out the homeless people using it as a place to jerk off and do drugs, then idk what to do. I personally don’t feel safe at ours, especially with my kids.
Yeah, you shouldn’t see homeless people. no one should!
(/s)
I don’t think the words “jerking off or doing drugs” were accidental in that comment. The request isn’t to ban homeless people from being in the library respectfully.
A rule like “no large backpacks” is bullshit, and anti-homeless. Backpacks aren’t a disruption to the library.
A rule like “no jerking off or doing drugs” is perfectly reasonable.
I mean, this but unironically? No one should be seeing homeless people because they shouldn’t be homeless.
But they do exist, something systematic must be changed for then not to exist. (Public housing, maybe?)
But until than, what?
There’s maybe two problems with this:
- public housing is a part of the picture, and so are public libraries. The solution is certainly not to cut library spending just because there are homeless people using it
- Thinking there being homeless people around is an issue that needs solving is itself pretty bigoted. Like, maybe you have a problem with people who haven’t showered for a while? or people who use the library for personal activities because there are no better places for them to do them? But ‘these people are a problem’ itself becomes problematic because you’ve consolidated those qualities you find objectionable into a class of person, and that makes it really easy to forget/misplace/dismiss the humanity those people deserve.
It’s a common attitude, so don’t feel like i’m picking you out personally to scold. More people should be aware of how that attitude dehumanizes people experiencing shelter insecurity.
There is no system under which nobody will be homeless, unless some people are kept inside by force. We can reduce homelessness, but if we don’t stop until there is ZERO then we will have gone far into the realm of cutting people’s rights down so much they can’t screw their own lives up.
I hate that this is true, but we don’t benefit from pretending (or legitimately believing) that it isn’t.
In order to have a world where people can determine their own destiny, ie in order to have a world with freedom, we must allow people to destroy themselves.
The system is badly rigged and unfair, but even the perfect system will still have some homeless people.
you can ease it by volunteering. That’s what I do. I volunteer with my local community center and food bank. I mean it’s something instead of nothing.
Until that point in time people have to accept that there will be people living on the streets, they will be drinking, they will be doing drugs to cope with living on the streets and nothing will change until people stop complaining and attempt to make said change.
Seriously, have you considered that the same ideology that strive to choke public libraries, also the one that push people to homelessness? (At least unsheltered homelessness)
Only at the lowest possible resolution image of the situation.
I’m sure it’s possible to enforce a “don’t do drugs or jerk off here” rule at libraries, without destroying all forms of civic responsibility for the downtrodden.
You don’t get it. We are saying that the same people who want to close down libraries are also the ones causing more people to become homeless and/or closing down homeless shelters.
No they probably shouldn’t be jerking off at a library, but they don’t have anywhere else to do it. Maybe if you had been homeless you might understand.
Libraries are the last bastion of indoor public spaces. If you have a problem with people experiencing homelessness, do something about it. Don’t complain about the one remaining place that welcomes all people.
If you can’t be in a library without jerking off in the shared spade, you have to go outside.
“I hate seeing homeless people trying to cope with being homeless”
ok so do something about it, vote for people who will fix it, donate money to places that will help, volunteer at food banks, community centres, soup kitchens, be the change you want to see.
you: no, I prefer to complain
you’re part of the problem.
“then idk what to do.”
good lord you’re an idiot. and the terrifying thing is you procreated.
“I hate seeing homeless people trying to cope with being homeless”
This is called a number of things:
- putting words in someone’s mouth
- mis-using quotation marks
- a straw man
He didn’t say that. He said he hates to see homeless people in there jerking off and doing drugs.
Respond to that. Don’t respond to something else that so heavily distorts what the other guy said. There’s no point, other than to sacrifice anything valuable the conversation could have been into being a play about how morally superior you are.
Ugh.
Was going to say the same thing, only you said it much nicer then I would have.
Not one of the responses to your comment seem to actually address the issue.
As usual, lemmy users are too busy trying to prove that they’re way holier than thou and forget they live in the real world, not the idealized ones they make up in their overly politicized fantasies.
People not feeling safe due to homelessness at a library will not be using a library, they will not see value in the library because it’s not a place they would go to. They also likely won’t care about them enough to make additional funding a major concern for them.
If you want to procure more funding for a library, it needs to be a place people see value in.
You can work to solve homelessness and also improve safety of libraries, demonizing someone for not wanting to go somewhere because they’re uncomfortable and feel unsafe is not helping support your issue.
You don’t understand though, that’s millions we could throw at building another stadium for a private individual to own and profit off of!
It’s the same with the federal budget and NASA. It pisses me off to no end to see the only x-ray telescope we have get the axe so we can throw fucking Raytheon more money to bomb Palestinians.
DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT THE POOR BILLIONAIRES!?
Can’t they just sell one of those sound-weapon equipped tanks from the NYPD to cover the entire library budget?
Yes, but they don’t want to.
Sell it to whom? They’re the only buyers.
Idk, Uvalde police might need it to cover up childrens’ screaming next time.
Why do that when the news will do it for you?
FUCK that got dark. Christ, I gotta go find religion after that one
check public schools for that, now.
Sell it to the library? Wait.
I mean, I’m more okay with heavily arming librarians than heavily arming cops I guess?
I’d watch that show
I’d play the game. Play as a librarian in a library under siege by cops. Traps activated by pulling the right books.
The Librarians?
I don’t remember Eve being heavily armed, if we could give her the gun Vasquez from aliens had, I’d be a happy camper.
The fascists don’t want to. They love weapons and hate books.
Can’t we just fill the libraries with more books about weapons to increase the funding? 🤔
The picture included makes me think we should challenge the mayor’s hotshot skier son to a race down Triple Diamond run, and if we win the library will be saved for us punk kids to use on Sundays.
