• themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Killing libraries is not about saving money, it’s about restricting knowledge. Beware the leader that doesn’t want the people to read.

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • Zink
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          6 months ago

          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.

          • NABDad@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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.

          • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

      • dezmd@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

          • NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            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!”

            • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              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.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Can’t they just sell one of those sound-weapon equipped tanks from the NYPD to cover the entire library budget?

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    6 months ago

    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!?

  • SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      6 months ago

      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…

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        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

        • cheesepotatoes@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

        • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

        • Glytch@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          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.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Do you think that company owners want to pay more or less for employees?

          Do you think you would pay more or less for an employee that doesn’t have any other good options for a job?

          What is the best way to expand your job options?

          Companies and politicians are absolutely incentivized to keep a good portion of the populace stupid. Critical thinking and education are detrimental to both, except where you provide some service that requires it.

    • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      It’s hysterical to hear right-wing commentary about how New York Democrats are socialist Marxist communist hippies when the reality has much more goose-stepping to it.

      • huginn@feddit.it
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        6 months ago

        He won by 7k votes in an election with 21% registered voter turnout.

        He won not by broad appeal but rather by apathy - his voters were engaged by fear mongering bait plastered on every news outlet about “crime” so they elected a goose stepping cop.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It was wild to see, but New Yorkers seem to love picking the guy who promises to be the biggest asshole to homeless people.

      • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        I had the homelessness situation described to me yesterday as such: When people see homelessness, they equate it to crime. But when people think of crime, they think of violent robberies and murders. This makes those people view the homeless only through a lense of prosecution. And this view and subsequent treatment only exacerbates the problem.

  • DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    I asked nypl to let me pay for a library card. they won’t issue. they will issue if I walk into a branch, but it’s a temporary card unless I can prove residency.

    I don’t think they should have their budget cut but I would pay a subscription fee to access it from out-of-state.

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    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?

  • moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    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

    • Venator@lemmy.nz
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      6 months ago

      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.