Drink their blood. Got it.

Wow. My local library mostly has books. No board games. No media stations – there are some (old) computers you can use to browse the web, so I suppose you could watch media there, but it’s set up as a desk, not a couch or something. You can borrow some games, but not game consoles, and there’s definitely not a spot to play the games on-site. Definitely no VR rooms. There’s one branch of the library in the city that has 3d printers. One branch that has a “music editing station” with a music keyboard attached to a computer. One branch has a high quality, large format scanner for scanning historic docs. Definitely no kitchen or playground.

The idea still seems to be that libraries are supposed to be quiet places where you can read books or study. Any media is meant to be consumed with headphones on, so obviously no shared listening of any kind. They do loan music, video games and movies, but they’re meant to be brought home. You can borrow a lot of musical instruments, but again, there’s no place to play them on-site because the library is a quiet place for reading or studying.

I think it would take a major mental shift for people here to consider libraries as places where you might do something non-quiet, and/or non-serious. And something like cooking on-site would be seen as completely non-librarylike.

I’ve been to the Y, and at the moment it doesn’t seem overtly christian. But, as long as that “C” is part of the name, and especially as long as “Christian” is part of the mission statement, it can potentially become a lot more unfriendly to non-Christians.

That document you linked to says that some YMCAs are overtly christian, and talk about the problems that causes:

Ys that have a strong Christian identity may find that non-Christians are uncomfortable with explicitly Christian language, imagery, and activities. Proselytism is an especially sensitive issue.

For example, several survey respondents express discomfort with colleagues offering Christian prayers or reading Bible verses during the “mission moments” that begin Y staff meetings

I do think there’s a special thing about church that is this bigger than yourself experience

I’m pretty sure that’s only the case if you’re a believer. And, in general, people who aren’t believers don’t go to church, so you’re selecting for a group of people who want to believe in something bigger than themselves.

The Y is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to put Christian principles into practice

https://www.ymca.org/who-we-are

New Brunswick?

Well, definitely not a Christian association.

In the show Clarkson’s Farm, Jeremy Clarkson is looking around, trying to buy a pub. At one point they talk about wanting to have a pub with a little grocery store attached. Clarkson’s girlfriend explained why that was common at one point in Ireland. It was because in the past men would get paid, go immediately to the pub, and drink until their paycheck was gone. If there was a shop attached to the pub, they could hand in an order at the shop before they started drinking. And then, even if they drank away the rest of their paycheck, they’d still be handed a bag of groceries before they were kicked out and had to stumble home.

I like that in the US, New England (NE) is in the North East (NE).

Also, in places with significant winters (including Northern Europe) parks aren’t an option in winter.

Northern Europe seems like the kind of place that would realize this is a problem and invent some kind of community building which was open in the winter and had a shared kitchen, a stock of board games, a court for indoor sports, etc. That’s certainly not going to happen in the US.

Ooooh, la dee dah. A morning dressing gown and an evening dressing gown? Does your butler hang it up for you?

I also use hooks. It’s better than using a chair. But, I recently saw an upgrade to the simple set of hooks in Ikea: a pegboard. A pegboard lets you customize it so you can have hooks for small things (like a hat) and other hooks for longer things (pants, etc.) I haven’t tried it yet, so I might be missing something, but it seems like an upgrade to hooks to me. In the past, I also just went with a coatrack. It’s pretty compact and lets you keep the back of your door for a towel or something like that.

its

Plus, at least one of the two economists got really, really hard watching his buddy eat some shit.

I see that as support for Newsom.

Then that’s your issue. You shouldn’t.

Who’s supporting Newsom?

“Liberals like you”, that’s a real asshat thing to say.

if they fuck around again, have them arrested. They have officers in the capitol

If that had ever happened, then it might be worth talking about. But, realistically the most you’ll ever get is “reclaiming my time”.

I wonder what the most effective way to fight this is. If it isn’t stopped both sides will do it more and more. If a democrat did it, I would really hope that other democrats would call them out on it. That might stop it. The other approach that might work is the Newsom style mocking of it.

For why these are superior:

Fully open mode = big hole for air go thru.

Slanty mode = very windy ez, rainy ez, rainy and very windy… just close window.

But, the innovation I miss more than the windows were the roller shutters.

First of all, light blocking. Forget blackout curtains or something, just roll down the shutters and no light is getting in. If you work nights or something, you can block the sun completely and sleep in the dark. Along with that, the light is being blocked while it’s still outside. Why does that matter? Light means heat. In summer you don’t want the heat inside. Block it at the shutter and it doesn’t come inside to heat the inside of the house. Compare that with blinds, curtains, etc. In that case, the light has already entered the house before it hits something and heats it up. With white curtains you’ll reflect a lot of the light back out, but you’re still heating the interior of the house. They also reduce noise, add security, protect in bad storms, etc. But, to me, blocking the light and keeping the heat out was so much more important.