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Every social and business interaction is engagement in public life!
Isolation still wins every time
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Once again, Scandinavia is making me so so jealous
It’s there to make sure they don’t kill themselves in the winter.
Winter is hitting my little town in Sweden and I have to say that your suggestion is looking increasingly appealing. It’s not the cold. It’s not the rain we get now in place of snow thanks to global warming. It’s not even the darkness. It’s the gloomy all-encompassing grey.
It’s like all life and joy leaves the world until spring hits in May.
At least with snow you get white. The dead and the grayness is soul destroying.
Yeah. We don’t get a whole lot of snow anymore though. At least not where I live.
Well, I say that but I moved in September, maybe this area gets a tonne of snow!
I live in the US, and my local library has a cafe, 3d printers, and you can even borrow tools.
Isn’t Norway separate from Scandinavia?
Where do you have this from?
I think I saw it tossed around on Lemmy, of all places.
No.
Fairly normal where I live
And the most popular one: the podcast studio. I’d like to point out that the other 20-ish libraries we have besides of Bjørvika are amazing too! You should see the one we open in Holmlia dec 1st. It’s even got a separate youth-library next to the normal one.
Not sure where you live, but I have actually been to a fair few libraries like this in the US. Usually if you want a really cool library, you’ll have to go to the main one in the state. If not that, the highest reviewed one. Of course, it all depends where you are, as different regions seem to care about having nice libraries at different amounts.
Gaming stores for some board games and DnD.
My local one smells like body odor unfortunately
Post on a local Facebook page that you’ll DM a game of D&D for anyone who’s interested. Bam, instant friends.
I might consider learning how to do it first, but yeah. Players are always looking for DMs, and nerds are fun to be around.
Ooh, you could play at the libr-- ohhhh.
My friend’s uncle was arrested for playing at the library. He was by himself in a corner of the compurer lab.
Playing… With what?
The Loch Ness Monster
And domestic violence, that’s how I read it the first time. Dark humor?
I can’t express enough how badly I want this.
It’s actually pretty easy to book libraries for after hours events. There’s a small cost associated because it requires staff to work outside normal hours.
I can’t even afford to rent a room during normal working hours though. Plus, I’m pretty sure my local library doesn’t offer evening bookings.
Asterisk: I can technically afford it, but I’m not paying like $160/mo to host a weekly club at the library. That defeats the whole point of a third space.
Paying for something doesn’t defeat the point of a third place. Enterprising and profit do. People covering just the cost of materials required for their activity is not that bad a thing.
I would rather more basic activities be covered by taxes too though.
I agree with you, but I do wish our society/culture allowed us to exist without requiring constant payment. Just exhausting after a while.
It’s really disappointing how much of our space is privatized.
Apparently we’re even supposed to give individuals private space now!?
I’m hoping to eventually open something like a board game cafe to help address this for my hometown. Far from a perfect solution, but I would like to get as close to a “third place” community-oriented vibe as possible without going totally broke, at least.
If libraries were open late they would be filled with homeless people looking for a safe, warm place.
What I’m saying is we need safe warm places for the homeless AND libraries to be open late.
Truthfully, putting the homeless in a safe warm place that enables them to have access to a library at night sounds like a smart combo.
My local library has security guards because people keep shooting up heroin in the bathrooms.
This would exacerbate that
We should absolutely have safe housing for homeless people with UBI and transitional programs. We should also offer mental health and substance abuse treatment – and in extreme cases humane involuntary treatment for people that are a danger to themselves and others.
And none of this should take place in shared, public spaces for the safety and dignity of everyone involved. This is a failure of society and needs to be treated as such. Placing the burden on individuals isn’t the solution. Expecting public spaces designed for other uses to pick the slack of a broken societal safety net is insane.
Or fix the housing crisis lmao
hire the homeless to build housing for homeless people
humane involuntary treatment
You can’t have humane involuntary treatment. In cases where somebody is threatening someone else, I would say involuntary treatment is called for. But we shouldn’t decide when its okay to imprison people for exercising their bodily autonomy.
And also, the heroin.
Almost nowhere in Seattle offers public bathrooms anymore because of this. It’s a massive problem that still doesn’t have a solution
we know the solution. it’s building a shit ton of cheap housing and handing it out to people and charging them 30% of the income, not counting the first $20k. it’s just rich psychopaths who run the country would rather profit off of prison and let them die instead.
that’s a good point, we should also end the drug war
Same. The homeless population has unfortunately made libraries where I live pretty dangerous places and I can only imagine how much worse that would be if they were open all night. My city doesn’t seem to care at all about people shooting up and ruining public spaces.
Sounds like my kind of party!
except I’m not likely to spend much time in my local library if it is constantly filled with homeless people.
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Homeless people usually don’t have the peace of mind required for reading books, they are kinda busy surviving.
Yeah, nothing against that idea in theory, but in practice, places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth, making it an extremely unattractive place to hang out and socialize.
Denver’s Union station downtown is a perfect example. It’s a “public private” space that tries to stay open late on weekends to cater to the crowd but ends up being a hellhole.
places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth,
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts. Some are legitimately forgotten by the system and for different reasons lost job/domestic abuse/no fam/disability/health issue/financial issues. And even at that : addiction is also a symptom of a shit society. Not the same issue as what causes other homeless people but there can be more than one problem in a poorly designed system that comes up with the same result of being homeless.
Society built on capitalistic ideals for more than just survival as a goal has an extremely narrow scope for who it is interested in serving.
You’re putting all homeless into a box.
With the exception of your first sentence (me putting homeless people in a box, which I’m not sure if you’re making a pun or not), all of other the things you said are correct and I agree with. The things you said and the things I said are not mutually exclusive.
In other words, not all homeless are the same, not all are drug addicts, and society should do better at preventing homelessness, and you might still have a late-night library filled with urine-soaked drug addicts.
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts.
Are we not allowed to make generalizations at all? I promise you if you open a homeless center in any major city you will find out very quick that psycho behavior comes with homeless people at scale. It’s a guarantee that you will have meth addicts ruin whatever infrastructure you provide them. It doesn’t matter that there are some good homeless people when you are almost guaranteed to face the bad ones.
also more homeless drug addicts started after they became homeless, not before. being on the street like that deteriorates your mental health. the longer we let this go unaddressed the worse it gets.
They’re already full of homeless people 😐
the housing crisis and resulting homelessness have dramatic downstream effects on everything
We’ve been doing extended openings 0700-2200 for several years in Oslo. As do libraries all over Norway. You need to use your library-card or app to open the door, so there’s some control (data lives for 7 days). We have very little problems - maybe there’s some homeless there but they are as welcome as anyone else. We do have security guard, or one that strays between branches. And yes we do have homeless people in Oslo.
Go Norway! I whish we had a library law here in Germany like you do - our places are underfunded and understaffed… a lot of my colleagues are very passionate about their jobs, we could do so much more with our local libraries.
A lot of Norwegian libraries are underfunded as well.
In Oslo public library (Deichman) we’ve been given more money the last 10 years than previously. And we have shown what that money can do.
During Covid shutdown the Library was what kept open except for two weeks - that really showed what kind of back-bone we were for Oslo.
It was very tough on our frontline workers as we were swamped with students ignoring any precautions. Working in libraries are still low paying compared to the education
Crazy idea : let’s use churches to accommodate homeless people since you can find them fucking everywhere, surely they’re not used after 8pm, and that’s basically the point of them in the first place, no?
Are you aware that churches do some of the most public outreach for homeless people in the united states?
some of the most?
I think monks aren’t excited about washing off piss in the morning
Then they should provide access to toilets. Where are they going when they want to take a piss? Also isn’t helping the poor in anyway they can a charitable act revered by their religion?
You are making the mistake of assuming homeless people’s actions are rational.
Maybe for the Sikhs?
Every major religion reveres helping the needy, for example in Islam, zakat, giving money for charity (if you have enough wealth to afford it) is a requirement.
I get the idea and I think it’s wonderful but have you ever been to a homeless shelter? They need staff to break up fights, protect women, clean up the mess made by drug users and alcoholics, and all sorts of other difficult things your average old lady pew duster isn’t capable of dealing with.
As much as I despise organized religion they aren’t fully to blame for the situation. Some of them have really made an effort.
Religion even at its very very best can’t do that job. That is why we need the government.
Government can’t do that job either. We already have homeless shelters. I don’t know why people talk like this is a new idea. We have homeless shelters in our society. They’re government funded in some cases, or church-funded in other cases.
We still have homeless people. We do provide free shelter and food to people. And we still have people sleeping on the street.
You aren’t allowed to do drugs in homeless shelters which is why a lot of homeless people don’t use them.
we need places to accommodate them. like how restaurants used to have smoking sections. there should also be access to drug abuse healthcare with no mandate and allow long term residency in shelters, including the ability to receive mail and use it as a legal address for ID documents and employment. if we did all that we could see a fraction of them, perhaps even a large fraction, eventually getting back on their feet and out of the system.
The governments barely do anything, in general not putting more than a token effort into helping.
There’s never enough support for the increasing number of homeless people.
As much as I despise organized religion they aren’t fully to blame for the situation.
They are if they don’t pay the taxes that would have been used to help with situations such as this.
Most churches can’t keep the lights on. For every LDS or RCC there are a thousand places on the verge of bankruptcy. Every atheist I know makes a big deal about the big players but not one has shown me the raw the numbers that proves that if they paid corporate tax rates it would be mean more than a few more cruise missiles used to blow up weddings in Pakistan.
Proposal: taxes that scale with income… You could call it, I dunno, some sort of income tax.
Cool. My employer now pays the bulk of my earnings in stock and corporate perks.
Prayer is not a corporate perk ;)
Income tax is paid by church employees. The thing that isn’t taxed is their profits.
Yeah agreed. There are some small churches with actually kind people who help the homeless and do good stuff.
We need the government: to stop blocking housing development
I agree but on no other neoliberal positions. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
That and stressed-out students pulling all-nighters.
Finally, the library bathroom will get used for sex.
no
Too late.
I joined a hackerspace/makerspace. Similar in concept, but instead of books; tools and nerds.
i would love to do the same but the nearest one is more then 100km away, sometimes it really sucks to be in a remote town
The library of our university is open 24/7 while exam season, which is nice
Great idea. I think I will suggest it to my library!
My wife was a bartender and then got a job as a librarian. I don’t think she’d like that much.
Sorry guys, plan’s off, this guy’s wife said no.
Soooooorrrryyyyyyyy
Shhhh…
There are usually late / all night coffee shops. Lots of good memories and conversations had there, and considerably cheaper (though not free).
That’s the thing, though - if you’re not spending money, you’re not welcome. It’s not your space, in any sense.
Don’t got to tell me, I’ve held my coffee cup aloft like some kind of warding torch - proof that I’d paid a couple dollars to be here - back when I was hard up.
But if you’ve got money, it is a lot cheaper than a bar or a resto
Since covid, most coffee shops, restaurants, and other hangouts open at 6 AM and close by 3 PM in my area. My only options are bars.
