A combination of factors. Lower funding, suburbanization, growing means for home entertainment, growing wages sending people to more expensive options, etc.

I read something about the Carnegie libraries in Pittsburgh basically doing this way back when. Apparently it was popular for people to get off work, go home, clean up, eat, then head out to the library. There was stuff there for kids like story tellers, tutors, art workshops, and more. For adults, quiet places for people who just wanted to read, places for study, areas for people to discuss various subjects, classes on various skills (painting, pottery, carpentry, etc) and the ground floor main area had a general social space. They served coffee, food trucks set up outside, and some inside. It was a popular place for people who didn’t want to go to the bar.

I don’t feel the need to convert them, to get them to back off their bullshit. There are ways to move forward without them, we need to focus on working on that.

The only ways to force someone out of a cult is through forced deprogramming and by attrition, as you break the cult apart, or it naturally breaks down. So what do we do when the cult members you want to do this number in the millions, many of which are willing to resist violently?

Listen, all I am saying is that if all the billionaires disappeared over night, if you avoided mass communication media you would probably not know. If you took that same amount of collective wealth from the bottom up human society would collapse.

This is just what goes on in medicine science when things are operating properly. Test, collect data, run experiments, do it again, do it again, then, after the short term use has been proven safe 30 different times, by 100’s of research groups, you start researching the long term affects of it.

That or the far right has gotten to a point where they will openly condemn anyone who isn’t racist regardless of their other political stances.

If we know that the material can go 10k years without degradation, which is something we can know, then it can last that long. Will it be practically possible to store it in a way that will allow for the maximum amount of time before the material begins to degrade? That’s a whole other thing.

I mean, this is straight out of the Maccarthyist play book, so it would feel at home in mid last century.

Hmm, looking at the data the rise started a few years before the decriminalization, peaked the year after, and has begun to decline, or at least plateau, again. It seems more like the the financial and societal stress of the pandemic, which took place during the same time, is probably a more likely factor. This happened all over, however things are beginning to decline, which is why the crime wave cries aren’t justified. Things are slowing down again after a high seen at the end of a world wide stress factor. We shall see how the next couple years plays out, will it continue to decline, plateau, or rise? Looks like things are moving in the direction of declining again.

The cops being babies probably had some affect on it. How much we wont know for a few years. Other places where the police had similar reactions are now in criminal decline again, after a peak at the end of the pandemic, such as Minneapolis. Seattle seems to still be on a rise, but there are more confounding factors than less police. Also, while a lot of these places had the highest straight numbers of things, the amount of crimes per capita is still significantly lower than in the 80s and early 90s, as the populations of most of the cities, that saw the worst increases, and the US as a whole, has increased greatly since.

But yeah, there are police departments all over the US who are either refusing to do a lot of their job after having regulations on the tightened, or even had their whole departments just quit. This, even though the general amount spent on police has actually been on the rise. The defund the police talking points aren’t really holding up due to this and, when you really start looking into the things said by the police, city officials, and communications/paper work filings, about their decline in number, it usually has more to do with them not liking growing transparency rules, less internal control over their investigation and penalties, and reduced protections offered by qualified immunity.

I can remember when crime actually was out of control in the US. In the 80s and 90s violent crime was far, far, worse than today. It was during a time where republicans had been at the head of federal government for most of 20 years, and the majority of roughly 40. to top it off, while the exact reason the decline happened is still debated on some points, most agree a series of progressive legislation passed in the 70s are amongst the primary factors that drove the decline in criminal activity.

Seriously, look for pictures of poor areas of major cities all over the US during that time, and the same for now. It is a night and day difference. We used to have large areas of major cities that looked like they had been bombed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtI-En92Xso

That’s cool, don’t share any information you are not comfortable with. Thank you for the reply.

Where did this happen, if you don’t mind saying. Just would like to read up on the incident.

That I apparently do not exist on steam

I used to get these all the time. Haven’t seen one in almost a year now. I wonder what happened for them to so strongly disassociate something with me? I wish I knew so that I could weaponize it.

I have never gotten an ad for a game I was currently playing. For me it’s always these mobile games, namely ones that use hentai art to sell the game, I have found out some of these are not actually porn games, or the most recent offering from the biggest studios.

Oh you reminded me, hygiene products, all sorts of hygiene products that have been branded to assure me I am not gay, or a woman, for wanting bathe and groom myself. There is also the one where some douche tells me I am not a dish.

I never get fashion ones, however my feed is periodically bombarded with videos to people who make subculture fashion for women. like lolita dresses. I have no idea why. The only thing I can think of is that I show an interest in music with associated subcultures and they just do not know how to get them right. Hey, this guy listened to Lingua Ignota, let’s send him 20 channels discussing pastel colored lolita clothes and kawaii culture.

Yeah, my experience with youtube ads

Buy a Chromebook

PragerU

Right wing Youtubers

Don’t vote to make abortion a protected right by the state constitution

Buy a ford

Here’s a pornographic/semi pornographic anime game we are paid to show you

BUY A CHROME BOOK!

Hey, check out this person’s scam! They paid us to force this scam on you!

Look at these cable news channels’ youtube channels

Listen to this mom who is totally concerned about some bill that will kill or save all the children

BUY

A

CHROMEBOOK!

buy a jeep

Listen to this prepper try to hock you “survival” gear and shelf stable food

Don’t you remember when families did things? wasn’t that fun? Families, doing things?

Soon it will also be flooded with THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!

I am interested in none of these things

So their two best candidates are a, multiple court case proven conman, and the man who protected a high profile pedophile for years? The US is doing really well at the moment.

I, too, used to feel this way. However, now that I am old enough to put 20+ years between now and the time the pictures were taken, I do like being able to look back through those pictures. It is amazing how your memory distorts and loses details of the past, even of strong memories where you still know the important beats correctly. I wish I had more. I now try to get more when I am doing things. Though I will never be one of those people just going place to place to get a bad picture of it with me in frame.

One possibility is breadfruit. We, realistically, can’t depend on one though. Even the most robust staple food will still have some sort of vulnerability so it will always be of benefits to have several.