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Have you ever actually been to a library for longer than 10 minutes? You can hang out there with a laptop without paying for a $6 latte every hour. You can talk with friends if you're quiet. I used to tutor there. If you don't like the gender books just hang out in the engineering/science/classic lit section. Public libraries are lovely places! I used to go regularly to this one library in the NYC area that looked like a castle with a fireplace and amazing views. Well, until this one homeless girl fell in love with me and stalked me there. So I guess I can agree on some of the drawbacks.
This is a problem in every medium. You'll have a perfectly working phone from the 10s, car from the 00s, baseball stadium from the 70s - that people start crying needs to be replaced. Why? "Because it's old." I think most people here are exceptions but it seems to be a characteristic of the human race to be addicted to anything new and shiny, even if it's worse (or slightly better but not remotely worth the effort).
I love this concept of eternity. One thing that drew me to areas of study like Latin and even theology (well, Bible study) is that it feels very complete and unchanging. There won't likely be any new developments, all you have to look through is the small pile of books on your desk, but you can look through them at so many different levels, all of which have been considered by scholars for thousands of years.
Just thought I'd mention, this paying $6 for a latte every hour actually depends a bit on where you go for your latte. If they have a high demand, then of course they do this, but if it's a low demand place, they're usually welcoming to people hanging around for longer. In Western Countries, restaurants, cafes etc also seem to have a very "get your drink and get pushed out the door" mentality, but if you go to other countries you'll find it's a lot more leisurely.
It's also an indoor place to meet friends before going elsewhere, and also a place where computers are easily accessible and provided with internet access, which for homeless people can make a huge difference in getting a job and getting themselves out of homelessness. But this is more about public libraries as a sort of "public function room" if the function is quiet and not loads of people. It's also as something to provide support to people.
Out of curiosity, is NYC a cold city? I've seen online pictures of places there with external air conditioning attached to apartments, so I'm assuming it's a hotter city? On that point of support, it also provides a place out of the elements to be for a little bit(before it closes for the night if it's not a 24/7 library).
There is a big difference between a NYC library and a normal sized town library. It's like you saw someone saying "man my 5 year old Chevy Spark sure sucks" and responded "Well my brand new S class Mercedes is the best car in the world! Maybe you haven't been in a car for more than 10 minutes." These large sections you speak of are a 5 foot shelf in most places. Good luck finding quality unfiltered internet in most places. My library has zero places where you can talk and it's 4 stories. In face there was a large room where you could sit at tables all day and work on stuff....but that got trashed so they could put more DVD shelves there for the poor peoples Blockbuster. So it's either get a DVD, borrow a social issues book, or get the fuck out. The only thing it has of any value is an entire floor of kids books.
Depends on the type of technology. I'd suggest reading Theodore Kaczynski's manifesto, but on the point of technology, there's 2 types of technology. Local technology, easily made, easily created, easily maintained... eternal for all intents and purposes(so by meaning it's eternal, but by theory and heat death of the universe, it's not). Then there's infrastructural technology. When you look at the fall of the Roman Empire, a lot of infrastructural technology was lost, like proper piping, aqueducts etc... even the steam engine was invented during the Hellenistic era. But all this was lost in the collapse of a civilisation, which brings a collapse of infrastructure, and a collapse of infrastructural technology.
New != better. Open sewers were used following the closed sewers of Rome in Medieval era, which was newer... but worse. Similarly older isn't worse. Roman Concrete is better than our modern concrete, yet lost to time.
Hmm, it is true that my current views on technology are anchored hard in the era I was born in. DOS scares me, but if I was born a few years earlier, perphaps I would be a DOS suprematist that would would both reject Windows and Linux.
It's definitely dependent, even in cities, but it's such an unpleasant experience to be told to leave that I end up not wanting to risk it if I'm stopping at a cafe I'm not familiar with. Not to mention some cafes near colleges even filter the internet to absurd degrees (seen DuckDuckGo blocked lmao). But I've never seen anyone respectful told to leave a library, except at closing time.
I've lived in smaller, poorer, and more dangerous towns than NYC and never had this experience, but it can happen if a public library has poor management. It's the same with anything public - if your city isn't willing to kick people out who try sleeping in the neighborhood park, you won't have a place to take your kids.
NYC gets both cold and hot. You definitely need heating in the winter, and you can survive without AC in the summer (I lived somewhere for a few months that had such an insanely loud air conditioner that I mostly kept it off) but it's not pleasant.
I spent 6 hours in a Tim Hortons one morning completing school work and nobody bothered me (having only bought a double-double for 1.83). Must suck to be an Americuck.
You are precisely wrong. A company practicing planned obscolescence does it because they have decided they do not want to bring in new value, they'd rather repurpose the value they already have. So, they break their phones to manufacture want/need for their product. Then, they don't need to improve their product because the customer will buy it regardless. They are actually allowed to be complacent and provide minimal progress if they want, which they will because it's pointless now. The numbers increment annually, but it doesn't change much. Nobody needs a faster phone. My S6 is eight years old and still runs all the apps I need at a good speed.
I find myself to have all sorts of behaviors that I'd rather not have in the long run. These are often persistent responses to situations in which I felt threatened in some capacity. Trauma responses, defense mechanisms, etc. In these cases, I often cling to the behavior that caused me to survive the situation because I know that it works enough to keep me alive. I cling to these things irrationally. I can see how my life would be measurably better if I did not engage with them, yet I return time and time again, until I can manage to break the survivor bias, and prove to myself that something else really truly could be better. I understand that these behaviors are within my control, and that they have a basic value, but I call it "enslavement" because I do not want to continue in them yet out of faulty reasoning in my most animal like brain, I cling to them. I am slave to myself because I can't get out of my own way. I don't want to always engage with my most immediate desire, because those desires can be misguided.
Firstly, abandon this notion of an "animal brain". Certainly, there are more primal parts of the brain, but it is only there to keep you alive, otherwise, it is entirely subordinated to the conscious you. I can attest, It is the quickest way to abandon all control and responsibility over your life. Abandon it, and see it all as yourself. Now on to the rest of my post.
Please keep posting because you write a beautiful truth. There are those of us who wish we could do everything, live in a Uncle Ted shack in the woods but don't face the hard truth that we don't have all the time in the world to relearn these things, and maybe it just isn't worth it. Besides, life is good with some good friends and a lover, and little else more.
I'm not here shirking responsibility for my actions. Anywhere I find myself engaging in a behavior that I don't want to, I do just as you've described. I sit and think about what I'm doing, why I do it, and if it makes sense to keep doing it, or if there is some superior behavior that I could implement. I'm not a passive observer in my own mind, helpless to do anything, but I am able to observe myself abstractly, and make changes to my life from there. My previous posts were perhaps a bit too focused on the problem and less on the solution.
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