121–130 of 250 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Libraries in Canada have the same stipulations, but are actually funded and are open all the time. Our downtown library is open 9am-9pm every day of the year.
That's a severe overgeneralization and I can tell you that is not the case.
Talk about diversity, the library is a place where you get to see people from all walks of life outside the silicon valley bubble (different race, age, handicap). It builds a learning community where people have the opportunity to help each other at a more human level.
Libraries are an excellent place to put some money. They provide learning opportunities, but many also provide resume and job search training, community meeting places, free internet access, and I think is one of the few "neutral" places in American society. Neutral in that there are few, if any politics involved, and it's an equal opportunity benefit to a community that most people can get behind. Even if they don't…
I overwhelmingly agree with that. I grew up in one of the poorer places in America - Appalachia. Despite that, we had a nice library, donated initially by a wealthy individual and then sustained by various forms of private funding over the decades. It didn't always have the absolute latest books, the selection was decent though. It had Internet access very early on and was a valuable, inexpensive resource for young a…
What's the point of libraries these days? We literally have the possibility for everyone to have a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in their pocket with all books that were ever written.
I live in a gentrifying area of NYC. There's a public library branch a few blocks away from me that sees lots of visitors every day. I rarely walk by it and don't see people coming and going.
Or not? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/paabgg/i-bought-a...
So the books have link rot but what of the webpages? They are gone, yet the books are still around.
Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet if I want to make a serious study of something, I hit the textbooks. The internet is, in my experience, a poor replacement for a stack of well written physical textbooks. The internet may be a big library, but in many ways it's not a very good one.
Counterpoint: My friends all went through mechanical engineering WITHOUT reading textbooks - that was the secret to their success. No one is going to touch the textbooks in a library.
Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My…
Whenever a topic like this gets posted, it feels like the majority of commenters feel 'entitled' to other people's money and think they know best how to spend it. Or the notion they have to 'give back.' I'm not rich in the popular sense of the word (besides having the fortune of being American middle class), but I do have investments by virtue of almost never spending on consumer goods. And having no wife or kids. My…
“So far, you’ve concentrated on things that might benefit our distant successors” ... “space trave, cancer treatments, AI” I would hope we’re going to make large strides in these in his lifetime. If we could effectively funnel more into R&D sooner, we’d all see the benefits sooner. Cancer(s), for example, might be cured in say 2060 with our current effort, but if we solved the problem by 2030, hundreds of millions wo…
Will cancer ever be solved? Isn't cancer many different problems that got the same label?