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.

Not surprising, same thing for the Brady list.

At this moment? No. However things were not always like this and won’t always be like this. If someone like Schwarzenegger was around in the 70s or 80s I could definitely see it, as the idea was popular then as well.

As of now, yes. However, there are a lot of people in the US who would like to change the stipulation that naturalized citizens can not be president. So a push for this could pass, especially for someone like Schwarzenegger who is a republican and the right kind of immigrant.

While I like Arny a lot more than anyone else I have seen looking for the position please, no more celebrity politicians.

Yeah if only they stopped with demanding a solid yes or no on detainment and keeping their mouths shut. Instead they rant about how they don’t need licensing, registration, etc. because they aren’t using their vehicle for commercial purposes. It gets more unhinged from there.

Yes, if the cops stop you, get a firm yes or no on being detained, as they will try to make a voluntary contact situation seem like something you are obligated to cooperate with. Yes, you should not answer any questions with few exceptions: if you are the driver of a car that has been pulled over for an infraction or you have been arrested. Yes, you should insist that they tell you what they are bothering for and you should never respond to questions that fish for you to give answers that may fill in the blanks for them. Keep in min though, they are not obligated to tell you until they cite, charge, or arrest you. (eg. for things they ask so you fill in the blanks: “do you know how fast you are going?” answer “how fast did you clock me at?” do not say no, do not give a number) If you are at your home when the police arrive, unless they have a warrant that specifically allows them to enter your house, do not open the door. Speak to them through the door or a window close to the door. If they actually have a warrant 99.9% of the time they will show it to you in hopes of gaining compliance because almost every does at that point. The rare times they do not do that? Well there is a very good chance you, or someone in your house, is considered a dangerous criminal who is wanted for a serious crime.

Give the cops as little access to you and your information as possible. DO NOT claim you have the right to drive on public roads without documentation while you have a gun on your hip and you are berating those police.

platforms driven by user created content like the nazis, and other extreme right ideologues, because the audience for them consumes that content like religious zealots going to services, getting in their daily requirements of indoctrination. This inflates user engagement. However, the businesses advertising their services, and products, on those platforms do not like their company being associated with these people.

Now I am going to have to make these

Yeah, it was great. When the kid proved he was sober he requested to speak to the arresting cop and called him out on it to his face while the cop gave some stupid excuses and and got away from the kid as fast as he could.

This is a new tactic the police are trying out. They have recognized that people recording them, and people releaseing police recordings via FOIA, are making them look bad and resulting a lot of public outcry and pressure. So what’s the solution? Institute better transparency regulations and work on creating more accountability for bad actors? No, of course not.

Along with these invasion of privacy claims the police are also fielding charging people with organized crime for recording them on live stream and/or for a youtube channel. Claiming that recording their activities is actually a physical form of interference because “I had to physically leave the scene to address you”. Claiming that showing up to more than one scene run by the same cops qualifies as stalking. Claiming that posting videos and pictures of them going about their duties is doxxing them. We will see more and more tenuous attempts to use the legal system against anyone who would expose their own actions. They want to find a wedge the court will allow them to use to arrest anyone who records them or releases information they gathered from FOIA. Many jurisdictions are also pushing a variety of bullshit in order to not comply to FOIA at all.

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