395 Comments

No. I worked with him, and the boss would have frowned on that. I could only gaze in wonder at the absurdity of such a view. He eventually got let go because he was pushing his politics to the customers, which management didn't like, making product decisions based upon his personal beliefs (and not upon what would sell), and he also shirked whatever tasks he didn't like as often as he could.

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You cannot replace the services of a reference librarian with Google.

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Card catalog works ok

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we come for the content, as well, not to mention the good company... and manage to do it on a 1st gen iPad. if technobabble trumps ideas, perhaps you should, indeed, move on.

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It's the mafia, just in different clothing

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They should just loiter outside Koch properties.

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Damn them, trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps mooching off public resources.

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Amen. I've got no children and a six-figure salary. I happily pay my taxes so others' children can have access to schools and health care. HAPPILY, DAMN YOU ALL, because THAT'S HOW THIS WORKS.

I read something somewhere about "provid[ing] for the common welfare." Must've been in a Chick Tract.

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We recently renovated our city's library, and people who I know damn well are never using it complain constantly that it's "swamped" by homeless people and "not safe". I never go there, because I'm lucky enough to have internet and a job that lets me feed my Kindle addiction, but the people I know who do say that's a bunch of bullshit. The top floor computer lab usually is in use fairly constantly by homeless people or poor people who don't have access to internet at home, but it's the only place they can work on their resumes or apply for housing, and they're actually fucking doing that. And this time of year, they do take advantage of it being open 12 hours a day and having free coffee/tea available, because they don't want to freeze. I'm perfectly fine with my tax dollars going there. Since it opened, there has not been ONE incident of violence or any other issue involving homeless people. But snotty little shits make assumptions.

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How else do we get all the jobs back? Remake us into a third world country and the other countries will ship their jobs back to us!

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That's so weird. I grew up in Dunfermline, birthplace of AC, where he is known as a bigly philanthropist. There is (or was?) a theatre, swimming pool, music institute, and a fund for every school kid in town to have a picnic last day before the summer break. He was born in a wee cottagey house that's still there with a plaque by the door.

You think you know someone....

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Yes, that "government schools" business started with Karl Rove, etc. One of the Right-wing tactics was/is to denigrate every public service. Public schools formerly were referred to as "neighborhood schools."

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God, I hate these people.

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And it works so darned well that firemen watch people's houses burn down because "Fuck yeah, why not?"

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How did you guess???? Not suburbs, but our two smaller branches are both in residential neighborhoods, while the main branch (that people actually use) is downtown. One of the neighborhood branches is actually less than a mile from our main branch, but we still hear from people who refuse to come downtown because it's "not safe" (aka, not everyone is white! Some people have facial piercings!) so they demand we keep the neighborhood branch open regardless. And then there are the people who've never actually used the library, but demand we keep the neighborhood branch open because it's good for their property values. That's why we thought it would be responsible to keep that location open, but reduce hours to the times of day when people are actually using it, but now that's become controversial in itself. ("Why are you cutting OUR hours, but you're not cutting hours for THOSE people?")

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Why does this make me want to cry? And in a related question, how the fuck did we get here, to this horrible place in time...and how the fuck do we get back?

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