FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
I agree, which is why they'll be fine if the IMLS disappears. They don't need other people's money to get by.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
The amount per taxpayer is small, sure, but the question is whether the amount should be used to fund other people's libraries. That question remains the same whether the tax is $1.50 or $1,000 per taxpayer.
As explained in that comment, most of library funding is already local, and in the case of Alabama, you pointed out that Alabama effectively got $0 from the federal government for 2024.
Puerto Rico got $2,147,080 and they're not even a state.
And I don't want to encourage local and regional brilliance, I want to encourage people paying for the services they enjoy instead of getting other people who don't enjoy them to pay for it.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
Last I checked, Daily Wire was doing a victory lap after Trump's election. This doesn't seem like the result of Boreing screwing up, he's always been more interested in making movies.
Though their DailyWire+ subscriber counts are not public, they have announced numbers from time to time. They said they had 1,000,000 subscribers in 2022. According to Axios last year they had over $200 million in revenue, and in 2023 they had a capital valuation of over $1 billion (https://www.axios.com/2024/12/10/the-daily-wire-eyes-growth-investment-in-2025).
I don't see any signs of Daily Wire declining, in a business sense. They seem to be headed up and to the right.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
Let's assume that $211m was equally distributed among the states
It is not. They make their largest grants to state libraries, but they don't distribute it evenly. In 2024 they didn't even give Alabama state libraries a grant at all! California got $15,705,702 for their state library system, the only grant that went to anybody in Alabama whatsoever in 2024 was $184,876 to the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium.
Here's the full list of 2024 grantees under their "Grants to State Libraries" program:
California State Library $15,705,702
Texas State Library and Archives Commission $12,512,132
State Library of Florida $9,533,426
New York State Library $8,125,215
Pennsylvania Office of Commonwealth Libraries $5,891,819
Illinois State Library $5,736,330
State Library of Ohio $5,448,084
Georgia Board of Regents $5,162,498
North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources $5,089,381
Library of Michigan $4,788,124
New Jersey State Library $4,506,420
Library of Virginia $4,289,358
Washington State Library $3,948,629
Arizona State Library $3,804,635
Tennessee State Library and Archives $3,689,581
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners $3,642,371
Indiana State Library $3,589,836
Missouri State Library $3,338,467
Maryland State Library Agency $3,332,465
WI Div. for Libraries and Community Learning $3,230,831
Colorado Department of Education $3,218,246
MN Dept of CFL/Library Development & Services $3,165,524
South Carolina State Library $3,028,013
State Library of Louisiana $2,726,161
KY Department for Libraries and Archives $2,708,198
Oregon State Library $2,597,695
Oklahoma Department of Libraries $2,529,938
Utah State Library Division $2,289,874
State Library of Iowa $2,210,343
Nevada State Library and Archives $2,205,502
Connecticut State Library $2,164,184
Arkansas State Library $2,157,781
PR Dept. of ED/Public Library Programs $2,147,080
Kansas State Library $2,109,780
Mississippi Library Commission $2,109,457
New Mexico State Library $1,797,977
Nebraska Library Commission $1,746,652
Idaho State Library $1,741,500
West Virginia Library Commission $1,668,036
Hawaii State Public Library System $1,541,630
New Hampshire State Library $1,529,144
Maine State Library $1,526,754
Montana State Library, Natural Resource Information System $1,427,530
Rhode Island Office of Library & Information Services $1,413,623
Delaware Division of Libraries $1,389,442
South Dakota State Library $1,346,956
State Library, North Dakota $1,295,858
Alaska State Library $1,276,792
District of Columbia Public Library $1,256,248
State of Vermont Department of Libraries $1,244,357
Wyoming State Library $1,220,427
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
And did most of them really eat your internal organs after raping your children?
Depends on the tribe, really. I recall that the Five Civilized Tribes weren't so bad, but when you get to the plains it's a real horror show. The Comanche were not nice guys, to say the least.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
Museums, libraries, etc., primarily benefit local communities. Why should my tax dollars go to a local library 1,000 miles away: can't they fund their own library if it matters so much to them?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
An additional bit of info: for 2024 their largest grantees were:
California State Library: $15,705,702
Texas State Library and Archives Commission: $12,512,132
State Library of Florida: $9,533,426
New York State Library: $8,125,215
Pennsylvania Office of Commonwealth Libraries: $5,891,819
The big grantees are all state libraries, looks like they give a grant to each state. The lowest state library grant? Wyoming State Library, $1,220,427.
The smallest grant of 2024? $2,510 to the Seneca Nation of Indians, in a grant they will use for a "Kid's Reading Project".
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
7d ago
How much money are they actually giving out here? How many local libraries are going to disappear because they don't have federal grants?
You can search their list of awarded grants here (https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded-grants) and for calibration's sake I looked up the town whose library I spent the most time in as a wee one, wandering the stacks. Looks like that library has received zilch from the IMLS. They did give a local wildlife park near the town $1,775 back in 2003, and the local "Pioneer Farm Museum" (which is just a little farm all done up in historical style where kids can take a trip and learn how to churn butter or whatever) got $6,370 in 2002. That's it.
Searching around, they seem to give out a lot of $10,000 grants to native tribes, presumably for village libraries. So where is the big money?
So I went ahead and searched for Tacoma, which was the closest city to where I grew up that had proper museums, big ones that people like to go to. What did I find? $400k to the University of Washington, $630k to something called "Environment & Culture Partners" which appears to be an NGO that tries to get museums to talk more about climate change, $170k to the Museum of Glass (a great museum I must admit, check it out if you're in Tacoma), $250k for the Children's Museum, $145k for the 9th and 10th Horse Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers Museum (never heard of it), $140k to the Washington State Historical Society, and $25,000 (Back in 2014) to the Pierce County Library System (which, come to think of it, my hometown library was part of. Still, 25k spread over all the libraries in Pierce County is kind of small potatoes).
My test seems like a mixed bag, since the Glass Museum and Children's Museum were pretty nice to go to as a kid (and even today, for the glass one). On the other hand, shouldn't a big city like Tacoma be able to support their own museums? I doubt either of these places would close their doors without the IMLS in any case: the Museum of glass got exactly two grants, one in 2024 and one in 2006, so I doubt they're relying on the money to stay open. Meanwhile it seems like a lot of this money gets funneled to universities and NGOs.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
15d ago
Why would Walsh leave the Daily Wire? I don’t see anything particularly verboten to Shapiro about either of those tweets. I’ve heard Ben say much the same on his show many times.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
16d ago
It doesn't matter whether it was binding or not because we haven't broken it in any case: in the Budapest Memorandum we promised not to invade Ukraine ourselves, and complain to the UN Security council if someone else did. That's it. We never promised to protect them, just to leave them alone.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
16d ago
Yeah, Matthew Stover’s version is the best version of RotS for sure.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
18d ago
I would object to describing the situation as “Christian gangsters going after Christian community leaders”. I don’t think anyone can rightfully complain “No True Scotsman” if I say that the vicious killers of the cartels, who murder pastors because they help addicts recover, are not Christian.
If you think their standards are too loose, fine, but is there any doubt that millions of Christian’s are currently being persecuted? If not in Mexico or Columbia than certainly in China, North Korea, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, and other countries that enforce laws against Christian religious practice.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
18d ago
It makes sense that they get stuck at Cerulean City: the only way to leave the city and progress is to go on a side track to rescue Bill, then you need to go in an NPCs house and then out their back door. Most NPC houses don’t have back doors, and this is the only time you need to go through a house to progress instead of going in a house and then leaving the way you came in.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
18d ago
If you click on the individual country they explain their reasoning. Here was the reasoning for listing Mexico:
Although the majority of Mexico's population is Christian, many believers live in danger of persecution, particularly from criminal gangs, drug cartels and indigenous groups. In many parts of the country, the presence of criminal groups is growing. Christians who bravely speak out against their activities, or who are involved in community work or evangelism (especially with youth, drug addicts and migrants) are deemed a threat. That makes them a target. In some cases, Christian children or the children of church leaders are singled out.
In some Indigenous communities, those who decide to leave ancestral and traditional beliefs to follow Jesus face ostracism, fines, incarceration and forced displacement. Given that indigenous leaders are those who administer justice in such areas, believers have no one to turn to to investigate wrongdoing and protect their religious freedom. These families can also face harassment from the community, such as property damage, restriction of access to schools for their children, and threats.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
18d ago
Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. Their plight is almost entirely ignored by corporate media.
This is certainly true if you count by volume. It seems likely to me that Jews may be more persecuted as a percentage of all Jews, because there are very few Jews and billions of Christians. According to the non-profits who care about this sort of thing, 380 million Christians live in countries that have high levels of persecution and discrimination towards Christians.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
29d ago
They're trying to make Japan better by making it easier to access mental healthcare and find ways to fight societal isolation. That you would want them to make Japan better is obvious, what specifically should they be doing to make it better that they're refusing to do? Give everyone a check each month? Let the zombie corporations die? Mail everyone a waifu pillow?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
29d ago
That makes a great deal of sense, and I would broadly agree. Thanks for clarifying.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
29d ago
What a strange thing to believe. Do you believe parents have no duties to their children, and that children have no duties to their parents?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
29d ago
Kind of seems like they're trying to change the conditions. That 9 step plan they started off with in 2007 consisted of:
(i) research on the prevalence, risk, and protective factors for suicidal behaviors; (ii) increased public awareness; (iii) human resources for early intervention; (iv) community efforts for mental health; (v) better access to mental healthcare; (vi) supportive community environments; (vii) prevention of suicide reattempts; (viii) support for persons bereaved by suicide; and (ix) enhanced public–private partnerships.
Seems like doing more to treat depression, improving access to mental healthcare, and creating supportive community environments are all ways of changing the conditions. What would you want them to do?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
30d ago
Kind of seems that that is exactly what they are doing: providing mental health services, attempting to find ways to reduce social isolation, trying to change social norms so that literal oblivion does not look like such a nice choice in comparison to social disgrace, etc.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
30d ago
It's popular because the financial benefits are great: for many (maybe even most) veterans the care they get through the VA system is either free or close to it. And the VA Community Care Network program means that for outpatient stuff you can actually get seen by a non-VA doctor and the VA wills still pay the whole bill (there are hoops you have to jump through, but a lot of people are motivated to jump if it means they don't have to pay a cent of their healthcare bills).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
30d ago
Suicide is a form of murder: self-murder. We make efforts to stop murders, we should make efforts to stop suicide. Overall, society must signal disapproval of suicide. Cultures that honor or otherwise approve (even the implied approval of not bothering to do anything about it) fall into failure modes that our current society doesn't, without much obvious benefit. See Imperial Japan, for instance, which continued fighting long past the point where there was no hope of victory because their culture venerated honorable death over defeat. It did their society active harm. Their suicide rate remained high up until around 2010, when it began to drop and has continued to drop until today, where the suicide rate is actually a little less than the United States (it went from a high of 25.6 per 100K people in 2003 to around 12.2 today, compared to the US's 14.5).
Why did suicide rates drop so significantly in Japan? Well, in 2007 the government released a nine-step plan to lower suicide rates. Since then they funded suicide prevent services, suicide toll lines, mental health screenings for postpartum mothers, counseling services for depression, and in 2021 created a Ministry of Loneliness whose job is to reduce social isolation. In other words, when the Japanese government tried to make a societal effort towards preventing suicide, suicide rates dropped.
Which is good, because Japan needs every citizen it can get. Population is still dropping, and everyone who kills themselves can no longer contribute to society nor create and raise society's next generation.
If you're talking about actual speechcraft: as in, oratory, speechifying, talking out loud to a crowd, etc, then I have one piece of advice that it seems people desperately need: stop saying "Um"! Or "Um" derivatives such as "like", "er", "you know", "really", etc. It seems like everybody I hear give a speech can't help but pepper the whole speech with them. Trump is a notable exception, but he gives so many speeches that it's expected he would get the basics right.
There is a method which can cure you of this common bad habit. It was performed on my by my venerable public speaking professor, and I can testify to it's efficacy. Get a friend, and give them a bell; one of those bells you see at reception desks, where you give it a good whack on top and it lets out a loud ring. Then start talking. It doesn't matter what, any kind of monologue will do as long as it's not memorized. Tell them to ring the bell every time you let out a filler word. That's it. After doing a few sessions of this your filler words will be gone. Just make sure the bell is loud enough to be a bit startleing.
As far as writing goes, I can only pass on the advice of the great C. S. Lewis (who, whatever anyone thinks of him, was undoubtedly as successful and extremely effective writer). Here is a cosolidated list of his writing advice, gathered from a few different sources:
- Always try to use language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it.
- Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
- Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
- Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us the thing is “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please, will you do my job for me.”
- Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
From time to time I have had sudden bouts of insecurity because I never had an experience like that when I met my wife, or when we were dating. So when people talk about “love at first sight” I get uncomfortable. I’m a romantic at heart, and I like the idea of falling desperately in love with someone like that, but that’s not what happened to me. I was not especially attracted to her when I met her, no more than any other young woman. I grew to love her slowly, as I got to know her. I love her deeply today: I would die for her if I had to. But I never “fell for her”, so to speak.
Of course I never fell for anyone else either. There have been three times in my life that I saw a woman and was struck by her beauty. I felt strongly physically attracted to her: infatuated might be a good word. But I wanted to bed those women, not love them. Two of them were complete strangers whose character was unknown to me. The third I had a conversation with, and discovered she was not the kind of person I wanted to have a discussion with, much less live with. It was lust only.
They got movies and shows and such too. I think Jordan Peterson is working on his second exclusive series for them.
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