If I am not laying on private property or in the entrance of a shop or something I can lay around whereever I want. I don’t really understand what OP is talking about.
America Bad, of course!
In some areas, almost everything is private property. Including sidewalks, parks, beaches…
I was in a city that only had one green area that was publicly accessible. The was signs that you weren’t allowed to be on the grass, only the paths. So you could pretty much only walk through. Even just standing, you’d be in the way.
I get that the property owner sets the rules, but if everything is private, it gets hard to exist.
And that’s why I’m placing you under arrest.
What ?
This is a big city problem. In smaller cities you typically have very few places you can’t loiter.
Free land can be bought. Bought land can’t be free.
Trite and inaccurate.
BS, and def doesn’t fit this group.
Loitering is illegal in the US because public spaces are free. Why are you just sitting in a public space for free when you could be sitting in a cafe or restaurant and contributing to the economy? Oh you don’t have that money? Well then you’re worthless to society and just shouldn’t exist, obviously.
when you could be sitting in a cafe or restaurant and contributing to the economy
or even better, being exploited for cheap labor in prison!
Why would you seat doing nothing instead of making money to donate them to some FOSS projects, that are desperately needing them? And there are many such projects. Time to invest in good things, go grab some buzz and donate to your favourite FOSS project(s)! Then we go chilling in the forest with moon partisans and being worthless to regimes around the globe… together.
Only illegal if you’re a teenager or a minority.
Most (including my city) places, have no age/other restrictions on the law. Although they are often used against those groups.
Blm land? National forest? Can lay around for 14 days straight.
The land billionaires are salivating to carve up, log and develop? That land?
We just can’t get a break from you guys, can we? Doesn’t matter what the discussion is about, it always gets turned into US political grievances. This is what’s killing this platform and making every sane person leave.
If you think this is exclusive to the US you’re denser than a brick.
i mean, this post is explicitly political tho?
So glad you get to live in a world where you get to ignore politics. Also, I’m assuming you live in another country, and that’s why you’re frustrated things default to the US. So do I. I fucking hate that the US Empire has Earth by the balls, though that is ending (thankfully).
And unfortunately, anything billionaires do here is often a sort of trial run for other countries. These assholes (Tech Asshole Billionaires, Heritage Foundation and theocratic asshats, Trump and Wallstreet, etc) want to carve up this entire fucking world and enslave us, like full on chattel slavery. That is, those of us they haven’t sent to death camps. We need to do everything we can to stop this.
You might not be a leftist, so the term endstage capitalism may or may not mean anything. But we are living in those times, and a few outcomes await us. One of them being techo-feudalism and surveillance dystopia, or a better world where we break this shit apart. Either way, politics is quickly affecting every single aspect of your life, because these assholes want to privatize every single minutia of your life if they can.
Maybe one day we can sit back and ignore ‘politics’ (as they are defined now), but until then, I believe we have a LOT of work to do.
It’s not a binary choice between consuming all the politics or none of it. It can be done on your own terms when you choose to, rather than being perpetually consumed by it all day every day. That’s an extremely unhealthy media diet that nobody should advocate for.
But it’s not consumption of media that’s the issue here. You’re offended that we’re mentioning political issues in a post about legality. You can ignore what you want, but everyone else doesn’t have to be silent or pretend they’re unrelated to make you happy.
I actually hear you and greatly sympathize with this. I absolutely need days when I just don’t pay attention to the news or politics, outside of my local community organizing and action. I really look forward to a world where politics means what the etymology does “the dealings of the city”, and not catastrophic, firehose levels of information about every single thing, each one of which is existential. I look forward, and work towards, a day when either I or those who come after me (don’t have kids and won’t) live in a society where politics means mostly things like planting community gardens, neighborhood groups, and distribution of commodities in a local environment. Where even the bigger issues are amazing, like high speed rail and massive green energy projects, space stations, and megastructures that benefit all, not just the elite.
I really want you to know that I really feel where you are coming from, and I desperately want this torrent to stop. It feels so inundating and all encompassing. I applaud you for taking days where you recharge and take a break. In a sense, there is a privilege involved to those of us who can afford to do so, but also I will use that privilege for that, so that I can then go and also use it to fight back and make a change.
I can only speak for myself here, but it’s not even about taking days off. It’s about protecting the remaining non-political places from being poisoned by political discussion. There are so many more appropriate places for it than the Showerthoughts community. I don’t think anyone subscribes here for politics - rather as an escape from them.
It’s just my one-man fight against the wind. I keep at it not because it makes a difference but because I care. Still, if I manage to make even a few people more conscious of it when posting, I consider my efforts worthwhile.
I also apologize for my harshness. I aspire to one day be able to take criticism the way you did.
This is a post about the legality of resting in different areas (apparently in the US), it’s inherently political.
I could understand if this were a sub about bunnies or something, but it’s not. I don’t think the fediverse is dying, and I dodn’t think you have to seek out reasons to clutch your pearls and be offended that people dare talk about the politics that affect their lives…
Yep, enjoy it while you can!
Black Lives Matter land?
For the fellow east-of-the-mississippi and not-US folks. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) operates public lands with fairly loose rules about use, including camping up to 14 days.
Sorry, it’s just one of my favorite lines from White Lotus.
It’s actually BURNlNG MAN land with a typo’d lowercase L that’s gonna unnoticed but it’s too late to change the records now.
(burning Man is on BLM land and happens to also be where the land speed record is currently held - salt lake city salt flats weren’t big enough, apparently)
In Canada, a very old arrangement dating from the creation of the country, says that navigable water is a federal matter. Whether it’s on the side of the ocean, a big lake, or a river, the water and anything below high tide is Crown “land”, and public. There are obviously exceptions and access by land can be controlled but not by water. At least not the beach itself.
It leads to weird situations, like a provincial park that can’t stop boaters from using remote parts of “their” beach. Or another where boats band together between some islands, and party and jetboat among kayaks and SUP.
But this also prevents owners of big houses around lakes to claim a part of that lake, or the foreshore.
We don’t have the right to roam in general here, with some exceptions for Crown lands, and it happens that bodies of water and rivers is Crown land.
Anyway, that’s how I understand this.
More of this country is crownlands than privately owned lands. Except for the National or Provincial Parks you can roam free without registration. There is no cell signal when you head out there, you need a sat phone or one way emergency beacon.
In the UK all farmland is fenced off, with occasional walking paths available. I used to think the Ridgeway was great because there was about 50 miles of trails one could walk on or ride a bike, and in summer motorbikes and 4x4s were allowed too.
It blew my mind when I moved to Spain and I worked out I could get pretty much anywhere off road whenever I felt like it.
For novelty I once rode my little motorbike from my house to the supermarket, with only about 50m on paved roads. It was very liberating. But unfortunately some of the yoghurt I bought got squashed by the jostling on the way home, and my bag smelled of bad milk for a couple months even after I’d washed it :-/
In Scotland under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 you can walk, camp, and explore most land in Scotland—even if it’s private—as long as you’re respectful, don’t cause damage, and give people (especially homes and farms) their space.
Yeah, bit then the midges get you
Seriously though, Scotland is mostly ahead of the rest of the UK in many ways. I had some of my best times in Scotland :-)
Necause you misspelled ‘but’ I then had to read your comment with a Scottish accent.
Aye, it’s a sexy accent alright
(I don’t have a Scottish accent, lol)
This is also true in New Hampshire in the US.
Nice!
Great for them!
The new coastal path has access rights down to the sea in most cases.
It’s not perfect, but there are cleaners with enzymes that really fight dairy spill smell. They’re primarily marketed here as pet odor destroyers. A spilled spring latte came back to haunt my car carpet in the summer despite my best cleaning efforts initially. I sprayed with the enzymatic cleaner and cut it in half within a few days. I sprayed again a week later and got rid of most of it. If it sits for a few days in the heat, I could smell it upon entering, but it easily got evacuated with open windows for a minute. Like 4 years later it’s still there very faintly, but now it has to sit for like a week in the summer and it’s only identifiable because I know what it is.
TIL that “loitering” does not mean leaving garbage in public spaces. Ive heard the term but never expected it to mean standing around idle, this is so stupid.
It’s baffling to me that you can get fined by just standing somewhere doing nothing…
As the guards around Skyrim will sternly remind you: “No lollygaggin”.
BTW, little newborn kittens or puppies are also called litter.
say “little kitten litter” 10 times
You are thinking of littering. Loitering is standing around idle on another person’s property. It’s usually used now adays to move vagrants along but the law has jim crow origins.
Also, a driving licence and a driving loicence are the same thing. The latter is just in a British accent.
It’s a common mistake for non native English speakers. I thought the same for years but now know the difference.
Oh wow, you just blew my mind. I am in fact thinking about littering! I was a bit suspicious about me not realizing the true meaning sooner, but did not look into it further. This makes a lot more sense now, thank you for clearing this up. :)
It’s a common mistake since the words are very close, it does not help that many people who loiter also usually litter.
most places are legal for laying around.
you are probably thinking of the “land of the free”
Yes from what I’ve seen here in the “land of the free,” people get suspicious & uncomfortable at anyone who isn’t actively rushing around with a purpose or purchasing goods & services from establishments. Can’t just stand around or lay down or even sit, there are no benches anywhere.
Loitering…I don’t even think that word has a translation in my language. You made up a term and turn it into a crime?
I think it means like hanging around. But I guess they thought a ‘Hanging around’ charge would be hard to take seriously in court. Land of the free, eh
Few places nowadays is it legal to lay around & do whatever you want outdoors, usually getting cited for loitering or something.
What kind of shitty place are you living in?
I always find it funny to figure out that stuffblike loitering isn’t something the Simpson invented. It’s something americans are not allowed to. But freedom is very important to them
But they have guns! Muh freedumb!
Loitering laws are mostly just racism.
It’s rich people not wanting “riff raff” hanging around. No one cares if you’re hanging around slums and ghettos.
That’s where you’re wrong. Police love loitering laws there too. Easy excuse to harass people and search them
The US is a shithole
I once went to a park sat on a bench and right in front of me was a no loitering sign. It’s a park, what else am I going to do?
I once went to a park sat on a bench and right in front of me was a no loitering sign. It’s a park, what else am I going to do?
That is hilarious (well, sad actually, but you get what I mean). Also kind of reminds of that one politician once saying that “breast are not suitable for small children” in the public breastfeeding debate …
Most of those “no loitering” signs only exist to give the police a legal crowbar against homeless people. Realistically if you’re just sitting and minding your business nobody will actually come along and eject you.
Gonna jinx it eh
sitting while black has entered the chat
The US . if youre not white good luck even walking around. Youll get called in. And I’m not even in the deep south.
“Loitering” aka “standing while young”
Let’s be fair, here. You can also get done for “standing while homeless,” and “standing while poorly dressed,” and also “standing while black and/or Hispanic.”
Curiously enough, you’ll never get nicked for loitering if you appear to be doing something vaguely socially acceptable. I suggest showing up with an easel and paints; you can hang around all day without anyone bothering you.
Except in Italy, nearly the totality of the coast is privately handled and you must pay to access it…
It’s like that all up the US Pacific and Atlantic and the US has a lot of coast.
The gulf is for the poors to play in the oil every now and then as a treat.
California does not have private beaches. Nor do a lot of states.
Most places in the US define anything below the average high tide line as public. You can own the dry sand above, but if it is wet it is public. Unfortunately there are exceptions.
