We have a town swimming area at a local pond, which includes an enclosed area suitable for laps. We also have a couple of private gyms that have pools that are reasonably close. (And anyone can buy membership.) Admission to the pond costs something, but it’s really cheap.
But yes, it varies a lot by municipality.
I don’t think that’s quite accurate - they may not like to, but lots of people do pay for schools that don’t benefit them personally and I’ve never heard of anyone who complained their taxes were being used to fund a library they don’t use - but I do think that no government can provide every amenity that any resident wants. For example, there are only four model aircraft fields in my city while there are hundreds of baseball fields and basketball courts. Even if the facility someone wants exists, they still might not get the exact service they are looking for. My city has public pools - but only some offer lap swimming for limited morning hours like 7 to 9 am… There’s only one that has lap swimming during all open hours - and that one requires a $150/yr recreation center membership.
I’ve heard it; from people who don’t use any library at all, and don’t think that libraries matter. And I’ve heard libertarians say that they think libraries should all be privately funded. They themselves, of course, expected to be able to easily afford the subscription fees. (They wanted the roads privately funded, also; and thought they’d be fine with all of those toll booths, which I suspect wouldn’t be true in practice. Although these days I don’t suppose you’d have to stop,.you’d have a transponder in your car.)
And some of the local libraries’ tax support gets voted on, along with the school district budget vote but as a separate line. So far it’s always passed comfortably in my area; but there are always significant votes against it. Though I wouldn’t want to guarantee that none of those votes come from people who do use the library.
I’m on the budget and finance board of our municipality. There are proposals almost every year to defund the town library and provide a credit on tax bills for people who send their kids to private schools. Defund the library means all operating costs are supposed to come from membership and/or usage.
They can’t even collect enough signatures to get the question on the warrant, but in part that’s because the petition to put the question on the ballot has the petitioners names and addresses. The majority of pathologically selfish people do not want to advertise it.
How many timeouts does each team have left in an NFL game?
Unless your vision is good enough to ferret out the itty-bitty lines placed arbitrarily somewhere on the score display, your guess is as good as mine.
So, this is kind of petty, but lately I’ve been watching some “Let’s Play” videos on YouTube – Twitch streamers playing video games while other people watch. And these guys spend half the time chatting with their Twitch followers instead of playing the game. I realize that the social interaction is what brings in the subscription money, but I just want to see the game played, not have to sit through a bunch of chitchat.
Me cooking everyone dinner.
Guest: “can I help?”
Me: “thanks, just keep rotating this corn on the grill while I check on the stuff in the oven. Just give it a quarter turn every minute or so.”
I go to check on stuff in oven, Guest immediately wanders off. Corn burns.
Why did you ask if you had no intention of actually helping?
That is annoying.
There are those who believe they deserve some credit merely for offering. Or less than that give no further thought to the offer at all. When they ask ‘car I help?’ the answer is no thank you.
Where I work, we have to “hide” the stepstool when we close. (It goes underneath a low shelf now.)
Because the person(s?) responsible for cleaning the floors kept putting our one, single, sole stepstool on the tippy-top of a very high shelf.
… where you’d need a stepstool to reach it.
We busted out the ferrealz ladder, and made a pact to never leave it where the cleaning crew could find it again.
I know, but then they ask again and again. Until you feel like a jerk for saying no.
That’s when I get out the meat cleavers.
That’s mildly annoying to me. What’s infuriating is that those same hard-to-open doors also slam shut as if driven home by an atom bomb, awakening everyone within 100 feet (including you, when your neighbor gets in late). And even if you want to be a considerate hotel guest and gently close the door to prevent the atomic slam, the latch still fires into place with the sound of a sniper rifle. Honestly, what idiot designs these doors?
I can see that you feel my pain. 
Hahahaha.
But that’s… diabolical.
Okay, this doesn’t infuriate me, but it drives me nuts, and it’s totally unimportant. A friend has a lovely kitchen with a simple tile backsplash. It’s white “subway tiles”, and there’s a simple “brick” pattern. Except two tiles near the light switch are wrong. Like… They cut a hole for the light switch and couldn’t be arsed to fill in around it in the right pattern?
Every time i visit i end up staring at that blotch of misplaced white tiles on the wall.
That would get on my nerves. If it’s something I did myself even a tile slightly off center would drive me up a wall even if nobody else would notice.
OK. My neighbor gets deliveries from Fed-x UPS nearly every day. Understand that where we live this is a very, very bad idea. And very difficult for the drivers.
Just saw a driver trying to get up our drive. um, no, you are gonna get stuck for sure. Had to go direct him to where he should be.
DO NOT get home delivery when you KNOW that the conditions will not allow a delivery vehicle can get there. I like my my neighbor very much, but come on. Man up and do it yourself.
My en suite was completely redone during our remodel. I had white subway tiles floor to ceiling in my shower with a line of black pencil tile at about four feet high that continued outside the shower in the tile on those walls (not floor to ceiling). One day I came home when Danny was tiling my shower. There was a small piece of that pencil tile that was needed to fill in a space near the corner. As soon as I saw, I noticed that it was slightly crooked. Almost unnoticeable. But I noticed it. Our gc was there and made Danny fix it. I felt a little bad, but I know I’d see that tiny bit of crookedness forever and always be bugged by it.
I used to be a construction manager for a chain of department stores. The bricklayer had finished the veneer on one entire side of the building but hadn’t QUITE lined up the alternate vertical joints of a proper running bond pattern. Poor guy had to pull it all down and do it over.