I was running some simple errands this morning — I need a short bit of ethernet cat8 cable, something I figured I could pick up locally for $5-$10. I went downtown to what used to be the Radio Shack, that was my usual convenient place to get necessary bits of cheap tech. It was gone! The store had been cleared out and all the merchandise replaced with…Jesus crap. Well, I sure wasn’t going to get my printer connected with a prayer and some slogan praising Jesus silkscreened on it.
This is getting worrisome. A lot of the businesses around town have been gradually replaced with pious garbage that I will not shop at. This one, no, they’ll never get my business. Especially since the hours are 4-8pm on weekdays, longer on Saturdays, and of course never on Sundays. That doesn’t sound like a particularly good business plan to me, but what would I know? I’m not their market.
Anyway, if you’re in need some non-essential fluff and want to drive out to the middle of nowhere to pick it up, the place is called Kings Media & Merch. They sell nothing at all useful, and only at inconvenient hours.
For a bunch of people who wrap themselves in right-wing libertarianism with it’s obsession with “freedom” and “liberty” as well as their fetishization of the American Revolution, Christians sure love to depict their deity as a “king” or a “lord.”
Driving through rural Pennsylvania on my way back to Baltimore yesterday, I went through a small(ish) town with a Trump Store on the main drag. What the hell do they sell at a Trump Store? Do people really need THAT many ugly red hats?
Worrisome, yes — for them. Good luck keeping such businesses afloat, assholes. Amazon gonna be loving it.
Does all your networking equipment actually support cat8? Even if it does, I suspect you could get away with using cat6 or cat5, especially if it’s for a short patch cable.
Some local dollar stores have basic cables, sometimes, maybe. I have no idea what is common in your area. I’ve also sometimes seen cables at supermarkets as well, but those tend to be horribly overpriced.
You expected a Radio Shack to exist? Most of them closed in the Radio Shack bankruptcies of 2015 and 2017. They had run far downhill before then, turning into mostly phone stores.
I agree with Owlmirror that you can probably do fine with cat6 cable for a short run. I’ve not bought an ethernet cable in ages (I have so many old unused ones around), but I think that they are now sold in office-supply stores.
It could be worse, especially in the US midwest.
There has been a steady movement of people from the small farming towns to the larger cities. It has a name, rural flight.
One of the towns in the upper midwest where my relatives were, has lost 50% of its population since 1970. Including my relatives, none of which live there any more.
It is still losing population.
The town has a program where they buy up abandoned houses for back taxes and then tear them down. This is to keep the place from looking like a ghost town. You see whole blocks with 2 or 3 houses on them.
There is a smaller satellite town about 10 miles away that is doing even worse. This is an incorporated town, meaning it has an elected city government. Last time I looked, the given population for this place was…zero.
“Dark Ages” may indeed this time be the fitting term – even Arthur and Chlothar couldn’t buy ethernet cables then!
Ref:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081315/5-reasons-why-radioshack-went-out-business.asp
You’ve gotta get out of this place if it’s the last thing you ever do…
@ 8
Without reading the article, I’m going to guess it’s one or more the following:
1) Bad business decisions from those at the top.
2) You could get just about everything that Radio Shack sold cheaper elsewhere.
3) There aren’t enough electronics hobbyists left to support a brick-and-mortar store that sells transistors and capacitors.
*looks up specs*
Transfers data at 25 gigabits (Cat8.1) to 40 gigabits (Cat8.2).
5 gigabytes in a second.
Jezus. What’re you printing!?
*imagines flinging DVDs across the room.*
Yeah, no, I ordered cat5, you nerd.
The basic electronics store that replaced radio shack here sold basic computer and cell phone stuff, not transistors and capacitors. Apparently this town can’t even support that.
No wonder all the kids move away.
If people want cheap rubbish they can order it from Temu in China.
In fact, they have some useful stuff among the cheap junk.
I am unable to provide advice for American businesses, but one thing is certain: “mom & pop” stores will get no help from Republicans, they are pnly interested in big corporations that donate millions.
@2 Trump trading cards, Trump flags… all manner of overpriced useless crap made in China, I would imagine.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
No wonder the MAGA asshats buying this crap can’t make rent.
FUUUUCK!
I wish I could say you can immigrate to Sweden, but Denmark and Norway are probably more fun. I have heard a lot of good about the Netherlands. Finland and Sweden have ‘problematic’ winters.
Relics and icons.
The better off can afford to buy indulgences.
Same old grift with the added spice that some of the indulgences can be used to avoid penalties in this world (pardons & juice with the DOJ and SCOTUS) rather than “the next”.
Given the weirdly narrow market and the tiny window of opening hours, I wonder if this isn’t a tax write-off. Money laundering also springs to mind but I would be surprised if they turn over enough cash.
@birgerjohansson #15
More problematic winters than Minnesota? Maybe a bit darker, but the climate in the most populated areas of Finland and Sweden is considerably better than most of Minnesota. Temperatures in Minnesota often fall below -20°C (many times each winter); such chilly days do happen in Stockholm, Malmö, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Helsinki, Tampere and Turku…but it’s not so common. Generally these places have temperatures between 5 and -10°C throughout the winter months.
If I was younger…and American…I might have tried to move to a Nordic country by now actually. As a Canadian, I am still quite concerned about our future, given the fact that the USA is our biggest trading partner, and is currently in thrall of some weird dissociative disorder that has caused them to have two very distinct national personalities, only one of which is, in any way, based in reality. I don’t think we can count on America anymore, as a trade partner or diplomatic ally…although it might still be possible to negotiate trade agreements with places like New York, Washington, California, Minnesota, and the New England states. Added to that possibility, I think we need to draw on our relationships with the UK, European nations, Japan, Australia and New Zealand now, as well as other nations in the Americas, creating new trade and diplomatic ties to replace the ones that America has ruined by being so unstable. Doing so could absolutely strengthen and stabilize our economy, although it would be harder – trade with America is so much easier, what with the land-based trade routes. I’m certainly not worried enough about the massive elephant rampaging through the savannah next to us (with apologies to Pierre Elliot Trudeau) to actually consider leaving Canada though. That elephant is more likely to run off a cliff than fatally gore us.
Besides – America is everybody’s problem right now; nowhere is safe from its insanity. And every nation has its own domestic issues that make life interesting (to put it euphemistically). Even if my moronic countrymen and women are dumb enough to make Pierre Poilievre our next Prime Minister (as seems almost inevitable right now), I don’t think it is in the Canadian character to go full Trumpistan like Americans did. Our media is only partially bought and paid for by billionaires, and a huge majority of us recoil in horror at the kinds of things Trump stands for. Moreover, we have a moderately greater degree of social trust than America, and significantly lower income inequality (on both metrics, we outpace Japan and Germany, but don’t approach the levels seen in Sweden or Denmark). It is possible that domestic policy decisions, compounded by international instability, will create the kinds of conditions necessary for my country to suffer a similar fate as America. Nonetheless, I will fight the good fight to keep that from happening. It’s better than starting over, with a new language and unfamiliar culture (I shudder to think of the uncertainty that immigrants the world over experience, knowing they need to move, but not knowing if they can make it in their new home – you’d have to be incredibly brave to take such a path…and/or exceptionally desperate).
I live in the center of the high tech world in the bay area and I am unable to buy cables, connectors, and other mundane but necessary components anywhere. All small electronics stores that used to be scattered throughout the valley are gone. All the midlevel computer stores have closed. And Fry’s Electronics, where you could buy just about anything, went bust 5-10 years ago, their exotic storefronts and huge parking lots, rotting the California sun. The only store even close to selling that stuff, albeit at a huge markup, is Best Buy. Truly a sad state of affairs.
@9 nomdeplume : “You’ve gotta get out of this place if it’s the last thing you ever do…”
Nice ref! I love that that classic Angels old rock song!
@17 I was thinking that it might have been more along the lines of one of those “Jesus wants you to be rich” evangelical church grifts, possibly in conjunction with expensive “how to get rich quick” seminars that promise wealth and success just as soon as you complete all the seminars at a ridiculous price, blah blah blah, with whoever set up that storefront being the sucker who thinks they are going to get rich selling this crap.
[OT]
StevoR, ahem. You’re thinking of a cover.
@18
Yeah, some of us are pretty concerned about it too. And plenty of Americans recoil in horror at the kinds of things that Trump stands for. (His current wife just recoils from him.) The (minor) good news is that at least 38 Republicans were willing to tell Cheetolini to shove his demands up his flabby orange ass regarding the most recent budget vote. And approximately half of all Americans didn’t vote for the orange asshole. Unfortunately, we have the electoral college and the orange asshole got slightly more than half the popular vote. My cold comfort is that the asshats who voted Cheetolini in are already starting to suffer from buyer’s remorse.
Elitists declaring themselves “enlightened” was the cause of the dark ages.
Yes, we’re possibly approaching another enlightenment which makes these the dark ages. I worry that this will be considered the dark ages of “scientism” instead of “faith,” though. That shit ain’t right.
That Kings M&M T-shirt print shop looks very flexible indeed.
Their in-house design for “You are so loved (John 3:16)†seems an … interesting choice, though I would be tempted to ask for a custom design of “Live, Laugh, Love (2 Kings 19:21)â€.
But for your LAN interconnection needs, they can probably save you the bothersome hassle of choosing and buying your own cheap tat pre-2001 Cat5 Ethernet cable and instead source some up-to-date generic Cat5e from Temu on your behalf, then overprint it with “Cat 8 cable (U.N.cert) for sole use of Myers’s’s DataCentre™â€.
You can get Cat5e cable, connectors and crimp tools at places like Lowe’s, in the long run that’s cheaper than buying pre-made cables, you can fix / replace broken connectors ( that clip thing likes to break off… ) and you can make them in whatever length you actually need.
Also, here ( eastern TN ) the jesus market seems to be saturated, I’ve seen a few jesus stores close and get replaced by generic cellphone shops.
Macallan, Maybe it’s a turf war between 4Imprint franchises and franchises for cellular wholesalers, and the future of America is to be a dynamic equilibrium between Temu middlemen all the way down, and Bezos resellers all the way down.
Except in educated rural areas, where financial planning for John Deere re-certifications could become a growth area.
We got our first computer at that RadioShack back in 1987… Tandy 1000HX (I think). Played King’s Quest 3 and Space Quest 2.
It’s a bummer it closed. I was honestly surprised it was still around at all.
19 @Larry, I live near one of five Central Computers in the South [San Francisco] Bay Area. They sell cases, motherboards, CPUs, monitors, monitor stands, internet modems, routers, mice, and many kinds of cables and adaptors.
They do not carry components and do not have historical telephony connectors (I asked when I wanted a two-line to single-line adaptor.)
PZ titled this article: ‘Another sign of the coming dark ages’
For months now (as you’ve all read) I have been commenting/posting about how we are entering the New Dark Ages. PZ’s title makes me feel even more confident in that proclamation. The past few days I’ve been greeting people with ‘Here comes the new year, brace yourselves. I don’t know what will transpire with the ‘crowning’ of the mump* tag team of destruction, but, given all they have threatened with, it won’t be good.
*mump= a contraction of musk+trump by created by Professor Timothy Snyder.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/12/29/mumpocracy/
I hope everyone will survive in the new year. It would be foolish to hope for more than survival at this point. ‘The mump oligarchy’ will first negatively impact many of us in this deteriorating untied states (intentional alt. spelling). However, if ‘the mump oligarchy’ is successful, it will negatively impact worldwide.
p.s. as part of the Royal Society for the Preservation and Rejuvenation of Practical Antiquated Technology, we regularly buy new and ‘outdated’ computer and electronics parts. Yes, our local radio shack evaporated a few years ago. We do no specifically recommend any of these and derive no benefit from mentioning them, but, we have found that the office max/depot store sells OVERpriced cables, adapters and some computer accessories. The home depot has a small selection of somewhat expensive cables and adapters. We have bought from BnH electronics online. Their selection and prices are good. Parts People for Dell laptops and parts is very good. Microcenter is o.k. We will never by anything from amaz0n or Malwart since they are the abusive behemoths that destroy small businesses and towns.
And, importantly, Thank You PZ for providing us with so much info that we value and for allowing us to comment. We wish you all the best in the new year.
I think many of those chains that went broke were bought up by the wossname private equity firms, who slash investment in training, and other stuff needed for long-term survival. The bosses get rich, the companies go under.
Yeah, but not everybody shares the world’s longest undefended land border with it. Thing is, if the US misbehaves, though the whole world gets to watch the show, it’s us nestled all snug up against the southern border who are sitting in the splash seats. We’re already getting a bit of that in the form of handgun violence in southern cities … where do you think those handguns are coming from?
That’s not the scenario that worries me. The scenario that worries me is that Poilievre might as well be named Vichy and won’t even try to fight if the Panzers start rolling north. And there won’t even be any Ardennes in their way to slow them down …
(The other scenario that worries me is that Trump goes all “apres moi, le hivre nuclear”…)
That’s ludicrous. What do they expect you to do if your last one breaks, just do without from then on? I don’t see that making these bozos rich, though.
Even among the many silly things you say, that stands out as egregiously absurd. Insofar as the term “the dark ages” has any useful meaning (which isn’t far), it’s the period in the history of western Europe from which we have fewer written records than the period preceding it. That happened because the western Roman Empire was overrun by so-called “barbarians”, and this was followed by the decay of the urban centres where written records were produced.