211–220 of 225 posts
In the early 1990's, during my days as a Comp. Sci. prof, I was so excited about the emergence of the internet. When I saw the Mosaic browser (a precursor to Netscape and later Firefox) I knew the world had changed for the better. Now I have such mixed feelings. Magazines (like the Farmers Almanac) either go online completely or just disappear. They just cannot compete for advertising dollars with Google. And small f…
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You think you have a choice to buy local. It's more complicated than that. "Local stores full of people you know and trust" is what advertising tries to approximate. Instead of forming lasting human bonds with shopkeepers and employees, we are informed by ads who we should patronize. And we pay, indirectly, for that service. Private equity also takes its pound of flesh. Try hiring a local plumber. They'll always say…
the McDonald's in our town says "locally owned and operated", same with the stores where everything (literally) is made in China. These sums up the absurdity of the phrase for me.
Side note: Grocery Outlet if you're in the places they operate, is a completely franchised grocery store chain. In my experience in multiple towns, the local owners do a great job, and one near me donates to some excellent local charities.
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But if it’s so valuable… why aren’t people willing to pay for it? Forgoing luxuries like a vacation to support local stores full of people you know and trust, that might charge 20% more for the same product, seems like an obvious thing… That almost no Americans do in reality.
They dont get a choice. You really can’t operate a small store anymore. The distribution networks were all destroyed by the top-5 retailers. Regional supermarkets are capped by this. The lack of third party distribution means they have to have their own sourcing and distribution. They can’t grow and are slowly being picked off of PE and bigger chains. It’s even hard for restaurants. When I worked in restaurants in co…
According to the "best days" link in the article, November 7th is the best day to cut your hair because the moon phase and zodiac will lead to slower hair growth if you cut it today. I am amazed this publication made it this far.
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They dont get a choice. You really can’t operate a small store anymore. The distribution networks were all destroyed by the top-5 retailers. Regional supermarkets are capped by this. The lack of third party distribution means they have to have their own sourcing and distribution. They can’t grow and are slowly being picked off of PE and bigger chains. It’s even hard for restaurants. When I worked in restaurants in co…
After 50 years of such choices being made it’s not suprising that it’s exponentially harder. The real question is why did Americans decide to do so en masse so many years ago.
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I'm not sure that's still correct. There was an uplift because of Covid and people having more spare time, but whatever more recent (2024 - 2025) sources I can find suggest the trend has reversed. It's worth also considering demographics. If you narrow the focus to just younger generations (who, we can guess, are more addicted to smartphones) then the numbers look pretty bad. E.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2…
My son, who is away at college as a freshman this year, recently phoned me and apologized for calling me a bad dad and thanked me for not allowing him to have any devices in his bedroom after bedtime growing up, as it made him become a reader. He said he was amazed when he got to school and nobody else reads for pleasure.
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After 50 years of such choices being made it’s not suprising that it’s exponentially harder. The real question is why did Americans decide to do so en masse so many years ago.
We decided in the 1970s that all must be sacrificed on the alter of maximizing shareholder value.
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Print book sales are down, although not as much as people want to believe. Book stores are making a comeback but in terms of number of books on shelves I'd say the average one is ~50% less. We had a real heyday in the late 90s where a Barnes and Nobles would have a copy of almost any book you could reasonably be looking for, plus multiple rows of magazines. We have not returned to that, and certainly books that you'd…
Barnes & Nobles and Borders were both the ultimate in retail bookstores and also the beginning of the end of retail book stores. They killed local bookstores, and then Amazon killed them.
And B&N itself is doing just fine, and is opening new locations. Borders is the only major chain that failed to adapt. Other large book retailers are also still going strong, e.g. Books-A-Million.
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Only losers don't pad dates out to 10 digits to account for when Donald Trump passes off his earthly coil.
Big miss on your name not being Alive-in-0000002025
But I could do this one ;-)
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Print book sales are down, although not as much as people want to believe. Book stores are making a comeback but in terms of number of books on shelves I'd say the average one is ~50% less. We had a real heyday in the late 90s where a Barnes and Nobles would have a copy of almost any book you could reasonably be looking for, plus multiple rows of magazines. We have not returned to that, and certainly books that you'd…
Barnes & Nobles and Borders were both the ultimate in retail bookstores and also the beginning of the end of retail book stores. They killed local bookstores, and then Amazon killed them.