I think that a lot of societal ills can be chalked up to "low interest rate phenomena." Silicon Valley has had a decade to play with free money. What do they have to show for it? Smartphone CRUD apps, subsidized gig workers, influencers and child consumers. Let's keep raising interest rates.
I spent part of my childhood in Boardman. Rusty N Edie's BBS was a local number. I didn't know how good I had it until we moved to another state. I recall that "Fred Martin's BBS" was another fantastic local BBS in the Youngstown area.
As a counter to this, my local Micro Center is absolutely booming. I built a fast gaming machine earlier this year, and found all of my desired components in-stock there, with no compromises. Their prices were identical to the lowest prices online, and they offer price match anyway. All of my Ubiquiti stuff I got there as well. They have an expanding hobbyist electronics section that consumed the old physical software/gaming space. They have other great hobbyist stuff like retro gaming and drones. I've just taken it for granted, not realizing that many people consider Micro Center a PC builder "Mecca".[0]
Same, I bought almost all the parts for my Ryzen 3600 upgrade from Micro Center. Prices were great, pick up was easy, and they reflashed the BIOS for free in 30 mins.
I shop at the other DC area MicroCenter, in Rockville, and have had similar positive experiences. It's the closest thing I know of to the Fry's shopping experiences I had in the late 90s when I lived in the SF Bay Area. The biggest difference between the Rockville MicroCenter and the Fairfax one is that Rockville has more stuff locked up for theft control.
Run-DMC were definitely not sellouts, they sang about Adidas because they genuinely loved them and grew up wearing them. They weren't paid until Adidas took the opportunity to promote them even further. They did reject Calvin Klein ("no friend of mine, don't want nobody's name on my behind")
Additionally, Run-DMC had tons of positive, supportive, pensive and wise lyrics about education ("I go to St. John's University / and since kindergarden I acquired the knowledge / and after 12th grade I went straight to college"), economics ("All day I have to work at my peak /
because I need that dollar every day of the week"), hard work ("He gets better cause he knows he hasta / in 84 he'll be a little faster / cause only practice makes a real Jam Master"), and just being a good person ("here's another point in life you should not miss / do not be a fool who's prejudiced")
IMHO Run-DMC was easily the most inspirational and positive rap group of all time. And the best damn rappers period. RIP JMJ.
For the record, DMC were not sponsored or incentivized by adidas until well after the song was produced and distributed. Basically adidas jumped on an existing trend.
Let’s go with another example “freek a leek” a popular southern rap club song that never crossed over. He even admitted it. “Now I got to give a shout out to Seagrams Gin, cause I'm drinkin' it and they payin' me for it.”
