We have in our kitchen halogen lights under the cupboards that are burning out, five of eight now gone. I decided to replace them, and went to the local Ace Hardware. There I found a single GY6.35 replacement bulb packaged and priced at $6.99, meaning that we would pay $55.92 to replace all eight. I purchased one at that price, and then came home and checked it out on Amazon. There I was able to buy one dozen for $9.68 total.
Are they of the same quality? I cannot imagine why not, but even if not, say they last only three years instead of five, then I will have to repurchase them and again I will do so at Amazon.
I don’t like it. I see the deeper problem here, that outfits like Ace Hardware are legacy stores, and Amazon is pressuring them into bankruptcy. Ace may survive, as people are willing to travel a bit for immediate needs. And, it is always a subtle calculation we need to make when going to Ace … Home Depot is 13 miles away. Do I want to travel that distance to save a few bucks? They price that lightbulb knowing that people probably only need one, and will not check prices, as they want it now.
Just recently up here in the foothills our sporting goods and hot tub stores have folded. But that’s life, right? Mom and Pops gave way to supermarkets and corner gas stations selling a thousand things besides gasoline. I used to say that even in our small town of Conifer we have everything we need, including three Starbucks – in fact, everything except a mortuary. (We since found that over in Evergreen.) Cost Cutters is gone now, along with the hot tub and sporting goods stores. Rents, I am told, in the buildings that house these retail outlets, are outrageous. Worse yet, when we moved up here there was a Chili’s restaurant that had to close because the water bill (a well system) was too much for even a mainstream a restaurant to maintain itself.
Anyway, just as an impulse, I did an Amazon product review on the halogens, saying that it pays to shop around and noting that Ace hardware was almost six times as expensive. I then received the following email:
What? I have, in the past, reviewed books on Amazon, and they rejected my reviews. What I now realize is that there is a site-wide ban on anything I post on Amazon. It is not people, but rather a computer database that prevents certain people from posting there. Similar bans are enforced by YouTube and Facebook, and NextDoor is watching me closely.
Here is my (pointless) response to the computer that banned my lightbulb review:
Oh, c’mon Amazon! It is about a light bulb! Why the need to censor? By the way, I received the following note from Kim Jong Un when I got your email: “Dear Mark, here in North Korea we don’t allow any independent thinking and censor anyone who tries it. You thought the US was different? You’re not just banned from reviewing lightbulbs, but from reviewing everything!” I also got a post-humous note as follows: “Wow, man. I censored everyone in the USSR. I had to do that to stay in power. But man, Amazon … they’re getting carried away! Sincerely, Josef Stalin.”
The much larger picture is this: We live in a heavily censored society, but the censorship is done, as all good censorship is done, quietly and behind the scenes. We have plenty of independent thinkers, but you won’t see their words on major outlets. We are confined to small blogs. The public mind is owned now by large Internet mega corporations, and they do their details and pay attention. Nary a dissident thought gets through to the mainstream. AI? Don’t even think about it being of independent spirit. It is merely a reflection of the censorship in place in our era. It’s ominous.
I once wrote a post on a stupid display put on in local Montana libraries by friends of that time, highlighting books that had been censored. I kept silent then, but they won’t read what I write now. (Read my censorship post here if the spirit moves you.) On that display they showed copies of Animal Farm, Fool’s Crow, To Kill a Mockingbird, Invisible Man and others … the problem I saw with their silly display was that none of those works were ever censored! They were able to obtain copies of each one for their display! Works that are censored, really censored, do not see light of day.
Our friends of that time were good and sincere liberals, who today would be (or are) “woke”. As such, they are are only barely, almost imperceptibly, awake.
Piece of Mindful 
Yes, and “censorship” is usually just promotion money can’t buy.. as people rush to read the critically acclaimed, yet “dangerous, suppressed” works..
Also, both sides of the aisle have their own lists of “heavily censored” works, so they both get to be indignant about the tyranny of the other camp, and the threat they pose if they should ever get what they want unchecked.
I reread Animal Farm recently. The blurb on back of my copy says, while originally directed at the Stalinist Soviet Union, today it shows that “wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner..” Orwell has some cutting satire to say about it, or something.
But really, “freedom” wasn’t attacked.. The animals were miserable and exploited under their original human farmer – they just didn’t know how good they had it, compared to the more refined exploitation of the pigs. Don’t go chasing those utopian dreams, stick with the status quo – and maybe a little bit of social democratic reforms, that was Orwell’s bag, at the time anyway.
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Fool’s Crow was a book about native Americans that had, as I understand it, some explicit sex scenes. It was banned in the schools of Laurel, Montana. You can bet every kid in that school district wanted to get his/her hands on that book.
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How Amazon judges reviews sometimes is a mystery, this is not. It’s in the rules, it’s only ok to say something like “worth the price”, comparing prices is not allowed. Also, it’s not allowed to talk about the packaging, or problems with shipping. I really appreciate the reviews, these are a valuable source of product information. Actual photos, not shopped. Article descriptions are mostly not helpful, some article descriptions seem to be AI, are without any common sense. Recensions reduce the number of articles sent back, save people’s time, that’s what it’s about. I’d not worry about censorship here. There’s the Vine program, where people get free articles for writing recensions. Once in, it’s possible to get stuff worth thousands of Dollars, a friend told me. Income tax applies.
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interesting, and thanks. I m banned at Amazon anyway, and so thought this was automatic. It would be nice not to be banned. For once.
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Mark this is a good example why I don’t trust Amazon or in general most reviews on most websites. With the exception of Google reviews.
I hate Google as much as the rest of us – They still have my town wrong on my google maps address after 8 years of trying to get them to correct it – actually it is a 1/2 mile stretch of my road that is incorrect in the town which can confuse delivery drivers. After a while I realized it’s an advantage, makes it harder to find me!)
To my point: I leave a lot of google reviews for local businesses and restaurants, and they are linked to your google account with your real name, which I use. I leave great detailed reviews for my favorite local businesses, and critical reviews for businesses that don’t measure up. What is nice is my reviews get a lot of views, as google for some reason trusts me.
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https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.ULYTYFXS9zSwJbL8bnh-KgHaHh%26r%3D0%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=0f74b5285403b8cbca74e5d42e30f762cb06a276f4688b6515d52c5147521088&ipo=images
From Amazon of all places. Hoody version also available. (Direct link wouldn’t paste, just busy sign, gave up waiting.)
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“Rents, I am told, in the buildings that house these retail outlets, are outrageous”
That combined with loan interest, payroll, insurance, utilities if not included in rent, and other overhead costs. Most of thes places have little foot traffic and i’m not sure how they stay in business unless they are apart of a capital management firm network that can work in their financial debt loophole knowledge. Not sure why someone would look at these strip malls and say yes I must open a smoke shop, etc.., coffee store, sporting goods store there, after all the others folded. You can walk into one of these stores and ask the employee or manager how’s business? And they’ll tell you it’s been great…as you look around the store and realize you are the only shopper there.
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Well famously the stats on new small businesses are that something like 90% fold within three years. But some do become well established, beloved local institutions in some cases. Others do a booming business if they’re just in a good niche/ trend – smoke shops are not all empty ghost towns. But now under attack at least in red states, passing new THC laws – apparently from conflicts of interest, at least in Texas where the main politico pushing it has some connection to a rival industry, I guess tobacco related, not sure. But anyway, I understand why people keep trying, they dream of being in the minority that don’t fold, and give them independence and wealth, naturally..
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I tried to post a link to a clip from the new animal farm movie coming out.. no dice, but just search YouTube it’ll come up. Seth Rogen as the Stalin pig maybe, talking to one of the younger pigs about the “equality” of the animals, gingerly checking his idealism a bit.. I reread it very recently, kind of intrigued how they’re going to handle this updated version. I can’t stand the kind of emphatic “acting” they always do in these CGI animated features, but I can look past that for the sake of “research.”
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