Thought this was about Stephen Hawking´s passing :E
My childhood died when the curly phone wires that held you in place for taking a fucking call went out of fashion..
Comment has been collapsed.
I just want to agree to your comment:
…
wait for it
…
agree
Comment has been collapsed.
Those coiled curly phone wires were an INNOVATION that let you walk around up to a couple of metres away from the phone box with the talking and hearing part while you took your call! Unless you took the box with you, then you could carry it and go anywhere! As long as it stayed plugged into the wall. Show some respect, sonny!
But I agree with you, that was a landmark moment.
Comment has been collapsed.
I still remember time to time having to sit there to fix the coiled after messing with it too mutch while trying to keep a call while moving a bit away XD
Not sure if there's Toys R Us in my country, but heard about them before, it's sad to see less and less stores like that around. But I suppose is a dark side of our time with online shopping and children starting to play with videogames and cellphones each time early.
Comment has been collapsed.
sort of disappointing when i think on it, but yeah that was the buzz around in various chat rooms with plenty of Fs being typed.
Comment has been collapsed.
My childhood died that moment that I realized that you do not need a reason to buy an entire cake at the bakery :D
Comment has been collapsed.
So Mitt Romney killed Toys R Us.
(Or, more helpfully, the kind of shady financial practice he is invested in and which his company as well as others like it regularly carry out killed Toys R Us and will kill other businesses.)
I never went to Toys R Us, either. I don't think I've ever been inside one, so I wouldn't know about their prices and I won't have anything to miss if they close. There aren't many of them here in Canada in the first place, I think, part of the reason I've never been, just one that I know of in the city I live in. I think my toys usually came from Wal-Mart. LEGO, action figures, Pokemon and Digimon figures, I think those would have come from there.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, that's pretty messed up, that these private equity firms can buy out a company and then dump their debt on that company. They absolutely made a profit at Toys R Us' expense.
Comment has been collapsed.
that's only part of the answer.
Leveraged buyouts means borrowing money to but the company - the seller wants to sell the company, but the buyer doesn't have enough money, so the buyer borrows the rest (like buying a house or a car). The buyer then needs to pay off the debt from the company's profits. Historically, if the private equity firm can't turn the company around, they lose money, as the lender gets paid first.
In a few rare cases (most notably Marvel during the early '90s) the buyer actually has a way of saddling the company with more debt while funneling the profits to the parent company. This is not actually common, as it requires lenders to be stupid. That isn't the case here. The company simply wasn't doing well, and the private equity firms are not going to be making stupid profits here.
Comment has been collapsed.
Okay, so they borrowed money to buy Toys R Us, and then when TRU's profits were insufficient to pay off the loan they put that debt onto TRU?
Comment has been collapsed.
Toys'R'Us going down the drain due to being bought out by a private equity firm/locust isn't completely correct, but also due to previous and ongoing horrible management decisions as well (AFAIK they already had ~5 billion of debt at takeover). But yeah, they didn't help it by loading their crap unto the already existing mountain of trash.
Comment has been collapsed.
Really the sign of our modern society - the day one of the biggest scientisct celebrities and popularizers of science dies we are not crying for this loss, but rather crying that capitalist conglomerate selling products for mega-raised prices while paying their employees minimum wages gies bancrupt... Long story short - they've had it coming, if not them, you can buy your toys in any other store, that simply didn't want to be so greedy to make theirselves downfall.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, by the title I expected another thread about Hawking...
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't see your topic about crying of loss of Hawkings, just crying about a random topic, is that any better? :3
Comment has been collapsed.
I already heard about Hawking on the news; didn't hear about this on the news. Look, lots of people have been crying and a knowledging his death and celebrating his life. Let's have a moment for something else. Not that I care about Toys R Us. But you can only cry over Stephen Hawking so much.
Comment has been collapsed.
What are you talking about? Are the 100+ posts on almost any forum and the multiple articles on every site not enough for you? We all know about it and most of us grieve over losing him.
Did you make a post?
Did you make some sort of memorial?
Did you maybe make a song to commemorate him?
Maybe donated around half of your savings to the ALS charity?
He isn't a dictator of North Korea. We don't need a certain time for mourning and we don't need people to drop everything else that they're doing to do this.
This was obviously important for OP since he made a thread. Just because someone didn't do everything you are doing because of the loss of Hawking, doesn't mean that they don't care of they're a bad person.
Seriously... why do you turn a sad event into elitism where you can make yourself feel better because you're doing a thing that for you feels better? You're disrespecting the man and you're also disrespecting yourself and your own reputation. This serves no one but your own ego. God forbid someone does anything else but mourn the man... Jeesh...
Comment has been collapsed.
all I said is that a sign of modern society - that chain store, known for exploiting their employees is something to cry about. My point is not that everyone should be crying about Hawking or find him importnat, my point is that I find crying about a brand of stores, brand of stores being so important to you is something I personally find strange and telling a lot about modern western world.
Where do I disrespect OP or put myself into any kind of 'elite'? Nowhere did I directly mention neither OP notr myself. I am just staing my general opinion about society in general as well. Unless my opinion being any different from your own makes me being disrespectful - if that's the case then it really tells more about you than about me, cause only tour opinion may be valid and you find anyone not sharing it as a threat ;P
Comment has been collapsed.
the day one of the biggest scientisct celebrities and popularizers of science dies we are not crying for this loss, but rather crying that capitalist conglomerate selling products for mega-raised prices while paying their employees minimum wages gies bancrupt
Your first sentence immediately says that OP is not mourning their death and that he should instead of this make a thread about him. (or at the very least, not make this at all).
my point is that I find crying about a brand of stores, brand of stores being so important to you is something I personally find strange and telling a lot about modern western world.
True, god forbid people mourn something that had a huge role in their childhood. Hopefully you have zero emotional feeling towards any product, company or anything that isn't a human or other creature. Stephen Hawking affected my life way less than some video game companies. Emotionally, I care for him less than I do for those companies. That's because he didn't directly affect my life that much. But I feel sadness because he was a kick-ass dude who managed to fight against the hand that he was dealt and he did more than most of us could even imagine. So yeah, I also care about strangers less than about the things that I'm actually involved with. This isn't a "culture" problem, this is normal human behavior. It'd actually be way more weird if you cried about Stephen Hawking's death if you had no connection to him through his work, books or whatever else.
Where do I disrespect OP or put myself into any kind of 'elite'?
I guess you do that when you just assume he doesn't care for Hawking's death, where you insinuate that caring for a company is bad. You also purposefully used terms like "capitalist conglomerate" and "biggest scientisct celebrities and popularizers of science" to drive your point. You can do the same for Toys R Us. "The company that is apart of almost any person's childhood and the company who sold all of the best toys and worked on making kids happy". Is that true? Partially, but saying that would just hide the bad. You also hid the good. So yeah, you showed yourself as elite because you judged who someone freaking mourns. If that's not the definition of petty elitism, then I don't know what is :D
And just to drive my point in, I'd say it's fine to mourn both.
Comment has been collapsed.
"Hopefully you have zero emotional feeling towards any product, company or anything that isn't a human or other creature." - again, you criticize me for my point of view, that's the whole point here itr seems, how dare I have a different opinion from your own, it must mean I'm such a horrible person. So yeah - I do finding emotional feeling to something like a chain-store a materialistic view, thus a sign of our times. Exactly what I said. MY. POINT. OF. VIEW. couldn'tt care less how you feel about me having different point of view from your own. Also njowhere did I say you can only care for people or animals only - you put words into my mouth just to make your silly point sound more valid. People may care about many things - I feel emotionaly invested not only with humans or animals but for example all kinds of art, books, games, music or movies that influenced me as a human being, heck I may even be emotionally bound to some tastes that remind me of home, smell, etc, things that since always were important to evolution of human psyche, contrary being deeply emotionally invested to store brand is like I said 'sign of our tiumes' - brand do not exist to develop you as a human being, brand exist to milk you for money, qualified PR agencies work hard to make you feel invested, to make you think it's something special, but in the end it's all just a carefully crafted illusion made to make you spend even more money, nothing else, so yes, I do find times where people care so much about specially marketed brands such important part of their lives a sad times indeed. And no matter how much of a horrible person you will try to paint me because I dare to have personal well argumented opinion that is different from yours, this opinion is not going to change.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmm, fair enough. We've both had our say. Good talk :)
Comment has been collapsed.
It's entirely possible to mourn Hawking's passing and also mourn the loss of a store that many people loved and feel sad for the 33,000+ people that are going to be losing their jobs.
I heard about Hawking yesterday. I didn't learn about Toys R Us until today. And while I didn't shop there personally, hearing that 30k people in the US and 3k people in the UK are going to be losing their jobs is pretty depressing.
Comment has been collapsed.
thing is a lot of people here don't really seem to care about people loosing their jobs, they care about a store, a brand, actually quite contrary - T'R'U was known for treating their employees quite bad, employing on minimum wages, making people work unpaid extra shifts, understaffing a lot of stores and making people do more and more work for the same money, breaking employee laws, like dsnying payments while firing people, cancelling packages and bonuses that well written into contracts, list goes on and on. So if people loved this company so much that despite treatment of employees cared rather for a brand that for people who worked there I find it ahrd to believe that now suddenly they are sad because of people losing their job and not because an exploitative company went bancrupt.
Comment has been collapsed.
I remember when it was the leading supplier of video games. Shelves upon shelves of games from a dozen consoles and all you had to do was take a red paper and give it to the cashier.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's very sad. I remember when it used to be everywhere here.
And now it's gone :'(
Comment has been collapsed.
Almost all local stores will go out of business soon other than a few where you buy things that are not easily purchased online. Grocery stores like Walmart will survive and stores where you buy bulky things (grills, lawnmower, lumber) like Home Depot and Lowes will survive. Amazon already has a store with no check out lines or cashiers, you just walk in, take anything you want, walk out, and you are charged automatically. Car dealerships may or may not survive. The salesmen are not needed anymore and the process is already automated in some places with vending machines where you can buy cars. I think I heard a story where you can either test drive or rent a car from a vending machine as well.
Pretty much all jobs will be gone soon as well. Automation is taking almost all of them. Waymo (Google's autonomous taxi service) was recently given permission to run fully autonomous taxis in Arizona with no driver. The first tractor trailer shipment was made across the US in a self driving tractor trailer. There was a driver and I'm sure he took over a few times to get fuel and stuff like that, but the technology is here. I bet fully automated cars with no steering wheel or petals will be common within a few years and within 5 years it will be so common and a lot safer that your insurance rates will start going way up if you want to drive a car yourself (GM wants to be selling a car with no wheel or petals in 2019). A few years later (within 10 years from now), it will probably be next to impossible to buy a car that you drive yourself because you won't be able to afford the insurance because you are a huge risk compared to an autonomous car and then soon after they will regulate it out with laws. They are working on autonomous flying taxis already as well.
It's not just mechanical labor jobs, almost everything will go. Bankers, accountant, investors, stock brokers, insurance, IRS. Almost anything where you have to think based on things you have remembered can be done better with a computer program. Art will be one of the only things left (music, movies, games), but they are already trying to automate this as well. They want to analyze what people like and have AI create something that fits that pattern, which will probably work, but it will probably be even more generic and repetitive than what Hollywood, the music industry, and AAA games are doing today. Humans will probably dominate "true" art forever, unless they accept it and consume the garbage the is produced (definitely possible considering what we see today).
The world as we know it is going to change very fast in the next 5 to 20 years. There will be almost no jobs left for humans, which means no income for the majority of the population. This will probably cause a lot of problems at first (riots, terrorism, wars), but will eventually be worked out with a complete change to the monetary system of the world. Everyone will have to be provided with an allotted amount of money that meats a certain living standard. There will still be education and jobs, but only for those that want to accel and have the desire and brains to do it, possibly money as well because you may have to pay for your own education since an educated population will no longer be needed. Or they could have free education, but you have to enroll your children in a sort of competition and they do tests and pick out the best of the best and only educate as many as needed. Speaking of the population no longer being needed, there are powerful people that realize this and want more of the world for themselves and they will try and take it. They could let the riots, wars, and famine play out and let everyone kill eachother, or they could design a supervirus that kills almost everyone it comes in to contact with and only provide the antidote to a select few.
Yes, I'm sure some of you are laughing and thinking "crazy conspiracy theories", but I bet all of this will happen and much quicker than you may think.
Comment has been collapsed.
Everyone will have to be provided with an allotted amount of money that meats a certain living standard.
They already talked about this (universal basic income) last year in Davos.
The UBI is an economic concept usually associated with the left wing, but now the most powerful companies in the world are worried about losing their customers because of the automation. In the near future, the robots will probably pay taxes.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, it is a socialist idea that I wouldn't normally agree with and has never been practical throughout history, but in the future it seems that it will be the only way.
The robots don't need to pay taxes. Either the companies that own the robots pay the government or all the products the companies make need to have their cost to buy dramatically reduced because nobody would be able to afford them. If people don't have money, there is nobody to buy the products and the system would stop, so it will work itself out over time. The cost to produce and ship will go down dramatically, so the cost to buy will also go down.
Comment has been collapsed.
You should take into account that Uber will also have automated cars. And the point of that is, that people do not have to own cars at all.
Because cars take up a lot of space. Uber wants to change that.
https://www.unlockingcities.com/en/#1.
Jobs will disappear, but new jobs will emerge, all the machines and tech needs to be maintained.
There will be a run on technicians, programmers and mechanics to keep all the automated stuff running.
And also check this article, I found it very interesting:
https://www.futuristspeaker.com/job-opportunities/128-things-that-will-disappear-in-the-driverless-car-era/
I'm still waiting for the Star Trek era :)
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't think many new jobs will be created. Yes, we will need engineers and programmers to create the robots, but once you have it designed, you just program another robot to build the rest of them and when one breaks, you have robots that are programmed to do the repairs. The total number of technicians we will need will be extremely small compared the the number of jobs lost.
Automated machines will mine resources, automated machines will refine the resources and turn them into materials, automated machines will use those materials to build robots, robots will repair other robots. They can probably even use deep learning to have AI invent solutions to problems that a human would not think of or just do it faster, I think this may be happening already.
There will be certain areas where we will still needs humans to work, but it will be rare. People can take these positions if they want and make money to live above the lifestyle of the average person, the same as it is now. These are the people that will have their own cars, the average person will not be able to afford it and will have to use the autonomous public transport.
Comment has been collapsed.
In the end it comes down to our need to consume and buy buy buy.
If the consumers don't have any money to spend. There's no point to create "useless" stuff we don't really need anyway.
I'm still hopeful it will lead to a new enlightened Federation era, where there is no need or want for money. And we explore the mind, education, love, art, and discovery. Instead of the current Ferengi, profit and accumulated wealth era.
Unless the AI and robots take over the world, then it will be the Skynet era ><
Comment has been collapsed.
I kind of agree. There will certainly be a lot more time for thinkers when working every day is not required. Right now most of the world is a bunch of lemmings that are stuck in a cycle of work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep. Life is a drag and any free time people get, they want to try and enjoy it with family or a distraction. Most of them don't want to spend that little extra time they have thinking about philosophy or politics, which is understandable.
We live in a material world where the vast majority just want to be entertained and not think. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the entertainment as well. Not knowing why we are here on this earth or our purpose is depressing and entertainment is just a way to pass time. I think any job that can be automated by a machine should be. There is no reason humans should be performing repetitive tasks when we can automate the process and free ourselves to do something else. Humans are thinkers, not robots.
What I would love is if we could put a lot more money and effort into space travel, it seems like we have made very little progress since the 60s. Being able to travel to other solar systems and galaxies and find other life seems like the only logical next step for the human race. Otherwise we are just prolonging our meaningless existence on this planet waiting for another major disaster to wipe out all life and reset everything. Colonizing Mars or any other planet would be a good first step towards preserving what humans have learned and created.
Comment has been collapsed.
Thats some extreme optimism to think that the richest 1% will suddenly care about the welfare of anyone outside their immediate family. If the majority of the worlds population are of no use to them, then its easier and more cost effective to just eliminate them.
I think Isaac Asimov may have envisioned a closer truth in his Robot series with the planet Solaria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaria
Comment has been collapsed.
I never said that. This is what I said in my original comment.
Speaking of the population no longer being needed, there are powerful people that realize this and want more of the world for themselves and they will try and take it. They could let the riots, wars, and famine play out and let everyone kill eachother, or they could design a supervirus that kills almost everyone it comes in to contact with and only provide the antidote to a select few.
Comment has been collapsed.
I really don't think that automation will be the end of labour. Here in Australia, the vast majority of work is practically meaningless busywork and documentation. Employment is not about needing to find somebody to do a job, it's like a private club that you must be invited into by friends. Accountants and lawyers run the business world, and they deal with every problem by creating new regulations that require more accountants and lawyers for compliance. The issue extends throughout all industries - in engineering, I would estimate that 75% of the people I worked with made no significant contribution at all to the core business. We already have driverless iron ore haul trucks but there are plenty of jobs beyond truck driving, from truck maintenance to public relations and management specialists that constantly conduct studies and produce communication to tell the stock market how fantastic this (and the next) development is.
Comment has been collapsed.
Japan headquarters crisis Japan Toys' R Us is operating normally (Photo = Reuters): Nihon Keizai Shimbun
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXMZO28165020V10C18A3000000/
In addition, Japan's "Toys" R Us "is treated as a separate corporation.
For now it is possible to open as usual.
It seems to remain until the end in the world.
Japan collects the "good old days" of the world.
Will it be?
Comment has been collapsed.
Not sure if it's been pointed out yet but it's Toys'r'US in America only.
Aussie stores are still ok.
Comment has been collapsed.
Japan collects the "good old days" of the world.
Haha
Let us hope
(I just found that a nice, funny thought :)
Comment has been collapsed.
My childhood died when I realized grown ups were just as ignorant as me most of the time.
Comment has been collapsed.
My childhood died when I didn't receive my Hogwarts letter.
Comment has been collapsed.
Overpriced toys. The same toy I would buy cheaper in a regular supermarket(but my personal case here in my country, don't know about the others).
Not gonna miss it.
Comment has been collapsed.
time changes as so do options and in this world you evolve or die, simple as that. It certainly doesn't help that toys in themselves seem to be slowly falling out of favor compared to tablets and such.
I would say when my childhood started undenibly dying: When git cards started becoming the thing to get instead of actual things.
Though as much as the reality is, I still have fond times of looking at the after thanksgiving toys R us paper and making a christmas list. These days I'd be happy if I got some sort of clothing store gift card instead of YET ANOTHER WINTERY SHIRT.
Comment has been collapsed.
The days when they still had a big console section with an actual decent sales bin.
Heard here in a tv program once, how owners (can't remember from which chain) were forced to buy from more expensive suppliers, giving them little margins on sales.
Comment has been collapsed.
As of about a year ago (last time I went to Toys R Us) they still had a big console section - and decent sales
Comment has been collapsed.
I spent many a weekend there as a small child, drooling over their LEGO collections.
LEGOs as far as the eye can see.
As an adult, I used gifts for my nephew (he's a LEGO junkie) as an excuse to go there and drool. :X
RIP part of my childhood.
Comment has been collapsed.
Not the same. I can't be 8 again, and I can't bring back my grandparents who would take me there on weekends.
(I have been to one of the LEGO stores with my nephew, though).
Comment has been collapsed.
I went to a Toys R Us a few months ago for the first time in many many years and I couldn't believe how overpriced a lot of the stuff was. I'm not surprised they're going out of business.
Comment has been collapsed.
Toys-R-Us also bought out and shut down the famous New York toy store FAO Schwarz a couple years ago.
Toys-R-Us didn't exist in my area when I was a kid, so I have no childhood memories of it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Toys R Us is closing or trying to sell ALL their stores. They couldn't reach a bankruptcy settlement or a buyer. Shame. I remember going there, as well as places like Child World and KB Toys for things.
Read the article here.
A sad day for our childhood.
Comment has been collapsed.