The Resurrection of Toys R Us

On the heels of my post about the big box bookstore customer experience, it seems worth noting that an erstwhile big box competitor to Amazon is mounting a return. Just in time for the 2022 holiday season, Toys R Us is relaunching with small stores within existing Macy’s locations.

It of course won’t be the same as the Toys R Us that marked so many of our childhoods. An absolutely essential part of the holiday season was receiving and repeatedly tearing through the big Christmas toy catalog. And walking into the big store dedicated entirely to toys was like, well, like being a child in a toy store.

But then that model wasn’t sustainable. Not the way Toys R Us was doing it at least. The stores often felt dingy, empty, and dated. Inventory towards the end felt thin. You’d go into the store far too often only to have to go to Walmart or turn to Amazon. The world of 2017 just wasn’t the world of 1997, and Toys R Us couldn’t — or wouldn’t — adapt.

But hopefully now it has. Hopefully it finds great success with its Macy’s mini-store model. Because younger generations should get to experience picking a toy in person. Because mailers featuring holiday toy selections should make a comeback. Because Geoffrey didn’t deserve his ignominious end. And dang it, yes, because of the nostalgia.

Let’s face it: the big box brick-and-mortar bookstore experience sucks

I love bookstores. I really do. There’s this quaint family-owned bookstore down the road from me where I could spend hours. They even have a used books section with some really old offerings. I’ve spent more money there than I care to remember. But I’ve supported a family business and walked away with some wonderful new works, and so in the immortal words of that ruffian from We’re the Millers: “NO RAGRETS”

I even have a plethora of fond memories from my childhood in big box bookstores. An hour wandering the children’s section of Barnes & Noble or the music section of Borders (remember them?) was a treat. There’s something about a classic in-person book-buying experience that just feels nostalgic and, well, right.

And yet….and yet.

Let’s wind back a moment. Back in April, Elizabeth A. Harris of the New York Times wrote about how Barnes and Noble has become an unlikely hero for small bookstores. See, B&N used to be the enemy: the big box competitor putting old fashioned mom-and-pop rivals out of business just by rolling into town. But then the block gained an even bigger and scarier bully: Amazon. The one-stop-shop behemoth has unthinkable buying power, inventory capacity, and unmatched delivery times. The end result:

Today, despite the rise of other formats, the industry still relies on physical books — in 2021, they brought in 76 percent of publishers’ sales revenue, according to the Association of American Publishers. And more than half the physical books in the United States are sold by Amazon.

To control the majority of the overwhelming majority of the literature market in the United States is a grim reality for its competitors. And it means that the only realistic brick-and-mortar competitor is the multi-billion dollar hedge fund-owned B&N with its more than 600 hundred stores. After a successful new strategy launch, B&N’s future is looking pretty bright.

Unfortunately, the customer experience, to be blunt, kinda sucks. Have you been in a B&N lately?

“We’re out of stock but we can order it for you”

Yes, I can order it for me too. Not really why I’m here.

Ah well, guess I’ll look around for something else. Oh this book looks interesting. Too bad the pages are bent and spine cracked by the last four people who came into the store, bought a coffee from Starbucks, and sat reading it for hours like it’s a library. Oh well, if it’s good enough I’ll overlook it. How much is it? Holy crap, $30 for a paperback?! Whatever, maybe it’s amazing. I’ll check some reviews online. Annnnnd it’s $15 on Amazon and, unlike this much-read store copy, unused.

I’m not a snob. I get that books are expensive and some people, particularly young people, may read in bookstores because they can’t afford to buy a copy. I get it. But I’m also not going to spend $30 on the only copy of the book that four people have already much-used. If the store even has what I’m looking for in the first place. If they’re not telling me they can order it for me on their website.

I’m also not always looking for the cheapest deal. I’ve happily paid more to family-owned businesses for products I could get less expensive from a major corporation. I’d be much happier to pay that $30 for a pre-read copy of a book from a small business bookstore. I could justify that in my head and heart as supporting the small bookseller.

But what am I getting from the B&N (or any other big box bookstore) experience? Overpaying for a book (if they have it in stock at all) so that I can stick it to Amazon by….enriching another multi-billion dollar corporation? Encouraging them to keep doing what they’re doing, which is a substandard and overpriced experience?

There’s an argument to be made about supporting the business so that its employees continue to have jobs. But that’s true of literally any business. Even if, in some fantasy universe, B&N and its brick-and-mortar allies finally slayed the Amazon behemoth…Amazon’s employees would be out of work. It’s sad but that’s how the cookie crumbles.

I’m not trying to trash B&N. I want going there to be a wonderful experience. I want them to figure out how to provide a quality in-person experience. Small bookstores have a built-in quaintness. The hedge fund-owned big box store has no such natural advantage. They need to find a justification for existence beyond, “I need this book today — not tomorrow. I’ll hope they have it in stock and I don’t care how much it costs or how much it’s been used.” And so far B&N and its big box rivals haven’t been successful in that.

Let’s talk Salem and witches

I’ve always had a fascination with Salem, Massachusetts. I don’t know if it was the original Hocus Pocus (it takes place in Salem) or my general love of Halloween combined with my love of history and small New England towns. But whatever the reason, I’ve always been fascinated with the town and its history. Non-fiction books. Fictional plays. Podcasts. Personal visits. I’ll take it all.

And as I just mentioned, I love Halloween. Witches and pumpkins and trick-or-treating, all of it.

Separately, the revelry of Halloween and the allure of Salem are wonderful. But for some reason, when they’re combined, I find it…odd. Uncomfortable? Maybe not uncomfortable. Perhaps awkward is a better choice.

I’m currently reading JW Ocker’s superb travelogue/history book A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts. Ocker is a master storyteller. He recounts an October he, his wife, and his two children spent soaking-in Salem and its surrounding area. He notes that modern Salem proper is not where all of the action was: neighboring modern Danvers was actually the infamous Salem Town back in 1692. He relates a town — a series of towns — steadfastly dedicated to keeping their history alive and celebrating their identity. And I admire that.

What I find….awkward — I believe we settled on awkward — is the revelry of witches and witchcraft in Salem. The corny logos of stereotypical witch caricatures, hat and broom and all, used to sell ice cream. Adorning official city property. Modern-day revelers dressed as witches and partying in the streets. Witch souvenirs galore. It’s an entire industry. A sort of witch-themed version of Disney World. And of course it’s hard to blame Salem — it’s what they’re known for and it must be a significant source of income for the town and its residents.

But there’s something…awkward here, right? Lost in the revelry and caricatures and chintzy souvenirs is the fact that these women (and men), the inspiration of all of this gaudiness, weren’t witches. They were persecuted. Brutally. By neighbors who wanted their land or had personal grudges or merely fell under the spell of mass delusion. Family members turning on family members. People hanged by the neck until dead. Crushed under heavy rocks and refusing to confess to witchcraft to the very end. Even those who survived had their reputations destroyed or lost friends or loved ones. Mass hysteria and unspeakable cruelty cost innocent people everything. It was that shameful chapter of a town’s history that made it infamous and associated it forever with witches.

And that legacy is memorialized today by….witch-themed keychains and people partying in witch costumes. I can’t imagine having my entire life being ruined or even ended by neighborhood accusations of me being some monster, only for people in the future to come to my neighborhood to party while dressed like that monster and buy cheap monster souvenirs. For the neighborhood to build an entire industry around cheesy and fun representations of the monster I was accused of being on the gallows.

And to be clear, I’m not really blaming the locals here. Ocker’s book recounts wonderful, multi-decade efforts by locals to preserve the history of the victims. Salem and Danvers have memorials to the victims. And the people of Salem are just trying to make a living, capitalizing on tourism just as anywhere else would.

But I think it would behoove visitors to take a moment in between buying a witch keychain and partying at the Halloween parade to remember that the people whose tragic demise made the town infamous were not caricatures or mythical creatures. They were people — real people. Innocent people. Elderly women with families. Husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. People who lost their lives because of false accusations and community score-settling. Take some time to remember that the Salem witch trials aren’t just the inspiration for a parade or a town logo.

Rather, they’re a warning of what happens when neighbors cruelly turn on one another. Of what happens when we lose our basic human decency and instead let selfishness, pettiness, and hysterical fanaticism take control of us. Because we are not above the people of the past — we’re just as human as they were. Not witches or monsters. Just humans who can, under the right (or rather wrong) circumstances, resort to being unbelievably cruel to one another.

“The World Turned Upside Down”: From Christmas Ban Protest to Hamilton

One of the more memorable songs in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is arguably “Yorktown,” in which Alexander and his friends finally defeat their British nemesis. A particularly eerie moment in the song is when the “British” sing “The World Turned Upside Down.” It goes something like this:

We negotiate the terms of surrender
I see George Washington smile
We escort their men out of Yorktown
They stagger home single file
Tens of thousands of people flood the streets
There are screams and church bells ringing
And as our fallen foes retreat
I hear the drinking song they’re singing
The world turned upside down
The world turned upside down
The world turned upside down
The world turned upside down
Down, down, down, down

“The World Turned Upside Down,” for those who may be unacquainted with its real-life historic background, is supposedly the song the British played during their formal surrender to George Washington’s colonials and their French allies following the Battle of Yorktown. But did the British really play such an aptly-named song? Probably not.

The first mention of “The World Turned Upside Down” (or TWTUD) didn’t appear until nearly fifty years after Yorktown. That’s despite the fact that a large number of newspapers covered the battle and dozens of witnesses from the battle and its aftermath had their observations recorded. Even then, the claim has a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend vibe and the supposed witness had other recollection and reliability issues.

In debunking this popular myth, scholars and mainstream American history sources then turn to claim that in fact there was no British song called “The World Turned Upside Down” for British instrumentalists to play. For example, from Mount Vernon:

Nearly one hundred years of professional cataloging of early Anglo-American music hasn’t turned up a single eighteenth-century British tune or march called WTUD. (Writers who say there were several English WTUD tunes in the eighteenth-century are guessing from bad extrapolations).

That is going a step too far. There absolutely was a song entitled “The World Turned Upside Down,” published as early as 1646/1647. It was a protest song against Puritan England’s ban on Christmas celebrations (under Oliver Cromwell but not solely his doing, as has often been portrayed). The Cromwell Museum even provides the title page of the publication:

Because the Christmas ban was unpopular, the ballad attacking the ban was popular. We have contemporary publication records in the form of the Thomason Tracts.

Anyway, the lyrics of the song naturally have absolutely nothing to do with Yorktown or any relevant themes either way. The lyrics are, again naturally, very focused on Christmas:

Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis’d, new fashions are devis’d.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.
The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:
The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.
Let all honest men, take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.
Command is given, we must obey, and quite forget old Christmas day:
Kill a thousand men, or a Town regain, we will give thanks and praise amain.
The wine pot shall clinke, we will feast and drinke.
And then strange motions will abound.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.
Our Lords and Knights, and Gentry too, doe mean old fashions to forgoe:
They set a porter at the gate, that none must enter in thereat.
They count it a sin, when poor people come in.
Hospitality it selfe is drown’d.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.
The serving men doe sit and whine, and thinke it long ere dinner time:
The Butler’s still out of the way, or else my Lady keeps the key,
The poor old cook, in the larder doth look,
Where is no goodnesse to be found,
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.
To conclude, I’le tell you news that’s right, Christmas was kil’d at Naseby fight:
Charity was slain at that same time, Jack Tell troth too, a friend of mine,
Likewise then did die, rost beef and shred pie,
Pig, Goose and Capon no quarter found.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down.

I’m sure you’ll now add it to your Christmastime playlist.

Clocks Start Ticking on Delisting Chinese Companies from US Markets

From the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. securities regulators have started a countdown that will force many Chinese companies to leave American stock exchanges, after a long impasse between Washington and Beijing over access to the companies’ audit records.

The action will accelerate the decoupling of the world’s two largest economies and affect investors that own securities in more than 200 U.S.-listed Chinese companies with a combined market value of roughly $2 trillion.

In late 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed a law that bans the trading of securities in foreign companies whose audit working papers can’t be inspected by U.S. regulators for three years in a row.

The delisting requirement is part of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. Beijing has argued that requiring disclosure of data-heavy tech companies, disclosures that could include emails between company officials and government officials (often a blurred line in China), would endanger national security.

Chinese officials have previously refused to allow disclosure of audit information for two major Chinese companies: Alibaba and Baidu. Both are listed on US exchanges.

Chinese officials insist that their US counterparts should accept at face-value the work of Chinese auditors as if done by US auditors themselves. Unsurprisingly, US officials have not been receptive to the notion.

Not helping the situation: the revelation that Luckin Coffee, a Chinese upstart competitor to Starbucks, had fabricated its financial data. Chinese officials and Luckin only took action after US-based Muddy Waters Research published a reporting alleging massive fraud.

Luckin’s investors have included well-connected firms, including one with firm connections to current and former senior Chinese government officials. Wang Qishan, current Vice President of the People’s Republic of China, helped found one of those investment firms. Luckin founder and ex-chairman Charles Zhengyao Lu (who was chairman at the time of the fraud discovery) is a former local government official.

Commies Blocking Crypto: Chinese Firewall Blocks CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap

Wolfie Zhao reports that two major cryptocurrency websites — CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap — are now inaccessible to users in China. Users are finding ways around the firewall, turning to VPNs, but it’s the latest sign of the Chinese government forcing out crypto.

Earlier we learned that Chinese authorities seized Ethereum mining machines from a warehouse in Inner Mongolia. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is apparently monitoring energy usage to locate potential mining operations indicated by higher usage levels.

Ethereum Developer Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Helping North Korea Evade Sanctions

Stupid Move: Going to North Korea, a country that brutally oppresses its own people while building an illegal nuclear program to hold the world hostage, and trying to help them evade sanctions with cryptocurrency.

Extra-Stupid Move: Asking the feds for permission first and then going anyway after they say “no.” Yeah no, just go ahead and let the feds know you’re gonna commit a crime and also that you know it’s a crime.

Also, if you’re gonna play international rogue who don’t care about no US anger, why the fuck would you do it to benefit….North fucking Korea? Orwell’s hell come to life. That doesn’t make you a rebel; it makes you a tool of a totalitarian state.

Miami Already Profiting from MiamiCoin

If you missed it, private sector actors recently developed a cryptocurrency to benefit the city of Miami. Miami’s mayor has been a huge advocate of crypto and supported accepting the coin’s financial benefits, which the city has now chosen to do.

MIA runs on the Stacks protocol, which in turn runs on top of the Bitcoin network. People can “mine” MIA by sending STX, the native token of Stacks, to a smart contract, which forwards 30% of those contributions to a wallet reserved for the city. Last month, the city voted to accept those funds, now worth $7 million.

Apparently MiamiCoin, which can only be purchased on Okcoin, now generates $2,000 every ten minutes for the city. Okcoin, which was founded in China in 2013 but is now based in San Francisco, is now working on opening a Miami office.

MiamiCoin was created by CityCoins, which plans to launch city-themed cryptocurrency for other major cities as well. One prominent figure behind CityCoins: Balaji Srinivasan, previously a top executive at Coinbase and General Partner at legendary venture capital firm a16z (Andreessen Horowitz).