Thulean Archives

Today I set a new record. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? But is it really? Let's find out. I have children, and they ride bikes. And if they do, I have to change the inner tube on a bike at least once a week. This week I had to do it four times. And that's a new record. And why am I saying this? Well, dear young people, things have changed. When I was young, you had tires that were not paper thin like they are today. You had inner tubes that lasted more than, you know, a couple of weeks. When I was a kid, you know, I think maybe I had a flat tire two times, maybe only one, in my entire bicycling career from age 6 to age 16. And the reason for this is that back in the days, the people who made things didn't always pick the cheapest material, the cheapest manufacturing method, and the cheapest laborers. Things were designed to last, and things were made to last. Capitalism hadn't broken our societies that much yet. And mind you, the 4 inner tubes that I had to replace. Because you don't. Don't bother trying to fix them. If you try to fix them, the kit used to fix them is also very cheap and poorly made and so forth. So don't bother. Anyhow, of the four tubes that I had to replace, one of them I had to replace because it didn't work to begin with. The, you know, the vent didn't work. It was impossible to inflate. And of course, maybe there exists some, you know, better, higher quality tires that are not paper thin. Maybe there exists some inner tubes that will actually last for a little bit out there, but I haven't found any. And related to this are the people who say that you have to buy it from local stores, right? You have to support the community, but don't do that because the local stores are buying these cheap products from China, not because the Chinese cannot make them better, because they have asked the Chinese to make them as cheaply as possible. If you go to China, you can find high quality products, but they don't sell them to the west because our capitalists want to have a maximum profit margin, you know? So the local store buys things from China, takes a huge profit from this, and then sell it to you. So they're basically just ripping you off. You can go online and buy the same product for a fraction of the price directly from China, from Temu or Ali or whatever. So the local store in your area, you can pretty much describe them as scammers. They're scamming you. You can just buy it from China, much cheaper, and you get the exact same product anyhow. And yes, this is the state we are in here in the west. We have some scammers and everything is made Intentionally not to last, because they want to make more money from you. And I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so I know this is true. The society has changed. Our greedy capitalists have intentionally done everything they can to increase their profit margin. And that is the only thing they ever worried about. And because of that, everything here is shit. It's designed to not work, and it's always made from the cheapest possible material. Thank you, capitalism. And now it no longer works to buy the best brands because everyone is doing the same, and all the products, regardless of brand, are crap.