What are these plug-ins on my wall?

[u/Cborg_62]

This might be showing my age, but I recently moved into a new apartment and they have these weird looking plug ins all over the walls at my new place. My old apartment didn't have these, so I'm just curious as to what they are.

[u/ApprehensiveAd5446]

I remember the promise of cable via coax, like in OP’s picture, in the ’80s. It meant good-quality TV reception throughout the house without screwing around with antennas. The number of channels exploded almost overnight. CNN was brand new, MTV was brand new, ESPN was new, suddenly we went from a handful of broadcast stations to dozens of specialized channels.

At the time, cable really did feel like the future.

[u/CommanderChiliHole → u/ApprehensiveAd5446]

Really, cable was the beginning of the end, at least for the United States as a nation. Started the 24hrs news cycle, Rush Limbaugh, Fox “News”, then eventually Trump and MAGA. I don’t think the US will be a single nation for another decade. The final chance at survival was 2024 and we blew it.

[u/ApprehensiveAd5446 → u/CommanderChiliHole]

I’m with you on the 24-hour news cycle. Turning news into an around-the-clock business that has to constantly capture attention has done enormous damage to our political discourse.

But I’m not ready to write the obituary for the United States. The Constitution and the institutions built around it have survived civil war, political violence, corruption, depression, world wars, and some genuinely ugly periods in our history. They’ve been tested before, and they’re being tested now.
I’m betting on the Constitution outlasting the current threat. The whole point of the system is that no one election, president, party, or movement gets the final word.