There are a lot of narcissists who would sleep with a 17 year old female who wanted to have sex with them. About 75% of men and probably 10% of women.

Expecially if she was 17 and 255 days or something like that.

In today's world with no privacy, I can't be sure if he was an indiscreet idiot.

The standards we live by today are very different than the standards in place only 20 years ago.

I mean seriously- buying margarita machines with the money?

I suspect John Oliver's piece helped push this.

Kudo's to John Oliver!

Oil isn't priced for the cost to get it out of the ground.

Oil is priced for the cost to get the last 5% out of the ground.

We don't have to replace 20% of the cars with electric cars.

You are right on the solar panels. We already have cheap solar panels. But the major industrial power plants have bought up every panel that will be made for the next several years. Until those orders are fulfilled, those less expensive panels won't flood the market.

Plus until we have better batteries, solar won't do more than demand shave (tho it's nice in sunny areas).

The peak energy most people can produce from their land/roof won't cover their energy budget. But it may reduce their energy budget. I have one panel that cuts $36 a year off my electric bill.

LED lighting energy savings beat that in six months. lol.

But net/net- my energy bills are down 30% now from five years ago. I simply use less energy than i used to.
Likewise, electric cars, hybrid cars and plain old gasoline cars with better gas mileage are all part of the total picture lowering demand for oil enough that prices were unsustainable.

and those trends are going to continue and get more efficient and less expensive.

Got a suggestion.

Print out your post and put it in an envelope to open and read when you are 45. You'll probably massively facepalm yourself that you were ever so naive.

I made it. I retired at 51. The other 499/500 don't.

1) investors drive equity prices up for companies that lay off. Executives are compensated in stock options.
2) they are being excellent owners by today's standards. offshore jobs- save money, focus on core business model, profit your self for 2 years and then move on to the next company and do it again.
3) This is a very naive statement. Turn it around- what conditions beyond your control *could* force you to work those hours. Have you taken every precaution to prevent being put in that situation. Do you live on half your salary? Do you have multiple years of income saved? (I did).
4) Companies hire people who have a job. Companies do not hire people who worked a long time at one place (even if they have good skills on paper) and are currently unemployed.

Drop the negative semantic shit like "cushy" and "coast". It's dumb and it's keeping you from seeing reality. Yes those people were unwise. I agree. Unlike me, they really didn't believe they'd become unemployable at the age of 50. I realized that when I was 28 because I saw it happening even back then. Companies want young IT staff. They cut loose 90% of the rest as they pass 45 and are not top 1% material and replace them with cheaper labor that has current skills which the company didn't have to pay for training.

I'm trying to show you the road ahead waiting for you and you are blinding yourself to reality. You won't win if you stay blind. You'll do the same thing everyone else does.

Down to $1.72 here.

BTW, your other responder is way off on shipping costs. Shipping costs do not run 1%. Lol. That's crazy low.
Business articles on setting up distributors and retailers suggest expecting 10 to 20 to even higher as a percentage for shipping. The low end (10%) is palatalized, light weight (i.e not metal), full truck from shipper to reciever, one stop only.

It's a good thing we didn't spend 2 trillion dollars, 4000 lives, and tens of thousands of crippled citizens we'll have to support for life unnaturally subsidizing oil between 2003 and 2007 alone.

Oh.

Wait.

We.

Did.

If you *REALLY* are a conservative, who doesn't want to get entangled in foreign affairs. Just think about it. Oil gets HUGE subsidies.

Solar and wind don't have to replace oil to crush oil prices. At best they need to reduce demand by 5% and the market will do the rest. The shale oil will still be there in the future.

But seriously man- don't even think that the oil industry doesn't get subsidies that dwarf other forms of energy generation.

In order...

1) the company was profitable and is profitable. the savings it expected ($100 mil a year+) didn't happen.

2) most of the people had been with the company for 20 years (or more) and had 4-8 years to go until retirement. The company had never had a layoff and was profitable. The original owner retired around 5 years before and basically the company went from being a nice place to work to a bad place to work as new management came in.

3) There were clear warning signs that people like you and I could see (having been laid off before). Not so clear to long term employees who'd been thru two harsh conversions with 70+ before and were retained with another 6-8 years job security each time. Expectations were a harsh conversion to SAP and then 6-8 years of job security afterwards. Also recall the economy was crap from 2009-2011 so you were not changing jobs-- and anyone over 40 has a house and (many) kids in college. You are just trying to get down the road at that point.

4) Again- you and I and modern employees at most companies sure. What people dont' get is-- if you have a very good / nice owner who takes care of the employees and makes the place a wonderful place to work-- it can all go to hell the second they sell/retire/die. So even at a great company, with good bosses, etc. etc. you should keep training and be employable. But... working at a place 20 years works against you- regardless of your experience and training- after the layoffs occur. So you basically have to leave a great place every 5 years or so to protect yourself. And that puts you at risk of being the newest employee when layoffs occur at the new place.

---

BTW- a few people did leave early and the company executives felt betrayed and were bitter and vindictive. Irony, eh?

Because it's in their financial interest to believe it.

My last company hired a lot of indian workers from infosys because infosys told them the employees would all be SAP experts.
After laying off close to 500 united states IT people- they discovered (and this is a shocker!) that the indian employees were

a) untrained
b) training on the companies time
c) being rotated to higher paying sap clients once they were trained.

But all the higher ups got their bonuses and they adjusted the project deadline from 2012 to... (wait for it....) 2030. That's right.. an EIGHTEEN year fall back on the original plan to bring all six areas on line at the same time.

This after working the united states citizens 70+ hours a week from 2010 to 2012 to make the deadline when ( this was leaked by people in legal after the layoffs) the u.s. company *knew* they were going to lay the u.s. citizens off in 2010! That's some evil shit.

Even the executives who were let go got six figure severence packages. Not so much for the hoily poily.

Someone pumped the ratings at Avast to make Chilling Effects show as a suspect site.

So the site that tried to take over my computer last week is safe but Chilling Effects is suspect?

I can't see a way to put in a plus rating for it.

Mostly replaced by hydraulics now.
Metal roller skate wheels.

Fuck you pig might get you harsh treatment but basically being black will get you killed for reaching for your registration in the glove box when they ask to see it.

They only report killing 400 people a year but a facebook page that gathered every credible report (and was fact checked for veracity by 528.com) showed that they kill roughly 1250 people each and every year. It's horrific.

7 year old girls shot by swat teams. 12 year old boys gunned down. 40 year old working class people beaten and then charged with damaging the officers uniforms by getting blood on them.

I think it's mainly the drug war.

Canada kills 1/40th the number of people with a very similar population.

Don't get me wrong- I donate to the police survivors fund- but the police are way to willing to kill people without a trial and when they do -- even violating their own procedures (ala Garner), they are not punished.

Seriously, I don't listen to music radio any more except pre selected songs from periods I already like.
So hit me with the "70s" and the "80s" music.

I discovered Blue October because a friend gave me a pirated disk and said they were good. So I've gone to several concerts- bought some T-Shirts.

But it's really too hard to find good music by listening to the market dominating "clearchannel" mega media conglomerate.

I'm in the filter bubble on pandora so it doesnt' suggest anything new.

Netflix does a better job because it has a "what's popular on netflix" set of shows.

Yes but it is a percentage game.

If every time someone said the word "ham sandwich" there was a 1% chance that someone would murder them and nothing could be done to stop it, then people would stop saying ham sandwich.

If there is a 1 in a billion chance of being killed- it's essentially random background noise and you can get used to it.

There is a fundamental (he he) problem. We basically are not yet ready to throw down on this issue. So freedom of religion ensures islamic radicals will be present in every country.

That's not a troll- it's a reasonable comment.

However--
Bad people break down into two camps:

Redeemable and killable.

First you try to redeem then, but if that doesn't work you must kill them until they surrender their ideals.

Japan and Germany in WW2 were good examples of the second case.

You should always try reason and clarification first. But you have to recognize that it doesn't always work.

If this continues, there very well could be a point where islam is put into special box- like say religions that want to sacrifice human beings. A lot of people could die during that process.

Hopefully the ongoing collapse in oil prices will reduce the ability to inflict damage by these people.

I see no mass protests or riots in the streets over this heinous crime.

http://www.barenakedislam.com/...

Islamics worldwide are celebrating the murder of the offensive french journalists.

Many of them shared videos from the scene of the attack, calling the shooters âoeheroesâ and praising them for avenging the honor of the Prophet and of Islam.

To quote one muslim, Abu Bakr Al-Zariâ(TM)ni:
        âoeCongratulations to France and to its people for reaping what their hands sowed. Did these evil cartoonists think that we were a nation that would remain silent in face of those who insult our Prophetâ¦? Did [French President] Hollande and the governments that preceded him think that their interventions and despotism in the lands of the Muslims would not be met with retribution? No, by Allah, from now on the youths of Islam will no longer remain silent, especially since we have a state [ISIS] to mobilize armies if anybody insults the nation of Islam.â