[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:23 pm

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/21/we_had_ ... peter_pan/
Seems like they found a really good guy for this.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Dec 07, 2014 3:27 pm

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... IRxgjGG_OM

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:12 am

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... convention

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Dec 24, 2014 11:57 pm

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... gina-kayak

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Dec 25, 2014 1:33 am

That does admittedly probably violate Japanese porn laws. They are surprisingly strict in some ways.

I am also surprised to learn about the "Festival of the Steel Phallus".

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 7:22 pm

So a guy got sued for running a website that tells you how to exploit loopholes in air ticket prices.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 9:52 pm

I should just fucking start compiling these "No, businesses don't give a shit about you, just their profits" cases in a binder and hand it to libertarians.

(I typed the wrong political term at first...)

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:21 am

Sean Hannity voted 'Worst Fox News Host' by the cable hosts of the three networks. Including his peers. Afters, he decides to show his professionalism by ragetweeting at the website who ran the poll.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:10 pm

Gas costs $1.85/gallon in Memphis Tennessee; in the last 2 months it's price dropped $2. Is this gift horse of the awesome or Trojan variety?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 6:00 pm

The price of oil has crashed to about $50 per barrel for no readily explicable reason, and OPEC has officially declared they're letting it wind up wherever. The bad news is that it'll undermine the economic viability of alternative energy. The good news is that everything is going to get cheaper to ship and the State Department is nobly resisting the urge to call up all the oil-producing countries the US doesn't like to laugh manically.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 6:15 pm

Hicks wrote:Gas costs $1.85/gallon in Memphis Tennessee; in the last 2 months it's price dropped $2. Is this gift horse of the awesome or Trojan variety?

It's a temporary price crash that happened because frakked shale methane became interchangeable with oil for a bunch of industrial processes - meaning that with oil's very high price it became economically viable to get non-oil hydrocarbons out of a bunch of dubious reserves. A lot of methane and such went on the market at once because a lot of groups went all-in on frakking and such because high hydrocarbon prices justified high extraction costs.

Of course, supply and demand being what it is, with a lot of hydrocarbons on the market, the price demandable for those hydrocarbons fell. The price of a barrel of oil is now lower than the extraction cost of a barrel equivalent of many of the atypical reserves. That's going to shut down a lot of the more marginal wells, which in turn is going to cause there to be a lot less hydrocarbons on the market in a few months and correspondingly higher prices for the ones which remain.

An equilibrium will of course eventually work itself out, with prices high enough to support enough operating wells to maintain prices at that level. But I wouldn't bet on it happening any time soon. Fracking companies apparently routinely report vastly different numbers to the government than they do to potential investors. That in turn entices people to jump in and invest in new extraction when the economics don't really justify doing that, exaggerating a boom and bust price structure.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 6:23 pm

There's more supply. And the gas recipe for winter is cheaper to make than the blend used in the summer. And winter demand for gas is typically a bit lower than summer.

OPEC would probably like for oil prices to make fracking unsustainable as well.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:17 pm

It's really no different than the Texas oil boom at the start of the last century, except of course there's no authority to mandate limits on extraction to artificially sustain the price (and, by comparison, no need for "hot oil.")

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:20 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
Hicks wrote:Gas costs $1.85/gallon in Memphis Tennessee; in the last 2 months it's price dropped $2. Is this gift horse of the awesome or Trojan variety?
It's a temporary price crash that happened because frakked shale methane became interchangeable with oil for a bunch of industrial processes -

Also, fracking technologies developed for extracting methane from shale also became relevant for extracting some oil reserves which were previously unfeasible to extract.

In response to this, the Saudis led OPEC into a "strategy" of continuing to pumping large amounts of their oil on the market. Whether such was an attempt to starve of those marginal wells now competing with them or an attempt to undermine the Russian petro-economy in the face of Ukraine inspired sanctions or just the usual failure of cartels to agree is anybody's guess.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:25 pm

Also, as I understand it, China's demand is finally leveling off.

The conspiracy theorist in me wants to believe that this has to do with trying to drop the hammer on Russia (in addition to the other economic sanctions). Though the more "reasonable" side of me is skeptical of that theory.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:06 pm

It apparently is dropping the hammer on Russia quite effectively, but the people who would want to do that on purpose don't have enough control over the price of oil.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 1:00 am

There's some speculation that the rising demand for hybrid and electric is decreasing demand for gas, too, but I'm not about to put that up as gospel, just a plausible thing I heard on NPR.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 5:31 am

I'd heard it had to do with Obama and the strategic oil reserve, but I don't trust those sources on this at all.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Jan 02, 2015 5:07 pm

I hear the tooth fairy also helped this oil shit out drastically by giving the fracking magnates's kid a gold tooth. ALso Fucking rainbows... this is how they work.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sat Jan 03, 2015 6:25 am

Yeah, we clearly have the same amount of trust on that theory, which is to say fuck all.

infected slut princess · Tue Jan 06, 2015 7:57 am

It's not just oil. Look at the prices of coal, steel, iron ore, etc.

US shale is yet another Wall Street bubble finance hype machine. It's the new "subprime." US shale can go fuck itself.

Btw, China went from $1 trillion to $9 trillion GDP in 13 years. Idiots thought this would go on forever. You figure out.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 9:05 pm

http://mic.com/articles/107372/49-treme ... -this-year

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 9:40 pm

Leaving Florida was in retrospect one of my families better decisions.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:35 pm

Florida man pleased with exile.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 1:48 am

Apparently carribean lizards have pokemon in their cloaca