Hijack this thread

[Whatever4]

Randi Mayem Singer

@rmayemsinger

Because everything sucks, please enjoy this dad making a roller coaster out of a laundry basket.

Can't embed the vid but it is extra cute 'n' adorable...

Soooooo cute!

[ZekeB]

No surprise, but it's sad when an icon falls.

http://nsl.latimes.com/T/v400000166763a ... 5175bcf263
Sears files for bankruptcy, will further shrink operations

I'm not a business genius, but I'd like to know why Sears sold off their profitable lines. Craftsman is one. I believe Allstate is another. Rumor has it they'd like to sell off the Kenmore line. When you're left holding nothing but the unprofitable lines it's a sure-fire way to go bankrupt.

[DejaMoo]

No surprise, but it's sad when an icon falls.

http://nsl.latimes.com/T/v400000166763a ... 5175bcf263
Sears files for bankruptcy, will further shrink operations

I'm not a business genius, but I'd like to know why Sears sold off their profitable lines. Craftsman is one. I believe Allstate is another. Rumor has it they'd like to sell off the Kenmore line. When you're left holding nothing but the unprofitable lines it's a sure-fire way to go bankrupt.

Eddie Lampert. Eddie Lampert. Eddie Lampert. He bought KMart and Sears, combined them into a holding company. He bought Sears because at that time it had a hellacious chunk of cash assets. He saw an opportunity to grab Sears and its assets for his and his hedge fund's benefit, leaving Sears just a shell. He sold off the brand labels, including Kenmore, long ago as part of strip-mining Sears' assets.

My sister worked for Sears since the early 1970s. After Lampert's acquisition of Sears, the employees kept asking why the cash wasn't used to update and modernize the stores. Instead, the stores were allowed to get rundown and dirty, and the former exclusive brands began to be sold by competing retailers. As sales declined, they laid off employees. My sister was in a district management meeting where the managers tried to stage a revolt against the increasingly ridiculous long hours they had to work along with being critically short of staff. They were told, "if you don't like it, quit." As soon as she qualifed for retirement, she did. Not long after, most of her peers who'd stuck it out lost their jobs anyway.

Lampert didn't want to keep Sears going. It was just his cash/assets cow, to be milked till it ran dry.

[TollandRCR]

Lampert also wanted Sears' excellent mall locations. He seems to have had no interest in operating Sears as a successful store.

[Volkonski]

Got all excited when a letter from the boss arrived. My Soros check at last!



Turned out to be a survey about marijuana legalization.

[kate520]

The devil wind has stolen our electricity. None of my devices have more than a 25% charge, so I’ll see ya when the light come back on.

[HilltownGrrl]

@tek - massive amount of tots & pears to you & your parents. I love that photo of them! I hope everyone is doing well by now.

@kate - I hope the wind stops asap & that the electronics fairies charge your devices when you're not looking.

@HST's Ghost - thank you SO MUCH for that video. I'm bookmarking it to watch on the bad days - it's fabulous*!!

*And I say that as someone who loathes rollercoaster - I almost fell out of the one at Mountain Park in Holyoke MA when I was 17 & would have if my two friends hadn't hauled me back in. I slid up & out of the drop bar up to my knees as we went down the first hill & spent the rest of the ride on the floor hanging on & waiting for it to be over. I've never been on one again & never will. Once was more than enough.

[tek]

Grrl, Mountain Park!!!! *

For everyone else:

https://www.pbs.org/video/wgby-document ... -memories/

Was started in the late 1800s as a way for the trolley company to generate weekend fares.

The much larger Riverside Park (now morphed into Six Flags) was 20-ish miles down the road, but that was more of a big deal.. Mtn Prk was where (especially young people) would go just for fun. The local rock-n-roll station (WHYN "Win Radio") would do a live remote there almost every weekend.

* I hate rollercoasters

[kate520]

When I was 10 our folks let my little brother and I go off by ourselves at the State Fair in Sacramento. We got on the rocket, I think it’s called. Big I-beam with nosecones attached to either end. It went round and round, and the nose cone also spun clockwise. It had a bar like on roller coasters. The “windshield” part of the nose cone was wide open.

Bro was too little, they should never have let him ride. About halfway through he started to slip free of the bar. I grabbed his legs and hung on for dear life, both of us screaming. They never stopped the ride. I’m not even sure they noticed.

I hate rollercoasters.


Still no power. I went for a ride charged the phone but it’s almost dead again. Mañana, y’all.

[maydijo]

No surprise, but it's sad when an icon falls.

http://nsl.latimes.com/T/v400000166763a ... 5175bcf263
Sears files for bankruptcy, will further shrink operations

I'm not a business genius, but I'd like to know why Sears sold off their profitable lines. Craftsman is one. I believe Allstate is another. Rumor has it they'd like to sell off the Kenmore line. When you're left holding nothing but the unprofitable lines it's a sure-fire way to go bankrupt.

For years now I've thought it was both surprising and disappointing that Sears - the mother of all mail-order companies - didn't recognise the importance and impact of the internet sooner. If they'd only recognised the opportunity it presented, they could've been Amazon before Amazon was even a twinkle in Jeff Bezos's eye. For a company which survived many iterations over the years, evolving with the marketplace, it was remarkably short-sighted of them.

Like just about everyone else in the US we have some family heirlooms that started out as mail-order items from Sears. For my pioneer ancestors growing up on the plains and prairies of the west and mid-west, it was just about the only way to shop, especially for larger items like furniture. And like every other American child of the 1980s/1990s, I still have sugarplum-dreams of that wonderful childhood bible, the Christmas Wishbook. Ahhh, the anticipation of its arrival - the smell and slick feel of its pages - the weeks spent on my stomach in the living room, circling everything in sight, even those things I only kinda-sorta wanted - I feel sorry for my own children, that they have never got to experience the pleasure of the unadulterated fetishized consumerism that is the Christmas Wishbook.

[MN-Skeptic]

I love roller coasters! I begged and pleaded with my husband until he went on one with me and he was surprised when I screamed during the ride. I had to reassure him that is was fun screaming, not terror screaming. He was ok going on them then.

[maydijo]

When we went to California Adventure a few years back, my normally very timid son was very excited to try the big roller coaster with Mickey's face on it, the one that goes upside-down. So we dutifully waited in line only to discover when we got to the front of the line that he was a smidgeon too little. I started to say something and my husband hushed me and whispered to him to stand on his tippy-toes. Absolutely nothing happened, and he loved it, but I was terrified during the upside-down bit, not because it was scary but because I was afraid he would fall out!

[Lani]

President Donald Trump said that Sears Holdings Corp. had been mismanaged for years before it declared bankruptcy. Among those responsible for its management: his Treasury secretary.

Steven Mnuchin was a member of Sears’s board from 2005 until December 2016, and before that was a director for K-Mart Corp., which was acquired by Sears in 2005.

“Sears has been dying for many years,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Monday to inspect hurricane damage in Florida. “It’s been obviously improperly run for many years and it’s a shame.”

Treasury didn’t immediately respond to questions about Mnuchin’s service on the company’s board.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -its-board

[Mikedunford]

President Donald Trump said that Sears Holdings Corp. had been mismanaged for years before it declared bankruptcy. Among those responsible for its management: his Treasury secretary.

Steven Mnuchin was a member of Sears’s board from 2005 until December 2016, and before that was a director for K-Mart Corp., which was acquired by Sears in 2005.

“Sears has been dying for many years,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Monday to inspect hurricane damage in Florida. “It’s been obviously improperly run for many years and it’s a shame.”

Treasury didn’t immediately respond to questions about Mnuchin’s service on the company’s board.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -its-board

There is literally nothing that Trump can't fuck up.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Re: Rollercoasters

[GreatGrey]

[RTH10260]

Adolf would not have approved this message. Get ready for a long march to the eastern front!

[maydijo]

"I'm gay for Hitler!" was one of the lesser-known propaganda slogans . . .

[John Thomas8]

Lampert didn't want to keep Sears going. It was just his cash/assets cow, to be milked till it ran dry.

Eddie is a Randroid, a completely morally bankrupt hairball of the lowest order. Here's a bit on it from Denise Cummins at PBS. On that page, search for "An example from industry" and see:

An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

Instead, the divisions turned against each other — and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources.

Objectivism is a disease.

[RTH10260]

the GOP Gods on immigration

[Estiveo]

29 years ago at this time I was hanging out in the street with Estiveo's Mom and all the neighbors who were home, wondering how long the aftershocks would go on, when it would be safe to go back indoors, and learning over our car radios how bad the damage was turning out to be.

10/17/89, 5:04 PM, Loma Prieta quake.

[John Thomas8]

In honor of Canada's National Sanity Day:

[Estiveo]

Screenshot_2018-10-17-18-56-49.jpg

[kate520]

As we were wandering around in Claremont CA last weekend we saw a whole block with blue BETO signs.

[Patagoniagirl]

Estiveo, that is just the best! I live in an area where my neighbors would be screaming that they are PENDEJOS! Love it.