No, it's not really a no brainer. The few studies done, when other known factors are considered, showed that virgin marriages had <2% difference in satisfaction, probably within the margin of error....divorce rates are obviously skewed because most virgin couples are extremely religious, which accounts for lower divorce rates...it doesn't mean they have happy or successful marriages.
STDs and unwanted pregnancy are easily avoided with responsible safe sex...granted, most teens aren't very responsible.

Your reasoning is flawed...if Christians raise Christians, (and I assume you think the same goes for other religions) where do atheists come from? Also, you do know that children given abstinence only sex ed, usually Christians, have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs, don't you? Very few follow church instructions once outside of church, that's why less than 5% of marriages are by virgins.

...but I can derive no satisfaction from that fact....none at all.

As a former employee under both Jobs and Cook, I can tell you exactly what is wrong with Apple.

When I started with Apple, every thing we were concerned with was innovating. What could we come up with next? Sure, there were plenty of misses, but when we hit, we hit big. It was ingrained in the culture of the company. Managers wanted creative people, people who might not have been the best worker bee, but that could come up with new concepts easily. Sometimes corporate rules were broken, but if you could show that you were actively working towards something new, then you were OK.

Fast forward to when Cook started running the show, Steve was still alive, but had taken a backseat really. Metrics became a thing. Performance became a watchword. Managers didn't want creative thought, they wanted people who would put their nose to the grindstone and only work on things that headquarters suggested. Apple was no longer worried about innovating, they were concerned with 'maintaining'.

Two examples which might help illustrate further:

1. One of the guys I was working with was constantly screwing around in any free moment with iMovie. He was annoyed at how slow it was in rendering, which at the time was done on the CPU power. Did some of his regular work suffer, yeah. But he was praised because his concepts helped to shift some of the processing to the GPU and allow real time effects. This functionality made iMovie HD 6 amazing to work with.

2. In a different section of the company, the support side, a new manager improved call times, customer service stats, customer satisfaction, and drastically cut down on escalations. However, his team was considered to be:

a. making the other teams look bad

and

b. abusing the use of customer satisfaction tools, like giving a free iPod shuffle (which literally costs a few dollars to make) to extremely upset customers.

Now they were allowed to do all of these things, no rules were being broken. But Cook was mostly in charge by that point and he was more concerned with every damn penny. So, soon after this team blew all the other teams away for the 3rd month in a row, the new manager was demoted and the team was broken up, to be integrated into other teams willy-nilly.

Doing smart things was no longer the 'thing'. Toeing the line was. Until that changes, nothing is going to get better for Apple. I know I personally left due to stress and health issues from the extreme pressure that Cook kept sending downstream on us worker bees. My job, which I had loved, literally destroyed my health over a year.

I think that until relatively recently, there was a pretty even 3-way split amongst Puerto Ricans to:
A) Stay a commonwealth / territory
B) Go independent
C) Become a US State

But recently (likely thanks to shit like the video is describing), "stay the same" support has been dropping dramatically.


From the US population in general, I think poll results (on the rare occasions the question gets asked) tend to remain a pretty even 3-way split.


I think the 3-way division of options wasn't doing them any favors for a long time; status quo remained because none of the 3 options could get a majority. So I guess here's hoping that their situation will improve now that they seem to have largely cast aside that 3rd choice.


(I should note that I am by no means an expert or even particularly clued in on this topic. I've been to PR twice, and loved it. My "info" comes largely from a High School report I did on the topic like ~20 years ago, and a continuing genuine interest that has motivated me to keep vaguely informed *read - I wikipedia it once every few years. But although I may be way off or out of date on my info in the post above, my hope that their situation improves to their satisfaction is sincere.)

Did you get that job as a fortune teller?

Whilst we're making blanket assumptions about people we don't know, when did you realise you were racist? Was it the smug satisfaction you felt when you saw a black man mercilessly beaten or shot by the police on the internet, or before then?

And is it easier to hide your racism behind a veneer of support for the police, or better to hide your face under a white sheet so no one knows it was you? Which works better? Thanks for your reply in advance.

Wow. You know what, I sometimes write really long posts on the internets but I rarely hit enter. Because it's mostly really difficult to explain some things in writing to one's satisfaction. So while I still don't understand the whole transgender thing, I do acknowledge it really must be difficult to take a pee in a Men's Restroom with a dress on.

Well, Steve was an odd duck. He was a huge asshole, but when it came to people coming up with new and innovative ideas, he would support you into either success or failure (god help you if it was failure though). Once he died, there was a noticeable shift in direction towards conformity and the bottom line.

As an example, one of the managers I worked with had a team that was breaking customer satisfaction records because he had them actually caring about the customer. Unfortunately, it also meant they weren't pulling in the same amount of profit because they weren't trying to ram Applecare contracts down customer's throats, they were also supporting some customers that were just outside their free support, and finally they were using the internal program put in place under Steve that allowed escalation reps to go beyond the norm. Like helping a smaller school set up a mac mini server network without forcing them to go to server support and paying 300 bucks for a one time call. Yeah, bottom line wise, Apple lost a 300 dollar support call fee. But they later sold quite a few macbooks to the students who were used to hearing how good Apple was.

Anyway, after some of the other groups started complaining, that manager was quietly removed and put over a non support team. This pattern continued to grow worse right up until the time I left, whatever brought in the most money was king and thinking outside the box was verboten. It certainly influenced my decision to retire early, as it did others who went on to other jobs.

So much job satisfaction *promote

Yeah, that's not me. I'm happy being mediocre or less as long as I can afford slacking off on my couch, watching Netflix and masturbate.
Ambition is for those who can't find satisfaction in just being themselves.

There are actually a couple of other happiness-increasing technique that is somewhat non-intuitive, is shown to increase happiness in repeated studies, and is fairly easy to implement and difficult to reverse: Having a dog or cat.

It appears that being needed by the animal makes the human feel as if they have intrinsic value which...I mean it would be nice if we had that without pets but, there it is. If you want the best bang for your buck, I would suggest a small dog or cat from the pound as it will eat significantly less food than a bigger animal.

Another life change that actually effectively increases long-term happiness on average is marriage. This seemed a little too hairy for this video though. Also, DEFINITELY NOT DOSE-DEPENDENT. One spouse...better for happiness. Two spouses USUALLY NOT.

So there you go...get a pet, get hitched, and shorten your commute. You need to get home anyway, so you can feed your dog!

SOURCES:
Homeownership doesn't increase happiness: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/realestate/homeownership-the-key-to-happiness.html?_r=0
Short Commute = $40,000 raise
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141514467/small-changes-can-help-you-thrive-happily
Commuting Linked to Lower Life Satisfaction
https://uwaterloo.ca/recreation-and-l...

Commuting and Metabolic / Cardiovascular Health
https://uwaterloo.ca/recreation-and-leisure-studies/crunched-time-commuting-linked-lower-life-satisfaction

Commuting related to lower social activity and lower general trust
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4509867/

10 Things Commuting Does to your Body
http://time.com/9912/10-things-your-commute-does-to-your-body/

OOO! Oooo! I've got the perfect solution: Roll your own cigarettes...but with CATNIP! The pain in the ass it is to roll catnip (which doesn't stick together, unlike tobacco and other...stuff), and the beyond-satisfaction one gets from a catnip-high will quell any craving for hours! Or all cravings, for that matter. Repeat when necessary, and you'll be nicotine-free in no time!

Hooked on Catnip worked for me! (ow)

Same can be said of many things - caffeinated tea, for instance.

Then also, think of all the dopamine that is released from a satisfying meal. All food and drink has the capability of releasing chemicals and hormones that give us humans all sorts of desired effects - from fullness, to satisfaction, to alertness.

And they all can be commodified. This particular "Roger" sketch doesn't quite hit home like the rest of them.

"Evil" is a moral judgement that is a personal opinion. To say she's not "evil" is meaningless, because it all depends on what you think is evil, and there's clearly no consensus about that.

What she's clearly not for most people is trustworthy. Time and time again she's demonstrated that to the satisfaction of well over 1/2 the American people (at least according to all polls done on the subject). No matter what your personal opinion is about her or how wrong you might think those detractors are, that they say they think that is a fact, and that makes the election a coin toss...and unfortunately the Republicans supply the coin (because they make the voting machines).

In my mind, if I can't trust a person, it doesn't matter a whit what they say they'll do, because I can't believe they mean it or will follow through. I feel that way about both Clinton and Trump, but to differing degrees. I think they both have put their own interests above those of the country, and will do so again.

I am up in the air about his fear.
He reacts at first like he's afraid, but once the dogs are out of his range, he doesn't look for an escape route like someone in fear would do, or even look around to be sure neither dog is coming back, he continues to advance towards the back of the property, directly towards the now injured, semi cornered dog. He also certainly doesn't look at all afraid in the second view when he's leaving, I see no fear in his walk or stance, and certainly not in the lunging swipe at the barking dog.

...but, giving him every benefit of a doubt, assuming he was terrified of the dogs and just didn't show it clearly, HE'S still 100% at fault for trespassing, more so (if that's possible) in a yard with dogs (the gas company keeps a record of which houses have dogs, and the meter readers insist you put them away when they come...at least here in Cali before we got wireless meters) and therefore he's 100% at fault for his injurious reactions, even if they were in self defense, making him and the company 100% liable for any bills IMO. I hope they get excellent medical care for both dogs and get their child a good, expensive therapist, and I hope it's all at gas company expense...a high enough bill might make them change their policy. A dead tech in someone's yard would make them change, I'm pretty sure of that.

Sadly, I'm relatively certain this isn't the first time something like this has happened with that company. Any company that sends people to enter your yard once a month is going to have issues with pets now and then, but it's not like people have much choice in gas companies, so bad customer satisfaction ratings aren't a real issue for them.

I wish they posted the part where he enters, I'm curious about whether there was a closed gate that he opened, or if the yard was just open like it is when he leaves.