Storm the Field

HCAD hitting everybody in Houston with the max this year.

Yep, I said last week that Bregman's timing was totally off. His hardest hit line drives have all gone foul. When he gets hittable pitches, he's swinging early.

Looks like you can get the PS5 version of Fallen Order for $20 at Walmart of Best Buy or for $29 on Amazon. I doubt you "need" to have played it to enjoy Jedi Survivor (most AAA sequels these days have a recap for people who missed the original), but it's a good game and worth playing on its own.

Final trailer out yesterday.

Another day, another perfect opportunity to repost this:

Markets seem to think there's traction on the XOM deal. PXD stock up 6% today.

Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) = CLF/CNP Civilian Labor Force (CLF) = All persons 16 or older that are considered employed or unemployed. Basically all persons that are either working or looking for/available to work. CLF excludes people who choose not to work (including retirees), have given up on looking for work, and people unable to work. Civilian Non-Institutional Population (CNP) = All persons age 16 or older, excluding active duty military, incarcerated persons, and those in residential care facilities. So, to answer your question, LFPR is effected negatively by disability. Per BLS, only like 21% of persons with a disability are employed. The remaining 79% do not work and have either no ability to work or any intent to work, and are not considered part of the labor force. While that sounds dramatic, the same holds true for non-disabled. The vast majority of persons considered "not in the labor force", whether disabled or not, have no intent to be employed and are not looking for work. We're at historically low levels of U-6 unemployment, which is currently 6.7%. All time low was 6.5% back in December. U-6 is the "regular" headline unemployment (3.5%) plus individuals who would like to work but have given up looking, and individuals working part-time that want, but are unable to find, full-time employment. By comparison, U-6 was up to almost 17% in the depths of the GFC in 2009, and took close to 6 years to get below 10.0%. It stood at 7.0% in February 2020 before COVID.

There's usually 1 or 2 times each season where we go through a rough patch and just can't seem to figure out how to win, and I decide to quit watching on TV until I see that we had an easy W. I simply get tired of spending my leisure time being frustrated. Rarely ever lasts more than a game or two. Not sure it's ever happened 9 games into the season. Woof.

Stories out today that XOM has held preliminary talks to buy PXD for nearly $50B. Holy hell.

Some other interesting nuggets from today's report: Black UE: 5.0%, lowest ever reported. Participation Rate up to 62.6%, highest in 3 years but still 1.0% below pre-COVID. Digging deep into the data, it boils down to Whites 55+ leaving the workforce. Prime-Age (25-54) Participation up to 83.1%, highest since 2001. It took just 3 years for Prime-Age to fully recover this time around. By comparison, after the GFC, it took nearly 13 years.

March jobs report comes in pretty close to expectations. Markets now expecting one final .25 hike in May. 236K (est. 230K) U-3: 3.5% (est 3.6%) Wage Growth: 0.3% MOM, 4.2% YOY (down from 4.6% last month).

God do I love the businessman's special games, especially on a "Fucking Finally!" day like today. Lunch at Truth followed by a weekday afternoon at MMP with 3 close co-workers in my season seats. Hard to beat.

Lol, just re-watched Bregman's hit this game. Missed it originally. Season in a nutshell so far. Solid drive to the Crawford Boxes. Misses a HR by 1/4 inch, ball careens right into the LF's glove as he's running towards infield. Thrown out at 2B by a good 4-5 steps.

Woof, just noticed that Pena has overtaken Bregman for lowest BA in the lineup. 0/15 over the last 3. Pena: 4/25 (.160) with 2 RBI, 1 2B, 0 HR. 2 BB/7 K. Bregman: 4/24 (.167) with 0 RBI, 0 2B, 0 HR, 3 BB/7 K. Guys, I think I may have found an issue. Hear me out, but there's a school of thought in advanced baseball theory that says you don't really want to have the top 2 spots in your lineup be absolutely atrocious.

Dusty post-game: "I had a plan to have Maldy hit a HR there, but we didn't execute. Sometimes that's the way it goes."

With the caveat that the season is only 6 days old, this is just bad team baseball right now: Starting pitching has been average. Bullpen has faltered at exactly the wrong moments. When we've been tied late, we've been the ones to break so far this season. Offense is AWOL outside of the 3-5 spots in the lineup. With the exception of Tuck and Alvarez, we're a slap-hitting singles team so far (when not striking out). In the bottom quarter of the league in 2B (3), HR (4), SLG (.307). Clutch hits just ain't coming, as we're averaging 9 LOB/game (tied for 2nd to worst in MLB). The AAA replacement players were using at 2B and OF aren't just failing to contribute with their bats, they're fielding poorly too.

Breaking: Permian Acreage Still Expensive. Announced yesterday that Ovintiv is selling their remaining Bakken acreage and going all-in on the MIdland Basin. Dropping $4.3B to buy up 65K acres from 3 EnCap companies (Black Swan, Piedra, and PetroLegacy). 4.3B/65K = ~$66K/acre.

Quite a interesting ride between stops at $80 on 3/3 and then again on 4/3. Who knew you could pack both an international banking crisis and an OPEC surprise cut into just 30 days?

Have a 3-day trip to NOLA with several other couples coming up next weekend. Haven't been back since a bachelor party in 2020, literally the weekend before COVID ground everything to a halt. Been close to a decade since I've been for a "relaxing" weekend (vs. guys trip/bachelor party). Need to catch up on this thread for some dining ideas. We're doing a private group dinner at Calcasieu one night, but so far, that's pretty much the only meal that's been pre-planned.

Fallen Order was great, and it sounds like Jedi Survior will be a very solid sequel. One thing I wished they'd updated, which it doesn't sounds like they did, is that I wish all the collectibles in the game actually had functional effects rather than just cosmetic. Like getting a certain poncho would provide increased defense or health or you could tweak your lightsaber configuration to get additional damage or elemental effects or something.

Bout to be monsoon season in H Town. ~5 inches expected between Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning.

First game of the year where I had my group's season tickets. Glad to be back in the hallowed grounds of MMP, but that's about it for what I enjoyed today. Worst 5-9 batting order I've seen the Astros roll out in a long while. I know Dusty has his hands pretty tied with Altuve and Brantley out, but yeesh. Watching the rookies go up there and K looking with men on base gets old pretty quick. Throw in that they intend to give Yordan frequent days off and we're in for some very lopsided batting orders these first 50 games or so. It's actually pretty impressive that we're 2-2. CWS stranding the bases loaded a dozen times certainly helped. We have a total of 4 XBH thru 36 innings and have struck out 41 times. Luck remains elusive as well. Not getting any of those "weak shot down the line that barely stays fair and rolls into the corner for a stand-up double." Bregman's timing is totally fucked at the moment. Swinging ahead or behind of everything. Finally crushed a solid line drive today and of course it went 5 feet left of the fowl pole. Far from hitting the panic button yet. Need to get that first good solid ass-whooping in and get our mojo flowing.

OPEC+ announces a surprise new round of production cuts through the end of the year. Led by Saudi (500K), Iraq (210K), Kuwait (150K), and UAE (145K). Several other countries cutting by 50K or so. Total cuts amount to about 1.15M barrels a day. IN addition, Russia is extending its current "temporary" 500k cut through the end of the year (not that I think they have much choice regardless). Almost every analyst I follow was expecting them to stay the course at tomorrow's meeting. Quite an unexpected outcome.

SIAP, but Russia is coming up on an impressive milestone. Within a day or two, they'll have lost their 10,000th piece of equipment. Currently sitting at 9,942 destroyed/abandoned/captured as of the latest update from the Dutch OSINT group Oryx. https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html