Off The Net For Awhile -- August 3, 2021

I've hit a wall. 

I have several posts in draft ready to be posted but they don't have anything to do with the Bakken so once I put some more Bakken posts up those other non-Bakken posts will be posted.

I doubt I will be off the net very long, but at least for now, I'm taking a break. 

I'm sitting here watching a Lana Del Rey video laughing my head off. I love it when LDR is smiling, having a great time, perhaps before her dark period, I don't know.

And when she's good, she's incredible, and her fans would tell me she's always good. LOL. She drops a lot of southern California "jargon." I doubt I catch very much of it, and what I do catch generally takes several sittings listening to her songs, watching her videos. I would give examples but I don't want my California readers think I'm really that "uninformed," for lack of a better word. 

Things that fascinate me but concern me not:

• EVs
• the numbers simply do not add up (and people much smarter than I must know that)
  
• Covid-19
• Louisiana is most fascinating: fourth wave; deaths not yet tracking new cases
• Arkansas was the poster child for failed policy two weeks ago and today? No one even mentions Arkansas and Covid-19 in the same sentence; second wave; deaths tracking new cases
• Sweden: needs to be fact-checked, studied, but it's being reported that mask-free Sweden is trending toward zero Covid-19-related deaths; corroborates what I've been saying all along; everyone will eventually be vaccinated and/or test positive for Covid-19, one variant or another; twenty years from now, it's very possible, the Schumer/Cuomo/Fauci handling of the virus was the worst possible choice
  

Things that no longer interest me in the least:

• global warming

Folks with the least job security:

• Biden / Kamala Harris staff
• the clock runs out in less than three years and it's hard to believe the former will serve a second term;
• if he does serve a second term, does he do so with a new VP?
• I would assume their staffs are maintaining robust relationships with DC movers and shakers;

Investing: chips.

• chips: something is going on but I don't know what; better said, "I don't know why."
• AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Apple
• one chip company on "no one's radar" -- an enigma
  
• something just popped up with AAPL: on a "red" day for the market, AAPL is having one of its best days in weeks. Something's up. Sometimes it takes decades, billions of dollars, a bit of luck, to finally break through. MarcketWatch, within the hour, just posted a most interesting op-ed piece which lays this out.
  

Investing: pharmaceuticals, vaccines -- 

• something tells me Big Pharma stumbled into something beyond their wildest imaginations. Two companies just increased the prices of their Covid-19 vaccines. I think a lot of folks think that these vaccines are free to the public. They aren't. Someone is paying for them. The initial series (one jab or two) will be followed by annual boosters. All those folks who are vaccinated and experienced no adverse effects (99%+) will eagerly get their boosters. 

Oil: what can I say? It's a fool's errand to predict the price of oil.