Happy Pride Month -- June 1, 2023

Locator: 44812B.

Day 1: Saturday, May 27, 2023

Today, day 6:

• biking weather, scale 1 - 10: an 11 (eleven)
  
• a swimming day later this afternoon

Headline of the day: analysts miss ADP (jobs) growth number by 54%. 

Analysis: we're in a recession. 

Reading:

• The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, chapter 6, part 2.
• "Words Fail," Rachel Avia, The New Yorker, May 29, 2023, p. 42.
• the tortured bond of Alice Sebolld and Anthony Broadwater, the man wrongfully convicted of her rape.

Most egregious use of a word:

• media referring to Elizabeth Holmes as an entrepreneur on the day she reported to prison, to begin her 11-year sentence.

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Around The Net
Debt ceiling: in the US Senate; the Dems need nine GOP votes to avert a default

• $35 trillion debt (or thereabouts, in round numbers)
• GOP: $2.1 billion is too much to spend on the homeless and our military vets. Link here (temporarily purposely taken off line).

Huge: XOM and CVX shareholders -- show us the money! Imagine that. Link here. This may get a stand-alone post later:

Shareholder anger over the pace of Big Oil’s action on climate change may have peaked, judging by the latest US proxy voting season.

At their annual meetings Wednesday, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. comfortably saw off resolutions that would have forced them to align with the Paris Agreement and reduce fossil-fuel production.

Support for the proposals put forward by activist investor group Follow This plunged to about 10% of the shareholder base from more than half a year earlier. 

Similar motions received more backing from shareholders of European majors BP Plc, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE, but still fell well short of the 50% required to pass. For much of the past decade, the climate movement’s shareholder activism was buttressed by weak investor returns. 

It was easier for Wall Street to get behind the idea that Big Oil should rein in production when many flagship projects were over-budget and needed high crude prices just to break even.

EPD: announces completion of a 400-MMcfd expansion of its Acadian Haynesville Extension natural gas pipeline, increasing its capacity to 2.5 bcfd. Also: 

Enterprise’s 1.65-billion lb/year polymer-grade propylene PDH 2 plant is also scheduled for completion in second-quarter 2023 at its Mont Belvieu complex in Chambers County, Texas.

S&B Engineers and Constructors Ltd. is performing engineering, procurement, and construction for the plant using Honeywell UOP technology

The project includes a “sizeable” C3 splitter column, which S&B installed in pieces onsite using a specialized gantry crane. Other scope includes a modularized reactor section, compression equipment, multiple fired heaters, and associated infrastructure and utilities.

Throwing in the towel: NYC mayor will give city workers four day weekends -- link here.

Buffett, put sad face emoji here: HP and HPQ.

• memo to self: call Warren Buffett later today to advise him on how he could really spur investor return

Memorial Day weekend:

• travel by automobile: down slightly
• travel by air: breaks through the 2019 seven-day average

Charles Barkley: never ceases to amaze.