The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): 09/30/23

Saturday, September 30, 2023

The Age Of Innocence -- September 30, 2023

Locator: 45607BOOKS.

Government shutdown? If averted, credit goes to Dems. 8:02 p.m. CT, Saturday, September 30, 2023. Adulting is hard. [Later: crisis averted for 45 days?]

Hurricanes: global winds, dynamic. Looks like both storms are deteriorating. It appears the storm in NYC is tapering off.

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The Book Page

I've always said the problem with high school and college is one has to take subjects for which one may not be prepared; that is most evident in literature.

Years ago, when I was reading voraciously, 2004 to 2011, let's say, I went through a very short Edith Wharton period, and then lost interest.

But having just read Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton, I am once again fascinated with Edith Wharton. So, those coming here to read about the Bakken will be upset, I suppose, for awhile, with my notes about this novelist.

I do believe I've read Wharton's A Backward Glance, but I do not remember the particulars. So, time to read The Age Of Innocence. From wiki:

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton.

It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review.

Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize.

Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters'".

The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she was already established as a major author in high demand by publishers.

After WWI, Edith Wharton said she needed "a momentary escape."

So, time to order from Amazon.

The MRO Bailey Oil Field -- September 30, 2023

Locator: 45606B.

The Bailey oil field is tracked here.

I'll never quit blogging about the Bakken but if I did quit, I would replace the blog with a blog on MRO activity in the Bailey oil field, North Dakota. Just saying. But I guess that’s still sort of like the Bakken. But different.

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On Another Note

For the record, I have more posts than GasBuddyGuy has tweets.

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On Another Note

Nothing to do with the Bakken, but for the archives, I've just about had enough with EU regulators. Now, the EU is upset with Nvidia.

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On Another Note

My wife seems to be able to drive to any location in the local area in a third of the time it would take me.

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On Another Note

I have to laugh. Some folks think the government shutdown was due to Feinstein. LOL. 100% due to GOP. The WSJ. [Later: GOP does their job.]

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On Another Note

Reality sucks.

Softer inflation.

Underlying inflation cooled notably this summer, with price pressures moderating for a third consecutive month in August.

If that continues this fall, it would strengthen the case for the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates.

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption expenditures price index, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.4% last month, largely reflecting energy costs.

Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose just 0.1% in August, the weakest monthly increase since 2020, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Over the three months through August, core prices rose at a 2.2% annualized rate. If that trend continues in the coming months, inflation would be running very close to the Fed’s 2% target.

But higher energy prices pushed up overall inflation last month, highlighting why officials aren’t ready to declare victory.

Weekly Progress Report -- Duolingo Spanish -- September 30, 2023

Locator: 45605MOVIES.

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The Movie Page

In The WSJ this week:

The terrifically tense movie “The Train” (1964), directed by John Frankenheimer, needs no special pleading. Memorably shot in black-and-white and spanning several genres (war, heist, action), the film is a fictionalized recounting of real events—the looting of French art treasures (specifically Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubist paintings) by Germany during World War II. But beyond its abundant visual rewards lurks a thoughtful questioning of who art is for and what price is too high to pay for its preservation. So how apt, if perhaps coincidental, that the picture’s re-release on home video in a new 4K restoration from Kino Lorber (a UHD/Blu-ray combo pack) comes just when the subject of looted art is once more, sadly, in the news.

Media brim these days with stories of Russian looting and cultural destruction in Ukraine, revived calls for the British Museum to repatriate to Greece the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles, and museums and private collectors returning dubiously obtained Italian, Middle Eastern and African arts to their native lands. And earlier this month, it was reported that works by Egon Schiele once owned by the Austrian Jewish collector Fritz Grünbaum and later appropriated by the Nazis were confiscated from three U.S. museums, followed shortly after by stories that other institutions were finally returning different pieces by the artist to Grünbaum’s heirs.

By juxtaposing important philosophical issues alongside impressive cinematic flourishes, “The Train” has long ensured its enduring appeal. It was among the top 20 highest-grossing movies in North America in 1965—not bad for a picture shot in unglamorous monochrome with just one Hollywood star (Burt Lancaster) and an ending that remains one of the bleakest ever released by a major American studio (United Artists, in this case). According to Frankenheimer, who died in 2002, that final sequence was frequently eliminated when the movie was broadcast on network television, before cable and streaming were options. But as he sagely noted, the film’s central point is undermined absent that gut punch.

“The Train” starts with an eerie calm as a Wehrmacht officer views masterpieces by Gauguin, Picasso and Renoir amid a cache of similar works in Paris on the night of Aug. 2, 1944. That mood is quickly shattered, though, by his announcement to a diminutive female curator that the best of these paintings are to be hastily packed and shipped to Berlin in advance of the Allies’ imminent arrival in the French capital. And from that point till the end of this two hour and 13 minute film, the heart-pumping pace never flags, the intensity evenly divided between the visceral (explosions, executions, gun battles, racing locomotives, etc.) and the cerebral (intrigue, ruses, double-crosses, and the like).

Available on Amazon Prime Video (probably not the latest release, but it will eventually be there, I assume) -- again, making Amazon Prime a great, great option.

Week 39: September 25, 2023 -- October 1, 2023

Locator: 45604TOPSTORY.

Top story:

Senator Diane Feinstein dies at age 90.
GOP “confusion” risks another government shutdown [Later: government shutdown averted; Dems force “clean funding bill”; funding for 45 days.]
UAW expands strike; playing rope-the-dopes well
Trump "organization" deemed liable for fraud in NYC; iconic icon in dustbin of history

Top international non-energy story:

Russian-Ukraine war continues

for all the "propaganda" that either side is winning, in fact, there was virtually no change in land lost / land won in past year; has become one large stalemate and no end in sight

Top international energy story: