John Weir

Personal feed of things I see and find interesting. The opinions expressed are my own. he/him

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a Senior Vice President of Upstream Portfolio Strategy at ExxonMobil.

I need to explain the relationship between your gas prices and our stock price, because I think people are confused and believe these are two different things.

They are the same thing. Observed from two different tax brackets.

You are paying $4.11 a gallon. That is up 29.5% from last year. In Kentucky, it is up 42.5%. In California, it is $5.89. You are paying roughly $940 more per year per vehicle than you were twelve months ago, and I need you to understand that we know this because we modeled it. We modeled it in Q3. We modeled it over lunch. The lunch was catered.

The model is called DEUGD. "Demand Elasticity Under Geopolitical Disruption". Thirty-one slides. I presented it to the board in a room with a Nespresso machine that takes pods we get at cost through a vendor partnership. The model tells us exactly how much more you will pay before you change your behavior.

The answer is that you don't change your behavior.

You get a second job. You stop buying ground beef. You canceled the pediatric dentist. You let the check engine light stay on for another month. You pick up a twelve-hour shift on a holiday you used to spend with your children. But you do not stop driving. We have forty years of data on this. The demand curve does not move. You are, and I mean this as a term of art, an inelastic asset class.

One-fifth of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. When the Strait is disrupted, Brent crude goes to $100 a barrel. When Brent goes to $100, our upstream portfolio generates an additional $11 billion in annual profit. Chevron gets $9.2 billion. The top 100 firms collectively earn $30 million per hour.

Per hour. That is not a metaphor. That is the wire transfer schedule. I can hear the notification on my phone. I have not turned it off. It is pleasant.

Last year, we produced 4.7 million barrels per day. Highest in forty years. We generated $52 billion in operating cash flow. We returned $37.2 billion to shareholders. Seventeen billion in dividends. Twenty billion in buybacks. Our CEO said on the earnings call — and the transcript is public — "ExxonMobil is a fundamentally stronger company than it was just a few years ago."

He said this on the same call where we disclosed the war-profit uplift model. The same call. He did not lower his voice. Nobody asked him to.

We are fundamentally stronger. You are paying $940 more per year. These are not unrelated facts. They are the same fact, observed from two different income brackets. I said this already. I will say it again. It is the load-bearing sentence of this entire confession.

I sit in a building in Spring, Texas. The building has a subsidized cafeteria. Wednesday is brisket day. The gas station across the street from the building charges $4.09 per gallon to the people who work there. I have never checked. I expense my fuel. The company pays for my gas with the money it made from raising your gas prices. That is called a closed-loop benefit structure. I did not name it. I did use it this morning.

We received billions in federal tax incentives last year. Congress debated removing them. The debate lasted four hours. The incentives lasted another fiscal year. The $940 your household pays is not tax-deductible. Our lobbying budget is. We spent millions on lobbying last year. The return on that investment was the incentives. I have seen worse ratios. I have never seen a better one.

There is a poster in the lobby. The poster says "Powering the World's Progress." I walk past it every morning. I have never once thought about what "progress" means in this sentence. I suspect it means the share price. The share price is $146. The share price was $108 before the Strait closed. The share price is up 35%. Your grocery bill is also up. These are both called "progress" but only one of them is on my poster.

We have an internal wellness initiative. It is called "ExxonMobil Thrives." It includes gym access, mental health days, and a quarterly mindfulness seminar led by a contractor we pay $40,000 per session. Last quarter the seminar was about managing stress during periods of global uncertainty. The global uncertainty they were referring to is the same global uncertainty that generated our $11 billion windfall. We are managing it well.

$37.2 billion to shareholders. $940 extra per household. $30 million per hour. Millions in lobbying. Billions in tax incentives.

The pipeline connects your gas tank to our dividend schedule. The pipeline is not leaking. The pipeline is not broken. The pipeline has never worked better. I would know. I built the model that monitors it. The model says you will keep paying.

You have not proven the model wrong yet.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.

Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”

[John Weir @weirja]

Going to be fascinating to see the impact of a significant reduction in the workforce on US healthcare options that are anchored on Corporate employment.

[John Weir @weirja]

@Sharat_Chander Nope. Funny tho.

[John Weir @weirja]

This made me sad. Our Service men and women should not be left feeling this way

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

This cartoon has never been more accurate than it is now.

[John Weir @weirja]

Nope. We have checks and balances. It’s good.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

If ANY judge ANYWHERE can block
EVERY Presidential order EVERYWHERE,
we do NOT have democracy,
we have TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY.

[John Weir @weirja]

@levie on #3. I cant help but think that some variation of old tech (JINI )+ API Gateways + LLM's will be the solution space for this - The Technology landscape will have caught up to Bill Joy (of Sun Microsystems fame) .

Or a CAN Bus model. https://t.co/QCNuupZm1G

[Dwight McKissic @pastordmack]

For those who have expressed outrage over my voting for Kamala Harris, in response to the MSNBC article that was published yesterday and has over 700, 000 views….please know that, anyone who has or will be voting for Donald J. Trump, I simply will not engage with you in a discussion surrounding my character, credibility, or whether or not I’m a Christian.

[John Weir @weirja]

@Sharat_Chander Speedy recovery!!

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

So proud of the talented athletes representing @TeamUSA at the @Paralympics! I'll be cheering them on and hope you will, too. 

[Alex Cole @acnewsitics]

Hey @RobertKennedyJr you forgot to delete this one.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Perfect 😂💀…..h/t @JRDuquette

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

A new day in Westminster has dawned...

[John Weir @weirja]

@Sharat_Chander @kc_dc Feel better

[Thomas Horrocks @thomaslhorrocks]

In light of Louisiana’s recent decision to require that the 10 commandments be posted in every public classroom, I’m reminded of this astute observation from Kurt Vonnegut.

[Liza Rosen @LizaRosen0000]

https://t.co/27QUoeBt24
According to the Palestinians and their supporters, by turning an empty desert land into a thriving city the Jews kicked Arabs out of their homes and displaced them.

Here is what the Palestinians don't want you to know:
In 1947 the Arabs who did not have a national identity at the time (only during the 1960s they decided to identify themselves as "Palestinians") became victims of their own agenda which was backed by the neighboring Arab countries.
They paid a heavy price for their own decision to try and ethnically cleanse the Jews who tried to prevent war and reached out for peace. Many left their homes and others were indeed forced to leave because of the war that the Arabs themselves initiated as they rejected the UN partition plan. The Arabs literally declared that their ultimate goal was not to establish a state but to "push the Jews into the sea". They had the opportunity to establish an Arab state, but they preferred to destroy their neighboring one for being Jewish.
The Jewish state won, the Arabs lost but did not learn a lesson and repeated their fatal mistake again and again over the years.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

A breathtaking speech by Miriam Novak at the UN General Assembly.
Don't miss a word!

For two thousand years we have lived among you, offering you our knowledge, discoveries and inventions.

At the UN Special General Assembly in New York, held at the request of the leaders of the European Union and the New Arab Bloc, the representative of Israel, Miriam Novak, spoke.

Standing at the podium, in front of the green marble wall of the main UN hall, Miriam Novak said into the microphone:

"Ladies and gentlemen! As you know, eighty years ago, Europe, led by Germany, carried out an ethnic purge: it exterminated almost all the Jews who lived there. French, Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians – all helped the fascists.

You killed at least six million Jews, including newborn babies. Each of them could have given the world children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so you can multiply the number of killed by four or five...

And now, when we are again plundered, beaten and killed in all your countries, and your courts release the murderers, you tell us that we have no right to defend ourselves?

We have no right to warn our enemies that we will respond to a new ethnic cleansing with an even more powerful strike?

Perhaps you can name another nation whose extermination is so fanatically sought by your new Iranian-led international community? And why?

For two thousand years, we have lived among you, offering you our knowledge, discoveries and inventions.

We have given you the alphabet, the Bible, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, the twelve apostles, Spinoza, Disraeli, Columbus, Newton, Nostradamus, Heine, Mendelssohn, Einstein, Singer, Eisenstein, Freud, Landau, Gershwin, Offenbach, Rubinstein, Saint-Saëns, Kafka, Lombroso, Montaigne, Mahler, Marcel Marceau, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yehudi Menuhin, Stefan Zweig, Arthur Miller, Maya Plisetskaya, Stanley Kubrick, Irving Berlin, Edward Teller, Lion Feuchtwanger, Paul Newman, Robert Oppenheimer, Benny Goodman, Eugène Ionesco, Imre Kálmán, Marcel Proust, Marc Chagall, Barbra Streisand, Claude Lelouch, Steven Spielberg, Anouk Aimée, Leonard Bernstein, Norbert Wiener, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Andrew Lloyd Webber and thousands of other scientists and educators.

Imagine how many such geniuses could have been born from the millions of Jews killed by you, and then from their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren!

But these unborn geniuses disappeared forever in crematoriums, burned synagogues, and mass graves.

So do you really think that your resolutions, boycotts and sanctions can bring us back to the gas chambers?

No, ladies and gentlemen! Having lived among you for two thousand years, we have had to adapt to you and learn not only your languages, but also some aspects of your psychology.

Otherwise, how would we have survived in Persia without Persian perfidy? In Spain without the Spanish cruelty? In Germany without German submission to discipline? In France without French avarice? In Poland without Polish vanity, and in Russia without the oaths and the Russian habit of court latrines, where one must squat and talk about one's spiritual greatness? — (Laughter in the room.)

"And that is why I will tell you frankly: yes, we are not angels. Among us there have been international crooks and gangsters, Lansky, Medoff and Epstein, thieves, looters, adventurers and even pedophiles.

But in all our common history, there has never been a Jewish Bogdan Khmelnitsky, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. There have never been Jewish Josef Mengele and Erik Koch, Jewish Adolf Eichmann and Idi Amin, Jewish Andrei Chikatilo and Li Zicheng, Jewish Jeffrey Dahmer and Jean Bokassa, Jewish Fritz Haarmann and Ted Bundy, Jewish Nikolai Dzhumagaliev and Albert Fish.

We have never made necklaces with human ears, never scalped, never eaten human flesh, never made soap with human fat, never made lampshades with human skin, never made mattresses with women's hair, never burned people in religious temples, and never killed children in gas chambers. Instead, we created things that changed the world for the better.

Drip irrigation, seawater desalination, Intel processors and Centrino and Core Duo platforms, the world's smallest DNA computer and the world's first USB flash drive, nanowire and camera pill, multiple sclerosis drug and exoskeleton, Google Glass for the blind and baby breathing monitor, The radar that can see through walls, the holographic reality artificial intelligence synthesizer, and hundreds of other wonderful things.

Representing only 0.2% of the world's population, we have given the world 32% of the Nobel Prize winners. Yes, I forgot to tell you: we have never consumed and do not consume the blood of Christian infants to make matzah. Already in 1913, three Orthodox experts on Judaism proved this at the famous Beilis trial in Kiev.

In 1962, the Second Vatican Council lifted our guilt for the crucifixion of Christ, and in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI declared that "the Christian cannot be anti-Semitic, we have the same roots."

In 2019, his successor, Pope Francis I, said that "every Christian has a Jew in him" and that "one cannot be a true Christian without acknowledging one's Jewish roots."

In addition, the head of the global Catholic Church said that "the covenant between God and Jews continues to apply" and "that anti-Semitism includes not only attacks on Jews, but also criticism of Israel."

Finally, in June 2020, the Rev. John Hagee, the leader of American Evangelical Christians, published his "Appeal to the World," in which he said simply and clearly, "Why do we, eight million patriotic American Christians, support Israel? Because God is on Israel's side! If a Christian says he doesn't like Jews, then his false Christianity is very dubious. God says, "I will bless those who bless Israel! I will curse those who curse Israel!"

And now I want to ask the European delegates in this room: who do you think you are? Are you Christians or not? When you pray to Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the holy apostles, are you not praying to the Jews? And when you say that you carry the image of Christ in your heart, do you not admit that you carry a Jew in your soul?

Even if you are a hard-core atheist, your ancestors were Christians for two thousand years, and therefore, Judaism is in your blood – whether you like it or not!

So, ladies and gentlemen. If you insist on the international boycott of Israel because you continue to hate Jews and want the total extermination of Jews on earth, then be consistent – start with yourselves, do seppuku! It will be an honest ethnic purge.

And now, as we say here in America, I have news for you. Now, after the Christians, it is the turn of the Muslims to get rid of anti-Semitism.

Yes, it won't be easy, but just as the Almighty helped humanity get rid of the bubonic plague, anthrax, cholera, and coronavirus, He will help you get rid of anti-Semitism.

You ask: why? Why has the Almighty brought us back to Israel and forced you to give up your desire to destroy us? For He has to have a purpose, doesn't He?

I will give you my personal opinion. For according to His purpose, every nation is to bring to mankind what it does best.

The French - cooks and perfumers.

The English and the Russians - writers and poets.

Italians - artists and musicians.

The Germans - soldiers and philosophers.

And we Jews - geniuses.

Geniuses who, in all fields, are advancing humanity from barbarism and idolatry to culture, humanism and technical progress. This is our mission, which we have been accomplishing for two thousand years, despite everything!

So whether we have genetic, torsional, nuclear, tectonic, cosmic, or other defense weapons, that's none of your business! Whether you allow us to have defensive weapons or not, we don't care.

As one of the founders of our state, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, once said: "Whether you like us or not, we don't care, we arrived before you and we will leave after you."

[John Weir @weirja]

Nice to see more efforts to make building quantum applications easier for us mere mortals!! https://t.co/BlKo0XdIDo

[John Weir @weirja]

@goldengateblond I’m in. Dolly is a Treasure