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Eastwood

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Eastwood

  1. 9 hours ago, Chewbacca said:
    12 hours ago, dieucla98 said:
    That's not how math works.
    Edit: Or you're leaving out a key piece of info such as "I now have a homestead exemption or ag exemption or..."

    Yeah, that math don't math unless he's withholding information.

    My first guess was that he has, or just received, the 65+ exemption. 

    I am originally from, and still have family in, small town Texas. I can’t think of a single small town in Texas that I’ve been to, that isn’t a vacation location or commuter town to a big city, that is “nice.” They are all filled with equal parts impoverished people and retirees who made a life in that town when it was possible in the 60s and 70s. People will point to Fredericksburg or Round Top to claim small town Texas is great. Not the Gillette or Tivoli or Corsicana type towns. The towns that industry forgot. 

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  2. 3 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

    Impact would be 5 plus years down the road.   A whole new world by then.

    I am of the opinion that this sentiment is more of a gamble than a lot of you think. 5 years ago was 2019. Natural gas demand has only increased since then. Renewables continue to earn market share domestically, but abroad is where the meat of the effect of this policy will have on global climate goals. Developing countries want cheap energy and care less than we do whether it is clean or not. LNG was our opportunity to incentivize a cleaner transition. 

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  3. 1 minute ago, bolverk said:

    Thanks for the thoughtful, logical response. I largely agree with everything you've posted. I'm not opposed at all to the idea that natural gas is a good, less-polluting bridge. 

    What I would like to know is how many planned projects this decision affects. I understand that there's a significant timeline from planning to construction to operation -- almost a decade, I believe (maybe a slight exaggeration, but not by much). Would a project that's planned today be up and running by 2026 or even by the end of the decade?

    Is this something we should be concerned about in the short term vis-a-vis Europe's energy situation? Or is this something that's more long-term?

    I don’t know the exact number of affected projects, but the fallout I am comfortable attesting to is that the longer this stays in place, the more investment sits on the sidelines to see how it shakes out. A project that could have been approved during the freeze would most likely be online by 2030. Possibly at early as 2027 depending on what stage the project was in at the time of freeze. 

    As Hate mentioned, there are projects that have dollars already invested that are affected by this. Land purchased, contracts entered into, gas committed, pipe committed, etc. Upstream and midstream companies will now pull back on commitments, investors will want to wait before committing money to feasibility and economic analyses, land that would have otherwise been acquired in prime export locations may get purchased by other industries, and overall money just goes elsewhere and it most likely isn’t to green initiatives. 

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  4. LNG export facilities take literally years to go from proposal to FID to being online at full capacity. These facilities that are still being built were approved long ago. Under the Trump administration, EPA approval took ~150 days and it is 300+ under Biden. That’s just for EPA approval. A complete freeze on new approvals for just the election year would probably be a multiple year setback for the industry as a whole. We will maximize exports by 2026 and hit a ceiling that will quickly be eclipsed by Qatar (was #1 in exports until we passed them) and Russia. 

    Look, I get it. Paris accords, fossil fuels bad with zero redeeming qualities and no way to make it work with our climate goals, yadda yadda. The reality is that natural gas is a bridge fuel to net zero. It is 60% cleaner than coal and a cheap transition fuel for developing countries. It’s dirt cheap here in the US and that’s why it became such a hot export. The most likely fallout of this is that countries who are hostile to the US or fund NGOs/terrorist organizations that are hostile to the US will reclaim lost market share and profit at our expense. Additionally, countries who need cheap energy will either delay shuttering coal plants they intended to replace with natural gas or even fire up new coal plants. And do you think Qatar and Russia have the same environmental regulations we do? Do you think they are monitoring for methane leaks like we are in the US? Limiting flaring? Protecting water sources around export facilities?

    This may actually be a net negative for climate goals. It reeks of election year pandering and won’t serve overall global climate goals. It only soothes the handwringing at home. 

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  5. 44 minutes ago, The Earl of Texas said:

    Seems like a terrible hire but the Third aggy Law of Thermodynamics states the graph will intersect at “Elko was Bjork’s last mistake for us” and “Wow tOSU is doing pretty great” in 36 months.

    There’s also that, right? Bjork leaves A&M and Ohio State wins a national championship 3-4 years in, Aggies will have the opportunity to once again reflect and ask themselves whether it is the school’s culture, rather than the people they hire, that is the problem. And the result will be the same as it ever was. 

  6. A couple of days ago, I was debating college football with a coworker and talking about how almost every team seems to wander the desert for a decade or so after long periods of success with the exception of Ohio State, who seem to always be a contender. 

    But hiring Bjork is one way to start a desert era. Congrats to the Buckeyes. 

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  7. That area was originally closed in, but the Dart Bowl Enchilada Aftermath Incident of 2008 led to some unplanned “remodeling.” People pay good money for that kind of wall demo, so silver linings and all that. 

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  8. Team Heat Pump. Aux kicks on occasionally, but having a two story helps during defrost cycle because upstairs is usually 10 degrees warmer than downstairs, so the air going across the coils to defrost the unit is hot enough to not require the aux to kick on. If anything, the aux kicks on for about 10 minutes every other hour. And this is with an 11 year old Goodman compressor and an 8 year old air handler. 

  9. 1 hour ago, GenXer said:

    I learned everything I need to know about plagiarism from Cemetry Gates.

    If you must write prose and poems the words you use should be your own
    Don't plagiarise, don't take "on loan"
    'Cause there's always someone, somewhere with a big nose, who knows
    And who trips you up and laughs when you fall
    Who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall
    You say: "'Ere long done do does did"
    Words which could only be your own
    And then produce the text from whence was ripped
    Some dizzy whore, 1804*

    * Source is genius.com

     

    1 hour ago, BeardIP said:

    image.png.261337af7ef3dbc4a34d18c1b2cc2394.png

    Yeah, was this before or after one of the best metal guitar solos of all time?

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  10. 1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:


    Only if you didn’t advise your client about the potential, but remote, risk, and let them make a business decision.
    Good contract review isn’t hard: 1) these terms are really important, let’s get them right, or be willing to walk away; 2) these terms are somewhat important, let’s negotiate on them and maybe use them for some horse-trading (maybe you give on a couple of them, in exchange for a price break); and 3) these terms carry some remote risk (yes, this term provides that if every EU country is conquered by Tanzania in a war, the contract is terminated…I think there’s a pretty low risk of that happening, so you need to make the business decision of whether you can live with that risk), so decide if you can live with that risk. Note that the overall value of the contract has some bearing on the amount of risk to be tolerated.
    Generally, if you spend a shitload of time haggling over category 3, you’re either a dumb client or a bad lawyer (spoiler: there are plenty of both out there).
    Oh, and writing in plain English isn’t hard. But a lot of lawyers who are addicted to using forms that have been used and re-used for 20 years have a hard time with it. I’ve written good contracts on one yellow legal pad page on the hood of my truck. You will do x, and in consideration, I will do y, by z date. Yes, sometimes it’s specialized enough where you need lots of defined terms…so use your definitions section to make the meaning plain and clear. That’s what it’s there for.
    Back to the topic: the SCOTUS will fuck this up 5-4 or 6-3, it’s just a question of how they’ll fuck it up.

    YMMV by which industry you are working in. For my industry, there is usually an imbalance of power in negotiations between my side and the opposing side for prime assets. "Just walk away from the table" isn't an option because I'm trying to secure rights that several other parties are competing over. It becomes a Game Theory exercise of who will pay the price to entry and who will eat the bad contract. Sometimes the price is so high and the terms so bad that nobody will accept (and that bar keeps getting lower and lower, setting precedents that make my job even harder). Sometimes the only way forward is to endure 6 months of haggling over the minutia, including a specific word being used here or there. Therefore, it becomes my job to find a way to make the language as acceptable as possible without running them off and I find myself going back and forth with opposing counsel over what should be obvious language. If I don't, there are two primary negative outcomes: 1. I hold firm and a competitor eats the bad contract. Bad for me from an optics standpoint, even if the competitor falls flat on their face. 2. I eat the bad contract and the liability bomb goes off in the future. Bad for me, bad for the company.

     

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  11. 55 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Ironically that’s why I like negotiating with lawyers on the other side- they get so wound around the axle about language that’s only disputed in catastrophic situations that they inadvertently wind up reopening commercial terms with real value.

    Because in the event that those catastrophic situations happen, guess who catches the blame for there being "ambiguity" in the document?

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  12. 22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    The Hawking bit:

    1) entirely untrue.

    2) really fucking funny.

    I mean, REALLY funny.  Makes you wish it was true.

    That is some old school Mad Magazine, late 80’s-early 90’s SNL style comedy. 

    Hilarious. 

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  13. Just now, Wilcox Cummingtonite said:

    Exactly. Last time we lost a heartbreaker like this we wandered the desert for 15 years. Let’s hope this time is different. 
     

    These chances don’t happen often.

    That was because the head coach panicked and completely shifted his offensive strategy away from the spread to the power offense that he just watched curb stomp his team after recruiting the #1 spread QB in the nation who hadn’t taken a snap under center since junior high. 
     

    No, I’m totally over that. It was years ago…

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