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In my 25+ years of being a Brewers fan, we had two teams that were capable of winning the pennant: 2018 and 2019. Someday there might be another one, but for now Stearns is the only Brewers GM in 40 years who has given us a real shot at reaching the promised land. You could maybe make an argument for the ‘08 or ‘11 teams if they had gotten luckier or avoided injuries, but I put them on a lower tier below the Stearns teams.

Oh, I guess government jobs are a different world. Yeah gotta check all the boxes on those applications or it will lead to an auto-rejection. Even if the cover letter just says "see my resume" haha. I was on a couple of hiring committees when I had a university job. I've never seen a process that was so perfectly designed to reject all of the candidates that would actually do the job well.

I would interpret that one as a red flag. Who is going to waste the time with that on an initial application?

It sucks that the Badgers have been an embarrassment for so long. On the Kraken-Canes broadcast the other night they showed the team photo of the 2009 Badgers with Derek Stepan and Justin Schultz (who were facing each other). Brought back some fond memories of the good years.

Unfortunately the past 3 years does not predict the next 3 years. We may have already burned the peak of both Burnes and Woodruff. It's frustrating to watch the Phillies make the run that we should have made with Burnes and Woodruff, but you need more than that, and you need some luck.

Unfortunately the past 3 years does not predict the next 3 years. We may have already burned the peak of both Burnes and Woodruff. It's frustrating to watch the Phillies make the run that we should have made with Burnes and Woodruff, but you need more than that, and you need some luck.

It's what separates us from the Diamondbacks, but far does it separate us from any of the 12 teams that made the playoffs? We're in a deadball era, Burnes and Woodruff are certainly in the top tier of MLB starters, but there are more like 20-25 starters who could be placed in that bucket, not 5-10. And there are more and more of them coming up from the minors every year. Burnes and Woodruff certainly have the potential to do in the postseason what Nola and Wheeler are doing for Philadelphia. In fact, they might have done that in the 2021 playoffs if that hadn't run into the Braves, who had the rotation to match them.

It's what separates us from the Diamondbacks, but far does it separate us from any of the 12 teams that made the playoffs? We're in a deadball era, Burnes and Woodruff are certainly in the top tier of MLB starters, but there are more like 20-25 starters who could be placed in that bucket, not 5-10. And there are more and more of them coming up from the minors every year. Burnes and Woodruff certainly have the potential to do in the postseason what Nola and Wheeler are doing for Philadelphia. In fact, they might have done that in the 2021 playoffs if that hadn't run into the Braves, who had the rotation to match them.

Housing prices are clearly going to come down, it's just a matter of time. I'm throwing a ton of cash into savings to wait for the deals at the end of the upcoming recession when prices are low and rates have gone back down. In an ideal world the vacation rental market crashes as well...fingers crossed.

This discussion started with a number of very serious concerns about the current and future state of the oil supply. The issues with renewables are certainly not trivial but compared with the status quo the future looks promising. And as noted by others, renewables are already cheaper and the gap will continue to grow as the technologies scale. If you want to look at a place that knows how to scale things quickly, look at China. EV sales recently surpassed 20% (25% if you include PHEVs). They are 2-3 years ahead of their targets. Now that the "inflation reduction act" has passed we're already seeing billions of dollars invested in battery factories. So it's just a matter of how fast the transition is at this point and how close we get to fully electric (75%? 85%? 95%). It's closer than you think. Other states are starting to follow California in banning gas car sales after 2035. I think we're maybe 10-15 years from seeing gas stations starting to close due decreased demand. Most of them will be gone by the 2040s. Imagine telling someone in the year 2005 that Blockbuster Video would cease to exist in 2020...

The truth is that in order to hit the CO2 emission targets, there needs to be BOTH electrification of the vehicle fleet AND at least a 30% reduction in miles driven. So you're right in that we can't just swap in EVs and call it a day. And I also agree that the battery supply + battery waste are going to become issues, especially as time goes on. Methane still releases a ton of CO2 so it will only be useful in limited applications. Hydrogen is intriguing but producing the hydrogen without releasing CO2 is challenging. I would imagine both of those getting used in some settings for trucking/heavy machinery. Nuclear...again, I agree that we should be doing way more nuclear than we are right now. But the truth is that right now it's cheaper to do wind and solar than build new nuclear. At least we have delayed closing down some nuclear facilities...that's a small win. Otherwise, I don't know what to say. The political dilemma is that we need massive CO2 emissions reductions while not making people feel like the quality of life has been disrupted. So EVs it is. In other news, did anyone else see PepsiCo's earnings report? Increased revenue and profit despite a decrease in sales. Sure adds fuel to the argument that inflation is mostly corporate price gouging.

Remember, the previous president basically said "drill baby drill" and it still didn't happen. Anyway, we did this to ourselves and I have zero sympathy. By "this" I mean that we let global capitalism run free without any concern to the consequences. I could list a dozen examples but the most obvious one is that when vehicles got more efficient we took all of that efficiency and turned it into massively large trucks and SUVs at a time when gas prices were relatively cheap. We did it because it was "what consumers wanted". Now consumers want low gas prices for their huge vehicles and the gas prices will never be low again because the price is set on the global market and every country in the world is trying to get cheap oil. Nobody wants to invest in more drilling or refinement--again, the ship has sailed. You can't retrofit refineries for cleaner energy like they did with coal power plants. Meanwhile, the price of lithium is going to soar and there is a huge amount of money to be made investing in mining and processing EV battery components. We'll be thanking ourselves times a million in a decade that we took a hit right now and finally gave EVs the kick they needed to take off. And from the consumer perspective it's a pretty obvious decision to buy a fuel efficient vehicle or an EV at this time. I saw that regular gas was back to $5.50 this morning and I laughed as I drove by the gas station in my EV. I didn't even have to mention "climate change" for the above to be true, but once the climate impacts start getting really bad in the 2030s-40s the push for green energy is only going to be more massive than it currently is.

The purpose of the strategic reserve is to buy low and sell high, so I don't have a problem with it. I do think we've made some terrible strategic decisions in this country when it comes to handing the transition between fossil fuels and renewables. We haven't been as dumb as Germany at least, but we haven't ramped up renewables and EVs fast enough to compensate for dwindling investment in oil production. Personally I'm happy that I don't buy much gas anymore, because I agree that the price is probably never going below $4-$5 again except maybe in this nasty recession which is now inevitable.

OPEC did not vote to directly cut production, they cut the production cap by 2 million barrels/day which still leaves current production 1 million barrels/day short of the cap. It was more of a symbolic vote than something that will actually move the needle too much. The Russian oil is still making it to market and probably will continue to do so.

MLS is largely a pyramid scheme. Existing owners are mostly making more money from expansion fees than gate or TV revenue. Only a couple of the MLS franchises are profitable -- Seattle, Atlanta, and maybe a couple of the new teams that are still drawing well. The franchises also have to pay money TO the league in order to fund operations. The league has enough momentum and rich owners to carry on, but if they really wanted to be successful in the long term, I agree they should be more innovate (at least from an American sports perspective). Unfortunately, nobody is going to pay a $100 million franchise fee that comes with the risk of being relegated to the NWSL, but one can dream... As for stadiums, again, this is America, part of owning a pro sports team is that you have to get the local taxpayers to build you a stadium. You don't want to be a tenant at some other billionaire's publicly-funded stadium.

Hahahaha. Why???? Even a Level-2 at a gas station is pretty much worthless. I sometimes use Level-2 chargers at restaurants or in parking garages, that gets me up to a full charge in 2-3 hours (I have a plug-in hybrid so a full charge is about 20-25 miles in EV mode). Edit: from a web search it appears those 120V chargers were installed back in 2011, probably as a publicity stunt. They recently installed a Level-3 charger for the first time.

Mortgage rates have plateaued (and are now falling slightly) so I don't think we're going to see any dramatic decline in the housing market, other than the seasonal slowdown. I'm sure it will go right back to being insane again next spring. The massive explosion in rent prices is only further tipping the scales in favor of more people wanting to own rather than rent. I do think we're likely to see a construction boom again as materials costs have plunged and housing remains scarce.

Yeah, round 1 of inflation is over. I'm still worried about another energy crisis. It's almost guaranteed for Europe this winter, but even beyond that there is no excess supply anywhere. Any disruption is going to send gas back to $5 or more. The glut of raw materials is a very good thing for easing the housing crisis...interest rates will surely suppress home prices but rental prices are absurdly high right now. It will take a while to build enough new units to make a dent there.

I love how emboldened this front office has become. I think Mark A has given Stearns the green light to do whatever he wants and they no longer even pretend to care about optics. The idea that Doug Melvin would have 'won' this trade deadline is such a joke. He couldn't have won because he would have already blown all of our trade chips trying to win the deadline or the offseason in the last year or two.

Even with full electrification of passenger vehicles, miles driven still need to be reduced by 33% to hit the Paris climate goals.

Unfortunately natural gas still emits about 60-70% of the CO2 that diesel does. Obviously much, much better in terms of particulate pollution, SO2, and NOx. Plus it has the same problems with global supply and geopolitics that every other hydrocarbon does. Extraction from farms and landfills requires new technology and infrastructure (I have a close friend who works on this problem). It's worth doing, but it's not a scalable solution when methane is easy to extract in other ways. In a couple of US cities they are running some pilots of battery-powered buses. Batteries actually work well for buses because there is always down time at the beginning/end of a route to charge. And as noted earlier, stop/go vehicles are ideal for electrification. I do think that long haul semi trucks and heavy machinery will be the last to transition. It's been interesting already to see that oil companies have not made any effort to increase production during the latest price spike. The reality is that electrification is going to drop oil demand in the 5-10 year time horizon. It looks like massive green energy and electric vehicle credits may be on the way from Congress if the proposed bill gets passed.

Yep, it's weird to go back into an ICE vehicle and press the gas pedal and wonder why it takes forever for the vehicle to respond. Or why they handle so poorly because they are top heavy and there is no power in the rear wheels. Or why you have to press the brakes so hard to make them stop. And them I'm like...uhh...I have to go to a special store to buy gas??? And take it to a shop every 5,000 miles to change the oil? They are literal pieces of junk compared with EVs. As soon as the price is equivalent, which will happen in the next 5-10 years or sooner, the EVs will fly off the shelves. Then 5-10 years after that we'll see 75%+ of gas stations closing due to lack of demand. The people left with ICE vehicles will have to drive 10-20 minutes out of their way to get gas while the supercharging stations will be everywhere. So it will actually be faster to supercharge than refill with gas.

An EV is already practical for almost every 2-car household in this country. Nobody needs more than one ICE car. It takes 2 seconds to plug in once you have the charger installed. And of course the EVs are far and away superior cars to drive due to their lower center of gravity and faster acceleration.

I'm heavily pro-nuclear but it simply isn't possible to build another nuclear plant in the US unless there are massive regulatory changes. By the time you fight through the regulatory red tape and lawsuits it's extremely expensive and time consuming. Wind and solar are way cheaper and faster to bring online. The grid can handle way more electric cars than we currently have and there are plenty of ways to get around the demand issues. Demand-based electricity pricing would solve most of the problem. Look at the supply/demand curves that ERCOT has been posting the last few days. There is a TON of supply available in the middle of the night which could be used to charge electric cars. Currently I plug mine in at home and forget about it, but if they changed to demand-based pricing I would simply set a timer and have the charger turn on at midnight. The main underlying theme is that there's no hope for anyone to be proactive about any of this, so we'll wait for everyone to buy electric cars (which is clearly going to happen, because they are superior to ICE vehicles and the environmental impact is lower even when you account for the mining). Then the utilities will eventually react to whatever is happening, likely by doing the above.

There is no unemployment problem, only a wage and benefits problem. Much of the 'quitting' has been people getting better jobs. Employers have shown almost no loyalty to employees and they only way to get a decent raise these days is to change jobs. I don't see any of these trends reversing. There are plenty of $15/hour jobs out there, so nobody is going to want to work retail or food service. The excess jobs will be automated or be eliminated. I would say my biggest concern is that many jobs that previously paid a middle class income are starting to fall into the low wage category. Teachers, government jobs, nursing in some cases. Anyway...for investment purposes the excess cash that was around during COVID is clearly gone. Speculative investments like tech and especially crypto have already corrected. If it wasn't for the Ukraine mess I bet inflation would already be cooling off. I do worry about crypto fully collapsing, which would reverberate into the broader economy. Otherwise I'm guessing that we'll have our mini-recession and things will at least stabilize. I'm curious to see Q2 earnings but generally I'm guessing it will be a good time to invest again by the end of the year.