John spent his childhood on a rice farm in Anahuac, Texas, attending a one-room schoolhouse.

After retiring from Exxon he became a full-time investor and consistently outperformed most professional investors for many years. He was skilled with the law, negotiating and finance

In 1991 he served as President of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, guiding peers through massive upheaval in the energy business.

He earned renown in the oil and gas industry for decades of work as a landman at Exxon, completing deals around the globe and relishing the work.

John Alfred Vance Jr. died on May 30th, 2026, at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He experienced no pain in his final days and was surrounded by loved ones. He was 92

Customers ship $10,000+ rigs from around the world, the roofs roll back at sundown, and scopes can be operated from a laptop anywhere on the planet. Pricing starts at $99 a month

A night was spent at a "telescope ranch" in the middle of Texas A young astrophotographer named Bray Falls tends 550 telescopes across 40 acres outside Brady

One of the best pod episodes to date — 2.5 hours on the nuclear energy industry featuring an absolute savant guest Covers nuclear energy history, why the US stopped building reactors, and the realities

The film scored 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and an “A” CinemaScore. If word of mouth follows The Martian’s pattern, it could exceed $600 million globally — same screenwriter adapting both books for a studio

The commercial logic: roughly 200 million people subscribe to Amazon Prime, which includes Prime Video, so theatrical releases primarily serve as marketing for a streaming service those customers already

Amazon MGM’s 2026 began poorly — a Melania documentary earned $16 million on a $40 million budget, and Crime 101 made $65 million worldwide against $90 million in production costs — then Hail Mary opened

Project Hail Mary cost about $200 million and was released by Amazon MGM, a studio created after Amazon paid $8.45 billion for MGM in 2021. After several pricey flops, this release is the first clear payoff

He was a software engineer who began serializing The Martian online in 2009; readers urged a Kindle release, and within days he had a literary agent, a publishing deal, and Fox bought the film rights.

Andy Weir wrote a novel no publisher wanted, posted it chapter-by-chapter on his website for free, then put it on Kindle for 99 cents; it sold 35,000 copies in a month, and the movie based on his third

It's rare to see such a reliable group of collaborators producing spectacular work repeatedly

Andy Weir is an absolute phenom and a genuinely good person. The book-to-film partnership with Aditya Sood and Drew Goddard is incredibly cool to witness.

A more extensive briefing is expected later this week to outline the path forward for Artemis II and subsequent missions, ensuring alignment with the President’s vision to return to the Moon and establish

While there are many differences between the 1960s and today and expectations are understandably high given the investment in this program, Artemis was created to exceed Apollo's accomplishments; plans

The disappointment is recognized and most deeply felt by the NASA team that prepared for the mission; historical setbacks occurred in the 1960s—for example, Neil Armstrong's Gemini 8 mission lasted under

Regardless of the fault, access and remediation require work inside the VAB Preparations for rollback will begin, removing the March launch window from consideration