Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as stock market iron laws, AI eating everything, rethinking adult ADHD, best jungle hotels, airport lounges guide, explaining US labor reports, missing short sellers, crypto bros being crypto bros, explaining the American economy, urbanization and British christian fundamentalist cults, most terrifying destination in each US state, the best photography links and of course always all of the most important developments in the crazy world of frequent flyer miles and points at the lower half of the post. Enjoy the weekend and stay cool.
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This blog started way back in 2012 focusing on my crazy hobby addiction of traveling with frequent flyer miles, hotel and bank points. It has since evolved to curated posts featuring the best web content along with my commentary.
Due to new severe credit card affiliate restrictions, there will not be any credit card links in the body of the blog posts other than Capital One Bank and personal referral links going forward. You can always get to my credit card links by clicking on “CREDIT CARDS’ at the menu on the top of the homepage or the big beautiful “We make finding a new credit card simple” banner on the right sidebar. Or, preferably, you can receive new offers in your email inbox by signing up to receive alerts HERE to avoid clicking to find the one credit card you want to apply for. Or you can always email me, thanks for your support.
BLOG HOUSEKEEPING
This is truly a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it while it lasts.
Every time I hit publish I look back and I feel content that I did my best and this blog sticks to its mission.
PERSONAL FINANCE
I really have no arguments about these Iron Laws of the Stock Market.
Volatility is mean-reverting
Buy when the stock market crashes
Diversification is your best hedge against extreme events
Your biggest edge is not data-driven but behavioral
The stock market has to crash sometimes
The market is hard to beat
Risk never completely goes away
Mean reversion and momentum are here to stay
Extending your time horizon increases your odds of success
Markets eventually punish certainty
Let’s now go deeper and learn all about the labor market. And how the data about it is derived: All About That Labor Report.
It’s no coincidence that the softest hiring of the last few years occurred right when the tariff scare started.
There’s a real chance that we’re undergoing a seismic shift in how we all work and that AI is either going to replace a lot of work or reduce the need to hire people to do a lot of that work.
There’s a lot going on with BLS employment reports and there’s a lot that can go wrong, but they’re not manipulated and we know they’re not manipulated because the process doesn’t allow for it…The BLS is incredibly transparent about all of this so it’s not like they’re out here hiding things from everyone. They will tell you themselves that their own process is inefficient and needs upgrades (and a bigger budget). But make no mistake – the data isn’t manipulated. It cannot be manipulated. It would take a coordinated effort by all 50 states to manipulate the QCEW (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages) and that’s implausible. The monthly data might be noisy and unreliable, but revisions do not reflect manipulation or inaccuracy. The revisions actually bring us closer and closer to the QCEW data, which we know is right. So Friday’s employment report and its big revisions are telling us the truth about what’s going on in the labor market.
Sadly, this is true. No Country for Short Sellers. The capitulation of short sellers makes the market a riskier place to invest.
We used to debate the efficient market hypothesis. Now we debate whether to take out a home equity loan to YOLO into Tesla. And people are serious. There are actual posts—real ones—from investors lamenting that owning a home kept them from going all-in on Elon. The average investor now spends six minutes researching a stock. The market is a dopamine delivery systems of a society that stopped asking “what’s it worth?” and started screaming “NUMBER GO UP!”
There is no market left for short sellers. No market left for value investors. No market for the cautious or the skeptical or the diligent or the prudent. And no country for old men. [I burst out laughing after seeing this below…and when I could not laugh anymore, I switched to crying…we are all mixed up in this meme world we are living through…]
We have all been trying to explain the reasons behind this and yet we have all failed. I am at a point where I just keep going back to my disciplined investing process. Wait, this is what I have always done. Diversify baby, keep the costs low, rebalance at regular intervals and make smart tax moves. And let the “experts” try to figure this out while we all focus on more important things in life and keeping our heads above all this endless nonsense. But maybe, just maybe, this is what is going on?
a market dominated by active investors tends to be characterized by “mean reversion”—in which high valuations are followed by a correction—a market dominated by passive investors is instead characterized by “mean expansion,” in which high valuations are followed by even higher valuations…A market dominated by passive investors also naturally becomes more concentrated. Active investors tend to avoid larger stocks that they believe might be overvalued, but the opposite is true for passive investors. Because they allocate funds based on the existing size of companies, they end up buying a disproportionate share of the biggest stocks, causing the value of those stocks to rise even more, and so on.
The explosion of passive funds over the past 15 years could explain why the market has become less sensitive to real-world downturns, more likely to keep going up no matter what, and dominated by a handful of giant companies. Or that theory could end up being disproved by unforeseen events. It wouldn’t be the first.
Be grateful if you managed to stick with it…
SCAMS/CRYPTO/AI/TECH
Crypto bros are a special breed. A unique combination of arrogance, grift, bad taste, greed and just pure assholeness. And these guys omg: Tequila, Drugs and Torture: The Spending Binge of Two Crypto Bros That Ended Behind Bars.
The two men were on a mission that, whatever it was at the start, disintegrated into a weekslong binge of cocaine, booze and spending. It ended in May with arrests and allegations of kidnapping and torture within the posh confines of a $75,000-a-month rental in Manhattan
I started excerpting parts of the article and kept shaking my head. And I stopped. Because I wanted to keep my head intact. Read and be careful about your head. Because you may shake it violently and lose it, you have been warned.
Another post from A Wealth of Common Sense: AI is Eating the Economy. Yeah, we are living through an era that we are not sure how it all shakes out. And if someone tells you they know they are lying. All we know is the gazillions that are spent on all things AI are unreal and this probably saved the stock market after ChatGPT entered our lives in November 2022.
Remember the guy who threw his hard drive that contained 8,000 bitcoin in a landfill and has been trying to dig it up for years. Well, he gave up. But wait, as with all grift that goes along with this shit, he does exactly what you expected smh: UK man who lost 8,000 bitcoin in landfill says he hasn’t given up, pivots to tokenizing legal claim.
Howells said now he is planning to tokenize his legal ownership of the lost 8,000 BTC into a new Bitcoin Layer 2 smart token named Ceiniog Coin (INI), utilizing the upcoming network update that removes the 80-byte cap on the OP_RETURN opcode in bitcoin transactions to free up space for more functionality. The token is slated for launch after October, and an ICO is planned for later in the year, Howells added. “The intention is to bootstrap the Ceiniog ecosystem and launch a successful high-speed, high-scale, fast-confirmation, payment-focused web3 environment secured by the Bitcoin blockchain and backed by 8,000 BTC,” Howells told The Block. [I felt this urgent need to punch something…serenity now, serenity now.]
And I left for last in this section one of the must read articles: How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the American Economy. The author is trying to bring it all together and explain this really strange phase of life we are living through, enjoy reading it as much as I did.
There are currently 3 Americas:
- America 1 (The Speculative Class): The first America is the speculative class, and its engine is artificial intelligence. The Magnificent 7 are spending over $100 billion a quarter on data centers, which are these monumental projects of hope. They consume vast amounts of capital and electricity, a place where money and power are absorbed in a high-stakes gamble.
- America 2 (The Real Economy): The second America is the real economy. With 75% of new jobs in healthcare and social assistance, our workforce is being absorbed by the essential but underfunded ‘maintenance economy’ of an aging population. While it props up the labor market, it fails to generate the type of wealth that fuels the stock market or long-term growth, as resources are poured into maintenance rather than creation.
- America 3 (The Memes): The third America is the bridge between the other two, acting somewhat as a psychological gold sink for those who are priced out of a house and a future. The money spent here is largely speculative and doesn’t build a sustainable future (is memecoin investing productive, I don’t know) but it gives people a sense of agency and hope within a system that otherwise offers them little.
It’s a very strange world.
Indeed it is, it gets better after that going deeper in each America…
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ODDZ & ENDZ
I always enjoyed reading about cults. What makes people flip and follow so blindly others who are not who they portray themselves to be. On the contrary, they tend to be charismatic fraudsters and/or charlatans almost every time. And I did not know about this one across the pond: The rise and fall of the British cult that hid in plain sight. Philippa Barnes was a child when her family joined the Jesus Fellowship. As an adult, she helped expose the shocking scale of abuse it had perpetrated. It can get really sinister when you add Jesus in the mix…
The latest on ADHD, must read imho if you are interested on the subject: Rethinking Adult ADHD. The diagnostic category of adult ADHD is becoming more inclusive. That’s not the same as it being overdiagnosed.
As Americans began to spend more time online, many people increasingly shared their diverse lived experiences with ADHD. An explosion of ADHD anecdotes shared on social media posts may or may not have aligned with scientifically validated information about the disorder but certainly stretched the public’s conceptualisation of ADHD’s many faces. [And as I have said all along, the pandemic changed everything]
The rise of the ADHD world also created some money-making opportunities. Many ADHD posts touting lived experience linked directly to purchasable products or services such as supplements or coaching. [Money is behind, well, pretty much everything.]
Urbanization. The world population is moving to cities. Why is urbanization happening and what are the consequences? Amazing resource. Push play and see what happened over the years.
- Globally more people live in urbanized settings than not (disputes in these figures are all above the 50% urban mark);
- The broad distribution and density of where people live across the world (sometimes at very high resolution);
- Although it can seem like our expanding cities take up a lot of land, only a bit more than 1% of global land is classified as a part of a settlement or as infrastructure;1
- rates of urbanization have been increasing rapidly across all regions (in 1800, less than 10% of people across all regions lived in urban areas);
- urbanization is expected to continue to increase with rising incomes and shifts away from employment in agriculture;
- disagreements in urban population numbers arise from definition or boundary differences in what makes a population ‘urban’.
MUST click, if you are into photography: The Winners of the 2025 Mangrove Photography Awards.
TRAVEL
Alaska Airlines continues to impress with its methodical way of just growing steadily, here we go: Alaska Airlines to launch London, Iceland flights, debut new livery for international expansion. Awaiting and holding our breath when the airline reveals its new frequent flyer program later this month. Also, is it just me who thinks the new livery looks fantastic?
Interesting: The most terrifying destination in every state.
Anyone remembers the song “Welcome to the Jungle”? For some reason, that came to mind when I saw this article: 15 Beautiful Jungle Hotels Around the World. Most of these look amazing.
If you are looking to travel to Tuvalu, you better hurry up: The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu could be submerged in 25 years due to rising sea levels, so a plan is being implemented to relocate its population to Australia.
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This blog started with a focus on miles and points and travel. It has evolved since then. Everything below deals with the hobby of collecting frequent flyer miles and points and maximizing your travel experiences. If you are not interested, you can stop here, thank you.
MILES & POINTS
Here we go again.
Chase Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt still remains a great value. I wonder for how long. The Ultimate Guide to World of Hyatt: How to Earn, Redeem and Maximize Value.
Capital One lounges are great. But the bank needs to start building more, the sooner the better. Which is not happening: A Complete Guide to Capital One Airport Lounges: Amenities, Locations, and More.
These are probably not going to last: Want to Fly Business Class? These are the Easiest Flights to Book With Points.
If you are into eating out a lot and maximizing it: Guide to card-linked dining programs for airlines, hotels & more.
I am doing this promo. Because, you know, this is like a drug addiction lol. JetBlue Partner Passport Challenge: TrueBlue Partners offer a world of possibilities to earn points on travel, dining and everyday activities. Explore that world from 7/28 – 10/28/25 to earn up to 7,500 bonus TrueBlue points. I can easily knock out four of them except the car rental.
Unexpected freebie for having a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, I ‘ll take it. Register HERE to receive an Air Canada 5,000 points flight reward certificate.
Another one: Air Canada, bites the dust goes revenue based on earning/elitestatus. All these programs should be renamed frequent spender programs instead; they are definitely NOT frequent flyer programs anymore.
American Airlines and World of Hyatt are running this promo again. I did this last year and it looks like I am not targeted to do it again, boo: World of Hyatt and AAdvantage Offer Free Elite Status.
TRAVEL REWARDS CREDIT CARDS
If you are included in these crazy high balances, you should not be reading this section of my blog: Credit card debt reaches $1.21 trillion — in line with last year’s all-time high. Why? Because:
With annual percentage rates just over 20%, if you made minimum payments toward the average credit card balance ($6,371), it would take you more than 18 years to pay off the debt and cost you $9,259 in interest over that time period.
Yeah, it is getting really hard to keep this straight: Credit Cards That Offer Priority Pass Memberships Compared – What Are The Differences?
Also, these are always changing, so here is the latest: Amex Airline Fee Reimbursements. What still works?
This card is back again: Chase Freedom Flex Now Accepting Applications.
Oh, Ron Lieber at the New York Times is on Bilt: How Does a Rewards Start-Up Know What Credit Cards Are in Your Wallet? Some people who have signed up with a company called Bilt have been unnerved to see a list of all their credit cards displayed. How did Bilt get this information?
Better offers, if they got to 100k I may be interested. Until then, pass. JetBlue Premier, Plus & Business cards all have up to 80K welcome offers. No affiliate links on Barclay cards, fyi.
I laughed a lot with this video making fun of all the stupid credit card coupon credits that are all over us lately, enjoy: Worst Credits Awards: Crowning the Gold Medal of Terrible Credit Card Credits.
NEW OFFERS:
After waiting for this so many years, it finally arrived.
Citi Strata Elite Review: 80,000 Points Bonus, $595 Annual Fee, $300 Hotel & $200 Splurge Credit
Please click the link above to get all the info you need about the card and email me if you want to apply.
Citi has a new offer for 30,000 Thank You points for its Strata no annual fee card. It replaces the Citi Rewards+ card. Very good earning rates for a no annual fee card: 5x on Hotels, Car Rentals, and Attractions booked on cititravel.com, 3x spent at Supermarkets, Select Transit, Gas & EV Charging Stations, 3x spent on an eligible Self-Select Category of your choice, 2x spent at Restaurants and 1x on All Other Purchases. Email me if interested.
EXPIRING OFFERS:
Chase Southwest Personal Cards: 100,000 Points with $4,000 Spend In 5 Months. 100k Signup bonus for all 3 personal cards is excellent. If you like 100k bonuses and free bags it makes sense too as each Southwest point could be worth around 1.3 cents, so we are talking $1,300 travel value. Even after the annual fee you will score over $1,000 of free travel. And this is what we are talking about around here! You know where to find them, thank you. All three 100k offers end September 17, 2025.
My still favorite bank Chase is at it again. We have two new 100k offers on United business cards. Actually, the United business card is decent, especially for people who have United elite qualification aspirations. I have it myself and…not keeping it by the way. These days I don’t roll out of bed for offers less than 100k lol.
Speaking of 100k offers, the United Quest card offer ends August 20: Chase United Quest Card: 100,000 + Up To 15,000 Miles Signup Bonus Offer.
If you are into Marriott Bonvoy, we have two worthy elevated and best ever offers and you know where you can find them:
Marriott Bonvoy Bevy: Earn 155,000 Bonvoy points after $5k minimum spend within the first 6 months, $250 Annual Fee
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant: Earn 185,000 Bonvoy points after $6k minimum spend within the first 6 months, $650 Annual Fee
The STANDARD Amex Platinum offer is now up to 175,000 Membership Rewards points. The annual fee is $695 and the minimum spend is $8,000 over six months. 5x on Airfare and Hotels and 1x on everything else. Superior Centurion lounge coverage and of course Priority Pass lounge membership. No foreign transaction fees. A long list of couponized credits, up to $1,800 if you took advantage of every single one. Which you won’t. The easiest credits are the $200 airline fee credit, the $240 Digital Entertainment credit, up to $200 Uber credit and $200 hotel credit…and many more.
Same deal with the STANDARD Amex Gold card now up to 100,000 Membership Rewards points. The annual fee is $325 and the minimum spend is $6,000 over six months. This card’s main appeal has always been its earning power at 4x for dining worldwide and groceries and 3x on airfare. Crazy couponing comes with it, such as $7 per month on Dunkin Donuts, $10 per month on Uber Cash, $10 per month on 5 Guys/Grubhub, Cheesecake Factory, Wine.com or Goldbelly, two $50 Resy credits for dining per year and $100 hotel credit per year.
Please help the small independent blogs like mine continue to exist by supporting them with your CREDIT CARD clicks, thank you!
THIS CARD STILL PAYS FOR ITSELF:
The 75K CAPITAL ONE Venture X card has a minimum spend of $4k in the first three months. If you like simplicity and looking for one (premium) card, I highly recommend this card (and yes, I have it myself!). It has an annual fee of $395 but it comes with an easy $300 statement credit for travel booked on its own travel portal, essentially turning it into a $95 annual fee card. But wait, there is more! On each card anniversary you earn 10,000 points essentially making it FREE! Every dollar of spend earns 2 points and flights booked on the travel portal earn 5 points per dollar. You get access to Capital One and Plaza Premium airport lounges and a Priority Pass Select lounge membership and, this is important, you can add four authorized users FOR FREE who can also have their own Priority Pass Select airline lounge membership and, this is BIG, they can bring in unlimited guests with their FREE Priority Pass card! You can transfer your Capital One points to up to 18 Transfer Partners. No foreign transaction fees. Free Hertz President’s Circle rental car top elite status. Cell phone protection and PRIMARY rental car coverage. Awesome seats at baseball stadiums for just 5k points each. And lots more.
Here are my three TOP CREDIT CARD OFFERS:
The 75k Capital One Venture X card.
The 75k Chase Ink Business Unlimited card.
The 75k CHASE Ink Business Cash card.
BONUS OFFERS NOTIFICATIONS
Would you like to be automatically notified every time a card comes out with (or is about to remove) an elevated welcome offer? If yes, I highly encourage you to sign up if you haven’t yet. And when you apply for a credit card from a link in these emails you help support the blog.
Elevated Card Offer Notifications
All you have to do to receive these free notifications is:
1. Click on the link above
2. Create an account
3. Subscribe
MY ACTION AND BLOG BUZZING
The 200k Chase Ultimate Rewards points from the Sapphire Reserve Business credit card have landed, hooray.
Closed two Ink Business Preferred cards. And one more soon. So sad they were not kept after the first year and hope that is not used against us, you know, popup jail messages showing up down the road.
Burned 29,438 Chase Ultimate Rewards points for yet another Seattle-Detroit round trip for daughter to visit home. She is burning through the stack of Chase points I spotted her and after we close her own Ink Business Preferred card she is going to be on her own like her brother. It’s just getting way too difficult for me to manage credit cards for all four these days now that they moved away. Even managing my wife’s credit cards is a bit more difficult as we have had some inane chats with Chase reps lately. Anyway, the bang is not what it used to be and it is time to let the kids roam on their own. They are content to just stick with their own Sapphire Preferred and Ink Unlimited cards. Son has had an Amex Platinum card for a while as well. Maybe in the near future my daughter may step up to get her own premium card. That’s about it, time to get going on really simplifying this part of my life. No way to go cold turkey lol.
I did book a hotel reservation for family stay in my hometown at this place. Sadly, I had to pay lol. Can Hyatt build a Hyatt Place here please? I opened a loyalty account before booking it to get a discount and some freebies. Because I can’t help myself, the points addiction is strong.
I have been watching a lot of videos on YouTube about Thailand. And, with all “experts” online, you need to be careful who you devote your precious attention to. The true experts on anything online are VERY few. It boggles the mind anyone feels it is okay to just do a blog post/video on how they managed to fly for free in First Class or stay in a top luxury resort for free because they discovered travel hacking last year/month/yesterday and they just have this urge to tell all about it and YOU too can do it too only if you click on their affiliate credit card or sponsored links. Or, the dude who moved to Thailand last year and now you can book him for a one hour phone consultation for $xx.
The worst is when amateurs feel like they should share their “brilliant” investing techniques. I am not talking about the scammers. I am talking about genuine people who totally believe in their own investing methods who just grab a camera and record videos telling you all about it and, you know, it is content and, sadly, really believe they are helping viewers smh. And some ETFs they are babbling about are super shitty and they have no freaking clue how dangerous they are. Be careful out there! Off my soap box.
My no annual fee United Gateway card just keeps targeting me for spend based promos constantly. As one promo rolled off, another one came up for August and September to earn 3x on restaurants/groceries/gas. So, it stays in my stack I keep with me…again. It’s just crazy that this card just keeps doing this, no other card I have comes remotely close. I felt hurt it was not 5x this time. You can check out if any of your cobranded Chase cards have similar spend based promos HERE.
I watched Naked Gun 2. I laughed. Not as much as the original one. I guess Liam Neeson’s acting has range, lol.
The 2025 Women’s Copa America Final between Brazil and Colombia was one for the ages, here are the highlights.
I DO have a separate page listing my other affiliate links HERE including: Rakuten and Top Cash Back
I am giving myself a challenge for the summer, average 5 credit card sales and 15 Buy Me a Coffee sales per month. Trying to avoid a loss in my blogging business this year you guys, thanks. If I can’t even hit these low targets after almost 13 years of blogging I am out.
June:
Credit card sales: 7 Buy me a Coffee sales: 1
July:
Credit card sales: 6 Buy me a Coffee sales: 24
August:
Credit card sales: 3 Buy me a Coffee sales: 3
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS:
200k CHASE Sapphire Reserve Business, 100k CHASE Sapphire Reserve (AND $500 Travel Credit), 175k AMEX Platinum, 100k CHASE Southwest Plus/Premier/Priority (END 9/17), 75k CHASE Ink Business Cash, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture X, 75k CHASE Ink Business Unlimited, 150k CAPITAL ONE Spark Cash, 150k AMEX Business Platinum, 200k CAPITAL ONE Spark Cash Plus, 75k CHASE Sapphire Preferred, 100k AMEX Gold, 90k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 75k CAPITAL ONE Venture Rewards, 80k CHASE Southwest Performance Business, 15k AMEX Blue Business Plus and many more!
As of today, I have burned 1,047,267 miles/points year to date (2,027,816 in 2024) and have 4,404,709 miles/points in the bank.
Remember, you are NOT allowed to ever carry a credit card balance!
Let me leave you with this:
Some of the links are behind a paywall. You can try to read them using Archive.is.
Thank you for reading my blog. If you enjoy it please forward it to a family member or friend. Or Buy Me a Coffee, thank you!
Feel free to contact me anytime at travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com, all feedback is very appreciated.
George
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Hi Buzz,
Great post with lots to think about.
A question: Is that $7 Dunkin’ Donuts credit if you buy there or if you stay away? How do you spend $7 at Dunkin’ Donuts?
You can load the $7 credit to your account monthly then go in and use it whenever you like.
Dunkin’ donuts…None near me. I very rarely use Uber. Every lounge I have seen lately is stupidly crowded or I don’t have much time to use it. The value out of some of these expensive cards is not what they say it is, I have found. To me, anyhow. Venture X seems to be the easiest to get at least most of the value out of the AF. Therefore I wonder when this will get nerfed.
All good reading as usual so thanks for that! I always look forward to Friday’s and getting the latest from you!
As far as the 50 most terrifying destinations in each state–I… didn’t find the Mt. Katahdin trail terrifying, much less Mount Rogers, Mount Magazine, Barataria Preserve or Clingman’s Dome… I guess some of the truly terrifying stuff, like those crazy rides, I just don’t visit.
As far as I know, we’ve never lost a tourist to an alligator in Barataria… I always have the idea that people-eating alligators are more of a Florida thing. 🙂
Sorry to be late! I’ll send a note from the archivist.
Lots of interesting ideas and links today. The consequences of the acceptance of
the efficient market hypothesis are really important. Does belief in the EMH change
the behavior of the market? Oh my.
Just booked a Hyatt Place stay at the other side of the state to accompany son in a beach volleyball tournament. He was going to drive there very early tomorrow so here comes his Globalist dad, let me fix that for you lol.
World of Hyatt projected elite night credits: 54
I will respond to the comments sometime over the weekend.
Finish the weekend strong.
I’m waiting for Nobody 2 to come out next weekend although like most sequels it’s highly unlikely to be as good as the original.
I’m anxiously awaiting the new primo Alaska card. Any idea if you’ll have any referrals, general or personal?
Actually, just found out I do have a link for the personal Alaska Visa card…I had no idea, I am still a newbie how this affiliate cc things work.
And getting one for the new premium Alaska Airlines card is likely. But it won’t come when the card is introduced, it should come a bit later. How later? I have no idea, hopefully within a few days I hope.
I also like the new Alaska livery. Feels like the old design was rooted in the past and felt saggy.
AI and ChaptGPT. I finally dragged myself out of the cave and have started using it. I do think people need to beware, I asked tax questions – one US based and one for Oz tax. I knew the answers to both and have to say ChatGPT made basic errors, but for someone who did not have prior knowledge they could end up severely misled. What surprised me was when I initially mentioned capital gains it did not ask me if I meant LT or ST. I have been using it for travel itinerary suggestions and for that it has been brilliant. I can see that aspect giving me hours of my life back.
Tuvalu relocating citizens to Oz, isn’t it amazing that we can take them and I’ve not heard disagreement from anyone in the community suggesting we start our own ICE force or start banging on about welfare. We already have a visa program for islanders to come each year and do crop picking. Works for everyone involved, they get to earn decent money and take it home to a place they enjoy with their families but where they struggle for work.
Oops that’s daggy not saggy, damn auto correct.
@ Sam: Say no to drugs and…Dunkin 🙂
@ Carl: The Capital One Venture X pays for itself. Actually pays cardholders $5 after offsetting the $395 fee with the $300 travel credit and 10,000 points each year. It was nerfed earlier this year…just the authorized user/lounge visits. But still, a winner. Will it get nerfed again a year later? Probably.
@ peachfront: You know, I almost did not post that link. Because I thought someone will call it out for not being dangerous enough lol.
@ DML: Archivist, really? Is this the 2025 version of “dog ate my homework” excuse? 🙂
@ Christian: Has there been a sequel that was better than the original? Hmmm, something to think about. At this point, no Bank of America referrals or affiliate links. But I will ask as I think the new premium Alaska Airlines card may be a winner. I think the airline will go all in on revenue based earning/burning. I think the AA loyalty points scheme may be winning?
@ Vicky: Interesting observations about ChatGPT, thanks. Son is paying $20/month for it. I have not found any must use applications to me personally yet. Let alone paying a monthly fee for it. Which makes me scratch my head when I see the gazillions spent towards it. Also intrigued by the potential application of AI in the Travel industry. Well, developing for sure…Don’t get me started on what is taking place here in the US. Every single day, several times a day, I shake my head and curse the people who voted for the worst POS twice. Just six months in and I am starting to wonder if the pace of destruction will surpass the point of saving ourselves.
To the guy who unsubscribed yesterday, thanks a lot for not meeting your expectations I guess. This hurts so many years later. If readers liked my content they would not unsubscribe. So PLEASE, if you like my content please forward a link to this post to people you care about. Prove that organic growth works. Because it sure ain’t working judging from the decrease in subscribers!
Thanks to Sam for getting credit card sale #4 this month.
Great day yesterday in Grand Haven, Michigan swimming and beach volleyball. Who needs Hawaii beaches when you can drive to Grand Haven 🙂
Hope you got credit for the Hyatt Card via your links. I had to go thru reconsideration and after that who knows. Trying hard to toss ya the bone 🙂
Not yet, when did you apply? When recon is involved, it takes a long bit longer when compared to instant approvals.
May you all get instantly approved 🙂
Thanks Ryan, much appreciated. Makes me feel much better than learning someone unsubscribed.
A story about your home country. I’d never heard of “Washingtonia” and I wouldn’t have suspected it’s in Greece: https://archaeology.org/issues/september-october-2025/letters-from/searching-for-washingtonia/
I had never heard of this, wow. Wow as in this was actually attempted and wow again for me never hearing about it 🙂 Thanks for passing it on.
Need to put tomorrow’s blog post ready. I was going to see Nobody 2 but TBB duties superseded that want. At 6 cc sales month to date I think this was the right thing to do 🙂