We blog about returning to normal, IRA mistakes, more PPP free money, the new Hyatt promo, marvel at landing in Mars, travel all over the place (virtually for now), look deeper into the pandemic and the vaccines, learn about clean nuclear power, review award search tools, another bank gives up in the US, show you how to watch new movies for free and lots more!
TBB Blog Mission: To Educate. Entertain. Inspire. In That Order!
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Changing things up a little bit as this blog evolves. The MILES & POINTS section has now moved toward the end to widen the appeal of the blog and hopefully not turn off first time visitors. The eclectic variety of content has absolutely NOT changed!
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TOP PICKS
Top picks are not excerpted at all. I recommend you find time to read every word!
We are getting our butts kicked by an invisible virus here on Earth but we are rocking it over on Mars!
Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)
Let’s start with something positive! I wish this comes true. At the end of the day (I always thought saying that is weird!), we do not know what is going to happen, it is up to us to make this happen. Oh, it also depends on what the damn virus will do too!
The Most Likely Timeline for Life to Return to Normal
TRAVEL
It has been rough…is a huge understatement! Travel’s Covid-19 Blues Are Likely Here to Stay—‘People Will Go Out of Business’. 2020 was the worst year for tourism on record, with one billion less international arrivals! I feel for the people in the tourism industry in countries so dependent on it as this appears to be shaping up to be another awful year and many will sadly not be able to hang on. Looking ahead, this quote nails it: “The truth is that nobody knows for sure…It all depends on how vaccinations proceed.”
We all missed flying so much! Maybe I book one of these just to get away from it all and get my fix…soon! The 10 Longest Flights in the World.
This is a 2 minute video from my hometown Larisa in Greece. The ancient remains are one of the best kept…secrets in the world, the city gets no tourists at all, it is crazy! Or maybe just the complete chronic lack of competent tourism marketing human capital, sad!
Stunning picture of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain.
COVID-19
Think about it, how did the rich nations manage to screw up the Covid-19 response so spectacularly? This will lay out some possible answers and I sure hope science figures this out, the sooner the better for the sake of all! Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others? It is a probably a combination of factors. I had a deep thought the other day about this…I wonder if the processed food we eat here is responsible?
And there lies an epidemiological mystery. The usual trend of death from infectious diseases—malaria, typhoid, diphtheria, H.I.V.—follows a dismal pattern. Lower-income countries are hardest hit, with high-income countries the least affected. But if you look at the pattern of COVID-19 deaths reported per capita—deaths, not infections—Belgium, Italy, Spain, the United States, and the United Kingdom are among the worst off. The reported death rate in India, which has 1.3 billion people and a rickety, ad-hoc public-health infrastructure, is roughly a tenth of what it is in the United States. In Nigeria, with a population of some two hundred million, the reported death rate is less than a hundredth of the U.S. rate. Rich countries, with sophisticated health-care systems, seem to have suffered the worst ravages of the infection. Death rates in poorer countries—particularly in South Asia and large swaths of sub-Saharan Africa—appear curiously low. (South Africa, which accounts for most of sub-Saharan Africa’s reported COVID-19 deaths, is an important exception.)
This is a good comprehensive article about the subject of vaccines we are all so interested about lately, understandably so! How soon will COVID-19 vaccines return life to normal?
Will this vaccine be the terminator of Covid-19? We sure hope so and based on my newly acquired knowledge of epidemiology, I think the answer is yes. If not, don’t blame me though ok? Novavax Nears Covid-19 Vaccine Game Changer—After Years of Failure.
PERSONAL FINANCE
This is a pretty good recap of what is going on in the investing landscape. Finally the international and US small cap allocations are paying off! #Diversify!
Here we go again with another round, hopefully it goes to more people who actually need it this time! Biden Changes P.P.P. Rules to Help the Self-Employed.
Hopefully this article remains free to access: 20 IRA Mistakes to Avoid.
CURRENT EVENTS/POLITICS
Our grandchildren’s children will be talking about this horror: U.S. reaches 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus.
I turned on the news yesterday and I was annihilated by coverage of the Tiger Woods car accident and then I turned it off…I think the media IS missing Trump!
ODDZ & ENDZ
This is very cool to watch: Murmurations; Ornitographies project.
This was a very educational article about nuclear power. Read with an open mind and suppress your anchored beliefs. It may just even change your mind: The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power.
There are currently fifty-six nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. They provide the country with roughly twenty per cent of its electricity supply— more than half of its low-carbon electricity.
This is mind-blowing! Pennsylvania man snaps picture of rare half-male, half-female cardinal. Known as a bilateral gynandromorph, he described it as “a bird divided right down the middle, half male and half female” that stood out as “pretty unusual.”
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 75k CHASE Ink Cash, 75k CHASE Ink Unlimited, 100k CHASE Ink Business Preferred, 60k CHASE Sapphire Preferred, 60k CITI Premier, 65k CITI Business AA Platinum Select, 50k CITI AA Platinum Select, 20k CHASE Freedom Flex & CHASE Freedom Unlimited, 75k AMEX Platinum, 85k AMEX Business Platinum, 50k CHASE World of Hyatt, 150k AMEX Hilton Business & Hilton Surpass (and $150 credit!), 100k AMEX Hilton Card (and $100 credit!), 150k AMEX Hilton Aspire, $300 AMEX Blue Cash Preferred, $300 AMEX Blue Cash Everyday, 140k CHASE IHG Rewards Club Premier, and many more! Please use my Affiliate links.
If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me!
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! Feel free to skip this section and parts of the next one if this is not for you.
Newbies: If you discovered this blog from one of the big miles and points blogs, you will soon realize that they keep trying to sell you travel rewards credit cards. NON STOP! Have you ever read a credit card “review” they did that concluded that the credit cards sucks? Nope! Perhaps you may want to consider that these blogs do not have YOUR best interest in mind because they are just marketing machines pushing bank merchandise for the sales commissions. You should probably avoid them and try to support blogs that are not in it for the money and have YOUR best interest in mind. THINK!
You can now register for Hyatt’s new promotion:
Hyatt is having the best promotions by far. And my fear is there is going to be way too many Globalist elites out there you guys 🙂 I do not have any plans to take advantage of this at the present time. But if you do, here are some ideas.
Support some local restaurants, have some nice meals and earn up to 6,000 Marriott Bonvoy points I guess, in case you were not enrolled previously.
I have never paid for this! Because the whole point is to travel for free 🙂 Which award search tool is best?
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
In the meantime, The Points Guy Inc. hired another four full timers smh. While this blog earned $1.01 yesterday…can you feel the momentum shifting? No? Lol.
Not surprised that such a software product came out to address this: BankScout: New Bank Bonus Tracking Tool! Just bringing it to your attention in case something like this can be helpful to you, do your own due diligence!
I say good riddance! HSBC to announce exit from U.S. retail banking, reshuffles top jobs.
The Daft Punk band called it quits. I may make some enemies here but, in my own opinion and taste, this band was way over rated. And they went out in a typical snobbish way, an 8 minute over the top video of them….never mind.
Today I am watching the new movie The Mauritanian for free online. Because I have a free account at STX Screenings and they sent me a VIP Pass. You can open an account there too. Nobody paid me to pump this, I just want you to watch free movies sometimes. I miss going to the movies so much, it has now been a whole year since I did that, unbelievable!
I AM trying to make my posts smaller! Sticking with not more than four links in each section and aiming for three. Blog keeps evolving, makes life interesting.
And I leave you with this…
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First!
I never understood the appeal of Daft Punk either.
I had to use the Google for Daft Punk 😉
Friend who is a (neo-natal) nurse here says, anecdotally, 85% of Covid deaths here have been obese. Processed food like my beloved Doritos could be part of the problem.
Smaller post but still my BuzzLinks still grew by 5! Quality work.
Happy Hump Day for all y’all working folk.
#TBBon
Good group of stuff to go through this morning. I like how the Sagrada Familia pic is from a post entitled ‘Cozy Homes with Cozy Views.’
Re: the article on richer countries being hit harder by the pandemic – at the risk of straying into correlation is causation territory, I think we might find later that the link to spreading the virus from travel has been underplayed. Despite what airline-funded studies tell us about the safety of a 10-hour flight to Brazil, it has to play a disproportionate role of continuing spread that wouldn’t otherwise be there for countries just staying put.
Or maybe it’s just that being anti-science / anti-expertise is the ultimate privilege. The US has its own special cornucopia of shitty behavior with our increasingly default setting of weaponized George Costanza method of doing the exact opposite of anything we are told.
Thanks for the link to the nuclear power piece. That discussion about the consequences is terribly important.
Thanks for the comments you guys.
No comment on how TBB the enterprise is shifting the momentum to take over The Points Guy? Come on!
I have a Top Pick for the next blog post, whenever it comes. It is about mental illness and it will blow you away. While leading you all to click the crap out of my Chase credit card links…yeah, lol #facepalm Actually, it applies to me because I must be severely mentally ill to keep doing this for eight plus years earning $1.01 a day…
I went for breakfast at my local Hyatt Place and snagged a couple of juicy apples in the process…
I am really trying to stave off obesity while hoping and praying my phuckin spine disc nerves calm the phuck down after so long so I can get out there and start running again!
Gotta run, I mean, read and do some taxes, later.
From the few people I know personally that got the Covid bad, or died from it, I think you might be onto something about the processed food, or maybe obesity theory. I had not thought about it as a world wide angle of study, but this makes some sense to me.
First from the Pacific North West! Good Morning everyone!
Mah brother! Bellingham WA here. Where you?
It’s Ramsey, don’t worry about it, you are always first here because you voted for a winner and not a LOSER! 🙂
Speaker suggestion for the next TBB company retreat: https://www.caa.com/caaspeakers/points-guy
I wonder how many credit cards I will have to sell here to afford his speaking fee? Actually, when I say that I can not accommodate his entourage…I think that is the end of it, sad!
You probably already saw this
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/tax-court-rules-cash-reward-profits-from-credit-card-manufactured-spend-to-be-taxable/
I’m surprised AMEX let them churn the CL that many times.
Maybe that was the beginning of the RATs…
From $1.01 on Tuesday to $1.03 earnings on Wednesday…Clearly the momentum is so clear and strong now!
I need to get a life and move on smh
A day late, a dollar short. Thanks for the post Buzz, great to see the hometown video.
Ah Bellingham. the old stomping ground, great town, even better beer!
I hate to say it, travel is killing us.
Good luck with the healing Buzz!
Hang in there, we are going to win!
TBBbeingpositive
$1.01
$1.03
$0.43
Worst thing about blogging is checking the conversion numbers, nothing comes close.
“You are like the others TBB”.
LOL
New post coming Friday at 6.30 am. Enjoy them while they last…
Heathens who don’t like Daft Punk. What have I stumbled into!!!!
I was expecting this much earlier! I did not say I did not like them, all I said was that they were “a bit” overrated 🙂