I bring you the latest collection of eclectic links around the web with the best drives, craziest market, gambling addiction, Capital One bank, connect crypto to Bernie Madoff, a new child tax credit calculator, post office branches resemble Blockbusters, global ice loss, the Radisson Rewards programs is becoming needlessly complex and an afterthought and lots more, enjoy the weekend!
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TRAVEL
I have done a few of these, need to do more and some I had not even heard of! The Most Beautiful Drives You Can Take Around the World.
When we start traveling again “soon”, maybe we start with Museums are welcoming back visitors. Here are some of the most enticing exhibits across the US. The Racing in America exhibit of the Henry Ford Museum in my back yard (Dearborn, Michigan) looks nice while the Cowboy Museum just does not do it for me you guys…
When you think Road of Death you are probably thinking the one in Bolivia. But this one is in Vietnam and it looks terrifying!
List of latest Travel Advisories by the US State Department.
PERSONAL FINANCE
I have been expressing here how pockets of the investing world have reached insanity levels I have never seen before. And then here comes this blogger who can write better what I am thinking 🙂 The Craziest Market I’ve Ever Seen.
The joke internet coin (Dogecoin) is now one of the top 5 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. The joke video game retailer (Gamestop) is worth over $10 billion. The joke electric car manufacturer (Nikola) has a price-to-sales ratio near 10,000 and is still a multi-billion dollar company. I could go on, but you get my point. The joke as investment idea has arrived. [Imagine dealing with clients and their nest eggs and…this is not a joke! So, it’s been, well, CRAZY! One day it will stop and nobody knows when…]
Let’s stick with this theme because it does remind me of the dot com stock mania: Connecting the stock market, Dogecoin, Bitcoin – and Bernie Madoff. The game(s) can continue only as long as people are willing to play.
At its core, then, Madoff’s scheme depended on a simple idea: As long as you can keep new investors coming in and old ones from cashing out, you can make an illusion seem real. And that, as it turns out, is the same idea that has animated a host of speculative frenzies in the past year. The booms in so-called meme stocks, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, and cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin are, in some sense, legal Ponzi schemes writ large, in which the value of the underlying assets is little more than a wager that new money will keep coming into the market.
And I loved how this article ends: “It’s like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff. He can keep going until the moment he realizes there’s no ground beneath him. When he does, he falls. And it’s a long, long way down.”
There is a new higher Child Tax Credit for 2021. And some of you may start getting half of it sent to your bank accounts or via check later this summer. And here is a Child Tax Credit calculator to see how much (more) you will be receiving.
COVID-19
We actually got lucky with Covid-19. Yeah, I know, hard to believe. What do we have to do so we don’t let the next virus grow to a horrific pandemic? What Will It Take to Pandemic-Proof America? Must read. When the next virus strikes, we’ll look back on this moment as an opportunity that we either seized or squandered. Archived Link.
This quote by Farzad Mostashari, a former assistant commissioner of New York City’s public-health department and the Obama Administration’s national coordinator of health information technology, said it best: “We need to think of public health like defense…The systems we maintain during peacetime are the ones that allow us to succeed at war.”
But the story of this pandemic isn’t yet over. For all Americans, the arrival of COVID-19 was a calamity without precedent. It was the first time in generations that the country had faced such a threat. Instantly and persistently, the virus has upended how we think, act, work, and live. Looking back now, it’s hard to fathom how bizarre today’s routines would seem to our pre-pandemic selves. That fact alone suggests that transformational change is possible, and that, once it arrives, it no longer seems so unattainable.
My last flight was in December 2019. I am still not comfortable with it but do feel much better being fully vaccinated. I am going to lay low for a while until the virus numbers go way down. What shocks me is…people getting infected and bitching about it while thinking they have been responsible all along, I mean, how tone deaf can you be! How Safe Are You From Covid When You Fly? Great job on the graphics depicting how air circulates inside planes. Archived Link. —–>The graphics likely do not work with this link, sorry!
We have learned so much. And there is still so much we don’t know: We know a lot about Covid-19. Experts have many more questions. Please step back from inserting your amateur opinion and let the scientists figure it out. Can’t wait for the answers!
Having said all that, if you were not paying attention, we hit a world all time high in infections on April 20 with the leading country being India. India hit an all time 24 hour high of 312,731 infections…hey, USA is no longer #1 in this! Remember when we were wondering here how come India was doing so well…At least, the world beat the flu this season!
At the end of (each) day and every day until this nightmare is over, vaccines work!
ODDZ & ENDZ
I am anti gambling. I think it is a disease. And this writer so eloquently and painfully captures it because…he is the addict, wow! The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High. Must read. The author is a very talented writer, I hope he gets over his addiction…
For example, I could tell you that during a 36-hour period in July of 2006, I lost $18,000 in Las Vegas. Or I could tell you I once picked through every corner of my car, including the grating underneath the spare tire, for five dollars of spare change so that I could make the minimum bet at a blackjack table (a bet I lost). And my interest in divulging these details would not be to instruct or to edify, or even to elicit empathy from fellow addicts. My interest would be to rip open my suffering heart and show you its beautiful beating, and in this way, I might think of myself as having been more alive than you, my hopefully horrified reader, were at a similar age and time.
Fascinating to watch: Post office locations in the continental US: 1770-2002.
When you see it like this…Visualizing Earth’s Global Ice Loss Between 1994-2017.
MILES & POINTS
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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: The incentive of bloggers in the miles and points industry is to keep you at it by constantly talking up programs and, of course, credit cards because the sales commissions are worth A LOT of money to them. Never forget this, Incentives Matter!
Register for the summer Hilton Honors promotion HERE. Earn Double Points on stays of 1 or 2 nights and Triple Points when you stay 3 nights or more from May 3 – September 6.
More suited to newbies, if you fly United: Which United Card Should You Get? Here’s A Comparison Chart! Yep, available with my links too, thanks for your support! In addition, you will also find in my link two new Chase Marriott Bonvoy offers which I will only recommend if you love Marriott and have a Chase card slot open and you are shut out of any other card in the universe lol: Two New Offers for Chase Marriott Cards, Total of 150K Points. I guess if I tried harder to put lipstick on these pigs I could earn more but…that is not what Educating is all about.
Capital One Bank keeps improving their cards but I think they are still way behind Chase and Amex: Capital One ups their game, adds Turkish and some 1:1 partners, airport lounges. Right now this bank offers the Venture Rewards card for 100,000 points and two cards of the “Spark” series for 50,000/$500. Beware the high minimum spend required! They are available with my links. Definitely not recommended for newbies! You know, CO cards mostly earn 2 miles/points for dollar and you can use them to pay for travel expenses pretty easily so they could work well for someone who wants the simplicity of one or two cards and…then gets to escape all the sometimes mind numbing detail and waste of time trying to maximize our bang handling tens of other credit cards!
The mini me of hotel loyalty programs, Radisson Rewards, has been doing a series of WTF moves due to its ownership basically by the Chinese government. It is going to split into two parts and…it is complicated and that is the last straw! Of course, it is devaluing and dressing it up just like Delta and Marriott do, they screw you with a smile! A lot has been written in the blog world about the changes. Here is the one post I found to be the one that captures them well and it is not overly critical: Radisson Rewards Devaluation, You Say? Why I Actually Like The Program Changes. This is the program that I have been trying to burn all my points…for years! I just switched a few monthly charges on its Visa card which I will likely cancel…which I have also been saying for years! I sent a link to my daughter and told her, if you want to travel this summer and want to stay for free…pick some properties. We shall see…More in the BLOG BUZZ section below.
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.
The Radisson Rewards Americas Award Devaluation Property List. At the end of the day, you are likely better off using a 2% cash back card and paying paid rates and…you are spared all the non sense with this program.
And here is THE list of how many points are required per night in all the other properties around the world in the Radisson program…
Interesting commentary by The Points Guy Inc CEO here: The Diminishing Role of Credit Card Loyalty in a Post-Pandemic World. It leaves me wondering if this will lead to reduction in miles/points valuation guides and/or less enthusiastic selling of travel rewards credit cards. Bwahahahaha.
I am going to leave with a very serious pic below but I do want you to laugh. And if you do not laugh with this video, I am not sure what to say to you! Scott Seiss Retail TikTok Compilation FULL.
It has been brutally cold here in Michigan the past few days and after a very long time I wondered out loud…why stay and take it?
And I leave you with this…
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TBB
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Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
First!
Enjoyed the nice drives link… I’ve only done a couple of those but I’ll add in the drive to Key West for consideration. I haven’t done it in over 20 years but it really sticks out in my mind.
About that $&data article
CumRocket Crypto Surges 634% In A Single Day In ‘Extreme Mania’ Market!
…..it’s probably safer to end the message here. NFT is BS.
So what happens to the rest of us that just stay the course when the bubble bursts on these meme stocks/NFTs/crypto etc?
Please tell me nothing. It’s not like my ho-hum index funds are going to start including 1% LeBron James highlight gifs in their portfolio; but at the same time this kind of volatility can’t be great.
Great post Buzz. The drive in the Canadian Icefields is spectacular, all the way down into BC.
Good morning!
My flight last month was quite fine. Delta cleaned up very nicely.
The trips link brought back great memories. Got to get back to the car too.
@ Nick: I did the Key West drive a few years ago, well worth it.
@ ABC: Yeah..WSJ today had an article about three dudes screwing around on Robinhood and…screwing themselves in the end. Sometimes I wonder how reporters get people to reveal so much and then trick them into photo sessions and…nvm.
@ Bill: Yeah, it is kind of surreal…There is a lot of cash out there still…who knows? All I know is that me and my clients will not be left holding the bag one day 🙂
@ David: Thanks. Yeah, I did that drive too, it is fantastic. I still remember the glacier and the bears!
@ DML: I need to get back in the air before I lose it…languishing 🙂
It seems like I’m one of the few in the points game who actually likes Country Inn & Suites hotels. I’ve thought the ones I’ve stayed in have been pretty nice, but I was comparing them to an alternate road-trip hotel like a Super 8 or even Hampton Inn, not a Ritz Carlton. The splitting of the program seems like it will be a hassle. But the category adjustments seem like a “meh?” for me. I looked at places I’ve stayed and they’re generally going from 28k to 30k or 44 to 45. As long as I can use my free night at the Blue Aqua, I don’t care how many points it is.
I have had good experience with Country Inn properties…if I manage to find them when and where I need them 🙂
When you compare the 30k to 45k properties with cash rates…they mostly do not make sense. It is probably due to the pandemic but still…
Anyway, like I always said, we are all different. If the program works for you, Great!
I agree on CI&S. They’re perfectly fine for what they are and I use Radisson as my alt-hotel program as they sometimes have better coverage in places where a Hyatt isn’t available. I’m annoyed that the well-run CI&S we stayed at in Asheville is going to 60K and the one I had my eye on in Kalispell is going to 75K but oh well, there are still others in the 30-45K range.
Did you get the memo about all the compliance changes Amex is doing? I think they are trying to get rid of us all and just go exclusively with TPG and a few more. Reading some of these changes they want us to do and I am seriously thinking to quit.
Yes…unreal!
And the trend…
3 conversions in March is equal $ to 6 conversion in April.
Thanks to the reader who got a CO card!
In other developments, managed to burn 15k IHG Rewards points for a Holiday Inn in Toledo, OH tonight as I am going to attempt to walk the Half Marathon I had signed up last year lol. Only 6 miles away. The Radisson within walking distance, my chance to finally burn some Radisson points, was available tomorrow night and MIN two nights, sad lol.
HNA got out of the Rezidor group long ago. AFAIR private equity stepped in and is now slicing and dicing the Radisson pie.