We bring you another SPG promo, how Air Berlin is bleeding, Toledo Cleveland comeback is on, learn about pink flamingos, more on budget airline expansion, learn more about investing stuff, go snow boarding in North Korea, beat on some bloggers because this is what critics do, they don’t kiss asses…oh wait, maybe that is why this blog is not getting many clicks, oh the injustice of it all…
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Were you targeted for an SPG promo? Check HERE. I am never targeted. Don’t they know who I am? Please don’t answer that lol.
With Air Berlin in bankruptcy, Oneworld Alliance Has a New Hole in Its European Network. Especially if Lufthansa steps in…At this point, scratch Air Berlin on any plans. Even American Airlines took them off their award search engine!
Lets get some news to you to underline the fact that the deep discount airlines are on a giant roll:
Sun Country Airlines to expand and go the budget/Spirit route. I wonder why they are doing this——–>$$$$$.
And Cleveland will get Icelandair direct flights to Keflavic, Iceland. Another way to get to Europe…sometimes I wonder why we bother with miles if the trend continues…
This appeals to Michigan based readers. Surprise! Toledo Express Airport will now have direct flights to Charlotte. On American Airlines. Maybe there will be some award space…
Video about North Korea, yes another one! The shots in the ski resort are great. The men are annoying as hell, I wish they shut up and just let the cameras roll (HT: ABC).
What a fantastic article! The Unsolvable Puzzle. TBB must read! We all evolve!
Think about the investment factors that have changed in just the last 20 years.
Private equity assets have gone from $600 billion to more than $5 trillion. The number of public companies has halved. Index funds have attracted effectively all public equity asset flows. Annual reports went from being sent in the mail to being scanned for keywords by supercomputers. The cost of storing industrial amounts of data went from millions of dollars on rack servers to thousands of dollars in the cloud. Social media connects what used to be walled off. Stocks went from being traded by humans to high-frequency traders, and now the HFTs have competed themselves down to zero profits. The Federal Funds rate averaged 6.5% from 1960 to 2000. Now it’s been below 1% for 105 of the last 188 months.
The investing industry is filled with brilliant people and terrible results. The reason is that the field has less to do with the kind of knowledge that makes a good physicist, and more to do with the rare intellectual flexibility and nimbleness that makes a good flu vaccine researcher.
How the Plastic Pink Flamingo Became an Icon. “I didn’t know that” is a common phrase from TBB readers. I wished they came together with $ clicks woohoo!
Beware of smartphones! Big Idiot Drives Into Even Bigger Sinkhole Because He Was Staring at His Phone.
Back in the 1930s they had a cocktail vending machine, this is what it looked like! #wow
Because…science!
BLOG BUZZ
This section is for advanced level hobbyists and veteran blog readers & personal rants & stuff
Loyalty Lobby repeating the sensationalized click bait crap of the two poster boys of Boarding Area (VFTW and OMAAT) days later is a bit much…
I think VFTW, OMAAT and their biggest fan boy Live and Let’s Fly use the same ghost writer. No evidence. Just thinking out loud.
Oh oh I hope I did not cause a travel blogger to decide to start blogging about how to help family and friends to travel for free. GlobalGaz did a post pushing signup links of FTU and “mega” hacker Nomadic Matt selling his hacking book with a bonus you guys: five (of seven) interviews with bloggers in the TBB Blogs To Ignore list. Sad! If Nomadic Matt is a hacker I am the sexiest man alive!
So boring out there in the miles and points blogs….zzzzzz.
The Irving Thomas trade in the NBA #wow.
And I leave you with this….
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
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A rare first here.
Wow indeed!
You know what is rare? I actually got 8 hours of sleep last night. It feels so…weird!
I have a lot of time for Matt (note: I am in his book too).
He has grown a big business off the back of his huge blog, and done it the hard way (ie no $300 card sign-ups). He also has a big charitable focus to what he does.
No clickbait, generally well written stuff.
If I can speculate …. his issue is that he has a huge number of readers, but they don’t have any money. After all, that’s why they are reading a backpacking blog. And you can’t make a lot of money off people without money. That’s why you end up trying to move those who can afford it into the travel hacking space where you can offer them some creditcards.com links.
>>>>>>>>> That’s why you end up trying to move those who can afford it into the travel hacking space where you can offer them some creditcards.com links.
And that’s why I do not have any respect for the guy. I have seen him everywhere, I remember one time he posted how depressed he was doing this online business thingie. I felt sad for him.
I wish him the best. My point is….WTF does he know about travel hacking and then trying to make money like the other “experts” pumping plastic…bonus 5 Titan interviews (out of 7), really? A book? With this scene changing by the hour? By the way, check Austrian Business Award space for next summer you all!
I do not want to “succeed” that way. The cost is too steep to pay. So I ll just do my thing whining away…until I get tired of it and I am slowly getting there after cinco years.
All this conventional marketing crap disgusts me…I am just not cut out for online success I guess.
Point for all: Do NOT let others define what success means to YOU!
Aspirational awards are rare in the backpacking world.
Part of the backpacking experience is just to get on a train, end up in strange situations and meet folks from different parts of the world. Maybe lose your virginity. I didn’t need Matt for that. It’s an unguided experience that’s been passed on for generations in (Western) Europe. Get an Interrail card for a month and stay at youth hostels and beaches. Now you also have Airbnb and the concept has expanded to eastern Europe and southeast Asia. It’s not a hard nut to crack.
I did that in the summer of 1987. It was great.
But after travel hacking…I would be out of my mind to stay in the places I stayed 🙂
I call bs on “poor NM” story. He was pushing bullshit CC links last time I looked at his site (when US Air was being acquired, someone pointed me to his travelhacking article which pushed the 30k bonus Barclays card without any mention of 50k non affiliate bonus). He’s pretty notorious in travel blogger circle for doing some shady things as well. We have lots of mutual friends and I end up running into him at least on a yearly basis (hell, I even helped him out with a seat at a recent conference) but I won’t talk to him or shake his hand.
Bronze?
Ok…it’s freeeeee!
Terrific links today.
Thanks. I wish I could say it was a terrific click day but…
Glad to see the Iceland CLE service as that’s a reasonable departure point for me in Dayton. But even more happy to see WOW adding CVG. I know there are pros and cons to WOWair but having options is always nice especially for us in cornfield land!
Wife bought a pink flamingo for the cent yard a few years ago just to be silly. Never knew the story
Good for CVG to add Wow…Anything helps 🙂
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What?
thats what I said
SAVE might be interested in Sun Country
What?
that’s what i said, too