TODAY'S READ
IHG Rewards New Offers, Pandemic End, FinTok Lunacy, Trump Tax Returns
We bring you the IHG Rewards new offers, talk about the pandemic end, warn you about the FinTok lunacy, the sad Trump tax returns, travel to Indonesia, Berlin, North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chase expanded the Pay Yourself Back feature, a stunning read about a giant dude in the Ukraine, the best Covid-19 coverage, the best drone photos, how clicking on clickbait crap makes the world an awful place so please stop contributing to it WTF is wrong with you and lots more, enjoy!
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I have moved the COVID-19 Section further down starting with this post. There is a LOT in this post. This is my baby, going strong for almost 8 years! You all enjoy the weekend and thanks for spending some of it reading my blog. If you are not into the frequent flyer miles/points game please feel free to skip the Miles & Points section.
TOP PICKS
I am starting a new blog section titled TOP PICKS. For readers who have been here for a while it is similar to the “Best of Web” posts I used to do. Simply I pick some content that deserves special mention in these now weekly curated blog posts I do. As I think everything I post here is a must read, think of these in this section as the MUST must reads! 🙂
Old friend Mile Nerd gives advice to graduating young men as they enter adulthood next year. Adulting 101. You will enjoy reading these and you will realize why it is here as a top pick. Just a few of my favorites:
Do you really want to be the guy who makes people wait for you to back into a parking space?
Make 2 lists:
First, write down the names of anyone you could depend on in a jam.
Next, list the people 100% willing to talk to you about anything at all.
If any names show up on both lists…that’s who matters most.
For the love of God, learn the difference between “your” and “you’re.”
No ribs on a first date. Or spaghetti.
Your career is important. But it shouldn’t cost you your mental health.
When you consider doing something that crosses the line, take a second and remember what a courtroom is. Ask yourself the following question:
“Do I really want to put my life in the hands of 12 people who were too dumb to get out of jury duty?”
I have been around the web ever since I fired the Netscape browser in the last century. And I had never heard of the Improbable Research website! Its tagline is “Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK“. I found it very appropriate for my blog’s mission! Every year they have a contest titled the Ig Nobel Awards and here are the 2020 winners. These are awesome in their own improbable way (get it?) and my favorite was this to get a taste of what you are about to see, enjoy!
ECONOMICS PRIZE [UK, POLAND, FRANCE, BRAZIL, CHILE, COLOMBIA, AUSTRALIA, ITALY, NORWAY, ITALY]
Christopher Watkins, Juan David Leongómez, Jeanne Bovet, Agnieszka Å»elaźniewicz, Max Korbmacher, Marco Antônio Corrêa Varella, Ana Maria Fernandez, Danielle Wagstaff, and Samuela Bolgan, for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries’ national income inequality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing.
Which one is your favorite? 🙂
Well, it belongs here as Trump’s tax records finally came out: Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance.
I am not sure how I found this story from 2005. About some dude in rural Ukraine who had a brain surgery as a kid, something went wrong and then just kept growing and growing. Great writing and, well, I found it good enough to add to the Top Picks this week, enjoy! XXXXL.
Leonid S. is eight and a half feet tall, and he is still growing. He is 34 years old, weighs 480 pounds, and he is still growing. He can’t fit in a car, wears size 26 EEEEE shoes, can pick apples eleven feet off the ground standing flat-footed, and yes, he is still growing. Michael Paterniti journeyed 9,000 miles to a tiny village in the Ukraine to learn from the world’s tallest man.
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: 65k CitiBusiness AA, 20k Chase Freedom Flex, 130k AMEX Hilton Business & Hilton Surpass, 70k AMEX Delta Platinum Business and 60k Platinum Personal, 140k IHG Rewards Premier, 100k IHG Rewards Traveler, 60k AMEX Delta Gold Business and 50k Gold Personal.Please use my Affiliate links.
If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me please, thank you!
Chase Sapphire Preferred 80,000 Points Signup Bonus with $4,000 Spend. I do not have an affiliate link for this card sadly and my referral link only offers 60k points. If you decide to go for it, please try to find a blog you want to support and use their links!
The higher signup bonuses from the banks keep coming. We now have the IHG Rewards Club Premier offering 140,000 points and even the no annual fee IHG Traveler credit card offers 100,000 points! I think these are indeed the highest offers for these cards. You could stay in Holiday Inns for several nights for free and not even pay an annual fee, thanks US banks!
Post corona our world is so different. And banks try to hang on to their customers by making it easier to burn some of the accumulated points as not many are even thinking about travel these days. Chase Expands ‘Pay Yourself Back’ To Ink Cards & Extends Until April 30, 2021. Certainly a welcome move.
Hilton Honors still has hotel awards that cost just 5,000 and 10,000 Hilton Honors points. Not that many but still…I could be doing numerous pump posts screaming at you to get the Amex Hilton cards so you can stay for up to 30 nights for freeeeee but I am not that kind of blogger and I guess that is why my blog credit card conversions suck 🙂
TRAVEL
Well, what can I tell you? You come here for unique content. Like this one about, please contain your enthusiasm, Ukrainian Railroad Ladies. For some strange reason, today’s post is taking a Ukranian turn you guys…
A stunning 3.50 minutes film “Devil’s Gold”. Roughly 300 miners a day climb two miles up the Kawah Ijen mountain and then descend more than 900 yards in their search for “devil’s gold.” This is one miner’s story of hard work, courage, and suffering all in the name of family.
I love this link in German. It shows pictures of Berlin side by side that you can then extend out. I was in Berlin (both sides) back in 1987 and it still remains one of my most important travel experiences that had a huge impact in my life. Maybe one day I dig out some of those paper photos and scan them…
Remember Mobutu Sese Seko? If not, a little history for you. He was the dictator of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly called Zaire) who ruled for more than 30 years expertly playing off the two super powers to help him…take corruption to unprecedented levels, even for African dictator standards! And then he built Gbadolite: The Versailles of The Jungle. Amazingly how it rots these days…
Since we are again avoiding destinations like the Maldives which travel bloggers bank sales representatives use to sell credit cards to unsuspecting masses, why don’t we visit virtually more fascinating places like Gbadolite above or, please sit down, an empty village: Inside “Peace Village,” The Ghost Town On The Border of North and South Korea.
COVID-19
Sure hope so! Here’s How the Pandemic Finally Ends. A vaccine by early 2021, a steady decline in cases by next fall and back to normal in a few years—11 top experts look into the future.
A must listen! How Will COVID-19 End? with Ed Yong at the In The Bubble podcast with Andy Slavitt. The whole transcript is there as well. I am the reading type 😉
We all knew that but reading this it kind of scared me: Vaccine Chaos Is Looming.
What if the Chinese get there first? Or the Russians? Oh, talking about the Russians: Russia’s Sputnik Vaccine Stunt Could Cast a Long Shadow.The Russian government is exploiting a scientific win for propaganda purposes. The potential consequences are troubling. “Troubling” may be the second best understatement of the year. What is first you ask? That Donald Trump pays his fair of share in taxes, bwahahahahaha!
I guess we could not have prepared for the pandemic like South Korea so let’s compare to Vietnam: Vietnam vs COVID-19: Round 2. 1,094 cases and 35 deaths. IN TOTAL TO DATE! This is just an average day in Florida, sad!
What a sad milestone and such tragic photos: A Look at Virus’s Impact as Deaths Near 1 Million.
PERSONAL FINANCE
I like the first line of this “Seems So Easy” article: “Managing Money is ridiculously simple—and unbelievably hard.” Right on! Everything listed is so common sense and looks so easy. Yet, the vast majority of people are basket cases when it comes to their money management. I think #7 “Keep It Simple” is very important. Sadly, I see this constantly out there: Instead, it seems investors are drawn to complicated strategies because of their complexity. They like the sense they’re doing something “special” and they wrongly assume such “sophistication” is the key to better returns.
I like helping people, it is in my nature I guess. And warn you about dangerous stuff. Like some ridiculous bros in FinTok, as in financial Tik Tok: Welcome to FinTok, Where Day Trading, Options Investing, and Misinformation Reign. STAY THE PHUCK AWAY!!!
CURRENT EVENTS/POLITICS
I watched the debate. It was a shitshow and I hope they do not have another one. If you are still undecided, what is wrong with you? Here is the transcript of the debate.
I have been on record, never wavered, that this Trump guy is mentally unstable, totally unfit for this office and very dangerous to the well being of us all and the whole planet actually. And he never amazes me how he can reach yet another low, wow! I mean, when you run on Law and Order and you have an easy task to just condemn white supremacy and violence and you instead do this Asked to Condemn White Supremacy, Trump Stalls and Tells the Proud Boys to “Stand Back and Stand By”…is there any wonder why I am very interested to buy a gun for the first time in my life? Shocking as I am a lover and not a fighter…maybe when you cross middle age that love part takes a step back, sad lol. #GodHelpUsAll
So, instead of crying, let’s laugh, you are reading the TBB blog after all. Best tweet with a gif about the debate!
Here we go: Ten times Trump shamed others on tax. The ridiculousness of it all! And how can you lose so much money running golf courses, depreciation and all, wow! I could do a whole post on this but…let’s move on, shall we?
Oh, God keep helping us please! How QAnon Conspiracy Theories Spread in My Colorado Hometown. I have a feeling years later we will find out that all this Q shit was started and developed from an intelligence operation by Putin himself…oh wait, am I fighting conspiracy non sense with….conspiracy crap? Hope God helps me too!
This shit is spreading faster than the corona virus after it enters a nursing home! QAnon’s Inexorable Spread Beyond the U.S. The bizarre, pro-Trump cult known as QAnon has been gaining followers in the United States for months. Now, the conspiracy theory has begun spreading to Germany. It’s followers believe that the coronavirus is a weapon of the elite in their quest to enslave the world.
ODDZ & ENDZ
I remember reading about this many years ago, wow! The 1925 Serum Run To Nome: The Incredible Story of How a Remote Alaskan Town Was Saved From an Epidemic.
Remember when you heard of a nice married woman who was volunteering in prisons and helped a man sentenced to life escape because she fell in love with him? Yeah, I remember shaking my head wondering how stupid can people get and ruin their lives. This is a fantastic story along with an interview of her: The True Story of the Married Woman Who Smuggled Her Boyfriend Out of Prison in a Dog Crate. On a second thought, maybe this deserved to be a Top Pick instead of the Ukrainian giant dude…
If you are very pro environment and all green and stuff like that, you will soon be able to be buried in the first ever eco-friendly fungi mycelium casket. Lay dead and…feed the earth with your very own nutrients and become a valuable source for new life. I think I will spare you the shocking video ok? 🙂
One of the most enjoyable reads this week was this: The weird world of kidnapping insurance. Fascinating insights about how they all operate in this “industry”.
Reading this article made me very sad. There should be no mercy to people who do this! Stolen lives: The harrowing story of two girls sold into sexual slavery.
No photos yet in this post, how sad. Let’s change that, here are the Best Drone Photos of 2020.
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.
I have updated some of the blogs listed in my now infamous lists: Blogs I Like and Blogs To Ignore. One notable addition is Miles to Memories who continue to do things their own way and succeeding and keeping the quality up and not going down in a rampant bank sales representative mode like the blogs in the Ignore list. And with so few blogs in this space now I had to add one more.
I also updated the Travel recommendations with the sites I use for travel hacking, general travel sites and a few miscellaneous ones. Additions are Amusing Planet, Cranky Flier and The Atlantic.
Been busy, I also updated my Personal Finance recommendations. I added Investor Amnesia.
I had several readers who did not like my turn to anti Trump material here and they let me know. I guess this guy wrote the response for me to you disappointed reader.
A travel blogger quit and I am surprised we are not seeing more yet: I’m quitting travel blogging.
Posts that make me barf. By the king of clickbait View From The Wing who only posts this crap because…you click on them, SAD!
Woman Climbs On Seats, Pounds The Overhead Bins Screaming About Her Evening Plans
Woman Jumps American Airlines Counter When She’s Not Allowed To Board Without Shoes
I wonder who the ghost writer is who writes these posts for the top two bloggers in Boarding Area and posts them almost at the same time…not even trying to hide it anymore. You can rest assured this blog is being produced by the guy who goes by TBB…whose blog can not afford to even hire an intern lol.
I am out with the CNB card, I cashed out with eight $100 Amazon gift cards. CNB bank sent them to me via UPS in about four days, very fast! I will be canceling the card shortly, adios #anotheronebitesthedust
I have started running again. More like jogging. If you are over 50 years old, recovery is so darn slow!
And I leave you with this…
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.
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By: TravelBloggerBuzz
Title: IHG Rewards New Offers, Pandemic End, FinTok Lunacy, Trump Tax Returns
Sourced From: travelbloggerbuzz.com/ihg-rewards-new-offers-pandemic-end-fintok-lunacy-trump-tax-returns/
Published Date: Thu, 01 Oct 2020 10:31:06 +0000
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