Cstrrider

It really depends on what you want. For me, I would rather optimize point usage to minimize out of pocket costs to go places, either offsetting trips I have to do or enabling trips I want to do. I would rather pay for a decent resort ($150-$250 per night) and coach tickets with points and get 1-1.5 ¢/pt than pay the same total for business class tickets and pay for the hotel out of pocket but get 2 ¢/pt. Basically in calculating redemption rate I would use:

(Cost I would pay for the trip w/o a rewards card) / (points spent)

Instead of:

(Listed cost of the trip) / (points spent)

If your travel cards got cancelled and your points cashed out and you just had a flat 1.5% back card, would you pay for Business class or First class or would you save the money and fly coach for your next international trip? Not to mention the out of pocket cost for first class is greatly inflated because a large portion of first class tickets are going to people getting "outsized value" from redemptions and people paying cash rates likely simply don't care what they spend. It would be interesting to see what the average cost of first class tickets is assuming 1¢/pt for redemptions, but I am sure airlines don't publish that.

I am not judging someone for choosing to use their points to enable a more luxurious trip, but when valuing travel points I think its important to remember what you personally would have paid out of pocket instead of what the listed cost is.

I appreciate that and think its really cool. If I lived in a more rural area I could see using it, but it doesn't help me when I get lost in the city with complex traffic patterns. I wish I could quit google maps but it will be a while before it works well enough as a replacement for me.

I have said this in a different thread but Mastodon will always have an adoption issue because the use for twitter is the ability to follow marginally known to famous people that you want to hear for whatever reason (for me sports, finance, tech stuff etc) and occasionally interact with them or even become a followed twitter person yourself. Mastodon may not reach critical mass on its own but being federated and connected with people that use a twitter like service from Meta will greatly open up the opportunity to use Mastodon like many would want to use Twitter.

The bigger issue will be how well the connection works and there is always going to be concern with how meta uses the data, but for me it does make mastodon more appealing...

Fair but my point was that the point of twitter is following/interacting with public figures while Mastodon does not have any of those mainstream public figures to make it worthwhile to the vast majority of people. The point of reddit is following topics and discussing them with regular people and even on a smaller scale Lemmy can provide that. Mostly I was just agreeing with you.

I use twitter to follow content from mostly public people like sports writers, tech writers, some athletes, etc. Effectively, I use it to get breaking news about some things I care about and only rarely interact when I come up with something I think is really funny. Maybe not everyone uses twitter like me but most probably use it to follow famous people and public figures and attempt to interact with them or whatever.

Mastodon can compete with Twitter on a technical capabilities front but its going to struggle to get the mass appeal that Twitter has without the less anonymous clientele.

I have tried other open source apps but always end up back on google maps because I live in a city and need detailed directions all the time....

Awesome have a great trip!

When booking hotels my process goes:

Check Google for cost in the area, then in this order book what is reasonably around that price:

FHR/THC > Marriott > Hilton > Amex Portal > Hyatt > other chain direct site > Discount sites

I have the Aspire and Ritz cards right now (I plan to downgrade the aspire when I hit 1 year unless I get a retention offer).

I see you have some metal Maui Jim aviators, I have their Makoas and in general their non-rubberized Nylon frames with ST Glass lens are a great Buy for Life option for people who don't like aviators. Mine look like they did when they were new.

Love the list in general!

I'm actually surprised its not more some instances grew by multiples right?

Yes I am in the US and I understand that this is a US centric problem though SMS is the feature that set signal apart from other secure messaging apps and made it slightly easier to get people to join. It was a nice alternative to imessage on android as opposed to yet another messaging app. Even in the US I have had to use SMS, WhatsApp, fb messenger, instagram's DMs, Line, Group me, Matrix, etc, to talk to different people and I was not going to convince many to switch to signal (I tried).

Mostly places near southern California:

• US Grant Hotel in San Diego
• Mission Pacific/ The Seabird in Oceanside
• The Westin in Anaheim
• The Conrad in Las Vegas (I think this is no longer on the list but there are many Vegas options)
• The Biltmore in Phoenix
• Also the Rome Cavilari which was a bit more pricy but incredible.

I wish they hadn't gotten rid of SMS though, that was the biggest sell for me over other options. I'm never going to get more than 2 or 3 people I regularly text to switch...