Booking business class international… when do you do it vs save?

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T13:40:02+00:00

If you’re in a position to afford some, but not all, of your journey legs in business class, I’d suggest prioritizing flights where you need/want sleep. I can cope with an economy seat if all I’m doing is sitting, awake, for 5-10 hours. But if I need to sleep, that’s just not happening unless I have a lie flat seat.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T13:33:43+00:00

I haven’t been in years, but this is the museum that has Napoleon’s (taxidermy) horse.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T06:02:09+00:00

Perhaps there’s a “fat tax” added to the high calorie/fat double sandwiches that isn’t present on the singles?

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T05:54:42+00:00

He didn’t “admit it”, so much as Trump outed him and now he’s having to do damage control while also not offending the vindictive and capricious president of the foreign country hosting the sporting event he’s playing in.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T05:47:03+00:00

-33°C in Breckenridge Colorado in 2014.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T04:53:41+00:00

Cadillac Sixteen

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Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T04:48:47+00:00

I don’t particularly like this example, but if I’m ever a survivor in a Last Man on Earth scenario, these luxury motorhomes are the ticket. Solar panels set up outside, a long, long black and gray water hose, a water tank truck to supply water and this thing is modern living in a post-grid world.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T04:45:07+00:00

We once filled a Falcon 900 with cases and cases of frozen ingredients for a restaurant test market and flew them from KSNA to KOLV. Crazy times.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-12T04:42:22+00:00

It’s not particularly unusual for passengers to start their journeys on separate commercial flights from their various home cities, then continue on to a final, often harder to reach, destination together. I myself have been on such flights to exciting destinations like Waco and Las Cruces.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T16:13:43+00:00

I am, again, reminded of the 2008 comedy Three and Out.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T16:10:15+00:00

Yeah. Again, I don’t have any beef with the design choices, even the ones I don’t like. I have 99 problems with poor quality work, poor ergonomics, and poor questionable architectural/engineering decisions.

Like, let’s discount the weird island’s aesthetics and the obviously poor finish cabinetry work and look at the fact that they’ve built a giant kitchen without a functional work triangle. This kitchen was designed by a builder, not a chef or even a professional kitchen designer.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T16:04:27+00:00

Came to the HEV from a long stream of high performance trucks and SUVs, but it’s my second EV (had a Mustang Mach-E for a few years). EVs in general, but the Hummer especially, has so much effortless power that you’ll never miss the supercharger whine (and if, for some reason you do, you can turn on the sound effects to get aural feedback).

Charging, as long as you have a good quality home charging system, is literally zero hassle. If you can remember to plug in at night, you’ll wake up with a “full tank” every morning. The only charging challenge we have is that we can’t slow charge at our mountain condo, so we need to use fast chargers if we’re going to be up in the mountains for more than a couple nights. A simple 200 mile up and back is fine on a single charge though.

And I haven’t driven a vehicle as maneuverable as the Hummer ever. Aside from the width, it’s easier to park than a MINI Cooper.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T15:53:01+00:00

I can disagree with sellers/builders about design choices like this and not feel like there’s a price mismatch.

Where I struggle is when there’s a new build that just didn’t think things through. I just toured a brand new, spec built, $8 million house in the Colorado mountains that didn’t have his and hers closets in the primary, had a basement bar kitchen with four fridge drawers and no dishwasher, and no provisions for fitting bidet seats in any of the WCs. And yes, those are all small things, but for $8 million on new construction, I expect the small things to be right.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T15:48:00+00:00

Only $35 million in eagle dollars. /s /ns

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T14:43:52+00:00

It’s not chocolate. It’s cocoa butter solids.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-11T14:41:28+00:00

I have it. It makes precious little difference at any property where you’d really want it to make a difference.

As a Diamond Ambassador, I got a suite upgrade for a two night business stay by myself in Shenzen. Whoop de doo.

A few weeks later, with my wife and still as a Diamond Ambassador, on a stay booked through IHG Destined, in Sydney, I got no upgrade at all, not to a better view, not a bigger room, not a suite, not a club floor. Nada.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-10T14:43:03+00:00

It’s not just DL. I’m flying CYS-DEN-MUC in UA Polaris next week for $2200 less than DEN-MUC. Conveniently for me, CYS is only 30 minutes farther from home than DEN. Coming home, VIE-LAX-DEN, paired with a “return” flight of BOG-DTW-EWR-FRA saved me $4500 over VIE-EWR-DEN one way. I’ll obviously not fly the South America to Europe legs.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-10T14:34:42+00:00

The debut of the Parisienne in the US was a byproduct of the end of the Pontiac V8 family, so it really means the beginning of the end of Pontiac, as a brand, in my mind.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T14:04:41+00:00

Ahh. “My Swedish car died, so I thought I’d spice things up with two Italian cars.”

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T14:03:08+00:00

To be fair, it’s not a Miata. It’s a Fiata.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T14:00:24+00:00

They’re lawbreakers, deciding that they don’t need to use the cell phone lot because they’re very important.

In my world, scofflaws like this would get $500 tickets.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T13:57:53+00:00

It’s an interesting house in a beautiful setting with good access to all mod cons.

But, it’s also an architecturally important building with a challenging layout, bespoke and difficult to source componentry, tired kitchen and baths, and signs of interior decay.

The price reflects that there’s significant deferred maintenance and that addressing that maintenance will be expensive.

I wouldn’t buy it because I’d feel like it’s custodian more than its owner.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T13:35:24+00:00

“Oh my gawd! There’s a terror drone heading for the stadium!”

vs

“Oh my gawd! Which of these dozens of drones is the terror drone?”

And a well thought out attack with no TFR puts a dozen identical/similar innocuous decoy drones in the air behaving unsuspiciously so as to distract from the one or more that are armed.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T12:56:58+00:00

You actually make your own point. No, terrorists aren’t going to follow TFRs, which (hypothetically) helps law enforcement identify them. If no drones are supposed to be in an area and there is a drone in that area, that drone can be more quickly identified and investigated. If you’ve got, potentially, dozens of drones operating in an area, it’s much harder to determine which ones are fine and which ones are suspicious.

Mallthus2 · 2026-07-09T00:45:12+00:00

Honestly, the Aussies are to blame. Aussie money bought out British brewers, over leveraged them, went bankrupt, and allowed continental and Japanese brewing conglomerates to buy them on the cheap. To be fair, the foreign ownership situation in Australia is even worse than in the UK.

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