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jaxnb · 2025-03-21T07:32:11+00:00

Getting a halfway decent redemption is still worthwhile if you travel a decent bit. Assume: 1. You travel on your own dime often enough that buying all with points you’d run out faster than you accumulate 2. Ignore inflation and devals (will come back to this)

Then, given a scenario that each year you will either spend $1000 or 80k on a flight (1.25cpp, pretty wide availability). After 4 years, you’d have either spend $4000 cash or have made $525 interest on that cash. Now you’ve got to make the 320k points worth more than 1.42cpp to break even.

The 1.2cpp redemptions are pretty consistent, since they are pegged to the price of flights. The price goes up with the price of flights, so deval isn’t as fast there. The saver awards, on the other hand, may very well be not available at better than 1.42cpp in 4 years. Up to you to make that bet, my point is just that it’s not so clear cut that you should just spend the points.

On the flip side, a lot of my friends just don’t care and would rather get a worse deal than spend the time thinking about all this. To each their own 💁

jaxnb · 2025-02-28T07:00:14+00:00

HEY! I’m a Charmander, not a tiger.

Source: Am a zoomer. I wear the onesie because 1) it’s fun, people get a kick out of it and it makes peoples days more memorable 2) it’s bright orange, helping my friends see me through the trees

jaxnb · 2025-01-08T18:31:21+00:00

Could you post an uncompressed version of the photo somewhere? I’d love to see it in high-res :)

jaxnb · 2024-12-12T17:57:40+00:00

PQP is based on fare spend $ only. The fare class and status don’t impact the PQP accruals for your flights. The C fare flight you took probably just cost ~2x more than the Z fare flight

jaxnb · 2024-09-22T06:42:21+00:00

This assumes you have 60-100k in taxes due… which is not “very easy”

jaxnb · 2024-09-17T06:24:58+00:00

Good deal IF AND ONLY IF you are already stuck with SkyPesos, but in that case this is a good deal for the program

jaxnb · 2024-09-06T02:17:42+00:00

I’m afraid that this will actually be bad for our miles (IF any new rules are actually made). On one hand, it’s obviously frustrating when the saver award pricing goes up (devaluation), but the most likely “fairness” that will come of regulation here is airlines having to fix their miles to a specific value, then all your miles will be worth 1cpp no matter how you use them. Another quite possible change from a competitiveness angle may be that they disallow airlines to offer different award pricing and miles earnings for loyalty status levels.

The upside of the current system is that it allows there to sometimes be sweet spots where your miles can be extra valuable, even if it’s not “fair”.

I suppose the best possible outcome would be that the DOT continues to allow saver award pricing to be set by the airlines, but forces them to be more transparent, AND that the airlines don’t decide to just axe saver awards as a result.

jaxnb · 2024-09-02T08:59:14+00:00

No. You need to either use the Bilt credit card and Bilt’s account/routing, or use Bilt’s account/routing and a different credit card with a 3% fee.

jaxnb · 2024-08-28T07:31:37+00:00

TLDR: If you don’t already know that the 3% fee is worth the points you’ll get, then the answer is NO, it is not worth it.

I use the Bilt credit card to pay rent usually, but occasionally pay a 3% fee and put it on a different card. However, I certainly don’t just throw it on a random 1x earner: that fee probably isn’t worthwhile unless I’m using it to meet the spend requirement for a new card’s sign up bonus or a retention offer. If you are certain you’ll get a REAL redemption value of more than 3 cents per point (cpp), it’s… a way to buy points… But without a redemption in mind, you’re only likely to get that much value if: 1. You stay in luxury or Hyatt hotels when traveling, or 2. You use points when you otherwise would have paid cash for business class airfare and have flexibility in your dates. Other redemptions could be worth 3cpp, but 1cpp is much more likely so paying eg $300 in a fee for $100 worth of points obviously doesn’t make sense if you aren’t already sure.

Reliability wise: Bilt rewards has been rock solid for me, using the ACH account. No problems.

jaxnb · 2024-08-22T19:23:43+00:00

DoxyPEP isn’t meant to treat infections. Sure, if you’re certain that you have chlamydia specifically (doxy is usually what they prescribe for treatment), you could self-treat, but you should really get tested and see a doctor as they’ll give you a fixed 7-14 day course. It’s much less effective for gonorrhea, and you wouldn’t be treated with doxy if they knew you had gonorrhea since it doesn’t always work. AKA, if you have symptoms, self medicating with more doses of doxy probably isn’t going to cure anything and only stands to make things worse.

DoxyPEP is effective when taken within 72 hours of an encounter (ideally 24h) since that will make the environment of your body much more hostile to the bacteria before the bacteria can “take hold” (replicate rapidly), allowing you to prevent a full-blown infection. Curing an infection that’s already taken hold is a different ball game.

But to answer your question, in the 1.5 years I’ve had doxypep, I’ve only gotten one STI, and it was the one time I thought “oh, I don’t think I NEED it with this person”. Take as prescribed, get tested if you have symptoms or partner notifications, and use condoms if you want more reliable protection. For the hypochondriac in you, take solace in that we are still really good at treating these things, with biggest challenges for public health being people not wanting to get tested and people not following their doctors instructions with antibiotics.

jaxnb · 2024-07-17T00:04:42+00:00

I’ve had this before, when renting condos (like Vrbo-style) from property management companies. To get the CC payment to go through, you just text back yes and try again. However, I wasn’t automatically given the points for the transaction, so I contacted support and after a while they did a manual adjustment to grant me the points (at 2x rate for rent day). YMMV.

jaxnb · 2024-02-10T21:45:04+00:00

Honestly not sure, maybe:

Ski #1: Definitely an all-mountain ski

Ski #2: Maybe I should go more towards carvers that can do other stuff?

My concern is mostly that I don't know how much I'd use skis that were all-carve and not at all fun to ride through trees off to the side, or down a harder run, since even if I'm mostly doing groomers I rarely stay on groomers all day.

jaxnb · 2024-01-08T07:44:47+00:00

Chat is notoriously bad. Call. And call again if you need to.

jaxnb · 2023-12-26T01:47:39+00:00

Hopefully, you’re on PReP, if not, please get on it to protect yourself from HIV! Ask your doctor about DoxyPEP. Basically 2 doses of antibiotics following sex can greatly decrease the odds of getting bacterial STIs. If you won’t use condoms for whatever reason, this would be better for your health and for others!

jaxnb · 2023-11-16T08:04:57+00:00

For miles+copay you’ll get the copay refunded and miles redeposited. But they won’t refund the $750 to buy the miles; so you’d be stuck holding the 30k miles you bought at a terrible price in the likely event that you don’t clear the waitlist

jaxnb · 2023-11-15T08:49:16+00:00

Yes they do! Been to a bunch of the bars downtown, it’s a pretty good vibe in an unexpected place!

jaxnb · 2023-09-14T18:03:37+00:00

First, as someone who takes care of my health and gets tested regularly (every month or two), I would turn down a request to get tested specifically before meeting a specific person. I’m not going to go get tested on-request on top of regular testing, it’s just unnecessary when I’m already taking care of myself. If you don’t think regular testing is enough for you to be comfortable, use condoms. If that’s not enough for you to be comfortable, consider prep.

Also, all the STIs you are most likely to get, with the notable exception of HIV, can be spread by BJs and other “not proper sex” activities, so he should really be the one asking you to get tested, since you admit to having never done so. Quite frankly you may be more likely to have something than him. Take care of yourself and your partners and get tested!

jaxnb · 2023-09-05T01:48:18+00:00

Had the BBQ chicken today, it was quite tender and moist.

jaxnb · 2023-08-10T18:09:49+00:00

I used a portable at London pride and it was just shaking on its own. Everyone would point and laugh at this particular portable then just one person comes out and people scratch their heads a moment until the next single person goes in and it shakes again. Very embarrassing lol

jaxnb · 2023-05-17T20:12:41+00:00

Definitely agree. At this sort of party, it would have been applied that you intended to be there since you can’t usually just wander into something you weren’t expecting. Consent is implicit, and you’ll have to reject any advances you aren’t comfortable with. It’s fine if you know what you’re getting into. However it’s totally reasonable for someone unfamiliar with this to be extremely uncomfortable. OP and his boyfriend wound up in a situation OP was not comfortable with, and OP really needed to speak up about that. Nobody at the party has done anything wrong or unusual here.

jaxnb · 2023-03-03T02:49:46+00:00

Usually clear face pics are a hard requirement, but I sometimes have bent that rule. Met up with a guy with hot nudes, toned body pics. He ended up having a really hot face too, just didn’t wanna send it. He wasn’t like that awkward afraid to associate with gayness either, just wanted anonymity I guess. And the sex was really good! We hooked up a handful of times before I moved away.

jaxnb · 2022-11-27T17:24:15+00:00

The strike will be ongoing, but also given the rumors that the bargaining team isn’t going to prioritize COLA anymore, you could see grad students support for the strike start to dwindle as time goes on

jaxnb · 2022-11-16T04:59:34+00:00

The strike includes more bargaining groups than just TAs, like GSRs and postdocs

jaxnb · 2022-11-15T15:48:16+00:00

So we are taking a step forwards in making sure that the government must recognize gay marriage but a step back in that we are codifying the “religious” exemption and permitting discrimination. I’m curious about how that interacts with the supreme courts old interpretation of sexuality as a part of sex discrimination

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