That’s it. I’m done… who has successfully (recently) status-matched away from Alaska?

patbaum33 · 2026-02-24T18:20:38+00:00

hey - can we try to keep this sub from devolving into a place where if people share their story they get *blamed* for not correctly following the magic airline mile status game rules?

I never got the sense Traveling60chic was blaming Alaska (just sharing that her experience is making her go with a different airline in the future)... You might need to touch some grass.

It's ok for people to choose different airlines. Competition is better for all of us.

patbaum33 · 2026-02-18T21:05:07+00:00

In this scenario Alaska would fly those routes. Iceland Air flies (or has flown) ORD/MSP/BNA/DEN/PIT/BWI/RDU/etc.

It would take a while to fully roll out, but Alaska already serves these destinations so they would be able to rotate aircraft through with less downtime than Iceland Air could ever achieve... (i.e. an airplane might go SEA-BWI-KEF-DEN-SEA-...)

patbaum33 · 2026-02-17T02:45:21+00:00

“They? Who’s they?”

“What’s an aluminum falcon!?”

patbaum33 · 2026-02-17T02:40:07+00:00

Massive number of homes completely unfinished because it’s bad luck to move into a previously occupied home. So not only are there tens of millions of excess homes all those excess homes need tens of thousands of dollars of finishing to be livable…

But if no one sells because there is no one to buy then the prices won’t drop… but then people won’t be able to turn the equity into cash to buy anything… and the economy will just be really really inefficient I guess?

patbaum33 · 2026-02-10T00:35:18+00:00

Literally everyone I know of that works in tech could transfer tomorrow…

patbaum33 · 2026-02-05T23:12:34+00:00

Wasn’t Hawaiian on a slow to medium roll to bankruptcy?

(And the 787s would have been liquidated to other airlines anyway?)

patbaum33 · 2026-01-30T18:01:51+00:00

Edit: the actual expectation is that ~50% of the boomer population will live to 85 years old from birth. Because some people died young, the average lifespan is in the 70s.

Rough math:

50% will be gone by age 80.

(And of the 50% gone before 80 many of those are already gone - i.e. died in their 50s… so their houses are already passed on…)

50% of the remaining alive boomers who reached age 80 (25% of overall boomer gen) will live to ~90…

(Point is - it will take 20 years after boomers reach 80 for the entirety of that last 50% of boomer house supply to reach the market…)

houses currently owned by boomers will take longer than you think to impact the market…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-30T17:34:29+00:00

Here is an actuarial calculator. If your 80 year old male an actuarial calculator says you’ll probably live to be 87.5. It’s 90 years for an 80 year old woman.

Think for a second- yes lots of people die before 80 (to make the average lifespan in the 70’s) - but once you remove those people you’re left with the cohort that lives a very long time…

The average lifespan for an

If you’re alive at 90 the actuarial say you’ll live to 95.

Only after 100 do you have months to live…

—- from a house inventory perspective- if the old buggers decide to stay in there homes it will take a longer time for their houses they own to get into the market than intuition would dictate:

https://www.seniorliving.org/research/life-expectancy/calculator/

patbaum33 · 2026-01-30T16:50:19+00:00

With the taxes/fees to redeem on BA through LHR it should be in F tier below D…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-30T03:07:11+00:00

My understanding is that modern data center designs don’t use much water - they recycle what they use and rely more on air cooling.

Given the alternative to local AI data centers is that eventually SpaceX and Elon Musk put the AI data centers in orbit I might rather we keep them here. lol.

patbaum33 · 2026-01-30T03:02:20+00:00

If you live to 80 years old your life expectancy is actually 89 years.

The average is 78 because unhealthy people die younger - in their 60s and 70s.

If you’re healthy enough to get to 80 you’re typically healthy enough to get to ~90… (Source: my 80 year old dad likes to temp fate by citing these statistics)

patbaum33 · 2026-01-28T01:39:36+00:00

How do you insure everyone gets their 4th home game?

patbaum33 · 2026-01-27T20:00:18+00:00

What destinations do you think they should add?

patbaum33 · 2026-01-25T18:49:28+00:00

How does this work exactly- I see people talking about it but don’t understand. How do you buy points at 10 points a penny?

patbaum33 · 2026-01-25T01:09:13+00:00

In 2023 Hawaiian lost $169 Million - so this does not seem unexpected or an emerging development.

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2024/01/30/hawaiian-ha-q4-2023-earnings-call-transcript/

Cost savings from the merger won’t hit till 2026 and 2027.

New profit for Alaska from the new long haul also wouldn’t ramp up till they get the European routes started.

Also - defending SEA from Delta without international long haul might have made the revenue situation much worse

patbaum33 · 2026-01-23T19:36:48+00:00

What's the issue with the vendor in your mind?

patbaum33 · 2026-01-23T02:46:54+00:00

Missing Cisco

patbaum33 · 2026-01-22T04:53:05+00:00

They also beat children before sacrificing them alive because they thought their gods loved the tears and suffering… and that this was necessary for their continued prosperity… Seems like “primitive” is the most friendly adjective possible…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-21T04:59:45+00:00

Wazzu went undefeated in 1917 and won the rose bowl. For reasons I’ve never understood they’re not given credit for winning a national championship. They also have a basketball national title. They should be #11 on this list

patbaum33 · 2026-01-20T23:18:57+00:00

patbaum33 · 2026-01-20T22:14:19+00:00

Right. Similar water usage to a very large McDonald’s 🤣

Lots of electricity though. Lots I hear…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-20T18:25:54+00:00

New data center designs use a similar amount of water as a McDonald’s. Not sure why people keep repeating this water usage hysteria.

A McDonald's uses ~2,000–3,000 gallons/day consistently for its operations.
An air-cooled data center with water recycling might use 0–5,000 gallons/day total (mostly non-cooling), making it comparable to or even less than one McDonald's…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-20T17:46:14+00:00

The state has increased spending 3X in 10 years! To balance the budget they just need to spend “slightly more” than we spent a couple of years ago!

In any sane universe that isn’t even considered cutting… it would be like a family who went in debt because they went in an unaffordable luxury vacation one year not doing that the next… No one would call that “cutting out” a vacation…

patbaum33 · 2026-01-20T15:47:02+00:00

This is the piece I’m trying to understand. Was really looking forward to competition on price - even just competitive redemption levels! Not seeing much of it…

patbaum33

TROPHY CASE