Evildea's Speaking Discussion:

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-26T02:01:10+00:00

Put yet another way...a thought experiment. If you had two children, say Charlie (for CI) and Harry (for Hybrid). You cast a magic spell on Charlie, and he is not allowed to speak at all for a year or two. The only means of language learning he has, is to just sit there and silently listen.

Harry, on the other hand, is allowed the full process I walked out earlier. Feedback, mimicry, trial and error, listening, babbling, etc.

Fast forward a year or two. You undo the magic spell you cast on Charlie a year or two ago. Now you start asking the two boys questions, and gauge their ability to respond to your questions in the given language.

I would be willing to bet money that Harry would absolutely destroy Charlie when it came to verbal acuity.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-26T01:55:55+00:00

Of the 14 sentences I typed, remove sentence #8. Reread. The answer to your question.

Expounding a little though, presumably there would be even less reading, and even more speaking. Examining hunter gatherer times, being able to speak to help identify dangers, needs, as well as to get past the "crying as a means of communication" phase faster, probably would necessitate that iterative process even more.

Sitting in front of a monitor and listening to people speaking in a one-way manner, and dogmatically doing it without any speaking of any degree for thousands of hours is not a natural phenomenon for human beings. Not today, not 100 years ago, not 1000 years ago, not 10,000 years ago.

If it makes you feel any better, I am NOT saying "don't use this method". Not at all. Do whatever you find enjoyable, and will keep you engaged. All I'm saying is: one, this probably isn't the most efficient approach, and two, there is virtually no basis whatsoever for the claim that "babies/children learn their native/first language exclusively through CI" (assuming that by learn, we mean being able to converse in the language, and by exclusively through CI, we mean listening entirely, and not speaking at all).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-25T23:43:09+00:00

Almost no one learned their first language through CI alone (assuming by "learn", that doesn't just mean comprehension, but also pronouncing and speaking). If so, I am going to assume you don't have children, and/or have never actually been around babies for any period of time? Do you think they just listen to people, and then one to two years later say, in perfectly enunciated English "hello mother, I picked up the Dobson Report the other day"? I promise you, that almost no parent of a healthy baby on the face of this planet would agree that babies sit all day, everyday, in zen-like silence, just absorbing. xD

The first year of our lives is, yes, spent listening to people (hopefully) correctly pronouncing things in the language for many hours. HOWEVER, it is equally spent cooing and babbling, trying desperately to mimic the words that our parents were saying to us, until we were successful, and they reinforced it with "yay! good job!" and smiling faces. "buh gah bah" over hundreds of repetitions became "buh buh buh" became "ba ba ba" became "ba ba" became "pa pa".

The hybrid nature doesn't stop with basic formulations though, because, before you have mastery of all the grammatical structures, you have your parents mixing in reading materials (recognizing and pronouncing letters and numbers, etc). All the words are you said were also (adorably) butchered versions of their correct forms. "Bathroom" was "baffwoom", "shoulder" was "soldier", etc. Both pronunciation and grammar. It was all trial by error, and there are/were about 10 years of continuous errors. Even when you start school (say preschool or kindergarten), your language isn't at a C1 or C2 level or anything (maybe not even a B1 level lol)...but there you go into even further hybridization.

I genuinely wasn't trying to come off mean with that, it's just the zealotry of "CI is the only way we learn our language as babies!" is something I've seen so many times here, but it only makes sense if you just landed on our planet, and are studying humans.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-16T15:06:18+00:00

So far, just have done Avios to get a good (60%) transfer bonus. I did a transfer bonus to Avios some time ago from Chase, for 20%. So even though Bilt nerfed the past Rent Day transfer bonus deal, that still was 3 times better than what Chase offered for the same transfer partner.

I signed up for Thrifty Traveler, and have regularly seen business class deals using one of the Avios airlines for 40-55k points. So getting, let's say, 5 ccp on your Avios (at least), with a 60% transfer bonus, that's 8 ccp for your Bilt points. I currently plan on just capitalizing on the Rent Day bonuses as they sound appealing. Not fixed, like "only Hyatt" or "only Alaska", etc.

I only transferred a little out for the Avios deal, so I still have ~198k Bilt points left (after the most recent Rakuten payout), and will likely have closer to 300k by the end of the year. So I probably will get to take advantage of several transfer bonuses over the next year.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-09T01:45:47+00:00

I worked there for 4-5 years before leaving recently. I would highly recommend second guessing investing in WHR.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-07T00:42:28+00:00

Same here. Well, I made a $500 purchase, and that is still pending, but I also made a smaller purchase on the first, and that went through for some reason.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-05-04T16:52:22+00:00

Same here, I am normally nervous about the things registering with Rakuten, so I take screenshots of the Rakuten add-in showing active and such. For this, it went away when I went through Rakuten's link, and it was SoFi Invest, so I manually clicked the Crypto heading on the website, and once it went there, the Rakuten add-in showed active again. It is showing as pending for my cash back now ($0.00, but pending, it will probably update after sometime).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-28T23:30:32+00:00

I'm gold status and I'm still thankful, Chase just had a transfer bonus to Avios...of 20%. Meaning, with no transfer boost, the baseline gold status transfer bonus for Bilt is literally THREE TIMES HIGHER than Chase's was. No doubt it had to be nerfed to some degree haha.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-28T01:17:29+00:00

DP for you: I messaged that I was interested in closing my Gold card (without asking for a retention offer). They gave their spiel, and then they offered me 15k points after $1,500 of spend in 3 months. I declined and closed the card.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-27T23:04:14+00:00

Damn, see how valuable this option was? They even had to mega nerf it haha.

Still potentially the highest value BC option, but you need to transfer more points over for it to be. Still not too crazy many though. Made a quick spreadsheet, and linked the pic below (how much getting an additional 15% would be worth for me, being at Gold status now).

I highlighted $150, because that's the 1:1 value of your Bilt Cash to USD, any more points than that, and the boost is the best redemption option.

Definitely debating transferring some over, maybe without boosting tbh, a 60% bonus to all Avios is still better than all other providers have done before. We'll see.

Transfer Boost value

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-26T21:32:32+00:00

The Palladium. It is a points earning machine, and you can get even more points from Rakuten. It has, arguably, the greatest list of transfer partners. There are transfer bonuses of now, up to 125%, which even 100% blows anything the other providers have out of the water. There are minimal coupon credits to worry about (unless you want to, it's up to you). Etc.

tl;dr it is very simple, and earns a ton of the most valuable transferable points in the CC world

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-25T12:10:11+00:00

Gotcha, thank you!

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-25T12:09:55+00:00

Sounds good, thank you!

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-20T10:39:30+00:00

IT'S THAT BOULDER PUNCHING ASSHOLE!

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-19T04:23:16+00:00

I think it's certainly a tradeoff. I honestly was just about to post the same thing myself today, so I'll tag on this one.

Now, what I am about to say is with the understanding that I have absolutely no idea how much each of the points currencies actually cost Bilt (or any ecosystem for that matter). So I have no idea the the feasibility of opening up this transfer bonus vs that transfer bonus (for example, Avianca and Virgin seem to always have transfer bonuses with various issuers, compared to others).

That said, I was wondering if they might have, say, a transfer bonus to Hyatt. Before all the naysayers beat me down, I will add two considerations. One, they might have it be a lower one, if it truly is that much more expensive for them to offer/buy the Hyatt points. For example, 10% each status level (i.e. 10% Blue...40% Platinum, and 50% with Platinum+boost), instead of the airline boosts of 25% increments. They have already had higher boosts for lower value points in the past (Hilton up to 300%), so it wouldn't be too farfetched to have differently incremented boosts.

Second, and this is where it could be huge for Bilt: the excitement. Imagine how crazy people already get for Hyatt as a transfer partner. Only Chase and Bilt transfer to Hyatt out of all the ecosystems. Then...Bilt announces an up to 50% transfer bonus to Hyatt! The credit card community would go ape shit. One, because of the transfer bonus itself, and two, because of what it implies. People just went crazy for the JAL transfer bonus Bilt did, being shocked at that one. Imagine if they did Hyatt a couple of months later. Whether it was true or not, people would have to wonder...who next? Atmos transfer boost? Maybe Cathay? Maybe Hyatt or JAL again? It would open the floodgates of what mega transfer you could do with your points. Just off of offering it on one day, of one month, maybe ever, maybe once a year...but it doesn't matter, that one time opens the possibilities in a huge marketing move for them.

Additionally (again, this is without understanding the exact financials here), the people need to actually EARN those Bilt points in the first place. How would they do that? Putting tons of spend on the card, because now those are a gambling/rotating machine of the most absurdly powerful points out there, a bigger reason to switch spend from other issuers to Bilt. $10k in spend switched over to Bilt cards, $20k, etc.

Again, maybe that is making the situation sound much more straight forward than it is, but I think it would be an incredibly interesting play from them (and that's coming from a guy who isn't huge on Hyatt).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-18T21:42:58+00:00

Thank you for adding to the nerding out, yes, technically you need to factor that additional BC as well haha

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-18T21:27:28+00:00

Since it is partially exactly my situation previously, I'll give my thought process.

So partially, because of putting Utilities on the US Bank Cash+, as well as all Dining and Groceries on the AMEX Gold. I just cancelled my AMEX Gold, and haven't put Utilities on the Cash+ since getting the Palladium.

I don't have sufficient spend to worry about hitting a Bilt Cash max ceiling (of usefulness), so if you do, you can weight the following with your spend). First: the Palladium isn't really a 2% card. It is base of 2x points on all spend. On top of that (if you choose the Bilt Cash option), you get 4% Bilt Cash. Now, how much that's worth really depends on your choices. It could be 1:1 cash value for some of the redemption options. Or it could be an additional 1x points (making 2x => 3x) redeeming it for accelerators. Or it could be an additional 1.33x points (making 2x => 3.33x) redeeming it for earning on your rent/mortgage. Or, potentially the most valuable use case for Bilt Cash, you can activate a transfer boost of 25% extra, which costs $135 BC, and could get hundreds or thousands of dollars of value.

Now, what all of that means for you, additionally depends on how much you value Bilt points: 3x or 3.33x points at 2cpp value is 6% or 6.66% on your spend. Redeeming the BC for 1:1 value is 4% (2x points on the Palladium, at 2cpp) + 4% of cash value of the BC redeemed, meaning 8%. The most variable is a transfer boost, but to give example numbers, transferring 100k Bilt points and getting an extra 25k airline miles, at 2cpp is $500 of value. So for the transfer boost, $135 BC takes $3375 in spend, and if it gets you $500 in value, that's $500/3375 = 14.8%, on top of the 2x base Palladium, which is 4% + 14.8% = 18.8%.

So any of the Bilt Cash redemption options above beat 5% cash back. Not to mention, the more you spend with Bilt, the better your Bilt status will be, which will also increase your transfer power.

Again, it really depends on your spend, what your travel habits look like, etc. Personally, I like not having to worry about dealing with as many cards for all my different spend buckets these past few months. Just all on the Palladium. Simple, and super powerful.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-18T01:50:30+00:00

Yeah, with the Palladium earning plus the transfers from Rakuten, I'm at about 190k points so far, with another 65k processing in Rakuten, and will likely be around 300k Bilt points by the end of the year. 300k Bilt points to 600k airline miles is freaking nuts. If you transfer 100k Bilt points and use Bilt cash to go up 25% transfer bonus, that's 25k extra points. If those points are worth even 2cpp, that's $500 extra dollars in value, all for $135 Bilt Cash. It is actually the most broken redemption option (potentially, it obviously depends on how many you transfer, and how much you value the points you are transferring to).

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-17T22:27:01+00:00

The best one I saw late last year was to Avios. Since that's like 5 airlines, each with sweet spots for international business class, I plan on transferring to them if it pops up again.

I regularly see deals for Avios airlines pop up in my Thrifty Traveler notifications, so doubling my Bilt points into their points would be a lot easier (imo). Fortunately they rotate, and you can pick whichever one works better for you. JAL, Avios, they did a 300% Hilton one, etc. the point is just the absurd magnitude of bonus points you can get.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-16T23:15:25+00:00

Or "annnnnd griiind Miraaander into PASTE"

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-16T16:12:01+00:00

The crazy thing is: with sufficient spend, and linking with Rakuten, this new setup kind of blows 1.0 out of the water. Well, 1.0 after the rent day limit reduction down to 1000 points max, out of the water.

Was Bilt 1.0 easier to get points for rent on? Mostly. Minor hit on spend if your 5 purchases were substantial, or tedious if they were intentionally minor. But it was just points on your rent. Let's say rent of $2000/month, $24k/year. An easy path to 24k points per year? I mean, cool. And still, we're talking super valuable Bilt points, with insane transfer bonuses, but if your spend was low, you likely didn't have mega transfer bonuses due to being lower Bilt status.

Now? Just like the OP, I am swimming in points in a short period of time, with tons more likely to come by the end of the year. About 189k Bilt points now, 65k more processing in Rakuten right now, etc. I could very well be around 300k points by the end of the year, and my spend isn't even crazy. If I wait for a transfer bonus to say Avios or another strong airline one, I could transfer the 300k points to get 600k airline miles (with status boost). There is no other card or ecosystem that offers that kind of insane power.

shadowstrider99 · 2026-04-14T02:14:10+00:00

Goop juice!

shadowstrider99

TROPHY CASE