News and notes from around the interweb:
- Let’s revisit the Conroe Hyatt near Houston. The city-owned white elephant has $170 million in construction debt and a newly-commissioned report from Jones Lang LaSalle estimates that it is worth “between $22.5 million and $23.8 million.”
When I wrote about the property two years ago, occupancy was so low I speculated it was actually built as a CIA black site. Maybe government-owned hotels aren’t such a good idea. - Do people realize that they can select their specific itinerary themselves? (And if there’s a schedule change, that they can generally change flights as well, although certain city pairs will have limited options.)
Hey @united I’m pregnant and didn’t appreciate that you put my connecting flights so close together in time and at such far gates that I just had to sprint across IHA to make my connection. You got us here 5 minutes before my connection started boarding.
— Corinne Snow (@Corinne_V_Snow) October 23, 2025
- The whole ‘restore trust’ thing at Evolve Bank isn’t going so well. The new CEO appointed in August was arrested by the FBI.
- Hilton’s miserly 1,500 bonus points per stay promo (worth six bucks) was so bad they’ve upped it to a still-disappointing 2,500 points per stay.
- Is Brightline killing people?
According to Federal Railroad Administration data, the Brightline has been involved in at least 185 fatalities, 148 of which were believed not to be suicides, since it began operating, in December 2017. Last year, the train hit and killed 41 people—none of whom, as best as authorities could determine, was attempting to harm themselves.
- Tokyo Haneda airport is getting a full-size godzilla
- DAL Moscow, Inc! Surprised this list isn’t longer tbh.
Here’s the full list of @Delta subsidiaries per court filing pic.twitter.com/QKD1I3AJWn
— David Shepardson (@davidshepardson) October 24, 2025
- Cheapest lounge constuction ever, just set up dividers to wall off a section of the concourse as was done here in Cairo terminal 3 domestic concourse.
Brightline fatalities are mainly people walking on the tracks and not seeing or hearing the trains.
We need to stop those evil murderer trains from harming people. People just walking or driving and from out of nowhere a massive train jumps it tracks just to kill people
If only we were actually taking white-collar crime enforcement more seriously; instead, we’ll see a token political opponent ‘taken out’ for disloyalty, while the global kleptocracy continues relatively unchecked. Panama and Paradise Papers forgotten. So much history ignored. This is nothing compared to the pardons of folks like CZ. We’re cooked.
@jojo trains seem to be out of control and they could be anywhere!
Here in the MSP area, the light rail always seem to go out of its way to hit cars and even sometimes pedestrians.
Hey United, I unnecessarily sprinted through IHA in order to get to the gate before boarding started, because I’m pregnant and taking a slower pace and arriving 15 minutes before departure isn’t an option.
That lounge only the 151st worst thing to happen in Cairo in the last 48 hours.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15223429/Hamas-dangerous-terrorists-released-Israel-staying-luxury-resort.html
How about booking a longer connection? A lot goes into gate assignments, which are likely done all by software and the software doesn’t know there’s a pregnant woman onboard. Problem solved.
We just stayed at Conroe Hyatt. Great 4 star hotel IMO, and great staff as well. There were a big convention event when we were there and according to a restaurant staff, conventions are really the bread and butter and keep the hotel very busy. We hope they will find a way to keep open and be viable.
There are expensive fixes and cheap fixes for the Brightline incidents. Cheap: Education campaign. Local papers, radio, TV, social media, ads online, etc. Expensive: Put up fencing and stronger intersection controls (e.g. raise the tracks above road level, fully block traffic [some intersections only block traffic in the direction of travel, which allowed an idiot firetruck to pull in front of the train], block pedestrian crossings, etc.).
The problem is fundamentally people not realizing this is NOT a slow freight train, but a 100+ MPH high-speed rail train operating on tracks that were repurposed to allow this. Every one of these deaths that I’ve looked into was somebody ignorant doing something stupid. Design could def be improved, as I mentioned above… but that’s also expensive, and the cheaper, faster solution is to just tell people to stop being idiots b/c these trains are much faster than you think they are.
Unfortunately, people in the USA are largely not accustomed to dealing with high speed trains and act stupidly as a result. Add in the Florida Man genetic flaw and you end up with a number of dead people.