News and notes from around the interweb:
- Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo charges $20 for an express Nespresso pod. Only 2 per stay are complimentary, unless you’re in a suite!
- $180 for two cocktails and two bottles of water in Las Vegas – including a $25 “Admin Fee”
A Las Vegas live show venue, the Dolby Theatre inside Park MGM, appears to be price gouging guests by selling absurdly expensive & over priced basic drinks & adding excessive “admin” fees. This was what two visitors experienced at a recent Zayn Malik show. This is exactly what… pic.twitter.com/GZdensAR8N
— Jen G. (@vegasstarfish) February 16, 2026
- Using Frequent Miler’s Valuation Method, The Bilt Palladium Card Is The Most Valuable Card They Have Ever Seen, Even With Zero Housing Spend There are bumps with servicing, but there’s a reason I love spending on the Bilt Palladium Card (See rates and fees). You may think the product is complicated, but that’s what makes it fun (and creates opportunities for outsized value).
We find that the first year value is $3,149, exceeding even the value of the former leader, the American Express Platinum Card, at $2,630. However, redeeming every bit of this value requires a spend of roughly $35,788 during the year in order to generate enough of the internal currency known as Bilt Cash (hereinafter B$) to use the offers on the Bilt card. But that level of spend is not materially different from that required to support spend on the AMEX Platinum or the card below it, by some distance, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which was worth only $1544 in FM first year benefits.
- The Washington Post agrees with with me. TSA should regulate security, it shouldn’t be both regulator and service provider (regulating itself is how you get unaccountability and poor performance).
- Working link for Bank of America Atmos Rewards Summit Visa Infinite Card 100k Point Bonus (HT: Doctor of Credit)
- Your Turo knows what you’ve been doing in that car. This is crazy.
This woman rented a car from an online app. The owner of the car always has a dash cam installed in all of his cars. He even told her she could disconnect the camera because she wasn’t comfortable with it. We can clearly see what actually happened in this case, it was cut and… pic.twitter.com/vWuXlxv62U
— SonnyBoy (@gotrice2024) February 22, 2026
- Cool story, bro (HT: Enilria)
- You should pull your kids out of school to travel.
Excused. pic.twitter.com/LAWsa3Bq6H
— Delta (@Delta) February 23, 2026
- A number of hotels show up as unavailable through Chase’s The Edit online but here’s a data point on successfully booking by phone.
Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post agrees with Gary?
Well, well, well… turns out, View from the (Right) Wing is back!
I agree with having a dashcam for a rental but having a camera recording the driver is probably an invasion of privacy. That said, the camera did show a driver who was doing other things and couldn’t be bothered to drive full time. Her story about being forced off of the road is shown to be a lie from the external facing camera, looking at the drivers on the other side of the road and whether any drivers passed her.
Speaking of crazy Vegas pricing – at Cosmo, beer in the minibar is cheaper than the cheapest water in the minibar – $13 vs $15.
That would be 20 BRL or about $4 USD by the way. Still ridiculous.