News and notes from around the interweb:
- Wells Fargo is eliminating the ability to combine rewards accounts, gift rewards, and set up automatic redemptions
- I’ve written about and use InKind for discounted restaurant meals, here’s how it works.
They’ve temporarily doubled their new member offer. New users referred by an existing member get $50 (the person making the referral gets $25). So refer a spouse or partner and you’re getting $75 in free food. Free to join if you aren’t already signed up.
In Austin, I eat at The Well, Waterloo Ice House (they have playgrounds), Peaced Tortilla and Bar Peached, Wu Chow, Lao’d Bar and Old Thousand. So it’s very much worth it for me.
You’ll also often see “refer yourself / multiple accounts” discussed, which is of course against inKind’s Terms. Feel free to leave your referral code in the comments.
- My toxic trait is believing that this airline passenger should receive a full refund, because the product that was sold to them was not actually delivered. Airlines constantly sell the attributes of their product, wanting customers to pay a premium, then when they fail to deliver fall back on ‘well all we actually promised you was transportation’ (our fingers were crossed).
@AmericanAir soooo can we talk about some compensation?
This is how I sat for 2 hour flight, couldn’t even get a beverage from the FA because I had no where to put it. On top of that, the FA just said whoops, it’s a full flight, make the best of it…. 🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/0pUlFA8zXb
— Bhishma (@Bhishybhish) June 7, 2026
- The federal government, defending detaining a U.S. citizen three times and rejecting his REAL ID drivers license as proof of legal presence claims that REAL ID isn’t reliable. (The technical claim that it doesn’t prove citizenship is true, because you can get a REAL ID while in valid legal status, which completely undermines the government’s case.)
Given the original $10 billion cost estimate of the REAL ID transition (though at the time there were estimates as high as $23 billion, and no retrospective analysis was done that I’ve been able to find) I certainly hope that REAL ID actually mattered.
Of course, there is zero public evidence showing that REAL ID has caused a measurable reduction in security incidents, stopped a known attack, or materially improved no fly or selectee matching beyond the general hand waving about credentials being more reliable, which the government now questions when convenient to do so.
- Aww.
- Fuel is expensive nowadays. This mistake at LAX is just watching money pour out of that plane.
- China ride-sharing drivers compete for passengers, offer extra services from karaoke to haircuts With drivers under pressure from lower ridesharing platform pay, down to as little as 15 cents per kilometer, they’re finding ways to generate ancillary revenue from their rides to supplement the income.
One ride-sharing driver put a karaoke machine and a disco ball in the back seat. Passengers could simply sing songs by scanning the QR code. The karaoke machine also had a rating system. If the passenger got 95 or above, he would give them a drink as a prize.
One passenger reportedly planned to ride 3km, and changed their destination to a place further away after discovering the karaoke and even picked up two friends on the way. Another opened a cafe in his car, offering americano and latte made “on site”, priced between 22 and 29 yuan.
Some drivers also installed massage mats on the seats, offering an initial two-minute free massage, to induce the passengers to pay for longer service. The downside is that the passenger cannot choose to not enjoy the free massage. One person who had been diagnosed rib bone fracture hailed one such car, and said he went through a “torture” by the massage mat.
On the China story, yeah, cute, but, like, for real, there’s a lot going on over there that would shock a most of us (in the US, Europe). Payments are now basically all just QR codes (Alipay, WeChat pay). No cash. Hardly any credit cards, outside of HK (and hotels). And, nearly all new vehicles are EVs (there are like 20+ new makes/models, far more than just BYD). Their use of drones, robots for everything logistics is like sci-fi-level. Instead of looking at these quirky rideshare stories as mere novelties, we in the West should focus on how rapidly China is scaling its automated infrastructure, because that is where the real competitive gap is widening.
I’m not unsympathetic, but it is only a two-hour flight. Suck it up a bit, pal.