Now that the UnitedHealthcare guy is in custody and the bizarre celebration of murder has died down, I’d like to talk about ERISA (long-term disability benefits) denials and the horrifying lengths insurance providers will go to deny people lifesaving care, while raking in billions in profit each year. Over the…

That’s right, we’re going off-topic again, but this time it’s for a very important reason. We’re only weeks away from the November 2021 election and the Minneapolis ballot has a crucial charter amendment question about establishing a Department of Public Safety, or as it’s more popularly known, “defund the police.”…

What’s my problem now? If you’re new to this blog, what took you so long? Also, you may not know that I was a full-time, freelance travel writer for 13 years. This included many years researching and writing Lonely Planet guidebooks, which requires agonizing amounts of fact-checking, because if you…

This is my public declaration, so I don’t back out (unless I quietly delete this later), that I have run the numbers and formulated a plan to retire at 50. OK, it’s more accurate to say that I can retire at 50, just as soon as I complete an admittedly…

Hi all, This is possibly the first of many addendums for my “Coronavirus tourism survival and recovery” post from back in April. I encourage you to read or re-familiarize yourself with the original piece as well, since few if any other people appear to be writing or talking frankly about…

This shouldn’t be news to anyone by now, but tourism and hospitality stand to be the worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and, to add injury to injury, probably face the slowest recovery. All accommodations with the exception of the most robust hotel chains will hear a near-death rattle at…

tl:dr – If you work in travel and tourism, and are younger than 50, these issues are going to affect you sooner or later. You’re going to want to be proactive, not reactive, if you want any hope of your business/destination surviving and maintaining a career in this industry until…

tl:dr The numerous flaws in TripAdvisor and Booking hotel reviews are dizzying and likely beyond rescue. I’ll preface this post by saying that I have no new hard evidence to present here. There’s no conclusive DNA test, no bloody murder weapon, and no one caught red-handed with 12 kilos of…

Spoiler alert: your hand soap budget is about to increase by a factor of 20. Dirty money, like filthy, is so much worse than we thought. A study done by the now chronic hand washers at the Cork Technology Institute on euro notes and coins found that 97% of the…

Why are there so many airline fees and why do they seem so dubious? The short answer is economics. I know that’s not the answer you were hoping for (i.e. “Unforgivable ripoff”), but even the angriest flier has to admit that the video explanation below makes a lot of sense…