Quick Note -- Airlines And Price Gouging -- January 29, 2025

Locator: 48432ARCHIVES.

Wow, I'm in a great mood this morning.

We'll have a bit of rain over the next 24 hours but then more than a week of sunny weather and a high of 72°F on the weekend. The days are getting noticeably longer and it's just a matter of time before the swimming pools open up again. 

The dip in the stock market -- I love how "they" call it a "dip" -- was another opportunity for young investors. I remain fully invested at all times. I have a rolling 30-year horizon. I don't plan to leave my heirs any money: they will inherit our entire estate of US equities and the dividends that come with those equities. I've already started the process.

I will be off the net for awhile. I walk Sophia to the bus every morning and I'll be leaving in a few minutes. I've been up for a couple of hours updating production data for Bakken wells. A lot of old sites were updated. I've referenced a few of the sites that I updated, but most of the updates were done without bringing the posts forward.

It's getting more and more impossible to keep up with the news. More on that later, perhaps.

I'm looking forward to a cross-country trip or two or three this calendar year. Whether it all plays out or not, hard to say. I'm too comfortable in my apartment. LOL. 

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Of Interest

From Forbes this morning: 

First up, AI:

Venture firm General Catalyst is leading a $50 million funding round into Onebrief, a startup that makes collaboration software to help Pentagon leaders speed up military planning.   

Chris Miller, a former acting Secretary of Defense and co-author of Project 2025, also joined the startup’s board, telling Forbes his role provides a link to the Trump Administration ahead of what Silicon Valley hopes will be a bumper year for startups working with the Pentagon.

Second: in most instances this would be called "price gouging." But I guess "price gouging" only refers to items bought by poor folks. Is it appropriate to use the phrase "poor folks" any more? I've lost the bubble on such things. Anyway, back to "price gouging":

Major U.S. airlines have boosted flight capacity from Kansas City and Philadelphia to New Orleans ahead of the Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl, and experts recommend booking flights now to avoid the steepest prices. Nonstop tickets to New Orleans from domestic airports are already averaging $979 per round-trip ticket, significantly higher than the average domestic airfare of $294 for a round trip, according to the travel platform Hopper.

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Travel

Wow, wow, wow!

The [London] Telegraph ranks the 1,250 prettiest and ugliest cities in "Britain." Link here.

We lived in England for many years:

• first, the family lived three years in southeast England, in Suffolk County, near Cambridge, northeast of London; and,
• then over a period of four years I spent many months in Yorkshire, near the Scotland border.

It was awesome. Four of the prettiest cities noted by The Telegraph were in the areas that we lived. Most notably, Ripon was one of the four cities and where I spent a lot of time, at the Ripon Cathedral for evensong. 

In the immediate area of Ripon was another city that made the cut for being most beautiful: Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Ilkley was a 23-minute drive from where I stayed / worked while in Yorkshire. I have no idea how many times I would have driven through that village. Bolton Bridge, nearby, was a favorite destination. As for hiking, I usually hiked north and west of Menwith Hill which means I probably did not hike through Ilkley.

When on temporary duty, up to four months at a time, I stayed at the Wellington Inn in Darley, just a fifteen-minute walk from the base. Maybe 30 minutes. I forget. I often got picked up by someone driving that direction so seldom had to walk. Occasionally the Air Force would allow me to rent a car while at RAF Mildenhall. 

I would usually hike all day Saturday and all day Sunday. I would leave as early as 7:00 a.m. and not return until 7:00 p.m. In general, all my day-long hikes were solitary, but on many outings by car and short walks I generally had one or two female companions from the air base who also shared the joy of ... what do they call it in Germany -- volksmarching.  Whereas the latter tends to be larger groups and very well organized, the walks I did in England were anything but.