Just a little (link) love: limp noodle edition
December 6, 2018
How an irked Northern California postal patron helped crack a global plant smuggling scheme
I knew the CRISPR baby gene editing was bad, I didn’t realize quite how bad it was. But of course if you’re going to be unethical, why would you bother to be meticulous about the quality of your work?
On Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere
Oh great, another data breach. This time with my favorite hotel chain: Starwood.
As much as I’m an introvert and don’t want to talk to anyone, I also do want a little bit of a fabulous neighborhood.
Whew. A standard marriage according to the research sounds absolutely terrible: “Experts used to tell straight couples they should get hitched and stay that way, no matter what. But one researcher told a different story: marriage was not only harder for women—it could actually ruin their lives.” Also I’m not so sure what the big deal is about your friends choosing to have polyamorous relationships. In what way does that affect you?
This FlyerTalker’s question about what salary you make and how often you fly business class was interesting in how people pushed back. Some interesting anecdotal information there. Personally we make more than the OP, together, but I don’t think we’ve ever flown business class. There was that time Dad went and bought us Premium Economy for an overseas flight when we could ill afford it but that was foolishness in the extreme, they were paying for that for ages. One set of friends got hooked on business class recently because of an unexpected upgrade and blanched at the real business prices ($5000 for a single overseas flight). I don’t think I know anyone else who travels business class regularly (outside of Kathy) but I’d like to, once or twice. It’s not really a thing you do with kids, though. Still other well-off friends choose to travel economy, despite traveling in style during their working years, to preserve their retirement income for all the other fine things in life they enjoy.
I’ve flown business class a time or two, but either I’ve been upgraded due to overbooking or I used frequent flyer miles because the miles-eligible spaces in coach were booked, and I decided that I’d rather use additional miles for business than dollars for coach.
Tragic Sandwich recently posted…A Day in the Life
The airline once upgraded me to business class on a return flight. It was my only overseas work travel and I was the most junior person on the team, so it felt really odd when I checked in and saw it. I actually went to my manager to verify that she was okay with my accepting it. She was.
It was so, so much nicer. The outbound trip was economy, so I know the exact difference: I couldn’t sleep much at all in economy and it was uncomfortable in so many ways. Business class was a completely different experience. I could sleep, I wasn’t crowed in close to other people, it was easy to get up and down if I needed to. The difference was big enough that I wouldn’t want to take an overseas flight that wasn’t business class. The cost difference is so big, though, that I wouldn’t want to pay business class prices to do it. If I ever travel overseas again, it’ll have to be on miles. Or, if it’s for work, I’ll have to weigh the cost of paying for an upgrade myself. Economy is fine for within-continent travel, but when it’s an extremely long flight, I just don’t think economy is good enough. It isn’t just a matter of sucking it up for the duration of the flight, it’s also how you feel physically for days after you get off the plane. (Or at least, that’s how I think about it for me.)
We are about to take business class at 3x the cost of economy (that’s after a huge sale!) because my mother feels she can’t tolerate sitting up for the whole flight any more. Before that it was economy all the time except for freebies.
I’ve never taken business class either, but have always wanted to.
Once I got an opportunity to stay in business class if I deferred to the next day arrival, and I decided to just go on the plane.
If I were to do it I would use points, but it’s just so $$$ otherwise!
GYM recently posted…A Week of Money: Maternity Leave Edition
I made my students discuss the CRISPR baby thing in class! It’s literally an instant textbook example of how not to do gene editing. AND the gene variant he *should* have used doesn’t confer immunity, only resistance (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3185609/) and not even to all strains AND one of the babies is a reported heterozygote.
And also the scientist is now reported missing.
Jenny F. Scientist recently posted…Marshmallow Making Tips
As usual, a great selection of interesting posts! Thank you… <3
In graduate school (and some years thereafter), a couple among our set of friends entered a polyamorous arrangement. This went on for some years, and it was actually pretty interesting. Eventually, they evolved back into a one-on-one relationship; then had a child.
The husband, after some years of apparently enjoying the open marriage concept, became pretty unhappy…even miserable. How she felt about it, I do not know: it was her idea, and she didn't discuss her feelings with her friends. But eventually she must have thought his happiness was more important than the network (as it were). Or possibly given a choice between him and them, she selected him. Who knows? Whatever works for you is what works for you!
Most of my international travel was in business (as stand by and business travel) . I just/am flew tp Hawaii in main cabin…Delta has changed their seating since I last flew ugh. Made me think I want to try for business for my next long haul (I’ve not priced it.) I noticed the seat row spacing after flying Southwest so much.