Airfares are climbing. Hotels are charging more. Rental cars cost what they cost — which is to say, too much. Summer travel costs are rising again, and the collective response seems to be a shrug followed by a credit card swipe. According to Axios, domestic airfare is up 8% compared…
Category: Travel
Culture
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A Dancing Robot Bought Its Own Plane Ticket — Then Got Its Batteries Confiscated
A Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to San Diego was delayed Thursday — not because of weather, not because of a mechanical issue, but because a child-sized humanoid robot named Bebop showed up with batteries that were too big for federal regulations and a dance routine nobody asked for. The…
Culture
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The New Travel Flex: No Signal, No Email, No Apologies
Americans left 768 million vacation days unused in 2023, according to the U.S. Travel Association — and even when we do take time off, 40% of us check work email. The World Health Organization defines workplace burnout as exhaustion, detachment, and declining efficacy. But clocking out at 5 p.m. doesn’t…
Airlines
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Airlines Will Put You on a Bus, Charge You for Not Fitting Their Shrinking Seats, Then Blame You — Flying in 2026
There’s a reason I’m avoiding airline travel chaos right now — and it’s not just one thing. It’s the compounding absurdity of an industry that’s decided customer experience is optional. Southwest Airlines is reportedly testing what amounts to a “fat tax” — charging passengers extra if they don’t fit into…
Culture
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Lunar Hotel Reservations Are Here — And They Cost More Than Your House
Recently, a startup began accepting lunar hotel reservations — not for a property that exists, but for one that might exist, orbiting the Moon sometime in the unspecified future. The deposit? A quarter of a million dollars. Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU Space) is the company behind this. They’re asking…
Culture
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Why Passengers Keep Grabbing Bags During Evacuations
The evacuation slide is deployed. The cabin lights are screaming red. Smoke is doing that low, theatrical crawl along the ceiling. Somewhere up front, a flight attendant is shouting words that should not require interpretation. And yet — arms go up. Not in surrender. In retrieval. This is the problem…