Claude explained it to me.

It had a step by step guide to resolve this problem on this airline. Very good.

But, it didn't work because some web developer made a foolish decision. Basically, if there is any mismatch in personal information, you cannot connect the flight to your profile.

Why is there a mismatch? Because their @#$%(@#$ website has a dropdown for the city name and they do not have my city because I do not live in a city! So I just put in the first city in the select field.

An enduring problem

Dateline: 2009
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-firing-of-mr-x-becoming-a-social-media-black-eye/

Venting, but I just booked a ticket on an airline I have not used before.

Without fail, I always have the same experience.

1. Buy ticket on their site (not Expedia) and give all my contact info

2. They ask if I would like create an account so I can manage my travel. Yes

3. I give them all the same contact info.

4. I look at my account and it shows no flights. No upcoming travel.

But guys, I disabled my cookie blocker and let you put all manner of tracking shit on my browser so that you would know that it is the same person with the same email in the same session that just registered so he could manage his flights.

Why are you note able to connect the dots?

The only way I've found to avoid it is to create an account and then book your ticket. Even then it's iffy. The last time on United, I could not figure out how to get my flights to show in my account.

If Amazon ran an airline, they would surface every flight I've booked, every flight I've considered booking and every flight of anyone I had talked to within earshot of an Alexa unit, and flights of everyone who has a similar travel history to me.

There is so much competition in the airline industry, but I guess nobody chooses flights based on which airlines have functional websites.

When golf courses are criminalized, only criminals will play golf.

Of course, the template works so well because some very important elements are left out.

At the same time, I have a friend who was a filmmaker and his mentor told him there are only two stories: football and young person overcomes adversity.

So, like romcoms would be football - moving the ball back and forth until finally there's a goal

And of course Harry and Luke are story #2

But physicians are already complaining that Medicare reimbursement rates are not sufficient to cover costs. Medicaid reimbursement rates are quite a bit lower than that.

https://www.mgma.com/mgma-stat/2026-medicare-reimbursement-changes

https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/calendar-year-cy-2027-medicare-physician-fee-schedule-proposed-rule

We could, of course, just say that doctors make too much and should get paid less which would mean that the reimbursement would cover costs. But for primary care and some specialities, we have a doctor shortage, so you can only squeeze that lemon so hard.


https://www.sgu.edu/school-of-medicine/blog/us-doctor-shortage/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11838062/

Posted by a former filmmaking prof on X with the comment:

"My students were always a bit gobsmacked when I showed them this in the Film Industry and Synergy classes."

https://www.esf.edu/news/2026/usda_approves_american_chestnut_project.php

The chestnut was the dominate tree in many of the forests of the eastern US until the chestnut blight wiped them out. Majestic, old-growth chestnuts and elms. Most people younger than me have never seen one.

I think the part that I really hadn't thought about is that most desal plants are designed only to fire up when there is extreme need.

That has the two obvious follow-on consequences mentioned in the article

1. It means they are super expensive per unit since most of the time that massive investment is idle

2. They are super unreliable because you don't do routine maintenance so when it's time to actually start them up, they don't start.

So much cheaper than I thought in places where they are base infrastructure and run full-time. Much more expensive than I thought in many common implementations

Highest increase in a couple of decades
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/business/health-insurance-increases.html

https://apnews.com/article/three-year-college-degree-ab4f336a8b4d3abd97980133a84a4007

The American Association of University Professors is not happy

My BIL worked in Lidar/GPS mapping for a long while and he said that they would deploy a ground station, then fly over with a plane and get centimeter accuracy.

Specialized robots are not good enough to make you a pizza, but humanoid robots will clean your house. Seems like a good idea

https://www.wrtv.com/videos/news/national/startup-renting-out-humanoid-robots-to-clean-your-home

https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/forget-more-reservoirs-should-the

This is a really interesting read about the economics of desalination plants vs reservoirs.

I always just thought that desalination was prohibitively expensive unless you had no other option.

https://9to5mac.com/2026/08/26/ads-have-landed-in-apple-maps-and-they-are-as-bad-as-expected/

Aren't Apple fans so cute. It warms my heart when they try to play in the real world.

QuoteWhen we ran a poll last month, the overwhelming majority [i.e. 93%] of 9to5Mac readers agreed that Apple should exit the ad business.