Day: July 12, 2026

Revisionist history is fun not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I get set off so easily by news from the airline industry.  Maybe it’s because I’m constantly frustrated by the endlessly elevating cost of travel, compounded by all of the traveling I wish I’ve done that I struggle to try and make reality.  Maybe it’s because the industry is so full of bullshit that’s so easy to sniff out, where companies are getting richer by the second while consumers have long been left in the dust at being able to keep up with rising costs.  Maybe it’s because of years of having flight privileges and then not has me with some resentful shell shock at what it costs for the rest of the world to travel and it manifests as vitriol toward in the industry.

Maybe it’s just all of the above to varying degrees.

Anyway, I read this article about how airline travel costs aren’t coming down in spite of the plunging costs of jet fuel, and this is one of those situations where an explanation isn’t needed at all; most of us in the world know and accept that the airline industry is just a bunch of greedy fucks who will continue to increase and increase costs and that going backward is absolutely not an option.  But an explanation is given, courtesy of Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian, and naturally all it does is incite anger and frustration to anyone like me, stupid enough to read it.

However, the worst part is that from the time I originally read it, to the time I’m taking the time to write about it, the original post as well as all links, feeds and summaries about the original post have all been since edited, to make Bastian look like not quite the disgusting money-grubbing corporate asshole, because there was a quote originally that basically blamed the rich for why fares will indefinitely remain high, because the affluent don’t want to run the risk of the poors getting on their hallowed Delta jets.

It really was a sight to behold, a masterclass of white man CEO-ing, where Bastian completely dodged accountability, threw his richest customers under a speeding bus, acknowledged the class disparity in the world by also blaming the poors for existing, all while not even trying to stop spinning bullshit about the dollars and cents that make Delta and all the other airlines are grubbing for with every ounce of energy they have.

Revisionist history truly is an incredible thing.  Clearly, smarter people than Bastian quickly realized the disgusting horror of his original words and cashed in a whole lot of favors for them to be able to scrub the entire fucking internet so quickly to revise his words to not necessarily stop blaming the rich, but to soften the accusations that the poors are why the rich are the reason why fares remain high.

The funniest (ironically) thing about this whole thing is that it was wholly unnecessary for Bastian or any CEO to even pipe up about this whole thing.  It’s one of those things most people already know and have begrudgingly accepted the fact that airline costs will never, ever, ever come down because the industry, much like all other corporations, really like money, and when they get used to seeing how much of it comes in on account of a hike, they would rather eat their young before bringing it back down, regardless of if the reason for the increase swings back downward or goes away outright.

Not only did anyone not have to say anything about this, no airline really even has to do anything in order to try and placate airline travelers.  Like, Delta tries to justify keeping their airfare costs astronomical by introducing the most minimal of perks, like a discount or reduction of bag fees, or a tweak to boarding process – but only for those in first or business class, and possibly the less pleeb-ey pleebs in economy plus.  With absolutely zero consideration for the economy and Spirit basic class, whose nickels and dimes are the real reason why the company makes a gozillion dollars a year.

Yeah, Delta doesn’t even have to do that, because the whole airline industry is full of collusion, and if all carriers agree to the same uniform set of draconian in-flight privileges, then nobody is required to deviate from the status quo.  In fact, the fact that Delta is doing such is only going to piss off the people operating United, American and any of the other carriers that will most likely have to tweak their operations in order to fight for the five passengers per flight who are fickle enough to pick one over the other on account of such trite perks.

And then of course, these too will disappear in the future, regurgitating and recycling the droll state of airline traveling for consumers, and then the whole thing will restart itself in 12-18 months, but with fares another $40 higher across the board.  Because of inflation, fuel costs, too many poors getting on, etc.

God bless ‘Murica

My Español education has led up to this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I try not to live a life of too much envy, but if there’s one thing that I am often green with envy of, are polyglots and their abilities to be able to competently communicate with people of various nationalities in their native tongues.  Fewer things are as cool to me than seeing people who are able to change linguistic gears at the drop of a hat, multiplied by how competent they are at each language not native to them.

The more languages a person can bust out, usually the more envious I am, and there’s this one dude on the internet who probably makes his living through reaction videos of himself going around, mostly preying flexing on the Chinese, surprising them with Mandarin or Cantonese after putting himself in these deliberately orchestrated scenarios.  He speaks a large number of languages competently, but he seems to have his niche creating content surprising Chinese people, which makes me resent this rare form of white privilege he’s capitalizing on, but at the root of it, I’m just jealous that he’s able to speak so many languages.

Now I can say that I can speak a number of languages myself, but none remotely close to my ability to read and write English.  My Korean is adequate enough to be able to survive in Korea, but I wouldn’t be able to brog or be writing too many emails in Korean in a professional capacity.  I think I know enough Japanese to be able to go to Japan and not be completely invalid to the locals, and I’ve been determined to learn Spanish, seeing as how it’s probably the most utilitarian secondary language to know living in America.

Needless to say, I’m not going to be producing polyglot content any time soon.

At the time I’m writing this, my Duolingo streak is up to 556 days, entirely on Español.  I can count on one hand how many days that I’ve been forced to freeze, and every single one of them has been on account of being on cruises over international waters, and therefore being incapable of logging in to complete a single lesson.

Maintaining a streak is about the easiest thing in the world for someone like me to do.  Committing at least 30 minutes a day for most of that duration is a different story, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job, and even on days in which “I’m away” I still make sure to get in as much Duo as I can.

I think I’m still very much a novice at the language, repeatedly tripped up by verb conjugation and utilizing the correct form of them for all the variables that can change their use, but for the most part I’ve felt my confidence grow throughout the last two years at being able to actually engage a Spanish speaker, and I know that if I’m not already there, I’m going to hit a wall where I won’t ever develop further unless I actually use the language among others, on a routine-like basis.

Either way, the whole point of this post is to build up to the fact that the culmination of my current track has led up to a milestone occasion, in a slightly not necessarily just ironic sense: I was able to download the Telemundo app, navigate through the 100% Español log in process, and successfully get the Spanish broadcast of Copa Mundial de la FIFA going because mythical wife had heard that the Spanish broadcast was way more entertaining than FOX’s English broadcast, plus without the cringey right-wing ads they inject during half and hydration breaks.

It did not disappoint, even if we noticed that any goal scored by Argentina got three elongated gooooooooooollllllllls from Andrés Cantor while goals scored by anyone else just two.

This, is almost up there with being able to speak with and haggle with Mexican shopkeepers in Cancun over another La Parka mask for my collection of La Parka masks, as well as being able to respectfully dap up and ask Mexican tourists in Seoul if they were having a good time in Korea, after the Korea vs. Mexico World Cup match.

Tiny interactions, sure, but positive ones, and ones that I wouldn’t have had the thought to even entertain engaging, had I not taken the forward step to learn another language in the first place.

Ultimately, the level of comprehension I’d love to be able to achieve is, like Nate McLouth doing an interview entirely in Español good at Spanish, but at the same time there’s also that concern that if my Español proficiency were to surpass my Korean, it would be pretty disgraceful in some sense.

Either way, neither is going to ever really improve if I don’t use them, and I feel like if I didn’t have so many obligations in my life, and were independently wealthy, among the things I would do to pass the days in the absence of needing to work, learning moar languages would definitely be up there.

But hey, hurrah for my improvement in Español, y con suerte seguirá mejorando.