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Education

Man shares travel hack that made his business class flight 'cheaper than economy'

All it took was a simple tweak to his browser.

travel hacks, cheap flights, flying business class, LATAM
Photo by alevision.co on Unsplash/ @camerconstewart_uk/Instagram

"Sometimes it pays to learn a language!"

It feels safe to assume that if money were no object, people would always choose to travel business class over economy. After all, who doesn’t want a fast check-in, fancy food and drink choices and more of that sweet, spacious legroom?

However, at anywhere between four to ten times the price of a regular economy ticket, this style of traveling remains a fantasy for many who simply can’t afford it.

Luckily, thanks to one man’s clever travel hack, that fantasy might be more achievable than we realize.

Cameron Stewart, a British photojournalist and camera operator, recently shared how he was able to score business class tickets at a fraction of the price, simply by switching the website language from English to Spanish.

Stewart had booked his flight on LATAM, Latin America’s largest airline company. According to The Mirror, he heard that LATAM’s website sometimes showed different ticket prices depending on which language the browser was set to.

While booking his flight from Santiago to Easter Island, Stewart decided to experiment and switched his computer’s VPN or "virtual private network" to make it seem like he was located in Chile, along with changing the browser's language.

"I cleared all cookies from my browser, and used private browser mode so there was no way the website would determine I was outside the country," Stewart told 9News, according to The Mirror.

Using Google translate to navigate the site, Stewart was easily able to book. And it actually turned out “cheaper than economy.”

Stewart shared his story in an Instagram post, along with a photo in his cushy seat, all smiles as he sat next to a generous amount of some kind of orange beverage. Probably made from organic oranges they grow in the plane's private garden.

Is the trick foolproof? No. But with such a dramatic price difference, it might be worth trying out.

With ever rising inflation costs and constant headlines about an inevitable economic crash, people consider saving money to be more important than ever. Even those who are incredibly wealthy are looking for ways to save. Rather than cutting ourselves off from the things that bring us joy, there are plenty of creative solutions when it comes to living frugally.

That goes for traveling too. Airline tickets might be bonkers, but the need to travel still exists. Perhaps even more so post-pandemic. The good news is that with a little bit of work, you can discover incredible deals to make the trip more feasible—things like finding the optimal times to book, checking sites multiple times a day, and learning how to optimize credit card points, to name a few. Sure, it doesn’t guarantee a hoity-toity business class seat, but it does make adventure that much more attainable.

Excuse me while I change my browser settings to French. Allons y!

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travel
Pop Culture

Professional baby namer lists the top girl names from the 80s that 'did not age well'

Bad news for the Lindsays, Courtneys and Heathers of the world.

Photo credit: Canva, @namingbebe, TikTok

There was a time when every other girl was named Ashley. That time has ended.

As we know, baby name trends are constantly changing. One generation’s Barbara is another generation’s Bethany. But it doesn’t make it any less odd when you suddenly realize that your very own name has suddenly made it into the “old and unhip” pile. And for many of us 80s babies…that time is now.

In a now-viral TikTok post, baby name consultant Colleen Slagen went through the top 100 girl names from 1986 to find which ones “did not age well” and were no longer ranked top 1,000 today. Such a descent from popularity would mark them as what she calls “timestamp names.”

Spoiler alert: what might be even more surprising than the names now considered old school are the names that are still going strong.

The first name that Slagen says is “officially out” is Heather. That’s right, not even cult movie fame could help it keep its ranking.

via GIPHY

Other extinct names include Erica, Courtney, Lindsay, Tara, Crystal, Shannon, Brandy and Dana. Tiffany, Brittany and Casey are also heading very much in that direction.

“My name is Brandy. The Gen Z hostess at Olive Garden told me that she’d never heard my name before and it was so unique,” one viewer wrote.

However, Andrea ranks “surprisingly high,” and Jessica, Ashley and Stephanie have survived…so far.

Gobsmacked, one person asked “How is Stephanie still in there? I don’t think I’ve met a Stephanie younger than myself at 34.”

But the biggest holdout still belongs to Jennifer. “She was a top 100 name all the way up until 2008. Round of applause for Jennifer,” Slagen says in the clip.

@namingbebe Sorry Lindsay, Heather, and Courtney. #babynames #nametok #nameconsultant #girlnames #80skid #1986 #nametrend ♬ original sound - Colleen

If your name has found its way into relic of a bygone era status, fret not. Slagen, whose name also ranks out of the top 1000, assures it just means “we are creatures of the 80's.”

Of course, while we still have baby names that become incredibly common for extended periods of time (looking at you, little Liam and Olivia), the real contemporary trend is going for uniqueness. As an article in The Atlantic notes, for most of American history families tended to name their children after a previous family member, with the goal of blending in, rather than standing out. But now, things have changed.

Laura Wattenberg, the founder of Namerology, told the outlet that “Parents are thinking about naming kids more like how companies think about naming products, which is a kind of competitive marketplace where you need to be able to get attention to succeed.”

But again, even with a keen eye on individualism, patterns pop up. “The same thing we see in fashion trend cycles, we see in names,” Jessie Paquette, another professional baby namer, told Vox. “We’re seeing Eleanor, Maude, Edith—cool-girl grandma names.”

So who knows…give it time (or maybe just a pop song) and one of these 80s names could make a comeback.


This article originally appeared on 5.9.24

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community
Science

A study reveals the cheapest time to buy airfare

The average flyer misses the best deal by 15 days.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons/https://images.flysas.com.

Taking a trip on the airline.

Everyone seems to have a theory on the best time to purchase airfare to save the most money. Some say it's right before take-off. Others will swear that prices are lowest six months before the flight. Well, now we have the truth. A scientific study was conducted by Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Commission that found the best times to buy flight tickets to get the best deal possible.

When we actually buy...

DOMESTIC: 32 DAYS IN ADVANCE

INTERNATIONAL: 59 DAYS IN ADVANCE

When we should buy...

cheap deals, Expedia, ticket prices, domestic flights

Get your boarding pass ready.

Photo from Pixabay.

DOMESTIC: 57 DAYS IN ADVANCE

The ideal advance-purchase time for domestic flight to snag the lowest average airfare is 57 with prices climbing most rapidly in the 20 days leading up to the flight. On a flight that averages $496, it will cost $401 57 days before the flight and around $650 the day of departure.

INTERNATIONAL: 171 DAYS IN ADVANCE
For a ticket that averages $1,368, the lowest average of $1,004 happens around 171 days before take-off. On the day of, the price will be around $1875. Ticket prices begin to dramatically escalate 75 days leading up to departure.

(H/T Conde Nast Traveler)


This article originally appeared on 10.14.15

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travel
Joy

NICU nurse adopts 14-year-old patient who delivered triplets alone

“I knew it would be impossible to find a foster home that would take all four of them. No one was going to take a teen mom and her preemie triplets.”

Today|YouTube

NICU nurse adopts teen with three babies.

Having your first baby is a scary experience. Everything is new—you've quite literally never done this before—not to mention an entire human is going to be removed from your body one way or another. Childbirth, no matter how your baby leaves your body, is not for the weak. But imagine giving birth alone to not just one baby, but three, all at the same time. Then imagine doing that feat at the age of 14.

Shariya Small experienced that scenario in a hospital in Indiana, and her nurse Katrina Mullen took note. Small's babies were premature, born at just 26 weeks, when the average gestation for triplets is 33 weeks, according to ReproductiveFacts.org. Due to their early birth, the babies, Serenitee, Samari and Sarayah, had to stay in the NICU at Community Hospital North in Indianapolis for more than five months, according to Today.com.

During their time in the NICU, Mullen noticed the young mom visited her babies alone, not appearing to have much of a support system. “She’d be there alone for days at a time sitting at her babies’ bedside,” Mullen told Today.com.

The pair got to know each other over the months that the babies were in the hospital, but Small continued to be reluctant to open up about her family life. That changed after she found out that Mullen had her first child at 16 and had given it up for adoption. Their experiences bonded the two moms, and Mullen began helping to care for the babies and Small by giving her advice and showing her how to properly care for the infants.

Eventually, Mullen gave Small her phone number before the babies were discharged from the hospital. It quickly became apparent that Small did not have a support system, as she called Mullen often asking for advice. Out of concern, the nurse went to visit Small an hour away, where she was living with a family member.

The condition of the home was concerning enough, but Mullen became even more worried when she saw how thin Small's son Samari was. It turns out he had to be admitted to the hospital, which prompted a visit from Child Protective Services, who determined that Small and her three infants would need to enter foster care. She gave the social worker Mullen's information and things began to fall into place.

Listen to Small and Mullen explain their unique story below:

This article originally appeared on 4.10.23

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nicu nurse
Health

Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.

If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.

Image from https://www.youtube.com/...

This isn’t comfortable to talk about.


Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.


A recent video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.

Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.

*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)

It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:

reporters, news, human resources

Awful.

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.

Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.

DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.

It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.

The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their jobs.

broadcast news, female reporters, discrimination

Not saying it.

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.

hate speech, slander, sexualization

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.

The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is.

They did a study of over 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006. They counted how many comments that violated their comment policy were blocked.

The stats were staggering.

From their comprehensive and disturbing article:

"Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the 'top 10', one was Muslim and one Jewish.

And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men."
harassment, feminism, culture, community

If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.

All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.

So what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?

  1. To start? Share things that make people aware it's happening. Listen to the Just Not Sports podcast where they talk about it.
  2. If you know someone who talks like this to anyone on the internet, CALL THEM OUT. Publicly, privately — just let them know it's not OK to talk to anyone like this.
  3. Don't stop talking about it. Every day, the harassment continues. Don't let it linger without attention.

There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.

Watch the whole video below:

.This article originally appeared on 04.27.16


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Science

A study found 4 different categories of couples. Where do you belong?

What if I told you someone did find a way to "categorize" your love style but with actual real science?

Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This movie couple definitely could have used some healthy therapy.

Ever fallen into one of those Internet dating quizzes? You know, the ones that promise to categorize you? Like "what your astrological sign says about your relationship style."

They can be fun, but we all know they're mostly fluff.

What if I told you someone did find a way to "categorize" your love style but with actual real science?

Three relationship scientists asked about 400 couples to track how they felt about their relationship and how committed they felt to marrying their partner. They followed each of the couples for nine months. Not, like, literally followed them — that would be creepy. Instead, they just asked them a few questions and asked them to keep track of how committed they were feeling over time.

At the end of the nine months, the scientists collected all the couple's responses and delved deep into the data. They found that couples did indeed tend to fall into one of four categories.

Prepare yourself for some soul searching because you might just be:

1. The Conflicted, but Passionate

celebrity, relationships, commitment

Scarlett and Rhett from "Gone with the Wind."

Image from Insomnia Cured Here/Flickr.

This is the couple Facebook made the "It's Complicated" relationship status for. Their levels of commitment tend to go up and down over time, especially after arguments. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. These folks use those conflicts to help them make decisions about the relationship, and in fact, they didn't appear to be any more destined for a breakup than any of the other groups.

Also, as a bonus, they tend to follow those turbulent downs with passionate ups. "These couples operate in a tension between conflict that pushes them apart and passionate attraction that pulls them back together," said study author Brian Ogolsky.

2. The Partner-Focused

dating, hobbies, leisure activities

A nice night to have a couples walk.

Image from Yiannis Theologos Michellis/Flickr.

If your idea of a perfect date night is a long walk followed by eight hours of binge-watching "House of Cards" together, you might fall into this category.

Partner-focused couples tend to spend a lot of time together and share hobbies or leisure activities, and it's that shared time that tends to propel them forward. They tended to be more careful and thoughtful about their relationship decisions — more likely to build from the inside out — and tended to be the most satisfied overall.

3. The Social Butterflies

social butterfly, bar hopping, dancing, friendship

Dancing the night away...


Image from Esther Bubley, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection/Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, if your perfect evening with your partner involves grabbing all your friends and hitting the bars or breaking out Settlers of Catan for the hundredth time, this might be the category that best describes you. Social couples usually share a friend group and use that time spent with friends to inform and build their relationship as a couple.

"Having mutual friends makes people in these couples feel closer and more committed," said Ogolsky. They also tended to be pretty stable and have higher levels of love based on feelings of friendship toward each other, which can be a good indicator for long-term happiness.

4. The Dramatic

drama, community, therapy, social norms

A little Renaissance kissing with oil

Image from Sofi/Flickr.

Unfortunately, not every couple's path is easy. Things may start out good, but tend not to stay that way for dramatic couples. This type of couple tends to make decisions based on negative experiences or stuff from outside the relationship.

"These couples have a lot of ups and downs, and their commitment swings wildly," said Ogolsky. "You begin to see little things eroding, and you start to see the relationship in a negative light, and soon you give up," said Ogolsky.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, dramatic couples tended to break up the most, twice as much as other couples.

So what's best? Well, here's where this article differs from a lot of those Internet quizzes. Because the answer is that there isn't a "best" kind of relationship.

couples therapy, love, marriage, biology

What do healthy relationships start and end with?

Image from Maryam Mgonja/Wikimedia Commons.

Different couples work and grow differently. These are different pathways and it'd be a mistake to assume there's a "correct" way to love someone. Or even that you're forever locked into a certain style of relationships. "These are not predefined, for-life patterns," said Ogolsky.

And even in a single relationship, these patterns aren't predictors of destiny — a dramatic couple may, in fact, outlast a social one, and a partner-driven couple may be as passionate as anyone you could ever meet.

And the researchers willingly admit in their paper that their study doesn't cover all relationships. Many very happy couples have no desire to marry, for instance. And, it should be noted, that it wasn't too long ago that the U.S. didn't even allow all couples to get married!

Wait, you're not going to tell me how to find the perfect, golden, eternally-happy relationship?! Why even study this then?

Because, in our hearts, humans are social creatures, Ogolsky explained. Love, friendship, passion, and commitment are part of the human experience. Understanding relationships can be as important to understanding ourselves as studying chemistry or biology. They can even affect your health!

As for what you can learn from all this, the important takeaway is that what you use to make decisions — whether from conflict, from the inside, from the outside, or from friendship — can influence your level of commitment. It might be useful for couples to think not just about their choices but how they make their choices.

So ... what's your category?


This article originally appeared on 02.15.16

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