This was the path I pursued when I did not get satisfaction from Hilton or the 3rd party. At first, the credit card company (Discover) did issue a credit. They reversed that decision two weeks later. I had several back and forths with them after that. I sent emails that illustrated the window of cancellation for refund, and when the cancellation was sent. I also sent emails, and phone logs showing my attempts to contact the 3rd party, along with those to Hilton. I asked for an explanation as to why they reversed the decision and not honor my request to decline the charge, but I never got an answer.

In the end, big business sided with big business to the surprise of no one. As a result of that, I also paid off the balance on that card and froze the account. So in the end, two companies lost my business because of a $250 refund that absolutely should have happened. And even though I'd never had an issue in the past, I am also far less inclined to book through 3rd parties now even though they offer a discount. I'd rather pay more and work directly. The amount of time and effort spent fighting this was definitely not worth the savings.

As a retired business owner, I always strove to put my customers first. If I chose a contractor who failed to deliver on their obligations, that's on me. I chose to get in bed with that contractor, not my customer, and I clearly made an honest but poor decision. But my business was not enshittified. I wasn't beholden to shareholders or private equity, who's money is made in the margins of declining levels in service, satisfaction, and quality.

Too bad. I recently stayed at a Sonder. It was a little bumpy at first, but the overall experience was decent. I agree this does not look good for Marriott AT ALL. I ran into an issue a few years ago with Hilton. They contracted booking through a third party for a convention. Despite my cancellation nearly six months in advance (well within the posted cancellation policy), the third party would not refund the reservation holding fee (one night). Hilton accepted no responsibility for the vendor they chose to put between me and room. So exercised the only power I have as a consumer.

I have never booked with Hilton, directly or indirectly, since. I likely never will. The rewards card I chose was with a different hotel chain, with which I stay exclusively now. That's 30-ish nights that could have been booked with Hilton, traded for 1 unclaimed night for which I was fully entitled a refund.

There are errors in some of the lyrics on these sites that are replicated everywhere. That is, you cannot find the lyrics without the errors. Anywhere....except if you have a booklet that came with the CD, I guess..

Just one example that I encountered recently. In the soundtrack of the film "Arizona dream", there is a number titled "TV screen". A line in the lyrics says "You are the target for the stars and the products on the TV screen". I hear it very clearly....Every lyrics site I checked had "planets" instead of "products".

See here for example
https://genius.com/Goran-brego...

Can some good soul (native English speaker) listen to the song and tell me did I mishear? The whole world says "planets" but I insists the word is products. Also, products is much more in line with the the lyrics. The stars that sells us products on the TV screen.....planets just does not fit IMO.

but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

Wind, solar, and batteries isn't likely to get an electrical grid as close to zero carbon as France sees with heavy use of nuclear fission.

Nuclear uses gargantuan amounts of concrete for cooling towers, ponds, and underground storage bunkers. Which produces a lot of CO2. As always, renewables beat the pants off your radioactive water heaters.

To stop the advance of Ukrainian troops in the occupied part of the Herson district.

Russian artillery does that with ease, without flooding Russia's own troops and equipment. Your propaganda is as self-debunking as the assertion that Russia would blow up their own multibillion dollar pipeline and top negotiating tool that they could have turned off with a switch.

Why did the ruzzkie destroy dozens of cities that according to their own propaganda were "Russian"? Mariupol, Bakhmut, Volnovaha, etc. etc. etc?

Because your Azov pals were heavily dug in, especially with the tunnels under Mariupol. Duh.

LOL, which ruzzkie troll farm did you crawl out from?

There's a nice meme that neatly addresses this dipshit dumbfuckery. It's a clear picture of a banana, with a caption that says "this is an apple, if you see anything else, you're a Putin Puppet". Twenty years ago you losers would have been smearing Iraq war skeptics as Saddam Lovers. SSDD.

Quite strange then that the Ukrainian people have been resisting ruzzkie "approach" since the 90s, and are either trying to fight this invasion off or running away, mostly westwards, don't you think?

Quite colossally ignorant. Crimea was voting for more indepenence from Kiev and closer ties to Russia in the 90's. People in Donbass also overwhelmingly voted to re-join Russia. Small wonder as Kiev had spent eight years bombarding them.

Their war crimes are well-documented, numerous and unprovoked.

Annnnnnd more projection. Less than half a percent of Ukraine casualties are children, compared to 30% or more in Gaza. That's the difference between a war and a genocide. Russia hasn't even done decapitation strikes to take out the Banderite regime.

Basically, a terrorist shit will do terrorist shit anytime.

Using a HIMARS or an M-777 for your projection? Nazi America and Nazi Israel are by far the worst terrorist states the world has ever seen.

And once you see "banderites" and other similar propaganda shit, you know you're talking to a zetnik.

Western media was awash in reports on Ukraine's Nazi problem before it was time to forget all that to pretend Russia was the bad guy. Including NATO itself via their Atlantic Council think tank telling you of Hitler Youth camps set up in Ukraine.

Enjoy your bowl of shit, NAFO troll.

https://geosciences.princeton....

Abstract: We test whether Hg in marine sediments over the last 550 m.y. of the Cretaceous is a reliable proxy linking Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions to late Maastrichtian global climate warming and the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (KPB).

From what I have seen and read about this, it is quite possible that the traps were emitting unimaginable amounts of gasses for tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of years. In this video essay from Kurzgesagt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjoQdz0nxf4) it is suggested that the traps emitted the equivalent of tens of thousands of our civilizations (!!!) for great many years. Gases that swung the climate like mad: sulfur-based "coolers" and carbon-based "warmers". Plus the mercury, where our current emissions will not even register on the scale back then (and also why the greatest source of Hg in the air today is coal and oil burning - we are re-emitting the poison that the Earth spewed in the past).

In the last several years though, there seems to be a concerted effort to bury the contribution of the traps and put all of it on the asteroid again. Could it be because the traps show that the greatest danger is beneath our feet and has nothing to do with our civilization? Compare the apocalyptic claims of irreversible this and catastrophic that, which will surely happen next year, or at the latest by 2030 or at the very, very latest by 2050 with evidence that tens of thousands of civilizations worth of emissions, going on for a lot longer than our singular civilization has existed didn't result in irreversible climate change and wholesale destruction of life. In fact, adding the asteroid as the cherry on the cake, KPB extinction event is, as far as I remember, the mildest extinction of the big 5(?). Only 75% of everything living perished...

Kurzgesagt goes on mentioning that all the big extinction events were caused by volcanic activity.

Due to democrats trying to ruin our country with their evil thoughts of democracy and freedom, real and accurate news about our government will now come from our state run, officially recognized, Pravda Sotsial'naya...err Truth Social.

Thank you for your loyalty, komrade.

Bullshit, this is basically just a license for all the other manufacturers that can't compete with the Chinese on prices to charge the American public more for those very same types of electronics.

America's allies were warned for many years on becoming reliant on Russian energy and how that could be used against them in the future. That time has come.

EU countries did that to themselves by cutting off their main natgas supplier, not from any action taken by Russia. And then whistled and looked the other way when the US blew Nordstream.

The sun doesn't stop shining and the wind doesn't stop blowing for literal months at a time. Your radioactive water heaters do for maintenance. Nuke fans love France for their nuclear fleet but half of their plants were down at one time for maintenance. Nothing is more unreliable than nuclear power.

When it comes to writing code, I'm maybe just shy of intermediate...it's not specifically part of my job and most of my coding experience was either in university or from the occasional side project done for fun. I've used AI a bunch recently for coding, again mostly for fun stuff. Right now, I'm using to code in a language I have zero experience in and I've found I spend an enormous amount of time fixing its mistakes. So much time that it's difficult to say if I'm even saving any time over just learning the language slowly and methodically. But a 5x increase in speed? Hell no. Maybe that only comes into play for upper-tier programming?

Can anyone here attest to gaining anywhere close to that level of improvement?

every bit of land that is occupied by islam has been stolen from some other culture. by the sword, 100% of the time.

you want some justice? have the arabs give back all the land they stole from the native peoples of the time. every land they have was stolen. why is that never talked about?

there were religions long before islam, but all the countries that are islamic were forced under threat of death to convert.

genocide is what the arabs did to everyone who did not convert.

funny how you guys want to flip the narrative.

actually, its not funny.

the real culture war is islam vs the west.

islamic countries with big pockets are paying to have 'good PR' in universities. they are playing the long game. they are not stupid.

they have a clear goal in mind. you either know this or you dont. go search if you dont know what I'm talking about.

but they have funded the universities in order to have their message forced on all the students.

is there any natural reason why women would protest against their own rights? and yet, that's the side they picked.

its about funding and buying mind share.

they are winning. and its sad to see.

but this is what's going on.

6 years at two different universities. Never once did I experience anything like indoctrination. Not even a gentle nudge.

I think the right sees a liberal bias among students and incorrectly concludes the colleges and universities must be to blame. I think it's more likely though that kids at that age and going through that process are full of hope. The act of getting a degree is driven by hope for a new and better future, and hope is the foundation of the left so kids will naturally gravitate toward a liberal bias.

Fear is the foundation of the right. As people age, elements that stir or instill fear become more of a concern. This is likely because we have offspring to care for and protect, and we have ever-less time to achieve our goals.