u/Mathemodel

I am doing a self transfer with a flight that lands at 6 pm and my next flight leaves at 10 am in the morning (bag check in 7 am).

I was looking at the airport hotels and they are A) sold out or B) 400 dollars a night. I don’t have a large budget (200 usd).

so my questions:

1. is there an airport lounge before security in T1? what is the cost?

2. Is there a bag storage place to leave my checked bag secure?

3. What can I do overnight before my AM flight?

thank you!

being a conventionally attractive young woman you can clearly see it. makes me grossed out by men especially those in relationship.

title.

As a 20 something just getting started on my career, I was able to take several memorable trips to places like Guatemala, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and even Peru through Spirit Airlines low fares. With jet fuel prices already double, the end of Spirit Airlines further increases already sky high air fares.

Spirit Airlines used to be a way the lower and middle class can afford to visit family out of state or country or take their family on a vacation.

RANT: Is freelancing the new slavery? My experience trying to get on Fiverr and Upwork.

I've been thinking about offering my freelance services and naturally looked at Fiverr and Upwork since they're the platforms I already knew. The deeper I looked, the more issues I ran into.

1. Ethical issues. Fiverr is an Israeli company. That's a hard no for me, I'm boycotting on principle (I refuse to pay money to a company established on the same land where my grandfather's family was slaughtered and kicked out and I am not even allowed to visit.).
2. The fees are insane. Fiverr takes 20%, Upwork takes 10%. On top of that, both platforms charge you for basic analytics that should be free. In countries like mine, those fees aren't pocket change. And honestly the profit margins are insane for these companies.
3. The Upwork bidding model feels predatory. You pay to bid on jobs, you don't get that money back if you lose, and freelancers are racing each other to the bottom on price. It's basically a lottery dressed up as a job board. Freelancers who don't have money to bid get pushed out exactly when they need work the most. I can afford to bid, that's not the issue. I just don't want to play this game. It feels like a scam, not a marketplace.
4. The bigger picture is what really gets me. As we move away from traditional corporate jobs into a world of solo operators and AI-powered freelancers, is this the model? You go online to earn money and instead the platform extracts money from you while you fight other desperate people for scraps?

This feels like a new form of slavery, AI-powered freelance slavery, and honestly it might be worse than wage slavery. At least with a job you know what you're getting.

I'm tired, man. Everything keeps devolving into evil, the same pattern: corporations and the top 1% win, and the rest of us are forced to compete for scraps in increasingly inhumane ways.

Anyone else seeing it this way? Are there better platforms out there, or is this just the future?

I spent some time pricing out the same staples across stores in different neighborhoods. The gaps are genuinely wild, but not in the way you'd expect.

Here's what a dozen eggs costs right now:

- H-Mart (Amsterdam Ave): $9.99

- Pioneer Supermarket (Columbus Ave): $9.99

- Whole Foods (UWS): $7.99

- Key Food (Amsterdam): $6.79

- Fairway (UWS): $5.89

- Trader Joe's (UWS): $3.49

It's not always the fancy stores ripping you off. A Vital City reporter found kiwis at their local C-Town going for $9.99 while the same item was $6.99 at Whole Foods. Gothamist tracked prices across 20 stores for six months and found regional chains like C-Town and Foodtown were consistently more expensive than Trader Joe's and Aldi.

So the neighborhood bodega or local chain that feels like it should be cheaper than Whole Foods sometimes isn't.

Curious about a few things:

Do you already shop around, or do you just go to whatever's closest? Are there stores or neighborhoods you've figured out are consistently cheaper? And is a subway trip worth it if you'd save $15-20 on a weekly shop?

Would love to know how people actually handle this. Feels like information that should be a lot easier to find.