{"id":46069,"date":"2026-05-14T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=46069"},"modified":"2026-05-08T09:26:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:26:49","slug":"monks-smuggling-weed-language-books-abandoned-luggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/monks-smuggling-weed-language-books-abandoned-luggage\/","title":{"rendered":"Monks Smuggling Weed\/Language Books\/Abandoned Luggage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Weed Smuggling is Still Alive and Well<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As easy as it is to buy weed legally in so many places now, I would have thought that trying to smuggle huge amounts of it would be a thing of the past. But no. First, Sri Lanka arrested 22 Buddhist monks<\/a> who were transporting 5 kilos each<\/em> in suitcases. Then in Mexico, a drug-sniffing dog led police to 1,278 kilos of marijuana hidden in a shipment of eggs in a truck<\/a>. The smugglers weren\u2019t too bright: the truck didn\u2019t have any license tags. (May be paywalled\u2014Mexico News Daily.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good Books for Language Comprehension<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My spoken Spanish is not where I\u2019d like it to be since I\u2019m working all day in English and only use it when I\u2019m out, but my reading comprehension is good because of fiction books I load onto my Kindle that are meant for intermediate learners. These try to get you in the habit of not stopping to look up every word you don\u2019t know, but reading at a normal pace to understand most of what\u2019s happening. Then there\u2019s a summary and a vocabulary list at the end of each chapter. I\u2019ve read ones like this<\/a> (a backpacker travel story) from Lingo Mastery and ones like this <\/a>from Olly Richards (short stories) that I would recommend. You can find similar ones in other languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abandoned Suitcases at Hotels and Airports<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have often left articles of clothing or shoes behind at a hotel to lighten my load or make room. According to this trend report from Christopher Elliott<\/a> though, high bag fees\u2014especially surprise ones at the gate\u2014are causing a lot of travelers to leave their whole suitcase behind. Sometimes with their contents still in them. Hotels in Japan are putting up signs that you could be charged for leaving one behind. \u201cThe abandoned luggage issue isn\u2019t just about saving a few bucks on a checked bag,\u201d says Zackaria Saadioui, founder of Prked, a peer-to-peer airport parking marketplace. \u201cIt\u2019s a sign of fee fatigue.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Much Will Spirit Be Missed?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of extra fees being the entire business model, RIP Spirit Airlines. I last flew them back in the early 2010s and haven\u2019t ever met anyone who professed to be a fan. I have been worried though that their long-expected departure from the market would give other airlines an excuse to raise prices on their routes. But their shrinkage over the past few years during two bankruptcies has made them mostly irrelevant in the overall market. In May 2024, Spirit operated 3.4% of all domestic flights. This month, that number was around 1.1%. Roughly 1 in 91 routes. So you\u2019ll probably pay more if you\u2019re in their former hub of Ft. Lauderdale, but otherwise you can just hop on Allegiant, Frontier, Breeze, or another alternative that\u2019s still holding down fares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of\u00a0A Better Life for Half the Price<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The World\u2019s Cheapest Destinations<\/em>. See\u00a0past editions here,<\/a>\u00a0where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nomadico issue #206<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2385],"tags":[2386],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46069"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46070,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46069\/revisions\/46070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}