🐤 Overlooking overbooking

🚘 Jimmie calls it quits: With nearly seven dozen victories in his career and a whopping seven NASCAR Cup Series championships under his belt, it’s clear that driver Jimmie Johnson has established a racing legacy that will stand the test of time. At the age of 47, however, he’s ready to trade his life on the track for quality time with his loved ones. He announced this week that his days as a full-time racecar driver have come to an end — but he’s leaving open the possibility of taking part in somewhere around 10 special races in the future that he wants to check off of his “bucket list.”

💣 North Korean provocation: For a while, it seemed as if North Korea was firing off missiles on a nearly daily basis. While that’s no longer the case, South Korea asserted this week that its despotic neighbor to the north launched a short-range ballistic missile that traveled roughly 370 miles and landed in the ocean off its own eastern coast. The provocative move led to new fears of a nuclear escalation and South Korea’s national security director reacted to the news by leading the council in denouncing the missile launch in the starkest possible terms.

🐭 Snowden the Russian: Edward Snowden has been on the lam internationally since he sounded the alarm about U.S. surveillance programs by releasing classified data nearly a decade ago. Although American authorities continue to call on the 39-year-old fugitive to return to the states and face prosecution, he might have another option available. Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree this week naming 75 foreigners — including Snowden — as Russian citizens. It remains to be seen what Snowden will decide, but he was granted Russian residency a couple of years ago and said at the time that he wanted to apply for citizenship without renouncing his status as an American.

⛈️ Ian gains momentum: Tropical Storm Ian was upgraded to hurricane status early Monday and Florida braces for a devastating impact. Most of Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, was placed under some type of evacuation order and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport confirmed that it would be shutting down operations as of Tuesday afternoon. A number of other counties are also issuing evacuation orders as Floridians across the state are piling into hardware stores and supermarkets to horde as many staples and supplies as possible before trying to ride out what is sure to be a major storm over the next few days.

Apparent dysfunction within the airline industry has gained a lot of media attention in recent months with canceled flights, long lines at the airport, and threats of employee strikes. One of the terms that has been bandied about throughout this period is “overbooking,” which sounds pretty dreadful for anyone who has paid good money for a seat on a passenger jet.

If you take a closer look at the way airlines operate, however, you’ll notice that overbooking really isn’t as terrible as it seems.

In broad terms, here’s what it means when an airline overbooks a flight:

• Companies use algorithms to determine how many people are likely going to cancel their flight or miss the boarding call for any reason.
• In order to avoid losing money on these missed flights, airlines often sell more tickets than the number of corresponding seats on the plane.
• If too many people show up for a flight, the airline will provide incentives such as cash vouchers to anyone willing to take a seat on another jet.

It all adds up to a business plan that works out best for the company and its customers. Airlines are able to maintain full capacity more often and they don’t have to pass on the cost of missed flights to passengers in the form of higher ticket prices.

Although there is always the remote possibility that a passenger will lose his or her seat, research shows it’s far less common than you might think.

Between April 2017 and April 2018, more than 630 million passengers boarded a commercial flight in the U.S. — and just 15,000 or so were involuntarily forced to give up their tickets due to overbooking. That means your odds of being booted are less than 1 in 42,000.

Sure, there are plenty of issues to address when thinking about the future of the planet — particularly the environmental issues caused by pollution and other factors. But here at Early Chirp, we don’t want to only focus on the bad without giving a dose of positive news as a chaser.

Take the wildfires that have plagued the American West, for example.

A few years ago, much of Talent, Oregon, was decimated after a blaze tore through the town. Thanks to the ingenuity and persistence of locals, however, that town is now flourishing with a number of features that are meant to address the underlying problems that led to the disaster in the first place.

Among the important advancements that were introduced to the area by the nonprofit group Energy Trust are fire-resistant insulation and reinforced window. Not only is the town more immune to fire, but homeowners have seen their energy bills shrink to almost unbelievably small amounts.

Judging from the town’s smart response to an otherwise tragic event, it appears that “Talent” is a fitting name for the community!

Need a little more good environmental news to start your day? Here it goes:

• Oregon recently became the latest state to get rid of its last coal-burning power plant. Hawaii is expected to follow suit in the near future.
• A nonprofit organization called Green Forests Work has taken on the job of planting chestnut mine sites in the areas left behind by abandoned coal plants.
• Oh, and Talent isn’t the only town to build back better after a natural disaster. Greensburg, Kansas, for instance, focused on renewable energy sources and insulated concrete construction after a powerful tornado ripped through the community in 2007.

I’ll admit, it can be unsettling when I’m discussing a brand or a destination with my wife, and the next time I check Facebook I see an ad for that very thing. It’s clear I’m not alone, since this type of coincidence has fueled speculation that social media sites use smartphone mics and other insidious methods to listen to what we’re saying.

But it’s not true!

Don’t take my word for it; Facebook even addressed the rumors a few years ago when it affirmed that the company shows ads “based on people’s interests and other profile information — not what you’re talking out loud about.”

As for when the platform actually does use your smartphone mic, the company insists that it only does so when users have given permission and are using an app that requires such access.

If you want an added layer of security, you can always visit the settings page and remove permissions for social media sites to access your microphone.

Still not convinced?

Ad agency McNutt and Partners took on the conspiracy theory a while back and determined that social media platforms are probably telling the truth when they deny they’re listening to your conversations.

“For one, doing so would be illegal,” the company reported. “Secondly, the logistics of actively listening to, recording, and storing conversations just don’t make sense when you really think about it.”

So what’s really going on?

As it turns out, these companies are just really good at stitching together clues from your location, interaction with hashtags, engagement with brands, and much more. You still might not think social media companies are benevolent forces for using such invasive tactics — but at least it’s better than thinking that Big Tech is listening to your every conversation.