I recently got the Capital One Venture X card, which comes with a hefty annual fee.It has great travel benefits, but I've had mixed experiences with my complimentary Priority Pass.I haven't been able to use many airport lounges with it, but it and the card are still a good value.After years of seeing Capital One's catchy "What's in your wallet?" commercials, I finally looked into its credit cards.As a frequent flyer, I found its Venture X card to be the most appealing option due to its variety of travel perks, but I hesitated to apply for it because of its fairly high annual fee of $395.I finally gave it a shot when I realized it comes with a complimentary Priority Pass membership, which usually costs a few hundred dollars.At the time of writing, I've had this card for just over a month and have used it for two vacations, with more scheduled in the weeks to come.Here are my initial reactions to the benefits particularly the Priority Pass membership, which felt so desirable it convinced me to get the card in the first place.The Capital One Venture X card won me over with its cash-back and travel perks I spend a lot of time in airports waiting to board my plane. Amanda Adler By signing up for the Capital One Venture X card, I immediately got a lot of perks, including a $300 annual travel credit and a $120 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck Credit.These benefits alone help defray the $395 annual fee, and the card also comes with:10X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel5X miles on flights and vacation rentals booked through Capital One Travel2X miles on all other purchasesI also got an initial bonus of 75,000 miles after I spent $4,000 on purchases within the first three months of owning the card.For my family, the card's biggest draw is the aforementioned complimentary Priority Pass membership, which provides unlimited access for me and two guests to select airport lounges worldwide.My family of three spends a lot of time in airports, and waiting in a lounge is far more appealing than vying for crowded seating close to the gate.The Priority Pass membership gets me access to many lounges, but there are limitations Many airline-specific lounges, such as the Delta Sky Club, don't accept Priority Pass cards for entry. Amanda Adler Once I got my Priority Pass membership, I used its easy-to-navigate app to see which lounges I could access.I was delighted to find my pass got me into lounges in all three terminals at my home airport, Orlando International Airport (MCO). However, I learned most airline-specific lounges, such as the Delta Sky Club, don't accept Priority Pass.I was also surprised by the lack of Priority Pass lounge options in some larger cities with major international travel hubs I found no lounge options when I had layovers at Salt Lake City International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.Los Angeles International Airport doesn't have lounges guests can access with Priority Pass, either. During a long layover in Salt Lake City, I discovered no lounges here would accept my Priority Pass membership. Amanda Adler I also realized that even if lounges are available, they may not be close enough to my flight to be worth visiting.For example, while I was flying out of Montral, the only lounge I could use was in a terminal quite far from the one my plane was departing from.Still, over 1,700 lounges around the globe do accept Priority Pass. I'm hopeful I'll be able to take advantage of my membership as I visit more airports.Despite its drawbacks, Priority Pass is still a good solution for my lounge-loving familyOn my recent trips, I've struggled to find available lounges outside of my home airport. However, I still think Priority Pass is great for my family.Having access to airport lounges in Orlando, our home base, is a great perk on its own, as I've previously paid as much as $50 per person per visit for this benefit. Now, we all get into the lounge for free.I enjoy having comfortable seating, ample charge ports, and a quiet place to relax before boarding a plane. My son loves stocking up on the complimentary lounge snacks, which saves me from having to buy him pricey and generally mediocre airport food.Knowing there's a comfy airport lounge waiting for me at MCO the next time I travel helps make my journey feel almost as fun as the destination.Plus, with my Capital One Venture X card, I also earn travel rewards for every dollar I spend. Although I've only had my card for a few weeks, I've already racked up miles I can redeem for future flights.

Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us and terms apply to offers listed (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate products and services to help you make smart decisions with your money.For Love & Money is a column from Business Insider answering your relationship and money questions.This week, a reader is tired of their wife upheaving their lifestyle.Our columnist says actively participating in her goals is the first step toward compromise.Got a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.Dear For Love & Money,My wife has a habit of making sweeping declarations about how we'll change everything we've been doing and reinvent our lives to be better, healthier, happier people.Every few months, we start eating clean, buying nothing, waking up early, going on evening walks, or doing a new workout routine. Each time, the phase lasts for a week at the longest, but one or two days is the norm.As you might've guessed, New Year's is her Super Bowl. This year, once again, we're doing it all differently, especially the spending. She's put together an unrealistic budget and a chore chart and tossed everything in the pantry.I like our life, though, and playing this game where I participate in her phases is beginning to wear thin. It's not the goals that bother me; I like to save money and could lose a few pounds, but I'm sick of the constant resolutions to "fix "our lives.Why can't she just be happy? How can I show her I want the same things as her but don't see our lives as broken?Sincerely,Contented Compare Today's Banking OffersDear Contented,I love that you chose to sign your letter "Contented" because that word highlights the key difference between you and your wife's worldviews. For people like you, the higher virtue is finding joy and meaning in what you already have. Self-love, gratitude, and recognizing the little miracles in life make the ordinary extraordinary.For others, like your wife, the higher virtue is relentless idealism: work ethic, striving, and recognizing individual responsibility and agency in a broken world.We all need a bit of both, and I'm sure the true virtue is found somewhere between the two a middle ground your marriage of contentment and growth-orientation is perfectly suited to achieve. Finding this balance, however, is the tricky part.I've often heard people like your wife call themselves "self-development addicts," and it's a fitting name. These self-development addicts tend to be dreamers, and it's the pot of gold they imagine at the end of the rainbow that gets them out of bed every morning. The image of themselves rocking toned abs, headlining a conference about how to get debt-free and build wealth, and finally becoming good enough to feel that emotion that comes naturally to people like you: content.As you seek a compromise that both of you can live with, remember that this hunger for growth is essential to who your wife is. Like you, I tend to fall on the contented side of the dichotomy. So, I recognize that beyond the hassle these constant phases create, they can also feel like implicit criticism.I see this pain in your final question: How can I show her our lives aren't broken? If your spouse is looking at your shared life and saying, "We must improve this," it can feel like they are saying, "You're not good enough."You must unlearn the belief that you're the problem your spouse is trying to solve. Even when you're being swept up in the latest resolution, even when her enthusiasm for change extends to your habits, remember that your wife is simply a dreamer, and it's the hope for the future, not her hatred of the present, that drives her.Honoring your wife's dreams is an excellent path toward a reasonable compromise. I keep using the word "compromise," which may seem strange because right now, your wife seems to have things all her way. After all, up to this point, you've supported your wife by going along with whatever kick she's on, but you can better support her in a couple of ways.One, get invested and stay invested. If your wife wants to save money or pay off debt, take the initiative to find a good savings account option and budgeting app. Update your tracking devices, and help her develop a reward system. A lot of your issues with your wife's phases seem to be the whiplash of it going all-in on day one and pretending nothing happened by day four.You probably feel a lot of relief when you see your wife's enthusiasm for her New Year's resolution waning. Meanwhile, she is likely feeling like a failure and already plotting the next life upheaval that will fix everything once and for all. And so it goes. Your best bet for stopping the cycle is to help her achieve her goals and keep both of you on track rather than staying quiet and hoping she'll forget.Second, you can support your wife by being honest about your feelings and outlining what you need her to compromise. A goal you can work toward together might be instituting a daily gratitude practice. List five things you love about your lives to one another every night before bed, or keep a catalog of things you're thankful for on the fridge.Practicing gratitude together will help you feel appreciated despite your wife's posture toward growth and improvement, and will also remind her that happiness isn't a destination she has to climb the mountains of life to reach. It's something she can carry with her on her journey.As for your wife's part of the compromise, this depends on your needs. What do you want to stop? What is your threshold for work and revision? If it's the cycle that bothers you, agree to her plans on the condition that this is the last time you rearrange this area of your life. Or, if it's the extremity of the budgets and diets wearing on you, tell your wife you need her to downscale her plans to something that feels more sustainable.Finally, remember that you may not like or believe in every new scheme your wife devises, and sometimes, you can and should opt out. Sometimes, compromise means one person training for a marathon while the other cheers for them at the finish line.Rooting for you,For Love & MoneyLooking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.Don't know where to start? Consider a financial advisor.Finding a financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to three fiduciary financial advisors who serve your area in minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAssetSmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. Start your search now.

If you've wanted more Gundam outside the gunpla models, Bandai hopes the Gundam Assemble tabletop game will spark your interests.

Research shows that A.D. 536 was not the worst year to be alive.

Honda's new facility could drive breakthroughs in solid-state batteries for electric cars, ultimately leading to batteries with more than double the range of existing EVs.

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Several Nintendo Switch users have reported being victims of an unusual crime. Instead of finding a cartridge in their brand-new game cases, they've been greeted by a single googly eye. It's unclear how widespread the issue is, but Switch fans may want to proceed with caution the next time they buy a physical copy of a game.

Marvel Rivals' inaugural season, "Doom's Rise," has undoubtedly been a massive success. Though not all players have tried Competitive, it was recently revealed that Marvel Rivals surpassed 20 million players within two weeks of launching. As a massive hit on platforms like Steam and Epic Games, the hype surrounding the superhero shooter shows no signs of slowing down.

Kengan Ashura might not look like one of those huge successes on Netflix (like Seven Deadly Sins, for example), but it's been a major hit on the platform, creating a loyal and engaged fanbase.

When DC Comics Absolute line was leaked, then announced in 2024, one arresting image sucked all the air out of the room: the widest, square-est version of Batman anyone had ever seen. The idea that when veteran Batman writer Scott Snyder had the opportunity to remake Batman from the ground up in a darker setting, his first directive to artist Nick Dragotta was to make him frick-kin yuge was intriguing, to say the least.The visuals of Absolute Batmans sibling books, Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman, werent quite so surprising. Wonder Woman has carried a sword and worn pants before; Superman has had shaggy hair. Batman was so wide, he made his fellow heroes reimagined designs look normal by comparison. Its no wonder Absolute Batman became the book to fixate on.But three months into the run of each book, Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman are sprinting toward all-time-great comic book status, in part because the writers and artists were able to keep their biggest, most of-the-moment twists on two very old superhero stories a complete secret until just the right moment. Maybe they were hidden behind the younger Batmans remarkable girth?A new year is a time for reflection. Ive been doing some reflecting, and Im willing to say it: DC Comics Absolute Universe rules much harder than I ever expected it to, in a way I thought was impossible. Its giving me a dark timeline that actually feels good to visit.[Ed. note: This piece contains some spoilers for the first three issues each of Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman.]I get now why writer Kelly Thompson and artist Hayden Sherman wanted to keep the details of Absolute Wonder Woman on the down-low during the initial project announcement. Even though their first issue literally takes place in hell, its wonderfully quiet, slow, and soft in a way that monthly superhero books rarely ever get to be, and in a way that would suffer in summary. They deliver a Diana who has been separated from her Amazonian heritage by divine edict, but who is determined to be a bulwark between humanity and terrible monsters, even if that requires spitting in the face of gods. Also, I wont spoil it here, but #3 reveals something about Dianas physicality in such a casual way that it hits like a Mack truck.Meanwhile, in the first three issues of Absolute Superman, writer Jason Aaron and artist Rafa Sandoval have drummed out a steady series of subversions to the Superman story we think we know. Better yet, theyve taken the time to show those differences have meaning, outside of the shock of the unexpected. Their Superman still grew up on a farm a farm on Krypton, an extremely stratified society in which his family is from the laborer caste.Supermans relationship to his doomed homeworld is traditionally distant, but Kal-El the curious preteen gives Aaron and Sandoval a vehicle to display the flaws of Kryptonian society from a close-up view, opening Absolute Superman #2 with little Kal getting written up at school (remote class only) for writing an essay himself, instead of using the computer to AI-generate one, based on the Kryptonian database of all approved knowledge. They establish all this detail in a mere two panels that will hit any school-age kid, parent of such, or teacher with the chilling punch of an effective ghost story.The third issue, released on the first day of 2025, gives the familiar Superman origin tale another trenchantly modern twist. In this version of the story, the leaders of Krypton dont refuse to believe the warnings that their planet is dying, thus perishing along with it. Here, they support the illusion that everything is normal and under control, while secretly building massive escape ships for the elite castes alone.Kal-Els parents, meanwhile, have been constructing their own ship for the paltry few laborers they can fit on it. What happens next? Do the elite Kryptonians survive? Do Kals parents? So far, theyve only been seen in flashback, so I guess Im waiting for Absolute Superman #4 to find out.For comics readers, the Dark Timeline is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Maybe theres a dark future the heroes need to avert, or a thing could have gone terribly wrong if only What If? Or its the future and nothings as good or easy as it used to be. Or maybe theres an entire multiverse where things turned out so bad that the universes inside it are good for nothing more than kindling in a cosmic forge. A familiar setting, but shockingly worse is an easy well to return to.When the Absolute setting was announced as a darker version of the DC universe, created by the evil god Darkseid for someday-to-be-revealed dark purposes, it felt like mere repetition. In this universe, the heroes come up in ways that make them underdogs, Scott Snyder said in an announcement video, making the case that direr origins would make it resonate even more when Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and upcoming Absolute heroes like Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and the Flash inevitably made the decision to fight against the darkness anyway.I didnt think Snyder and the rest of the folks on DCs Absolute books would be able to execute on that idea so quickly and consistently across three creative teams and three very different revisionary concepts. These first three Absolute books arent just solid, theyre incisive, meaningful, and gorgeously told.Thompson and Shermans Wonder Woman is about love in the face of self-denial, and claiming your identity even in the face of divine censorship. Aaron and Sandovals Superman is about action and striving and tragedy, but also the joy of writing and the power of telling the truth.In an era where corporations are censoring references to queer or trans characters out of fear of backlash, theres a resonance in having Wonder Woman defy divine law to speak the word Amazon aloud. In particular, theres resonance in giving that moment to a queer-coded character. (And often, lately, thank goodness, a straight-up queer one.) I do want to see Wonder Woman defying rules imposed on her from above. I do want to see Superman rejecting generative AI as a homogenizing, lie-spreading force. I do want to see him navigating a metaphor for the billionaire-backed push to escape Earths climate problems by building a Mars base on the backs of indentured labor.Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman are going there:Not just making up harsh alternate futures for the sake of grim-and-gritty storytelling, but presenting them as our harsh futures, with the promise that theyre shaping heroes to fight back. I get enough dark timeline vibes from life in the 2020s. The least my comic book dark timelines can do is punch the real ones in the face once in a while.