I don't know, I have doubts. This is the whole legacy media system writ large. The distribution pipe this is all going through is rotting through- not rotted through yet but not being renewed. It's all running on theaters that were established on economic theories that no longer apply. I suspect/fear the whole thing is just going to vanish in time. At least in journalism the new things (social media mostly) still depends on the legacy zombie journalism media for stuff to steal so some degree of money pumping into Reuters and actual news gathering has to somehow occur. I am not sure the streaming model needs theaters at all. Movie making will just shift to making movies for streamers on TV rather than theaters.

Probably so. Of course I say this with the knowledge that I am very likely going to capitulate to my older son's requests to go see the Minecraft movie when he is on spring break. This leads me to believe that something will always be around just not anything close to what we've been used to.

I agree- I think the movie theater model is deep into the death spiral now. The masses aren't turning up which is jacking up the ticket prices which is making going to the theater even less appealing. Theaters were descending pre-covid but Covid just accelerated the process a lot.

Yes, all true. There's a bit of a structural element in that Lettuce Head Liz Truss was, effectively, the Speaker of the House in American contexts and, thus, Trump would be a lot harder, functionally and procedurally, to ditch. The underlying point, though, that tanking the economy is going to reduce Trumps power is a good one though- it should and will.

I think now is a good time to talk about Liz Truss. Now Truss was a fool who announced an inexplicably poor economic policy, which quickly panicked the markets. She was a terrible choice for leader, and choosing her was an indictment of the Conservative Party. But you'll note that one she screwed up badly enough, they got rid of her, quickly. And while I wouldn't call Rishi Sunak a good PM, he at least knew better than to crash the economy.

Which means that while The UK's Conservatism are a dysfunctional mess, they are much less of a disaster than the Republican Party is right now.

When we got tickets to A Working Man, the theater was mostly sold out. The only rows that had two seats next to each other (with a bro seat on either side) were the front rom and the back row.

We got tickets for the back row.

The other night, I watched Nosferatu on my broski's 85" television in his basement that we were sitting about 8-10 feet away from.

The field of vision real estate taken up by the screens was comparable. And, during Nosferatu, we could pause.

As of 1.24 pm DOW seems to be bumping along at 38k with a little excitement around a false rumor of a 90-day pause causing the market to perk upwards until rumor popped.

Wasn't sure what to expect... personally felt that another 5% drop would've signaled a lot more pain to come. There's still time...

But I'm also not sure what to make of a 15% overall drop with a floor of 38k. (If that's the case).

My own sense was that we wouldn't know how to interpret things until this coming Friday - or the first set of financial institution failures. But, if it's just a 'correction' with a slow moving recession...?

"he says he would come more often if he could buy and smoke pot at the theater. “How fun would that be?” he says. “They have a bar here so that people can relax and enjoy a drink.""

You'd quite literally have to have a different building... pot invading public spaces is already creating a backlash... you'd nuke non-pot screenings anywhere and any time in your theater. Plus, there's a pretty big lack of awareness comparing (or not comparing) the externalities of Pot vs. Alcohol.

It's a content saturation problem... there are too many alternatives to films. And films as a medium don't offer that much of an upgrade over 4k viewing.

If there's a 'new thing' it will be something along the lines of immersive theaters like you get in a 90second ride at Disney Hollywood.

Part of the problem is that the Conservative Party is (usually) the Stupid Party.

There's a point at which "moral agency" kicks in and it's above a certain line and sufficiently stupid people are below it... and, in a group, you tend to get even stupider.

And let’s face it, who would trust Trump to make an honest deal at this point anyway?

People need to understand how fascism works, philosophically. Fascism is, ultimately, a belief in natural hierarchies extended to the natural conclusion. This applies to everything. The part people tend to misunderstand is that they think this is _logical_. That you can make agreements to be subservient, and those agreements will be honored.

It is not. It is all lizard-brain nonsense. The lizard brain has a vague sense of where people belong, and a sense if if they 'know their place'.

This is, for example, why it doesn't require people to think they're at the top. It has a vague sense of where it belongs, too. It has as much genuflecting towards people above them as it expects genuflecting from people below them. This is why you get people like Trump cowtowing to people like Putin. He thinks Putin is above him, and it's entirely natural for him to give deference to him.

This also means, in their little lizard brain, that they see people who did not know their places but were forced into agreement with what they say not as 'making a deal', but that such people not only rightfully belong below them, but need to be forced there, forever.

Columbia caved to Trump instantly, and he decided to continue to destroy them. He will continue to humiliate them, forever. He thinks they challenged him, and they are forever his enemy.

Resistance, meanwhile, tends to actually scare them. Because if they have to back down, it make their lizard brain reprogram you into into an equal, because the other option is somehow their lesser beat them. So you must not actually be long there.

Practically speaking, you can remain safe from bullies, and fascists, and whatnot, by doing vaguely what they say, never challenging them, and never becoming their enemy, and hoping you never fall into a class of people they go after. Never look weak or like an easy target, but never strong enough to challenge them. Staying under the radar _does_ work, I will admit that.

But once you _do_ become their enemy, it doesn't matter how much you cower and beg and plea and agree to do what he says, he will continue to hurt you.

Foreign countries appear to mostly be understanding that they fall into 'a class of people the fascists go after' as a general rule, and are not going to cave. They're already his enemy, he already thinks they 'don't know their place', and they fully understand this.

From Variety: Texting, Weed and Sing-Alongs: Four Radical Ideas for Bringing New Audiences to Movie Theaters

While I tend to agree that weed would make a movie better (at least it did back in 1992), I'm not sure how the ingestion would work. Edibles, from what I have heard, take a while to kick in and you can't really titrate the experience like you can with a joint. If it is smoking that they're going to be doing, the movie houses will have to get one of their rooms rebranded as a Cigar Bar (or just have a courtyard, I guess).

If my memory is accurate, it's also the case where the most pleasant buzz to watch a movie would be categorized as "comfortable". And, by "comfortable", I mean "shouldn't drive". So you're going to need a DD.

Which, I suppose, the movie theaters could push for... "bring a friend", I guess. But being the guy who isn't stoned with one (or more) stoned dudes is... well, maybe they could set it up and give a free ticket to the DD. Or a free soft drink.

As for cellphone-friendly viewings... ugh. There are a couple dozen reasons that I don't go to the theater that often and cellphones are among them. But if there's a cellphone showing, maybe it can be in a theater next to a non-surfing showing.

Of course, most of the responses to the tweet of this article were of the form "maybe make good movies?" but, as I look at the landscape, I see that Minecraft broke $150 million over the weekend and so that's probably not on the table either.

Some version of the Major Questions Doctrine is obviously correct. Congress can't just delegate unlimited lawmaking power to the executive branch. There has to be some limit. But it's not really feasible for Congress to specify every detail. The reasonable compromise between these extremes is that Congress can delegate the finer details of implementation of a law to the executive, but that the executive must stay comply with the spirit of the law and not unilaterally decide major questions.

Given that the “Major Questions Doctrine” was made up horse hooey to keep Biden (and Obama retroactively) from being successful, I would doubt such things would do much good, much less be allowed by the Courts. A other to remedy this exists but House Speaker Johnson cares. It to take up his powers and use them.

I am suspecting the lawyer will wake up Monday morning, be at a ‘bring your toothbrush’ to court moment (Aka, they might throw me in jail on content and not let me leave.) on Monday when he shows up without the detainee, and will instead be quitting his job this weekend.

Ah, that decision just got easier for him. That lawyer, whose name is Erez Reuveni and was the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, just got placed on leave by the DOJ. So he will not be walking into court on Monday. And hence will not be the person sanctioned.

For "failure to zealously advocate", which I presume must mean 'Failure to make the Trump Administration's actions legal somehow'.

And his supervisor, August Flentje, a Deputy Director, was placed on leave for "failure to supervise a subordinate".

I am not sure who still exists in the Office of Immigration Litigation at the DOJ and who is going to show up in court Monday. What I am 100% sure of is the judge will give absolutely no leeway or delay because the government has decided to fire their lawyer.

We are getting near the point of mass resignations of lawyers at the DOJ, simply because this situation is untenable: Their clients keep doing illegal unjustifiable things and they have to walk into court and explain that to the judge, somehow. And failing to get the judge to go along with the administration's illegal action results in them being punished by the administration.

Yeah; I think you are right that he sees the American Empire as a thing that was being managed to the benefit of a few; he's using populist language to reorient the goods of empire to a new few and perhaps along the way share some spectacles and low value gluten. It's rather crass, but sharing the benefits of empire was always an option we mostly pretended didn't exist.