I hope you recover quickly!

(I'm also spending the whole flight masked because I don't want to spread what my seatmate has all over California)

I like how our society pretends that there is a storied and proud intellectual tradition behind conservatism. Like some guys got together and thought real hard and invented bigotry.

Sculptor stamped my cold command on it,
now I'm the lifeless king in your sonnet.
See my works, ye mighty, and despair!

There's a pedestal opposite me
covered in epigraphy
that celebrates my grandeur, lacking all humility.

Yeah I mean I mostly CAN go to theaters but I don't really feel like wearing a mask for two hours?

And basically every wheelchair driving friend of mine has some ugly story about getting mistreated at movie theaters

The part of this where Netflix is also the asshole (or more accurately, is not my friend) is the part where consolidating distribution of more and more media (including older media and our cultural back catalogue) in one company gives that company more and more control over what I can see and when

Disruption is good for us even when a limit on consumer choice is due to actual costs—printing and distribution costs, for example.

But when a limit on consumer choice is artificially imposed to protect legacy conglomerates from disruption? That's anti-competitive, and that's bad for consumers.

But there's nothing sacred or intrinsic to our culture about AMC and Regal's business model. In a fight between them and Netflix, everyone's the asshole.

Consumers are on our own team, and it's in our best interest to dismantle artificial limits on consumer choice.

None of which is an argument for giving Netflix (or anyone else) de facto control over whether a film is commercially viable.

I haven't weighed in on the Horses game situation because my take doesn't fit in a post, but it's A Problem that Steam is the de facto arbiter of whether a game is viable.

Competition made that happen. Consumer choice forces businesses to work harder to attract customers, AND it creates room for smaller and newer players to succeed in markets previously dominated by giant conglomerates.

The Drafthouse model of smaller theaters with big recliners, premium snacks, and alcohol has taken off precisely BECAUSE it's offering people a premium experience they actually want, instead of offering as little as they can get away with to folks who have no other way to see the film.

— and that largely meant giant rooms full of tightly packed uncomfortable chairs where you might need to fight a stranger for your armrest.

Some films are fun to watch with a big crowd, but usually the fun was all on the screen, not in the room.

It's easy to wax nostalgic about small independent theaters, but they are not the driving economic force, here. Most theaters at least in the US are giant chains.

Until the Internet and HD TVs introduced competition, the economics of theaters was cramming in as many folks as you could fit—

If the theater experience is valuable in itself, then surely people will buy that experience even if they have other options for seeing the film?

If access to that experience is only viable if consumers can't watch the film another way, that is, by definition, anti-competitive.

Having an ebook app on my phone has helped me a ton. I put the app icon front and center, and moved social media icons to a folder. Now I'm much more likely to pop open the book I'm reading and get through a few more pages, before opening social media.