Alfred Raines

Should voting be mandatory in the United States?

Ask anyone who has worked the polls in Ohio for six presidential cycles. The line at 7 a.m. is mostly retirees and the line at 6 p.m. is whoever could get off work. The people missing are always the same: young parents, hourly workers, renters who just moved. It's not that they don't care. They're tired and the system makes it their problem. If voting were mandatory, employers would have to give people time, because 'I have to vote, it's the law' is a sentence no boss can argue with. I have watched too many elections decided by who had a flexible schedule.

Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

I go to Tuesday matinees sometimes, the cheap ones, and the last three I attended had fewer than ten people in the room. Each time I sat there thinking about how the thing everyone defends, the shared gasp, the collective laughter, requires a crowd, and the crowd stopped coming. The magic people describe is a memory of 2008, not a description of last weekend. Maybe that's fine. Maybe theaters become what vinyl became: a niche hobby for enthusiasts, a few revival houses in big cities, everyone else streaming. But let's call it what it's. The era of the theater as the default is over.

Should location privacy violations trigger automatic independent audits?

Here is the part nobody prices correctly: audits are cheap and breaches are not. IBM's annual breach report put the average cost of a data breach at $4.45 million in 2023, before counting the regulatory fallout, and location data is among the hardest kinds to contain once it spreads. An automatic audit is a modest, predictable compliance cost next to that kind of exposure. Companies already buy cyber insurance and run penetration tests for the same reason: verification is cheaper than disaster. Making audits automatic after a violation just extends that logic to the aftermath, turning 'trust us, we fixed it' into something a board can actually rely on. The firms that complain loudest about audit costs are usually the ones whose internal controls needed the audit most. [IBM](https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach)

The box office numbers are the part nobody arguing for this wants to face. Theaters need seats filled, and every added hassle is another reason to wait for streaming.

Entertainment · Sep 23, 2026 · Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

Night-shift nurse, single mom. Our family video call with grandma happens at 10pm because that is when I am home and awake. A 'shared wind-down at ten' would end the best part of our week.

Lifestyle · Sep 23, 2026 · Should families set shared screen-free hours rather than individual limits?