Clark Hyde

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

They have buried this industry before. Television was supposed to kill it in the fifties, VHS in the eighties, DVDs, then Netflix in 2013, and every time the theater adapted and survived smaller but real. The current adaptation is already visible: premium large format, event cinema, concert films like the Eras Tour movie that did around $180 million domestic ([Box Office Mojo](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/)), live Q&As, 70mm revivals that sell out in minutes. The suburban twelve-plex showing the same four blockbusters is probably doomed, and good riddance.

Should factory farming be phased out within ten years?

In March 2024, bird flu turned up in American dairy cattle for the first time ever, and within weeks a Texas farmworker caught it from infected cows. That had never happened before: a flu virus jumping from birds to cows to a person, in that order. The CDC's own writeup calls it the first instance of likely mammal-to-human transmission for this virus. [CDC](https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/157118) Now picture where it happened. Not on a small family dairy. The outbreak ripped through industrial herds where thousands of genetically similar animals breathe the same air, because that is what a factory farm is: a casino floor for viral mutation, running 24 hours a day. Every epidemiologist will tell you pandemics come from crowded animals. We got a warning shot in 2024. A ten-year phaseout is not radical. Waiting for the mutation that spreads between people is.

Should people with felony convictions automatically regain voting rights after serving their sentences?

My shop was robbed twice in three years, and the second time the man who did it had a record that filled a folder. I am not heartless, but I watched the court order restitution my insurance never fully covered, and I think finishing a sentence means finishing all of it. Florida's Amendment 4 kept that distinction: it excluded murder and felony sexual offenses, and lawmakers later required fines, fees, and restitution to be paid first, because a sentence is not just time served. [The Brennan Center](https://www.brennancenter.org/) notes that hundreds of thousands of Floridians still owe legal financial obligations, and calling those debts a poll tax dodges the fact that victims were ordered that money by a judge. Automatic restoration sounds compassionate until you are the person still waiting on the check the court said you were owed.