Lydia Mulligan

Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

I took fourteen months off when my daughter was born. When I started applying again, a recruiter friend told me off the record that my applications kept dying at the automated stage at two different companies. Same resume that got me interviews before the break, now with a gap. The models don't have a field for 'was raising a human.' They have a field for continuous employment, and mine wasn't continuous. Every woman I know who took maternity leave has a version of this story. We're told the pay gap is about choices, and then the machines punish the most common choice of all. A human can look at a gap and think 'parent.' The software thinks 'risk.' That difference is worth a ban by itself.

Should the federal government break up Big Tech companies?

I run a small subscription app with four employees. Apple takes 30 percent of every dollar my customers pay, then sells its own competing service with no such tax. That is not a marketplace, it is a toll booth with a conflict of interest. The Justice Department's [2024 lawsuit](https://www.justice.gov/antitrust) argues Apple illegally maintains its smartphone monopoly in part by degrading rival apps and accessories, and the EU's Digital Markets Act has already forced Apple to allow alternative app stores in Europe. Developers there are shipping updates Apple would never have permitted. If a 30 percent cut enforced by a single gatekeeper is not monopoly rent, the word has no meaning. Break up the gatekeepers and the toll booths fall with them.

Should movie theaters make phone-free screenings the default?

The highest-grossing concert film in history made $261.6 million worldwide, and its screenings were the opposite of phone-free. Theaters encouraged fans to sing, dance, and film the whole thing, because the phone was part of the show. [InsideHook](https://www.insidehook.com/music/taylor-swift-eras-tour-box-office-record/amp) That is where the theatrical business is actually growing: event cinema, where the audience's second screen is a feature, not a bug. A phone-free default tells the exact customers keeping theaters alive that their kind of fun is wrong. You want to lecture Gen Z about attention spans? They will just stay home, where the phone is welcome and the popcorn is cheap. Theaters do not have an attention problem. They have an arrogance problem.

Should record-setting athletes receive standardized bonuses across men’s and women’s teams?

Standardization cuts both ways, and its supporters forget the sports where the women's game generates more. In tennis, women's finals have outdrawn men's at some events; in several Olympic cycles, women's teams have been the bigger draw for sponsors. A single standardized schedule would cap those bonuses at the men's level or drag everyone to an average that shortchanges whoever performs better commercially. The [FIFA prize pools](https://pfa.net.au/the-pfa-post/pfa-post-womens-world-cup-prize-money-explained/) differ because the tournaments' revenues differ, and pretending otherwise does not help women athletes. It constrains them. Let each program's bonuses reflect its own economics, and let thriving women's programs pay more than the men when they earn it.

concession prices are the actual villain here. nine dollars for a soda is deranged

Entertainment · Oct 6, 2026 · Are movie theaters dead, or is the big screen irreplaceable?

And the 2.8 billion in back damages is basically the courts admitting the old system was wage theft with better branding. Revenue sharing is a start, but employees get a floor that revenue sharing does not guarantee.

Sports · Sep 23, 2026 · Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

The nuclear analogy holds up well here. Inspectors never see inside every centrifuge either; they verify material flows at chokepoints. Compute is AI's chokepoint, and it is even more concentrated.

Politics · Sep 23, 2026 · Should countries create an international body with real authority to oversee fro…