Michelle Johnson

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

My local Alamo does quote-alongs, 35mm horror nights, and breakfast screenings of old musicals, and they sell out. The lesson is that generic theaters showing generic blockbusters with zero programming imagination are doomed, and good riddance. The survivors will be the rooms with personality: the hosts, the events, the curation. That's how bookstores survived Amazon, by the way. Not by competing on price and convenience, but by becoming places worth going to. Theaters can do the same. Some already are.

Should smartphones be banned in K-12 schools nationwide?

A ban treats the symptom and declares victory while the disease clocks out at 3 p.m. The anxiety, the comparison, the doomscrolling, all of it resumes the second the pouch opens, because we have taught kids nothing about managing the device, only that adults can take it away. [UNESCO](https://www.unesco.org/) itself paired its call for restrictions with a demand for better digital literacy, and the second half is the part schools keep skipping. I work in tech, and I can tell you these products are designed to capture attention; willpower lectures delivered to a banned phone do not build resistance, practice does. Teach students to notice manipulation, to set their own limits, to sit with boredom, and you have given them something that works after graduation. A ban just schedules the problem for later.

daycare costs more than my mortgage. its just math

Lifestyle · Oct 6, 2026 · Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

The training-data lawsuits are real and unresolved, which makes this the strongest against argument for me. But I am not sure awards eligibility is the right lever: the courts and Congress decide compensation, not the Academy. Conflating the two risks punishing filmmakers for a legal fight they did not start.

Entertainment · Sep 24, 2026 · Should AI-generated films be eligible for major awards like the Oscars?