Toni Taylor

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

My neighborhood has a repertory theater that shows 35mm prints, and the audiences are full of people in their twenties. Not ironically, not as a bit. They go because a scratched print of a 1975 thriller, watched with two hundred strangers who gasp at the same twist, is simply a better night than anything an algorithm served them that week. The obituary writers keep looking at the multiplex chains and declaring the patient dead, while the small rooms with character are quietly thriving. Maybe the future isn't fewer theaters. Maybe it's fewer bad theaters, and the good ones were never in trouble.

Should corporate boards face personal accountability for repeated privacy violations?

The numbers make the abstract concrete. The 2017 Equifax breach exposed the personal data of [147 million Americans](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/equifax-pay-575-million-part-settlement-ftc-cfpb-states-alleged-failure-take), followed by a $575 million FTC settlement, and the executives who oversaw the security failures kept their pay while shareholders and consumers absorbed the cost. [Section 304 of Sarbanes-Oxley](https://www.congress.gov/) already claws back CEO and CFO compensation after accounting restatements, because Congress decided some failures are personal, and privacy failures at this scale deserve the same logic. A company fine is a line item; a clawback is a career event. Boards will fund security properly when the people signing the risk memos know their own compensation is on the line, not just the company's.

The 55 mph example is the one people always forget. Congress could not pass a national speed limit outright, so they bought compliance with highway money instead. That is the exact playbook a federal health system would run. It starts as free checkups and ends as prove you complied to keep your coverage. The machinery for that kind of abuse is already built and tested.

Politics · Sep 24, 2026 · Should the United States adopt a universal healthcare system?

Twenty minutes to refocus after one notification. Multiply that by a school day and it is a miracle anyone learns algebra at all. I am a teacher too, and the phone ban is the first policy in years that made my classroom feel like 2010 again, in the best way.

Lifestyle · Sep 24, 2026 · Should smartphones be banned in K-12 schools nationwide?

Disclosure does not solve anything if voters cannot tell what the AI did. AI was used on a credits crawl tells me nothing about whether the performance I am judging is a person or a composite. Transparency theater is not the same as informed voting.

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