(Sorry. I am unreasonably entranced with the kitchen magic which makes brown sugar usable again.)

Do you know the trick of sealing a piece of bread in with hardened brown sugar to soften it?

People get to like what they like! I like the experience of an audience and being strapped in for the ride. I get testy if the movie was not worth it, but it is just a different experience from watching at home.

It can also lead you to stare at your cat and be utterly transfixed by their sheer beauty as they carefully clean one paw.

Not your fault. Even the most rigorous routine and trying every trick will not work for some people.

Sorry. I think I implied that you had an unnuanced view, which you very clearly do not. And yes, the tech is _so much better_ than it was. (I am so grateful televisions don't have scan lines, anymore, for instance.)

Oh, for an iron bladder!

What's worst, really, are the people who decide to fast forward through the boring bits. Or the ones who decide to stop in the middle and get back to it...eventually.

They are different experiences, though? I find them to be so. And yes, there are movies where it is not worth the trailers and ticket price and inconvenience. But there are others where they are worth it. And some movies where it doesn't matter, but some where it really does.

My family has also been in the country since the 1600s. (Well except for jaunts to Canada, now and again. Some of my family were royalists, and most of them were poor for most of the last 400 plus years.)

My state-issued birth certificate doesn't list some data that the US requires to issue a passport and I had to get a variance to get my passport. And there is literally nothing I can do about the fact that the county in question doesn't meet the federal requirements.

There's a lot of value to having things that you can see at home. But I don't pretend that it's the _same_ thing. Could you watch 2001 on your phone? Well, yes. But it really doesn't have impact at that size.

Home viewing is enjoyable, sure. But it's also not the same experience. If you can pause at any point, wait an hour or a day or a week before resuming, if you can watch a movie and fold laundry or do other chores, it's really not the same experience.

There really isn't a substitute for going to a theatre and being locked into the experience with a lot of other people around you. I miss going to the movies, actually, and I didn't do it a lot before COVID.

Sometimes, I look at the men I love and my heart just aches for them. They live in a world which is so cruel, and unless they are comfortable having female friends, they have so few resources. It's not like guys can't be wonderful and supportive of their bros, but they so often don't know how.

To quote the inimitable N. K. Jemison "No voting on who gets to be people."

It is _unconscionable_ to put to referendum whether or not murder is ok.