For anyone stopping by looking for more info, it’s Camp Lejeune not Legume.

That part. But it even worse than that.

My wife and I used to be avid theater goers. We used to watch at least five movies a year in the theaters; more if you count the times we went individually. Almost all of the theaters we visited were high-end lounge-style movie houses. Think "Alamo Drafthouse," which is a poster child for the downfall of theaters I'm about to describe.

We're the perfect demo for the movie theaters: free time and disposable income. Yet, we've only seen two movies in the theaters this year, and not for lack of trying.

Theaters are in a kind-of death spiral. they're losing revenue to streaming, so they can't invest in making an experience that attracts people to the theater, which leads to them losing more revenue to streaming, etc. Companies circling the drain are perfect targets for M&A and enshittification in the name of growth.

This is exactly what's happening to high-end theaters: Moviehouse and Eatery (a small chain of high-end theaters) selling to Cinépolis, Alamo Drafthouse selling to Private Equity, IPIC starting to raise red flags, and probably more.

The end result is always the same: endless ads appear where mostly-ad-free prerolls used to be, food and drink prices go up while quality goes down, service gets worse as staff are asked to do more for effectively-less pay, and previously-super comfortable lie-flat lounge seating gets more and more decrepit, all while increasing ticket prices!

All of this is even more insulting when the movies you pay to see are distributed by Netflix or Apple and are all but guaranteed to end up on their platforms in mere weeks, sometimes with better post-production.

We used to happily pay $100+ for a night out at the movies seven years ago. Our experiences have gotten costlier and more disappointing, however. Families deciding to drop $1500 on a 100" TV with an Atmos soundbar and relegating the theaters to the past makes total sense to me. It's sad --- theaters are a social experience and have given me so many great memories --- but it was all but an eventuality the minute streaming on Netflix went live.

here in SF it's pretty common to bribe officers with gift cards to get traffic tickets dropped.

it's been like that as long as I can remember

also, in the late 80s I remember my GF's father bribing the SF building inspector to overlook something.

The subtext of the joke is "killing people fosters change." I understood it just fine. You're hung up on specifics of contemporary cultural nature. The joke was not about the in world setup; writers (especially back then) used the Simpsons as a rice cake, a bland vessel to provide cover for the critique of their culture.

Not so much today where media is obsessed with fan service, probably to manipulate their perception of the world and keep them addicted. They need a lot of you's out there sweating the details, coming back for another bump.

"Fancy" citation when such things are commonplace. "Everything" yet more hand wavy melodramatic emotional terminology.

Your posts aren't constructive at all. Ignoring the painting to argue over a couple brush strokes, as they are terribly offensive to your sensibilities. If we were in a room together I would expect you to pull a up turns nose good day, sir!

You might consider going outside as circling trivialities with such emotional conviction is unhealthy.

Just went on a 5 mile walk myself. Feels good man.

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The problem with the revolution talk is too few know how to "work to live".

Only 4% hunt in the US anymore. When is the last time you sewed a shirt? Grew a carrot? 100 years ago everyone had manual labor skills, even the rich. Musk and Zuckerberg live the same prisoner's dilemma.

Our lived experience informs us revolution is certain doom as we watch ourselves live daily routines that only require the smallest obligation to ourselves; eat, shower, sleep, computer.

~84% live less than 100 miles from their childhood home. Americans are fine being sedate and cared for despite the rhetoric they're rugged individuals.

Office workers need to learn how to grow potatoes and rotate a tire first.

The best kind of revolt would be a methodical Luigi style pruning. Simpsons made that joke 20+ years ago; you'd have to kill 50 CEOs to see certain changes[1]. That's included here to demonstrate how normal and old the issue is.

Inflation since 1980 is 297%. Slow steady deflation of buying power into helplessness was not an accident.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/simpsonsshitposting/comments/1hios5...

If anything it seems like the agents would be easier to trick (at least right now).