In that case, theatre management is not doing its job. My local theatre will kick people out if they disturb other patrons by talking or using their phone. They make the policy very clear and are pretty strict about enforcing it.

My local movie theatre has a very strict no-phone policy. They will kick you out if you use your phone during the movie. And the theatre sets the sound to reasonable levels. I don't understand why all theatres can't do these simple things.

I live in Canada and I go to a movie theatre at least 2-3 times per year. I like the experience, and our local theatre is clean and comfortable with great sound and an excellent screen. It feels like more of an occasion to go out to a movie than just watch one at home.

I never buy food or drink there, though. I either do without or smuggle my own in. And I don't subscribe to any streaming services, so I can justify the cost.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant by environmental issues.

The Netherlands is planning on making natural gas wells near Groningen permanently unusable. They haven't actually been used in a long time because of environmental issues, but this seems to me like a dumb thing to do. Arjen Lubach has a great video about this (in Dutch, but YouTube's auto-translate should be decent, I think...)

Well, I've never used WhatsApp, so I don't know all the features. There's also something called "email". Remember that?

But OK, I'm retired and not in the travel industry, so I'll have to take your word for it.

Facebook fading into the same amount of (ir)relevance as MySpace would be fine by me!

Of course you can avoid Whatsapp. You say: "Sorry, I don't have Whatsapp". If people want to communicate with you, they'll find another way. If not, then they are probably not worth communicating with anyway.

I use Signal. I reckon its about the least-enshittified chat program so far.

Check the USA international tourism numbers, bud. Way down. In fact, the USA is the only major tourist market to have seen its numbers drop in 2025.

I no longer have a Facebook account as of January 2025.

I also don't have Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. accounts. I don't use Meta products at all.

And believe me, I am doing my best to convince people not to use Facebook.

The good news is that the number of monthly active Facebook users has pretty much stalled since 2023.

Now, can we see it decline? Please? Pretty please?

Funny how the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020.

"We're #47! We're #47!"

Any doubters of the wisdom of this move should take a look at this video. 15 minutes, but well worth watching.

Well, with my scheme, seconds and minutes would change along with hours too. A daytime minute would be exactly 1/60th of a daytime hour, for example, and a night-time second would be exactly 1/3600 of a night-time hour. Everything would automatically adjust to the actual day length! What could possibly go wrong?

I guess the speed of light would no longer be constant. But meh.