Good Morning,
The U.S. has lost a fifth of its movie theaters and nearly a third of its bowling alleys since 2001 (Fortune). That’s not a taste story, it’s an infrastructure one — the places where strangers used to end up sitting next to each other are disappearing.
The consequence shows up inside the rooms still standing: moviegoing has stopped being habit meeting spontaneity, and the question of what to see has collapsed into whether to go at all (The Atlantic). Instagram, meanwhile, is building a TV app on the theory that private scrolling becomes a shared activity if you move it to the big screen (The Atlantic).
But a room still does something a feed can’t. Bayreuth audiences booed the AI-assembled projections in a Wagner staging (Los Angeles Times). Some additional evidence: remembering sequences, processing music and staying present with other people is exactly the demand researchers think helps hold dementia off (Harper’s Bazaar).
All of our stories below.