Chu The Cud

By Chu The Cud | October 2026

When I was younger, going to the movies was one of the things you looked forward to doing on the weekend.

Whether it was with a group of friends or a girlfriend at the time, it was a night out. A nice dinner that didn’t cost a fortune, followed by a movie. Nothing extravagant. Just a simple evening enjoying the company of others.

Somewhere along the way, we started losing that.

The decline of the traditional moviegoing experience had already begun, but COVID seemed to accelerate it. Theaters closed, streaming services flourished, and people became increasingly comfortable staying home.

First, we were glued to our televisions. Then came the phones.

Four people sitting in the same room, watching four different programs on four different screens.

Together, yet completely apart.

Sure, there were still families who made an evening out of watching something together. But the shared experience seemed to be disappearing.

And with it, another piece of our social fabric.

But lately, I’ve noticed something interesting.

People seem to be returning to the movies.

I work next to an older AMC theater in Los Angeles, and I’ve been watching the activity. It’s not the bustling crowds I remember from years ago, but there’s a steady stream of people coming and going. More activity than I recall seeing just a couple of years ago, when it seemed only a major blockbuster could bring people out.

And perhaps something else is changing.

Audiences appear increasingly willing to give smaller-budget films a chance, while some enormously expensive productions struggle to justify their costs.

Maybe people are beginning to look for something different.

Or maybe they’re simply remembering what it feels like to get out of the house.

Because going to the movies was never just about the movie.

It was about the anticipation. Making plans. Meeting friends. Taking someone on a date. Sharing a laugh with strangers or hearing an entire theater react to the same moment.

It was a social experience.

Something we seem to have sacrificed for convenience.

And convenience, as wonderful as it can be, doesn’t always make life better.

Living in Los Angeles, going to the movies can still be expensive. But there are theaters offering discounted nights for around seven dollars a ticket. Add some popcorn, and you can still enjoy an evening out for approximately twenty dollars.

That’s not unreasonable for a little escape from the isolation we’ve become so accustomed to.

I’m not suggesting movie theaters are returning to their glory days. National attendance remains well below its pre-pandemic levels, and streaming isn’t going anywhere.

But perhaps the renewed activity I’m seeing is a small indication of something worth encouraging.

People getting out of their houses.

Putting down their phones.

Sitting together, laughing together, experiencing something together.

Maybe it’s time we stopped living entirely inside our own heads and started being social again.

After all, civilization isn’t built by people sitting alone in separate rooms staring at separate screens.

It’s built through shared experiences.

And maybe, just maybe, the movie theater still has a role to play in bringing some of that back.

— Chu The Cud
© 2026. All Rights Reserved.

You know what doesn’t lower the price of gasoline, groceries, electricity, rent, or education?

Looting stores. Burning down businesses. Destroying your own neighborhoods and cities.

You cannot make life more affordable by destroying the very communities in which people are trying to make a living.

Destruction is not an economic policy. And outrage is not a solution.

— Chu The Cud
© 2026. All Rights Reserved.

By Chu The Cud

At one time, we washed our clothes by hand. We spent hours preparing meals, cleaning our homes, and performing tasks that technology eventually made easier.

We invented machines to give ourselves more time.

But what did we do with that time?

We filled it with more distractions, more demands, more consumption, and more screens.

We invented computers to serve humanity, but increasingly, humanity organizes its existence around computers.

The internet accelerated the transformation. Smartphones made it nearly impossible to escape.

What began as a tool to make life easier gradually became a place where people spend much of their lives.

The screen was supposed to be a window into the world. For many, it has become a substitute for the world itself.

We watch strangers eat, travel, argue, fall in love, and experience things we could be experiencing ourselves.

We have become spectators of existence rather than participants in it.

Technology promised us freedom from labor. Yet somehow, we became increasingly occupied.

And therein lies the irony.

We spent generations inventing ways to save time, only to invent new ways to waste it.

Life didn’t become less interesting. We became less interested in living it.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether technology has improved our lives.

Perhaps the question is whether we’ve forgotten what we were saving all that time for.

— Chu The Cud
© 2026. All Rights Reserved.

By Chu The Cud
October 9, 2026

We raise our children to live in a world without us, confident in their ability to stand alone.

And are left with the ignorance of what to do when they finally accomplish it.

But it wasn’t just what I taught them. It was who they became.

And, the house gets quieter.

Time slows down.

Now we are alone without instruction,
just experimentation.

The purpose of our purpose becomes the absence of purpose.

And therein lies the ignorance of preparation.

We taught them how to leave.

But who is teaching us how to remain?

© 2026 Chu The Cud
All Rights Reserved

The Cud | October 2, 2026

The Boston Red Sox got swept by the Yankees in the Wild Card Series.

It hurt.

But I’m not going to let two games erase what happened over the previous five months.

When Chad Tracy was called up from Triple-A Worcester to replace Alex Cora, he inherited a team sitting at 10–17. The Red Sox were going nowhere.

Then something happened.

Tracy brought energy. Young players came up from the minors. Kids who weren’t supposed to be carrying a Major League team suddenly were. And somehow, this collection of veterans, rookies and Triple-A call-ups turned a miserable season into one hell of a ride.

They made baseball exciting again.

Then came October.

And Chad Tracy looked like what he is: a first-year Major League manager experiencing postseason baseball for the first time.

Against the Yankees, his quick hook with his starting pitchers hurt.

In Game 1 , Tracy went to the hook early. 

Sonny Gray was pulled with two outs in the fifth after only 70 pitches. Gray wanted the baseball. He believed he should have been trusted to keep pitching.

In Game 2, Payton Tolle was pulled with two outs in the fifth after 83 pitches. Boston was down only 1–0. Erik Miller came in, and the Yankees immediately made Tracy pay for the decision.

Again, Tracy turned to the bullpen.

Again, it didn’t work.

Those decisions deserve criticism.

But they also deserve perspective.

Across the field was Aaron Boone, a manager with years of Major League experience and a Yankees organization that has never been afraid to spend money to compete. Right now, the Yankees simply have the better team.

That’s baseball.

What interests me now isn’t what Chad Tracy did wrong in his first postseason.

It’s what he learned from it.

Chad Tracy took over a team that looked dead and helped get it to October. He did it with a roster that, at times, seemed like half of Worcester had been given directions to Fenway Park.

And it was exciting as hell to watch.

Now Tracy has something he didn’t have when he walked into that Major League clubhouse:

Experience.

A Major League season.

A pennant race.

October baseball.

And the sting of getting swept by the New York Yankees.

I’ll take that into next year.

Because sometimes the most valuable thing a young manager can carry into the following season isn’t a trophy.

c 2026 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved

Life is a series of patterns. Some we inherit, some we create, and others we blindly follow without ever questioning why.

Relationships, religion, politics, family, and society all operate through patterns. Some teach us integrity, discipline, and responsibility. Others demand obedience, reward conformity, and discourage independent thought.

Yet when things go wrong, our first reaction is often, “Why is this happening to me?”
Perhaps the better question is, “Why does this keep happening to me?”

How many times do we repeat the same mistakes, trust the same behavior, or defend beliefs we’ve never bothered to question? We change the people, change the circumstances, and somehow end up with the same results.
At what point do we stop blaming coincidence and recognize the pattern?

Religion can provide purpose or demand obedience. Politics can unite or divide. Relationships can strengthen us or destroy us. And society can convince us that following the crowd is somehow the equivalent of thinking for ourselves.

But just because millions of people follow a pattern doesn’t make it right. And standing against it doesn’t automatically make you right either.

Nature follows patterns. Human beings have the ability to recognize, question, and sometimes change them.

Not everything that happens to us is our doing. But what we do once we recognize a pattern is where personal responsibility begins.

Seeing patterns is awareness. Recognizing them is intelligence. Knowing when to join them, challenge them, or walk away is wisdom.
Perhaps the most dangerous pattern of all is believing we’re independent thinkers while blindly following someone else’s ideas.

So the next time you ask, “Why is this happening to me?” consider another question.
Am I recognizing life’s patterns, or am I simply repeating them?

© 2026 Chu The Cud
All Rights Reserved

The time given

was spent with lies.

Time never returned

once spent.

Manipulated without cause,

lies fall like rain.

To care or not to care,

that is the refrain.

The web was made with children,

the strongest bond.

So was the knife

that made me fall

the first time.

Healing leaves scars

only seen from inside,

reopened

in a meet and greet.

To avoid what inflamed you

is to never feel that

which made you uncomfortable.

© 2026 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved

For decades, the traditional arrangement was simple: the man went to work and financially supported the family, while the woman often stayed home and supported the family in a different way, raising the children, managing the household, taking them to school, activities, doctors, practices, and everything in between.

That work had real value, even though it didn’t come with a paycheck.

When a marriage ended, the law recognized that economic imbalance through things like spousal support, because one spouse had sacrificed earning potential to support the family.

Women fought for equality, equal rights, equal treatment, and equal pay. Fair enough.

But equality has to work both ways.

Today, there are fathers who make the same choice women historically made. They work part-time or earn less because they choose to be the parent who gets the kids to school, picks them up, takes them to sports, goes to the park or beach, handles appointments, and is there for the day-to-day raising of the children.

If that marriage ends and the woman is now the primary breadwinner, she may become the spouse ordered to provide support.

And if we believe the principle was legitimate when the roles were reversed, it shouldn’t suddenly become outrageous when the man is the one who sacrificed income to raise the children.

You can’t demand equality when it benefits you and reject the same principle when the circumstances are reversed.

Equality isn’t about men or women winning.

It’s about applying the same standard to both.

c 2026 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved

Many people say they do not want data centers in their communities but they are often the same people who depend on them every day.

Data centers power the phones in our pockets, the navigation and safety features in our cars, streaming services, social media, cloud storage, online banking, medical records, scientific research, weather forecasting, and the computing behind advances in medicine and technology.

That does not mean communities should accept every proposal without question. Data centers should be built responsibly, with real attention to electricity demand, water use, noise, emissions, land use, and local benefits. But we cannot demand unlimited digital convenience while pretending the physical infrastructure behind it should exist somewhere else, out of sight and out of mind.

If we want the benefits of a connected, data-driven world, we also have to be honest about what makes that world possible.

c 2026 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved

Three children are dead.

Their mother strangled them.

Yet somehow, the story has shifted away from the three little children who lost their lives and toward the women who sat on the jury.

Why is the jury room becoming the real courtroom, where the battle over innocence and guilt was actually fought?

Three white women came forward to publicly condemn the lone holdout juror, the one man who refused to join their collective decision. After receiving backlash, another juror, a man, was brought forward to criticize him as well.

And I have to ask:

What happened to the three babies?

Where is the outrage for them?

Where is the focus on the children who were actually murdered?

Instead, we are watching a media narrative develop around the women who wanted the same verdict, the juror who wouldn’t give it to them, and the battle over what happened inside that jury room.

The mother becomes the victim.

The husband is suggested as the real culprit.

The lone juror becomes the villain for refusing to go along.

And the three children, the three innocent lives at the center of this entire case, become almost an afterthought.

Maybe that’s the uncomfortable question nobody wants to ask:

Were three murdered children simply not controversial enough to keep the ratings going?

Because apparently, the jury-room conflict is more compelling than the graves.

And if there is a broader political movement trying to use this case to undermine confidence in the jury system, that deserves scrutiny too.

And the DSA is sitting back and licking their chops. 

c 2026 Chu The Cud

All Rights Reserved