consumer behavior

I didn't even know Ben Affleck HAD an AI company. Now Netflix is buying it for $600 million. Photo below - Pirates of the Caribbean, now a Disney+ franchise. Are we circling the drain when it comes to streaming and subscription costs? Where does it end?

Congrats to Netflix on buying an AI cinema effects company nobody ever heard of before, for nearly a billion dollars (see link below. But there's already too much CGI low quality film franchises where the screenwriters seem to have left the building ages ago.

This is a story which could go either way. I could rant about there being too many marginal AI players to eke out a living and survive the coming shakeout. Or I can point out that there is a limit to the number of streaming subscriptions anyone can afford, and the amount hours in a day to enjoy those shows. Let’s focus on how much my entertainment monthly charges are.

Netflix – yes I have this one. $24.99 a month. To get 4K film (when available) and watch on more than one screen. This is March 2026 pricing. Netflix has raised prices annually, amounting to 40% of the past few years. This is no doubt helping to fatten Ben Affleck’s wallet.

YouTube – too many plans to list, even if I had all day. If you go for the top plan, it could cost up to $82 a month. If I cancel Xfinity/comcast subscription then I’d still need comcast Wi-Fi ($50 a month), a price which will surely continue to inflate. If I want “good” comcast Wi-Fi, with better speeds and reliability, it’s gonna cost more.

Xfinity TV package – I’m paying over $100 a month for 2 sets. I have a bunch of things bundled into this, including HBO max, would are available as standalone. Or maybe they are already standalone for me? I can hardly tell. I get several emails/texts a week telling me the apologize for tiling and disruption, and inviting me to upgrade to a faster/more expensive modem. Consumer alert - HBO Max removed "Westworld" from it's on demand streaming. You have to pay per episode, even though it was an HBO show when originally broadcast.

Paramount + - $8.99 a month on my plan. $13.99 if I go ad free. I got this to watch “Star Trek - Strange New Worlds". I think . . . )

Apple TV - $12.99 a month. This is the only way to get Ted Lasso and any of the soccer matches in Europe. I've started watching "Severence". It's very good. But not $156 a year worth of "good".

I believe I also may have Disney +, but I haven’t stumbled into any House of Mouse content recently. Disney owns the entire Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Indiana Jones franchises. Does this mean i can only watch re-runs at Disney+ now?

Here are subscriptions I’m pretty sure I have NOT been snared into yet: Hulu, Sling, Fubo, Philo, separate ESPN (I get at least 2 ESPN channels on Xfinity, so I assume it’s bundled); I don’t have a dedicated NFL streaming package. And I don’t have “new” Direct TV, where the dish is gone and they stream their content to my Xfinity modem.

So far I’m up to around $300 a month. Before I factor in my AT&T wireless plan. That’s costing me $50 a month, even with a paid off phone. And I can’t cut my cellular service, even though I NEVER watch TV on my phone, or my tablet.

So – I’m spending $350 a month to watch tv, receive zillions of spam emails, and occasionally make a phone call. And those dozen services get more complex all the time.

Maybe this is the reason many of us have no cash left at the end of the month. It’s all going to wireless entertainment. I don’t have enough free hours in the day to justify all this expense.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Netflix to pay up to $600 million for Ben Affleck's AI company

If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.

Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.

That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.

Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.

This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.

Real change begins when money moves differently.

Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.

My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.

This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.

If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.

Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

Free book giveaway! Register here.

The concept of this app sounds promising. Do you think the internet can be a place for deep and meaningful conversations in this day and age?

I didn't book an accommodation because of AI generated images. I love AI because it has helped me save hours by automating systems, analyzing SEO, and creating website content.

But today, while researching places to stay in Buenos Aires, I realized that we need to be mindful of when to use AI so that trust is not eroded.

My wife sent me the link to an apartment listed on Booking dot com. This listing had tons of great reviews but several of the images were clearly AI generated. They were generic. Fake looking. This made me question the reviews too, especially since I saw one name repeatedly pop up under different reviews. 

I searched for this property on Tripadvisor and saw customer submitted photos. Here I could see that several of the Booking dot com photos were generated based off the customer submitted ones. And the Tripadvisor reviews were fewer and not as favorable.

We didn't book this place. It may still be a great place to stay. But the use of AI generated images threw me off. 

I feel like I should have a clearer point to make. But I'm also feeling lazy to come up with one.

As cities like Austin cater to coastal transplants, their unique culture gets diluted, becoming more generic. Is cultural entropy inevitable, or is there a counterforce? As cities like Austin cater to coastal transplants, their unique culture gets diluted, becoming more generic. Is cultural entropy inevitable, or is there a counterforce?

The canary in the coal mine for me is the yuppie coffee shop (which admittedly I love). When you're in one of these shops - the ones with the $6 non-dairy cappuccinos, gorumet chocolate chip cookies topped with malden salt, in a room with lots of wood accents and pothos plants overflowing from their shelves, there's no way to tell if you're in Austin, or Williasmburg, or the mission district of SF or Shoreditch in London. 

While the internet enable infinte diversity and microcommunities, physical spaces seems to be converging toward a monoculture. I imagine fueled by things like increased global travel and social media. 

#DeepTakes

benefits of not valuing paying more for quality services? . Was thinking about AI contributing to lower service rates by humans. I feel tension around this inevitable happening and had an insight that since we are moving toward lower costs, this could help usher in Universal Basic Income, a world where we don’t need to worry about how much we are making anyways. Does this make sense? It’s longterm though and there’s still a current today ouch to it all.

Navigating Buying or Walking. For those of you who are good at saving your money. 💰 What inspires you to not buy? 

Say you’re in a store or online and you see something cool. What do you do? What are your criteria for buying or walking away? 

Asking because while I love knowing money is being put away, I also love to shop. It can be as simple as, I’m in Manchester (like I am right now) and want to buy something unique that I can’t buy at home. Or I don’t have a something in that color, fabric or design. I don’t need it. I just like it and will enjoy it.  

How do you navigate this? What’s your approach?

Navigating Buying or Walking. For those of you who are good at saving your money. 💰 What inspires you to not buy? 

Say you’re in a store or online and you see something cool. What do you do? What are your criteria for buying or walking away? 

Asking because while I love knowing money is being put away, I also love to shop. It can be as simple as, I’m in Manchester (like I am right now) and want to buy something unique that I can’t buy at home. Or I don’t have a something in that color, fabric or design. I don’t need it. I just like it and will enjoy it.  

How do you navigate this? What’s your approach?

What's your view on EMFs? What do you belief about EMFs? I keep hearing seemingly reputable people warning about them. My husband says the argument isn’t scientifically sound. If you think EMFs are harmful, why, and how do you reduce exposure? I use wireless headphones a lot- my phone not so much.

It's the littlest thing . . So this happened. . . How would you relate?

I recently purchased new kitchen appliances (yay me!). They were delivered today. Prior to their arrival, I had been sitting with a range of emotional states (from joy to fear to contentment, etc.) and body sensation that kept me energized.

When the new fridge and stove arrived, I felt my excitement again. Saying goodbye to the old, dated, dingy appliances was a joy. The stove looked amazing when it was installed. The fridge has french doors and bottom freezer, exactly what I wanted.

And. . . There is a noticeable ding on the left door of the fridge, subtle yet in plain sight! Yaaaaa! Everytime I see it (and it has only been a few hours), my body tenses up and there’s annoyance. I am told that I have 2 options, I can take $150 compensation for the ding and keep the fridge, or exchange the whole fridge (which means I need to take action and coordinate a whole new delivery). I feel frozen and indecisive. . . Which option do I take?, I ask myself.

It is really interesting how impacted I seem by this one little thing…. a ding.

How would you relate, if you did?

Left Media Bias bigger than i realized. No matter how you measure (print media, online, page views, paid subscribers, followers, etc) US media leans heavily left, to an extent that surprised me. Most ways I tried back-of-the napkin math have right + right-leaning news sources being below 10%… and even the most generous assessments that include lost of neutral/other outlets still have left + left-leaning above 50% (meaning 5:1 liberal to conservative is the lowest estimate i could find).

Context

The US is pretty evenly split in terms of the two major parties:
> 45% of U.S. adults Republican-ish, 44% Democrat-ish Gallup 2022

Some sources

• Allsides Here’s Allsides review
  their media bias on Allsides.com here’s the site’s own assessment of its own bias
• Googling the top 25 most-subscribed news channels in the United States, and
• Even the more left leaning LLMS can’t help but point out this as a fact of modern media.

Takeaways

• First, this gives me empathy for Republicans. Many American conservatives feel like the underdog, regardless of how much power or influence they yield, because in a very real way, they’re not represented in a substantial part of the public narrative making machine—the media—proportionally. The perception of bias is true despite their being popular conservative outlets with sizable audiences, and as a result the left has influence on public opinion.Impact on Public Trust (but also how come Republicans aren’t better at getting media subscribers?)

• Second, how come Republicans, who are stereotypically thought of us as having more business acumen or money or something, are getting so handily beaten in the media?

• Third, I try not to get involved in politics because I’m scared of loosing connection or turning people off of the value of relatefulness because of my takes, even if they’re nuanced. We’re very good at otherizing people and forgetting to look at nuances. I’m certain I lack nuance. I don’t want a difference of political opinion to get in the way of our connecting. I started writing up this for the TTT email (which I ended up deciding not to send) but I realized others are deeply esconced in politics and way smarter and more educated in the field than I, so I decided to not go there. But here on uptrusting.com I think it’s a cool opporutnity to test; could also be a nice road to empathy, or self-empathy, depending on our identifications.