In the age of meme-slop and digital newsrooms shuttering, are mainstream newsrooms equipped to cover the internet? @jakeadampitre.bsky.social asked @taylorlorenz.bsky.social, @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social, and @samleecole.bsky.social to weigh in:

wrote about why the media is still so bad at covering internet culture & the lack of resources available to fix it, for @objectivejournos.bsky.social objectivejournalism.org/2025/12/do-n...

recommended reading: Randy Martin, Knowledge LTD: Toward a Social Logic of the Derivative (2014)

this one has been cooking for a while: for @jstordaily.bsky.social i wrote about early futurists & how they helped bring us to the way "the future" is wielded today by Silicon Valley and others daily.jstor.org/the-first-fu...

wrote about Canada's proposed age verification law which is a very bad idea! www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

for @artukdotorg.bsky.social i wrote about Norman McLaren's drawings, prints, and paintings & how they sit alongside his animation work artuk.org/discover/sto...

wrote about Canada's first queer film, Winter Kept Us Warm www.inthemoodmagazine.com/issue-14/win...

David and Larry Ellisons’ sloptastic vision for Hollywood is coming into focus: “Paramount has reportedly signed a $200M+ multiyear deal for Higgsfield AI to use mass-use Popcorn AI model that ingests dailies and script notes, then outputs regional cuts: new leads, alternate jokes, revised endings”

hosting trivia tonight and making everyone listen to Dragula

NEW: Trump’s tariffs & threats to make Canada “the 51st state” have sparked boycotts of U.S. products & may have even swung Canada’s April election. But anti-American fervor has a long, colorful history in Canada, writes @jakeadampitre.bsky.social newlinesmag.com/essays/anti-...

“If an LLM recommends a pesticide that ends up killing an entire crop, it’s hard to know who’s to blame.” Offrange writer @jakeadampitre.bsky.social looks into the promise and peril of farmers embracing AI: ambrook.com/offrange/tec...

i wrote about our greatest living documentarian and run down his best films about cities and what it means to manage them

“10 years ago, Quebecers could easily find a place to live without spending more than 25% of their income on rent. Today, someone making minimum wage in Montreal would be lucky to spend 50%. Our rent-to-income ratio has gotten shamefully out of control.”

Read our latest feature from @jakeadampitre.bsky.social‬. www.hnn.us/article/war-...

celebrate canada day by reading my new piece on how Iraq war films, like Warfare, fetishize "authenticity" but leave aside history www.hnn.us/article/war-...

wrote for @fastcompany.com about the AI boosters in Hollywood & the rifts the technology is creating in the industry, including for unions www.fastcompany.com/91360193/is-...

wrote for @fastcompany.com about the AI boosters in Hollywood & the rifts the technology is creating in the industry, including for unions www.fastcompany.com/91360193/is-...

wrote about how disappointing Canada’s first AI minister already is www.theglobeandmail.com/business/com...

i wrote this!

Tech For Us? my latest newsletter open.substack.com/pub/unwanted...

spent months speaking to small indie theatre owners in Canada & looking into the vampiric, dominating Cineplex monopoly we all suffer under this.org/2024/12/21/m...

dammit i forgot about bluesky again, y'all good?

rest in peace David substack.com/home/post/p-...

spent months speaking to small indie theatre owners in Canada & looking into the vampiric, dominating Cineplex monopoly we all suffer under this.org/2024/12/21/m...

well ryan has basically (& much more succinctly!) made the argument about tiktok here that i do in my dissertation. we've been so desperate to see it as social media with social implications when it has always been focused on ecommerce which only filters down into the social

as someone who researches tiktok, on one hand a ban is an insane overreach into limiting free expression, but on the other hand, it is a cesspool and the world would be better without it lol. multiple things can be true...

watching a movie on netflix with ads in montreal is great because i see the same WWE Raw ad every time but you never know if it's gonna be the english or french version, you can turn it into a little game

The way that university officials have begun to treat “peaceful” and “disruptive” as antonyms, when they in fact are not antonyms, is the kind of violence to language that one expects of authoritarians

can i just copy and paste my tweets here? otherwise i forget to open this app lol

I wrote about Casey Newton's essay on AI skepticism, the uselessness of a "AI is real and dangerous" v. "AI is fake and sucks" dichotomy, and the limits of AI boosterism. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-phony-...

best books i read this year

can it simultaneously be true that folks who get older never understand the cultural habits of younger generations and that the same is happening to me, but also that gen z & alpha seem to have far less curiosity in their cultural consumption in a way that feels genuinely different?

seems fine

if this academia thing works out, i'd love to one day teach a film course called "Hong Kong Handover," about how those anxieties have manifested pre- and post-handover in film, from Comrades Almost a Love Story to Johnnie To's Election 1 & 2

every media studies academic (including me) after SCMS rejections come out

that new yorker conner o'malley article is a reminder that this Vine compilation, which i have watched dozens of times, is no exaggeration the defining comedy of the 21st century www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzpA...

wrote about the entitled boosters insisting that "making" stuff with AI is the same thing as being a creative, plus a bit on how Gladiator 2 reflects Hollywood's disinterest in cultivating movie stars like it once did (also consider subscribing!) open.substack.com/pub/unwanted...

wrote about the entitled boosters insisting that "making" stuff with AI is the same thing as being a creative, plus a bit on how Gladiator 2 reflects Hollywood's disinterest in cultivating movie stars like it once did (also consider subscribing!) open.substack.com/pub/unwanted...

sitting down to grade 3 to 4 papers at 1pm: locking in

Every AI product or application advertised on TV opens with the premise, "you, hog that you are, are very obviously too stupid to write even a brief email. Well great news, asshole." Thank you for solving all the problems I have doing basic stuff with your application that does them weirder/worse!

it's so funny and sad how many AI boosters are simply non-creative people who feel entitled to creativity and so feel fine claiming that the results of their prompts are on *equal creative ground* to what an actual artist has made. delusional, and i have to believe self-defeating

so wild to see an earnest one of these in the wild in 2024. bluesky really wants it to be 2014 again

obviously not the first to say this, but more people should read the Financial Times — truly the only mainstream publication that skips the bullshit & tells you exactly what the wealthy are thinking & how they're scheming to fuck us all over this time

Ever since I started reading The Secret History, I've been seeing it everywhere — on the metro, in a crossword, in a podcast. The world's in the Tartt zone.

need to follow the bluesky weirdos and sickos, where can i find them?

Netflix with ads is great living here because every 15 minutes of a Star Trek episode there's suddenly a jump scare screeching Quebecois voice trying to sell me real estate in Laval

i’m just gonna call posts on here “tweets”

the ending of Witness for the Prosecution is so insane i'm honestly speechless

looks like the migration over here is really and truly happening. okay well subscribe to my newsletter! unwantedutopias.substack.com

Jake Pitre (@jakeadampitre.bsky.social) was a visiting PhD scholar last semester and we wrote something together: Dream job: The online creators who make money from livestreaming their sleep thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/feb...