jake pitre

Hollywood Isn’t Directly Attacking Trump. It’s Doing Something More Interesting. Less “what we need right now” and more “what it feels like to be alive.”

Many Hollywood projects responding to Trump’s first term were “direct, if unsubtle, approaches” to the moment—but now, films and TV shows are exploring in different ways what being alive feels like during a tumultuous period, Jake Pitre argues:

Hollywood Isn’t Directly Attacking Trump. It’s Doing Something More Interesting. Less “what we need right now” and more “what it feels like to be alive.”

Wrote about the last year or so in mainstream political cinema, with the spectre of Trump haunting it all, and the films (and Tim Robinson) that look instead at what it means to "live through history." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

Folks, I'm in a position where I could really use any work. I'm an academic who can teach film, media & communications, and a writer who covers tech, film, and politics. Editors, etc hire me to do anything in those realms. Keep me in mind for anything you think I could be good for!

Folks, I'm in a position where I could really use any work. I'm an academic who can teach film, media & communications, and a writer who covers tech, film, and politics. Editors, etc hire me to do anything in those realms. Keep me in mind for anything you think I could be good for!

very fair, I do think it rises above that even if it’s in conversation with it

The new doc on HBO, Neighbors, is pretty fascinating

AI expert-in-residence initiative helps artists shape the future of creative work | News - Concordia University Public conversations and a summer course examining AI and artistic agency coming to Concordia

Concordia University, known for its excellent Fine Arts Dept. rolling out the carpet to the AI bros. They might be interested to know that the Fine Arts students by and large reject AI for all the right reasons. This is enraging.
www.concordia.ca/cunews/finea...

the idiocy of AI boosterism in a sentence

The Tumbler Ridge shooting is already fuelling anti-trans hate in Canada | Xtra Magazine Bad actors on the right are leaping to connect the shooter’s trans identity to the violence

NEW from me today:

Tumbler Ridge is mourning a horrific loss. But how the shooter's identity is being talked about online, and the dangerous links being made to trans people at large, will have resounding and dangerous impacts in the months and weeks to come.

xtramagazine.com/power/tumble...

I don’t really pay attention to charges of doomerism. I don’t know what it means offline.

I do know that refusing a version of how the future will unfold forecloses on the power that actually shapes that future. That’s not disavowing that tech changes are happening but they are in now a given.

Pulse, Demonlover, and Meanings of the Internet Two films clairvoyant in their skepticism of the internet.

wrote for @typebarmagazine.bsky.social about Pulse & Demonlover as the best films about the internet as a network of depersonalization www.typebarmagazine.com/pulse-demonl...

one year since David Lynch's passing. commemorating by seeing Part 8 "Gotta Light?" on the big screen tonight <3

when i reply to my gf "hi hungry i'm jake"

The '90s San Francisco cyber thriller that predicted online pizza orders Sandra Bullock's cyber thriller was years ahead of its time.

Sandra Bullock's cyber thriller was years ahead of its time.

The '90s San Francisco cyber thriller that predicted online pizza orders Sandra Bullock's cyber thriller was years ahead of its time.

i interviewed a bunch of the tech whizzes behind The Net (1995) for @sfgate.com www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/a...

This is funny because those are like months old on TikTok, you’re experiencing the dregs

Do newsrooms need a memeologist? In the age of meme-slop and digital newsrooms shuttering, internet culture reporters say mainstream media is ill-equipped to cover not just trends, but a radicalization that doesn't look how it used…

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:

Do newsrooms need a memeologist? In the age of meme-slop and digital newsrooms shuttering, internet culture reporters say mainstream media is ill-equipped to cover not just trends, but a radicalization that doesn't look how it used t...

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...

@karengregory.bsky.social reminded me of our little project!

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

Oooh thanks for the rec!

The First Futurists and the World They Built - JSTOR Daily From Saint-Simon to Silicon Valley, the urge to forecast the future has always masked a struggle over who gets to define it.

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...

Opinion: Canada’s age-verification bill for porn is a slippery slope to a restrictive internet While its intentions are good, the proposed bill is riddled with problems and should not be passed

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

Drawing movement: Norman McLaren's experiments in animation Discover artworks, explore venues and meet artists. Art UK is the online home for every public collection in the UK, featuring over 700,000 artworks by over 60,000 artists.

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

Anti-Americanism in Canada Is Nothing New — It’s a Tradition Trump’s tariffs and threats have sparked boycotts and motivated voters north of the border, but Canadians’ desire to distance themselves from the US has deep roots

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-...

A Cautious Embrace of LLMs - Offrange Like virtually every industry, farmers are feeling pressure to integrate AI into their everyday workflows. But even early adopters remain wary.

“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