jake pitre

@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

When will landlords and speculators answer for their role in the housing and affordability crisis? When will landlords and speculators answer for their role in the housing and affordability crisis in Montreal and elsewhere?

“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.”

War Stories Without the History Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.

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

War Stories Without the History Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.

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-...

Is this Hollywood’s moment of AI reckoning? As studios, stars, and startups race to harness GenAI, a rift is forming within the industry. Some see opportunity; others see existential threat.

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-...

Is this Hollywood’s moment of AI reckoning? As studios, stars, and startups race to harness GenAI, a rift is forming within the industry. Some see opportunity; others see existential threat.

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-...

Opinion: Is Canada’s AI Minister just an industry spokesman now? Evan Solomon appears to be focused on touting the importance of the AI industry, instead of imposing safeguards on this technology before it’s too late

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

fair, but those numbers seem pretty tiny to me!

the first one sure but i feel like the second one is generally a positive? what the heck

i wrote this!

Tech For Us? Possibly, maybe

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

Movie monopoly “This industry is corrupt,” Lisa Milne, owner of The Royal Theatre in Trail, B.C. (population 7,920), told me, referring to the film exhibition industry in Canada, before I’d even been able to start r...

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?

Blue Skies and Golden Sunshine All along the way

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

Movie monopoly “This industry is corrupt,” Lisa Milne, owner of The Royal Theatre in Trail, B.C. (population 7,920), told me, referring to the film exhibition industry in Canada, before I’d even been able to start r...

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