Jake Cole

Like the phoenix from the ashes. Writing at @Slant_Magazine, @hyperallergic, others.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

@hurricanejan3 I decided to put a toe back into this place and have been immediately reassured that no matter how annoying Bluesky can be it’s better

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

If the worst and dumbest Pitt fans stop watching the show over this, Ganesh will have made a far greater contribution to the show than she did as Mohan

[Film Updates @FilmUpdates]

Supriya Ganesh says the “creative decision” to write Mohan off was made by executive producers R. Scott Gemmill, Noah Wyle and John Wells: “They work with such intention on the show and make all the choices that they make for that reason, so I think it’s better to ask them for answers.”

(https://t.co/dGwku701oB)

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

I also loved @EBTGOKU’s piece and the extended rumination on how deftly Parsons tacitly connects his idea of the Backrooms to AI psychosis https://t.co/kWkN4NAY2H

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

Was not expecting to love Backrooms as much as I did. https://t.co/rl3sDSFAt1

[Sophy Romvari @SophyRomvari]

Blue Heron is in its *5th* week in cinemas across the US which I’ve come to understand is quite rare for a film of this size. Thank you to every single person who has made the trip to the cinema and told others to do the same. 💙

[fooler initiative @metroadlib]

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!!!

WHAT?!!!

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

@eedaaf @wtflanksteak You should be gatekept from fucking scissors, dummy

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

You can’t possibly predict what her last choice is gonna be based on this first pick

[robert franco @responsiblerob]

one of the most elite choices i’ve ever seen in a four favorites. expert display of ball knowing

[gato fumante @KweenInYellow]

NPR finally mentions that this was a false-flag in the 18th paragraph lol

[Radiance Films @FilmsRadiance]

A softer side of Johnnie To comes via ROMANCING IN THIN AIR, our Limited Edition containing exclusive new writing by @ThatJakePC and reversible sleeve art - plus extras incl. audio commentary (+ new subs) by @Futurhythm and a visual essay by @TheEndofCinema on To's melodramas

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Sure, your eyes aren’t tricking you. That clip looks better than the new trailer, and the reason has nothing to do with talent. The VFX supervisor on Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014? Jerome Chen. The VFX supervisor on Brand New Day? Also Jerome Chen. Same person. Completely different system around him.

In 2014, Chen had 50 effects artists at Sony Imageworks, the largest VFX crew the studio had ever put on a single project. They handled about 1,000 of the film’s 1,600 VFX shots on a $255 million budget. The crew shot on real film (not digital), on location in actual New York City, scanned Times Square with 36,000 photographs of over 100 billboards, and built physical lighting rigs on set so the CGI would match the real world.

Now look at how Marvel makes Spider-Man movies. No Way Home had 2,500 VFX shots spread across 12 studios and about 3,000 artists. The budget was $200 million, $55 million less than TASM2 despite having 56% more VFX shots. Digital Domain, one of the VFX vendors, was delivering final shots days before the December 17, 2021, release. They kept reworking shots into mid-January, after the movie was already in theaters.

Zoom out, and the math gets worse. Marvel released 6 films between 2008 and 2012. From 2023 to 2025, they pushed out 7 films and 7 TV shows. The Hollywood union representing VFX workers reported that Marvel pays artists about 20% below industry average and staffs one person where other studios hire three. Artists described 64-hour weeks and breakdowns on the job. Then, in February 2025, Technicolor, the parent company of MPC (three-time Oscar winner for Life of Pi, The Jungle Book, and 1917), collapsed almost overnight. 4,500 jobs gone globally. The studio had been actively working on Disney and Paramount films when the lights went out.

Brand New Day has four months before release, and trailers routinely show unfinished shots. But the gap between a 2014 Spider-Man and a 2026 Spider-Man has nothing to do with technology going backwards. The industry has been asked to do three times the work for less money per shot while its biggest studios are going under.

[Isi Breen @isaiah_bb]

When you talk to Democratic operatives in DC, privately, every single one admits Gaza is the reason Harris lost. It is universally believed, and nobody will talk about it publicly. Its why the DNC didn't publish its post-mortem.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

Robby went Captain John Quinn mode

[ames the tv guy @amess_art]

ITS THE BEST SHOW ON TELEVISION!!!!!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Red Robin is a case study in how to kill a restaurant chain from the inside out.

In 2015, the stock hit $92.90 per share. Revenue peaked in 2017 at $1.4 billion across 573 locations. Families loved the place. Bottomless fries. Birthday parties. “Gourmet” burgers when that word still meant something in casual dining. The brand had real equity.

Then management panicked about rising minimum wages and made the single worst decision in the company’s history: they fired all the bussers.

January 2018. CEO Steve Carley cut bussers across every location, eliminated expeditors, and replaced kitchen managers with generic “back-of-house” roles. The logic was pure spreadsheet thinking. Labor costs were rising, so remove labor. The savings looked great in quarterly earnings. The second and third order effects were catastrophic.

Tables stopped getting cleared. Wait times ballooned. Walkaways increased 85% year over year. 75% of the dine-in traffic loss came during peak hours, the exact window when the restaurant makes money. Ticket times out of the kitchen jumped a full minute on average. Customers who waited 20 minutes for a table and another 20 for a burger stopped coming back. Red Robin’s own CEO at the time, Denny Marie Post, admitted the damage was self-inflicted.

And here’s the compounding problem. While Red Robin was gutting its own service model, it simultaneously launched a “Tavern Double” value menu at $6.99 to drive traffic. Orders of the cheap burgers jumped from 9% to 15% of all orders, which cratered the average check. So Red Robin was now serving worse food, slower, in a dirtier restaurant, at a lower price point. That combination is how you enter a death spiral.

Meanwhile, 16% of locations were in malls. Mall traffic was already declining. Those locations saw 5.5% sales drops versus 3% at standalone stores, dragging the whole system down. Management acknowledged the problem quarter after quarter and did nothing about it for years.

Five CEOs in 10 years. Think about that. The one leader who provided stability, Michael Snyder, was with the chain from 1979 to 2005. After that, it was a revolving door. Every new CEO launched a new turnaround plan. Every plan was abandoned by the next CEO. The North Star plan. The First Choice plan. New menu rollouts. Loyalty program reboots. None of it addressed the core issue: they’d trained an entire generation of customers to think of Red Robin as the place where the service is terrible.

The contrast with Chili’s makes the failure even clearer. Kevin Hochman took over Chili’s in 2022 and did the opposite of what Red Robin did. He simplified the menu, invested in operations, launched a $10.99 “3 for Me” deal that went viral on TikTok, and let the food speak for itself. Chili’s just posted 31% same-store sales growth. Red Robin’s comparable revenue was down 1.2% for all of 2024.

Both chains were in roughly the same position three years ago. One chain invested in the customer experience. The other spent a decade cutting it. Red Robin’s $65M market cap and Chili’s $3.3B market cap tell you which approach works.

The stock went from $92 to $3.61. That’s what happens when you optimize for the quarterly earnings call instead of the customer walking through the door.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

@benryanwriter You are a disgusting pig bragging that your “reporting” is based exclusively on getting your bitch feelings hurt.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

@bariweiss @TheFP Hey Bari did your shithead wife get you to hire all her pedophile friends or were you just a fan of pedophiles

[jasper nathaniel @infinite_jaz]

I fear that somewhere along the way I led you to believe I regard you as a respectable adversary. I do not. Let me remind you: the reason I know who you are is that I inadvertently discovered you lied about leaving Columbia on your own terms, and then several young women reached out to tell me that you harassed them. I do not have the words to convey how pathetic I find you, how little respect I have for you.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

“And don’t our nails look wonderful? One of the soldiers, and you should have seen him, he came to me, tears in his eyes, and he said ‘Mr. President, you ate, no crumbs. You slayed. You’re flying on Air Fierce One. You’re reducing the cunt deficit.’ So it’s going pretty good”

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump on Nicki Minaj: I said I am going to let my nails grow because I love those nails. I am going to let those nails grow.

[Jake Cole @ThatJakePC]

This is Victory in Europe Day for every woman who’s my type

[c ☆ @tintafey]

THAT’S MY SUNSHINY GIRL!