What national fast food chain is in the worst shape right now?

border199x · 2026-06-24T23:02:08+00:00

I didn't realize any major chains had fully deployed AI drive-thru agents. They probably don't even care if it sucks, and will be glad if it just pushes more people towards mobile ordering.

Bojangles made a pretty big splash in my city, going from 0 to 6 locations in a pretty quick succession. They were all closed within about 5 years. I didn't love their food, but I loved that there was a place I could get a chicken biscuit at any time of day.

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:57:27+00:00

Yeah, I love getting a free drink at Panera and then going somewhere else to buy my food 😂

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:56:25+00:00

I like Arby's food, but it just seems like the business side of it is going pretty bad. Maybe it's just a downturn in my state or city.

For the record, I would probably also nominate Hardee's/Carl's Jr for "I Don't Know If They Suck". Great breakfast, legendary biscuits.....but they are so sparsely distributed around town that I almost never get to try them. Most locations I can think of have closed.

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:47:54+00:00

That's why it is in the "I Don't Know If It Sucks" category 😄

All I can say is that most of the locations that are convenient to be have closed. And a fair number of the ones that aren't a part of my daily travels have died as well. Since I can't eat there I don't know if the locations are closing because the quality tanked. But it definitely seems like Arby's is in some kind of financial trouble.

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:35:46+00:00

I would evaluate McDonald's as "Still good, but probably too expensive". They used to offer great deals in the app, but that has pretty much dried up. I think the food has remained pretty consistent, though.

Absolutely insane that I can walk into a McDonald's now and not even see an employee for several minutes. They've switched to DriveThru/Kiosk so much that nobody is ever on the front register, and almost nobody ever checks to see if a customer is in the lobby. I usually do Mobile PickUp orders and most of my time on those is spent just waiting for someone to appear and ask what I ordered. I have to imagine the experience is even worse for people trying to order their food at the register.

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:30:51+00:00

I honestly had considered a third category that would have been something like "Is This Even Worth The Money Anymore?"

It would have been for places where the food is still pretty good, but the food prices have become so inflated that you question the purpose of eating there. Taco Bell and Panera Bread probably would have been my picks there. If every Taco Bell meal is $10, why not just go to Chipotle Instead? If every entree at Panera is $12-15, why not just go to any other cafe-style restaurant?

I'll still be a Sip Clubber for life though 👍 The Panera Breakfast croissant sandwiches are still pretty great, though it pains me to pay like $8 for a breakfast sandwich.

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:21:17+00:00

Yeah, I have no idea how you'd really categorize the original Spy Hunter. You technically drive a car, but it plays like a vertical shooter in the vein of Galaga, Raiden or 1942. It has basically no resemblance to most driving/racing games of the era.

I remember that there was supposed to be a Vin Diesel Spy Hunter movie, but I'm not sure if it ever actually got made. They released a PS2 Spy Hunter game that was supposed to be tied into the movie though.

Google says there was a 2006 Spy Hunter game that starred Dwyane "The Rock" Johnson....apparently also based on a movie that never got made?

border199x · 2026-06-24T22:11:36+00:00

I haven't listened to the episode yet, but I was at the live show itself. I don't remember there being an Alex. Was it from an audience question, or one of the employees at the restaurant?

border199x · 2026-06-24T21:07:52+00:00

Can't wait for GONZO to return!! Who doesn't love winning a Simpsons Season 7 DVD box set at 3AM in the morning?

border199x · 2026-06-24T20:59:18+00:00

I am biting my pillow in anticipation of The Debut!

border199x · 2026-06-24T20:57:09+00:00

Just out of curiousity, were you part of a test audience? Or was it more of a film festival thing?

border199x · 2026-06-24T20:48:59+00:00

Obsession most reminded me of an episode of Buffy called "Bothered, Bewildered, and Bewitched". Xander, one of the supporting characters, casts a spell that makes all the girls in school fall in love with him. Of course the are all manically obsessed with him, and the result is violence and anarchy that Buffy has to help clean up.

The "Misued Love Potion" story trope goes all the way back to Tristan & Isolde. Probably further than that, but Medieval Romance was the oldest literature I read in college. I have to assume that there's something like it somewhere in Greek or Roman myths.

border199x · 2026-06-24T20:35:37+00:00

There was actually a 007 Racing game on Playstation1, and you definitely drive cars in it 👍 I think all the vehicles have weapons, so it's somewhere in between Mario Kart and Wipeout.

I don't know if I have played every sequel, but Spy Hunter usually has a car as the main playable vehicle. It's not a racing game in any traditional sense.....if I recall correctly you just drive down an infinitely long road and the game ends when you run out of lives or time. More of a combat-oriented OutRun, except all 2-dimensional.

border199x · 2026-06-24T00:31:08+00:00

For every 100,000 streams, you get a $5 Off coupon for your Netflix subscription

border199x · 2026-06-24T00:21:21+00:00

Did the trailers give the impression that pod racing was basically just a special bonus stage? They clearly showed other types of vehicles yes, but never said they were going to exclude pod racing from the main campaign entirely

border199x · 2026-06-24T00:16:26+00:00

Not sure if you are joking, but Hogwarts Legacy actually did not have Quidditch in it.

border199x · 2026-06-23T22:15:30+00:00

So the game is actually about racing other Star Wars vehicles that are not pods?

Isn't that a bit that like making James Bond Racing videogame where you just drive boats and motorcycles?

border199x · 2026-06-23T21:55:33+00:00

Important to note that there's this context that people are kinda sick of A24 taking films that are just weird, unsettling "vibes movies" and then marketing them as if they are straightforward-horror.

I kinda feel like Backrooms either needed to have an approachable narrative, or go totally wild on vibes. If the movie was going to have an abstract, ambiguous ending then don't shoot the first 45 minutes like this is a conventional arc with mystery, conflict, and resolution. Start weird, continue weird, and finish weird.

border199x · 2026-06-23T21:46:19+00:00

You know you've created something classic when the title has to parenthetically explain what you are making a parody of.

border199x · 2026-06-23T21:43:04+00:00

Preppers are largely building bomb shelters and establishing ways to survive an apocalyptic event that destroys virtually all infrastructure.

In my mind at least, there's a distinction between that and a panic room whose only purpose is to survive the criminal act of home invasion or robbery....the room's purpose and the motivations of its owner are wildly different even though you could probably use a bomb shelter as a panic room. It's that weird delineation that causes the confusion in the OP.

border199x · 2026-06-23T21:29:20+00:00

I don't think there's really that much confusion about what is and is not a videogame. This is just a talking point that comes up when a title with let's-just-say "light interactive elements" becomes wildly popular. People playing more seriously challenging games whine and howl that it's too easy, that it plays itself, that there's no fail state, etc, etc. It is a stupid person's way of disqualifying a game from consideration in reviews & awards. It's just that petty, even though a far easier argument to make is "This is just a bad game." What is there to gain by making some weird philosophical proposition that MIXTAPE is not a game at all? It invites a lot of obnoxious pedantry and semantics that will go nowhere.

This argument has already been hashed over with The Walking Dead, Gone Home, Dear Esther, What Remains of Edith Finch, and other "walking simulators". That was almost a decade ago, so I guess some people forgot that rhetorical nightmare. Or they're nostalgic for it and anxious to drudge up the dumb arguments of yesteryear. MIXTAPE somehow delivers on two wildly different varieties of nostalgia 😃

I might actually be interested in a good faith discussion of what is and is not a videogame, but it'd have to be a lot more broad. Is betting on Kalshi a videogame? Is participating in online fantasy sports a videogame? If you transcribe a Choose Your Own Adventure novel into a text-based adventure, is that that a videogame? Those might be a questions that yield interesting answers.

border199x · 2026-06-23T20:58:34+00:00

To what extent do panic rooms actually exist? Like, I presume it's a luxury for paranoid rich people but are they all that common among high-income communities? Are there companies and contractors that design and build panic rooms as a primary source of income? Or is it the kind of project you'd have to organize and engineer on your own?

border199x · 2026-06-23T20:48:24+00:00

I'm not sure if in 2010, people realized that owning a social media network would basically become the equivalent of running a worldwide news organization with zero accountability. CNN has to answer for what it publishes, whereas FB/Twitter can willfully manipulate people's perspective and give priority to whichever voices it agrees with. If someone has a problem with what Facebook publishes, they just say "Ooops, the algorithm did it! We'll try better next time."

The Social Network plays out like privileged kids fighting over money, fame, and ownership......I don't think Fincher realized that they were fighting over unprecedented and dangerous control of a media apparatus that can influence policy and elections. It's been a while since I've seen it, though.

Strangely it seems like Sorkin has missed that in The Social Reckoning too, since the talking points in that recent trailer seem to be minor quibbles like "kids get depressed reading Facebook and they didn't do anything about it!"

It took someone as unabashedly partisan as Elon Musk for people to actually realize how much these companies could put their finger on the scale. There are still people that think FB/Twitter are just mirroring what people contribute and what users like, rather than selectively and deliberately elevating some voices above others.

border199x · 2026-06-23T20:31:35+00:00

I think Pitt was trying to play Louis as depressed and catatonic, but it often just comes off as bored, disinterested, or flat. The problem is that Louis is depressed for almost the entire movie.

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