PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • A network of AI-generated newsletters targeting “small town America”

    Nieman Labs reports that “a network of AI-generated newsletters targeting “small town America.” All run by one person.

    It turns out Good Day Fort Collins is just one in a network of AI-generated newsletters operating in 355 cities and towns across the U.S. Not only do these hundreds of newsletters share the same exact seven testimonials, they also share the same branding, the same copy on their about pages, and the same stated mission: “to make local news more accessible and highlight extraordinary people in our community.”

    We need to add AI generated awareness to the media literacy skill set.

  • Red envelopes for Lunar New Year

    Here’s some good background on those red envelopes, Hongbao, shared on Lunar New Year

    The modern concept of hongbao emerged in early 20th-century China. Elders would give money wrapped in red paper to children during the Lunar New Year as a talisman against evil spirits, known as sui (祟).

    But the gift giving traditions go back to about 200 BCE, way before Santa flew across the world.

  • Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music

    If this isn’t infectious, I don’t know what is. Questlove drops a trailer for a documentary about 50 years of SNL musical guests.

  • Building a resistance to meet the 3.5% rule

    Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, at Life is Sacred, found research on non-violent resistance campaigns.

    Chenoweth and Stephan even discovered something so important here that it gets a name: the 3.5 Percent Rule.

    Everywhere they looked where a nonviolent resistance campaign engaged the “active and sustained participation” of at least 3.5% of that nation’s population: they won.

    See also the CIA’s Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for Detecting and Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace.

  • Cover roundup: Dammit by Blink 182

    And it’s happened once again
    I’ll turn to a friend
    Someone that understands
    And sees through the master plan
    But everybody’s gone
    And I’ve been here for too long
    To face this on my own
    Well, I guess this is growing up
    Well, I guess this is growing up

    Sometimes a cover takes an original in a new direction or changes the weight of a song. Dammit, by Blink 182 can turn haunting or weary.

    Dead on a Sunday takes Mr. Kitty’s “After Dark” synth banger but sings “Dammit.”

    It also works with country twang, here’s Alexandra Kay.

    Serj T from System of a Down turning it into a ballad.

    Or a one man ska band, bring horns for a lively punch.

    And in 2020, an entire album of “Dammit” covers came out.

  • Do dogs watch TV? Yes, but…

    From Sian Cain in The Guardian, You’ve always wondered, here’s the answer: do dogs actually watch TV?

    “We watch TV for enjoyment, for emotional realism, for whatever personal preferences we have,” Mowat says. “I think dogs watch TV because they’re checking if it is real.

    “There’s a reason why dogs go over and sniff the butts of the animals on the screen – they’re looking for the realism and wondering whether it’s worth paying attention to.”

    Get your dog a Letterboxd account.

  • Addressing large scale problems requires large scale commitment

    Mike Davidson writes about the recent Southern California fires in a post titled, 47 Years Later, The Palisades Disappeared Overnight. It tells a story of growing up in a particular time and how Los Angeles overcame its smog epidemic. Plus, his father was a unique position to contribute as a meteorologist. What eventually did it? Everyone agreed it was a problem and people went along with the solutions.

    When you fly into LA today and see what you think is smog, rest assured it is nothing compared to what we had in the ’80s. The one advantage this public health problem had though is that it was in your face every day. Everyone in LA felt it daily and supported their government’s efforts to solve the problem.

  • Flow

    A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land,

    Flow really was a magical movie. No talking, just a motley crew slightly anthropomorphized animals navigating through beautiful scenery. Throughout the movie, we see hints of a higher level species (humans? who knows!), and you can’t help but wonder how or why this is happening.

  • Lessons learned from writing 52 short stories

    short story pen and paper

    This was originally posted on reddit a while back, and I’ve been meaning to post it here.

    The what

    I wrote 52 short stories across 9 different genres that totaled over 52,000 words. My constraints were one short story every Sunday, at least 500 words, and I’d publish them on my personal website. I’d consider them as first drafts, some needing more work than others, some exist as scenes, and some serve as the start of a longer story. I gave myself the challenge in order “just write,” but also explore different characters, genres and ideas.

    Success and learnings

    In doing this, I now have a body of work, where I could (and will) return to and edit them to be excellent stories. And with this body of work, I can see what tics or habits I lean on. For example, I need to get better at showing emotion in a variety of ways, and my ingrained aversion to to-be verbs causes verb tense issues at times. Moreover, if I don’t have a clear vision of an ending, my endings get muddy and flat no matter what idea I had at the start.

    In exploring ideas, I found fun in writing other genres and challenge in working to incorporate people different than my male, American, hetero self. The western I wrote about a bar tender recounting a story of a samurai in his saloon was one of the best, and I realized I could work with the conventions of the genre and still be able to execute; the same can be said of the fantasy stories I played with. And I made conscious decisions to write women, minorities, LGBT, in fantastic or mundane scenarios as normal, ordinary people. Did I do them justice? I don’t know. I’ll need to get feedback, especially for the story where a transwoman goes and buys a gun in reaction to an election.

    Story telling may just be an exercise in empathy.

    Ideas

    Ideas came from all over:

    • A picture of greenhouse I saw on r/pics spurned a horror yarn with two teenage boys
    • News headlines gave me more than one
    • My father asking about whether I wanted any of our Brio trains chugged along into a magical realist story
    • A joking comment about bourbon poured into oatmeal swirled into a story about a cam girl
    • Self driving cars can go on dark rides along technology’s cliff
    • Storage unit + science = !
    • Ferris wheel that goes underground
    • Social media is ripe for exploration

    And on and on…

    I even managed to write three on my phone while traveling 35,000 feet up in the air. But I’ll be honest, there were days where I scraped my keyboard for words. One idea I’ve had for sometime revolves around the woman in white ghost story trope but at a whiskey distillery. I was miserable writing it—i wasn’t feeling well, the setup was off, and it needed to be at least 5,000-6,000 words to create the tension. It was my worst. I cheated with the end, writing, “everything burned, and he died.”

    I do intend to go back to that one and redo it.

    Misc

    • Scrivener served as my main tool; the iOS Notes app, and then the iOS Scrivener app for mobile
    • I listened to a lot of post rock, jazz, and ambient music while writing
    • I drank coffee, water, Mountain Dew, beer, or whiskey
    • I really need to get dictation set up. I played with Dragon and a headset, but got frustrated with it

    Stats

    • Total words: 52258
    • Average: 1005
    • Median: 885
    • Longest: 2351
    • Shortest: 515

    Genre breakdown

    Genre Count
    Contemporary 15
    Crime 2
    Fantasy 7
    Historical Fiction 1
    Horror 6
    Literary 1
    Sci-fi 15
    Supernatural 2
    Western 2
    Young Adult 1

  • A Haiku Garden – Published!

    A Haiku Garden book cover

     

    A Haiku Garden: Selections from the Everyday Photo Haiku Project is published on Amazon!

    I created the book, which contains 104 of the most interesting photo haiku from the project. All photos and haiku done on an iPhone (4s then 6).