PJH Studios

Category: Pop Culture

Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people

  • Life in Russia isn’t all that great

    Two American families moved to Russia, and are finding out it’s really not all that good of a place.

    But things weren’t hunky dory. In videos since deleted but viewed by NBC News, the family was distraught when Huffman, instead of being able to use his welding skills in a special engineering division of the Russian army, was sent to the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine war. At one point, a rumor spread online that Huffman had been killed. Last month, DeAnna Huffman, who took over the family’s YouTube channel while her husband was in the army, revealed that he had survived and returned from the frontlines. Derek Huffman uploaded a video of himself celebrating his daughter’s birthday and claimed he was on “vacation” from the Russian Army. 

    Right wing media is poison.

  • The logistics of feeding Alaska

    Feeding the population of Alaska is a logistical endeavor, only made harder by all of the tariffs.

    Getting fresh food to Alaska has been a challenge since the first settlers began scratching in the creek beds for gold. It was just too far from the continent’s more populated areas, separated from the contiguous United States by cold, stormy seas and, on the few precarious overland routes, avalanche-prone mountain passes. During the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s, authorities feared that the hordes of prospectors would starve, and stories from that time — almost legends at this point — depict entrepreneurial types struggling to bring unbroken eggs all the way to the Yukon gold fields or herd reluctant cattle over Alaska’s Coast Range. Thirteen decades later, the challenges remain. Alaska’s food prices are second only to Hawai’i’s. One recent federal study found that prices in Anchorage were 36% higher on average than those in the Lower 48. A 2023 report commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) described Alaska’s food supply chain as “unique and vulnerable to disruption.” 

     I wasn’t the only one surprised by Eby’s apparent willingness to threaten that supply chain — to hit Alaskans in the gut. “It’s going to be a big deal,” Alaska state Sen. Robert Myers, R, who also works as a commercial trucker, told the Alaska Beacon. “Fresh produce — the vast majority of our fresh produce … gets trucked up. If you want to get something up here fast, you put it on a truck, not a barge.”

  • 21 tips to host a party

    21 tips to host a party.

    18) To leave a group conversation, just slowly step back and then step away. Don’t draw attention to your leaving or you’ll be pulled back in. It feels mildly weird to do this but it’s worth it.

    19) Throughout the party, prioritize introducing people to each other and hosting the people who are new or shy, even at the cost of getting less time hanging out with your best friends yourself. Parties are a public service, and the guests will (hopefully) pay you back for this by inviting you to parties of their own.

    #18 takes practice but is the right move.

  • Father Pete leads the masses at Notre Dame

    Thirty seconds into the video, the camera shows Father Pete — to call him anything else is to barely know him — striding into the Basilica. He’s as identifiable by his buzz cut and black-rimmed glasses as he is by his perpetual smile. Sunlight follows him through the doors.

    That’s when the student section loses its collective mind, cheering as if running back Jeremiyah Love just went for another 98-yard touchdown.

    Excellent story about a University of Notre Dame priest and the community he supports.

  • The rise of chatfishing

    ChatGPT and its contemporaries are becoming dating tools, or at worse, crutches to mask social conversational deficiencies, aka chatfishing.

    Soon, Rachel and her match were speaking daily, their conversations running the gamut from the ridiculous (favourite memes, ketchup v mayonnaise) to the sublime (expectations in love, childhood traumas). Often they’d have late-night exchanges that left her staring at her phone long after she should have been asleep. “They were like things that you read in self-help books – really personal conversations about who we are and what we want for our lives,” she says.

    Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub – polite, pleasant but oddly flat – felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she’d come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to,” she says. “I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI.”

  • Mexico City’s zombie walk

    Every year, Mexico City hosts a zombie walk. Quite festive with a lot of different interpretations.

  • Settlers of Catan movie

    Netflix purchased screen rights to Settlers of Catan. Hmmmm.

    Netflix has won the rights to the Asmodee board game and plans an array of projects — scripted and unscripted, live-action and animated. The streamer describes the TV and film projects as set in “a place where settlers must navigate bountiful and varied landscapes, shifting alliances and limited resources, while robbers roam the land.”

    There better be scene of somebody hoarding all the sheep or someone in dire need of a brick.

  • AI is gonna drink your milkshake

    Not only are AI data centers hungry for electricity, they are thirsty for water. So much that towns and cities are experiencing water shortages.

    Nearly 60 percent of the 1,244 largest data centers in the world were outside the United States as of the end of June, according to an analysis by Synergy Research Group, which studies the industry. More are coming, with at least 575 data center projects in development globally from companies including Tencent, Meta and Alibaba.

    As data centers rise, the sites — which need vast amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers — have contributed to or exacerbated disruptions not only in Mexico, but in more than a dozen other countries, according to a New York Times examination.

  • Tactical frivolity

    The current administration deemed protesters violent and menacing. You know what isn’t? A person in an inflatable chicken costume, a protest tactic called tactical frivolity.

    This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that the protesters were all Hamas agents or antifa interns, the protest in Chicago was wholesome, nonaggressive and almost shockingly middle-of-the-road. It’s hard to call an inflatable chicken dangerous.

  • Being social alone on the rise

    In the UK, there is a rise in people going to social events solo.

    “If I go to an event with someone else, I can very much spend the night doing their night, as they would want it,” says Anaïs Espinosa, a 26-year-old from London. “When I’m alone, I get to do whatever I want in the moment, whether that’s going to get a drink or being right at the front where the DJ is. You just act on pure instinct. I feel like a little video game character in a funny story.”

    I never had a problem going to an event solo. Yeah, it’d be cool to share the experience with a friend, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from checking out a movie, concert, or restaurant.