Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people
All the plants that made up Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl 60 set were people.
Hidden inside the sugarcane grass beside him were humans hired to stand there in costume. The realization that real people were cast to play hundreds of bushes at the Super Bowl turned the inconspicuous performers into a social media sensation overnight.
A Spanish figure skater, wanted to use songs from the Minions soundtrack for his Olympic routine, but that was put into jeopardy due to copyright clearance. What makes clearance especially difficult for the Olympics is you have to get the song cleared for the entire world.
In his post earlier this week where he lamented not being able to use the music, Guarino said, “I followed all required procedures and submitted my music through the ISU ClicknClear system back in August, and I competed with this program throughout the entire season.”
The sport’s governing body, the International Skating Union, said in a statement to Front Office Sports, “Copyright clearances can represent a challenge for all artistic sports. While the ISU does not have a contractual relationship with ClicknClear, we continue to work collaboratively with rights clearance stakeholders to ensure that thrilling performances can be accompanied by stirring music.”
Ultimately, he was able to get clearance.
I’ve thought about this often lately, how much does today compare to the years running up to the American Revolution, where British troops attempted to force compliance in its populace? Boston 1770 and Minneapolis 2026 share similarities.
The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and then the debate over the Bill of Rights. The Founders were also students of history, and saw how the domestic use of the military led to the fall of the Roman Republic. This, in large part, is why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress. You really can’t overstate how much the Founders worried about . . . exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.
The saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” In Florida, Jewish seniors are offering to hide their Haitian caregivers.
About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building’s Haitian staff in their apartments.
“That reminds me of Anne Frank,” Rachel Blumberg, president and CEO of the center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “There’s a kindred bond between our residents being Jewish and seeing the place that the Haitians have gone through.”
The seniors were aware of something that is only beginning to dawn on the rest of the country: that in addition to the aggressive immigration enforcement operations underway in Minnesota and elsewhere, the Trump administration has moved to cancel Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from a handful of countries once deemed too unsafe to return to.
John Mellencamp supported Indiana football long before their recent championship rise, donating funds during “the down years.” In return, the school built an exclusive shack on top of the stadium just for him.
Not that Mellencamp always minded. What he got in exchange for his support was not a championship run but a curious sort of VIP treatment. He had started going to Hoosiers games as a kid, when he lived in Bloomington and his brother was enrolled at the university, and in the years since had come to appreciate a perk of the sparsely populated contests: He was able to indulge his cigarette habit in the mostly empty stands.
In recent years, the school gifted the Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer a wooden shack affixed to the top of the stadium. There, Mellencamp—a self-described “anti-social guy”—could take in a game exactly the way he wanted to.
Half the street corners around here have people–from every walk of life, including republicans–standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.
I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what’s happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.
Operating a claw machine is becoming a competitive sport.
…the competitive claw machine community has grown. Aspiring clawmasters share tips and tricks online. Clawcades host tournaments for local players. The cost to play depends on location and prizes, but on average is still between a quarter and $2 per play. They’re especially popular in Japan, where a woman named Yuka Nakajima holds the Guinness World Record for most claw-machine wins at 3.5k.
In Japan, there is a Pokémon fossil museum.