PJH Studios

Category: Pop Culture

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

  • Playing SimCity 2000 as adult

    SimCity 2000 was a fun sandbox game as a kid, and looking back, building an airport first wasn’t a good choice. Ars Technia played the game with an adult lens.

    Can I live my values by sparing some money in a tight budget for homeless shelters or anti-smoking initiatives? Should I trust my police captain when he says crime is out of control, or should I wonder if he’s just protecting his own livelihood? Do I really want to spend more money and land space on solar power plants, or is a little pollution from the cheaper coal plant worth the trade-off?

    While these kinds of decisions plague me now in a way they never did as a child, the trade-offs I don’t have to make in SimCity 2000 also stand out. If I want to build a train line in SimCity 2000, I can literally pause time and just drag the tracks across the entirety of downtown. Here in the real world of suburban DC, I’ve watched as construction of the Purple Line light rail has dragged on outside my window for years, snarling traffic and running up costs in the process.

  • Closed captions are all the rage

    For various reasons is it any surprise closed captioning keeps growing in popularity?

    The poll suggests many young adults use subtitles because they are watching in noisy environments, whereas older adults choose them to better hear or understand what is being said.

    That makes sense to David Barber, a sound editor and mixer and president of the Motion Picture Sound Editors.

    “Part of it is cultural,” Barber says. “What the younger kids are doing is, a lot of them will multitask. They’ll listen to music while they’re watching a show. So they’re catching bits and pieces of this, bits and pieces of that. I think they probably are half-listening and half-watching. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”

  • A conservative concentration of media power

    Margaret Sullivan with an astute and sobering take on the consolidation of conservative media power:

    In 2020, only a tiny fraction of Americans got news from TikTok. These days, that number has soared to one in five.

    For young adults, those figures are much higher, with almost half of adults under 30 getting news there, according to the Pew Research Center.

    But who will own that hugely influential purveyor of information?

    As with so much of American media – from television networks to some of the largest newspapers – the answer is shaping up to be as simple and short as a TikTok video: the ultra-rich.

    As President Trump moved this week to clear the path to sell the platform’s US assets to a group of American investors, the metastasizing reality of media-by-oligarchy threatened to become even more extreme.

  • The story behind the blinking guy meme

    A random moment made Drew Scanlon famous, and uses the fame to raise money for multiple sclerosis.

    An avid cyclist who enjoys rides through Marin, he’s participated in a charity bike ride for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for 10 years. At this point, he’s raised more than $300,000 for research into the disease, which disrupts the central nervous system and can result in symptoms ranging from memory difficulties to chronic pain. 

    “I’m continually floored by how many people still react so generously to it,” he said of the meme, citing a $5,000 donation this year thanks to promotion through his social media channels (he has 81,500 followers on X, and the domain blinkingguy.com redirects to his donation page).

  • History as seen through in IKEA catalog

    History as seen through in IKEA catalog.

  • Robot umpires are coming to the Major League

    It was only a matter of time: robot umpires are coming to Major League Baseball.

    Human plate umpires will still call balls and strikes, but teams can challenge two calls per game and get additional appeals in extra innings. Challenges must be made by a pitcher, catcher or batter — signaled by tapping their helmet or cap — and a team retains its challenge if successful. Reviews will be shown as digital graphics on outfield videoboards.

    Maybe it’ll cut down on ejections?

    Adding the robot umps is likely to cut down on ejections. MLB said 61.5% of ejections among players, managers and coaches last year were related to balls and strikes, as were 60.3% this season through Sunday. The figures include ejections for derogatory comments, throwing equipment while protesting calls and inappropriate conduct.

  • Paul Hubbard creator of the huddle

    In 1884, a deaf football player created the huddle.

    During a tight game in the fall of 1894, Paul Hubbard—quarterback for the Gallaudet University Bison, and known as “the Eel” for his canny maneuvers—made a simple move that changed sports forever: Concerned that his hand signs were tipping off his plans to the opposing defense, Hubbard summoned his offense and directed them to form a circle around him, creating what many consider the first football huddle.

  • A history of cell phone ringtones as told by statistics

    Remember when people paid good money for a cell phone ringtone?

    In 2003, a Swedish animator created a 3D frog character to accompany “The Annoying Thing,” which caught the attention of ringtone maker Jamba!, who eventually combined “The Annoying Thing,” the 3D frog character, and the theme music from Beverly Hills Cop, rebranding this conceptual Frankenstein as “Axel F.”

    At its peak, Crazy Frog captured 31% of the UK ringtone market, generating over £40 million in sales in 2005, driven by an extensive advertising blitz where the song was featured up to 26 times a day on British television (per channel), reaching an estimated 87% of the population. The ringtone was so ubiquitous that it later spawned a full-length single, which climbed to #50 on the Billboard Hot 100.

    Crazy Frog’s meteoric rise is a perfect encapsulation of the 2000s ringtone craze: a grating 30-second meme that started as a phone alert, morphed into a charting single, and is now a forgotten relic—practically unknown to Gen Z.

  • Tunnel girl

    A northern Virginia woman, known on the Internet as “Tunnel Girl,” or Engineer Everything, is constructing a massive underground tunnel below her house.

    You’ll find her on TikTok detailing her process and journey.

  • Competitive jigsaw puzzle solving

    Sometimes, as they say, the algorithm delivers. In this case, a YouTube video of competitive jigsaw puzzle solving popped up from one of the more well known puzzlers, Karen Puzzles.

    There is a surprising intensity to the competition, especially when the competitors are near completion and each only have a dozen or so pieces left. As a sport, and provide plenty of material for ESPN quality commentary – history of competitors, techniques, and more.

    In the below video, she attempts to do a speed run of a 5000 piece puzzle, breaking down strategies and approaches for competitive jigsaw puzzle solving.