PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • Setlist.FM changing concerts

    Setlist.FM has been around quite a while. For music in concert nerds, it’s an awesome way to follow an artist as they tour. And it’s changing how artist put together their setlists.

    For musicians who regularly change their set list, it allows them to check what they last played the last time they were in particular city or the night before. For those that stick to the same set for an entire tour, it’s encouraging a little variety and exposing artist don’t change the set list from night to night.

    honestly, if you are a big production – like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, the setlist really can’t change all that much. But if you’re just a band or an artist with instruments and some lights, why can’t you change every night?

  • 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.

  • Axolotls are nifty

    Axoltls are weird, alien and fascinating creatures that can regrow limbs.

    Biologists have long been fascinated by the ability of salamanders to regrow entire limbs. Now Harvard researchers have solved part of the mystery of how they accomplish this feat—by activating stem cells throughout the body, not just at the injury site.

    In a paper published in the journal Cell, researchers documented how this body-wide response in axolotl salamanders is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system—the iconic “fight or flight” network. The study raises the possibility that these mechanisms might one day be manipulated to regenerate human limbs and organs.

  • 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.

  • Teens start banned book club

    After books were banned, what better way for teenagers to rebel than to start a banned book club?

    “It was really difficult for our first year,” Gooblar-Perovic added. “We couldn’t be like an official club with our school, because it would be, legally, iffy.”

    The group persisted. After the part of the law that affects school libraries was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, the Banned Book Club gained official recognition from the school. Now, as enforcement of the book restrictions remains frozen under a second temporary injunction, the club has 15 to 25 regular members and meets weekly to discuss books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale and Fahrenheit 451 — some of the same titles that had been previously removed from the Iowa City Community School District’s libraries. According to Iowa City West High’s library catalog, the books have since been reshelved.

  • 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.

  • Sam Adams has a new beer that’s so strong it’s illegal in 15 states

    Sam Adams has a new beer that’s so strong it’s illegal in 15 states.

    Utopias — the white whale of the brewer’s lineup — is back for 2025 and it’s stronger than ever. Released every other year, the 2025 Utopias clocks in with a jaw-dropping 30% ABV, higher than most liqueurs and as much as some rums. Despite that high number, it’s still a beer. And that’s where the sales issues come in.

  • 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.

  • Sea otters stealing surfboards

    A very real alliteration: sea otters stealing surfboards.

    On Wednesday, Isabella Orduna was catching some waves at Steamer Lane, a popular surf spot off Santa Cruz, Calif., when she felt a small nip on her foot.

    Startled, Ms. Orduna, a 21-year-old college student, rolled into the water. The moment she surfaced, she saw a “big, fuzzy, chunky bear of an otter” sitting on her board, she said. “I was like, wow, what do I do now?”

    The hijacking of Ms. Orduna’s surfboard was the first of two such incidents reported this week at Steamer Lane. On Thursday, another surfer had their board commandeered by a sea otter.