PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • Art but make it sports

    L J Rader is the person behind the account that pairs sports photography with fine art in startling similar juxtaposition.

    @artbutmakeitsports started in 2019. When did you realize that you had this gift?

    I don’t know if there was an exact moment. I think the account first started as me captioning art—I would say, “This Francis Bacon painting looks like Philip Rivers screaming.” Then it was like, “Wait, I’m gonna just put up the picture of Philip Rivers screaming.” I always knew in my head, this is what this thing looked like. But it started taking off when I put the actual image next to the actual artwork. And it was a steady burn—steady growth, but never really something that I cared about. I’m gonna, you know, post it to however many people, and I’ll post however many more in the future. But it is fun to see the community that’s grown around it.

  • Terranuking

  • Band camp for adults

    Adults relive the musical camaraderie of their youth.

    “I was thrilled because I love this place,” said Guess, 71, of Baltimore, a retired lawyer for the U.S. Department of Defense who plans to return to the New England Adult Music Camp in August. “It is serene, beautiful, a perfect setting. And it’s not all that different from what it was 50-some years ago.”

    Whether they are looking to make friends, improve their skills or just take some time out for themselves after sending their own kids to camp and college, adults can find a variety of summer music programs across the United States, ranging from electronic, folk, rock ‘n’ roll and jazz to chamber and opera.

    For many campers, it offers a way to relive the nostalgic musical experiences of their youth and make new social connections.

  • Astrophotography, a barred spiral galaxy

    This latest Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features Messier 77 (M77), a barred spiral galaxy famous and appreciated among astronomers for its combination of relative proximity and spectacular features to study. It is located 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). This new image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) highlights its swirling spiral arms, the dust in its disc and its piercingly bright core like never before. At the heart of M77 is a compact region filled with hot gas that handily outshines the rest of the galaxy put together, even overcoming the light-gathering capacity of Webb’s cameras. This is an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and it’s powered by M77’s central supermassive black hole, which is eight million times as massive as our Sun. Gas in the galaxy’s central regions is pulled by the strong gravity into a tight and rapid orbit around the black hole, where it crashes together and heats up, releasing tremendous amounts of radiation. The bright orange lines appearing to radiate out from the centre of M77 are not actually a feature of the galaxy: they are a type of distortion that arises from the optical design of the telescope. Called diffraction spikes, they are created because the intense light from the unresolved AGN is bent (“diffracted”) very slightly at the edges of Webb’s hexagonal mirror panels and around one of the struts that hold up its secondary mirror. This distinctive six-plus-two-pointed pattern is the same for any image taken by Webb. For diffraction spikes to appear, the light source has to be very bright and very concentrated, so they’re most often seen on stars. But in some galaxies, as here, the nucleus is bright and compact enough to make diffraction spikes appear as well. M77 is not just known for its easily visible AGN, but also as a prolific star-forming galaxy. The near-infrared image of M77 reveals a bar spanning across the central r

  • Power up your coffin with Super Mario

    Would you buy a Super Mario coffin?

  • Lunar hummus

    Chickpeas grown in moon dirt may bring us lunar hummus.

    Chickpeas of a variety called “Myles” were raised in a climate-controlled growth chamber at Texas A&M University. Seeds were coated with beneficial fungi and planted in a mix of the simulated lunar soil, made by Florida-based company Space Resource Technologies, and a nutrient-rich substance called vermicompost produced when earthworms break down organic waste.

    Harvestable chickpeas grew in soil mixtures of up to 75% lunar simulant. As the percentage of ​simulated moon soil – known as regolith – increased, the number of harvestable chickpeas decreased, though the size of the chickpeas remained stable. Seeds planted in 100% lunar simulant failed ​to produce flowers and seeds, experiencing early death.

  • Pickleball’s best player

    Like any sport in its infancy, they’re weird. Pickleball is still growing, and talented players are beginning to make a name for themselves. 19 year old Anna Leigh Waters is one such name.

    “When I was younger, I didn’t really understand it, but a lot of people were treating me poorly on the court or would get pretty upset [and] call me names,” Waters told NBC News. “But now that I’m older, I realize the feelings they must have been going through losing to a 12-year-old. I could see how that could get people to maybe do things that they characteristically wouldn’t do.”

    Seven years since her debut, Waters, 19, is the No. 1-ranked female singles and doubles player in the world and widely considered the greatest to ever compete.

  • Here’s to the Greenland shark

    We’ve all heard about the Greenland shark, which has probably been swimming around for over 400 years. But what how’s do we know about this creature of the deep?

    The Greenland shark is slow, as befits a fish so venerable. At full speed and with strenuous effort, it moves somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 mph. Although one of the two largest flesh-eating creatures in the sea, it has an astonishingly slow metabolism; in order to survive, a 200-kilo shark has to consume the calorific equivalent of one and a half chocolate digestives a day. They are both hunters and scavengers; they have been thought to hunt seals, perhaps inhaling them as they sleep on the surface of the water, but largely they eat whatever falls off the ice: reindeer, polar bears. The leg of a man was found in one shark’s stomach, but none of the rest of him.

    Plus, we don’t know how many there are.

  • Self driving taxis and what we’ll lose

    Robo taxis are coming and we might lose some serendipitous human interaction.

    Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.

    “He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”

    The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.

    “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.

    She hung up.

  • The Pope called customer service

    It reads like a joke, but even His Holiness can’t pacify customer service.

    Then, the woman on the line for the bank told him that it wasn’t enough — he would have to come to the branch in person.

    “He said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be able to do that,’” Father McCarthy said in a video clip shared on social media, recounting the new pope’s growing frustration as the audience laughed. “I gave you all the security questions.”

    The bank employee apologized. The pope tried a different tack.

    “Would it matter to you if I told you I’m Pope Leo?” he asked, according to Father McCarthy.

    She hung up.