PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • Climate change, creating hybrid species

    One of the consequences of climate change is the creation of hybrid species.

    Hybrid species are surprisingly common in the plant kingdom, but less so among animals, with around 10 to 15 percent of bird species known to hybridize. But as the ranges of animals shift due to changes in global climate, the likelihood of encounters between species that have never interacted before increases, which may lead to new ecological communities. “It’s an interesting sign of what is potentially to come in climate change and biodiversity shifts,” Stokes says.

  • Lost albums

    Steve Hyden goes long on lost albums:

    These are the three kinds of “lost” albums I am interested in:

    1. Albums that remain unreleased, either by artist’s choice or record-label maleficence.

    2. Albums that were unreleased for a time but then came out after they achieved iconic
    “lost” status, to the point where even now they still seem “lost” even though they technically aren’t anymore.

    3. Albums that might not actually exist.

  • Hampsters getting an MRI

    Veterinary medicine has to get creative to provide treatment. Here’s a video of a hampster getting an MRI.

  • The bankification of everything

    Every company offers credit card now. This has led to every company becoming an unregulated bank.

    Upward of 40 percent of Americans now pay for basic items like groceries and health care using borrowed money — and this excludes credit cards. A third of younger Americans hold their savings on nonbank tech platforms like Venmo, and industries from retail to transportation derive anywhere from 14 percent to half of their profits from partnerships with credit card companies.

    While this new type of financialization takes many different forms, the endgame is the same: Most major corporations now aspire to become unregulated banks, opening up new avenues to make even more money hand over fist. Banks operating credit cards are the highest-profit-margin enterprises in the economy. Every company wants a share of the loot, amassed from high fees and low overhead costs.

  • Taco Bell 50K marathon

    In Denver, someone figured out a 50 km loop that stops at 10 Taco Bells. Naturally, you would create an ultra marathon involving eating Taco Bell menu items.

  • Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman broke up. Then she had to record a love song for him

    Karly Hartzman wries an essay about her breakup, yet having to record a love song. It’s full of lyricism and captures a certain feeling.

    I filled my Marvin the Martian cup with tequila on our neighbors’ porch next door. While swaying on the wooden porch swing, I ate collard greens with pork-jowl bits that my bandmate Xandy brought to the party. I nursed several pieces of homemade cornbread.

  • Everynoise, the music genre explorer

    Everynoise, the music genre explorer. You click a genre and get a sample. Selections skew electronic, but still fun.

  • Geoguessing

    Did you know that there are competitions surrounding identifying a certain geographic, location, a.k.a.geoguessing? Like, could you identify a location in 30 seconds based on a single image?

  • Arcade cabinet art

    Dan Sinker perused a collection of arcade cabinets, taking the colorful art, design and typography.

  • Covid altering immune systems?

    One idea is that Covid may be altering our immune systems.

    Malgorzata Gasperowicz, a Calgary based developmental biologist, says that if immunity debt fully explained rising infection counts we’d expect to see a uniform rebound across all pathogens. But we don’t, she says.

    For instance, a 2024 study of more than 4000 viral cases from Ontario, Canada,4 found higher rates of bacterial infections in people recovering from covid-19 than in those recovering from influenza or RSV—although study groups weren’t perfectly matched by age or clinical setting, limiting direct comparisons.

    Jeimy says that many infants and toddlers admitted to hospital with rare infections since 2022 weren’t yet born when pandemic restrictions were in place, and they therefore couldn’t be experiencing immunity debt. They were, however, likely exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

    Wolfgang Leitner, chief of the Innate Immunity Section at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), speculates that covid-19 may somehow impair the immune system’s “memory” of past infections, potentially making even healthy people more vulnerable to future pathogens. He wonders whether the virus leaves lasting scars on the immune system’s T cell defences. “But that’s just (my) hypothesis,” he emphasises in an email.