PJH Studios

Author: Patrick

  • Bee nutrition supplement

    There might be a way to save the bees–a nutritional supplement.

    Scientists have developed a breakthrough food supplement that could help save honeybees from devastating declines. By engineering yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, researchers provided bees with a nutritionally complete diet that boosted reproduction up to 15-fold. Unlike commercial substitutes that lack key nutrients, this supplement mimics natural pollen’s sterol profile, giving bees the equivalent of a balanced diet.

  • Play ball, get a car

    Back in the day, a college football player getting a car required either subterfuge or other shady creativity. Today, however, with the free for all that is NIL, players can get a car easily, and car dealers are becoming a power broker with programs.

    There has always been a mystique around cars in college football. Before NIL, there were whispers, message-board postings and social media photos soft-pedaling accusations of underhanded dealings by boosters.

    Paparazzi-style photos appeared in the newspaper, like in 1979, when future SMU Pony Express (and Excess) star Eric Dickerson’s gold Trans Am made national news and became the most famous car in college football history, right up there with the Ramblin’ Wreck of Georgia Tech.

    But now, there are thousands of Eric Dickersons. Players legally pose with their new sports car on a dealer’s Facebook page. While it takes some of the cool factor out of the old days, it’s a natural evolution for the combination of sports and commerce. And a Pontiac seems downright quaint in retrospect. Across the country, major college football parking lots might as well be outside the Chateau Marmont.

  • Printing The Onion

    While not profitable yet, The Onion is making money with subscriptions to its print edition.

    Filled with spoof ads and satirical headlines that often take swings at the news of the day, the Onion has more than 53,000 subscribers paying as much as $9 a month. The publication has a new deal to sell its papers at Barnes & Noble, and is expecting about $6 million in revenue this year—up from less than $2 million in early 2024.

    The Onion isn’t profitable, but Chief Executive Ben Collins aims to turn a profit next year. “People like getting something in the mail that’s not f—ing awful,” he said.

    The publication’s results show that old-fashioned media products can find a niche despite changing reader habits and an unforgiving digital landscape.

  • Robot rentals assisting human workers

    Industrial robots are becoming more affordable for small and midsize companies, especially in situations where the companies can rent the machinery. The robots perform the repetitive, physically breaking work, allowing people to remain healthier and perform more valuable work.

    Buying a robot could cost as much as $500,000, and Mr. Calleja wasn’t even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Ill., firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about $23 an hour, roughly the same as a human.

    “We have very low turnover because we try to make jobs easier,” Mr. Calleja said of the company, which is outside Detroit. “We are a small facility, but we produce about 65,000 pounds of food a day.” Stacking it was “a backbreaking job,” he said.

    In an era when manufacturers consistently list attracting and retaining workers as a top challenge, companies are automating some of the worst jobs in their plants as a worker retention strategy.

  • Banana Ball growth pushing up against MLB

    As Banana Ball grows, where does it fit in the sports landscape with Major League Baseball?

    On a Friday night this summer, the New York Yankees packed Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in a rematch of last year’s World Series. An hour south that same evening in Anaheim, another major-league stadium hosted a sold-out ballgame, but the contest had nothing to do with the nation’s most venerated sports league, Major League Baseball. It was between a troop of dancing ballplayers called the Savannah Bananas and a rival of their own creation, the Firefighters.

    MLB officials say they view the independent Bananas not as competition but as a complement, an aid to the number of baseball and softball fans everywhere. To MLB, the Bananas are an entertainment product — not competitive with an established sport and closer to a stadium-filling concert, or a sport-adjacent show like the Harlem Globetrotters of basketball.

    But Jesse Cole, the Bananas’ owner, sees what he’s creating as much more than just baseball vaudeville.

  • Top 10 animal movie performances

    The Ringer proposes a top 10 list of animal movie performances. Amusing at the very least, and the top choice is, well, a choice.

  • Moving a Swedish church

    An amazing photo essay of moving an entire church in Kiruna, Sweden.

  • The Rise of the Groomzilla

    Perhaps because most of my friends are past the getting married stage of life, but apparently, groomzillas are a new trend.

    On subreddits like r/weddingshaming, you’ll find viral posts in which users vent about or seek advice on managing the groomzillas in their lives, like the groom who demanded his groomsmen spend more than $4,000 on an elaborate, multi-day bachelor party, or the guy who insulted his bride’s appearance during the first look, commenting that her makeup and manicure didn’t look good and that her gray hairs “stood out.” Over on r/bridezilla, one post spells out all the ways a woman’s fiancé actually out zilla’d her — reviewing and approving every placecard, centerpiece, and decoration himself, in addition to requiring he and his bride learn the Charleston (and perform it) and hand-roll 75 chocolate cigars to give guests in custom bands and cigar boxes.

    The rise of the groomzilla is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, when a groom’s investment manifests in controlling, aggro behavior — well, then we’ve created a monster. On the other, it feels like progress that hetero men are finally helping shoulder the labor of planning nuptials.

  • The art of William Darkdrac

    William Darkdrac with some nostalgic surrealism. Google maps, 2024

  • The value of an unread library

    Kevin Dickinson on the value of an unread library:

    Shelves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. They provide the foundation for a healthy and robust intellectual humility.