PJH Studios artwork, Portrait of a sun

PJH Studios

Movies, music, books, whiskey, and culture in a blog blender

  • 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…

  • Will o the wisps explained

    We may finally have a full explanation into how will ‘o wisps work. We knew methane and other swamp gasses were involved, but how did they ignite? As with the static electricity produced by stroking hair, fur, or carpet in the right conditions, the microlightning results from a buildup of opposing charges until the field…

  • AI for science research

    Top AI technologists are spurning major offers to start an AI focused company specializing in advancing science Dr. Agarwal is among more than 20 researchers who have left their work at Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big A.I. projects in recent weeks to join a new Silicon Valley start-up, Periodic Labs. Many of them…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • A school in Kentucky banned phones. And the kids started talking to each other

    A school in Kentucky banned phones. Unsurprisingly, they interacted more, and surprisingly, library circulation went up. “There is definitely a different feeling,” Neuss said. “It’s hard to quantify something like that. But it’s noticeable when you talk with students, walk through the hallways and go into classes.” What is easier to quantify is the immediate…

  • 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,…

  • Interesting Bars

    Interesting Bars, A cool website where you can search for interesting bars in a city. I suppose it’s still being populated as mid-sized cities aren’t represented.

  • 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…