PJH Studios

Category: Pop Culture

Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people

  • The Cassandras predicted our current political reality

    Back in 2015, 2016, there was a minority group of people who saw what Trump really was, Modern-day Cassandras who had a vision but were not listened to.

    Why were they afraid of this? Or, put better, how did they correctly see all this coming? Virtually all the Cassandras would make the same points. They used different examples and discussed them in different ways, but the bones of the argument were the same. The experience for me, as interviewer, was like hearing the same song played by different musicians—once by a folk guitarist, then sung by an opera singer, then played by a heavy metal band, then a string quartet, and so on. Very different styles, but clearly working from the same sheet music. 

    I started to think of this as “The Cassandra Song.” It plays as follows:

    1. Trump (or senior people in the movement) said (insert bad outcome or values).
    2. We had good reasons to think he/they meant it.
    3. We had good reasons to think his base wanted it.

    I still remember how the arguments with family members were that this was not going to go well. While they may not concede that I was right, they can definitely see that a lot of things did come true.

  • Rolling back the Constitution

    It’s no surprise that, with recent Supreme Court rulings using questionable logic and some dramatic mental gymnastics, the entire goal is to roll the country back to an older era.

    What this means in practice is that if you are not white, you cannot go certain places without the risk of being kidnapped by federal agents. That is not “common sense”; it is the nullification of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights under the law.

    This decision is only one of the ways that the Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has been chipping away at the parts of the Constitution dedicated to ensuring equal citizenship to all through rulings on voting rights, immigration, and equal protection. It has done this even as it insists—while striking down affirmative action and school-integration programs—that the Constitution is “colorblind.”

    The Constitution of the Roberts Court is not color-blind. It is a Constitution that permits discrimination on the basis of race, but forbids alleviating discrimination on the basis of race. And over the next year, the Court will face more cases that could further erode both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, pushing America back toward what some on the right believe is the true, Antebellum Constitution.

  • SNL’s alternate Home Alone ending

    Ariana Grande and the SNL cast provide an alternate Home Alone ending.

  • Thick vs Thin desires

    A new to me concept: thin and thick desires.

    A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it.

    A thin desire is one that doesn’t.

    The desire to understand calculus versus the desire to check your notifications are both real desires, and both produce (to a degree) real feelings of satisfaction when fulfilled.

    But the person who spends a year learning calculus becomes someone different, someone who can see patterns in the world that were previously invisible, who has expanded the range of things they’re capable of caring about, who has Been Through It.

    The person who checks their notifications is, afterward, exactly the same person who wanted to check their notifications five minutes ago.

  • IRS faces a lawsuit that would reclassify pets as dependents

    IRS faces a lawsuit that would reclassify pets as dependents.

    The IRS defines pets as property. Reynolds, though, says they tick every box for a legal dependent under IRS rules: They have no independent income (we’ll leave Lassie off this); they reside exclusively with their humans, and they have annual expenses that top $5,000. Calling them property, she argued, does not accurately reflect their role in a household.

  • Swiftie Dads

    There is a lot of good in the world. This includes Swiftie Dads. Paul Scheer interviewed the men, who were with their daughter(s), in the parking lot during one of the Los Angeles to stops. It could have easily been a punchline, instead it’s a sincere and earnest capture of life.

  • 26 ideas for 2026

    Derek Thompson put a list of ideas together for things to look forward to or watch for in 2026. Here are some:

    • Everything is TV
    • Anti AI populism
    • Housing costs

  • Child deaths to increase this year

    Due to USAID cuts, childhood deaths will increase this year.

    Global deaths among children under five are forecast to rise this year for the first time this millennium, largely as a result of falling foreign aid.

    The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted that 4.8 million children would die this year, up from 4.6 million last year. Declining humanitarian assistance is a major part of the reason why child deaths have fallen 50% since 2000.

  • To praise Gen X

    Amanda Fortini dives deep into the cultural relevance of Generation X. It’s lasting impacts to music, movies, books permeate the pop culture landscape.

    Yet Gen X isn’t just a time period; it’s also, as Rushkoff writes in “The GenX Reader,” “a culture, a demographic, an outlook, a style, an economy, a scene, a political ideology, an aesthetic, an age, a decade and a literature.” It’s a moment, a mood, an ethos and an enduring way of being, the hallmark characteristics of which — anticorporatism, anti-authoritarianism, ironic detachment, artistic independence, an existential horror of selling out and a live-and-let-live philosophy of life — feel like the antidote to a lot of what’s currently wrong in our culture.

  • Drunk raccoon

    A raccoon broke into a liquor store and passed out in the bathroom.