PJH Studios

Category: Pop Culture

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

  • A credit union inside a high school

    A Missouri credit union opened a real, working branch inside of the high school.

    That’s because this school year, a CSD Credit Union branch officially opened inside the high school, making it the second student-run credit union in Missouri. Winnetonka students and staff can make deposits, open accounts and even apply for loans without leaving campus.

    Working at the school’s credit union wasn’t as simple as enrolling in a class. Students who were interested in the job had to fill out applications and undergo extensive training. After getting the job, they’re managed by a credit union supervisor.

  • Respect the parking spot chair during winter

    In cities that experience blizzard accumulation of snow, unwritten rules exist surrounding parking spots, and who gets to use them, especially if you do the work of clearing the space. The people of Pittsburgh use a chair to claim their snow cleared spot.

  • Sabbatical, a.k.a. the adult gap year

    There appears to be a growing trend of working adults taking sabbatical or gap years between jobs.

    Mini-sabbaticals. Adult gap years. Micro-retirement. Extended career breaks go by many names and take many forms, from using the time between jobs to explore or taking an employer-approved leave to becoming a digital nomad or saving up for a monthslong adventure. Creating space for a reset, whether mental, physical or spiritual, is the common thread.

    Cost, personal responsibilities and fears of being judged by colleagues, friends and family members are some of the obstacles that prevent people from hitting pause on their work lives and setting out in search of new perspectives, according to sabbatical experts and people who have taken sabbaticals.

  • Bad Bunny’s half time bush people

    All the plants that made up Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl 60 set were people.

    Hidden inside the sugarcane grass beside him were humans hired to stand there in costume. The realization that real people were cast to play hundreds of bushes at the Super Bowl turned the inconspicuous performers into a social media sensation overnight.

  • Ian McKellan quotes Shakespeare in response or ICE and other xenophobia

  • Olympic ice-skating, the Minions soundtrack, and copyright clearance

    A Spanish figure skater, wanted to use songs from the Minions soundtrack for his Olympic routine, but that was put into jeopardy due to copyright clearance. What makes clearance especially difficult for the Olympics is you have to get the song cleared for the entire world.

    In his post earlier this week where he lamented not being able to use the music, Guarino said, “I followed all required procedures and submitted my music through the ISU ClicknClear system back in August, and I competed with this program throughout the entire season.”

    The sport’s governing body, the International Skating Union, said in a statement to Front Office Sports, “Copyright clearances can represent a challenge for all artistic sports. While the ISU does not have a contractual relationship with ClicknClear, we continue to work collaboratively with rights clearance stakeholders to ensure that thrilling performances can be accompanied by stirring music.”

    Ultimately, he was able to get clearance.

  • Two cities under siege

    I’ve thought about this often lately, how much does today compare to the years running up to the American Revolution, where British troops attempted to force compliance in its populace? Boston 1770 and Minneapolis 2026 share similarities.

    The rage from those pre-revolution clashes in Boston continued to linger for years into the Constitutional Convention, and then the debate over the Bill of Rights. The Founders were also students of history, and saw how the domestic use of the military led to the fall of the Roman Republic. This, in large part, is why we have the Second, Third, and Fourth Amendments, and why the Constitution splits control of the military between the president and Congress. You really can’t overstate how much the Founders worried about . . . exactly what we’re seeing in Minneapolis.

  • Jewish seniors are offering to hide their Haitian caregivers

    The saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” In Florida, Jewish seniors are offering to hide their Haitian caregivers.

    About 500 seniors live at Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, including many Holocaust survivors. Recently, some of them asked if they could hide the building’s Haitian staff in their apartments.

    “That reminds me of Anne Frank,” Rachel Blumberg, president and CEO of the center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “There’s a kindred bond between our residents being Jewish and seeing the place that the Haitians have gone through.”

    The seniors were aware of something that is only beginning to dawn on the rest of the country: that in addition to the aggressive immigration enforcement operations underway in Minnesota and elsewhere, the Trump administration has moved to cancel Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from a handful of countries once deemed too unsafe to return to.

  • Bluesky sports starter packs

    One of the more interesting features of Bluesky is the concept of starter packs, where people can create a list of accounts for a certain topic. Since sports are the last bastion of real time reaction culture, it would be natural for communities within sports to play out commentary in real time. Denny Carter collated a list of starter packs for a variety of sports.

  • John Mellencamp’s exclusive Indiana Stadium box

    John Mellencamp supported Indiana football long before their recent championship rise, donating funds during “the down years.” In return, the school built an exclusive shack on top of the stadium just for him.

    Not that Mellencamp always minded. What he got in exchange for his support was not a championship run but a curious sort of VIP treatment. He had started going to Hoosiers games as a kid, when he lived in Bloomington and his brother was enrolled at the university, and in the years since had come to appreciate a perk of the sparsely populated contests: He was able to indulge his cigarette habit in the mostly empty stands.

    In recent years, the school gifted the Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer a wooden shack affixed to the top of the stadium. There, Mellencamp—a self-described “anti-social guy”—could take in a game exactly the way he wanted to.