#popularculture — Public Fediverse posts

Live: Delta Goodrem lights up Eurovision stage
By Hanan Dervisevic and Rudi Maxwell

Delta Goodrem performed eighth in the Eurovision grand final, where she is one of the favourites to win. Follow live.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-17/eurovision-2026-song-contest-grand-final-live-blog/106679928

#MusicAwards #Competitions #PopularCulture #Television #BandsandArtists #HananDervisevic #RudiMaxwell

Which country has won Eurovision the most? Take our More or Less quiz

We've put down our tiny flags and picked up our record books to challenge what you think you might know about Eurovision.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-14/eurovision-more-or-less/106669698

#PopularCulture #Music

Delta 'proud' to be at Eurovision as five nations boycott competition
By Mazoe Ford

This week, the Eurovision Song Contest will burst onto the stage in Vienna, and onto screens around the globe, but behind the colour and campness, this year's competition is shaping up as one of the most politically charged in history.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-12/eurovision-begins-amid-boycotts-over-israel-participation/106668056

#WorldPolitics #MusicAwards #Music #Television #ArtsEvents #PopularCulture #MazoeFord

Four for the weekend: Lena Dunham, Kneecap and a fix-all stew
By Jo Joyce, Al Newstead, Hannah Story, and Velvet Winter

What we're watching, reading and cooking this weekend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend/106638546

#Entertainment #Movies #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Television #PopularCulture #Books #JoJoyce #AlNewstead #HannahStory # #VelvetWinter

Four for the weekend: Lena Dunham, Kneecap and a fix-all stew
By Jo Joyce, Al Newstead, Hannah Story, and Velvet Winter

What we're watching, reading and cooking this weekend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend/106638546

#Entertainment #Movies #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Television #PopularCulture #Books #JoJoyce #AlNewstead #HannahStory # #VelvetWinter

Four for the weekend: Lena Dunham, Kneecap and a fix-all stew
By Jo Joyce, Al Newstead, Hannah Story, and Velvet Winter

What we're watching, reading and cooking this weekend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend/106638546

#Entertainment #Movies #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Television #PopularCulture #Books #JoJoyce #AlNewstead #HannahStory # #VelvetWinter

Four for the weekend: Lena Dunham, Kneecap and a fix-all stew
By Jo Joyce, Al Newstead, Hannah Story, and Velvet Winter

What we're watching, reading and cooking this weekend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend/106638546

#Entertainment #Movies #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Television #PopularCulture #Books #JoJoyce #AlNewstead #HannahStory # #VelvetWinter

Four for the weekend: Lena Dunham, Kneecap and a fix-all stew
By Jo Joyce, Al Newstead, Hannah Story, and Velvet Winter

What we're watching, reading and cooking this weekend.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-09/what-to-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-weekend/106638546

#Entertainment #Movies #ArtsCultureandEntertainment #Television #PopularCulture #Books #JoJoyce #AlNewstead #HannahStory # #VelvetWinter

New York Groove: We got to the bottom of the Sex and the City-style composting ads . “It’s hard to remember any recent conversation about transit ads that didn’t center around AI ‘companions,’ AI slop ‘recipes,’ endless GLP-1 plugs, and problematic tutorials on how to contour your nose…. So imagine my delight circa mid-March, when my texts and DMs started blowing up with pics of Scrappy, […]

New York Groove: We got to the bottom of the Sex and the City-style composting ads . “It’s hard to remember any recent conversation about transit ads that didn’t center around AI ‘companions,’ AI slop ‘recipes,’ endless GLP-1 plugs, and problematic tutorials on how to contour your nose…. So imagine my delight circa mid-March, when my texts and DMs started blowing up with pics of Scrappy, […]

New York Groove: We got to the bottom of the Sex and the City-style composting ads . “It’s hard to remember any recent conversation about transit ads that didn’t center around AI ‘companions,’ AI slop ‘recipes,’ endless GLP-1 plugs, and problematic tutorials on how to contour your nose…. So imagine my delight circa mid-March, when my texts and DMs started blowing up with pics of Scrappy, […]

New York Groove: We got to the bottom of the Sex and the City-style composting ads . “It’s hard to remember any recent conversation about transit ads that didn’t center around AI ‘companions,’ AI slop ‘recipes,’ endless GLP-1 plugs, and problematic tutorials on how to contour your nose…. So imagine my delight circa mid-March, when my texts and DMs started blowing up with pics of Scrappy, […]

New York Groove: We got to the bottom of the Sex and the City-style composting ads . “It’s hard to remember any recent conversation about transit ads that didn’t center around AI ‘companions,’ AI slop ‘recipes,’ endless GLP-1 plugs, and problematic tutorials on how to contour your nose…. So imagine my delight circa mid-March, when my texts and DMs started blowing up with pics of Scrappy, […]

https://www.europesays.com/uk/931450/ 8 Beauty Products Used by the Royal Family #Beauty #KateMiddleton #looker #Makeup #MeghanMarkle #PopularCulture #PrincessDiana #QueenElizabethII #QueenElizabeth #Royal #RoyalFamilies #RoyalFamily #Royals #scouted #SkinCare #TheLooker

Book Review: Blank Space by W. David Marx

Author: W. David Marx
Title: Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century
Narrator: Frits Zernike
Publication Info: Books on Tape, 2025
Summary/Review:

Living in a college town, I often find myself in crowds of students and noticing that they dress pretty much the same as when I was in college in the early 1990s. With some exceptions like the rise of athleisure making yoga pants casual wear, the everyday fashions of young adults was frozen 30 years ago.  Which is strange, because of you look at photos of young adults from the 1920s to 1990s, the fashions vary widely between decades and even within a decade.  Similarly, the 20th Century saw the emergence of new musical styles every few years but arguably no new genres have been born since the 1980s.  This is not to say there isn’t good music, and a lot of artists are doing interesting things across genres, but a lot of pop songs from 2025 sound like they could’ve been released in 2000 and vice versa.

I was hoping this book would give me some insight into this flattening of culture.  My experience is that this book is a good if sometimes exhausting litany of twenty-five years of pop culture, a litany of music, fashion, reality TV, and internet culture.  But I don’t find myself always agreeing with Marx’s analysis of what created this culture.  He does make a good point about artists being omnivores, thus the creative mashups and remixes of existing culture.  But he also calls 21st century culture a “monoculture” when I find that cultural touchpoints are actually more fractured than in the 20th century. His examples of monoculture include frequent references to things I’ve never even heard of, like the Bathing Apes clothing line.  I suppose though that it is harder for niche cultures to remain niche thus not allowing subcultures to persist.

The book is very depressing in its analysis, particularly charging the millennial generation with compromising with consumerism (a harsh analysis in my view).  He frequently cites the philosophical battle of poptomism versus rockism.  Now I previously understood poptomism as appreciating that popular music, even silly love songs, can still be good art while rockism insisted only white dudes with guitars were worth listening.  But according to Marx, rockists are artists with ____ values who don’t sell out, while poptomism is assigning value to pop cultural artifacts solely based on their financial success.  Marx also chronicles how right wing politics evolved within this cultural milieu.  Conservatives when from “stuffed shirts” to selling themselves as cool and transgressive, an unfortunately successful counter-counter-culture in some sectors of society.

Overall, I think there’s a lot of interesting details in this book that can provoke further discussion even if I’m not always on the same page as Marx. In the introduction, Marx admits that his observations are limited to the United States and the fields of his specialties.  But even within that framework, there’s a lot more to be said about 21st century culture than can fit in a single narrative.

Recommended books:

• Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres by Kelefa Sanneh
• How Music Works by David Byrne
• Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida

Rating: ***

Associated Press: Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny top Spotify’s first all-time most streamed artists list. “It’s her, hi! Taylor Swift has topped Spotify’s first ever list of the most streamed artists of all time, published Thursday morning. She’s followed by Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny. That comes as no surprise: In 2025 the artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was named the […]

Set the coffee free!
#PopularCulture

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/apr/13/raspberry-danish-latte-viral-coffee-drink

MakeUseOf: I tried living on free streaming channels for a month and found some real gems. “I expected a downgrade, with endless ads, low-quality content, and a frustrating viewing experience, but what I found was surprisingly different. Free streaming felt less like scrolling fatigue and more like rediscovering TV as I remember it, where you stumble onto something good instead of endlessly […]

AV Club: Great Job, Internet!: Intrepid Mystery Science Theater fan finds and uploads lost episode “K03”. “…seemingly out of the ether, a YouTuber named Arthur Putie has found a VHS copy of the show’s third episode, ‌Star Force: Fugitive Alien II, also known as ‘K03,’ and uploaded it to YouTube. On Reddit, they wrote that the tape was ‘found in a garage sale around Minneapolis & finally […]

Deadline: ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ Getting YouTube Channel For First Time. “As part of the agreement, All3Media-owned Little Dot’s team in the U.S. will work with Fred Rogers Productions to launch and manage the channel, providing strategic insight, content curation and paid media services. The channel will include full-length episodes and a collection of repurposed digital-first […]

Deadline: ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ Getting YouTube Channel For First Time. “As part of the agreement, All3Media-owned Little Dot’s team in the U.S. will work with Fred Rogers Productions to launch and manage the channel, providing strategic insight, content curation and paid media services. The channel will include full-length episodes and a collection of repurposed digital-first […]

Deadline: ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ Getting YouTube Channel For First Time. “As part of the agreement, All3Media-owned Little Dot’s team in the U.S. will work with Fred Rogers Productions to launch and manage the channel, providing strategic insight, content curation and paid media services. The channel will include full-length episodes and a collection of repurposed digital-first […]

Deadline: ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ Getting YouTube Channel For First Time. “As part of the agreement, All3Media-owned Little Dot’s team in the U.S. will work with Fred Rogers Productions to launch and manage the channel, providing strategic insight, content curation and paid media services. The channel will include full-length episodes and a collection of repurposed digital-first […]

Yonhap News Agency: Naver to offer special map service tailored to BTS comeback concert. “South Korea’s top search engine operator Naver Corp. said Friday it will offer a special map service tailored to this week’s comeback concert by K-pop sensation BTS, helping fans locate information desks and other facilities at the venue.”

TechCrunch: Channel Surfer lets you watch YouTube like it’s old-school cable TV. “There’s a fun new way to watch YouTube: by channel surfing like a boomer with cable TV. This creative idea comes from London-based developer Steven Irby, who has just launched a web app called Channel Surfer, which presents interesting YouTube videos in an interface resembling a retro-looking TV guide.”

RadioTimes: Inside the incredible recovery of two missing Doctor Who episodes – archive expert “optimistic” more will be found. “This week, Film is Fabulous announced that it had recovered two previously missing episodes of the Doctor Who story The Daleks’ Master Plan – The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet – which will both be made available on BBC iPlayer in April. The two episodes […]

UC Davis: What Makes a Hit? On TikTok and Spotify, Listeners Only Partly Decide. “TikTok and Spotify differ from traditional media such as radio and even MTV. On both apps, user data, such as clicks and subscriptions, are fed into the platforms’ algorithms and influence the music that artists create to meet demand. This study highlights how the differences between the two platforms affect […]

UC Davis: What Makes a Hit? On TikTok and Spotify, Listeners Only Partly Decide. “TikTok and Spotify differ from traditional media such as radio and even MTV. On both apps, user data, such as clicks and subscriptions, are fed into the platforms’ algorithms and influence the music that artists create to meet demand. This study highlights how the differences between the two platforms affect […]

UC Davis: What Makes a Hit? On TikTok and Spotify, Listeners Only Partly Decide. “TikTok and Spotify differ from traditional media such as radio and even MTV. On both apps, user data, such as clicks and subscriptions, are fed into the platforms’ algorithms and influence the music that artists create to meet demand. This study highlights how the differences between the two platforms affect […]

ABC News (Australia): Iconic Australian-made pinball machines preserved for generations to come. “A full working set of Australian-made pinball machines will enter the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), including designs featuring cricket legend Dennis Lillee, the FJ Holden and the first Star Wars pinball machine ever made.”

Do you wish to return to easier times?
Then check out our 3 new books on #nostalgia !
1) #CulturalHistory "Happy Days" by Benjamin L. Alpers examines how #popularculture in the 1970s reimagined their past - from 1950s teens to neo-slave narratives, the US #bicentennial or #filmnoir

#CulturalStudies

Ulysses Jenkins, L.A.-born godfather of video art, dies at 79

Ulysses Jenkins, the pioneering Los Angeles-born video artist whose avant-garde compositions embodied Black ex…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #alternativemedium #america #artist #blackexperimentalvideo #Entertainment #entertainmentindustry #freedom #health #history #Hollywood #losangelestimes #popularculture #représentation #sports #statement #studioz #ulyssesjenkins #unitedstatesofamerica #videoart #work
https://www.europesays.com/2817972/

Gizmodo: File-Sharing Network Soulseek Has Been Flooded With AI Homer Simpson Cover Songs. “According to Vice, at least 2,000 songs uploaded to the platform currently feature vocals from Homer Simpson. The publication also warned that because of how Soulseek works—users who seed music can share directly from a folder, and lots of leechers download full directories of content—means that […]

Gizmodo: File-Sharing Network Soulseek Has Been Flooded With AI Homer Simpson Cover Songs. “According to Vice, at least 2,000 songs uploaded to the platform currently feature vocals from Homer Simpson. The publication also warned that because of how Soulseek works—users who seed music can share directly from a folder, and lots of leechers download full directories of content—means that […]

Gizmodo: File-Sharing Network Soulseek Has Been Flooded With AI Homer Simpson Cover Songs. “According to Vice, at least 2,000 songs uploaded to the platform currently feature vocals from Homer Simpson. The publication also warned that because of how Soulseek works—users who seed music can share directly from a folder, and lots of leechers download full directories of content—means that […]

Gizmodo: File-Sharing Network Soulseek Has Been Flooded With AI Homer Simpson Cover Songs. “According to Vice, at least 2,000 songs uploaded to the platform currently feature vocals from Homer Simpson. The publication also warned that because of how Soulseek works—users who seed music can share directly from a folder, and lots of leechers download full directories of content—means that […]

The Register: Pop music fans literally dying to stream hot new albums – in car crashes, that is . “A group of researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School recently issued a working paper reporting an association between the release days of the most-streamed albums and an increase in US traffic fatalities. The authors say the pattern is consistent with smartphone-enabled driver […]

Well HELLO THERE, author copies of our new book 💅

@katykaty

https://alastore.ala.org/infiniteloop
#libraries #archives #timetravel #popularculture #DoctorWhoQuotes

TechSpot: Disney is considering movie premieres inside Fortnite. “Epic Games’ Fortnite has long been more than just a game – it’s a live, constantly evolving social platform that commands the attention of hundreds of millions of players. Now, Disney appears ready to push that idea further by exploring whether Fortnite could also serve as a movie theater.”

The coarsening of #popularculture (perhaps more accurately thought of as the products of the #cultureindustry) in the #US in recent decades has played a major role in corrupting and degrading the public life of that republic.

The coarsening of #popularculture (perhaps more accurately thought of as the products of the #cultureindustry) in the #US in recent decades has played a major role in corrupting and degrading the public life of that republic.

The coarsening of #popularculture (perhaps more accurately thought of as the products of the #cultureindustry) in the #US in recent decades has played a major role in corrupting and degrading the public life of that republic.

Tubefilter: Cowabunga! In YouTube’s ‘kidslop’ era, ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ could be a perfect fit. . “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are returning to YouTube, except this time, they won’t be voiced by Nice Peter and EpicLLOYD. As part of a broad expansion of the TMNT franchise, Paramount is launching a kid-friendly animated series that will premiere on YouTube.”

"To many Bad Bunny fans, Sunday’s show, which he has dedicated to “all Latinos and Latinas around the world and here in the United States,” lands as an act of resistance. It’s a performance they hope will reverberate far beyond the Golden State arena."

~ Lauren Gambino

#Trump #ICE #PopularCulture #sports #BadBunny #SuperBowl #immigrants #Latinos
/4

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/08/bad-bunny-super-bowl-trump-maga

Doha Debates: Are superheroes the moral leaders of our time?

Over the summer I took part in a Doha Debate on whether superheroes are the moral leaders of our time or not.

Video version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x01NIvKNE-U

Audio version.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/doha-debates-podcast/id1

https://husseinrashid.com/2026/02/05/doha-debates-are-superheroes-the-moral-leaders-of-our-time.html/

#MediaAppearances #Video #comics #PopularCulture #superheroes

The Register: McDonald’s is not lovin’ your bigmac, happymeal, and mcnuggets passwords . “Drawing on data from Have I Been Pwned, McDonald’s said that ‘bigmac’ and its leetspeak variants were found more than 110,922 times in the site’s compromised password corpus. Other products, like ‘happymeal,’ ‘mcnuggets,’ and the generic-but-still-applicable ‘frenchfries’ were also common, and when special […]

What’s On Netflix: Stranger Things Radio Station ‘WSQK: The Squawk’ Archived by Fan After Going Offline . “Missed out on the live broadcast from Hawkins? A dedicated fan has archived the entire run of the Stranger Things Season 5 promotional radio station, WSQK, ensuring the 80s tunes and some hidden lore updates live on.”

Gizmodo: WikiFlix Helps You Catch Up on Films That Just Entered the Public Domain. “Perhaps the best-known films on this year’s list are the Marx Brothers’ pleasantly anarchic Animal Crackers and the 1930 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, and both are ready to watch right now. Helpfully, WikiFlix allows you to browse its catalog by year of release, so the easiest way to browse […]

Gizmodo: MTV Is Officially Dead. It’s Time for Zombie MTV to Live in Your Browser. “MTV Rewind’s videos… are drawn at random, with no algorithmic input. This obviously has the potential for frustration—no, I do not want to watch a video by Sublime, ever—but also makes for a more faithful recreation of the experience of sitting in front of the TV circa 1989. Using the site also neatly […]