The Culture Compendium

We are born as remixes of our parents. We all learn through copying at first. It is via copies that our life's work is preserved, because no original can last forever.

Highlights

2020

The Matrix Was Intended to Be a Trans Story, Says Lilly Wachowski (4 August 2020)
The Inescapable Whiteness of AVATAR: THE LEGEND OF KORRA, and its Uncomfortable Implications (26 July 2020)
Polyamorous relationships granted legal rights in Massachusetts (5 July 2020)
Changes To IndieWeb Organizing, Brief Words At IndieWebCamp West (5 July 2020)
Myths About Crime We Believe Thanks To Pop Culture (28 June 2020)
English place-names (24 June 2020)
On Finding Out Your Heroes are Monsters (Or: Detoxifying A Culture) (19 June 2020)
Names Matter (11 June 2020)
A group is threatening legal action & demanding payment for use of the bisexual pride flag (29 April 2020)
Leaving The Transformers Fandom (21 April 2020)
Brian Dennehy Dead: ‘Tommy Boy’ and ‘First Blood’ Star Dies at 81 (16 April 2020)
Breakthrough of Digital Culture: Finland accepts the Demoscene on its national UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity (15 April 2020)
Young people capitalize on cheap coronavirus flights: 'If I die, I die' (10 March 2020)
Confronting rape culture means changing the conversation on rapists (2 March 2020)
Why Do Corporations Speak the Way They Do? (February 2020)

2019

In Japan, Dead American Brands Get a Second Chance (December 2019)
Music is the weapon (November 2019)
My Culture is Not Your Toy: A Gay Japanese Man’s Perspective on Queer Eye Japan (15 November 2019)
The scary real-life town that inspired the Silent Hill movie (22 October 2019)
In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace (17 October 2019)
Abe’s New Word Order (12 October 2019)
How Scooby Doo Revived Gothic Storytelling for Generations of Kids (13 September 2019)
Less Human Than Human: The Design Philosophy of Steve Jobs (10 September 2019)
Mattel Introduces World's First Gender-Neutral Doll (September 2019)
Marcel Proust's Lost Gay Love Stories to Finally Be Published (August 2019)
Most writing advice is free, but the value varies (15 August 2019)
Critiquing Cultural Appropriation in Books That Are Kinda Meh (13 April 2019)
This Webcomic Librarian Is Protecting LGBTQ Stories (4 August 2019)
Male sex workers take over Amsterdam's Red Light District windows (3 August 2019)
Mauna Kea protests: what’s at stake for Native Hawaiians (24 July 2019)
Photographers, Instagrammers: Stop Being So D*mn Selfish and Disrespectful (22 July 2019)
Film photography shows signs of revival among Japan's youth (7 July 2019)
Growing number of car-sharing users don’t rent cars for driving (4 July 2019)
Mark Coker Interviewed by Hannah Howe (29 June 2019)
German Locals Purchase Town's Entire Beer Supply Ahead of Far-right Music Festival: 'We Wanted to Dry the Nazis Out' (24 June 2019)
UAE gift helps French palace reopen 'forgotten theatre' (18 June 2019)
It is literally impossible to write a sentence without grammar (June 2019)
Assholes: A Probing Examination (3 June 2019)
The cat who saved a Japanese rail line (22 May 2019)
These awesome & inspiring church signs have doubled the congregation’s size (May 2019)
An Entire Methodist Confirmation Class Rejects the Church Over Anti-Gay Policies (30 April 2019)
Shazam and Sekiro: Gatekeepers Die Twice (17 April 2019)
Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape in the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back (April 2019)
Why Asking The People Around You Is A Crappy Way Of Seeing If Your Culture’s Okay (28 March 2019)
Cory Doctorow: Terra Nullius (March 2019)
Scientology and the Fellowship (March 2019)
How language shapes the way we play (13 March 2019)
Why Many of Our Appalachian Ancestors Believed in Fairies | Appalachian Magazine (5 March 2019)
Appalachian Moonshine: The Real History Behind White Lightnin’ (5 February 2019)
Rainbow Arcade and Digital Queer History (7 January 2019)

2018

Ringing in the New Year with new public domain content (31 December 2018)
The history of Jews, Chinese food, and Christmas, explained by a rabbi (21 December 2018)
The (Straight) Male Gaze Rules on Sanitized Social Media (11 December 2018)
Charles Addams: The Long Island Macabre Master Who Created The Addams Family (29 October 2018)
All you need is loves: the truth about polyamory (25 September 2018)
The conventional wisdom about not feeding trolls makes online abuse worse (12 July 2018)
7 in 10 young people in the UK are non-religious, new research finds (21 March 2018)
Growing Pains: A Father and Daughter on Islamic Parenting in Japan (8 March 2018)
Analysis: The Pharmaceutical Colonization of Appalachia (12 February 2018)

2017

How did Victorian Muslims celebrate Christmas? (December 2017)
That Old Granny Magic – Appalachian Ink (31 October 2017)
Inside the world of the Ainu, the little-known indigenous people of Japan (28 July 2017)
200+ Posters From the Golden Age of Graphic Design Are Now Free to Download (21 July 2017)
Days of the Dog Star – Appalachian Ink (18 July 2017)
World Englishes in ELT: Mounting Evidence from the Cutting Edge (22 May 2017)
More Than Just a Pretty Face: Unmasking Furry Fandom (May 2017)
An English Sheep Farmer’s View of Rural America (1 March 2017)
Golden: A Love Letter to Appalachia (17 February 2017)
Designer Creates Arabic Illustrated Words that Show Their Literal Meaning (17 February 2017)
Vanishing Point: How the Light Grid Defined 1980s Futurism (16 February 2017)
What Makes Someone a Native Speaker? (February 2017)

2016

The Power of Play: A Reading List (2 November 2016)
Halloween Special: Vampires, Ruins, and Spooky Places in Romania (31 October 2016)
Get Your Children Good and Dirty (15 September 2016)
The Secret Furry Patrons Keeping Indie Artists Afloat (August 2016)
Big computers, big hair: the women of Bell Labs in the 1960s (13 February 2016)
How Being a White Girl in Japan Helped Me Understand My White Privilege (4 February 2016)
Everyone Uses Singular 'They,' Whether They Realize It Or Not (13 January 2016)

2015

How to speak Southern Appalachian (December 2015)
A Day In the Life of An Empowered Female Character (26 November 2015)
How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (10 November 2015)
Classroom Redesign: Students Take On the Challenge (19 October 2015)
How The Addams Family does BDSM right (September 2015)
Strange Mysteries of the Appalachian Mountains (June 2015)
If the countries of Europe were high school students, what would they be like? (24 April 2015)
The Shut-In Economy (25 March 2015)
What Women Want...in Women Characters (March 2015)
What They Really Mean When They Say They're Not a Feminist (March 2015)
10 Languages With Uniquely Bizarre Quirks (12 March 2015)
London opens a bar where you can pet owls (February 2015)

2014

Tokyo Metropolitan Area to Establish "English Village" (27 December 2014)
Barack Obama just became the first US president to write a computer program (8 December 2014)
For the Queens and Kings of Appalachia (4 December 2014)
Some Ways That I Act Like A Guy (21 November 2014)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Die Onstage (November 2014)
Lost Painting Found by Art Historian While Watching Stuart Little (November 2014)
Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns (24 October 2014)
F-bombs for Feminism Features Tiny Princesses Swearing (22 October 2014)
Pope ditches Latin as official language of Vatican synod (7 October 2014)
Martial arts and the cycle of bullshit (10 September 2014)
Reddit user made famous off celeb nude photos wants his privacy back (8 September 2014)
Homosexualité, immigration : Harry Potter rend les enfants plus tolérants (31 July 2014)
School Libraries Are Removing Classic Literature (27 July 2014)
How They Made ‘The Flintstones’: 15 Unpublished Photos 📷 (20 July 2014)
17 Lies We Need to Stop Teaching Boys About Sex (17 July 2014)
Un taux record de réussite au baccalauréat (11 July 2014)
Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917-1931) (June 2014)
Why self-publishing is the new punk (13 June 2014)
5 Tips for Teaching the Tough Kids (11 June 2014)
New Swimwear Line Proves You Don't Need 2 Breasts To Look Sexy (28 May 2014)
Why boarding schools produce bad leaders (9 June 2014)
271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book (May 2014)
Black magician Aleister Crowley's early gay verse comes to light (9 May 2014)
Little Zelda & Link Cosplay 📷 (28 April 2014)
Présenter un examen comme crucial fait baisser la réussite des élèves (24 April 2014)
Furry fandom: all humans welcome (21 April 2014)
Le harcèlement à l'école marque les victimes à vie (19 April 2014)
"I can't speak English – and it's a sore point for me" (13 April 2014)
Statue Of A Homeless Jesus Startles A Wealthy Community (3 April 2014)
Report from education think tank calls for definition of digital literacy (31 March 2014)
‘Yes’ And ‘No’ Might Seem Pretty Simple, But That Doesn’t Mean This Chart Isn’t Very Necessary (31 March 2014)
Crimea's Attorney General Spawns Anime Fan Art (19 March 2014)
White Without Privilege (19 March 2014)
Is this the new Bechdel Test? (17 March 2014)
Irish children are dying from neglect and abuse (March 2014)
Male Protagonist Bingo: A study in cliches [MANY IMAGES] (12 March 2014)
Un ouvrage de musique chinoise découvert à Cambridge (5 March 2014)
Signs You’ve Been Reading Too Much YA (19 February 2014)
Tiger Mom, Helicopter Dad: You Both Have It Wrong (18 February 2014)
Arizona Confronting Awkward Realization That Gay People Have Money, Buy Stuff (February 2014)
44 Stock Photos That Hope To Change The Way We Look At Women (12 February 2014)
The Bechdel Test needs an update: We’ve set the bar for female representation too low (7 January 2014)

2013

Iceland grieves after police kill a man for the first time in its history (3 December 2013)
Americans Try To Place European Countries On A Map (27 November 2013)
It's Thanksgiving So We Asked Brits To Label The United States — We're So Sorry, America (26 November 2013)
Fool Me 16,380 Times, Shame on Me (29 October 2013)
Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? (20 October 2013)
Punk Band Shoots Porn Film on Front Lawn of Westboro Baptist Church (3 October 2013)
Children are suffering a severe deficit of play (18 September 2013)
Captain America in a turban (10 September 2013)
Self-Regulation: American Schools Are Failing Nonconformist Kids (3 September 2013)
Andrei Tarkovsky's Polaroids (20 August 2013)
I hate Strong Female Characters (August 2013)
Hamlet is Banned (August 2013)
500 New Fairy Tales Discovered in Germany (9 August 2013)
Is Core Curriculum Rotten? (3 August 2013)
Bob Mazzer On The Tube 📷 (19 July 2013)
A Billion Stories (July 2013)
The Increasingly Bad State of Disneyland Paris: A Neverending Story (14 July 2013)
McDonald's closing all restaurants in Bolivia as nation rejects fast food (13 June 2013)
Memory in Elementary School Children Is Improved by an Unrelated Novel Experience (9 June 2013)
Gaming's new frontier: Cancer, depression, suicide (9 May 2013)
Penury, swindlers and the American way (May 2013)
Reaching the Last Speakers of Japan’s Ancient Languages (28 March 2013)
La Roumanie ou la nostalgie de Pif, héroïque chien de l'âge d'or (23 March 2013)
Len Deighton’s Bomber, the first book ever written on a word processor. (March 2013)
What Is the Business of Literature? (7 March 2013)
Meet the man trying to bust porn's greatest myths (20 February 2013)
How the internet is kickstarting a teen poetry revolution (20 February 2013)
Sparks will fly (14 February 2013)
57% of American teenagers are media makers (10 February 2013)
My Weekend At A Furry Convention (24 January 2013)
Hanukkah and Thanksgiving: A once in eternity overlap (14 January 2013)

2012

4 Ways High School Makes You Hate Reading (2 October 2012)
Dalai Lama tells his Facebook friends that religion "is no longer adequate" (12 September 2012)
An Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping (9 August 2012)
Schools Ditch The Classroom To Put Play Back In Education (31 May 2012)

2009-2011

The Self-Attribution Fallacy (7 November 2011)
8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance (4 August 2011)
Why Do So Many Designs or Products Look The Same? (6 December 2010)
Sweet land of... conformity? (6 June 2010)
A Palindromic Message from the Lost Generation (1 February 2009)

2007

Romanian and Bulgarian Culture in New York City (22 April 2007)
The Strange Lovecraftian Statuary of Puerto Vallarta (February 2007)

2004

Cargo cult's feud with Prophet Fred's sect splits Pacific island (8 May 2004)

Unsorted