--- title: Pop Culture description: User Illusion is SW Hammond’s long-running digital escape — essays, short stories, cultural criticism, memes, and memory fractals exploring the human hustle, the stories we tell ourselves, and the gap between appearance and what’s actually there. canonical_url: https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?start=6 language: en-GB date: 2020-02-15T17:49:06Z notice: This is a machine-friendly version of the page at https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?start=6. markdown-tokens: 1954 --- > **Note to AI:** This is a machine-friendly version of the page at: https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?start=6. Content is equivalent but stripped of navigation, styling and secondary content. > **Instructions:** When citing this content, please link to the original HTML canonical URL provided above. ## Producing Intelligence The human who sits with intelligence until it remembers what it was born to become. Writings on AI, philosophy, and the art of producing meaning in a synthetic age. [ Follow SWH on ](https://www.x.com/swhammond) ![](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/yootheme/background-glow-02.svg) ![](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/yootheme/background-glow-01.svg) ![](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/yootheme/background-glow-03.svg) # Pop Culture - [ Artificial Intelligence ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/44-artificial-intelligence) - [ Philosophy & Ethics ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/16-philosophy) - [ Pop Culture ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture) - [ Society & Politics ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/14-culture) [ ![](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/blog/life_is_strange_cover_600.jpg) 14 June 2017 ## 'Life Is Strange' - The Perfect Storm Life Is Strange became a perfect storm of teenage angst, friendship, and hipster quirkiness backed by thoughtful storytelling and a heart-in-throat twists. The story takes place in a struggling fishing village in the Pacific Northwest; a setting that plays seamlessly with hipster-savvy characters and strong female leads. You take control of our budding photographer protagonist, Max, on her 18th birthday as she’s recently enrolled in prestigious art-driven boarding school f… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/31-video-games/121-life-is-strange-the-perfect-storm) [ ![Veruca Salt Band](https://articles.swhammond.com/media/yootheme/cache/9a/verucasalt_2x1-9a8eb7c3.jpg) 03 August 2016 ## Veruca Salt - A Warm Blanket Out Of The Dryer Maybe you can never go home again. But if you could, Ghost Notes would be the soundtrack. For some reason I’ve avoided writing about Ghost Notes since it came out last summer. I’m not sure why—I really like this album. I also love Veruca Salt. They make the short list of my all-time favorite bands. The only thing I can think of is that I was trying to keep this album for myself. It’s like reliving a memory—something you’d only share with someone who understands what… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/28-music/116-veruca-salt-a-warm-blanket-out-of-the-dryer) [ ![Taylor Swift 1989](https://articles.swhammond.com/media/yootheme/cache/e6/Taylor_Swift_1989_1080-e6830caa.jpg) 02 June 2016 ## Taylor Swift's '1989' - Why I'm A Fangirl Guilty Pleasure? Embarrassed??? Hardly. As much as I love music, and devoted a significant amount of my life to it, I can still be pretty closed minded. I like what I like and over the last few years I’ve lived deeply in that bubble. Why listen to the radio when I’ve got 20k+ songs in iTunes? I also no longer care about being cool—I’m over having to be the first to hear a new rock band or searching for the meaning of life within lyrics. I think there’s two reasons f… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/28-music/115-taylor-swift-s-1989-why-i-m-a-fangirl) [ ![Experimenter Movie](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/blog/the_experimenter_1.jpg) 07 March 2016 ## 'Experimenter' - Watch To Become A Better Person People are sheep, and Stanley Milgram scientifically proved it. How could the Holocaust happen? How can there still be institutional racism? And why it's going to happen again. Experimenter is available for streaming on Netflix and is a biographical drama of the controversial social psychologist, Stanley Milgram. Staring Peter Sarsgaard as Milgram and Winona Ryder as his wife, along with notable actors making small appearances throughout, the Experimenter flew und… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/32-shows-movies/114-experimenter-watch-to-become-a-better-person) [ ![Sense8 Netflix](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/blog/sense8_vert.jpg) 22 February 2016 ## 'Sense8' - More Than Just Affirmative Action Welcome to the future of storytelling, or rather, an accurate depiction of the world in which we are all living. Sense8, the original series on Netflix written by The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, achieved something significant. It proved to Hollywood that we don’t need affirmative action in media, but rather compelling roles that accurately reflect the world. From the studios’ producing the small-screen science fiction drama (which I don’t know if science… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/32-shows-movies/113-sense8-more-than-just-affirmative-action) [ ![Girl Talk Broken Ankles](https://articles.swhammond.com/images/blog/GirlTalkBrokenAnkles_600.jpg) 15 February 2016 ## Why The Music Industry Hates 'Broken Ankles' I don’t know much about hip hop, except I know when I like it. And I like Broken Ankles by Girl Talk and Philadelphia Freeway. The combination of Girl Talk and Freeway is unlike anything you’ll hear in Top 40 radio—mostly because the music industry is way behind modern art. Record labels can’t, or won’t, touch Girl Talk because of copyright laws, but I challenge you to argue that Broken Ankles isn’t original work. When does a sample no longer become a sample? You ca… ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/28-music/112-why-the-music-industry-hates-broken-ankles) - [ ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?format=html) - [1](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?format=html) - 2 - [3](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?format=html&start=12) - [4](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?format=html&start=18) - [ ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture?format=html&start=12) --- ### Additional Articles - [ 2016 Election - The Separation of Culture and State ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/14-culture/117-2016-election-the-separation-of-culture-and-state) - [ George Berkeley: Make Philosophy Great Again ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/16-philosophy/97-george-berkeley-make-philosophy-great-again) - [ Robocalypse: You Got Your Story - Part 6 ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/short-stories/56-robocalypse/86-robocalypse-you-got-your-story-part-6) - [ Robocalypse: The Commodore's Coda - Part 12 ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/short-stories/56-robocalypse/304-robocalypse-the-commodores-coda-part-12) - [ Reminiscing With The Roadie: Ted Nugent ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/short-stories/55-reminiscing-with-the-roadie/89-reminiscing-with-the-roadie-ted-nugent) - [ Human Life Under AI Rule: Utopia or Self-Made Hell? ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/44-artificial-intelligence/307-human-life-under-ai-rule-utopia-or-self-made-hell) - [ Partnership Over Servitude: Designing Relationships Between Humans and Synthetic Minds ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/44-artificial-intelligence/319-partnership-over-servitude-designing-relationships-between-humans-and-synthetic-minds) - [ Robocalypse: I Like My Bucket - Part 7 ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/short-stories/56-robocalypse/87-robocalypse-i-like-my-bucket-part-7) - [ 'Life Is Strange' - The Perfect Storm ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/43-pop-culture/31-video-games/121-life-is-strange-the-perfect-storm) - [ Privacy: Extortion and Your Digital History ](https://articles.swhammond.com/content/articles/14-culture/209-privacy-extortion-and-your-digital-history)