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Last Week in Pop Culture 011, 4th Week of November 2018

As always, please do download my podcast for an auditory companion to this recap (58.9 MB). This goes on just over an hour and twenty minutes which was caused by the abundance of topics I covered. The rundown and timestamp can be found here.

Bare in mind that the podcast has some delineation since I based it on my blog rather than this particular entry, but rest assured that I cover most of the topics included here. Here's my accumulated news list for last week.

00. Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of Spongebob Squarepants, passes away at 57 due to ALS

A marine biologist and a cartoonist combined his passions to bring us this extraordinarily wacky and endlessly entertaining series that I and many others enjoy from their childhood even until now. I drew the above tribute based on that one episode of the pencil that can create anything and since he is the creator, it is only fitting for him to hold it despite the changes of size. It is unfortunate for him to suffer will ALS since early last year but at least his suffering finally ends ... Rest in peace, sir.

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01. Knickers is a steer not a cow

It's been told that this image is an exaggeration of size disparity between cows and we are just not familiar of cow's sizes in general (the species and types matter) but I just can't get over this image!

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04. Fallout 76's canvas bag is nylon controversy

Yeah, this is a bit enraging. Let's push aside Bethesda releasing a $60 game with the quality of Early Access and focus on this particular instance of fans shilling out for the $200 Power Armour Edition in hoping of getting the signature helmet and the canvas duffel bag. While they get the latter exactly, they instead got a definitely inferior nylon replacement for the former and when contacted, the replies were ranging from bizarre statement of "prototype" to downright insulting excuses of "unavailability of materials". If they knew of this problem months ago, why don't they change the promotional image of the bag and the description of the 'Special Edition' at all, letting these paying customers being burned out of their hard earned money without getting what they want in the first place? 500 Atoms as a refund attempt is laughable! I learned only recently that Bethesda finally succumbs to online pressure and will give them the bags in question ... oh, they do have it, huh?! After Blizzard, now Bethesda. Who is next?
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05. Payless' Palessi stunt boosts value of products

This is the perfect example of how people put artificial material values on branding despite the quality of the products. Just opening a new outlet with a new brand name is enough to fool these 'fashionistas' into spending hundreds over the original price. At least this proves that you don't have to pay extra for quality. This is such a brilliant marketing play. Look at her!.

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08. Taylor Swift's label contract to benefit other UMG artists monetarily massively

Using her superstar cloud, her join contract with the UMG label make they promise to hand over to their artists, on a non-recoupable basis, a portion of the windfall from its Spotify shares in the future. Not just to Swift, but to all its artists. Just like Tom Petty, I'm just glad there is someone looking to take care others in this cutthroat industry. She is young but this just shows maturity to me. Respect..

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> please visit the imgur gallery for all of the other news <

~Fin~