Cultrface

A blog dedicated to culture
and how it enriches our lives

Another pizza emergency: sales are “lagging behind the broader US fast-food market”

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According to the WSJ, pizza restaurants are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican-inspired eateries1:

Once the second-most common U.S. restaurant type, pizzerias are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican food eateries, according to industry data. Sales growth at pizza restaurants has lagged behind the broader fast-food market for years, and the outlook ahead isn’t much brighter.

I guess it makes sense as tastes and levels of disposable income change, not to mention the ever-increasing cuisine options. And it’s not just the US either as UK pizza outlets like Pizza Hut and Pizza Express have struggled for many years as other fast-food competitors take a piece of the pie (no pun intended) and supermarkets take more slices too.

At least the government will keep them afloat. Just don’t call 999/911 about it.

  1. Archived link ↩︎

30 facts about Venezuelan culture

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a horizontal tricolour of yellow, blue, and red with an arch of 8 5-point stars in the middle

Venezuela is going through a lot of sociopolitical turmoil with the illegal capture and arrest of its president, Nicolas Maduro. There are lots of contrasting feelings from its citizens—relief that Maduro has been removed (at least in person) but also worry about the future given that Trump did it and claims that the US will “run” the country now.

So the reason I’m writing this is to 1) help me educate myself more on the country and some of its cultural history (as I have done for countries like Australia and Argentina) and also draw more attention to the cultures rather than just associations with political warfare and dictatorships.

The history of Venezuela

  1. There are two stories about where the name Venezuela came from. The main one was from Amerigo Vespucci (the guy who likely gave his name to “America”) who said that areas in the country reminded him of Venice this calling it Veneziola, or “Little Venice” and then the Spanish version “Venezuela” was later adopted. The other came from one of his crew mates, Martín Fernández de Enciso, who claimed the indigenous people called themselves the Veneciuela.
  2. The Venezuelan flag (above) has three horizontal stripes of yellow, blue, and red, with an arch of 8 white stars in the middle representing the seven signatories to the Venezuelan declaration of independence and the Guayana Province. The flag originally had 7 stars with the eighth was controversially added by Hugo Chavez in 2006.
  3. Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 and gained indepedence in 1811.
  4. Venezuela’s official motto is Dios y Federación or “God and Federation” in English

Admin stuff

  1. Venezuela is the 33rd largest country in the world in terms of land area.
  2. The capital of Venezuela is Caracas which is also its largest city.
  3. Spanish is the most-spoken official language of Venezuela, with Castillian as the official “mother tongue”.
  4. Venezuela has an estimated population of about 31.3 million people but due to how the figures are gathered, other sources range from 28.3–33.7 million.
  5. The currency of Venezuela is the Venezuelan bolívar.
  6. The average life expectancy in Venezuela is about 72–73 years.
  7. The Venezuelan economy is the world’s 69th-largest by nominal terms, and the 77th-largest by PPP.
  8. Venezuelans drive on the right-hand side.
  9. Venezuela’s largest export is crude oil (ahem) with the US being its biggest customer (AHEM) (source)

Food and drink

  1. Venezuela’s national dish is creole pavilion consisting of white rice, stewed shredded beef, fried plantains (known as tajadas), and stewed black beans
  2. Other popular foods include arepa, which is a round, flat bread made from maize, hallaca, traditionally served during Christmas, and cachapas which are corn pancakes.
  3. The legal drinking and alcohol purchase ages are 18.
  4. In 2023, Venezuela imported $17.1 million of hard liquor, primarily from the UK (source)

The arts

  1. The Museum of Contemporary Art of Caracas (MACC) is home to thousands of pieces including works by Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin
  2. Notable Venezuelan writers include former president Rómulo Gallegos, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Antonia Palacios, Rafael Cadenas, and Karina Sainz Borgo.
  3. The literacy rate in Venezuela is about 97% (source)

Sport

  1. Baseball, basketball, and soccer are the most popular sports in Venezuela.
  2. Athletes representing Venezuela have won three medals at Summer and Winter Olympics (Asnoldo Devonish, bronze in 1952; Francisco Rodríguez, gold in 1968; Naomi Soazo, Paralympic gold in 2008).
  3. Coleo is a traditional sport played mainly in Venezuela and Colombia with small groups of llaneros or cowboys on going after cattle on horseback attempting to flip them over (naturally, it’s a dangerous sport for animals and humans)

Nature and geography

  1. The highest mountain on the Venezuelan mainland is Pico Simón Bolívar (5,720 m)
  2. Venezuela is home to over 1,400 bird species
  3. The Venezuelan troupial is Venezuela’s national bird
  4. The national flower is the flor de Mayo
  5. The white-bearded helmetcrest is exclusive to northwestern Venezuela
  6. Venezuela is also home to capybara, manatees, and Orinoco crocodiles
  7. Angel Falls is a waterfall in Venezuela and the world’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of nearly 1 km (3,212 ft)

Copyrighted works from 1930 enter the public domain today, including The Maltese Falcon, early Nancy Drew mysteries, Betty Boop, and Pluto

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Firstly, happy new year everyone. I hope 2026 is even more prosperous than 2025.

It’s that time of year again: 1st January is Public Domain Day as I’ve documented in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. This year, that means that certain works of art from 1930 become free of copyright in the US and available to the public to do what they want with it and without permission.

The biggest names include Betty Boop, Pluto (when he was known as Rover), and the first four Nancy Drew mysteries.

Below you will find a list of works from 1930 you might find interesting. As always, check works from any years prior to 1930 to make absolutely sure you follow any licence requirements (if there are any), particularly in other countries or regions such as the EU. That’s because copyrights may have been extended or follow slightly different laws outside of the US. Happy hunting!

Lists of public domain works from 1930 and more

Notable books

  • William Faulkner – As I Lay Dying
  • Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon (the full book)
  • Agatha Christie – The Murder at the Vicarage
  • Carolyn Keene (aka Mildred Benson) – The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and The Mystery at Lilac Inn
  • Watty Piper (aka Arnold Munk) – The Little Engine That Could
  • William H. Elson – Elson Basic Readers (the first appearances of Dick and Jane)
  • Noël Coward – Private Lives
  • T.S. Eliot – Ash Wednesday
  • J. B. Priestley – Angel Pavement
  • Sigmund Freud – Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and Its Discontents in English)
  • Bertrand Russell – The Conquest of Happiness
  • Jean Cocteau – The Human Voice (in French)
  • Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
  • Ruth Plumly Thompson – The Yellow Knight of Oz
  • Franz Kafka – The Castle (the first English translation)

Notable films

  • All Quiet on the Western Front (dir. Lewis Milestone)
  • Animal Crackers (dir. Victor Heerman)
  • Another Fine Mess (dir. James Parrott)
  • Anna Christie (dir. Clarence Brown)
  • Hell’s Angels (dir. Howard Hughes)
  • Morocco (dir. Josef von Sternberg)
  • L’Âge d’Or (The Golden Age) (dir. Luis Buñuel)
  • Juno and the Paycock and Murder! (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
  • The Big Trail (starring John Wayne in his first role)
  • King of Jazz (Bing Crosby’s first movie)
  • City Girl (dir. F. W. Murnau)
  • Madam Satan (dir. Cecil B. DeMille)
  • Doughboys and Free and Easy (starring Buster Keaton)

Notable cartoons

  • Dizzy Dishes (debut of Betty Boop)
  • Hot Dog (the debut of Bimbo)
  • Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930 (including the debut of Pluto, also known as Rover in The Picnic):
    • Fiddlin’ Around
    • The Barnyard Concert
    • The Cactus Kid
    • The Fire Fighters
    • The Shindig
    • The Chain Gang
    • The Gorilla Mystery
    • The Picnic
    • Pioneer Days
  • The full album version of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets

Notable characters (exclusively based on their appearances in the above media)

  • Betty Boop
  • Bimbo
  • Pluto the dog
  • Blondie and Dagwood
  • Flip the Frog

Notable musical compositions

  • I Got Rhythm
  • I’ve Got a Crush on You
  • But Not for Me
  • Embraceable You
  • Georgia on My Mind
  • Dream a Little Dream of Me
  • Livin’ in the Sunlight
  • Lovin’ in the Moonlight
  • You’re Driving Me Crazy
  • Beyond the Blue Horizon

Notable artwork

  • Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
  • The Jules Rimet Cup (the original trophy of the FIFA World Cup used from 1930–1970)
  • Paul Klee’s Tierfreundschaft (Animal Friendship)
  • José Clemente Orozco’s Prometheus
  • Theo Van Doesburg’s Simultaneous Counter-Composition

People whose works entered the public domain (subject to IP copyright)

In countries with life + 50 years law

  • Mikhail Bakhtin
  • James Blish
  • Tim Buckley
  • Julian Huxley
  • P. G. Wodehouse
  • Rod Serling

In countries with life + 60 years law

  • T. S. Eliot

In countries with life + 70 years law

  • Thomas Mann
  • James Agee
  • Dale Carnegie
  • The publications of Albert Einstein
  • The publications of Sir Alexander Fleming

Seth Bailey on every bestselling Christmas toy from 1960–2024

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The Best-Selling Christmas Toy Every Year: 1960 to 2024!

My son found this yesterday and I was intrigued to see what made the list in the last 64 years. A lot of the early stuff was alien to me but as it entered the 80s, it all made sense and then as it went through the 2000s and 2010s, I was clueless again.

I was also surprised not to see Woody and Buzz Lightyear feature anywhere from 1995–1999. I wanted those so badly and only managed to get a Woody toy that wasn’t the “proper” one thank to my auntie in the US. They were all sold out everywhere. Maybe one day, Buzz…

Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

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Christmas Eve on Sesame Street | Sesame Street Classics

Join Big Bird and the gang from Sesame Street as they celebrated Christmas Eve. It’s such a heartwarming episode of Sesame Street so I strongly recommend you curl up with a warm drink when you watch this.

Originally aired on Sunday 3rd December 1978, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street was nominated for an Emmy a year later and was up against itself (kinda). CBS also had a Sesame Street special called A Special Sesame Street Christmas but it wasn’t produced by the same people (Children’s Television Workshop, now Sesame Workshop).

That time when Tony Hawk dressed as Santa to deliver gifts in San Diego

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Tony Hawk Disguised As Santa Claus Yells “DO A KICKFLIP!” To Skateboarders

A few years ago, Tony Hawk—dressed as Santa—teamed up with Berrics to deliver gifts in San Diego. But in true Tony Hawk style, he traded a sleigh for a skateboard and found some time to yell at fellow skaters to do a kickflip. It’s not just the season of giving, you know!

Česnica: a Serbian Christmas bread

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Božićna česnica by Ivana Sokolović (shared via CC 2.0 licence)

Česnica is the round bread loaf served during Christmas dinner in Slavic countries such as Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. A coin is usually placed in the dough and at the start of Christmas dinner, the česnica is “rotated three times counterclockwise, before being broken among the family members”. The person who finds the coin in their piece of the bread will get be lucky in the new year.

Some families decorate the bread with piece of dough in the shape of their hobbies or jobs.

The top 10 posts of 2025

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Back for a fifth year, I’ve compiled the top 10 posts published this year (see last year’s if you’re interested, 2023’s 2022’s and 2021’s edition). I’ve actually published much less this year (108 vs. 202). Sad but true!

Anyway, here’s the top 10:

  1. OMG the Pizza Pooch from Pizza Hut is still alive in El Salvador
  2. The Kennedy family and its historical link to magic and the occult
  3. 14 minutes of Tim Allen grunting in Home Improvement
  4. The BBC on how to pronounce Basel
  5. I have learnt a new word: vaguebooking
  6. Lifta: a free Arabic typeface in black and stencil
  7. Copyrighted works from 1929 enter the public domain today, including The Maltese Falcon, The Cocoanuts, and Mickey’s first talkie
  8. Print Mag’s 13 African American graphic designers you should know
  9. In Ukrainian Modernism: an exploration of mid-century Soviet architecture
  10. Linus Boman on font piracy
a man with his face poking through a broken wooden door. he has a white beard and moustache and looks like santa. it's a photoshop of a scene from the shining starring jack nicholson
“Heeeeere’s Santa!”

Nick Robinson on XD

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The unique phenomenon of "XD" in Poland

Remember XD? It was an emoticon used predominately in the early 00s in online chat in North America to represent excitement or happiness. It died out as cultural language changed and evolved but in Poland, it still lives on and is used like it never went out of fashion anywhere.

Nick Robinson travelled to Poland to find out why that was and it’s a fascinating look into how language is perceived and meaning can change with the touch of a button or switching from lower to upper case (and vice versa). I kinda wanna bring it back but I think I also only want to use my cringe powers for good and my quota is already full from being a dad. Ah well! xD

A very brief explanation of “gloving”

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Gloving Is Dangerous

Gloving describes a trend of people who do hand tricks wearing special gloves with lights on the ends of the fingers. That’s not the official description but it’s the best tl;dr I’ve got. The video goes in a bit deeper and shows more of how gloving is treated (with irony and a bit of disdain from outsiders and enthusiasm and beef from glovers apparently?)

The fact that they repurposed the term “degloving” to mean banning someone from gloving is remarkable. I can’t wait for Danny and Donald to get in on this.

The eight-day week

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If you’re reading this, you should be familiar with the seven-day week starting on Sunday or Monday and followed by Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and so on. But there have been instances in history and other cultures where an eight-day week was observed.

For example, the Romans adopted the eight-day week from the ancient Etruscans who called it the nundinum. The Romans also tried to use a seven-day week alongside it but the week cycle we know today won out and was officially established by Emperor Constantine in AD 321.

Their enemies, the Celts, were said to use an eight-day week based on periods of darkness which led to words like wythnos literally meaning eight-day week in Welsh but is now used to refer to a seven-day week.

And in the current day, Theravada Buddhism in Burma use an eight-day week with each day associated with a compass direction, a planet, and a totem animal from the Mahabote zodiac (you can even find your zodiac sign).

Outside of that, I found a personal project for an octonary week by Joe Scanlan who remapped his own calendar in the 90s:

This calendar really suits me, and now I am interested in sharing it with other people, to see it it might also suit them. This is the part of the project that remains unrealized. Here’s why: the current 7-day week is based on the seven “planets” that are visible to the naked eye: the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, venus and Saturn. In order to have an 8-day week, we need to have another planet made visible In the heavens, to correspond to the extra day. This requires either constructing an artificial planet (a satellite) and placing it in orbit in our solar system; or some how altering either Uranus, Neptune or Pluto so that one of them would be visible to the naked eye from earth. Perhaps a giant lense or mirror could be built on one of them, the reflection of which would distinguish the planet from the other stars in the sky. This would make the global introduction of the 8-day calendar much easier, since its celestial logic would be evident to anyone looking at the night sky.

And there’s a 1999 article in The Independent by Michael Hager (now a Member of Cabinet at European Commission) advocating for an eight-day week, calling the week an “arbitrary unit” of measurement:

By itself, a reconfiguration of the week from seven to eight days, retaining the typical five working days, would cause a lesser drop in productivity than would shifting from a five- to a four-workday schedule in a seven- day week. For societies that adhere to a five-day working week, the insertion of an eighth day would reduce the number of potential work days from 260 to 228 (on average), since the number of weeks in a year would fall from 52 to 45.6. On the face of it, this implies an annual loss of productivity of about 12 per cent.

[…]

With three days instead of two between work weeks, both women and men would find it easier to juggle jobs and family, and everyone would have more opportunity to enjoy the arts, hobbies, sports and entertainment.

I like the idea of a 3-day weekend but not so much from the perspective of adding an extra day for the sake of maintaining productivity. But hey, that’s European politics for you!

The colour wars have now entered the fashion chat: engineers at Cornell University have created the blackest fabric on record, finding it absorbs 99.87 percent of all light that dares to illuminate its surface.

This Cool Link was published 9 months ago. (#)