Most people think pirates went the way of Blackbeard a long time ago, resurrected only for Broadway musicals and blockbuster movies starring Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. While some still sail the high seas with more modern weaponry and less swashbuckling, it's a modern form of cultural piracy that is the subject of Matt Mason's new book, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism. The frequent VICE magazine contributor “charts the rise of various youth movements — from pirate radio to remix culture — and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society” for what amounts to a fascinating read. If you're interested in having your eyes opened wide to how the counterculture has transformed society then we certainly suggest picking up this primer.

If you want one for free, well, you’re in luck. First five (polite!) commenters get their own, so…comment away!

Having a large head of hair, I often find missing things from car keys to my toothbrush while giving my curly ‘fro the once over. Part of me wonders if this is the inspiration behind the schmoelzer harry and harry jr. from Formila Design. If you find the idea of hanging your miscellaneous belongings on hooks, nails, and holders to be aesthetically unpleasing, and hate looking for your misplaced essentials behind the cushions of your couch, then perhaps you should invest in these one of a kind wiry wall mounted wigs in order to keep track of your car keys and other miscellaneous items. The harry and harry jr's hundredes of flexible and sturdy wire “hooks” will allow you to form them to fit your needs, providing the foundation to creatively organize and hold your stuff that you haven't lost already.

I'm not sure why documenting the most mundane details of your life can turn into such a fascinating visual case study. It's almost like taking “one man's trash is another's man's treasure” one step too far – not even sifting through it but simply just stock-piling everything and photographing it. That's exactly what Beijing-based artist Hong Hao has been doing for more than 15 years.

Well known as a conceptual photographer, he collects all the ephemera and trinkets (and sometimes just plain garbage) from his life and documents it. Then it's just pleasurably voyeuristic and odd to look at it all think “this is someone's life.” If you were to disappear today this would be the material left in your wake; the stuff you would dispose of says as much as the keepsakes you horde away. It all says everything…and it all says nothing.

Here comes my declarative statement for the week: The Ministry of Culture in Brazil is one of the best things to happen to government from which the U.S. could surely take note. From music events to art expositions, the federal subdivision is responsible for sponsoring the hundreds of free quality happenings year-round, with the best of them taking place right in Sao Paulo. How’s that for a social system, where money is actually — swallow this — reserved to make culture bloom?

You can taste a little of this generosity with Os Brasileiros, a 40-street-artist-strong exhibit running at Los Angeles’ Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art, which has Brazil’s Ministry of Culture totally down. The first part of the exhibit was commemorated by a performance on Saturday featuring a Brazilian singer, but the second part, come January 19th, will kick off with a capoeira show and gratis caipirinhas. But don’t just come for the drinks. Brazil’s most lauded street artists like Binho Barreto, Pato, Paulo Ito, FLIP and Flavio Samelo will have their work on display, giving you the ultimate opportunity to see what we’re psyched on in the southern continent. Part I runs until January 17th; Part II is January 19th through 27th.

It's about this time every year, as you stumble back into the office post-holiday, where you begin to realize some very important things. Like that you need a new calendar. Luckily for the style-savvy, designers like Imbroglio have new takes on the standard cross-the-day, flip-the-month variety that your bank may have sent you… with pictures of puppies or infants eerily dressed up like vegetables.

Created by Jean-Pierre Vitrac and re-produced by London design shop twentytwentyone, the pleasingly modernist jumble of the Imbroglio Desk Calendar turns into a perfectly acceptable keeper of days. As you slide the accompanying magnet, along it focuses the eye and cleverly reveals the date from the previously muddled negative space.

Even better, it can be reused so that you won't encounter the same design dilemma a year from now.