The phasing out of plastic straws has quickly become a trending environmental topic we need to adopt as our earth bears the brunt of human impact. We are learning more and more about how human behavior associated with mass production and consumption is directly linked to climate change. But oftentimes, there is a missing link and we […]
I’m constantly grateful for living in the #MeToo age. Every day I’m blown away by the bravery and strength of courageous women who risk their careers and their privacy to show the world that actions have consequences and no one should be above the law. We’ve seen prominent men, from Bill Cosby to Harvey Weinstein, […]
When I want to understand the internet, I turn to science fiction. Not for details of artificial intelligence or scientific accuracy, but for the writer’s ability to construct new worlds while exploring complex questions of existence. When Octavia Butler, who many refer to as the “godmother of Afrofuturism” was asked why she chose the genre, […]
Do you hate critics? You’re not the only one. As the field of theatre criticism continues to shrink, the remaining theatre critics (and by critics, I don’t mean bloggers) are now under intense scrutiny. However, while theatre reviews have been met with increased skepticism over the past few years, they can still wield enormous power […]
Sorting is the ordering of objects in a list, with emphasis on “ordering.” We often instinctively associate sorting with alphabetizing—and this is only natural because hearing our name read out from an alphabetically-arranged list is one of our first exposures to the concept of sorting. However, one can order items by date, size, location, etc. […]
The sound of selling out isn’t a minor note. No. If anything, it’s a major chord blazing loudly, overproduced, polished, and clean, practically on the front page of a magazine. When musician’s “sell-out” and their music changes, our disdain for the new sound is for an accumulation of reasons. We’re blinded by nostalgia, sure, but there’s also […]
Picture this. A green field of happy black people swaying on the melody of being for a time, carefree. On a Sunday in August, I stood in a field in Commodore Park, Brooklyn with 70,000 people, mostly black—all kinds of black—and sang in one accord with The Electric Lady herself, “Highly melanated. ArchAndroid orchestrated. Yeah, […]
An opinion piece by Manil Suri came out in the New York Times last week called “India’s Riotous Triumph of Equality.” For those who do not yet know, India recently did away with section 377 of the Indian Penal Code—a colonial era law that rendered queer sex illegal throughout the country. In effect, the ruling has decriminalized […]
It’s March 30th, 2017. I’m sitting in class, discussing Frankenstein for the third time in three semesters when I get this text: “Yo, [name of store redacted] broke street date on P5 today. I’m coming to get you now.” As a student with aspirations for a PhD, who cares deeply about their GPA for considerations […]
I’ve said it before, but I truly believe that our understanding of the political world is defined by our day to day encounters. Back in the summer of 2013, my friends and I went out for a late lunch in Jackson Heights. We had originally planned on dining at a fancy restaurant uptown, on Broadway, […]
