Anyone who knows me personally knows I’m an avid Playstation fan. Simply put, I think Microsoft has unequivocally lost this console generation. Microsoft bungled the reboots of some of their most beloved franchises like Halo and Gears of War. They launched a few new IP’s that were met with lukewarm reception at best. Console sales […]

Public schools are funded through federal, state, and local dollars. Free education is an expensive public service, but it’s significant in shaping the future of America. The value of education easily outweighs its expense. However, despite the benefits of having a well-structured education system, the United States chooses to spend eight times more on defense […]

Want Two: A Criminally Underrated Album That Sounds Like It’s Inspired By The Renaissance. Every song Rufus Wainwright crafts is lovingly weird and deeply literary. He doesn’t write albums that sound too similar, which in today’s era of music, is refreshing. He is an artist with a voracious love of Shakespeare. His performance  style is […]

To many people, I’ve become a subtle symbol of grief over the years. Clad in all black and never giving more than a pitifully vague answer about my personal life, I’m sure I’ve turned heads. The positive side to this is I can help people who go through emotionally rotten times. This manifests in many […]

I cannot find my high school id card, but let me describe it to you. I was 13 and my hair had been relaxed for precisely 11 months. It hung straight down to my shoulder blades, prone to waltzing in the wind. I am smiling, and I cannot remember why because I had just gotten […]

  For the past week I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit staring into the depths of the first-ever image of a black hole and contemplating my insignificant existence in the face of this void. As the image of the black hole rapidly spread across the internet another picture spread with it: a […]

It’s an overcast spring day in Chelsea, purple and gray-blue tinted everywhere like a bruise finally deciding to refuse its body’s resistance to healing. I have many kinds of family, including queer family, but today I am walking along in Manhattan with my blood family; a funny expression to use given that my little sister […]

In doing research for my thesis (finished now, woohoo!), I stumbled upon something I probably should have a long time ago – the critical field of video game studies. Considering how often I write about video games from this perspective, I’m a little surprised I hadn’t heard of the field prior to this. The field […]

I miss The Beach Boys. I seldom listen to them anymore. So, in searching for a substitute of my much beloved summer music I stumbled onto Jukebox The Ghost. Truly. One wonders, what makes music sound like “summer?” I spend all my summers indoors. In that aspect, I should be telling you the gloomy, sparse, chords […]

It’s Jummah. Every Jummah I wake up to the beautiful recitations of the Quran on the Echo Dot in my living room. The smell of kababs on the burning stove. The sound of laughter and teasing as my siblings argue about who will shower first. I wake up to bliss, to peace. Ready to release […]