3. Lion's Mane Jellies

  The SAT , the horrid horrid SAT. I, for one, flinch upon its mention, as I am sure many other juniors and seniors do the same.  First try, 1390, Okay, could be worse.  Second try, 1450, but I need a 1500.  Third try 1470. Gosh.  It's a story I’ve heard one too many times, and frankly, it causes me discomfort. Or I hear stories like this.  First try, 1590.  My heart rate spikes with jealousy upon hearing tall tales of such extreme academic success. But despite many high school juniors' complex love-hate relationship with the SAT, the standardized test has a darker undertone, reflecting a disturbing period in American history. Developed in 1920 by Carl Brigham, the test was built to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the so-called “Nordic” race, which, by eugenicists, is referred to as the “purest form” of the “Aryan” race. The SAT, today, is a trademark for academic promise and good college acceptances, but we as a society seem to have forgot...

Many criticisms have been raised about the nature of American consumerism, such as in the mountains of cheap supermarket snacks, seasonal holiday shopping crazes, and unethically sourced products. I’d like to talk about a large contributor to the third category: fast fashion. The dishonest practices of corporations like SHEIN and Temu are well-known, exposed time and time again , yet they’re still allowed to sell in over one hundred countries. It's not as if their customers can’t afford clothes that are more than five dollars. Mass clothing hauls have taken over social media, and one purchase can often add up to hundreds of dollars in the pockets of SHEIN. And now for a more uncomfortable fact: most of our favorite brands are fast fashion. All of us, whether we notice or not, are participating in this global trashing of our ecosystem. Abercrombie & Fitch , Urban Outfitters , Brandy , For ever 21 , GAP , and so many more. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a customer of many of these shops...

  When I think of America, like proper white America (not our ethnically, culturally, racially diverse bay area) there are 4 things that come to mind: pickup trucks, guns, a dysfunction government, and fast food. Yes you read that right! Fast food.  Probably one of the greatest inventions by an American. DO NOT get fast food and street food mixed up, just because they both get made quickly does not mean they are the same thing. Fast food is fast food! (I’m very sensitive and passionate about my food, I'm sorry).  Anyway. Where does fast food come from, the one and only, McDonalds! Back in April of 1955, Dick and Maurice McDonald opened up the very first of what would become the world's most popular fast food restaurant.  They had a vision.  Revolutionized the way restaurants operated, 30 second wait times, no utensils, no clean up and cheap fresh food that was approved by everyone's taste buds.  They truly exemplified the idea of beauty in simplicity. I thi...

The median age of the senate is now 64.7 years old.  64.7? 64.7? A few more years and that’s the age of our grandparents! Our grandparents! The same grandparents that can’t figure out how to open an iPad, the same grandparents that can’t tell the 400 pound tabby built like a cement truck bowling through a house is an AI generated video! Our politicians are getting too old, and it's starting to show. Now obviously, there is some experience that comes with age. A twenty-something college graduate is naturally not going to have anywhere close to the necessary level of “reading the room” that politics require. But there’s got to be a line where that experience gets overridden by the fact that these politicians’ bodies are just collapsing on themselves. Historically, most of our presidents have been around their mid-fifties. Except for the recent two. I mean, look at them. Donald Trump and Joe Biden are both nearing their eighties, and it’s showing. Biden literally had to drop out of th...

I run, grabbing my lunchbox from the backpack hooks, clutching it to my chest, an effort to keep it from falling out of my grasp.  I heave, my legs pumping, get behind the wall ball wall! My accomplices surround me, alright, fine, but 'accomplices' is a stretch; classmates is more like it. I huff, setting my lunchbox down in front of me, but it contained something else for me to feast on besides lunch.  I stare at my classmates as we sit in a circle, our lunchboxes in front of our laps on the gravel, forming a circle of some sort. The sixth graders called us a cult; we didn’t care. Whatever chatter the older kids participated in was none of our concern. I unzip my lunch box, and the rest of my classmates follow suit. A few dozen Shopkins tumble out of my lunchbox, and others do the same, except pencils, scented erasers, lip gloss, stickers, and other small trinkets that nine-year-olds can’t seem to get enough of cover the small area of gravel. We called it the trading ring. It...

  Around a week ago, British underground rap artist EsDeeKid announced his dates for the North American and Australian leg of his Rebel Tour. This tour accompanies his album, which was released earlier this year under the same name, and since its release, his music has blown up. At the beginning of 2025, the Scouse rapper had fewer than one million listeners on Spotify; in just a couple of months, he has amassed more than five million listeners on the same platform. This sounds like an “American success story” straight from a box office hit, right? An underdog grinds out music for around a year, and all of a sudden, he is put on the map? It sounds too good to be true. Which makes me ask: was the “American dream” ever even American? Or has it always been the dream of success under capitalism? It is not just the success story of EsDeeKid that has me asking this question; his lyrics tend to reference the fast life and the shiny cars that our own home talent reference in their own art...

This is her stop.  It says so in the corner of her vision, on the hazy blue rectangle floating in the dark somewhere at her wrist. She gets up and takes the three steps necessary to reach the threshold of the bus doors, turning back instinctively to give her thanks to the driver. There is no-one there past the card scanner though, of course, replaced by extra wires and a synthetic brain. She keeps her mouth shut. But still, she is grateful for the infinite patience of the machine as she shambles down the ledge onto the side of the road; it will not snag her in the doors as long as it knows that she's there.  The almost empty bus departs behind her as she moves forward, vehicles barreling past her. The device strapped to her wrist buzzes. It is a reminder to take her medication: something she has run out of a while ago and has not been able to afford the hefty price of since. She silences the thing that used to serve as just a watch with the flick of a finger.  They ripped...

        “United we stand, divided we fall.” This phrase was used by the movie Captain America: Civil War . The Avengers, previously having defeated two powerful antagonists, had divided up into factions. This is representative of a rapidly polarizing American democracy: Captain America wanted radical change, and Iron Man wanted conservation of the current state, so let’s call them Democrat and Republican respectively (also they’re depicted as blue and red respectively: let’s make life easier :). This is the sort of conservative-liberal divide in the US today, or in other words a bipartisan (two-party) one.  The two-party system, similarly to many political issues in the US, is controversial. Some say that gridlock in Congress is highly harmful, and this is caused by the two parties refusing to cede any ground. Not only was this the case in Avengers (leading to “war”), but is also the case in the current political climate. Indeed, studies have found that p...

The other day my aunt called my dad hysterically; she was so upset about what her son wanted to do. My cousin, who lives in India (Hyderabad if you care to know), is going to finish his junior year of college. He recently announced to the family that he wanted to come to America after he finishes his Bachelor’s. Naturally, the thought of having a family member flip their entire life around by moving halfway across the world is slightly daunting. However, I had faith my dad would support my cousin’s aspirations. My dad, too, dreamed of moving to America and obtaining the American dream. To my surprise, my dad started crashing out; he seemed to forget he was once in my cousin’s position.  My dad laid out a plethora of reasons for why it was unfavorable to move to the United States at this time—too much money, visa issues, and feelings of isolation. I wanted to know why my cousin wanted to work in the U.S. so badly since no one else seemed to ask him. So I called him the next day. His...

  Life was hard. The gloomy, cloudy overcast days of barely being able to eat. The cramped apartments of that could barely fit three, let alone twelve. But they had hope. There were rumors. Rumors that, across the ocean, that great blue sea of nothingness, there was a land of freedom. It was the most beautiful thing you could imagine. The streets were paved with gold. There were rolling hills, snow-capped mountains, all sorts of scenery that the grey skies they had could not offer. It was a land where “all men are created equal.” And they believed it. They held the belief in their hearts that there was a place better than where they were living now; that life across the sea would be perfect. When times got hard, they saw a ray of hope—that beautiful land of freedom that they imagined, a place that could offer them a new start in life. “If I could persevere, just one more bit, just a tiny bit more, I can have freedom too.” They persevered. They struggled, crawled, scraped together e...

Scientific research and education in the U.S. has been atrociously politicized. I assume that many of you have heard about the Trump Administration’s cuts on funding in healthcare and scientific research. I’ve heard about them too, but up until recently, I had no idea just how severe those cuts had been.  As it turns out, the administration has billions of dollars in research grants and funding for medical schools and hospitals in less than one year.  The Supreme Court continues to uphold its poor decisions, refusing to restore funding for COVID-19, DEI, and transgender health research.   The Trump administration is just cancelling money for things they don’t like; I can’t believe the country has come to this. We’re talking about critical public health safety, and political agendas should never interfere with that to this extent! In California, critical federal grants have been slashed for universities. Science does not run on barebone, “relevant” research. It is an ...

  The firearm and ammunition industry in the US is now worth 91 billion dollars as of 2024 (the official number for 2025 has not come out yet). That’s an 11 billion dollar increase in the 2 years compared to 2022 where it was valued at about 80 billion dollars.  Debates over gun control have been at the forefront of American politics for decades now, yet we are still no closer to solving the issue. There have been pieces of legislation such as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022 which outlined that states would have increased funding for states to implement crisis intervention programs as well as increased and more cohesive background checks and expanded school safety and mental health resources.  This was described as the “most significant gun safety initiative in 30 years." And this is the problem.  For lack of better words this is a band aid on a bullet hole! The problem isn’t even the lack of power behind the legislation, it is the fact that half of the ...

American cinema. It has long been one of the nation’s sources for cultural awareness. Films and TV shows shape how Americans see themselves and others, but also how the rest of the world sees America. In the past, cinema only reflected a fraction of American culture. It heavily focused on the stereotypical experiences of the white population, downplaying the experiences of minorities. In the case that minorities were showcased, it often reinforced biases and stereotypes. For example, I remember wanting to see an Indian Disney princess—and no, Jasmine does not count. Thankfully, the industry has embraced multiculturalism and individuality more in the last couple decades (to some extent). I want to dive deeper into the TV show that occupies my home the most, Phineas and Ferb, which may seem simple, but is actually pretty insane. The show hosts a vast soundtrack that uses Bollywood sounds, reggae beats, classical tunes, and so much more, reflecting America’s crazy combination of cultures....

“Gotta catch ‘em all, gotta catch ‘em all! Pokemon!” This song by Jason Paige is still fresh in my mind, but counterintuitively, my favorite line in the song was “You teach me, and I'll teach you”, referring to the collaboration required between a trainer and their pokemon to simultaneously improve both their skills to become the best. Just like Ash, currently, the US is the “best” on the world stage (militarily, economically etc), which is obviously a huge advantage in foreign policy. Currently. Similarly to Pokemon, getting to the top alone on the global stage is extremely hard to achieve (let me know if you usually fight fire-breathing dragons on your lunch break :). In the past, the US received an immense amount of foreign assistance, such as during the American Revolution where France provided a significant amount of money to fight Britain (mostly to counter Britain but we’ll take it), and it was in fact a German immigrant (Einstein) that led to the invention of the nucl...