Memes and Whatnot

It seems that the spirit of the prompt is to include some sort of philosophical life lesson or self-discovery that one has made throughout their time in secondary education. Luckily, I don't think I 've had an epiphany in any matter: the extent of this so-called epiphany is at most a reaffirmation of my beliefs. I've been lucky to always have had the foresight to know what it is that I wanted to do in the future: become a computer engineer and revolutionize computer hardware. This was nothing but a pipe dream at the start of high school, but I've put in the effort to make realizing that future a bit less of a pipe dream. You could tell me that it's a grandiose ambition, but I wouldn't listen to you.   I'd say its fair to say that most of us have some sort of dream that we are working towards, but the lesson that I had realized doesn't really matter what the end goal is; it's more of how I got there. I spent my time doing the things that I truly cared...

I think I've taken a few liberties with the topic of this free choice blog... While this may look like a gang symbol, it's actually the internet's greatest meme. Titled Minimalist Loss , this is a minimalist rendition of the comic strip Loss by Tim Buckley. I concede that this blogpost is a departure from the political content that I've grown accustomed to writing (haha nvm i haven't written anything political in so long). But I digress; If you don't understand Loss  here's a quick textual rundown.  Top left: Man walks into a doctor's office Top right: Man talks to receptionist Bottom left: Doctor tells man that his wife had a miscarriage Bottom right: Man stands over his wife crying in a hospital bed Here's a link of the original in case that wasn't clear:  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/loss . This meme is important to me because of its nostalgic significance. I remember in middle school I wasted a lot of time surfing the web. I'd occasiona...

 Having lived in Oakland for the majority of my life, I was born in India, I've never had the opportunity to live in a "big" city. I've only lived in the suburbs. When it came time for choosing colleges, I definitely didn't want to end up in another suburban city *cough* *cough* Ann Arbor *cough* *cough* and so I looked elsewhere.  I became quickly fixated with Carnegie Mellon. Pittsburgh, where Carnegie Mellon is located, is an odd city. It's got a big city feel without actually being a big city. Rather than trying to describe Pittsburgh, here's a picture that I took when I went there (funny how I committed to a school I hadn't even visited :P) blogger compression is so bad :( Pittsburgh has a medium sized downtown with SKYSCRAPERS!!! I'm so excited to be going to a college in a city with SKYSCRAPERS! In any case, the rest of Pittsburgh, outside of the main college town, is just run of the mill suburbs which is a nice taste of home. Having been to...

Well the prompt for this blog post couldn't have came at a better time. Back when we went to school and had actual club activities, I can't help but reminisce about my time on Troy's Robotics team. I had made lots of good friends on the team, but more so, I had made a lot of good friends on other teams. We'd occasionally chat about how progress on each of our robots were coming along or rant about the stupid bureaucracy that comes with doing robotics. In any case, with not having competitions this year nor the year before because of the coronavirus (side not I cannot stand hearing COVID or coronavirus or the other names that've been given to it, it's like listening to a broken record at this point) its been a long time since we've seen each other in person.  As luck would have it a few nights ago I was playing in a League of Legends (don't come at me) tournament with a friend; both of us invited some of our friends who are going to Duke and Carnegie Mell...

I saw a yellow butterfly flying in my opinion the wrong way, flying across the sound to Connecticut I saw a cormorant oily-looking flying close to the sea’s surface precisely as I floated on it on my back in the attitude of the crucifixion minerals in my body in conversation with the minerals of the sea about the sun how can I possibly add to what’s already been said so well by the ancients and said with an austerity I’ll never know it is an honor to take a backseat to the ancients who knew how I was a fat white fish dissolving under the sold-out stadium sun like a god but like a god I could live through anything. I refuse to do annotations on this poem. It's too soon. Let me procrastinate till the due date for the Mentor Poet Project. In any case, here's a picture of Timothy Donnelly:  This man and his beard exude so much swag; I'm truly jealous. While this reasoning may seem a bit superficial, albeit it is, the reason that I picked him was just because he caught my attent...

As I've written more and more of these blog posts, I've realized just how far I've strayed from my given title of a "Confused Political Compass." Maybe it's because these prompts don't cater themselves too well to politics; what can you do? On the topic of prompts, I'm super confused by what it means to put the pieces back together. Gut instinct was to write about playing with Legos as a kid, but something tells me that wasn't in the spirit of the prompt. I guess we'll have to settle with some discussion over my BBC book. My topic of interest is Emil Sinclair, the protagonist from Demian . Demian chronicles the intellectual and emotional development of Emil Sinclair, the protagonist and narrator of the story. Sinclair begins the novel as a mentally precocious ten-year-old boy. He has a sense that there is more to the world than what he learns in school and from his parents. At such a young age, he is in no way prepared to move into the world of...

I absolutely love the word eloquence. The way it rolls off of one's tongue is very beautiful. Any word that has the "qu" sound found in the word eloquence feels expensive and important. Take for example the word quail. Quail meat and quail eggs are considered a delicacy: both expensive and highly sought out for. Another characteristic of the world eloquence comes down to its lack of hard sounding consonants. The main consonant sounds of "l", "kw", and "s" all are very soft sounding; this contrasts with other consonants like "d", "t", or a hard "g". Words that contain those aforementioned sounds sound quite ugly, and often have ugly meanings associated with them. Words such as spite and bitter and come to mind.  Though the formal definition of eloquence relates to oral speech and written speech, by virtue of the sound of eloquence, it can be used in various contexts outside of that. Often the mannerisms in which o...

To be honest I didn't have much to write about Demian  so far. I'm lucky to have the creative liberty to write about whatever has been on my mind this week. Luckily, I do have something for that: the stock market.  I've been a long time follower of Reddit's Wall Street Bets. When I heard about the plan to try screw-over Melvin Capital and other hedge funds who shorted GameStop, I figured it was time to get my feet wet into the stock market. When GameStop's stock (GME) was at $45 per share, I put a decent chunk of change into it. Last week when its value soared to over $350 per share, I sold it; this ending up giving me 600% ROI and I made quite a bit.  There's a far more interesting conversation to be had other than me making some money on the side. It's the politics and economics that's behind it all. The entire reason that it was possible to short squeeze GME was that hedge funds had shorted it over 140%. Simple explained, when a stock is shorted over ...

 Honestly, this has been a very good English class so far. I enjoyed the variety of books, plays and short stories that we read together as class. Likewise it was to fun pickup books that I had a personal interest in reading. There's no doubt that the literature that we read together and discussed had a larger impact than that of what I read on my own; knowing that I'll have to actively engage in discussion upon completing a text meant that I put more effort and care into what I was reading. That quality was often lacking in my personal reading books as it was more for enjoyment and less of analysis. My prefered type of reading isn't novels or plays or anything like that. I find articles and research papers that are tailored to my interests in politics and engineering to be far more interesting. These texts provide information in a easily digestible manner — unlike the convoluted English found in the texts we read — and I enjoy that.  I thought that the work for this class ...

To understand the situation in the Hill District during the 50s, it's absolutely necessary to understand the factors that created said situation. The two main factors were the Housing Act of 1949 as well as the Great Migration. Together, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement enabled Troy to get his promotion as a garbage truck driver, rather than a lifter.  The Housing Act of 1949 was the brainchild of the president at the time, Harry Truman. The conditions in which he was brought up and his early career choices helped to shape the choices that he made during this presidency. Truman was born to a father who was a farmer and livestock dealer; he was clearly not brought up in anything more than lower-middle class conditions. This was no more evident then when he had to drop out of college in his first year due to insufficient funds. He was able to secure a job with his meager business college experience, but made no where enough to afford adequate housing, and thus, spent most o...

Maybe it's because my family is too Indian, but we don't really have many memories that are associated with storytelling. The best I can do is a an old video of what I think was my birthday party from when I was four years old. Some context is necessary for the significance of this story to make sense. As a kid, and even now, I didn't express my wants. Whenever we'd go outside and my dad would ask do you want this or do you want that, I'd consistently say no, even if its something I wanted. I'm not sure where that behavior started, but it's something that has stuck with me until now. This video takes place twenty or so minutes before guests started to arrive for the party. You could see little me crying and complaining that we still didn't have a cake. My dad was filming him teasing me by asking why I wanted a cake. I snarkly responded with "I want a cake! Don't ask too many questions!" I think that was most assertive I've ever been in ...

I was going to write this blog about a certain someone — you know who you are — but it seems that this blog's prompt is limited to this week. In the odd chance you're reading this, hi :). Anyways I figured it's time to come back to the theme of this blog: politics.  There have been many occurences during the past week where I've made the conscious decision to judge someone and say: "huh you're a f*cking idiot." Most of this comes from all the time I  spend  waste reading through Republican Twitter accounts.  To Ewelina Krawczyk and your comment which states "To all President Trump's haters: has anybody invited you here and asked for comments?" I deem you worthy of the title of "f*cking idiot" as you've appeared to have forgotten the first amendment exists. People have the right to criticize the government. In a more self-reflective tone, me judging someone for a singular twitter comment makes me someone who jumps to conclusions ...

 I listened to episode 722: The Unreality of Now which essentially was a summary of Trump's false claims and scandals. Everything from his sexual assault allegation to his claim that mail-in ballots are a Democratic hoax. To be honest, I haven't gained much from listening to this, other than getting a sense of the magnitude of the drama that surrounds the current president. Since he's on the news literally every day, I've lost sight of just how much drama surrounds him.  In essence there are three parts to this. Part 1 is on sexual harassment. I can't say much more than DJT is a creep and should be in prison. Part 2 is on guns, which I do have opinions on. Trigger warning: Rednecks hate me. Part 3 is on polls, which again, I don't have many opinions on. Voting has been mismanaged starting all the way up from DeJoy as Postmaster General down to stupidly gerrymandered voting districts.  The second amendment states that the people have "a right to keep and bea...

 While writing satire, it's important to take a bold stance on the matter at hand. Obviously, it's impossible for every reader to understand the point being made, writing in a bold and obvious fashion increase the likelihood that the reader will understand. Satirical writing thrives on being quirky and non-obvious. It's essential that the topic and style of writing isn't one that is overused and cliche.  In hindsight, I should've written the preceding paragraph in a manner that encompasses more than just writing, but I'm too lazy to fix it so we're moving on to Banksy's artwork. The piece was the one of the Napalm Girl.  It's important to know the context to this picture, so here's the original photo of the Vietnam War:  In the original photo, the first thing that caught my attention was the Mickey Mouse and the Ronald McDonald. Both of these were considered to be staples of the American lifestyle. What's interesting about the Vietnam War was...

Washington DC - In between his last coughs , McConnell tells his attending doctor to ensure that his death is not attributed to the coronavirus. Dr. Pei states that McConnell expressed a desire to maintain his image that the coronavirus is not in fact real but an institution created by the left to subvert the power of the right. She said "His pupils dilated so large I could see the empty cavity inside his skull. This happened when he remembered that the senate would now be able to pass the coronavirus relief bill." In an interview with NBC two weeks ago, McConnell explores the linguist aspect of political dichotomies. He stated, "There's a reason the right is called the right; it's because it's right. Checkmate libt*rds."  His last words were "Tell the left it was tuberculosis, asthma, high cholesterol, inflated ego, stupidity — but goddamnit please don't say it was the coronavirus. I refuse to die of coronavirus and become another statistic....

  My blog is quite aptly named: a Confused Political Compass. For those of you who don’t know, the image on the right is what a political compass looks like. I’d like to point out the false dichotomy that exists in our world. People get labeled either Republican or Democratic, conservative or liberal, authoritarian or libertarian, communist or capitalist, and so on and so forth. The political compass, however, does a good job of highlighting that these stances are more nuanced than two mutually exclusive ideas. I concede that while it's possible that two people lie in complete opposition of each other in the context of the political compass, say for example someone falls extremely far economic-left and extremely libertarian versus a far economic-right and extremely authoritarian. But again, there’s more nuance to this than those 4 categories. Add in for example liberalism and conservatism, now you’ve got a political cube. Keep adding more and more categorizations and you’re left wi...

I wanted to spend this week's blogpost doing something other than taking a dump on Trump, but the events that have transpired since my last blogpost have altered my plans.  First of all, I completely condemn any of you radical woke liberals who wish death upon Trump. You truly are the scum of the earth. No one — not even Trump — deserves death. Have some compassion people, he too is a person after all.  Now, back to your scheduled dump on Trump. It takes a lot of hubris, my buzzword this week, to say  Don't be afraid of Covid .  I'll admit, I'm not a doctor so take what I say with a grain of salt (as should everything you see on the internet). Take a look at these videos, you tell me, how unafraid of Covid does he seem to you? Trump appears to be wincing in pain while he breathes pic.twitter.com/YKhGhu0VN0 — Brennan Murphy (@brenonade) October 5, 2020 Okay Donald, you're souped up on a bunch of drugs, including dexamethasone. Dexamethasone comes with a laundry ...

I wanted to bring this up during our Harkness discussion on Thursday, but I didn't get the chance to. On page 43, Santiago says "I'm like everyone else — I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does." I bring this up to highlight how self-aware he is of how idealistic he is. In a sense, it seems that he's being realistic with his perception of the world. I think the outlook that he has is the best of both worlds. It's important, no doubt, to stay positive with our perception, but its important to be cognizant of our biases. Even more so than our outlook on the world, knowing our biases is important with our introspection.  This brings us to my topic of this blog post: Donald Trump. I used to believe that Donald Trump was an intelligent man — a grandmaster of 4d chess — who would lie and say stupid things to play the masses and make more money. In some sense, that's true. Take for example the Woodward tapes where Trump...

Interacting with people has become commonplace; you can't go an hour without exchanging pleasantries. Considering that these pleasantries have been around for so long, one would rightly assume that they have more purpose than simply being a mode to express politeness. Polite speech has developed to become a way to make people more receptive to what the speaker has to say. Polite speech has no intrinsic value, but the value of it comes from what the speaker would like to accomplish. Take for example the setting of a school - it would be considered rude to not use polite speech when addressing a superior. Looking at the most common use of polite speech is simply how we address our teachers; we address them with prefixes that demonstrate respect such as "Mr." or "Ms." Without these titles, a teacher would simply scoff at whatever else one has to say. Not only are titles the only way to demonstrate respect, we often use the subjunctive as a way of demonstrating ...

Science in the modern world has been kept in check by numerous organizations who exist for the sole reason of ensuring the progression of science does not come at the cost of human life. This topic is extremely relevant today due to the increasing number of cases of the Coronavirus. One would hope that as the number of cases exponentially increases, so does the rate at which the vaccine for this disease is to be created - alas that is not the case. Technically speaking, me and you both have the cure for the Coronavirus; there are numerous house hold goods that could rid us of this disease. To name a few: drinking bleach, putting your finger into an electrical socket, or even, if you're daring enough, messing with the furnace in your basement. However, it doesn't take much thought to see that these all have a rather important flaw to them: we end up dying too. That is why we have organizations like the CDC to make sure things like that don't get passed on as a "vaccin...