6. Leopards 2024

I'm sure you've seen it on TV - the Flash running around with his super speed, or Spider-Man, with his arachnid abilities, swinging from building to building on a cobweb. The lasting interest in superpower-related stories has only increased throughout the past few decades. Whether it be DC or Marvel, most of the time you will find the common teenager repeatedly fascinated by the heroic abilities of the supernatural forces on screen.  Why are we so intrigued by this? A blog on "The Purpose and Significance of Superheroes in American Culture"  details this exact fascination, including the fact that "no film genre takes our generation by storm like superheroes." Dan Waibel, the writer marvels at this new "generation" of superheroes, the ones that "nearly go against every physical aspect of what makes a hero". He uses the example of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and how "none of them wear capes, or have the typical superhero monologue abo...

Wikipedia      “ It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot have both. ”                                  – Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. Evidently, Machiavelli lived in an entirely different world than we do today. Having experienced an era of incapable, power-hungry rulers and instability in Italian leadership , his pessimistic ways of thinking are ultimately a product of his environment. Yet, many of his words transcend   time and space, becoming guiding maxims to consider today. Is it better to be feared than loved? Is it better to fear than to love? The answer lies in the perspective through which we approach fear. More often than not, we detest fear, understanding it to be an obstacle in our ambitions. Yet, its seemingly negative characteristics can warrant positive outcomes. Fear is a powerful motivator, driving forth action and...

Have you ever found yourself contemplating the complexities of human behavior? Why do we do what we do?  Psychoanalysis offers a captivating quest into the depths of the human psyche, providing understandings that can light up the dimmest areas of our minds. Founded by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, it revolutionized our understanding of the human mind and behavior. Freud's journey began with his work in neurology, where he encountered patients with mysterious symptoms that seemed to have no physical cause. Fascinated, he delved into developing his theories on the unconscious mind, the role of childhood experiences, and the significance of dreams.  In simple terms, psychoanalysis is a therapeutic technique that aims to discover the unconscious motivations and conflicts that drive our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It works by unraveling our past experiences, desires, and fears. Picture your mind as an iceberg, with only a tiny piece visible above the surface. The ...

 Being write is relative.  As long as I believe I'm right, then I'm in the write, and of course, you'd be wrong about everything else.  Try as hard as you can to justify to me that I'm wrong and your write, but in the end, I can believe what I want to believe.  The thing is self-justification is one of the scariest tools we have at our own disposal these days. I can justify that murdering Mai was okay because she had offended me that one time at the dinner party when she didn't laugh at my joke, or I can justify my own suicide by leading myself to believe that "it was the only way out." In the end, the most important thing to us is that we "believe we are right," and then we'll be able to do anything we put our mind to.  If you've ever tried to argue with an idiot, chances are, you weren't able to convince them of anything, even if they spewed the most BS, absolutely horrid, and impossible things at you. Their conviction when it comes...

          As someone who adored disney movies when I was younger, I have always loved the old style of animation and filmography. The warm colors and organic feel of the scenes fill me with nostalgia everytime I rewatch a classic film like The Little Mermaid .         The overly expressive movement of the characters makes the movies truly one of a kind. For example, in Bambi , the shy, fragile nature of Bambi and the excited, youthful nature of Thumper are shown through detailed animation. The contract between the characters made the movie interesting and drew the attention of kids for years even though it was made quite a long time ago in 1942. Source: JW3           Another thing that made disney films unique was the charming villains. Characters like Ursula and Maleficent had their own fan base because of their featured songs and backstories. Source: Business Insider       ...

Criminal Portfolio  Name: Jimmy Bowens  Age: 28 | Gender: Male  Felony:  Penal Code 646.9 | Charged with stalking and causing emotional distress to Elly Brown A quick look at this "criminal portfolio" would tell you that Jimmy Bowens doesn't seem like the most pleasant guy you could meet. He stalks, he harasses, he makes you feel like digging a 100 foot deep hole in the middle of Papua New Guinea to live off the grid.  Why did Jimmy Bowens start stalking Elly Brown? Let me fill you in.  Elly Brown is the walking representation of a cloud - a cumulonimbus cloud, to be exact. At first glance, she's got a happy-go-lucky, fluffy personality. She's someone who could never  do any wrong. But like any storm cloud, she's got a lot of hidden layers. A closer look would tell you that she actually can  do wrong.  (Not to be like Dhar Mann but...) You see, four months ago, Brown kidnapped (shocking yes!!) Bowens' favorite niece. She's held little Julie B...

Nowadays, most kids volunteer to enhance their stellar college applications. They are only focused on getting enough hours and doing as much volunteer work as they can. Yet, volunteering has many more benefits other than helping a student get into their dream college. Here are some reasons why: Volunteering can spread happiness. You can feel a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and others will also feel grateful for your efforts. You can give back to the community by volunteering. You can help at a local animal shelter or food bank, participate in an environmental conservation effort, or tutor an underprivileged kid.  You can use your own skills to help others. You can learn new skills from volunteering.  You can meet new people from different communities.   You can create a world of compassion and empathy. Depending on where you are volunteering, you might be able to get free food — and who doesn’t love free food? When I first started high school, I volunteered to co...

Currently, it’s Sunday night and I am sitting in my bed, putting off everything I have to do and I know I will hate myself for it in 12 hours from now.  I encounter the same problem as each week nears its end. On Friday evenings, I allow myself some rest, promising that I will get the next week’s work done in the next two days of break to make my life easier.  When Saturday emerges, I wind up spending the entire day in bed, opening my laptop exclusively for Netflix, pretending as if my academic tabs are nonexistent, and ignoring the list I made in my notes filled with work I said I would do. Once again, I swear that I will get extra work done on Sunday to compensate for my laziness on Saturday.  Sunday arrives, and I wake up eager to be productive and set myself up for success for the next five days. 10 A.M. becomes 2 P.M. As the sun begins to set, I find myself allotting time to do my work to avoid doing it in the moment. I think: Maybe I can wake up early, at 4 A.M...

Photo from Google To what extent do we have control over our own lives? Is everything determined by genetics? I've wondered about th ese questions for a long time now. It began with my realization when I was younger that a lot of my behaviors/characteristics could be attributed to my parents, as I noticed that a lot of peculiarities that I had were present in one of my parents as well. According to this article , two identical twins (identical twins have the same genetics) James Springer and James Lewis, were separated at birth, and yet, when Thomas Bouchard, psychologist at the University of Minnesota, met them after they reunited, he found that both had married and later divorced a woman named Linda and remarried a Betty. They were also eerily similar in their interests. The twins both loved carpentry, mechanical drawing, and math; their least favorite subject was spelling. As the article concludes, “a great deal of who they would turn out to be” was “written in their genes.” Doe...

 Happy Valentine's Day, or well, happy 21st of February if that's when you decide to do blog comments.  Anyways, the day I'm writing this is both the loveliest day (for some) and the loneliest (for people like me). Today I actively avoided looking at couples, I actively tried to forget that I was alone on the day where everyone else seems to be enjoying company with each other. And that feeling kept making me feel down. Today was probably the worst day I've had in a while because of that unshakably powerful feeling of loneliness, and it's really got me thinking what it's truly like for other people to be lonely, and not just in the sense of having an S/O or not.  I recently started reading a new book (Yeah, I know right Daniel is finally reading a book), and it really started to make me ponder what it's like to not understand someone else, and what it's like to not have someone who understands you. Mockingbird follows the story of a young girl with Asper...

In the realm of education, few roles hold as much authority and influence as a teacher. Behind the closed door of a classroom lies an undeniable force that shapes minds. It's a power that resembles order and pedagogy; it's the power of telling people what to do. Teachers, whether they acknowledge it or not, are delegated a crucial duty. They not only spread information but also develop young minds through the process. The development of the student can simply not afford the misuse of such a power. Like Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility." The influence exerted by teachers requires a profound sense of virtue, passion, and responsibility. They must recognize the weight of their words and the impact of their actions. They must also continuously strive to improve their skills and knowledge. image from Varthana.com The importance of good teaching lays the foundation for a brighter future, equipping people with the proficiency, skills, and values n...

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in today’s words, pics or it didn’t happen. The original phrase was coined in 1921 by English illustrator Fred R. Barnard in an effort to promote the use of pictures in advertisements. Despite its more literal origins, the phrase proves to be nearly universally true.  Pictures are retrospectively tools for communication. 50,000 years ago, cavemen filled the walls of age-old caves with intricate drawings that did more than serve as home decor—they told stories. Today, even in the midst of civilization, pictures are bridges that cross the barriers set by languages. Pictures are universally understood, whereas words are limited to those that know their meanings. Kuyperian Commentary Pictures convey emotion. A study at UC San Diego observed 50 participants as they were shown positive and negative faces, pictures, or words, and given a lemon-lime Kool-aid drink. Highlighted results of the study found that participants drank more Kool-aid after se...

You're three steps away from the dark, probably bat-and-rat-filled tunnel. It looks pretty cool honestly. You can just make out some graffiti at the mouth of the passage and they look pretty neat - bright hints of pinks and blues scattered throughout. They are signs that someone has been there before and hopefully made it out too. That puts you a little at ease. You stand at the tunnel's entrance for five minutes, debating whether or not you should make the treacherous journey of three steps to see where your destiny leads. After what seems like an eternity, you decide that you will.  I mean, what can go wrong? It's not like this is the cave where at least 30 people have gone missing before. It's not like your friend went missing here just last month. It's definitely not like your mom literally just told you not to go looking for the tunnel 20 minutes ago. It's a great idea, right?  Well, I don't know if certain doom sounds like a great idea to you, but that...

Photo from Google I remember sitting in my 4th grade classroom, looking up at a large poster on the wall saying “Believe in yourself,” and thinking to myself, Why is this even important? It is one of the most overused phrases in our society today, but it points to something more significant than you may think. I wa nt you to imagine yourself in your math class when your teacher gives you a seemingly challenging problem that they say has never been solved before. What would you do? Would you attempt to solve the problem, or disregard it, assuming that you do not have the skills to solve it in the first place? Exactly the opposite happened to an interesting man that I recently read about by the name of George Dantzig. Dantzig overslept one night and arrived 20 minutes late to his statistics lecture. He saw two problems on the board and copied them down, assuming that they were part of a problem set that he would have to complete for homework.  Dantzig took many days to work through ...

Before June of 1969, Stonewall Inn was only a humble gay bar. How did this bar challenge existing power structures and turn the world upside down? Historically, the LGBTQ+ community has faced contempt and oppression. In the early 1950s, gay bars — run by Mafia-like families — became popular among members of the community. These bars were places of refuge; people could freely express themselves and socialize without worry.  In the heart of Greenwich Village stood the Stonewall Inn. The Genovese family, who owned the bar, bribed New York’s Sixth Police Precinct to ignore the activities occurring within the club. The inn quickly became a popular establishment; it was large and relatively cheap to enter. It welcomed drag queens and runaway gay youths.  During the early hours of June 28, 1969, the police raided the bar without warning, forcing employees and patrons out of the bar. Fueled by the desire to be accepted, patrons of the inn and nearby community members of the LGBTQ+ com...

As I sat in Flex staring at the clock —10:45 AM, deciding if I should be productive today or not, I scrolled through Google Classroom to see if there was any work to get started with. Realizing I had a blog due this week, I immediately opened Blogger, creating a blank sheet as I stared at it, unsure of what to write about. To acquire some sort of motivation, I pulled out my headphones and opened my Spotify app, clicking on my playlist and choosing a song to listen to.  Then it hit me.  Music is something that has always played a big role in my life, and I think I can pretty much say it's quite a big deal in many other's lives, too. Any time I sit down to study or clean my room, or even go on a run, I always feel the need to have music playing in my ears. And it's not even limited to when I am performing a certain task or activity. Even when I'm simply feeling under the weather, I turn on one of my favorite songs and it can almost immediately help me regain some sort of ...

The Power of Living, Laughing, and Loving You see on the walls of every generic American home. You see it on decorative signs in your local Ross and TJ Maxx. You see it in stock images all over the Internet. The phrase “ live, laugh, love ” has become not just a classic motivational phrase that can be found in typical American stores and households, but a meme in younger generations. As teenagers, we refer to the phrase humorously, mocking it when we see it in our daily lives, but isn’t there some truth to the statement? When I think about the things that are truly valuable in life, I think of things along the lines of those three words. Rather than the moments that I’ve enjoyed having underlying themes of superficiality, they have involved me living, laughing, and loving.  While the phrase is undeniably meme-worthy (and is always going to get a good laugh out of me), it serves as a reminder and an encouragement to acknowledge the true powerful things in life: the small things. Fro...

Contrary to what most people think, power does not come from a title or a position. While holding a higher position may offer some advantages, mere titles alone do not foster respect. Instead, power comes from influence, impact and confidence. Rick Miller, a writer at Forbes, delves further into these concepts in his article, “ What Is Power, Really? ”. As I read the article, I thought of how power affects dynamics within the various clubs I am involved in. My robotics team, FRC Skywalkers, is a big one that comes to mind. Since there are so many different tasks we must complete in such a short amount of time, we separate responsibilities into different branches like marketing, business, outreach, software, mechanical, manufacturing and robot design. Each one of these branches has 4-6 members including a captain. And of course, the whole team has a team captain and two vice captains. It may seem like overkill to have so many different titles, but it helps us organize ourselves and comp...