3. Moon Jellies

As I sat down and looked at my Spotify wrapped, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at the old and cringy phases I had. 20,000 minutes on Laufey?? (last year) This happens every year. Why did I feel like this song was the one I wanted to loop for hours in my room???? I felt this way about my HUGE laufey phase back in 2024, and evidently, I was very into jazz and slow paced-music at that time. Laufey's newest album "A Matter of Time" Nowadays, we all listen different genres of music, and whether we stick to one genre or hop from one to another, it’s such an interesting way to perceive someone’s identity based on their music taste(s). Ranging from hip hop to jazz to k-pop to indie to classical to mainstream music (and many many many others), the possibilities are endless.  Look how far we’ve come! Back in the 1800s, music was strictly limited to traditional classical music with occasional parade marches for the military here and there. Only in the 1920s did expressive an...

I will now compare The Great Gatsby to a Netflix special. Sorry Mrs. Smith! F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic novel is considered to be the “quintessential novel of the Jazz Age,” creating discussions regarding wealth, class, disillusionment, and serving as a pristine reflection of its time. At the same time, the novel does not analyze itself. It presents the world as is, honestly showing the excessive wealth, moral decay, prejudices, and shallowness of American society in the Roaring ‘20s. Personally, this was one of the reasons I enjoyed reading it. The book doesn’t tell you what to feel or come to conclusions on its own; it simply presents a story and gets you to think about its complex themes. It’s a work of art, not a declaration regarding the state of affairs. Similarly, some (although a much smaller group) consider Bo Burnham’s Inside to be the zeitgeist of its years. Catchy, sardonic, and emotionally impactful, this 90-minute “comedy” special is indeed one of the most original and...

The Salem Witch Trials, lasting from about January 1692 until May 1693 , were a time of mass hysteria and tension. It all started when a group of girls in Salem, Massachusetts began having strange “fits,” which drove them to accuse many people in the village (mostly women) of causing these fits by “bewitching” them. Over a hundred people were casually labeled as “witches” and sent to trial, despite the fact that there was literally no evidence or any sort of proof to support these wild accusations.  Unless you count the “spectral evidence” that was accepted in these trials. An entire new court called the Court of Oyer and Terminer (oyer = “hear,” and terminer = “determine”) was created to handle the overwhelming amount of witchcraft accusations, and it became famous for allowing very questionable evidence into consideration, the most notable being spectral evidence , or seeing spirits in dreams or visions. People actually did have the sense to question the inclusion of spectral e...

Sometimes after school, you just want to hang out somewhere with your friends and get a bite. With how expensive (and mediocre) Bing Bing is, most of my friends decide to go to Kiya Sushi. I have no choice but to reluctantly accept even though I don’t really like sushi. Or avocados. One of my closest compatriots tells me I’m Luciferian because I dislike sushi.  And then she has the audacity to tell me her concoction of kiwi and soy sauce is absolutely delectable.  While I do enjoy dogging on her terrible, terrible takes (you cannot tell me raw salmon is good with oreo), many people take insulting others way too far.  People often replace common words like “stupid” or “dumb” for “SpEd” and “autistic”, which by themselves are normal terms in the correct context, but are often used as insults. Because apparently, it’s “shameful” to be someone with special needs. Does replacing “stupid” with a mental disability emphasize a point?  Another case of community names used in ...

  Thank you for your input, random user on Twitter who most definitely speaks for all Europeans!  Europeans on The Internet™ really seem to like disparaging Americans for not knowing geography. Whether it be for traveling or just in terms of general knowledge, no slack is cut when evaluating the “failures” of the educational system.  While I do agree that geography is an important topic to have knowledge on, there are a lot of factors feeding into this perception that aren’t necessarily our fault. For one, classes purely dedicated to learning geography are completely optional as well as few and far between. Taking Geography was an option in the ninth grade, but besides that, the few geography lessons we receive are scattered throughout other social studies classes. People on Reddit—which we all know is the most trustworthy source to receive objective facts from—state that Europeans simply can’t help it due to their “history with colonialism” (?). The subreddit by the na...

The “nonchalant” personality was popularized over the past year, originating on TikTok and spreading like wildfire across the United States and beyond. Being nonchalant in this day and age entails forgoing any outward expression of emotion, particularly in intense situations that would call for at least some form of emotion, to appear effortlessly cool, probably to impress someone one is interested in. Although there definitely are many nonchalant people who are truly indifferent to the whims of life, many of the nonchalant personas simply imitate the next best imitator to put on a mask of being cool. Despite there being nearly 4,000 emojis in Unicode 17.0, the most recent update to the total number of characters able to be typed on the Internet, modern Internet unironic emoji usage is limited to just a handful. Two emojis stand out in particular: the broken heart emoji (💔) and the wilted rose emoji (🥀), both primarily used to signify laughter or light-hearted mockery. For a period o...