1. Striped Dolphins 2026

 Ealier this morning, I saw a news article about the war between the US and Iran. According to google news, the US has reportedly shot, "two Iranian launchers" in an attempt to stop them from "shooting rockets armed with sea mines".  The Iranians lost 7 soldiers and civilians from these strikes. Although Iran relies on an authoritarian form of government and supports extremist groups, I think that we need to stop bombing them because we are killing too many civilians and wasting our money on problems that lie to Israel.   First off lets look at the numbers. According to google, the Iranian population has lost about 1,700 to 2,100 civilians ever since the US has attacked Iran. Additionally, thousands of people have been injured and families have been seperated. Tragically, their homes were also heavily impacted since there were many cases in which bombs were directed to many civilian neighborhoods. The people who are mostly impacted comes down to women and children, ...

  Picture Credit A few days ago, I was sitting with my friends in flex. We all had things that we needed to do, but we still had a long conversation. We started off by talking about school. My friend talked about her physics test that went horribly, and I talked about my chemistry test that went horribly. As we talked, we went through several topics until my friend talked about something that felt familiar.  She said that ever since her sister started attending middle school, her sister has had more of an attitude. She explained that her sister had gotten very argumentative and defied her parents constantly. Her sister wanted to attend singing lessons, but her parents suggested that she should get Chinese singing lessons. Her sister was completely against the idea of singing in Chinese, because she wanted to sing in English. Her sister got even more angry when her parents added that it would be an opportunity for her to improve her Chinese skills. My friend also added that her...

I recently stumbled upon this question when I was just going on about my day, 'Can colors go extinct?', and I just HAD to research about the topic (and by research I mean just google the same question with different wording fifty times and half heartedly read the first articles that shows up).  I got various answers that I thought would be interesting to share! The first answer I found originated from a reddit user that led me to look into human evolution. Did you know that there is a molecule called opsins that basically lets you see? All vertebrates have c-opsins but humans also have r-opsins. Anyway! The reddit user said something along the lines of ‘it's possible if the way we process light is different from two million years ago’ and as cool and awesome that sounds, that's not actually the answer. The actual answer is that colors cannot go extinct but there are shades that are no longer in production. The reasons usually being that the pigments contain toxins and b...

  Somethings about Myself - 26 August 2026 Hi, I’m Joseph and I want to share a bit about myself and also other things. I think that I am a pretty nice person and easy to talk to. I have a strange habit of being more outgoing and talkative when it comes to more formal activities like internships and formal events. It might just be because I’m usually tired and sleep deprived on weekdays and I really don't know this is part of my identity. About the things that I don’t know, the list just keeps going on and on. Part of my identity is being scared of not knowing something. I get scared when the slides from Chemistry in the Earth Systems Honors taught by Ms. Zheng turn into just letters scrambled around with a big arrow connecting them, I get scared when I can’t see the end of the in-n-out drive thru line because it's way too long, and I get scared when the school blocks Aeries usage during finals week which should “reduce” the stress. I categorize all these as a part of my iden...

Inspecting a person - particularly attempting to discover who they really are - has been the focus of countless soap operas, detective thrillers, and conversations the world over. One would think that after countless decades of experience, the human race would have discovered a methodical process with which we can understand one another. Alas, our insight of one another remains bleak and foggy in several areas, as 3 in 4 people report encountering stereotypes on a daily basis . How to remedy this global miscommunication? Perhaps we as a society can start with focusing on the simple details of one another; after all, as the popular phrase goes, “ the eyes are the windows to the soul ”.  Or are they? After all, if the way we currently view one another has perpetuated misunderstandings the world over, would not the quality of the windows we currently use have some contribution to our blurred vision? In fact, I would assert that while our eyes allow us to look out of our proverbial hom...

Does one aspect of who you are define yourself entirely? Can you be adequately described with just that aspect? It is incredibly likely that the response to this question is a resounding “NO” from most, and yet, with the advent of social media and the internet an alarming number of both historically oppressive and oppressed groups have started to discriminate against all members of groups they dislike. Thankfully, the problem has not been overwhelming, though its increase is depressing news nonetheless.  Essentialism–an idea that there is a specific quality of certain groups of people that cannot be altered, and these groups can be split up by specific criteria such as race, gender, nationality, etc.–is steadily growing. At first, this sort of categorization may seem harmless, but in actuality essentialism forms the basis of and maintains discrimination of these groups, determined based on who marks a specific aspect and who is marked by that aspect, enabling historical oppressio...