This past summer, every bookstore in New York City seemed to have a copy of Sofia Coppola’s photobook, a visual collection of all of her directing projects. Simply titled Archive, its sixty-five-dollar price tag deterred me from making an impulsive purchase, but its hot pink cover was too striking to pass by without at […]
Culture
declaration
Whispers of greatness Recently, ever increasingly, in questions asked, open LinkedIn tabs, and an intangible, broad malaise—taut strings that come down from the sky, tangled, untraceable, thin white thread that puppeteers us to work ever harder, to go to HL for the tenth time this week, that snakes its way through our skin, slithering along […]
C1914
How stand I, then, That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon […]
150 Years On, Tolstoy is Still Magical
One of the books that first comes to mind when you hear Leo Tolstoy’s name––and I’m here thinking of Anna Karenina––seems rather imposing. Anna Karenina. It’s a weighty book, for sure, just in terms of sheer size––you might even make a doorstop out of it. (I, for one, have never tried.) And weighty, too, in […]
Racial Stereotyping in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien
Imagination: the preeminent emblem of our humanity. Through it, we obtain the capacity to revise – or might I say, reimagine – the world around us; to create, alter, and improve that which is tangible and arcane. From J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis to George R. R. Martin and J. K. Rowling, authors of the fantasy […]
AI and The Future of Writing
In April 2022, I started reading articles about OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab, and its image-generating program, Dall-E (https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/). I kept reading and realized it is another version of GPT-3. GPT-3, or the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3, is a large language learning model: the AI model is given data to ‘train’ on to produce […]
The Bias Among Us In America’s Mainstream Media
Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives exposes the racial bias present in the news sources we trust the most. The New York Times. Washington Post. Wall Street Journal. These are our go-to sources for news. We use these news outlets to learn about current events and even cite them in our academic papers. Why? Because we trust them. […]
You Are What You Speak
I have always been an international student. Growing up in Hong Kong, I went to an international kindergarten, progressed to an international primary school, and then attended an international secondary school. Now, I am an international student at Bowdoin. Throughout it all, my proficiency in the English language has been my greatest asset. That is, […]
What to Do Post-Posting: Keeping Activism Actionable in the Age of Instagram
2020 seemed like the worst possible year to be stuck inside, a year limited to living vicariously through screens. From the national awakening surrounding pervasive systemic racism in the United States to the most important presidential election in recent history, this year brimmed with potential for grassroots-organized activism. While the COVID-19 pandemic did not prevent […]
Every Game Makes a Statement
Whether or not developers acknowledge it, politics and video games are deeply intertwined — for better or worse. The title of the mission, “No Russian,” rolls on my screen. I hold my breath while listening to the instructions given by Makharov, a Russian ultra-nationalist, who I am supposed to follow. I hold my disguise the […]