Often times, we have to deal with the pressure of stress and anxiety. What kind of ways can we all practice so we can limit this from occurring?
INTRODUCTION
Imagine a world without stress and anxiety. Feels pretty good, right? Unfortunately, many people in our world today still suffer from stress and anxiety. Unarguably, many people are acknowledged of the effects of stress and anxiety; however, most people rarely take action to solve the problems dealing with stress. This has to change! We all know that people in different parts of the world experience differently than others. Some people can feel stressed because of their workload, their unhealthy relationships with family and friends, or because they’re having a bad day. As you can see, stress and anxiety are usually created because of a person’s physical, emotional, and mental state. Experiences and particular situations that we encounter throughout our life contributes to the rise of stress and anxiety. Although there are no definite ways to cure stress, we can change our lifestyle, thus, limiting stress. Hello, my name is Dennis Lo, and today, I’ll be sharing some essential tips on how to reconcile ourselves from stress and anxiety.
WHAT’S THE TIME?
As a college student, there are moments that I feel stressed about something. Whether I have a test coming up or a competition that I have to prepare for, I feel stressed because I want to succeed in my work. This occurs a lot with everyone, and it’s pretty standard as well. We all want to reach our goals by being the best we can be. However, when there is a gap between your potential goals and what you can do, stress and anxiety occur. For example, a project has a deadline in a week; the person starts two days before the deadline. As seen here, the person begins to worry because he is afraid that he will not complete the project on time. His decision to procrastinate causes him to start panicking, which signals that he is stressed or feeling nervous. A tip to limit stress and anxiety from occurring is to always plan on your scheduling. As people often say, time is money, and we don’t want to feel stressed because we are losing time. Remember, we manage our scheduling and how much time we put into something. Consequently, the time you spend in the morning, afternoon, and night directly affects the time remaining.
HEALTHY SOLUTIONS!
There are lots of healthy solutions that can limit stress and anxiety. Some of the solutions that can strengthen your physical health include getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, and reducing caffeine and sugar consumption. Of course, you probably knew these methods, but ask yourself, do you use these methods often? Out of ten, probably only two people would say they practice these methods. You must regulate your body when you’re feeling stressed because when your body lacks the energy that’s needed throughout the day, you start getting tired, thus, causing you to feel stressed. Through my experiences, I believe exercising is one of those beneficial methods that a person can practice. Just like people say, physical activities play a crucial role in preventing stress. If you are one of those people who sit at home and watch television all day, I’ll advise you to go outside and take a walk or even ride a bicycle because these little practices would allow you to maintain a healthy body. Another beneficial solution is by talking to someone. You can release tension by talking to an adult or your friends. It’s imperative to speak to someone If you are falling into a perturbation. Make sure to tell someone what you’re upset or concerned about and consider visiting a therapist. Don’t let negative thoughts control you because sometimes we’re tested not to show our weaknesses but to discover our strengths!
SERENITY, NOT ANXIETY
I know it’s hard not to feel stressed or nervous at times; I get that. Sometimes, I would forget that there are solutions that can help. However, to limit stress, we must use different health practices. Make sure these practices suit your lifestyle. Don’t force yourself to do something you’re not comfortable in. As you get comfortable with yourself, you’ll eventually be able to reduce stress and anxiety. Lastly, do not believe the things you tell yourself when you are sad and alone. Be one with Serenity, Not Anxiety.
The following review contains spoilers… for a 15 year old movie.
Many films are spewed out by gargantuan studios to churn out some blockbuster cash, and others made by indie studios or standalone producers to fill a niche within the world of movies. Some are lucky and when released, shape the current zeitgeist.
Tokyo Drift is weird. Widely known for its title song, the movie falls in the mediocre fast and furious action flick category — it only gets a 3.5/5 because of the iconic Teriyaki Boyz banger.
Lucas Black as Sean Boswell stars as a seventeen year old reckless boy who cannot find himself out of trouble — driving cars? I don’t know, I feel like the substance of his run ins with the law is pretty stupid, but we are talking about Fast and Furious so not behind its league.
Nathalie Kelley takes on the role of Neela, the archetypical girl who’s stuck with the villain (Takashi) because of familial tragedy. I’ll give props to how they portray her relative power dynamic to other characters she interacts with, as she does intimidate and emanate a lot of confidence/experience (on cars, obviously). Also, Nathalie Kelley is a pretty cool person, fighting for indigenous rights in SoCal and beyond.
Brian Tee who is Takashi, known as DK (not in the end though), has one of the best intro scenes in my experience of watching cinema. I think it’s because of the opening beat to Tokyo Drift as he swiftly drives down ramps of a parking garage as hundreds of race goers watch. His role as a nephew of a Yakuza boss is quite refreshing, as although the skeleton of the plot line feels reused, the chassis of Tokyo and crime adds new flavor to the smoothly-paced movie.
Sung Kang reprises his role as Han, originally seen in Better Luck Tomorrow, who serves as The Mentor for Sean, albeit foolishly because of his faith put into Boswell’s amateur driving. I say that because Sean completely wrecks his prized ‘Mona Lisa’ 5 minutes after the first time they meet. He’s cool about it thought, which is interesting (his reasoning is he sees potential, which does work out in the end! After his death…)
I did notice, or at least it feels as if the camera shakiness differed in correlation to the skill of the driver when drifting. In the first race between Takashi and Sean, you can clearly see the bobbing of the shot as Sean careens and crashes into pillars in the garage, while the camera smoothly follows Takashi’s experienced drifts. On DK’s mountain *which has to be on purpose because Japan… D(onkey) K(ong)* Sean’s driving has considerably improved and so does the camera shot as it follows him duke it out with Takashi to stay in Tokyo.
Takashi dies? I have no clue, he just crashes off the mountain and Sean’s crew all cheers for him. The movie’s a little weird in that sense.
There’s also a Japanese character with a caricature-like British accent. I don’t know what to make of it, maybe Justin Lin knows why he sounded so cartoonish.
Not a bad movie overall, the song definitely leaped the movie past 3 stars just because I listen to it monthly.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed my review of the 3rd installment in the Fast and Furious franchise.
What if I told you that you don’t have to wait until you turn 60 years old to retire? What if I told you that it is possible to achieve a net worth of a few million dollars at age 35-40? I know it sounds wild, but it is not impossible if you set up multiple income streams and manage your money well. In today’s society, people work tirelessly to earn their salary until they reach the standard retirement age, which is around 62-65 in the United States. The main reasons why most people work for many years is for money and maybe for the satisfaction of working, but most people really just work for the money. Many are stuck in this sort of “rat race” where they use their salary from their job to pay off liabilities and payments, which continues to constantly cycle as people earn money from their salaries and spend for their discretionary or necessary needs, while getting into significant debt along the way. If you are a teenager reading this, does this lifestyle sound enjoyable for you? Do you want to work until you reach your retirement age and not have time to do what you actually like to do, while life just zooms away? I’m going to go ahead and answer that question for you: that answer should be no.
The dream life for teenagers is to have a lot of money so that they don’t have to work forever, and have time to do what they like to do, such as pursuing their hobbies, travelling, etc. This is definitely possible to achieve if you start learning essential finance concepts at a young age to help you become financially knowledgeable and responsible. In this blog post, I will go over the benefits of start your financial and investing journey at a young age. The earlier you start, the earlier you can become rich and achieve your financial goals.
1. Compound Interest is Powerful
One of the biggest reasons why experienced investors recommend to start investing as early as possible is because of the advantage of compound interest. In simple terms, compound interest is the interest earned on the interest. Here’s a great example from hermoney.com of how compound interest works in real life:
Sarah (20 years old): invests $1000 today and continually contributes $83 a month
Jim (30 years old): invests $1000 at 30 years old and continually contributes $83 a month
James: (40 years old): invests $1000 at 40 years old and continually contributes $83 a month
In this scenario, by age 70, Sarah would have $465,000, Jim would have $225,000, and James would have $105,000. As you can see, taking advantage of interest and contributing a small amount to investing at an earlier age can allow you to generate more money by the time you retire.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of compound interest, here’s a great article
2. Develop a Higher Risk Tolerance
When you’re younger, you don’t have much to lose, which is why starting to invest and learn about personal finance at a young age is optimal. You tend to have a relatively high risk tolerance when you’re younger as compared to adults. This does not mean to just gamble and invest into stocks or assets just for the thrill of it and lose all of your money. However, if you take the time to really learn these essential financial skills early, then you can start to experiment and begin developing important personal finance habits and investing skills. This becomes harder when you’re an adult because you have a lot more responsibilities and losing big could be devastating for you, especially if you don’t have any clue on what to do. Additionally, you will have more time to ride out the financial recessions, which can allow you to have some experience on how to overcome recessions and still make profits even when the economy is down. Starting early is an advantage because you have years to study the markets and refine your investing strategies, while also allowing you to develop a higher risk tolerance. With the amount of experience you get from learning through online courses, reading books, and actually putting in money to invest, you can become very experienced and you’ll start to see the various patterns and techniques.
3. Great Experience
If you really want to become an experienced and wealthy investor, you need to spend years investing and learning. A world-class painter does not magically become one after painting one piece of art, but spends a lot of time perfecting all the strokes. A soccer player, like Lionel Messi does not become a world-class player in a day, but puts in the effort to practice and improve themselves. This applies to investing as well as you need to put in the time to develop that experience. When you’re young you don’t have as much responsibilities except school assignments, which makes it the perfect time for you to learn investing and personal finance. If you wait until you’re older, than you may not have enough time to really practice and become experienced. Additionally, investing and learning personal finance allows you to also learn how to manage time effectively, especially when you have to allot time slots to invest and carry out your personal responsibilities. As an investor, you learn that consistency is key in order to generate wealth. You don’t want to solely focus all your time on investing, and likewise, you don’t want to solely focus on your personal responsibilities and jobs. That’s where time management comes in, and when you start young, you can develop that understanding earlier.
4. Early Retirement
Early retirement is a huge benefit of starting to invest early. It may be hard to think that far in advance into the future, but trust me, starting now at a young age will only benefit you in the future. And why wouldn’t anyone not want to retire early? Who wants to work for their entire lives? Early retirement allows one to spend quality time with your family or do what they love to do, such as travelling, reading, writing, and even investing. Don’t be one of those people that think it’s early to start because it’s never too early. Don’t wait for your friends to actually begin planning your future. You are the only one that can control what you want to do, so why not just do what you like to do? Why follow what others do? Have a determined mindset, set high goals, and start early to generate that wealth, allowing you to retire early and having a lot of time just for yourself.
Main Cast – Joe Taslim, Hiroyuki Sanada, Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson
The latest release of the Warner Brother’s 2021 plan, Mortal Kombat, is definitely a movie for fans of the franchise. To be warned, I am not deeply ingrained within the franchise or the lore, so my perspective will definitely not match one of a hardcore fan. However, I do have very minimal knowledge of the franchise, and I knew what to expect with this movie (Blood & Fights).
But I was still disappointed with the rest. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of fights and they are exactly what you came for if you are a fan of the franchise. However, save for a few scenes or a couple characters, most of the scenes when the music isn’t blaring or blood isn’t flying across the screen are just quite boring. A lot of the dialogue/acting is stilted and the characters, for the most part are quite shallow. Sub-Zero is really the only character that I liked, Kano is another fan-favorite but I found him a little over the top but that is accurate to the source material. The fights are great for the most part, I only wish we had more of the original theme playing when the characters fought, but the climax is cool at least.
In all, if you’re a fan of Mortal Kombat, you will most likely love this movie. If you’re not a fan but you love some great fight sequences, check your brain at the door and watch an hour and a half of some mindless fun. If blood isn’t your thing, definitely skip this one.
Main Cast – Kaylee Hottle, Alex Skarsgard, Julian Dennison, Rebecca Hall, Millie Bobby Brown, Brian Tyree Henry, other humans who cares, King Kong, Godzilla
This is a classic summer blockbuster, other than the fact it was released in the beginning of spring. Godzilla V Kong is exactly what you want it to be, a movie that is aware its audience is here for two Titans fighting and gives you as much action as possible.
Kong alongside a small crew of humans (Kaylee Hottle, Rebecca Hall, and Alex Skarsgard) take a trip to Hollow Earth to find a new power source, trying to use said power source to counter a newly enraged Godzilla. Meanwhile, another small bunch of humans (Millie Bobby Brown, Julian Dennison, Brian Tyree Henry) are exploring conspiracy theories about the King of the Monsters.
As always within these movies, the humans are here just to establish a plot and get out of the way. Each human in this movie is given the bare minimum in terms of characterization and motivation and that works because we have two gigantic Titans who we would much rather see instead. The only human that really shines in this movie is Kaylee Hottle who plays Jia – a little girl with a unique connection with Kong. She serves as the bridge between the humans and the Titan and easily has the most heartwarming scenes.
This movie is incredibly self aware of what people are here for, and I love that Kong is a big part of the plot so that he is almost always on screen. Like I said before, the human interference is as minimal as can be, so if you are here for the title, you will most certainly be satisfied. There are amazing action scenes and no shortcuts taken as we see Kong and Godzilla duke it out multiple times in various settings with tons of damage. The fight scenes almost felt like a 4D rollercoaster that you would see at Universal Studios, non-stop action as you’re whizzing by with either Godzilla or Kong roaring in the background. The pacing of the movie is quick and tight, with very minimal cutaways from one of the two Titans. Kong’s crew of humans are certainly much more important to the movie than Millie Bobby Brown’s crew, but the trio does crack jokes, ensuring the film isn’t a complete drag whenever we cut to them.
Watch this movie for a guaranteed wildly fun experience. There is no profound plot or impact, and there is nothing better than a movie that is self-aware. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think on Twitter (@MindExcite or @shishirn_03)!
Main Cast – Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavil, Ray Fisher, Erza Miller, Jason Momoa
Super sorry for the late release of the review! I know the Snyder Cut came out just about 2 weeks ago, but I wanted to re-watch the original Justice League before I wrote this review and that was much harder to also fit in. I will try my best to put out a Kong V Godzilla review this weekend!
By the way, I originally wanted to give this a 3.5 / 5, but I couldn’t find my half star symbol so I rounded up to 4. Do with that what you will, but this movie definitely isn’t too far off from a 4.
This will still be a mainly spoiler free review, but I will always recommend you to watch any movie with as little information about it before! I will include some minor spoilers as I do want to get into the differences between the cuts as well as a little bit of analysis. If you don’t want to read any of that, just know: if you liked the original Justice League, I think it is as close to a guarantee as I can give you that you will like this cut 10x more.
I rewatched the original Justice League after finishing the Snyder Cut, and it honestly isn’t even a fair comparison. I mean, it is exactly what you would expect if you took a 4 hour movie and turned it into a 2 hour one while attempting to keep a mostly similar plot. The Whedon Cut, the “Josstice League”, is mediocre, but some still enjoyed it (I would give it a 1.5/5). Well, the Snyder Cut legitimately improves upon it in every single possible facet. You would certainly hope a 4 hour runtime would result in that, and that is one of the possible issues that are present.
For some of the issues, the 4 hours isn’t horrific as the pacing of the movie is fine and it doesn’t considerably drag, but it still is 4 hours! Needless to say, the 4 hours certainly comes with its benefits with some needed characterization, some needed extra scenes that were incredibly helpful for the coherency of the plot, but it does also come with extra slow-motion because of course it does. The Snyder Cut still may feel a bit jumbled with the amount of storylines it flips between, but I will say it is incomparably better in comparison with the Josstice League. That movie, especially after watching the Snyder Cut, can be straight up incoherent at times. Other than the four hours and the slow-motion, another minor issue would still be the CGI. It is definitely improved from the Josstice League, but there are still some scenes that do stand out and not in the good way. The Snyder Cut is also definitely much more serious than the Josstice League. Whedon may be known for his attempts at humor, and while they definitely didn’t all work in his cut, I feel that Snyder may have removed some of his own jokes just to further distinguish between the two versions. There still is humor, but the Snyder Cut, with its 4:3 aspect ratio and darker color scheme (which definitely do grow on you and added to my personal experience) is objectively much more somber.
For the benefits, the Snyder Cut gives some needed, needed characterization and importance to characters that are merely accessories in the Josstice League. Of course, everyone’s talking about how much better Cyborg and the Flash have gotten, and this praise is well deserved. Cyborg goes from being a do-it-all Deus Ex Machina shallow character in the Josstice League to the glue of the Snyder Cut, and the Flash gets some actual characterization and a real intro/use of his powers rather than a random Russian family for him to save. However, I believe the character that benefitted the most and benefitted the movie the most would be the new and improved Steppenwolf. First, the most obvious improvement would be his character design himself, as I think he looks much cooler, but his character also gets some essential depth. He turns from, what I saw as, a blithering idiot with Mommy issues into a disgraced villain seeking redemption that we can actually relate to. Darkseid was one of the biggest marketing pulls for this movie, and while he is included and makes his presence felt, if you watch this cut solely for him, you will sadly be disappointed as he isn’t here for much. Also, the two chunks between the two films that I felt improved the most as a whole was the introduction of Wonder Woman and the climax. I obviously won’t get too much into the climax’s improvements as that is too many spoilers, but just know it is much better. However, I will delve into the improvements of the Wonder Woman intro a bit more since it is pretty close to the beginning of the movie and isn’t integral to the plot. The Snyder Cut’s introduction of Diana Prince is in every possible way superior, and I think the best comparison of scenes to show the differences in the two movies. Watching the two sequences back to back puts the Snyder Cut leagues ahead in my view, and it really makes some the Josstice League’s editing questionable. The fact that the Josstice League is exactly 2 hours long makes me feel like they were forced to be at that maximum runtime by the studio because the seconds to maybe minutes saved by shortening Wonder Woman’s introduction clearly made the final sequence worse. By the way, in my opinion, the first 5 minutes of Wonder Woman in the Snyder Cut is so much cooler than anything in WW84. (Small tangent, but as time has gone on, the more I have to grown dislike WW84. The plot of that movie, well, if I am allowed, I would like to officially change my score of that movie to like a 1, 1.25/5 from a 3/5 as the more I’ve sat with it, the more I pick it apart. It’s a fun time, but the more you think about it, yeesh. Just don’t rewatch it if you liked it the first time you watched it since you woke up early the first time and you were still a bit groggy for the entertainment.)
I hope I didn’t bore you guys too much with the longer, more comprehensive review, but I felt the 4 hour movie deserved it! Also, I had to do something a bit extra for taking two weeks to post this review. I will try to post Godzilla VS Kong this weekend for sure – it might just be a little delayed as I do want to rewatch the other Monsterverse movies first! Thanks for the patience and thanks for reading! Be sure to hit me up on Twitter (@shishirn_03) if you wanted to disagree, agree, or just talk about the Snyder Cut or other movies!
Main Cast – Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Melissa Leo, Terrance Howard, Viola Davis, Maria Bello
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Writer/ Screenplay: Aaron Guzikowski
Another break, another review! I wasn’t actually planning on writing a review this break, but I watched Prisoners and I was simply blown away and just had to come write a review. You may have noticed I added a little extra credits, namely the cinematographer and writer/screenplay and there’s a reason for that. The writing and screenplay in this movie is amazing, this story is an original and it is one of the best plots I’ve seen – the least I could do was include the writer’s credit here. As for the cinematographer, this movie is stunning, and it was no surprise when I saw Deakins’s name linked to this. Roger Deakins is quite possibly the best cinematographer today, and if you don’t believe me, search up his work and see for yourself how many notable films his name is attached to. It wouldn’t be crazy to find your favorite movie on that list. As always, this review is spoiler free, but the less you know the better. Just take my word for it and go watch this movie right now. If you’re not convinced, here’s a brief review:
Prisoners focuses on two families: The Dovers (Jackman and Bello) and The Birchs? Birches? – the last name is Birch (Howard and Davis) . Their daughters get kidnapped at a Thanksgiving dinner, and the rest of the movie is about the search for their kids, helped by Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal). I’ve unknowingly watched a couple Gyllenhaal movies in a row, and I’ve noticed I love him as an actor. He’s excellent in Zodiac, directed by David Fincher, as well, and he’s amazing in this. Every single actor in this movie does an amazing job, and Jackman/Gyllenhaal should’ve probably won or at least been nominated for an Oscar in this movie, but 2013 was just a stacked year for movies: https://oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2014. Paul Dano as one of the suspects is also incredible in his performance. But the star of this movie is the script, it is brilliantly written with every character being fleshed out. There’s really a ton of analysis that the viewer can do while watching this movie, and the movie requires the audience to put some things together on their own, which I love. There’s very little to zero direct exposition; instead, there’s tons of motifs, characterization, and deep themes.
This movie is heavy. It’s not easy to watch, and you might grimace or tense up quite a few times while watching, but that’s part of what makes it so good. I really don’t want to give up too much information about the movie, but I really don’t think you can go wrong with this movie. After you finish, if you’re like me, there’s tons for you to reflect on and pick apart. I found this analysis and breakdown really insightful and would definitely recommend a read if you’re curious for more: https://filmcolossus.com/prisoners-ending-themes-explained/ Obviously major spoiler warning with that breakdown.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you watched Prisoners and what you thought of it on my Twitter @shishirn_03 . Until next time!
A tale of two television networks forced to share the same airwaves.
I’ve always been interested in the operations of media networks. I’m not quite sure why, but it often leads to many late night searching through Wikipedia articles and the news sources attached. Last night, my interest was peaked and it led me down a rabbit-hole that created a juxtaposition between children’s movies like Toy Story and a 90 year old televangelist.
Yesterday, I was watching Jason Bourne, of all things, when an odd, adult swim-like bumper appeared on the screen. The bumper shared that “Freeform” (Disney-ABC’s network targeted at “becomers”, a self-coined term referring to young adults) would be off of the air tomorrow, returning February 1st, and could be viewed on Hulu or On Demand in the interim.
Naturally, this peaked my interest. Why would a network miss an entire day of programming? On paper, it sounds like an awful business move. However, in reality, it is a result of a quarter-of-a-century long contract that an astronomical amount of money from the largest media company in the world couldn’t resolve.
However, to truly understand this story, we have to go back to the origins of Freeform, and we aren’t just talking about ABC family.
In 1960, Army Veteran and Failed Lawyer, Pat Robertson, launched the Christian Bible Network. It would operate locally in the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Area for a decade and a half. However, Robertson had bigger plans for the network. In 1977, CBN became one of the first cable channels following the lead of Charles Dolan’s Home Box Office (more commonly known today as HBO) and Ted Turner’s WTCG (which would later become TBS).
This is important to note as, at this time Cable TV was not widely available, nor was it even widely demanded. Local networks provided content for free over the air, and cable television wasn’t developed enough to make the availability of HBO lucrative enough to encourage a widespread shift to cable. As a result, Robertson and his team would go door to door in Virginia, marketing cable boxes to Christians.
This feels like a good point to acknowledge my biases. I am a Christian, as my name might suggest, but have always been somewhat skeptical of televangelists. That being said, the intention of this article is not to bash Christian television. My only goal is to show the struggle between two networks, who could not be more polar opposites, being forced to share air time.
Anyway, Robertson’s move to cable proved to be successful. In fact, too successful. CBN was categorized as a non-profit in the United States, under the same classification as places of worship like churches and synagogues. However, in the 80’s, CBN’s non-profit status was beginning to be put into question, due to the massive success of the CBN cable network (CBN Family, as it had become known as the time).
In order to maintain the non-profit status, Robertson sold the network to his son, Timothy (via a new spin-off corporation, International Family Entertainment). The terms of this deal were very interesting, however, as it poised CBN as the producer of all original content produced for the network and was promised certain time slots for that programming. In essence, nothing had changed about the network, except that they had dropped CBN from their name to just become the Family Channel.
Under IFE’s ownership, however, they began introducing classic television shows during the late night block. The original creation of the popular “Nick-at-Nite” block is attributed to combatting this strategy.
At this point, IFE had pioneered a new type of network which aired children’s programming during the day and programming for adults in the evening. It was so successful that when IFE put the network up for sale in the late 90’s, News Corporation (20th Century Fox) hoped to compete against Nickelodeon and “Nick-at-Nite” by leveraging the Fox catalog of entertainment. Fox’s work would prove to be cut out for them, however, as a third network, Cartoon Network, would adopt this strategy and introduce a late night segment geared towards adults, creatively titled Adult Swim.
When word had gotten out about Fox’s hopes, competing bids would be placed by Viacom (owner of CBS and Nickelodeon) and The Walt Disney Company (owner of ABC and the Disney Channel). Fox would win the bidding process, but as we know, Disney would eventually win the war and get the Family Channel. After a 35% drop in viewership and $2.3 billion in debt, News Corp. would divest from the project and sell to Disney-ABC Television.
At this point, the network has been owned by four different media companies. However, because the terms of sale between CBN and IFE were binding to the network, each time that The Family Channel changed ownership, they were still forced to abide by the agreement that Robertson had made with his son all those years earlier.
So, let’s go back to present day for a second. When I first saw the “going off-the-air” bump on Freeform, I had no idea about all this history. Because of this, I wanted to know why they would be going off the air. Furthermore, I hoped to figure out what going off the air even looked like. In order to find out, I pulled out the television guide. Throughout the entire broadcast day, there was only one show one the lineup. The 700 Club.
Currently on its 41st season, The 700 Club is the longest-running syndicated television series on cable. The show is unlike any other I’ve seen. It features the news you could expect from a evening news show such as “Nightly News with Lester Holt”, mixed in with a style of punditry familiar to viewers of CNN and Fox News, as well as profile segments similar to ones on the “Today Show”, although each profile segment is presented as more of a Christian testimonial.
The 700 Club has expanded in the 41 years that they have been on the air, introducing “interactive segments” where viewers can connect with the anchors. However, the one thing that has remained the same for most of its history is the lead anchor, Pat Robertson.
Yes, you read that right. Pat Robertson, the ninety year old televangelist, has consistently hosted The 700 Club from the days of local television in Hampton Roads to today (with the exception of his presidential campaign in the lead up to the Election of 1988).
In case you’re wondering, Freeform didn’t provide any of that information to me. In fact, “The 700 Club” isn’t listed anywhere except for when on the television schedule. When this is the case, Freeform only lists two things. “The 700 Club” under the show title, and “Freeform Programming” under the episode title.
Freeform Television Schedule for Sunday, January 31st, 2021 as of the time of this article’s publication.
I found this particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. Chiefly, the decision to describe the show as “Freeform Programming” while actively trying to distance themselves from the show, and CBN as a whole.
At the beginning of 2016, ABC Family was rebranded to Freeform. This was the first time since the 80’s hadn’t carried the word “Family” as a part of its branding. This also dispelled rumors that a portion of CBN and IFE’s agreement required the word “Family” as a part of its branding. More importantly, however, it was the first time that we saw ABC actively attempting to make their network identity match up with their content.
While under the ABC name, the Family Channel saw radical changes shifting from a network of re-runs into a channel producing original content for young adults.
Don’t get me wrong. ABC Family still ran re-runs… a lot. However, they got a huge ratings boost from the production of two original series. Those were “Pretty Little Liars” and “The Fosters”. Both these shows caused a bit of an identity crisis for the network. One that would take until both shows were concluding their final seasons before they’d be able to fix it.
Pretty Little Liars and The Fosters were too very different shows, however they addressed similar topics. Relationships and Sex as well as Drugs and Alcohol scored both of these shows a TV-14 rating with a matching Common Sense Media rating of 14+. This classification, as well as the topics being addressed, are not exactly ones synonymous with a “family” channel.
Enter in Freeform. In multiple instances, Freeform made it clear that the rebrand was to get away from their family branding as possible. As they have pushed away from their former selves, specifically as the Trump presidency progressed, they have not been shying away in advocating for social justice. However, as the network developed into this home of liberal thought, the 700 Club became more aggressive in their advocacy for conservative policy.
Now, one might think that the answer to this is simple. Why don’t they just cancel or buy out that part of the contract? Well, turns out Disney have tried. More than once. Robertson turned down a $42 million offer to terminate the agreement.
This has caused some animosity between the two network, including multiple bumpers similar to those seen on paid programming expressing that the views of one network do not reflect those of the other.
Now, they are stuck at an impasse. With CBN holding the rights of the 11/10c block, Freeform can’t really develop any sort of late night programming. But the problem runs deeper than that.
So back to the schedule. We still don’t understand why they get an entire day of programming. Well, as I’m sure you can guess by now, it’s written in their agreement. CBN gets the entire day of programming on the final Sunday of January. That is a lot of air-time that Freeform is missing out on.
So, now this begs the question. What market is Freeform aimed towards? What family have all these networks been talking about? Under IFE, it was clear that the market was Christian families. However, ABC’s touting of “a new kind of family” left many confused. Especially when it was squished between old relics of televangelists.
So, what is Freeform supposed to do when they can’t get out of this agreement, but want to build an identity. My best guess is the nuclear option.
The Nuclear Option
Start fresh. Freeform isn’t a brand that has built a meaningful connection with its viewers yet. Heck, many still refer to it as ABC Family. So instead of trying to salvage this one, start anew.
What would this new network be called, I hear you ask. For that, I point you to Disney’s latest acquisition.
Under the Disney-21st Century Fox merger, Disney gained control of a few, very profitable networks. These were the FX Networks, and they had been trying to copy their business model for years.
Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the similarities.
FX provided a place for Fox to air their catalog of movies. That’s what Freeform did for Disney. FX produces original content that challenges the status quo and points out injustices in our society. That was the purpose of “The Fosters” and “Good Trouble” for Freeform. Every step of the way, Disney wanted to create their own FX. Yet, they failed. Now, Disney owns FX, and Freeform is in this weird spot of trying to figure out who they want to “become” — much like the target demographic of Freeform.
So, here is my prediction. Disney creates a new network. For the sake of this article, let’s call it “FXTeen”. They move “Good Trouble” and the “Pretty Little Liars” spin off to the new network, and shut down Freeform. That way, they can begin to start producing the content that they want to produce, develop the brand identity without being held back by these odd time restraints, and put it all under an umbrella which makes sense for the network they hope to be.
That solves all the issues except for one. Where does 25 Days of Christmas go? Well, in my research, I found that Disney had already begun expanding this franchise to ABC and Disney Channel, among others. I don’t think that was by accident either. Instead of it being a Christmas telethon for 25 days, Disney can spread out across all their networks showcasing Christmas movies for different ages. And, if they do happen to want to do a telethon, they always will have “FXMovies” or “FXM” to show it on.
Conclusion
This has to be one of the greatest legal oversights on behalf of Disney throughout their history. A fact that Freeform even acknowledges in those Adult Swim-style bumpers I addressed at the beginning of this article.
That being said, the fact that it has even gotten to this point is kind of ridiculous. CBN feels like a child on the playground whose been hogging the swing set, and justifying it by saying, “Well, I got here first.” That’s cool and all, but eventually when your forty-something, you gotta get off the swing set. If you don’t, then all the children are just going to go to a different playground. That may be nice for a while, and I think that is what we’ve seen for a long time with CBN and ABC Family/Freeform, but eventually, if there is only one old man playing on the swing set, the city might choose to divert their resources elsewhere. I think it’s only a matter of time before Disney does the same.
Main Cast – Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal
Well, it has been quite a while, but a little bit of a Christmas Miracle and we are back! I don’t know how often we will be uploading reviews during the hectic school year, so no promises. But with HBO Max’s latest announcement about movies for the 2021 year – expect a review for all of those movies pretty soon after they launch on the service! Starting with their first theatrical release on the streaming service, I’m giving you a quick, spoiler-free review of the latest DCEU movie, Wonder Woman 1984.
Any details I mention in this review are only details that have already been leaked in the main trailer for this movie; however, I went into this movie completely blind without a single trailer and I will always recommend that approach.
But if you’ve already seen the trailers and have fully bought into the hype for this sequel, you already know that Chris Pine’s returning in this movie and that Kristen Wiig has been casted to play Cheetah. Gadot stars throughout this movie, and Pine’s fish-out-of-water comedy may be cliché but it does work and his chemistry with Gadot is crucial for this movie. That sentiment can be applied to a lot of the movie actually – much of this movie is incredibly cliché and it can be predicted pretty early on. But the film does its job. It works well after the massive success of the first movie, and it establishes a standard of success the DCEU is yet to have in its chase of the MCU’s box office success. The fight sequences are enjoyable, and the visual effects for the most part are great too (one or two looked a little off to me, but that can be easily ignored and blamed on my projector.) Wiig as Cheetah is fine, but her character doesn’t exactly have the most revolutionary writing. She is the standard secondary antagonist, and this becomes quite obvious early on – her early interactions with Diana reminded me of Buddy as a kid in the Incredibles. The movie as a whole takes the natural progression in a hero’s story for a sequel, with some plot points reminding me of Spider-Man 2 (being compared to that movie however is not a bad thing.) Pascal as Maxwell Lord is again a good but cliched villain, and he does his job as the film’s primary antagonist well. His character is honestly a little forgettable in comparison to Cheetah, and his ending is a little lame. To be fair, I didn’t entirely like the ending for the villain in the first movie as well, so I wasn’t surprised at being a little disappointed here as well. For the fights, there are certainly some great sequences, but also expect dark, CGI – filled battles that make it almost impossible to see much of anything as well.
Overall, if you liked the first one, you’ll almost certainly be pleased with this one as Gadot and Pine still shine. It certainly isn’t the freshest material, but it is a great way to have some fun. There is one post credit scene with a little Easter Egg for Wonder Woman fans! Check it out and let me know what you think as a comment to this post or @shishirn_03 on Twitter!
See the world for the trees and the grass that is green.
See the world for the earth, the sky, the sea.
See the world for all the creatures hidden in the deep.
Now see the world for its pain;
Its hidden gore, blood stains, and mental strains.
See the black fog and the acid rains,
The extinction of the living and all the heat waves.
Life is not just about comfort and riches for personal gain,
But also the well being of all the living during human reign.
Our life is short yet our opportunities are limitless.
The world suffers for your actions, don’t forget it.
Continue your struggle for wealth and happiness,
But let the world live, don’t kill it.
This is a small poem I wrote many years ago about living life to the fullest, yet trying not to negatively impact the world. If I were to perform it out loud to people to inspire them to change, it would be considered spoken word poetry.
Spoken word poetry is a broad designation for poetry intended for performance. Though some spoken word poetry may also be published on the page, the genre has its roots in oral traditions and performance. Spoken word can encompass or contain elements of rap, hip-hop, storytelling, theater, and jazz, rock, blues, and folk music. Characterized by rhyme, repetition, improvisation, and word play, spoken word poems frequently refer to issues of social justice, politics, environment, race, and community. Related to slam poetry, spoken word may draw on music, sound, dance, or other kinds of performance to connect with audiences.
Here is an example of spoken word poetry:
Spoken word poetry is also the oldest form of poetry and, arguably, the most influential form of poetry. Because spoken word poetry strives to create change or inspire action among its audience, the fact that it combines elements of public speaking and poetry allows the speaker to better convey emotion and appeal to the audience than compared to a regular speech.
To be able to present an effective spoken word poem, you don’t need to be great at singing, but rather just have clarity of thought and speech. Being able to move your audience by comparing relative ideas and terms they connect with, being able to use metaphors, juxtapositions, and puns in a confident and flowing voice, and being able to present ideas without hurting people allows you to be an effective spoken word artist. In other words, being an effective poet and speaker makes you an effective spoken word artist.
Spoken word poetry had a decline in popularity centuries ago, however, it is making a slow comeback thanks to Walt Whitman in the late 1800s. Ever since it has been growing steadily, but over time, it has become a force of change to be reckoned with. From Andrea Gibson to Rudy Francisco and from Prince EA to Sarah Kay, we’ve seen a rise in spoken word poetry in the 21st century being used to stimulate social and environmental change. Seeing that Generation Z is becoming more and more interested in fixing the shortcomings and mistakes of generations past, I believe it’s safe to say that spoken word poetry is here to stay and will continue to grow exponentially in the times to come.
Hey everyone, Jaz here. It’s been a minute since I have written, but the start of 12th grade has been nothing short of crazy. The 2020-2021 school year started virtually 3 weeks ago, and it has been a unique experience for sure, as students figure out how to lay out their schedules to work with online classes. For me though, I go back to in-person instruction on tomorrow, and to say the least, I am anxious. Earlier, I was just excited to be back at Reedy, but with all the new procedures in place, I am curious to see how everything will play out.
Over at Countdown 2 Escape, we are currently under construction for our new room, which will be ready next week! The room is a phobia-based room, called “Tension”, and we have high hopes that as people return to school with confidence, we will be getting a lot more people coming through the new room over the next few months or so! Looking forward to seeing the escape come to life, and seeing business boom soon.
Cross Country is in full swing, and practices are going well. Our new coach arrived a few days ago, and he is really strict when it comes to logging miles, and takes running quite seriously. The meets are set to start in a few weeks, but since only 10 people can run the JV meet each week, my turn will likely come at a later meet. Anyhow, I’m glad to be spending time with friends running and making memories for my last year of high school.
Yahoo Finance is probably one of the greatest websites to research investments, and I highly recommend for those who haven’t used it to try it. Today’s blog post will primarily give you an overview on how to use Yahoo Finance and what statistics to look for on Yahoo Finance in order to make decisions. Before I begin, I’d like to apologize for staying inconsistent with my blog posts. These next few weeks, you may not see weekly Money Talk blog posts, and could be maybe once or twice a month. I am still trying to work out my schedule so bear with me these next few weeks. Let’s start today’s blog post!
Yahoo Finance Summary Page
In this blog post, I will primarily be analyzing the Apple Stock. Keep in mind that I am writing this blog post on August 28th, 2020, so the data might be different if you are reading this days after this posting. But you should be able to have a general understanding of what I look at when analyzing investments.
When you search up the Apple stock on Yahoo Finance, you will directly be taken to the summary page for this stock. On this page, you will find many relevant statistics and information, which will help you analyze the stock. It’s a good idea to start by looking at the market capitalization, which refers to the total dollar market value of a company’s outstanding shares of stock. A high market capitalization shows that the company is highly valued on the market. For Apple, the market capitalization is about 2.135 trillion dollars, showing that the company is highly valued on the open market. The next thing investors look at is the EPS, or the Earnings Per Share. The higher the earnings per share of a company, the better is its profitability. For Apple, the EPS is about 13.19. Another number investors look at is the PE Ratio, or the Price to Earnings Ratio. When you have a high P/E ratio (above 50), the company is overvalued and if the PE ratio is low (like less than 10), the company is undervalued. The PE Ratio for Apple is about 37.86, showing that it is decently valued. One last important number to look at is the volume. A higher volume indicates that more shares are being traded on the market. The higher the volume, the more you know that many people are buying and selling, which gives you an indication that some major movement might occur. There are other numbers on the first summary page which are good to look at, but the ones listed above are some of the important ones.
When you scroll down, you can find so many news articles which may inform you on what the company is doing or involved in. This can help you to assess whether the company is making good improvements or not. Towards the right of the page, you will find a section titled “Earnings.” You will see a chart with green, red, and blue circles. This information is useful as you can see whether the companies beat the earnings expectations from analysts or not. A green dot above the predicted EPS, means the company beat the expectations, whereas a red dot would indicate that the company did not beat expectations. A blue dot indicates that the company just met the expectations, while not underperforming or overperforming. Scrolling down even more, you will find a recommendation rating, which gives you some insight on what other analysts or investors think about the stock. Keep in mind, don’t blindly consider these ratings to make your investment decision, as this is just merely a suggestion whether you should buy or sell.
Chart Page
The next page I’d like to talk about is the chart page. Here, you can find the price movements of the stock, which can let you know whether the stock is following a bullish pattern or bearish pattern. On this page, you can analyze price charts to find patterns and future price movements through technical analysis, which I will be explaining in another blog post. There are so many different technical indicators you can use, such as MACD, RSI, Bollinger Bands, and more. However, if you don’t know how to use them, DON’T USE THEM! Otherwise you might make an incorrect prediction for the stock, which could cause you to lose money. If you don’t know much about technical analysis, do not worry. I will be making a blog post on this analysis soon, so stay tuned!
Conversations Page
On the conversations page, you have access to a discussion board where many investors write about what they think about the stock, and whether they believe the price of the stock will rise or fall. Keep in mind, however, that many pump and dump schemes are promoted on this page, which are schemes in which groups of investors artificially try to pump the price of a stock by getting other investors to buy them, and then quickly “dump” all of their stocks once they get a decent profit. You may lose a lot of money through these schemes, so be careful and don’t blindly follow what others say on that. One good part of the conversations page is that you will be able to find other stocks that investors talk about. This will allow you to get introduced to other stocks, which could potentially rise over time. It’s a nice idea to go on to the conversiations page to see what others predict, but don’t fully trust whatever the other investors say.
Financials Page
On the financials page, you will have access to company financial data. You will be able to find the 3 main financial reports, such as the income statement, balance sheet, and the cash flow statement. I discussed some of these financial reports in the Fundamental Analysis Essentials blog post. Some key numbers to look at in the income statement is the operating expenses, revenue, and net income. See if there’s a trend in these numbers. For example, if the net income and revenue is consistently increasing and if the operating expenses are stable without any fluctuations, it’s a good indication that the company is doing well. On the balance sheet, if the assets are increasing and the liabilities are stable without any serious fluctuations, it’s a good indication that the company is building assets, while effectively maintaining their liabilities. You can change the setting to get the financial data in terms of quarterly reports or annual reports, so you can conduct further analysis.
Holders Page
In the holders page, you will find data that shows you how many institutional investors have shares in the company. If there are a lot of institutional holders, that means many experienced investors believe the company is doing good and will be a decent investment for the future. For the Apple stock in particular, the major institutions that have shares in the company include Vanguard, Berkshire Hathaway, and State Street Corporation, which are some big institutions. This indicates that many institutional investors have a good feeling about the company, and believe it would make a wise investment for the future. Additionally, you can find the mutual fund holders as well, which shows the mutual fund companies that have shares in the company you are analyzing. For Apple, the major mutual funds that have shares of Apple include the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and the Parnassus Endeavor Fund. When analyzing a stock that you have in mind, it’s always a good idea to check out the holders page in order to see whether there is institutional buying or mutual fund investing going on with the stock.
Other Pages
Obviously there are other pages that I did not go over, such as the profile page (which gives you information about company management), statistics page (which give you other advanced fundamental analysis numbers), and the options page (which give you information on the call and put orders). If you are just beginning to invest, I recommend to just analyze the Yahoo Finance pages that I mentioned above, as when you start to look through a lot of the pages, you will be overwhelmed and it will be hard for you to make an investment decision. However, if you are advanced at investing in stocks, then check out some of the other pages I didn’t mention to research and analyze the stock even further.
As you can see, Yahoo Finance is a great website to conduct thorough research on investment decisions. I primarily use Yahoo Finance to analyze stocks and make watchlists so that I can keep track of price movements for stocks that I think are good. Making watchlists is a good way to stay updated on price movements of stocks you really like or feel will do good in the future. If you get the Yahoo Finance app and turn on notifications, you will get alerts if there is any major price movements on any of the stocks on your watchlist or if there is any news related to the companies you have placed in your watchlist. I think this is a good point to conclude this blog post. I hope you were able to learn about Yahoo Finance, and the many advantages it contains when it comes to stock investment research. Thanks again for reading this blog post, and hope to see you in the next one!
“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional”
~Roger crawford
Introduction
A deck of cards. The magician pulls out his prized possession for entertaining the crowd. He begins by showing the crowd that all the cards are blank, both front and back. Then with a fancy magical gesture and a wave of the hand, the cards slowly start appearing one by one. First the clubs, then hearts. Spades then Diamonds. All 52 cards. The audience gasps in shock and excitement. What a performance, am I right?
Hey everyone! My name is Abhinav Harihar and for my first blog post I thought I’d talk about how I got into magic and what I find appealing about it. For starters, those of you who haven’t picked up a deck of cards, what are you doing? It has changed my life completely and my passion for it continues to grow. What you are about to read below is very personal and if you’re not that emotional type of guy or girl I would just stop reading here because believe it or not, my magical journey has an emotional backstory to it.
Moving
Don’t we all dread the thought of moving? It all started 8th grade, when I had to move to India. The fact that we have to make new friends, adapt to a completely new environment and get accustomed to the lifestyle. I know I know, you have probably heard numerous sob stories about people moving and how it has “changed” their life, but I am not here to bore you with a suspenseful introduction, but rather explain it in my approach. My story is rather interesting when put into perspective now that I am looking back at my past experiences. I had many great experiences coupled with hurdles, but that’s like any other teenager, am I right? We all go through our share of struggles, but we learn from it. Okay, okay this isn’t some college essay so let’s get straight to the story.
Why did I get into Magic?
There are two main reasons why I got into magic. It’s not like that typical “inspirational” story, but bad things did happen. When I first went to school in India people viewed me as an outsider and started pushing me away. As a result, going outside was not an option because you did not have anyone to play with. So what’s the next reasonable option? That’s right you probably guessed it. Sitting in your room, bored and staring at the wall doing absolutely nothing. What a wonderful way to spend your Saturday afternoon. I’m kidding. Not about the part of staying in my room because that’s pretty much what happened to me. If you couldn’t tell already, I am a sarcastic type of guy and I’d like to think I have some humor in me. Anyways, So what did I do? I watched Minecraft videos and played video games. Then one day, I came across this show called America’s Got Talent. It’s pretty popular and it’s kinda sad if you don’t know it. Anyhow, I digress. That was the day I saw what would be my favorite magician and inspiration to start magic. His name you ask?
Shin Lim
Shin Lim. He was my idol. My everything. As soon as I saw him performing, my neurons fired up with excitement and I wanted to learn magic. He was the second reason I started, the first being having all the time in the world as you are all alone. If you haven’t seen him, go right now and search him up. He is literally one of the best magicians out there on this planet. Actually, first finish up reading my blog. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time. You all are busy and I thank you for taking your time to read this. All right getting back on track. I slowly started watching his cardistry and sleight of hand videos and day by day I made incredible progress. I would always have my deck of cards on me. Eating. Studying. You name it. My cards were like a part of me.
My Struggles and Final Thoughts
Then came another struggle. Public speaking and actually performing. You may have all the skills in the world, but if you can’t present it. There is no point. Unfortunately for me, I was that person. I was more of an introvert and I have always been. I hated interacting with people and starting conversations. What will they think of me? What if I embarrass myself? These would be the thoughts going through my head. But, like anything it all comes with practice. I started performing with my sister and slowly I built up my audience until I was able to perform in front of a stage. I am still frightened by the fact of speaking and performing. What if I mess up? What happens now? But, after numerous mess ups I have learned to deal with situations in different ways and overcome my nervousness. But yea, that’s all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed my journey to becoming a magician and hope it inspired you. I know in the beginning I said, this wasn’t meant to be formal and it was just for fun, but in all seriousness I have learned so much and overcame many struggles. I hope you all were in some way intrigued and want to learn something new. Hocus Pocus. I’ll see you on the flip side! Curtains closed.
“The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain.”
Reading was my first love. Actually, second (the first was eating). But, you get what I mean. Over the seventeen years I’ve been alive, I’ve read hundreds of books. From those books, I’ve amassed so much knowledge and perspective. I’ve always been a person eager to share what I know or think, and that applies to books as well. Every time I read a good book (or a not-so-good book), I scramble to tell someone about it. More often than not, I have to contain my excitement and my thoughts because a lot of the people I surround myself with are too busy to read books. So, here I am, typing away at a computer to share my excitement and thoughts about a book to the people of the Internet.
The book that I want to talk- or rave– about is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. One of my friends recommended it to me a couple of months ago, and over the summer, I decided to take a break from binging TV shows to sit down and read it.
I’ll be honest. When my friend mentioned the title, I thought it would be a book about the philosopher Aristotle and the painter Dante leaping through time to discover the secrets of the universe. So, imagine my surprise when I found out that it wasn’t near anywhere fantastical as that. I’ll have to concede that it was a pleasant surprise, because this book turned out to be one of the best books I’ve ever read (and that’s saying a lot).
It centers on two main characters: Aristotle (who goes by Ari) and Dante. They’re two teenage boys growing up in 1980s El Paso, Texas. You wouldn’t think that these two would grow to become friends. Ari is a loner who is angry, but doesn’t know why. Dante is a know-it-all who has a unique way of seeing the world. During their initial meeting at a swimming pool, they bond over their unusual names. From then on, they become friends, the kind of friends that are inseparable. This book chronicles their friendship through several ups and downs: an accident, experiments, moving, death and a revelation. Through all these things, they manage to stick together for years and learn things about themselves and the universe, as Ari says.
Rereading that last paragraph, I realise that the book probably doesn’t sound too interesting. You’re probably thinking it’s just another coming-of-age novel. And yes, it is. But, it’s so much more. The author of this book, Benjamin Alire Saenz, writes in such a way that you feel like you’re reading poetry- poetry that you can understand. I couldn’t put this book down; it was relatable in a way I didn’t think it would be. You’re always aware that this is a teenager’s point of view. I saw so much of myself in the characters: the way they thought, their senses of humour, how they passed a lazy summer afternoon. Every friend I know who has read this book has said the same.
But, the thing I loved most about this book is how beautifully it verbalised how teenagers feel or think or experience. The teenage mentality is one that is adopted when we feel we don’t know who we are and is relinquished when we begin to find those answers. Seeing Ari do that over the course of this book and grow as a character was so validating and moving. For those of you going through a time where you feel a little lost, a little heartbroken, or a little bittersweet, you’ll love this book. Even for those of you who don’t, I think you’ll love it too.
Hello reader! I just finished my online classes for the day. Pretty short classes with a good amount of content. For many of us, this is our daily life. I actually find online learning (through zoom meetings, not just homework) a little more challenging especially with trying to take notes or find time to do so.
Extracurricular activities seem to be sliced in time allocation and hopefully it will push us to have better time management with a busy work schedule (This comes with expectations on modern societal functions and systems like schooling). Becoming Renaissance people through high-school is a double edged sword.
I kind of gave up on my Native American Series articles and actually postponed them for way too long, stopping my writing and slowly it came to the point of withdrawing from the commitment. It was way too much research into textbooks and online google scholarly articles so I will try to rejuvenate it when I get my act together.
I have something for my regular post tomorrow so I can get back on track.
Have you ever wondered what is significant about colors and why do they exist? Of course, to most people in the world today, color is just normality This is because it exists in our eyesight every day. However, color poses a significant impact on our lives. One may not think about it, but colors impact the way we get dressed, the appearance in our home, the way people perceive nature, and even the way we feel and think. Think about the last time you see a color, how does it make you feel? Does it make you happy, sad, or angry? What is the difference between warm and cool colors? As you can see, the aspect of colors is not as simple as it seems to be as it shapes up people’s emotions. So, why do we feel the way we do about colors? Hello, my name is Dennis Lo, and today, I’ll be talking about colors, specifically to how it influences a person’s feelings and thinking.
How does Color influence the way we see things?
If you ever visit national parks, you may have seen different beautiful sights. You would see a beautiful blue sky, vibrant sunlight that reveals an alluring green color of grass, or even mountains and hills. Colors influence our feelings by capturing the images we see in our eyes. We admire the scenery and that’s why we pull out our camera for a picture. We pull out our camera because that scene is worth capturing. These types of actions all have to do with the influence in colors. Colors affect our emotions to something. When a person asked, “what’s your favorite color,” we all have our preference for colors. Some may say pink, blue, red, or green and that’s because these colors make them feel happy and delighted. These are known as positive emotions of colors. Of course, there are also negative emotions to colors. For example, some people may not like the color black because it signifies horror, fear, and aggression. Some people may not like the color red because it typically refers to the warning and blood. Each person perceives colors differently and that’s why the emotions attached to colors are different.
Why is color significant?
Human eyes can see about 10 million different colors. But why does it matter to you? To answer this question, let’s dive back to how colors can affect our lives. Color is significant not only because it exists in our eyes, but because there are lots of things that have to deal with colors. For example, when you pick what color of shirt, pants, socks, and shoes to wear, a wrong combination of colors can lead to a horrifying physical appearance. Indubitably, a wrong combination of colors in clothing can cause a loss of self-confidence, especially in a social society. The significance of colors lies in emotions and behaviors. Everyone knows there’s a separation of warm and cool colors. Warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow can stimulate feelings of excitement, joy, happiness, and energy. Whereas, cool colors such as green, blue, and purple can stimulate feelings of sadness and calm. Understanding these types of colors can potentially improve your lifestyle, understand your personality, and enhance your creative skills.
Colors in our eyes
Colors are a beautiful aspect that emerges in our eyes. When you see colors, try to recall your emotion to it. Do you feel happy, sad, nervous, or angry? To many people, colors may seem insignificant, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Main Cast – Karl Urban, Anthony Starr, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty
Well, hello guys for my first ever series review! I have been absolutely enthralled with this first season of The Boys and with season 2 right around the corner; I figured this would be the perfect debut for a show review! I was a little confused on who to put for the director credit, but I think program creator should work just fine. Also, I was actually going to review this superhero show with Akshay, but he was super (sorry, had to) slammed and he couldn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll still try to bring you all the fire of a two person review with the wit and charm of one (barely) person.
This review will still be spoiler free, in case you haven’t seen this masterpiece yet, but do hurry because as I said, Season 2 is right around the corner!
This is a superhero show, but let me make something very clear. This is not the MCU; this is not a lighthearted happy time. This is quite possibly one of the darkest, most gruesome shows or things I have ever watched, but I loved it. This depicts superheroes with realism, showing how human behavior would truly behave when given powers. For this entire thing to work, for the film show to have any substance, the atmosphere when these characters show up must be perfectly crafted. And it is. When you see The Homelander(Anthony Starr) on screen, it is a terrifying sight to behold. This film show made me re-evaluate my love for Superman because if a man like that truly existed: we wouldn’t be grateful, we would be terrified. Next, Hughie is our main protagonist (Jack Quaid), the character who is the audience, learning the dark details for the first time just like us. He has the biggest arc throughout this show and Quaid does a great job of pulling this awkward, timid character off. Starlight (Erin Moriarty) plays the new, pure superhero who truly wants to do good, and while her character may not have too much of an arc, it does have depth. The realizations she has throughout the series truly cause her entire world to fall apart, numerous times, and you feel for her probably the most. She’s maybe the one character who does little to no evil. Finally, (this is a TV show and there are tons of “main characters” but this would go on for too long if I did each of them so this is the quick summary) my favorite on this show is Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher. Karl Urban is delightfully dark, brooding, and aggressive as Butcher, and if they ever reboot the Wolverine franchise, his name should be the first words written on the page. He’s probably the funniest character in this show, but again, this is not MCU humor. This is dark humor or banter among grave conversations.
As I said, there are plenty more characters that carry plenty of weight as well in this show, but I simply cannot list them all unless you want me to write another Wikipedia page for this show. With very limited experience in comics in general and none in The Boys comics, I can safely say I have yet to see this type of plot before. This isn’t the superhero genre we’re accustomed to seeing make too much money at the box office. This is something completely original (for me at least, I think Watchmen or maybe Heroes have a somewhat similar premise, but I’ve never seen them, so I can’t comment) and completely riveting. I was hooked from episode 1, and I binged it as fast as I could without failing my school assignments (god bless three day weekends).
If you like action, dark/gritty characters, and in a sense a dystopian future (hidden within a seemingly Utopian world ), this show is definitely for you. If you can’t stomach violence or graphic fights, maybe skip this one and watch Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Office instead.
*each time film is written is a documented occasion that I forgot I’m not writing another movie review.
Main Cast – Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, Scarlett Johannson, Taika Waititi
Hey guys! If you couldn’t tell, a lot of our writers have become very busy now that school has once again started. Don’t worry! We are still planning to continue to give you fresh, weekly content, but you might have to be a little more flexible with schedules and lengths. This review for example, will most definitely be shorter than ones you’re accustomed to reading from me. I posted two last week for a reason!
For this week, I’m reviewing one of my favorite films of last year, JoJo Rabbit. For a quick synopsis, Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) is a die hard Nazi fanatic with Adolf Hitler! (Taika Waititi) as his imaginary friend. He goes home one day and finds that his mother (Scarlett Johannson) has volunteered to help hide Elsa Korr (Thomasin McKenzie), a teenage Jewish girl, in their house, and the rest of the movie is the growth of Jojo as the ideals he has been taught fight with the reality in front of him.
This movie is brilliant. The cast is perfect, with Roman and Thomasin shining and tugging at your heartstrings. There is pinpoint execution here, aptly navigating the lines of teaching a message and dark humor/satire. Some may be caught off guard by the presence of Adolf Hitler played by Taika Waititi of Jewish descent, but I believed it works perfectly. Through and through, each element of this movie is excellent, from cast to direction to cinematography. The plot may be thin at times, but the cast more than makes up for it and ensures you will have a great time. I don’t want to say too much more other than to wholeheartedly recommend for you to go watch Jojo Rabbit and get ready to fall in love with Jojo, Elsa, and the rest of the crew.
It has been a little more than a week since I last wrote. Unfortunately, I was not able to keep up with my own schedule of writing on my series in the past too weeks oops, but I am going to write the next to editions. I value the importance of getting my research right and my story straight than publishing weekly so hopefully that serves as a good reason.
School started and that was interesting and very holistically mundane. Our teachers seemed very personable and friendly for an online class and overpowered emotions of disconnection with teachers from other schools.
Our AcDec team is planning big this year. It is more like a year of redemption for me so I can bury the hatchet of falling short so far so it means a lot to go all out in this “last hurrah.”
Taking my life, with the majority revolving around busy work, as something to treasure has come to me quickly as the summer rolled on. It feels sort of comforting that I am at home for now, and while it seems life a safe space for me, we are in a pandemic.
I feel like my headspace is improving from the hot summer and mildly bizarre times I encountered and if life was to be treated like a videogame I feel like my xp bar went up :). I’ll see ya’ll next week.
Jaswin here for my last “What’s Going On” post of summer break 2020, and boy am I anxious. I think beyond anything else, I am just looking forward to whatever it is the future holds, and I am keen to see how everything will pan out for the rest of the year. You have probably heard this quite a lot lately, but I am going to reiterate: This school year is not going to same. It just can’t. Personally, I think Frisco ISD has the right idea with starting off the year with virtual learning, but as far as the September 3rd in-person starting date, I don’t really see how that would scientifically help anything in relation to Covid-19. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to getting my schedule soon, and seeing what classes I have with my friends as this last high school chapter begins.
At Countdown 2 Escape, things will be slowing down for me, even though school will be taking place virtually. The public will get busier as well, so I don’t know how our customer inflow will be affected. I am still looking forward to working as much as I can, and opening up our new room at C2E!
Cross Country practice began bright and early on Monday, and it was awesome to see friends that I had not seen for many months. With XC in full swing, I am considering playing soccer again this year. It’s my last year in high school, and I’ve always wanted to play a game of high school soccer(which I was unable to do in 9th grade due to an injury). Time will tell if I will be able to try out for the team.
Anyways, that’s all I have for right now. Things are going to get busy very soon, and we all will be involved in the regular 9-5 student life that we missed for 6 months. Catch y’all later!
Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to the Money Talk blog page. Today’s blog post will cover the basic concepts you need to keep in mind when you conduct fundamental analysis of companies to make an investment decision on whether you should buy a certain stock or not. I know in my What’s Going On blog post last week I hinted at a potential Billionaire Success Story series, but once I began my research and information compilation, I found it was taking a lot of time. I’m not shutting down the idea entirely, but I plan to postpone that series to a later time when I actually have some time to sit down and conduct research. The series that I will be starting for the next few weeks will be about stocks and how to choose the right stock investments that will potentially make you a lot of money. Let’s get started by talking about fundamental analysis, which is one of the two most used stock analysis techniques by investors.
Financial Reports
One of the main components to conduct thorough fundamental analysis of a company is by reading the company financial reports. Many companies release their financial reports on a quarterly and annual basis, which allow investors to evaluate the company’s financial health and whether it is making enough sales, revenue, and incomes. There are primarily 3 financial reports investors look at: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Let’s take a look at each financial report and see how these 3 financial reports will give you a full picture at a company’s financial health and stability.
Income Statement: The income statement shows you how profitable your business was over an accounting period, such as a month, quarter, or year. Investors read the income statement to understand how much revenue the company made, and how much they spent with their expenses. The income statement reports change in retained earnings that occurred during the period as a result of revenues, expenses, gains, and losses. Investors primarily look at the net income to see if the company income is increasing or decreasing. Additionally, investors look at the operating expenses to determine whether the company is paying too much to produce their products or conduct their business operations. Lastly, investors look at the revenue to see if the business is effectively able to sell their products and evaluate whether the revenue is consistently increasing or decreasing.
Balance Sheet: The balance sheet presents the financial position of a company with organized list of assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity at a point in time. As I explained in the Assets vs Liabilities article, assets add value to a business, while liabilities subtract from it. It is important to identify whether the company of interest that you are analyzing is accumulating assets which generate value for the company or is accumulating liabilities, which is problematic for the company. There is one main formula used in the balance sheet, known as the Accounting Equation or Balance Sheet Equation, which is one of the most important accounting formulas. This equation states that Assets = Liabilities + Equity. Equity refers to the owner’s value in an asset or group of assets. Let’s take an example. Let’s say, Company X has a total asset value of $1,000, with a debt of $900. In this example, the owner’s value in the assets is $100, representing the company’s equity.
Cash Flow Statement:The last major financial statement or report is the cash flow statement. The cash flow statement tells you how much cash entered and left your business over a particular time period. The cash flow statement has 3 parts: cash flow from operations, cash flow from investing, and cash flow from financing.
Cash Flow from Operation Activities: This is what you make and spend in the normal course of doing business. It essentially reflects how much cash is generated from a company’s products or services
Cash Flow from Investing Activities: this is the money the company invests into the company, such as purchasing equipment, machinery, plants, or factories.
Cash Flow from Financing Activities: This section of the cash flow statement focuses on how a company raises money and pays it back to investors through capital markets. These activities include paying cash dividends, adding or changing loans, or issuing and selling more stock. The cash flow from financing activities section measures the flow of cash between a firm and its owners and creditors.
Now the question you may be wondering is where can you find these financial reports for a specific company? Great question! I will be talking about SEC Filings next.
SEC Filings
The SEC filing is a financial statement or other formal document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. So let’s say you are trying to find the financial reports for Tesla, for example. All you have to do is search up “Tesla SEC Filings” and click on the first link, which will take you to the SEC filings for Tesla. Do this same Google search for any other company of your choice. Once you get here, you may see a ton of financial from different years and quarters. I recommend looking at the most latest date of filing. So if you are analyzing a company’s reports on July, then look at the SEC filings for the most latest month, like April, May, or June. Now let’s talk about the different types of reports you will see.
10K: gives you a detailed overview of the company’s performance for the year; you will be able to find the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, any company acquisition information, risk factors, and anything the company went through for that specific year.
10Q: gives you a detailed overview of the company’s performance for a specific quarter; you will be able to find the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, any company acquisition information, risk factors, and anything the company went through for that specific quarter; basically gives you the same information as the 10K
8K: gives you any updates or recent events that occured to the company, such as a board of directors election, bankruptcy filings, or changes in the fiscal year.
Proxy Statements: includes the company management information, overall business health, senior-level loan information, stock compensation information, and other relevant details that investors consider.
That’s all for today’s blog post. I know that this was a long blog post, and I apologize for that. But I hope that this post allowed you to learn more about the different types of financial reports and where you can find them. I’ll probably be making another blog post in addition to this one next week or in the coming weeks, because I wasn’t able to cover another important component of fundamental analysis. Stay tuned! Thanks again for reading, and hope you tune in for next week’s Money Talk blog post.
Main Cast – Seth Rogen, Seth Rogen, Seth , Sarah Snook
For today’s second review, I’ll be reviewing the newest film of 2020, An American Pickle. Released August 6 on HBO Max, the movie stars Seth Rogen in a double role. Got carried away with the number of Seth Rogens up there…
This movie is not at all a serious film. Herschell Greenbaum is a poor immigrant, working his way up. He moves from his poor country plagued by attacks from the Cossacks to the United States of America, where he becomes a pickle factory worker. He falls into brine and becomes preserved for 100 years, and to quote the filim, “The science there is very good and makes a lot of sense.” He goes on to meet his great-great-grandson, Ben Greenbaum, and the rest of the movie is about their interactions and differing lifestyles.
If you didn’t believe me the first time, you can clearly see, this film is not at all meant to be serious or realistic. It is merely just a funny and, surprisingly, wholesome movie. I thought this film’s strongest points were the interactions between the two Seth Rogens, who I thought did a fantastic job of expanding his acting range. The second half of this film goes a bit far and whimsical with a lot of commentary about various societal issues today. It jumps between that commentary pretty quickly, but for the most part, it works well enough to get a quick laugh.
Overall, this movie works if you don’t expect too much. If you go in looking for a laugh and a way to spend 90 minutes, you won’t be disappointed. Just don’t set your expectations too high, and you’ll have a good time.
Main Cast – Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe, Angourie Rice, Margaret Qualley
Today, I’ll be posting two reviews, so they’ll both be pretty short in comparison to that Midway Review. The first review will be an overlooked film from 2016, The Nice Guys, and the second will be the latest film of 2020, An American Pickle.
“World’s worst detective, huh?”
This movie is set in 1977, and it is a buddy cop comedy/ mystery thriller. I actually liked the plot of this film; I thought it was a good enough mystery to stand on its own, but the film’s strongest point has to be the chemistry of Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. These two are perfect together, and they make this film one of my favorite movies in recent memory. Pretty much every joke lands perfectly in this film, and Gosling shines with his comedic timing. I loved his performance and every minor detail: one that stood out to me the second time I watched would be the elevator sequence. When you get there, just stare at Gosling and you’ll see what I mean. Additionally, the hallucination sequence is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
The movie also takes advantage of its setting, and it uses some words and makes some jokes that are considered taboo today. Both instances that I can remember, the joke is exaggerated and the writers emphasize that they know what they’re doing. Credit must also be given to the director Shane Black because this movie looks pretty nice, and his skill of writing buddy comedies from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang certainly helped as well.
If you’re looking for a movie to watch this weekend, make sure to check out The Nice Guys, one of 2016’s best films and certainly the most overlooked one.
Hey yall! This will be a bit more topical of a what’s going on post for both our authors and a lot of our readers. I’ll quickly get out my personal life events that have happened in the past week. Monday was Raksha Bandhan, an important Hindu holiday celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters, appreciating the symbol of an amulet protecting the brother, while the brother gifts her and gives potential care. It is quite traditional and while I have no biological sister I share a strong bond with my cousin in India who gives the cutest and most creative rakhis.
Unfortunately on Tuesday, an explosion with estimates reaching 2.75kT (1000 tons) of ammonium nitrate occurred in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. It was absolutely horrific to see on video, which is something that has been prevalent in such disasters due to the advent of recording technology, and further spread through the internet with immediate speculation (which is sad to see but that is how people work) on different groups. I would rather wait than start accusing people, I see where they are coming from but the figures in the public pointing fingers isn’t helping.
The more topical subject for myself and others is the reopening of schools. I don’t want to replay the same stuff people have heard, rather I can only express my sadness for those that are to go to school. We are starting in-school learning in four weeks and it seems that it will be a mess. This especially hurts teachers and staff that do an honorable job that is not treated well by our society. If social distancing cannot be enforced which seems to be quite the case stemming from an email our school sent stating that we will have 28-29 people in classes. And those who are choosing to go in-school – at least a percentage – don’t have a choice and are forced to go to attain an education.
It is an unfortunate situation and while I label that as the current situation in many places across the nation, it is an understatement to what is happening and what is about to occur on a much larger scale. I feel helpless and pathetic while I write this on an online blog post. I can only wish those students going back and all staff well.
Even worse is our election and a poor infrastructure further tattered with suppression bullets by the current administration who can’t accept that this is not a normal election and they are not helping our democracy at all.
Very gloomy What’s Going On but depressing is the most accurate descriptor of the time and place in the country.
Welcome back. Today, we’ll be taking a look at one of the quickest growing areas in the automotive industry: the electric vehicle. Strap in, because this one’s going to be interesting…
For me personally, the first thing I think of when I hear the word “car”, is your typical gasoline powered engine, be it a 4 cylinder, 6, or 8. I’m sure most other kids from my generation thought the same, and always associated a “vroom” with a car, or vice versa. That very reality may be changing however, and today, we’re going to look into the art of a new type of car, one powered a battery and no more.
Tesla Supercharger
HOW?
Sure, we are all starting to see more and more electric vehicles on the road everyday (namely Tesla), and we can’t help but admire their simplistic styling, yet be attracted by their bold performance. We always talk about one day having our own Tesla, and becoming a part of a greener automotive community. One thing we don’t think about as much though, is how these vehicles even function.
The art of the electric vehicle is demonstrated by the simple design of the propulsion system: by powering the car using only a large battery, the electric vehicle is able to completely eliminate the need for a multi-cylinder, gasoline-powered engine. Without all the moving parts found in a traditional engine, the electric vehicle is essentially a very simple machine.
So if there’s no engine, and no gas to go in said engine, how does the EV even work? Well, it’s basically a 3-step process. Let’s lay out our parts first though: there’s the battery, one large motor (or 2, or possibly even 3), and there are the wheels. The battery sends power to the motor, which turns the wheels, causing the car to propel forward. Yeah, it’s that simple. Of course, there is no need for a transmission system (besides D, N, R, and P), because the motor provides a continuous power supply, and there is no need to change from one gear to another.
Tesla Motor
The lithium-ion battery takes stored chemical energy, and through its terminals, it turns it into useful electrical energy. This electrical energy is taken to the motor via an AC current, where some magical magnetic process takes places, and generates what’s known as RMF. So, when you’re pressing down the accelerator, you’re sending a greater current to the rotor in the motor, which the inverter is able to transform into rotation of the motor.
I said there’s no transmission, which is correct, but there is still a rotation taking place. A rotation which can spin up to 18,000 RPM! When the motor is moving at high speeds like this, the liquid-cooling system comes into play, and acts as a cooler for the few parts involved in this “engine”.
One big discussion when it comes to electric vehicles is how they charge, and the disapproval of some when it comes to the time it takes for a full recharge. Since the main battery provides power for the motor(s), it requires a charging ever so often. Depending on the model of the car, this charging time may vary, as all EVs have different EPA traveling ranges.
The battery in a Tesla can be found at its base, contributing to its low center of gravity
BENEFITS
The growing demand of the electric vehicle is supported by the green movement, as well as it’s high performance. Obviously, without an engine, the EV has completely eliminated emissions as well, which is one of the greatest reasons for the demand in EVs. Due to the nature of the motor of an EV, the car is nearly silent, which can be seen as either an advantage or disadvantage.
The EV sees many performance benefits. First, without as many moving parts, and the need to time cylinder valve openings/closings perfectly, the EV is able to gain instant torque from the motor, which is why they have an extremely quick acceleration. In fact, all of Tesla’s entry level vehicles are able to reach 60 mph from a start in less than 5 seconds, save the Model 3. An instant torque means you are able to get off the line instantly, which is a whole new level of performance.
Another interesting aspect which may be unfamiliar is the rolling/braking recharge feature. When you let off the gas pedal, the wheels spin and if you hit the brakes, current will actually run back to the lithium-ion battery, recharging it!
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk
FUTURE
As of now, Tesla is the largest competitor when it comes to the EV market, though they don’t like to call themself a competitor. Instead, they are actually willing to make deals with other manufacturers who are looking to get into the EV market, and supply them with Tesla motors and batteries. As they claimed, they are only looking to speed up the green revolution of the automotive industry, not make it a competition.
Who knows, maybe kids in the future will grow up with the idea that the electric vehicle is a “typical” car. Maybe one day, electric vehicles will easily outnumber gasoline powered engines. Maybe electric vehicles will fail. Maybe they will take over the world. All we can do is wait and see what auto manufacturers decide to do next…
Jaswin here. Another week gone, with some pretty eventful days. First and foremost, I would like to point out the tragic occurrence which took place in Beirut, Lebanon early yesterday morning. Blasts are a common thing, but one of this magnitude was last seen in China in 2015. I usually don’t find myself overly involved in natural disasters, but this one simply caught my attention because of a video I saw. The clip was from the point of view of a citizen who was standing, quite literally, right next to the factory where the blast took place. It showed the gruesome fire erupt into a mad cloud of smoke, and captured the aftermath of the explosion as well, displaying the remains of buildings, and the scattered debris across the city. My thoughts go out to everyone affected.
As for myself, well, I have been worrying about the tedious college application, and wishing that I could just be relaxing on a beach some place far, far away. The escape room hasn’t been too busy lately either, so business isn’t exactly booming. Without anything else to say, I would state that it seems like the world is at an all time low, just because everything seems dull right now. Not to worry though, because good times are ahead for sure. School starts next week (WHAT), so I’m looking forward to (virtually) meeting my teachers and starting off my final year of high school. I’ll catch you guys next week, on the last official day of summer break…
Hello again, hope everyone is having an awesome day so far! We have reached August and I have to say, I am definitely not ready for school to begin. I probably had one of the most restful summers staying at home and spending time with family, playing video games, and working on personal projects. I have had such an awesome time writing for the Excite the Mind website and reading the other enlightening articles on the other blog pages. Not only has my interest in finance and business fueled even more, but also I have been able to learn a lot about my interested field of study by writing weekly finance articles.
I have just finished up writing some overview articles on different finance concepts on the Money Talk Blog Page, but in the coming weeks I am going to switch gears and write about a different topic! My plan is to start a Billionaire Success Story Series, which will allow you to understand how the many famous billionaires rose to prominence and became the successful individuals they are today. Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how these successful billionaires make money. That is why you may not see a Money Talk blog post this week since I still have to figure out how exactly I want to go about writing this series and compile the necessary information to write detailed blog posts. If there is a specific billionaire or businessman you would like me to write about, please let me know in the comments down below or in the contact form linked to our homepage next to the Instagram and Twitter links.
I guess that’s it for now. I just wanted to give y’all an update on what you can expect to read on the Money Talk in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned for next week’s Billionaire Success Story Post #1!!
Main Cast – Ed Skrein, Woody Harrelson, Patrick Wilson, Nick Jonas
Hey guys! Hope you liked Christian’s post earlier today, and I hope you don’t mind another late night post! Thought I’d space out the two posts for today! It’s another military movie this week, which maybe just wasn’t very fair for the movie I’m reviewing this week, since it has to follow Saving Private Ryan. This week, I’m reviewing Midway, and I can summarize the review in two words.
Too much. The movie tries too hard, trying to put too much, and I honestly think the actors try a bit too hard too. Let me explain. In the beginning of this movie, I was irked by every character I saw. I can’t directly explain why, but something about the dialogue, the dialogue delivery, and just the overall characters in the introduction of this movie made me not care about them. It gets somewhat better, with Woody Harrelson and Patrick Wilson’s characters, and the expertise they bring with their on-screen presence. I think part of what made me annoyed was the accents these actors chose to use, but again, I am not certain.
This movie is based on the battle of Midway, and the surrounding events that led up to it. A great premise and a fascinating topic. Only problem is it tries to stuff too much into this runtime, and the film’s pacing suffers as a result, dragging at many points. Watching this by myself, I was actually able to yell at the screen when I wanted stuff to move faster. But rest assured, I stuck to my job and nothing was skipped in this film. This movie’s strong suits are when the characters suit up and participate in the battles this movie is known far. Its action sequences, at their best, can be quite thrilling and expertly shot. When the movie slows down to focus on the characters, this is definitely the weakest points. There are definitely characters whose names I didn’t know at the end of the movie, despite the hefty amount of screen time they were given, and I didn’t care about quite a few of them either.
To conclude, I’ll discuss this film’s climax shot. Don’t worry, no spoilers. But, I will say this film’s climax is quite possibly the most cliche sequence of shots I have ever seen. The film as a whole does have quite a few cliches, but that climactic war shot is riddled with cliches to the point where it just became overtly predictable. But an EVEN bigger issue is the fact that this climactic war sequence isn’t even the end of the film! There’s so many more minutes, (like 15, but still, at least 10 too many), of continuing conclusions of character arcs. Many of which I forgot, or again, didn’t care, about. The MOST interesting part of this film for me though, is the final card. The dedication of this film was the sentence that piqued my interest probably the most throughout the 2 hours and 18 minutes. This film was dedicated to both the American AND Japanese soldiers that fought the battle of Midway. That’s quite the choice. I understand that, at the end of the day, all soldiers are still human lives. Still, it is quite the choice for a Hollywood film to dedicate a movie to people that were responsible for the deaths of American lives. I don’t want to get too far into it, but it was certainly a bold choice to say the least.
To be honest, don’t watch this movie. There’s better war movies out there (See Saving Private Ryan), but if you want to see some weird accents, decent action shots, and too many characters, go ahead and give Midway a watch.
Next week will be a MUCH more positive review, with The Nice Guys being the movie I’m breaking down. Here’s a sneak peek of the review, GO WATCH IT!
Have you ever met a person who has hands like this? Have you ever wondered what caused this to happen, and how does the person cope with it?
INTRODUCTION
At some point in your life, you may have met a person who has hands that are similar to the picture above. Do you often refuse to shake or high five the person’s hands when you see that their hands are covered with water-like substances? These are a few of the simple things that people of hyperhidrosis would care and look out for because it’s a huge concern for them. Hyperhidrosis disorder is a condition of excessive sweating that is not necessarily related to heat or exercise. In normal body condition and temperature, a person could sweat in different areas such as hands, feet, armpit, and face. Out of an estimated 7.8 million individuals in the United States, only 2% to 3% suffer from this condition. Many individuals do not believe the existence of this condition to be a huge problem; however, individuals who have hyperhidrosis suffer from this condition everyday, which causes difficulties through everyday work. People must understand that hyperhidrosis is not as easily treated as everyone believes. Aside from ineffectively performing daily tasks, people with this condition often experience anxiety and embarrassment when they’re in the social world. Although there are no substances that we can take to resolve this issue, we can all learn to understand hyperhidrosis and learn how to cope with it. Hello, my name is Dennis Lo, and today, I’ll be sharing my personal experience with hyperhidrosis and providing some tips on how to manage this condition.
MY EXPERIENCES AND PROBLEMS
Like many others who experience hyperhidrosis, I also suffer from hyperhidrosis even to this day. There was never a day that I want to live with this condition because it’s simply annoying and it bothers with my daily tasks and activities. There are lots of examples in which this condition can be problematic. For example, if hyperhidrosis happens around your armpit, the sweat would leak to your shirt, which would cause you to feel uncomfortable and want to change your shirt. Through my experiences, writing a paper essay was difficult. My palm would sweat and it would leak onto my paper, thus, causing the paper to torn apart easily. Another example is when I use my technologies. Nowadays, we can use fingerprint scanners on laptops as well as phones. Well, that is not the case when hyperhidrosis kicks in. Since the ends of my finger are covered with drops of sweat, the fingerprint scanner is unable to recognize my fingerprint. As you can see, people with hyperhidrosis, not just myself, suffer through these problems daily. Hyperhidrosis is hard to control because it can occur randomly. Furthermore, it can also occur when a person is feeling nervous since stress hormones in your body build up when something exciting or scary happens. Through these problems, what kind of ways can we practice so that people with hyperhidrosis can limit their frustration in daily tasks?
HOW TO COPE WITH HYPERHIDROSIS?
As I mentioned earlier, there are no substances that we can take as of right now to completely cure hyperhidrosis. Fortunately, there are ways that we can practice to keep our hands, feet, armpit, and face free from hyperhidrosis. Since hyperhidrosis varies in different spots for every person, I’ll be providing simple methods and practices for all areas. A simple solution to a person who has hyperhidrosis on their hands is to wash their hands with soap often. Another possible solution is to use an antiperspirant, which would likely reduce the sweat produced on your hands. If using an antiperspirant does not work, I would stick with washing your hands with soap as it often helped when I experience hyperhidrosis on my hand. If you are a person who has hyperhidrosis on your armpit, antiperspirants can also be used. Of course, you can always put on deodorant as well to alleviate the bad odor. If your armpit continuously sweats and causing you to feel uncomfortable, I would advise you to change your shirt often. If you decide to change your shirt, make sure to apply antiperspirant or deodorant on your armpit. For people who are experiencing hyperhidrosis on feet, make sure to keep your feet open to the air. Limit yourself from wearing socks at home. You can always wash your feet with soap and water, which would reduce hyperhidrosis for a certain amount of time. If you are a person who is experiencing hyperhidrosis on the face, make sure to wash your face often. Additionally, try to be calm and relax throughout the day. I know it can be really hard to achieve, but a person who is comfortable and calm would indubitably be less prone to hyperhidrosis. Although these simple solutions cannot completely reduce the effects of hyperhidrosis, using these simple methods would reduce the frustrations you feel during the day.
COPEWITH HYPERHIDROSIS
As a person who lives with hyperhidrosis, there are, of course, a lot of information online that offers similar but different methods and practices than mine. However, these simple solutions that I explained earlier come from my experience and what I believe would work for others. I know that some people might already know some of these methods as explained, but for those who do not know, there are these simple ways that we can use to cope with hyperhidrosis. Using these methods may take some time out of your day, but the result from these methods may end your stress and frustrations with hyperhidrosis.
Welcome back. Lask week, I introduced you to the vast world of automobiles, and we dove into the heart of the modern vehicle, the engine. We took at a look at the 4-stroke cycle, and how exactly the engine is able to turn gasoline into motion of the car. At the end of the article, I touched on turbocharging, which is an extremely common form of forced induction of the engine, used to make cars more efficient, and run better.
When the average individual takes a look at a car, they will be able to name many parts around and inside of the vehicle, but chances are, they may completely forget what’s happening under the car. Well today, we’re going to be transitioning from under the hood of the car to under the car itself! That’s right, the exhaust system. The exhaust system in an automobile is significant, and there are actually many parts to it, which all have different functions. With that said, let’s get right into it.
THE MANIFOLD
Once the engine completes one cycle of the 4-stroke, the burnt air-fuel mixture takes the form of a gas, and it is at this very point that the exhaust system comes into play. Depending on the amount of cylinders that the vehicle has, there may be different types of exhaust manifolds. The exhaust manifold is a bulky piece of steel or aluminum which essentially combines all the gas of all the cylinders into one pipe. Also located within or near this manifold is the Oxygen sensor, which is an important diagnostic tool, and helps technicians to see if a car is successfully keeping up with environmental regulations. Depending on the year of the vehicle, there may be even more sensors located here, because this is the place where the burnt exhaust gas first exists.
THE CATALYST
Moving forward (or should I say backward), the first large mechanism, or device, that we run into, is the “Catalytic Converter”. Now, just going by the name, one might assume the function of this significant piece of hardware. The job of the catalytic converter is imperative: to chemically change and filter out harmful gases produced by the engine, including but not limited to carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and sometimes even dangerous nitrogen oxides. Depending on the size of a vehicle, or simply the size of its engine, a vehicle may have only one “cat”, or it may have two (known as the secondary cat).
The need for catalytic converter is seemingly obvious, especially with today’s growing limitations when it comes to emissions. Funny thing is, the most stolen item at mechanics shops and garages tend to be catalytic converters, just because of how important they are to a vehicle, and their value due to the aforementioned functions.
THE MUFFLER
Mufflers come in all different shapes and sizes, and they do just what they sound like they do: muffle the sound of the gases coming out of the engine. Keep in mind, at this point, we are past the catalytic converter, and the gases have been cleared of harmful chemicals (for the most part). So, once the gases do pass the cat, they move through the exhaust piping (which is carrying all gases when they are not going through different exhaust devices), and they often go through at least 2 types of silencers before being released into the environment. Again, depending on the size, layout, and make of a vehicle, there may be more than more muffler present. Mufflers are relatively large in size when it comes to undercarriage parts, and they are also required by law in many places around the world (same with catalytic converters).
A “resonator” is another type of silencing device, and it works very similarly to a muffler, though its size is much smaller. A resonator mainly adjusts the tone of the sound coming out of the engine, and in many cars, it actually comes before the muffler(s).
PERFORMANCE
I just wanted to include this section because I am very much into sports and tuner cars, and one of the biggest modifications you will see in the world of tuner cars are exhaust modifications. Since the overall goal of the exhaust system of the average car is to make the sound quieter and limit emissions, it is not ideal for fast cars.
When the engine is burning fuel and putting out exhaust gas at high RPMs, the back pressure of gas is very high. Having a catalytic converter, resonator, and mufflers will not help that gas flow any faster or easier, which is the reason race cars, tuner cars, and supercars have very restrictive exhaust systems. For example, many aftermarket tuning companies offer products such as “high flow catalytic converters” or “catless downpipes”, which all serve to let that gas flow as quickly as possible, and get out of the car through the tailpipes fast. Additionally, tuners often delete their mufflers/resonators/etc. so as to allow the flow of gas, which of course, comes with louder noise. MUCH, louder noise. For car enthusiasts, nothing beats the smell of burnt gasoline and a screaming exhaust. Ah.
Anyhow, these additions (or deletions, rather) do come with their cons. First and foremost, damage to the environment. Without any restriction straight from the engine, chemicals like carbon monoxide and other hydrocarbons and put into the atmosphere, which can cause environmental degradation of many types. Second, these modifications aren’t exactly legal. Directly taking out these parts may cause you to fail inspection, or get in trouble with the police if you’re driving down the road. That’s why many aftermarket companies have innovatively come up with ways to get that unrestricted performance with actual, physical mufflers and cats. This way, you will pass inspection, and the car will be legal.
When it comes to building a tuner car, however, there is much more that goes into making a car run quicker. The exhaust is just one of the important systems which can be freed through unrestrictive products.
CONCLUSION
The cars we see everyday all have exhaust systems. Though we never really lay our eyes on this system, it is doing one of the most important jobs in society by protecting our planet. Modifying the exhaust of a vehicle will come with performance and sound benefits, but environmental (and potentially legal) issues. Of course, if you see a Tesla going down the road, you can completely ignore everything that you learned in this article. Not really, but the magic of the electric vehicle has allowed for the complete elimination of the exhaust system (no engine, no exhaust). This is going to be the perfect transition to next week’s topic: Electric Vehicles! I am looking forward to it, and I hope you all are as well. Thanks for reading today, and I’ll see you next time.
Hey there! Jaswin here with my second “What’s Going On” post, and well the truth is, not too terribly much! I have been relaxing as much as I can, because once college applications open soon, I know I’ll be working restlessly to complete them (but hey, what’s new there?). Anyways, let’s see what’s new in my life.
My mom celebrated her birthday in the past week, but the celebrations lasted a couple of days. We spent time with friends and family (don’t worry, everyone was wearing a mask), and I even got to try out some photography and editing techniques with my mom. I have been thinking a lot lately about what I would like to photograph next, and all I can say is I’m really excited to see how far I can take this little passion of mine. In the meantime, I’m always checking out my friends’ photography, and brainstorming locations to take great pictures.
On the other hand, my job has been keeping me busy to some extent. Since the first reopening order made by Governor Abbott here in Texas, people were keen to come out and spend time with family at Countdown 2 Escape. When the so-called “second wave” hit, however, people have definitely been a little more careful, and some have chosen to stay home. We do have some people coming through day to day, though it isn’t heavy traffic like pre-corona. It’s hard to say when our client flow will get back to normal, but we can only hope for the best.
I have been biking more, and trying to run as much as I can as well. Cross Country practice is set to begin on August 10th at a time that is too early for my liking. Anyhow, I am definitely looking forward to getting back to running with the whole team, and seeing what the 2020 season is going to look like.
Anyways guys that’s all that’s been up with me, nothing too interesting if I’m being honest with myself. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s article though, and I can’t wait to keep writing! Take care.
“Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: A currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.”The future of money is Digital Currency.”
Nassim Taleb | Essayist
“The future of money is Digital Currency.”
Bill Gates | Founder of Microsoft
From the quotes listed above, you can see that cryptocurrency has a big hype surrounding it with crypto leader Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies making revolutionary strides to change the way how financial transactions will work in the future. However, it is only a developing asset class since there are many changes and improvements being made to make cryptocurrency transactions much more affordable, easier, and secure. Today’s post will primarily give you an overview of cryptocurrency, which is a relatively new asset class. Additionally, I will also talk about some advantages, disadvantages, and even the future of cryptocurrencies. The concepts in this post may seem too technical or too hard to understand for some of you since cryptocurrency is a hard asset to understand. Do not worry as I will be making posts in the future to talk about different aspects of cryptocurrency. Sit back, relax, and hope you enjoy this post!
Overview of Cryptocurrency
What exactly is cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency is a digital version of money where transactions are done online. Unlike other currencies, cryptocurrencies are entirely digital. Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital cash designed to be quicker, cheaper and more reliable than our regular government issued money. What sets cryptocurrency apart from regular currencies, is that it runs on a decentralized cash system, which is a network powered by users without any third party, central authority, or middleman controlling it like banks or governments. With regular currencies, people trust the government to create your money and banks to store, send and receive the money. However, with cryptocurrencies, users transact directly with other people and store the money themselves through crypto wallets. Without a middleman or central authority, transactions are much more affordable and efficient. So let’s say you want to send some cryptocurrency to your friend. You don’t have to go through the bank and get money out of your bank account to send it with cryptocurrency. All you do is access the amount of cryptocurrency from your crypto wallet and send it to your friend’s crypto wallet. Since there is no central authority like the bank or the government, those on the network verify the transaction through a process known as mining, which is a process in which transactions for various forms of cryptocurrency are verified and added to the blockchain, a public ledger of all transactions that ever happened within the network, available to everyone to see and verify. That is how cryptocurrency runs on a decentralized system without a central authority as it is powered by a network of users who transact and verify transactions to be added to the blockchain.
Another problem that cryptocurrency solves efficiently is the double-spending problem, which is a fraudulent technique of spending the same amount twice. The traditional solution was a trusted third party – a central server – that kept records of the balances and transactions. However, this method always entailed an authority basically in control of your funds and with all your personal details on hand. This is done via the Blockchain. In this way, those on the network can verify the transactions making sure no fraudulent activity is going on.
Advantages and Disadvantages
There are advantages and disadvantages to cryptocurrency as it is a relatively new concept of payment. One advantage of cryptocurrency is that cryptocurrencies hold the promise of making it easier to transfer funds directly between two parties, without the need for a trusted third party like a bank or credit card company. In modern cryptocurrency systems, a user’s “wallet,” or account address, has a public key, while the private key is known only to the owner and is used to sign transactions. When completing a transaction, the sender uses the receiver’s public key to send money. However, the receiver uses his private key in order to sign the transaction. Therefore, when starting to get used to the cryptocurrency technology and platforms, never share your private key to anyone. Fund transfers are completed with minimal processing fees, allowing users to avoid the steep fees charged by banks and financial institutions for wire transfers.
There are disadvantages as well to cryptocurrencies. Due to the semi-anonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions, it makes it well-suited for illegal activities to occur, such as money laundering. It is quite hard to conduct illegal activities due to how secure the blockchain network is. Using a forensic analysis of the Bitcoin specific blockchain, authorities have been able to arrest and prosecute criminals. Additionally, some fear that since most cryptocurrencies lack regulation from third parties like the government or banks, it will be hard to trust. Finally, the last problem that most people have with cryptocurrency is the volatile nature of the value of cryptocurrencies, due to its fluctuation in prices. However, keep in mind, the technology is still developing. More and more advancements in cryptocurrencies are still being made to this day to make it an efficient transaction method without as many disadvantages. As the cryptocurrency technology evolves, it will certainly be hard for fraudulent and illegal activity to occur as more join the network and have access to the blockchain.
Future of Cryptocurrency
Now let’s talk about the future of cryptocurrencies and what it can be used for. The first use of Cryptocurrency is to buy goods. Many stores and merchants now accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, and this number can soon increase as cryptocurrency becomes more popular. Companies like Overstock and Newegg accept Bitcoin as a payment method for consumers to purchase their products. Bitcoin is one of the more widely accepted cryptocurrencies as a form of payment whereas the other Alt-coins like Litecoin and Ethereum aren’t widely accepted just yet. In the future, more cryptocurrencies will be used for transactions as the technology evolves to make transactions quicker and efficient. If you’re a business owner, allowing cryptocurrency as a viable form of payment might be beneficial due to the ever-growing interest in cryptocurrency and the potential it holds to change the way payments work. Cryptocurrency has been one of the most hyped investments these past few years and is one of the hottest investment opportunities currently available. Many people who have invested in cryptocurrencies have become millionaires. Currently the supply of cryptocurrency is low since it is a relatively new concept and people are slowly starting to get into cryptocurrency trading. However, the demand is rising, leading to increased prices making it a profitable investment. One Bitcoin was once worth at almost 800 dollars, however it is now worth almost $10,000! This definitely could be the case for other popular Alt-coins such as Ethereum and Ripple. Once the cryptocurrency boom hits in and you have invested wisely in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other great alt-coins you can easily become rich.
Importance of Research
Keep in mind, however, that this is a new concept which I have reiterated multiple times. Due to this fact, rapid change in any direction could occur. New alt-coins which are significantly better than the current coins can possibly be created or some alt-coins can even fail due to its inability to keep up with the cryptocurrency demand. Additionally, cryptocurrency is a really volatile investment, meaning the value of the cryptocurrency can rapidly increase or decrease, making it harder to understand its future performance. This is why you must keep doing constant research. Research is crucial in order to make successful investments and to select good entry points and find good cryptocurrencies to invest in. Always keep reading cryptocurrency news to see any new developments which increase the potential of any cryptocurrencies, making it a profitable investment. Some good resources that I used for my research were Investopedia, Coin Telegraph, and Decryptionary.com. There are going to be many cryptocurrencies that are going to fail, so research must be conducted in order to buy the right cryptocurrencies. Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Ripple are some of the good ones currently, but there may be hidden gems that will skyrocket in value in the future.
With that, I think this is a good place to conclude this post. I hope you got a good understanding of the cryptocurrency asset class by reading this post on the Money Talk blog page. Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, and I will definitely answer it as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you in the next Money Talk post!
On July 21st President Trump issued a presidential memorandum calling for change to the 2020 decennial census. The president’s memorandum orders the Secretary of Commerce to exclude the illegal immigrants living in the United States in his report of the census to the president.
The decennial census is a constitutionally required count of every person living in the United States, and is used to apportion representatives and taxes to each state. The purpose of the president’s latest memorandum is to exclude illegal immigrants from the count used to redraw district lines next year.
Constitutionality
President Trump’s memorandum has been under much scrutiny since it has been released, many citing its unconstitutionality.
Article 1 Section 2 of the Constitution states that all “persons” living in the United States, with the exclusion American Indians, should be counted in the decennial census. The 14th amendment removed the counting of slaves “three fifths” of a person, and further states that “the whole number of persons in each State” should be counted. While the definition of “persons” is incredibly broad, it has long been interpreted to include all people residing in each state (other than Native Americans, who do not pay taxes), no matter the legality of their residency.
The president’s memorandum rests on the justification that it is the job of the president to make the final decision regarding the “whole number of persons in each State” after the census is completed, citing federal statute 2 U.S.C. 2a(a). The memo goes on to reference the Supreme Court case Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) to argue that it is “‘the President’s personal transmittal of the report to Congress’ that ‘settles the apportionment’ of Representatives among the States”.
While both these justifications do mean that the President is allowed to oversee those who conduct the census, they do not give the president the final say in who is to be included in the count, that job belongs to the Clerk of the House of Representatives.
Response
In just the one week that it has been issued, the president’s memorandum has received much criticism and is already facing legal action.
Three federal lawsuits have been filed against the president. The first lawsuit was filed by several groups led by the organization Common Cause, a government watchdog group based in Washington D.C. The second lawsuit came from a coalition of 20 states and several cities and counties, led by the state of New York, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The third federal lawsuit came from a group of immigrant rights organizations, who also filed their challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Previous Attempt
However, this memorandum is not the first time the president has attempted to bring the question of immigration into the 2020 census. In July of 2019 President Trump issued an executive order calling for a citizenship question to be added to the 2020 census.
But just like the recent memorandum, the executive order was met with much push back, and was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.
My Opinion
As a borderline bleeding heart, I have to confess that my opinion on this matter is one of annoyance and opposition. Call me soft all you’d like, but I argue that not only does the president’s memorandum completely contradict the Constitution, but also basic morals. Everyone who lives in the United States counts, whether they are there legally or not.
I’ve always disliked the term “illegal alien” because I feel like it dehumanizes the people whom the term is referring to. They’re not aliens, they’re human beings like the rest of us, and they deserve to be treated as such. This should start with acknowledging their existence, and its importance. Whether they live in the country legally or illegally, everyone is affected by the census. Taxes and representatives are apportioned using the census, and it doesn’t seem fair to discount a large group of people who live there, just because they aren’t citizens.
I know that even just the topic of immigration in general is controversial, but that is my opinion, and I stand by it. I believe that as a self proclaimed free and just nation, we have a duty to not only acknowledge, but include everyone who lives in this country, whether they are legal or illegal.
Main Cast – Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Vin Diesel, Jeremy Davies
Well, I guess the Leo streak has ended, but! there have been quite a few cast overlaps regardless! Spielberg, Hanks, and Damon return with one of the most intense, gritty films I have ever seen. If you were a person who thought you liked violent films, games, action, etc., I implore you to watch this movie. You’ll probably reconsider. This film depicts war at its true core of chaos. Horrifying chaos.
Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his crew of 8 must go find a hopefully alive Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) and send him home from war, World War 2, specifically. This is based on the sole-survivor directive, where if all but one of your children have died in service, the last is exempt from serving. Ryan’s three other brothers have been killed in action, and it is Captain Miller’s mission to find him and bring him home.
This film raises many philosophical questions about the morality of war, the weight of a life versus another, and Tom Hanks is the vessel from which these questions are often asked. He is a captain who must take responsibility for each action of his squad, and he must take responsibility for the consequences as well. Can the loss of a life truly ever be justified, regardless of who many it saves?
There are many specific sequences within this film that stick with you far after you’ve hit the end credits. Of course, the famous chaotic opening scene of the beaches of D-Day that is said to be very accurate is one the likes of which I have never seen before. That was the most … chaotic, terrifying sequence I have ever watched on screen. A character that stands out to me as well is Corporal Upham: the character whose intentions seemed pure, but whose choices were quite consequential to say the least…
To wrap, this movie is not for everyone. If you can’t normally handle gore or violence in a movie, definitely do not watch this unless you are very prepared and certain. For me, among other things, the film really just completely erased any sort of reverence I had for violence. For the foreseeable future, I can’t see myself thinking a battle of any kind is cool anymore because this film shows the other side of that equation. The side that is hidden from you in movies and isn’t programmed in games. The consequences.
Hey guys! I had finished the Arrow just recently and I thought for my first post I could talk about it and what I found interesting about the show. I will give my overall review in the end.
To begin, the show began with an amazing introduction about a playboy billionaire named Oliver Queen(Stephen Amell), son of the CEO of Queen Consolidated, Robert Queen. Both Oliver and his Father were lost in the North Chinese Sea where Oliver got to an island, but Robert had to sacrifice himself to let Oliver live. He had spent 5 years “on a mysterious island”.
The duality of his former and current self throughout the first 5 seasons really shows the character development that he has gone through not only when he stayed on the island, but when he was rescued. In the end of the show, you can see how his compassion comes full circle. Survival seems to be an idea that recurs throughout the show as his main goal in the island was to survive, even when he does reach the safety of his home.
Emotion has also been depicted very vividly with the use of color and background. From scenes of fights to when they show the more happier sides of the show, Coloring and lighting have been very well used to illustrate the atmosphere of the setting (Especially Lighting).
Although the show gets redundant and boring near the middle of the series, the beginning and the end of the show really captivate the viewer with the mysterious persona of Oliver Queen. The end really brings out the emotional side of mostly anyone.
4.3/5 – It’s worth the watch and I highly recommend it. Although it might seem like a chore in the middle, it will be worth the wait.
The automotive industry, like any other, is a constantly evolving industry, where new technology is being explored and tested, so as to provide better, more desirable results for the average consumer. Over time, cars have changed so greatly that one might be unable to recognize what powered the very first automobiles on earth. Today, it is safe to say that there are well over a billion cars on this planet, which has led to numerous benefits as well as consequences. So many vehicles tread the earth, yet in reality the question arises: How does a car even work?
There is so much more to a vehicle than meets the eye. To the average consumer, they see a chassis sitting on an engine, seats and a radio, a steering wheel and accelerator, and that’s mostly as deep as they care to dive into their primary mode of transportation. In order to break down how exactly a car is able to function, there are so many different segments and parts we would have to take into consideration. Namely, the engine, the chassis/suspension/drivetrain, the exhaust system, and the interior, if you will. Even by mentioning these systems, I would be missing so many important features of the average vehicle. Anyhow, today, I would like to start by explaining the engine component of a car, or as I like to call it, the heart of the car.
MODES OF PROPULSION
Let’s start by establishing that there are a multitude of engines out there. The most common gasoline powered engines are the following internal combustion engines: I4 (Inline 4-Cylinder), V6 (V Shape 6-Cylinder), and the V8 (V Shape 8-Cylinder). The ICE has come so far throughout the past 4 decades, and though emissions standards are rising, it is highly unlikely we will see the demise of petrol-powered engines anytime soon. In today’s society, we are even seeing electric vehicles take over the roads, known for their benevolence towards the environment, and great performance. Then there’s the hybrid engine, which combines the two aforementioned modes of propulsion. Usually, hybrid engines have 4 or less cylinders, making room for the electric motor that’s also in the engine bay.
This next part is going to go deep into the engine, explaining all its parts, and how they all come together to create motion out of nothing. Hang on tight. Okay, let’s put ourselves into close perspective with the engine. Hopping into the vehicle, we hit the “Start/Stop” button, and we hear the engine turn over, and roar to life. The battery is “activated”, if you will, and it sends a signal to the engine to jumpstart a “timing belt”, and after about 1 second, the spark plugs in the engine start firing rapidly, so as to bring the engine to life, to about 1200 RPM to be more specific. Now, all systems are “online”, and the engine is in the process of warming up (very important if you want your car to last as long as possible!), which should anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes (usually depending on the weather at a given location).
THE 4-STROKE CYCLE
Once the engine is warm and at operating temperature (around 80 degrees Celsius), the car is good to go. Let’s talk about the 4-stroke cycle, and as we go through it, I’ll explain more parts of the internal combustion engine. Every I4, V6, V8 (V10, V12, W16…) engine goes through a process known as the 4-stroke cycle, which is how it converts gasoline into movement. The first stroke is called the “Intake” stroke. In this step, an electronically controlled “camshaft” pushes down the “intake valve” on the cylinder. Fuel is sprayed into the cylinder as air comes through the intake valves. As this air-fuel mixture enters the cylinder, the piston within the cylinder is pushed downwards. As the camshaft rotates, causing the intake valves to close, the second stroke begins. The bottom of the piston is connected to a “crankshaft” via a “connecting rod”. Through momentum of the piston moving downwards, the crankshaft begins to rotate. The second step is called the “Compression” stroke. So, the cylinder is fully closed at this point, and full with the air-fuel mixture. As the crankshaft rotates underneath, the air-fuel mixture has nowhere to go but upwards. The third step of the 4-stroke cycle would be the “Combustion” stroke. Since the piston has compressed the , it is at the optimal pressure to be ignited. An important little part known as a “spark plug” ignites this air-fuel mixture at just the right time (electronically controlled again, just like most of the part in an engine). Now that the mixture has been sparked, a mini explosion takes place, and sends the piston downwards, causing more movement of the crankshaft. Through momentum, the 4th stroke of the cycle begins, the exhaust stroke. Here, the electronically controlled camshaft comes into play again, but this time it opens exhaust valves, located an inch or so away from the intake valves. When these valves open the burnt air-fuel mixture exits the cylinder, and the camshaft closes the valve. Whew, so that was a lot. Guess what? Everything I just went through- that only equates to ONE REVOLUTION PER MINUTE. To put this cycle into greater perspective, when a Lamborghini Aventador SV or a Ferrari 488 is roaring down the road, pushing its peak performance, it can be doing as much as 9,000 to 10,000 RPM. The 4-stroke cycle is a truly magnificent process, but there are a countless amount of mini machines that are in play for everything to continue to function smoothly.
Now, the crankshaft is a very important element, because that’s where all the power of the pistons becomes concentrated. All the pistons in the engine are connected to the crankshaft at some point, which is why the more cylinders a car has, the more power it can make at the crankshaft. Let’s talk horsepower for a second. Often times, when you hear people talking about how much power a car has, they will be talking in regard to the BHP, or brake horsepower (power actually being sent to the wheels, and the power the car is physically running in the end). This number is always going to be less than the true horsepower made by the car, because through the transmission and suspension systems, the car will lose a bit of its crankshaft potential energy to heat energy. Hey, what is horsepower anyways? One horsepower is electrically equivalent to 746 watts, but they didn’t have those kinds of calculations back in the day, when they started taking measurements for cars and creating baseline specifications. I remember reading a story about how the measurement of one horsepower was created by attaching a load of weight to a pony, and having the pony pull out the weight from a well. The value was determined to be 33,000 foot-pounds of work per minute, and after all, that’s what horsepower is: how much work you’re doing over a given time, which in the case of cars, is usually signified by revolutions per minute.
FORCED INDUCTION
Turbos: Short for turbocharger, and a seemingly unreal piece of technology. The turbocharger has become an extremely common application, mainly paired with I4 engines. In V6 and V8 engines, if there’s a turbocharger, you can be sure that it’s a fast, performance vehicle. So what is it? The use of a turbocharger indicates forced induction of air into the cylinder, speeding up the 4-stroke cycle, essentially “boosting” the vehicle. Additionally, turbos may prolong the life of the engine, so as the run is running normally, and they may promote better fuel economy for the car. Talking more specifically about how a turbo works-well, basically this is what happens: when the 4th stroke of the 4-stroke cycle is complete, and the exhaust gases are exiting the cylinder, they are redirected towards the turbocharger, where the exhaust gases start to spin at very high speeds. Then, these gases pass through an intercooler where the hot gasses and cooled, and through more piping, the cold air is put back into the engine, as the cycle continues. So like, magic.
CONCLUSION
All in all, the 4-stroke internal combustion engine is definitely a lot to take in. The engine truly is the heart of the vehicle, because without it, so many other systems would fail, not to mention that you wouldn’t even be able to drive. In today’s exponentially tech-powered society, cars are not being neglected when it comes to automating how things function and run. Computers play a massive role in timing when the spark plugs should fire, when the camshafts should turn over, and the timing belt (also electronically controlled), keeps all these parts in check, and makes sure they are moving in harmony.
I hope you all have become a little more knowledgeable when it comes to the automotive industry. There’s still a lot more to cover, which I will be doing next week, when I cover the exhaust system of a vehicle. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are as well! Take care, and see you then.
Another week goes by in the hodge-podge summer of 2020. I’ve never been busier or more active in any of my summers. A couple of reasons for this like managing and writing for this website (of course my favorite part of my day), writing for a Medical Magazine, creating a repository for our math team, planning for HOSA and much more. It is quite exhilarating and i’ve found a balance through it all to ensure I relax.
My grandfather and I play tennis and finally after nearly a decade I beat him in chess for the first time. I was very proud of a milestone after so long and tears welled up as I saw my grandpa express his happiness and sincere pride in his grandson accomplishing something dear to him.
A lot of work is going on behind the scenes for the organizations I am planning for and mastering it is essential to a smooth and successful year.
I even forgot about college apps throughout the week. I have to get back on that by Sunday because the earlier I start my essays the better.
Speaking of, after this week we are going to initialize another guest writer, Abhinav Talluri, a fantastic human being who will be writing about his passions and his want to help other students in the college admission process.
I am really excited to see the debut of Jaswin’s and Christian’s articles today and Saturday, respectively, and I am happy to see Jolene’s page up and running!
It feels like a lot of things are coming together in my endeavors and I am more than satisfied with that realization.
American politics are to answer important questions in the coming weeks and it is up to our people to decide (although the answers will be spoken by the politicians who determine law in the country, especially with the relief bills). I disagree with those that think 2020 is a horrible year; we are in a time that was needed for our country to come to a realization. Many events are going on, devloping drastically on a daily basis to which will affect the health and state of the nation. Be and stay informed, dear reader.
Hey y’all, Jaz here! This is my first Excite The Mind “What’s Going On” post, so I have decided I’ll just tell you guys a little bit about what’s been going on with my life recently. Since summer vacation started, I have gotten into a few new things, and continued enjoying old passions. I have been driving as much as possible, and with my passion for cars and driving, I have gotten into automotive photography/editing as well. Like most others on this page, I have been looking at college applications and such, and just been pacing myself when it comes to writing essays and filling out all the necessary but monotonous information. We just got word on when Cross Country practices are set to resume, so I suppose I’ll have to start running some more in preparation. Anyhow, I’m definitely excited for everything that is to come in the future.
Also, another huge thing that has been happening for me would be my part-time job, which has taken up a great deal of my time this summer, but I’m not complaining. I work as a Gamemaster at “Countdown 2 Escape”, a small business, boutique escape room in downtown Frisco, Texas. The job of a gamemaster essentially entails greeting guests (who have been assigned to you, and as a private party), taking payment, signing waivers, going through an orientation, gamemastering the escape room itself, and seeing the guests have a great time. I have been working at C2E since late March (with an obvious break during April/May due to COVID-19), and I am grateful to say that I love every aspect of the job. It’s just such a great environment to be in, and I have made a lot of new friends and such. Hey, if you’re not up to much, book a room at Countdown 2 Escape! We would love to have you (we’re really keeping up with our sanitization practices)!
Anyways guys, that’s just a little peek into my life. Hope you enjoyed/learned something new about me. I’m looking to publish my first article here at Excite The Mind very soon, and I hope you guys will join me on this journey, where I explore the vast automotive industry! Take care.
Hello and welcome back to the Money Talk blog page! As you all may know, the Excite the Mind blog website has added 3 new writers to our group: Jaswin, Jolene, and Christian! Additionally, we have many guest writers interested in writing for our blog, which is great news! This is really exciting for us as we are expanding and introducing new blog pages so that readers of our blog can have a diverse collection of posts. The Excite the Mind website is increasingly gaining attraction, and we would like to thank our regular readers and supporters. Make sure to follow our Twitter @MindExcite in order to stay updated on new changes to our blog and new blog posts.
Without further ado, let’s begin today’s Money Talk blog post! This will be the 3rd post in the asset class series, as I have already made posts for the first 2 asset classes, which were bonds and stocks. Today’s blog post will primarily give you a good understanding to real estate investing. So what exactly is real estate investing? As defined by Fundrise.com, “real estate investing is the purchase, ownership, lease, or sale of land and any structures on it for the purpose of earning money.” There are generally 4 categories of real estate that investors can invest in: residential, commercial, industrial and land.
Categories of Real Estate
Residential Real Estate: includes single-family homes, townhomes, apartment buildings, condos, and vacation properties
Commercial Real Estate (CRE): includes offices, restaurants, retail storefronts, and business buildings
Industrial Real Estate: includes warehouses, factories, power plants, and storage units
Land: consists of undeveloped property with no buildings or structures on it; landowners can earn money through land usage, such as for farming and agriculture purposes, or through land developments and sale of the land
How to Invest in Real Estate
There are many different ways you can invest in real estate. These different methods have varying levels of risk and reward associated with them, so you have to choose wisely. Real estate investing is risky, so don’t invest money you cannot afford to lose. Additionally, real estate investing is a significant investment of your time, so make sure you are ready to spend time with any maintenance with your properties or other work associated with real estate investing. Before starting to invest, you must know how much money you are willing to use to purchase real estate properties and what type of real estate property you are interested in investing. This will help you narrow down your options so that you can find the right properties for you. You can also contact real estate agents if you need some help in choosing the right properties for you as they can use their knowledge to help you assess your risk tolerance and rewards of your investments.
Purchase Rental Properties
One way to invest in real estate is to purchase a rental property and rent it out. For example, you can purchase a house in a neighborhood and then rent it out to interested tenants. You can also buy and rent our commercial or industrial real estate properties, but keep in mind that that the cost will be higher and the management will become complex. Many investors usually purchase or pool their money with other real estate investors to purchase large residential properties, like townhomes, apartment complexes, and condos. Property owners earn regular cash flow in the form of rental payments from tenants. This can provide a reliable stream of income for investors, but it also requires a lot of work or to ensure that operations run efficiently and the properties are well maintained. Property owners who cannot manage property maintenance contact property management companies for a fixed fee of earnings. This can take significant weight off of an investor’s shoulders, but will cut their profits earned from the income they receive from rental payments.
Before purchasing a rental property, you must first assess the surrounding neighborhood or city and understand the local real estate market. In this way, you can ensure you are making smart investments and offering rent prices that are fair for tenants. You have to conduct a lot of research in order to gather information about the neighborhood or city, such as what kinds of tenants live in the area, who’s moving there, and how prices have changed over time. You do not want to purchase a rental property in a shady neighborhood complex or high-crime areas, so you must learn about the area before making any investments to ensure the property is in a safe and attractive location.
Invest in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
Real estate investment trusts (“REITs”) allow individuals to invest in large-scale, income-producing real estate. A REIT is a company that owns and typically operates income-producing real estate or related assets, according to the definition by Investor.gov. Investing in REITs is similar to investing in stocks, as you basically buy shares and give money to a trust or corporation, which purchases real estate properties. This is also an efficient way since the company manages all the real estate property management. You will get a portion of the dividends as the property appreciates in value. However, similar to stocks, you can lose your money if the properties depreciate in value. Investing in REITs is one of the easiest ways for new investors to start investing in commercial real estate, and can come with a potential high yield. Your investment is also liquid, meaning that you can sell your shares at any time.
To buy shares of REITs, you will go through a brokerage firm just as you would when you buy shares of companies or stocks. You can find many on Yahoo Finance, which is a website I primarily use to research REITs, stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and cryptocurrencies. Yahoo Finance is great as you have access to a lot of information about the companies you are researching, and price charts to illustrate price trends and movements. Some popular REITs include QTS Realty Trust (QTS), Equinix (EQIX), and Boston Properties (BXP). Similar to stocks, you MUST research a lot in order to determine whether investing in certain REITs will be beneficial and will generate profits for you in the future.
Property or House Flipping
Property or house flipping is one of the most common types of investment strategies done by experienced real estate investors. Here’s how it works. You buy an undervalued residential property, which you feel that can increase in value. Then you renovate the property or house, such as re-painting, fixing up bathrooms, or changing the carpet or wood. At this point with all the upgrades and renovations, the house would be valued more than when you had previously bought it. Thus you can now sell the house at a high price and relish the profits you made out of this property flip! Investors sometimes keep this property as a rental property where they can receive monthly payments from tenants, rather than just selling it. House-flipping is a short-term investment technique, because expenses add up the longer the investor owns the home without leasing it to tenants or selling it. Investors can renovate the home to increase the home’s sale price or sell it without making any upgrades when its value in the housing market increases. Property or house flipping requires deep financial and real estate knowledge to ensure you are buying undervalued properties, that could increase in value in the future. You have to time it right as well, since house flipping will only generate profits if you buy during rising real estate markets. It is crucial you research the property fully and the city around to analyze the market and understand whether it is a good time to buy the property for house-flipping or not.
That is all for today’s Real Estate Investing 101 blog post. I hope you got an informative overview of the real estate asset class and understood the different ways you can invest in real estate. If these blog posts are interesting and helpful, please make sure to let me know in the comments below as I would love to hear from you! Feel free to provide any improvements you would like to see on our blog, which would help us make sure our blog website is awesome. Thank you again for reading the Money Talk blog page, and hope to see you in the next one!
Wow, I really can’t believe that July is almost over and school is about to open in less than 4 weeks! It feels like only a couple weeks ago when school closed down and I was excited to be at home for 3 months, without any e-learning, assignments, or studying. Although I had to stay home for the entire summer due to the coronavirus pandemic, I am glad that I got some rest and time to spend with family to do many activities, such as playing table tennis, cooking, and watching movies. Other than preparing for college applications, writing articles on the Excite the Mind website, and creating videos on the Future Billionaires Club (FBC) Youtube Channel, I have been able to do other interesting activities. I received an opportunity this summer to become a remote intern at Samatva Wealth Management, which is a financial advisor company. The program ends in the last week of August, so it is still continuing on. I have learned so much through this internship, such as mortgage refinancing, entrepreneurship, 401K plans, investment strategies, accounting basics, college savings, and Excel skills. This internship has probably been one of the main highlights of this summer, and I am grateful I received this opportunity to have some hands on experience working in the finance field.
Other than these activities, I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix shows as well. I just finished watching both seasons of All-American and the fourth season of Riverdale, and I have started watching Outerbanks. I love watching mystery shows, so Outerbanks seemed like a good one to watch since it is a mystery/treasure hunting themed show, and so far it has been amazing. Let me know if there are any other good shows on Netflix that you enjoyed watching, because I am compiling a list of shows to watch after I finish Outerbanks. That’s pretty much all I have been doing these past few weeks, but I will be updating you through the What’s Going On page if anything interesting happens. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Money Talk blog post on real estate investing!
Main Cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga, Martin Sheen, Alex Baldwin, Anthony Anderson
Ha! Remember last week when I was talking about having an A-List cast. I listed out quite a few more than normal in the main cast section for this movie just so you could really see what an A-List cast looks like, DEAR LORD! So many super famous people! And the movie, wow the movie… This is one fast paced movie that will quite definitely leave you behind if you don’t buckle in fast enough. I’m not going to lie, I was quite lost for the first 15 minutes just because of how fast everything was moving, but you get settled in after that fast intro.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan , an undercover cop who works his way into the ranks of Frank Costello’s (Jack Nicholson) gang, reporting to Officers Dingham and Captain Queenan (Wahlberg and Sheen). Meanwhile, a new police officer has shot through the ranks of the department as an immaculate officer, Sgt. Collin Sullivan (Matt Damon), who is a mole for Costello. The rest of the film is about Costigan and Sullivan trying to find each other and trying not to die in the process.
This film is quick, dark, and grimy, but at the same time, Wahlberg and Baldwin provide a small sense of humor with their relentless quips. Most likely, you will gasp, you will hold on to the edge of your seat, and you will be in shock for the last 20 minutes. Most importantly, you will not regret watching this film!
The Leo DiCaprio streak continues! I will try to keep it alive next week as well, but no promises! Thanks for reading, make sure to check out all the other pages we have here on Excite the Mind and stay tuned to read all the new pages we’ll be introducing this week!
Something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now after being immersed in this year’s Academic Decathlon material is that the United States is still in a Cold War mindset. With the podcast my friends and myself are recording to discuss the material, we also had a conversation on how the United States is in a continuation of a Cold War. Let me explain.
There are general distinctions in periods of history (i.e. trends, themes, and theories) and the 20th century has been no different. A reason to why we see so many trends is because it has been one of the better recorded periods due to the advent of technology throughout and better methods of recording/collection. During the latter half of the century, the USSR and the United States were involved in a series of proxy wars, threats backed by nuclear weapons, and an ideological battle.
The political mindset within the United States was so ingrained within the average American that we have terms like the Red Scare or McCarthyism (where Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to fear monger on the basis of there being communist spies infiltrating the country and government) as well as several agencies to battle the communist threat.
Our Space Program was funded largely due to the Sovjets developing spacecraft effectively first and sent the first man, among other achievements, to space. This is only one example of a driver in our national policies due to the perceived Soviet threat.
Our military engaged in several proxy wars where we would send ammunition and supplies, even our soldiers (called advisors in the Vietnam War) to help defend Democracy across the globe.
Our Pledge was even amended in 1954 with the words “Under God” as well as the changing of our national motto from E, Pluribus Unum (Latin for out of many, one) to In God We Trust. These phrases were created to promote a patriotic unity as a God-fearing nation and solidified a piece of religion into the state as a counter to the secular threat of the USSR (Don’t get me wrong, the U.S. is still secular, it just has this religious characteristic to it. In fact the addition of a religious motto and insertion of religion into the pledge should be an indicator of how big a deal the U.S. took the USSR) [1]
Even today after nearly 30 years since the end of the Cold War, a lot of our culture revolves around our past. Take for example, meme culture with the majority of historical memes having to do with the failure in Vietnam, or the antagonization of Soviet Russia. Even in our media such as Television, we have episodes in the Simpsons that have to do with Communist spies. We even like to highlight our military prowess and our global dominance whenever we have the chance.
An event that is extremely crucial to understanding why we still have many aspects of this mindset is something often regarded as the point that ended the 90s – the September 11th attacks. I wasn’t born when they happened but for the best of my abilities I understand the weight it carries in this country and worldwide. The tragedy is significant not only for the countless lives lost on that day and the following weeks (and unfortunately to this day), but also for the age it ushered in. The continuation of wars throughout foreign countries, mainly in the middle east is a direct effect of the attack on our nation. Our frustration was directed at Iraq and WMDs. We passed acts that would ultimately limit our personal freedoms and justifiably support it because of the fear instilled by terrorism. Unfortunately, this war on terror and terrorism itself has added fuel to the fire of the Cold War mindset. An unthinkable act led to our reaction which now many of us are realizing was not the right way to solve the problem.
What I’m trying to say is that our Cold War mindset never left us. Now it is up to you to decide if this can be beneficial or harmful.
My opinion
For me, I think it can harm us more than benefit because of a consistent sky-high military budget allocation and a low amount of government funding going to education or domestic development. Now while it is more complex than just cutting our exorbant military budget, we should put the spotlight on how we can solve the problem of spending so much on soldiers in foreign lands.
It is no mystery that recent wars have not been fueled for the common defense or protection of our citizens, but for oil-hungry capitalists. The United States has quite a history of messing with smaller sovereign states, even before the Cold War (see Banana Republics), but it could be argued that we increased intervening in foreign affairs during the Cold War and still do with the millennium wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Finally, the last point I will make is on how our country’s increased polarization in recent decades has been an accelerator of negligence towards more “left” leaning ideology. It doesn’t matter what your political stance is because it is easy to notice that a significant portion of our population will froth to the mouth at any mention of socialism/welfare/communism. I’d like to be clear: this is not not an endorsement of Communism, I have different ideological stances, but in my opinion it is not healthy to actively shun discourse on other ideologies than what each of us hold.
That should just be a basic principle in discussing politics. When we say slavery is wrong we need to understand why. If we don’t than there will certainly be groups of people denying the cruelty of enslavement. That is even present in today’s society with malicious suppression of education on slavery by Southern states – there exists people who believe it was states rights and heritage that led to secession.
Another point I want to bring that has been apparent in the new millennium is how many Americans see themselves as patriotic and in a harmful manner. This is not a form of patriotism borne out of unity, rather a grotesque form of individualism. We are patriotic about our own love for the country and we say it is for the ideals that it stands for, that is great and all yet we are not patriotic for our fellow Americans. We need to be patriotic to uphold those liberties we treasure, no matter if we disagree with how they are used by the various people within our nation. There are causes to it, a significant one being the individualistic mindset that is proudly labeled as American. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but it can lead to a damaging concept where we do not look out for others. An obvious example would be the selling of the idea of being anti-mask. Let me clarify, I am not saying that people who believe the talking heads are intrinsically harmful; I am saying that the acceptance of figures that spew out an idea that actively harms others is what needs to be addressed. We need to ensure that there is more funding towards education and that we have a populous than can criticize and evaluate what they hear.
Hey guys, welcome back to another Money Talk blog post! In the previous blog post, I talked about the bond asset class, types of bonds, bond ratings, and why you should buy bonds. Bonds are essentially a low-risk, low reward type asset, so you technically don’t risk losing a lot of money when you invest in bonds. However, stocks are much different. You can’t really predict how much of a risk and how much of a reward you can get from investing in the stock market. In this blog post, I will primarily be discussing stocks, types of categorizations of stocks, importance of diversification, and why you should invest in stocks. This will be the second post of our asset class blog post series. Let’s get started!
How do Stocks Work?
Stocks and equities represent the ownership in a company and are traded on the stock exchanges. Stocks generate portfolio income and are seen as money working for you. Stocks are bought and sold on the major exchanges almost daily, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Businesses sell shares in their business to raise money for various company initiatives, such as offering to fund new products, invest in growth, expand in operations, or pay off any company debt. Let’s take an example so that it would be easier for you to actually understand how this works. Let’s say a businessman starts a company and needs $100,000 in funding. At this point, the businessman invests $10,000 in his own company, and pitches his company to 9 other investors, who invest $10,000 each. Each of the investors have a 10% stake in the company. Now let’s say that the business is doing well and the total value of the company is $200,000. At this point, the $10,000 initial investment turns into $20,000 for the investors. The investors can now decide whether they want to keep the share or sell it to other investors for 100% of the profit. In this example, the company is doing well and investors are making money. However, this is not always the case as some companies could fail and investors could lose their money. But, this is the way stocks generally work.
Categorizing Stocks
There are multiple ways to categorize stocks, however most investors categorize stocks based on two factors: Sector and Market Capitalization.
Categorizing Stocks Based on Sector
One way to categorize stocks is by looking at the specific sector that the company is involved in. The 11 major sectors are shown in the diagram below.
There are many companies that are associated within these 11 sectors. For example, companies like Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) are the major companies that fall within the energy sector. Companies such as Paypal (PYPL) and Bank of America (BAC) fall under the financials sector. when picking companies to buy shares, it is important to consider the overall sector the company falls under so that you can evaluate the competitive advantage and the company performance in comparison with the other companies that fall under the sector.
Categorizing Based on Market Capitalization
Another method to categorizing stocks is by looking at the market capitalization (market cap) of the company. Market Capitalization is the total value of all of a company’s shares of stocks calculated by multiplying the total number of a company’s outstanding shares by the current market price of one share. I highly recommend going on to Yahoo Finance when trying to find the market capitalization because the calculated market cap is shown on the summary page when you search up a specific company. Yahoo Finance also constantly keeps updating this value as the share price increases or decreases, so it is really accurate. There are 5 basic groups when categorizing companies based on market capitalization:
Mega Cap Companies – market cap over 200 billion dollars
Large Cap Companies – market cap between 10 billion and 200 billion dollars
Mid Cap Companies – market cap between 2 billion and 10 billion dollars
Small Cap Companies – market cap between 300 million and 2 billion dollars
Micro Cap Companies – market cap between 50 million and 300 million dollars
Nano Cap Companies – market cap below 50 million dollars
Stock price alone does not represent the true worth of a company. Some stock prices could just be the result of pump and dump schemes so you may not know the true value of the company. Experienced investors consider looking at the market capitalization to truly understand the true value as perceived by the overall market. Investments in mega cap companies and in large cap companies are considered more safer and conservative investments than investments in mid cap or small cap companies. This does not mean to never invest in mid cap, small cap, micro cap, or nano cap, as some of these companies could potentially become large cap or mega cap companies in the future. Additionally, you could generate lots of profit if you score big on one of your investments in these companies, and that investment could grow in the future. However, the risk is obviously higher due to increased competitions for these companies and the possibilities of not being able to keep up with sector demands. That is why constant research is crucial if you want to make a really good investment, so that you can find an undervalued company to invest in and generate profits in the future.
Importance of Diversification
Now you may be wondering, why did I just spend most of my time talking about the different ways to categorizing stocks? I could’ve talked about other concepts related to stocks, but why did I choose to talk about stock categorizations? This was all to discuss the most important idea about investing: diversification. As defined by Investopedia, “diversification is a risk management strategy that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio.” A diversified portfolio incorporates different types of stocks from different sectors and with different market capitalizations. You may have heard of the popular quote by Warren Buffet, which is “do not put all eggs in one basket.”
Let me explain this concept with an example. Let’s say you bought shares of companies in the financial sector. Since you felt that financial companies would do really well after hearing other traders feel the same, you only invest in financial companies, so that your investing portfolio only has shares of financial companies. Let’s say some bad news comes out, and the financial sector took a big hit, like the Financial Crisis of 2008. You would have lost a LOT of money at this point, since you only had invested in financial companies. However, if you had allocated money for shares in companies in the energy sector, consumer discretionary, or materials sector, which did not do as bad, then you would have been able to minimize your losses.
That is why, you should have a diversified portfolio with companies from a variety of sectors and different categorizations of market caps. You should do a lot of research and select stocks from a variety of sectors and with different market caps, which would help you minimize losses and maximize as much profit as you can. Research is super important so that you can find out which companies or which sectors might do good.
Why Should You Invest in Stocks?
Now the question comes to why you should trade stocks. There are many reasons why investors choose to invest in stocks. One reason is to grow your wealth by trading stocks, as stock investments could generate a second income stream. In the Evaluating Your Incomes posts, I talked about the benefits of having many income streams. If you haven’t already read this article, I highly recommend you to check it out! Rather than just relying on the income you get from working, you can generate additional incomes by trading stocks. If you have the dedication to conduct research to analyze stocks and see where you can find good entry points to buy stocks, you can be rich and live a financially secure life. Stocks are definitely my favorite assets to look into and even trade because I have learned so much through stock market research. Whenever you analyze stocks and different companies, you can learn about so many things. I personally have learned how to analyze company financial reports and price charts through my research on stocks. Additionally, I have been able to learn about how the economy functions, learn about new upcoming companies, and new technologies that would be beneficial for the future. This can help you as well to have a better understanding of new companies and the evolution of technology and the sectors. After researching a lot and becoming an experienced trader, you will have so much knowledge in the fields of finance and business!
I hope you got a good understanding of stocks and the stock market. I covered a lot of concepts in this blog, but I hope it wasn’t too overwhelming for you. After I finish the posts on the real estate, cryptocurrency, and the commodities asset class, I plan to focus my blog posts on stocks and start introducing different topics associated with stock investing, so stay tuned! Thanks again for reading another Money Talk blog post. Make sure you take some time to read the other Money Talk blog posts, and even the blog posts on the other blog pages of the Excite the Mind website. Follow our Twitter @MindExcite to stay updated on new changes to our website and new blog posts. See you in the next one!
Main Cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen
“You know why the Yankees always win, Frank”
“Because they have Mickey Mantle?”
“No, it’s ’cause the other teams can’t stop staring at those damn pinstripes.”
I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember watching a movie with such an A-List ensemble in a very long time. Spielberg, DiCaprio, Hanks, John Williams! Not just that, the movie itself has been quite famous for a while, and I was so glad to get a chance to finally watch it. The one problem with seeing the cast list full of so many stars is it increases expectations, it creates “hype”, and I hate having any type of expectations before watching a movie. Of course, many cases it’s inevitable – who didn’t get hyped for Infinity War or Endgame? But many times, hype makes you have unrealistic expectations for a movie to the point where a movie will never be good enough. But I will say, this movie was just as good as I hoped it would be.
DiCaprio plays Frank William Abagnale, the world’s greatest con man, who also happens to be a teenager. He quickly becomes an expert of deception and bank fraud, rising through the ranks. Meanwhile, Hanks plays Carl Hanratty, the FBI agent determined to end Abagnale’s little escapade. The rest of the film is about just how far Frank goes and how much farther Carl goes to catch him. My favorite moment in this film has to be Hanks’s Knock-Knock joke, and you’ll know it when you see it. This film is definitely something special that’s stood out to me. It takes you through various genres within a single film, giving you plenty of the already promised crime thriller while also giving you a deep look inside of a person’s mental state after the impacts of loneliness, not having the parents, the family you always wanted. It ends with an ending I certainly didn’t see coming, and it really just made me feel as if I’ve wasted my teenage years in comparison with Abagnale. I have nothing but praises for any of the cast, direction, or music as expected. All I have to say is get ready to be entertained, DiCaprio, Hanks, and Spielberg have crafted an exquisite, nuanced experience that isn’t just a fun 2 hour crime movie. This film has substance, and you’ll come out of this one with a lot to think about for sure. That’s all I want to say without giving too much away, GO WATCH THIS MOVIE! It’s free on Tubi, I believe, and on HBO Max among other streaming services.
Welcome back to another Money Talk blog post! Hope you all are having a great week so far and staying safe at home. I know it must be boring to be quarantined and social distanced from your friends, but use this time as a great way to be productive to learn new things. Reading our blog is a great way to spend your time whenever you are feeling bored since there are so many great articles on our blog. You can learn about new movies, science/technology concepts, ethical/social issues, and even personal financial management through the Money Talk blog page! Make sure to follow our Twitter @MindExcite to stay updated on new posts and changes to the website.
In today’s post I will be talking about the bonds asset class, which I briefly talked about in the last blog post. As I said before, I will be writing blog posts for each of the asset classes that I discussed in the previous “Assets in a Portfolio” blog post. This way, you can start to understand in detail about these asset classes and notice the pros and cons of each. Let’s get started!
In the last post, I described bonds as loans that can be traded between people. The more formal definition as defined by investor.gov, is that bonds are “debt securities” where “borrowers issue bonds to raise money from investors willing to lend them money for a certain amount of time.” Whenever you purchase a bond, you are lending to the issuer, which could be a company, the government, or a municipality. In return, the issuer pays you a specified rate of interest during the “life” of the bond. When the bond matures or reaches its expiration date, the issuer will also pay the entire principal value as well, which is the initial money you lent when you purchased the bond. This is generally how bonds work. There are many types of bonds, but in this blog I will talk about government bonds and corporate bonds.
Let’s start by talking about government bonds, or sometimes referred to as Treasury bonds. One historical example that shows how bonds were used by the government was during World War 1 and World War 2. In order to fund the United States’ involvement in World War 1 and World War 2, the US government sold Treasury bonds to the US population and urged Americans to buy the bonds. The US government set a fixed date which ensured that the US would give back the money to those who bought the bond with additional interest. Government bonds are helpful for the US government to fund projects, such as road or bridge construction.
The next type of bond are corporate bonds. Corporate bonds are used by companies in order to generate funding for company operations or help the companies to accumulate enough money for various needs, such as investing in research and development, buying back their own stock, paying shareholder dividends, refinancing debt, and financing mergers and acquisitions. However, let’s say a company goes bankrupt and you have a corporate bond from that company. Bondholders will have a claim on the company’s assets and cash flows in the case of this occurring. The bond’s terms determine the bondholder’s priority of the claim, so it depends on what type of bond you have. However, you may not receive the full amount of money you were supposed to get or full amount of value, and your bonds can probably be exchanged with new ones.
Bonds are given ratings, which measure the creditworthiness of the bond. These bond ratings correspond to the cost of borrowing for an issuer. There are 3 chief independent rating services that give bonds a score: Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investor Services, and Fitch Ratings INC. According to Investopedia, “higher rated bonds, known as investment grade bonds, are viewed as safer and more stable investments.” Investment grade bonds usually carry a rating in the range of AAA or BBB- by Standard and Poor’s, and Aaa to Baa3 ratings from Moody’s. Non-investment grade bonds, or sometimes called junk bonds, usually carry Standard and Poor’s ratings of “BB+” to “D” (“Baa1” to “C” for Moody’s). However as the rating decreases, the bond yield increases due to the increased risk. Higher rated bonds are safer and less riskier, but don’t give as much yields. Lower rated bonds are riskier, but give more yields to investors, who are fine with these risks. You must research more and understand your own risk tolerance in order to make wise decisions on which bond investments would be beneficial for you.
So now, why buy bonds? Bonds are essentially a low risk, low reward investment as bonds provide a steady stream of income through interest payments. Unlike stock investors, bond investors know how much money they will receive in total after the bond matures so it helps them be certain of the bond returns. Stock investing is risky since you technically are owning a small part of the company, whereas you don’t own any part of the company or government with bonds. Bonds also reduce the overall risk in your portfolio and adding bonds can significantly dampen the volatility that could be caused by other assets, such as stocks or cryptocurrencies. Additionally, whenever economic downturns occur, many investors start to enter the bond market as the stock market wouldn’t generate enough returns.
Ultimately, bonds are a safe investment that you should direct some of the money in your portfolio to. I hope this post gave you a good understanding of bonds and the different types of bonds that are available. I know it might be confusing now on how bonds work, but once you research on your own, then you will feel more confident in investing in bonds. The bonds asset class was one of the hardest concepts for me to understand when I was a beginner in investing. I highly recommend you go check out Investopedia, Investor.gov, and The Ultimate Guide to Bonds as resources for you to learn more about bonds, since these resources helped me to have a full understanding of the bond asset class. Thanks again for reading this article and hope to see you in the next Money Talk blog post!!
Main Cast – Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
This is my biggest movie review yet! AND WE HAVE A GUEST REVIEWER, FOR THE FIRST TIME, VINUTHNA MALLAMPATY! I’m really excited to dig into both these movies, for reference, Vinu will be in bold text, and her ratings will be on the right! Let me know if you want her or anyone else to return for a future review as well!
Hello everyone!
Well, The Shining is a legendary movie in terms of pop culture, but Vinu, what were your initial thoughts while watching this movie?
To be honest, I was surprised by the amount of references from The Shining that other movies and shows include. I think it had a HUGE impact on pop culture and I think to fully understand that, you absolutely have to watch the movie, regardless of what you’ve heard about it.
I fully agree! It’s insane! When I started watching, the editing style was so different, and then I realized this movie is from 1980! It’s 40 years old, and for the most part, it actually ages pretty well. Some of the cuts and camera shots are a bit jarring, but otherwise, it adds to the style and the unnerving factor of the movie. But, I have to ask, were you scared?
Okay… I have to let the world know this before I answer: I hate watching horror movies (loser) because I am a huge coward and I believe that you can attest to that. (She’s a loser) That’s rude, but I’m gonna ignore it. Anyways, The Shining didn’t scare me as much as I thought it would. I think part of it is because the movie was in fact shot almost 40 years ago, so some of the sound effects and video effects aren’t as “realistic” as the ones being used today. And speaking of the camera shots, I thought it was pretty funny how there were so many zoom-ins. Not something that I expected from a 1980s movie.
It felt like I was watching a Tik-Tok video with how many slow zoom-ins to the face there were (honestly though), but I think, especially then, that was an iconic and unique style of filming. But at the same time, there were plenty of amazing shots that did really set the tone. The famous shot of the camera behind Danny on his tricycle is one that immediately comes to mind. For me, this movie wasn’t very scary as well, I don’t scare easily from horror movies (humble brag), but it was unnerving. The movie does do well in building an atmosphere, and you can see the decline of these characters slowly in front of your eyes. My favorite part of this movie, by far!, has to be the soundtrack. It is iconic, and I have heard it before without realizing I had.
See! That’s what I mean about the pop culture references. Along with the soundtrack, things like Jack’s ICONIC “Hereeee’s Johnny!” and the Grady twins (This was in a Jessie episode… ) and numerous other things have been parodied or reused in other things. And, speaking of Jessie, I remember EXACTLY which one you’re talking about. Anyways, I think the set design was also INSTRUMENTAL in building such a terrifying atmosphere. The Overlook Hotel is HUGE and I thought that contrasted with our typical experience of a horror movie, where everything is pretty claustrophobic…
I have to agree! This hotel is a main character on its own, and it carries such a presence! (*nods head vigorously*) Speaking of the characters, what did you think of them? They seem a little shallow and exaggerated at points, and I couldn’t quite tell if that was on purpose or not.
I noticed that too… we didn’t really get much backstory about everyone, which made it little bit difficult to understand the behaviors/motives of some of the characters. However, the acting was brilliant! (LEGENDARY performances!) I think Jack Nicholson was the PERFECT choice for Jack Torrance. His facial expressions (HIS EYEBROWS) were so vivid and sinister at times and that terrified me. I also particularly liked Danny Lloyd’s performance. He did so well! Whose performances did you like/stood out to you?
Well, I have to agree with you on Jack Nicholson. There’s a reason this movie is so well known to this day, and it was his legendary performance. But, I also particularly liked Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann. He was quite the unknown character whose intentions I couldn’t figure out until the end, and I appreciated his performance pretty well. Shelly Duvall is a little exaggerated at times (I thought so too.), but this movie hits its stride in the last hour and she excels there along with everyone else. I loved Danny shouting REDRUM at the end, that was brilliant by Danny Lloyd, especially at that age.
Honestly though! In my opinion, the scariest part of the movie was when Wendy figured out that “REDRUM” spelled backwards is “MURDER.” That was SUCH a good scene! (I KNOW!) I wanted to ask you, though, about what sorts of “underlying themes” this movie showcases, in your opinion…
Oh boy, we’re getting all English teacher (Hey now, it’s good prep for AP Lit! ;)) (ew). I think it just really highlights psychological decline, especially in isolation.(Yeah, it made solitude and isolation seem like a version of hell and this was alluded to in the beginning by Ullman.)
Yea, there’s tons of foreshadowing, and one of the scariest parts of this movie is how possible this is in real life as well. Obviously, the hotel takes it a bit farther, but the core elements of mental insanity is a very possible outcome from long term isolation. A horror movie that focuses on people, to me, is much scarier than a supernatural one, just because of the reality of it. I don’t want to give too much else away about the plot, but I will fully recommend it to all who read this. Any closing thoughts Vinu?
Hmm… I think I’d have to say that this is a movie that you’ll enjoy more if you go into it with an open mind (definitely). I did the opposite, and I initially wasn’t too interested because I’m so used to more “modern” horror movies where it’s dark throughout the entire thing and the soundtrack makes you feel on edge the entire time. But, after adopting an open mindset, it turned out to be such a good movie.
Yea definitely! I will say the beginning of this movie can be a little slow; it takes 30 minutes really before anything happens. But, in the last hour, all hell breaks loose (in SO many ways!), and that is the movie you really came to watch so definitely stick around till then. I have to agree with you; this movie is certainly not conventional at all, buttttt perfect segue time, its sequel in many ways is.
Come on, that was a pretty good segue, you can say it. (Yes, it was) Oooo, we disagree here, interesting! I actually liked this movie, and I thought it was a worthy sequel. I will say this, watch both. This movie completes the other and adds story to both. Now, I want to see if you’ll tear me apart here.
I… did not like this movie. As you mentioned earlier, it was a much more conventional horror movie with all of the crazy, terror-inducing sound effects and cool color palette and lots and lots of darkness. But, I felt as if the plot was a bit too thin. I don’t think I should give much away, but I was just very taken aback by the cult of, essentially, “psychic vampires.” It seemed random, especially compared to the first movie.
Fair, it is a little out of the blue. But, for me, Rebecca Ferguson’s performance sold it for me (I agree; her performance was really good!), and I think I just really really wanted this movie to be good, so I went along for the ride to see where it ended up. Similar to the first one, the last hour with that climatic drive through the mountains sends shivers down my spine with the nostalgia (!!!!!) of the first movie. And I only saw it a day before, I imagine the people who saw the original 40 years ago were much more impacted than I was. For me, the plot was a little shaky, yes, but I liked how we got to see the consequences of those traumatic sequences on Danny as a person, and we saw the genetic similarities between him and his father. BUT, the Jack Nicholson/ Shelly Duvall/ Danny Lloyd look-alikes, or whatever they used, were very distracting and I don’t know how I felt about that, especially Nicholson’s.
I agree. Obviously, this is a sequel, so I expected there to be some “re-using” of the first movie. But, I don’t think it was done in an effective way. Even the shots of the Overlook Hotel weren’t… what I expected. I’m not sure how to put this, but I guess I felt as if the movie was trying too hard?
Ya, I can see that. It does rely heavily on The Shining, and it tries very hard not to step on the toes of the predecessor, just because of the weight the first film carries. They used a lot of call-backs and used that nostalgia to elevate the movie. That’s possibly the real gray area for this film; some fans will like that and others won’t. It does not really work as a stand-alone film, for sure. I think you HAVE to watch both in order and keep an open mind.
I agree with that. I think Doctor Sleep wouldn’t have done as well as it did at the box office if The Shining wasn’t connected to it. But, yes, I also agree with keeping an open mind while watching this movie. It didn’t feel as realistic and tangible (!!) as The Shining did, but with an open mind, it’s a good “time pass” movie.
100%! I just realized after reading that, this movie was not a horror movie for me. I thought of it as a thriller sequel, and I realize why now. This film’s plot goes fully into the supernatural aspect. There is no longer that realistic psychological aspect being used as a horror device (which both of us really liked about The Shining). We still see it with Danny’s character, especially in the beginning. But, it’s not used as a horror device, but more as a characterization device. This movie is not a scary movie, and it shouldn’t be regarded as one, especially not on the same level as The Shining. What I think this movie did well, is add lore and add some “cement to the cracks” of the first film, solidifying both as a whole. I don’t know… I did enjoy Ewan McGregor, and I think he did a good job and especially, I really liked Cliff Curtis as well as Billy. I don’t know… this movie is iffy, but I do think you should watch both. Vinu, your thoughts?
I have to say that Ewan McGregor’s performance as Danny was good. It made us become invested in that character, which wasn’t done in The Shining as much. (takes the horror out, but adds character development instead!) Haha, exactly. But, I have to disagree with you on the latter part of your statements. I think that there really isn’t anything that would’ve drawn me to this movie if it hadn’t been connected to the first. It’s a good movie to watch to pass time, but I think that’s all I can say about it.
I think I do agree with that. Without The Shining, this movie isn’t worth much. You do need to watch the first one to really care at all about Doctor Sleep.
What’s that thing that people say? X walked so Y could run or something like that? (Ya, I think that’s about right. The Shining and Stanley Kubrick walked so Warner Bros. could run with the box office profits of Doctor Sleep.)I see what you did there. (haha, that had to be the reason to reboot this franchise after 40 years, but I do think it is worth to watch once. It’s not good enough to watch more than that, but if you have a couple hours to kill, I think you can go for it.) That pretty much sums this entire review up hahaha.
Perfect eh! Ya that’s our closing thoughts. Watch The Shining for sure, even if you don’t like horror, just because of the weight it has. Watch Doctor Sleep if you got time to kill, I think it’ll give you some extra content for The Shining, Vinu thinks I’m an idiot. (Yeah.)
That concludes my first ever double review! Let me know what you guys thought, and I have to thank Vinu so much for doing this with me! (You’re welcome. And, thanks for inviting me to do this review with you. I honestly didn’t think I’d enjoy watching these movies, but because you made me, I now know that there are a couple of horror movies that I will watch without hiding under a blanket.) We’re slowly converting everyone. I guarantee you will build up that tolerance slowly! I was hiding under a blanket when I started too. Next week will be a short, boring single movie review again, but I’ll definitely do more of these big projects for sure! Thanks for reading!
Hello there! Just wanted to give you a brief blog post on what is going on in my life right now. I’ve mostly been stuck at home due to quarantine and social distancing, however I have been getting a lot of things done! First off, I have been spending some time working on the Money Talk blog page and posting new finance articles weekly. Before writing, I like to research and read about the specific topic I am going to write about and understand it fully. In this way, the preparation research helps me to ensure that the information I write is accurate. Additionally, I have been working on a Youtube Channel as well, called the Future Billionaires Club (FBC). FBC is basically a channel that I created to teach high schoolers and newbie investors the basics of financial education, which are some of the concepts I write about on the Money Talk. Currently, I am wrapping up a cryptocurrency playlist and transitioning to create a video playlist on another finance topic, which I have not yet decided. I highly recommend checking it out as another resource to learn basic financial management and business soft skills. If you have Instagram, make sure to follow @reedy_fbc to stay updated on new videos and the investment strategy posts. I’ve also been taking a variety of online courses online on Udemy. I’ve taken a couple of courses in cryptocurrency, stocks, candlestick charts, trend analysis, and python in finance. As you can see, I am really interested in finance! Other than working on FBC and the Money Talk blog page and taking online courses, I have just been researching college and future career paths I could be interested in. Since I am a rising senior, I am starting to analyze different college programs and understand the application process. Other than that, I spend some time playing video games with my friends and relaxing with my family. That’s pretty much all that’s going on right now. Stay tuned for Wednesday’s Money Talk blog post on the bond asset class!
This piece is to cover what healthcare is and the columnist’s opinions on the current American healthcare system. The columnist is a current student in High School and lives in the U.S. He is not a health economist so further information can be found in more detailed studies/articles.
Key points:
Healthcare is a sum of efforts to maintain or restore the well-being of people
Doctors, nurses, social workers, and other professionals provide this care
Healthcare systems are based on balancinghealth, wealth, and equity
Our newest form of national healthcare is under the ACA
(Opinionated) The ACA is like a necessary evil to progress the system from its many flaws
The patient is not the priority in the American system
What is Healthcare?
Let’s start off by giving a definition of healthcare and its basic characteristics.
As defined in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, healthcare is the sum of “efforts made to maintain or restore physical, mental, or emotional well-being especially by trained and licensed professionals.” This seems pretty obvious. We have a doctor, nurse, or other licensed professional to help care or treat a patient when they are in need of it.
Healthcare systems across the world are a mix of health, wealth, and equity. The perfection of all three is practically impossible so we must have tradeoffs between the factors.
Who can provide health care?
So who exactly can provide health care for an individual? Within the United States, a health care provider is any “person or organization who furnishes, bills, or is paid for health care in the normal course of business.” [1]
There are different types of providers, falling into two main categories: Individual and Institutional.
Some individual providers include physicians, allied health professionals, and health professionals. Physicians are commonly known as doctors and can be specialized in their practice or can be a general practitioner of medicine.
Allied health professionals are non-physicians who do not require a medical degree. The path to becoming an Allied health professional could be by obtaining a certification, and associate’s degree or on-the-job training. They can be technicians, therapists, trainers, or social workers, among other various professions. [2]
American Healthcare
If you do not know what the ACA is, or the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), the act was a federal statute passed that overhauled and reformed healthcare (the largest since the establishment of Medicaid and Medicare under LBJ in 1965).
If you haven’t been granted an exemption and you choose not to purchase health insurance under the ACA, you will face a tax penalty. This is for younger people, who statistically don’t need the insurance as much as others, to subsidize the fees for the elderly or those in higher needs.
Health insurance coverage in the United States applies to around 90% of Americans, with 27 million not being protected under insurance. [8]
And still within our system, it is the insured who pays for everyone’s insurance. We have to pay for hiked up premiums when insurance companies are charged by hospitals taking losses.
The public health part of the ACA is provided through Medicare (elderly), Medicaid (poor), Disabled groups (both). The ACA expands on those Medicare and Medicaid from Title XVIII in the Social Security Act by having subsidize coverage for the near-poor.
There are no direct price controls on the market so doctors and hospitals can set up their own rates to which the market will bear.
It is funny (not) how longstanding principles of free will and choice play into our own lives. We can choose where to go, what to pay (based on plan or even no plan), and providers can charge whatever they choose (we don’t always have to choose that plan to pay but you get the point).
Employer based health insurance comprises half of the nation’s healthcare coverage, with employers with over 50 employees are forced to set up a plan for their workers or they will face high monetary penalties (under the ACA).
Medicare is much more expensive because within health economics (which we will delve into later) there is a basic principle of health insurance where those at higher risk will tend to be not as appealing to put under a plan. costs can skyrocket for these people and insurance companies do not want to cover this population as much as healthier people (health insurance is a gamble but opposite of the role between casinos and the player). Older individuals tend to have more conditions which demands more care.
Other Healthcare Systems
The Bismarck and Beveridge model are two main models many other countries use for their populations.
Let’s start with out friends across the pond in the UK – the Beveridge system. Shared sacrifice and solidarity between citizens are emphasized. Universal single-payer insurance (which is bungled in the US system), Public health care provision (the government runs and sets up the system), and Free care (no deductibles, no premiums, no coinsurance) are the tenets of this system. You may know it as the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. The key token to this system is to eliminate the choice between your money and your health. A flaw with the system is that the taxpayer would pay high prices, therefore there are queues and governmental control over novel tech so that is not a glaring issue.
You may know the latter as being the same name for the father of modern Germany. This is a socialist based model derived on universal sickness insurance and leads to coverage for all (historically taken in steps by countries). Key aspects are universal coverage (heavily-regulated employer or governmental insurance), Community rating (Healthier people subsidize the care for more at-risk populations), and Regulated private health care provisions (the government sets the prices with doctors and hospital managers). This is seen by health economists as a midway between the relatively unregulated US system and the nationalized Beveridge one. [8]
It is good for you to know of other models to ensure that you have an open mind about the variance in healthcare because it matters.
Hospitals
Institutional providers like hospital systems, clinics, or medical groups can provide more comprehensive, specific, or need-based care for patients.
I want to briefly go over hospital systems as they formed 33% of national health care expenditures in 2017. This was the largest share of expenditures in that year and has been growing at a rate of around 4%. [3] In a health care system, hospital systems can be public, non-profit, or private. They can be a combination like my local Children’s hospital, the CMC of Dallas where they are both a non-profit and are listed as private. This specific hospital receives donations from individual donors, corporations, or organizations. Public hospitals are ones that are funded by federal or local government. [5] Private hospitals usually have more expenses than public ones. Keep in mind that private hospitals are for-profit and try to make money out of the care they provide their patients so they will refrain from costlier emergency services and focus on “money makers” like cardiology, rehab, or elective surgery.
Patients
Let us look from the patient side of things. The patient goes to health care providers to seek medical services when needed or when going for scheduled visits such as an annual checkup.
Primary Care is what most of us go to for regular checkups and screenings. Your doctor is your Primary care provider. This type of care becomes really important for the HMO health plan as it relies on tests and checks that can preemptively find areas of concern. These providers will refer you to a specialist if further examination and treatment is needed for specific cases.
Specialist care is for patients who require specific treatment for their condition or disease so they go to specialists who have expertise in a focused part of the body or practice where they can apply their extended knowledge to your problems.
Emergency care is pretty obvious to what it does. If you are in need of immediate attention due to a medical emergency then you will go to the Emergency ward of a hospital or specialized practices for initial examination/diagnoses like an Urgent Care. Medical costs rise pretty quickly when you are in need of rapid care and this is where a lot of expensive bills are footed. However, profit margins are very low (only 7.8% in 2009) but are likely to rise because of an expected increase in insured patients under the ACA. [4]
Hospice care is a very personally emotional subject for many, including myself. It is a type of “palliative” care which is where care is done by relieving pain without treating the cause of the condition. It can be done in hospice centers or within the patient’s home. My paternal grandmother was put into hospice care after several years of battling her condition, and while it is too emotionally heavy and complex to go into her story, hospice care was what my dadima was under in her final months.
Health Insurance basics
Health insurance within America works by having a certain amount of people, known as a risk pool, paying their costs of insurance to cover those who need medical services when they need it. We have insurance pools because health insurance in general is expensive due to local high costs of drugs, high salaries for medical professionals, and complexity within administrative work. It is crucial to know that since we have insurance through pools of people, not everyone will get the same amount of insurance “value” because each person has different needs. There is variance. This is a basic principle of health economics. *This applies to Private health insurance; public health insurance under the ACA does not have risk pools
Let us go over a few definitions of insurance terms and their definitions. It is highly important to understand the meaning of these terms to comprehend the concept as a whole.
Things get very confusing on what is and what isn’t covered under plans like an annual physicians costs do not require a copayment by the patient.
What is a claim? A claim is what your doctor or hospital requests to your insurer after they have treated you.
A referral is what an insured needs from their doctor to visit a specialist, which is not always required under some plans.
Deductibles, co-insurance, copayments, and premiums are important terms that define how we pay for our insurance. Deductibles are paid yearly by the patient out of pocket which will be the first set of money going to medical expenses. After the deductible money is used up, co-insurance kicks in where both the insurance company and the patient start paying. Copayments are when the insured (patients) pay a fixed out-of-pocket amount of money for medical services like doctor’s visits and prescriptions. They are usually less than 25 dollars and are different than co-insurance (which can be mixed up often) because they are a set amount while co-insurance is a percentage of your bill (which varies by plan). Premiums are paid monthly to the insurer by the individual or employer to purchase health coverage. Premiums vary depending on factors deemed significant within the health insurance industry and are age, location, tobacco use, individual vs. family enrollment, and the plan category chosen. [5]
After a certain amount of expenses has been payed through co-insurance, all payments are made by the insurance company at a limit called the out-of-pocket maximum.
Pre-existing conditions are important because under the current national health care plan, the ACA, they are covered under your plan, however, if you are purchasing a plan individually they will not be covered. This exception is called the Grandfathered Health Plan and is applicable to plans purchased before the ACA was passed. The non-coverage of existing conditions along with other attributes that are not covered under these older plans like rate review (which enforces insurers to publicly notify the insured of any rate increase on premiums of 15% or more), ability to choose a doctor/specialist, and preventive care (where you are not made to pay for certain services like vaccines and screenings) leads to those having Grandfathered Health Plans being disadvantaged in many cases.
The ACA established the insurance marketplace which helped facilitate exchanges for health care plan, all of which are required to cover essential health benefits such as pregnancy and maternity care, mental health services, and prescriptions. [6]
There are some different plans under Private Health Insurance, let’s briefly cover them.
Quick and rather important note: Private insurance plans are better if they cost more (on a general trend… makes sense)
Second note: It should be known that insurance companies negotiate contracts with health care workers/ professionals/hospitals to be under a network. These networks are what is covered under plans and out-of-network plans where there is no contract between providers and your insurance company will not be covered except in minimal cases.
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO): An HMO uses the concept of “Managed care” where there are preventive measures taken such as screening tests to reduce the amount of times a medical service or treatment is required. There are no deductibles and limited co-pays. This type of plan is very strict, limiting the insured to only in-network coverage except for emergency services.
Preferred Provider Organization (PPO): This type of plan is similar to HMO’s except that there is usually a co-pay and deductible. There is a No Referral Required policy under these plans when visiting specialists.
Point of Service (POS): POS is a combination of the previous two plans where there are low deductibles and co-pays, higher out-network costs, and referrals are required from the Primary Care Provider (PCP)
Fee for Service (FFS): The “oldie” plan where you can choose the doctor or hospital and the insurance company pays for services. High cost compared to the modern low cost plans.
Quick stuff on Health Economics
This is a really interesting and draining field of economics. It assumes a lot from modern economic studies and modifies models to fit the specifics of health. I will quickly go over some models and types of healthcare.
Grossman Model: The Grossman model assumes that health is something that the patient chooses and something that happens to the patient. Since some health outcomes are a result of our choices (diet, exercise, etc.), we can implement a demand curve to model health and investments into health. Now with these assumptions, the model predicts that those who can benefit more from health care will invest more in its health. For example, poor health for those with lower wages will be more expensive than those with higher incomes. This results in wealthier individuals investing more into their health.
Something that is surprising for many is that as health prices increase, the demand decreases. This seems shocking to people because they think that demand is caused by medical need. However, through multiple studies like the RAND HIE (where two thousand Americans were given different rates of copayments and insurance) we have learned that outpatient care decreases as cost-sharing increases (where the patient has to may more of a share for the same service).
It is crucial to understand that wealth inequality leads to health inequality in all countries. For example in 2010, fifty-five year old American men in the lowest income quintile were expected to live thirteen years less than than those in the richest quintile (life expectancy is a simple way to highlight health disparity)
In economics an Oligopoly falls between a monopoly and a perfectly competitive market. Oligopolies will have low output and high prices. It is safe to assume that hospitals have limited competition and have some market power. However, health economists are split on whether increasing competition will lower prices and better outcomes. [8]
My take
In mine and in the opinion of many others, our system is very flawed. Now there are many other socioeconomic issues but health is one that directly affect all of us at one point in our lives. I mean it is our health. I will go over some underlying issues in this section.
There seems to be a health insurance bureaucracy. It is outright unfair to Americans to pay such high costs that are determined by the middlemen who control the pricing of services and medication. health should be a right, not a way to make stacks of money because you can overcharge. Malpractice is apparent throughout our system with many bills charging for arbitrary or ridiculous parts of the total cost. The people are hurt because they cannot pay these ludicrous prices for simple things like insulin. Insulin in terms of elasticity is highly inelastic. Many of those in need of the drug are forced to pay for the skyrocketing prices for this drug. Why? Because it is an ingrained belief in our system that we can profit off of the basic human needs of others.
In a perfect world, we should be able to directly pay the doctor and provide the needed feedback on the quality of service they provide us. We are controlled in choice by our health insurance companies because they have the money so they decide what we can be serviced with. I touched up on Oligopolies and insurance companies earlier and it is so vital to understand that our system works like that ebcause we have low outputs in quality and higher costs.
There are administrative inefficiencies too. When a patient needs a specific medicine and the insurance company does not directly say for the doctor to prescribe it, the doctor has to send a form to the insurance company to why they are prescribing the medicine. Costs rise for both doctor and company because of this flaw and there is no betterment for patient care.
In general, Doctors would want to keep customer satisfaction as a priority so they would not want to directly charge the patient the more expensive treatment, test, or medication if they were in authority of what the patient will get. But there is a financial incentive within our system to charge the patient with the more expensive option.
The employer gets to control what insurance company will cover us. We don’t get to decide what is best for us. The employer an offer lower wage jobs to the employee in exchange for their benefits so we still do pay for our insurance in that regard.
That free choice part I mentioned earlier should be revised. There is a lot of asterisks for the choice part because the employer chooses the insurance and do so to find the lowest quality and cheapest option for their employees. They get a bulk discount. We as individuals do not.
“The more complicated a financial instrument is, the more you’re getting screwed” – Dr. Alok Kanojia
That terminology I explained earlier – all the deductibles, the premiums – is all just to make money off of you. These financial instruments are put in place not for your benefit, economically or in terms of your health.
The service the insurance companies provide is risk hedging. They bet on your health. That is valid and is ok, but the amount we spend on the bet is too high.
If you are uninsured, the hospital takes a loss. They go to the Federal government and then ask for money. The government takes our taxpayer money and gives it to the hospital. When they take the loss the hospital increases the charge to the insurance company so they overcharge us, the consumer.
We still pay for the healthcare of everyone.
The power should be in the person needing the treatment.
I think it is reasonable to assume at the very most basic level that everyone should prefer the best option for themselves and others. What angers me is the disregard to others’ wellbeing in this country because of a disillusioned public. We wrap ourselves in a fabric of unnecessary complexities and fibers of apathetic indifference to our fellow Americans. Members of our population will not be open to other ideas because they will have preconceived notions on different ways of thinking and won’t lend their ears towards a POV other than theirs. LISTEN and LEARN. We are a population comprised of individuals born to change and progress, not stay stagnant in a gridlock of needless harm to ourselves.
Thanks to Dr. K of Healthygamer_gg for inspiring me to write this article.
We have made it to our 5th blog post of the Money Talk blog page! If you are a returning viewer of our blog, welcome back! If you are new to our blog, we are so excited to have you reading our blogs on the Excite the Mind website! There’s certainly a lot of cool topics being talked about weekly on our blog page, like the movie reviews by Shishir, the science/technology articles by Harkanwar, and the societal/ethical topics by Akshay. Make sure to follow our Twitter to get weekly updates on our new blog posts and updates on our website. Comment down below if you have any ideas or topics you would like to see us write about on our blog page, as we love hearing feedback and suggestions from our viewers in order to make the Excite the Mind website even better!
Today’s blog post will primarily be about the major asset classes. In the last blog post, I explained what the difference was between assets and liabilities. Hope you got a good understanding of that concept, as knowing this difference will help you with personal financial management. In this blog post, I want to give an overview of some of the main asset classes and go into a little bit more into detail on the assets investors are most likely to invest in or buy. There are many different types of assets like expensive paintings or classic cars. However, I will talk about some of the main types of asset classes you are most likely to make investments in. The asset classes that I will talk about in this post are bonds, equities/stocks, real estate, cryptocurrencies, and commodities.
Let’s start by talking about bonds. Bonds are like loans that can be traded between people. Let’s say that you have a $500 bond and you sell it to a lender, or a person that buys the bond. You will be able to spend that $500 now, but you will need to pay it back to the money lender sometime in the future. At a certain date, the bond expires and you must repay whoever is holding the bond on that date, along with the interest the bond has accumulated. For the person or entity issuing the bond, it becomes a liability. For the person that buys the bond, it becomes an asset. Bonds can be bought and sold, but the person that owns that bond when the bond expires at the certain date that was set will be the person that receives the money and interest. Both governments and companies utilize bonds to generate immediate cash. Governments use bonds to fund war involvement, government projects (roads, bridges, canals), and other monetary needs. Companies use bonds to fund their own company projects, such as factory construction, product marketing, and other company needs. I know this is a really broad overview, but don’t worry! I will be creating additional blog posts later on that will go more into depth on bonds. For now, I just want to make sure you can understand the general overview of bonds and all the other asset classes I will discuss in this blog post.
Now, let’s talk about stocks/equities. Both stocks and equities represent the ownership in an entity (company) and are traded on the stock exchanges. Stocks and equities are often used interchangeably but essentially they both mean the same thing. Investors usually invest and purchase shares of a company that they believe will do good in the future. Investors also can position themselves and short companies that they believe will not do too well since companies might have some bad days and share prices can plummet. That is why a ton of research is necessary when getting into stock trading, since it is a much more high-risk asset compared with bonds. If you don’t do enough research, you can lose big time if you don’t position yourself in the most effective way to make money. Stocks are one of my favorite assets as you can learn a lot when you are researching and analyzing. I have learned A LOT about the economy, new start-up companies, upcoming technologies, and much more whenever I research stocks. I recommend starting with stocks whenever you begin investing, as it is a relatively simple concept to understand and is an asset class that can generate profits if you do adequate research.
Real estate includes homes and investment properties. Some of the main categories of real estate investments include residential properties, such as houses or apartments, commercial properties, such as skyscrapers and office buildings, industrial properties, such as warehouses and storage units, retail properties, such as shopping malls, and mixed-use properties. Real estate is an example of an asset that is considered as an illiquid asset. Illiquid assets are not easily able to be converted into cash. Compared to stocks/equities, it’s generally harder and time-consuming to sell and buy houses. During volatile market conditions when there are fewer buyers than sellers, illiquid assets may become even more difficult to sell. In fact, sellers may not find any buyers that are willing to buy. In these instances, asset holders may be required to cut down their asking price to attract potential buyers, and in worst cases, they may find that their assets have no value at certain points in time. However, real estate investing with adequate research can yield you substantial profits if you can carefully choose exceptional real estate investment opportunities.
Next, is cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital version of money or a form of payment where transactions are done online. What sets cryptocurrency apart, is that it is a decentralized cash system. A decentralized cash system is a network powered by users without having any third party, central authority, or middleman controlling it, such as banks. There are many different types of cryptocurrencies in the market today. Some of the more popular ones include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and Cardano. However, be weary because cryptocurrency is very volatile and risky. Cryptocurrency has great potential to become the currency of the future as cryptocurrency eliminates the need for middleman authority, like banks and governments, and speeds up domestic as well as international money transactions. Currently, a lot of cryptocurrency companies have only just started and the price of many cryptocurrencies is considerably low when compared to where that price can be in the next 20-25 years. Cryptocurrency is one of the most hyped investment opportunities right now, as when the crypto boom hits in the future, prices of cryptocurrencies can skyrocket and you can make a lot of money! However, research is really important since it is one of the most volatile investments, meaning the prices can rapidly go up or down. Additionally, there will be many cryptocurrencies that cannot meet up to the demand of the cryptocurrency asset classes and can fail. That means, you have to know which cryptocurrencies are good for the future and research a lot on the potential it could have, before actually investing in that specific cryptocurrency.
Lastly, the commodity asset class is an asset class that is generally traded on separate exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange. There are generally 4 main sub-asset classes: Crude Oil, Power and Natural Gas, Precious and base metals (gold and copper), and agricultural products, such as corn and coffee. There are many factors that can move a commodity’s price up or down, which include political tension, inventory levels, weather, and overall economic growth. Amidst the recent Covid-19 Pandemic, the price of oil plummeted to all-time lows and even went negative! As people were quarantined in their homes, the demand for oil decreased. Oil is also constantly being drilled, so oil supply steadily increased. When demand decreases and supply increases, the price of the asset will decrease. This is just the laws of supply and demand, and this relates to the other asset classes as well. Oil producers were starting to pay buyers to take the oil commodity over fears that storage capacity could run out due to oversupply, which is why the price of oil went negative. Similar to the other asset classes, the commodity asset class requires a ton of research. Investing is not gambling, and you cannot just invest randomly, hoping it will go up. You may find this works sometimes, but in a majority of the cases, this is a risky move. Spend a lot time researching and reading about the asset class before making a decision on whether you want to invest or not.
I know this blog post was long and only gave you a brief overview of the main asset classes. However, I hope this post served as a good introduction so that you can understand some assets investors would likely invest in. In the upcoming blog posts, I will be giving you a detailed explanation of each asset class so that you can better understand them and have an idea on what types of assets you would want to have in your portfolio. Thank you everyone for supporting the Excite the Mind website and reading all of our blog posts, and see you in the next one!
Being one of the top agricultural producing countries in the world, almost 70% of India’s population depends directly on farming as a way of life. So what happens when this 70% is forced is to suddenly change the way they sell their products? This is what happened as a result of the Indian agriculture acts of 2020. These bills were originally intended by the government to monopolize farming. But by reading between the lines, it can be seen that these bills also hurt farmers’ livelihoods and sources of income. Tens of thousands of farmers from all around the country have rallied together at Delhi (India’s capital) to protest these bills.
Since the beginning of the protest, there have been various interpretations of the protests and the government’s responses. According to an NPR KERA interview by Audie Cornish, Sadanand Dhume, a Wall Street Journal columnist, believes that although the protests are well-founded and gained lots of traction, they “have been portrayed in the Western media is a bit of caricature” (Dhume). He compares the protest to a past one concerning anti-citizenship, which had harsher backlashes. With this, he explains this is the case mainly because the farmers are such a very powerful political constituency. However, he also reinforces that the reaction of the government is still over-the-top, “where you have dozens of these celebrities tweeting exactly the same words at the same time and talking about how India is under threat and how India is going to stand up for itself” (Dhume).
Another point of view we can see is from the side of the government. As told by Mujib Mashal Sameer Yasir, writers at The New York Times, states run by Prime Minister Modi’s party use the police to their advantage to reduce attention to the protests. In Uttarakhand, the police chief said that “his forces would be watching social media posts for ‘anti-national’ posts and that passport applications could be denied to anyone who had posted such content”. In Bihar, citizens were warned that “applicants would be barred from government jobs if they were found to have participated ‘in any law and order situation, protests, road jams, etc.’” (Mashal, Yasir). This shows how officials are attempting to fend off any possible new protesters by providing them with disincentives.
The effects of the farm bills on farmers and the social structure, the impacts they have had in foreign countries, and how the government has responded to all of these events show why the farmers’ protest is justified and even necessary.
In order to completely understand the reasons behind the events surrounding the protest, we need to first understand what caused them. On September 27th, 2020, the president of India gave his assent, announced the enactment of the Indian agricultural acts of 2020. The three acts were the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. In short, these three acts expand the scope of where and how farmers could trade, provide a legal framework for farmers to create contracts with buyers, and remove stockholding limits on agricultural items, respectively. On the surface, these acts seem to promote the economic growth of agriculture. While this is the case in the short-term, farmers realized that over time this would have a negative impact on them, first by causing them to reduce their prices drastically, then eventually forcing them to give in to monopolies, which would then be able to raise the prices without having to pay farmers. With this, farmers around the country knew they would have no choice but to make sure these bills are removed, which led to one of the largest protests in history. The protesters sit at the border of Delhi in solidarity against the unfair bills, showing the government that they have the power to speak up for themselves.
In regard to the effect of the bills, Farmers’ unions have long called for changes in the flawed agricultural economy, but these bills have specifically been created with the aim to benefit private corporations. Sirisha C. Naidu, an associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, thoroughly explains the minimum support price (MSP), why it is important to the farmers, and how the changes have a negative impact. The MSP is a minimum price that vendors are required to pay for the crops bought from the farmers. As Naidu explains, the new bills do not explicitly describe how the MSP will change. Understandably, the farmers are concerned; they fear that since there is no guarantee of the MSP, it will become unenforceable and private corporations will intentionally lower the price and refuse to buy at a higher price. This concern is the main reason that began the protest and affects the farmers most directly. As a result of the protest, there has also been a major social transformation. As Naidu states, two of the biggest changes that have occurred are the unification of farmers and farm workers and the empowerment of women. First, the unification of farmers and farm workers is surprising, since the relationship between landowners and those employed as workers is known to be conflictual. Nonetheless, the shared determination to protect their livelihoods has brought people of all social statuses to come together. Secondly, women have gained important roles during the rise of protests. Farmers that are unable to physically support the protest are able to rest knowing that they can depend on their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters to represent them in the fight against this injustice. Women have taken the role of organizing daily rallies and performances on cultural issues and even editing the Trolley Times, a way newspaper by protesters. This has brought attention to the importance of women in the household and has improved their ability to contribute to the cause.
A counterargument one may have is that these bills and the protests do not have any such consequences, as farmers will be able to negotiate the price freely and that the social transformations are almost negligible. But if seen closely, the majority of farmers in India do not have the means to fight a legal case against large corporations, but they do have the ability to voice their grievances through the. And while the transformations may be rigid in the short term, over time this will have a great impact on the overall social structure of India. The protest has allowed these topics to be discussed more than in regular circumstances. Since the women and farmworkers are actively participating in the protest, they also get to have a say in those discussions, which brings about a new perspective to people of higher status.
The second major effect of the enactment of the bills is the attention from foreign nations. People with agricultural backgrounds in India also put pressure on the Indian government by raising awareness in their communities. The story of Simranjit Singh, a Punjabi farmer living in California, exemplifies exactly that. Jonaki Mehta, a producer for All Things Considered, describes Singh’s feelings towards the protest and how he helps bring awareness of the injustice happening in India. Similar to people in other US states, Canada, Britain, and other countries around the world, Simranjit Singh, helps in organizing rallies and protests in his community to draw attention to the issue. Making sure that the knowledge of this protest is available internationally of the public is an essential step in ensuring change. In 1984, there was little awareness of the Sikh genocide and the massacres in the following decade because of censorship of the media. If there was more knowledge about this event internationally, there may have been a different outcome.
It could be said that spreading awareness internationally is useless since foreign powers will be unable to intervene. But raising international awareness is not just about informing foreign governments, it is also about informing the citizens. It has been proven effective by a tweet by Rihanna, a well-known US celebrity. She posted a link to a CNN article about the censorship of protesters, asking the question “why aren’t we talking about this?!” It proves that foreign awareness is necessary and is putting more eyes on the Indian government, which causes them to take more careful actions.
Lastly, another important effect of the bills is that they have shown the Indian government’s inhumanity towards those who oppose. In an article by Mujib Mashal and Sameer Yasir, writers at The New York Times, some of the government’s responses against the protest are shown. Leaders supporting the Modi government are releasing disincentives to refrain people from joining the protest, many social media accounts are being banned, and military and police violence is being used to unsuccessfully deter the peaceful protesters from pushing forward. This has shown what the government is willing to do to ensure their way and has drawn growing international condemnation from human rights groups and people with a strong influence. In the words of Dhume, it has “confirmed the fears of many that India is sliding away from democracy to a more authoritarian direction”.
One could counter this argument in a similar way as Dhume, by saying that “if you compare how the government has treated these protesters to how it treated protesters last year in anti-citizenship protests …, they have been far more careful.” While this may be true that in comparison the government has been somewhat milder than before, some argue that this is the case only because the farmers’ protests have gained much more international attention. It also does not change the fact that what is happening to these protestors is still incredibly cruel. In other more developed nations, these acts would be unforgivable, while in India they are oftentimes rewarded.
In conclusion, the effects of the bills on farmers, India’s social structure, international awareness, and the government’s responses are crucial topics when discussing the farmers’ protests in order to gain a full understanding as to why they are necessary. In recent news, Prime Minister Modi has announced that the Indian agriculture acts of 2020 will be repealed. This is an important accomplishment that has strengthened the power of the citizens in India and given encouragement to those around the country that are oppressed to rise up against injustice.
With less than three weeks in office, President Biden has already taken swift measures in executing his administration’s top priorities. In this article we’ll be focusing specifically on the Presidential Actions he has signed during his first week in office.
There are three specific directives President Biden has employed to carry out his agenda; executive orders, executive memoranda, and proclamations.
Executive orders are the most well known, and the most powerful of the trio. They hold the power of law and are meant to direct and govern government officials and agencies. Next are presidential memoranda. Similar to executive orders, memoranda manage the federal government, however they do not have the force and effect of laws. Last on the list are presidential proclamations. These are announcements of public policy by the president meant to communicate information about policy, holidays, commemorations, special observances, and trade.
Short and sweet, this proclamation essentially drives home President Biden’s calls for unity in the country. Mirroring his inauguration speech, made earlier that day, this proclamation declares January 20, 2021 aa a National Day of Unity.
In a message sent to the heads of executive departments and agencies, this memorandum focuses on rules and regulations pending or proposed before President Biden came into office. This action was meant to ensure that all new or pending rules are properly reviewed and approved by the president and his administration.
This executive order calls for the federal government to “pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all”. Agencies are called to conduct equity assessments and allocate funds and resources to promote racial equity in underserved communities.
This proclamation revokes “Executive Order 13780, and Proclamations 9645, 9723, and 9983” enacted by the Trump administration. These revoked proclamations banned entry into the United States from largely Muslim and African countries.
In response to the continued COVID concerns, this executive order requires federal employees, contractors, or individuals on federal lands to “wear masks, maintain physical distance, and adhere to other public health measures, as provided in CDC guidelines”.
As COVID continues to take hold in the United States, in an executive order President Biden created the position of COVID-19 response coordinator. This position is meant to advise the president and oversee the federal government’s response to COVID.
This order revokes President Trump’s Executive Order 13768, which focused on immigration enforcement and promises to “protect national and border security, address the humanitarian challenges at the southern border, and ensure public health and safety”.
This order focuses on revoking a variety of President Trump’s executive orders in order to better handle the “coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, economic recovery, racial justice, and climate change”. Executive Order 13771, Executive Order 13777, Executive Order 13875, Executive Order 13891, Executive Order 13892, and Executive Order 13893 are revoked under the reason that they “threaten to frustrate the Federal Government’s ability to confront these problems”.
With the purpose of protecting the environment and public health, this executive order calls for executive departments and federal agencies to review and “take action to address the promulgation of Federal regulations and other actions” that were passed during President Trump’s time in office.
Meant to address and prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation and to fully enforce “Title VII and other laws” that prohibit such discrimination.
Directs the Director of the Office of Budget Management to begin evaluating the process of regulatory review, in an attempt to address problems within it and modernize the process.
This order requires all executive agency appointees to sign an ethicality pledge, promising to “restore and maintain public trust in government”. This action also prohibits agents from accepting gifts from lobbyists and lobbying less than 2 years after they have left their positions.
Reversing a keystone of President Trump’s time in office, this proclamation ended the national emergency President Trump declared, thereby terminating the construction and funding of the wall across the Mexican border.
Calling on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to take actions to preserve and fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
With COVID cases continuing to rise in the United States, this order focuses on implementing policies on public transportation and international travel to stop the spread of COVID. This order requires masks on certain modes of domestic transportation and proof of a negative COVID test for international travel.
This executive order focuses on accelerating the production of COVID treatments and therapies and improving healthcare such that it is affordable, accessible, and efficient, especially during the pandemic.
This action directs the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to support the governors’ use of the National Guard for COVID response. Furthermore, this memorandum instructs the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fully cover the costs of the deployment.
Invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, this executive order is meant to increase the response to COVID by ensuring that “critical materials, treatments, and supplies” are available for those who need them.
Creation of a COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force within the Department of Health and Human Services to address disparities exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. This task force will provide recommendations to the president “for mitigating the health inequities caused or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and for preventing such inequities in the future”.
In supporting the reopening of schools, calls on the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to work together to “assist States and elementary and secondary schools in deciding whether and how to reopen, and how to remain open, for in-person learning”.
This order focuses on finding ways to “reduce the risk that workers may contract COVID-19 in the workplace”. The executive order directs the Department of Labor and to establish guidelines for workplaces and enforce such efforts to reduce the spread of COVID.
This order simply asks all executive agencies and departments to identify actions they can take to aid in providing economic relief to the American people.
Revokes various presidential actions from President Trump’s time in office which had diminished protections of federal employees. Additionally, this order restored collective bargaining powers of federal employees and advocated for the promotion of a $15 minimum wage.
In this order, President Biden states that “gender identity should not be a bar to military service”. Revoking President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military and calling on agency heads to ensure that discrimination in the military based on gender identity is prohibited.
As a further coronavirus protection, this proclamation placed traveling restrictions on non-citizens attempting to enter the U.S. from various European countries, Brazil, and South Africa.
Hoping to boost America’s economy, this executive order further strengthens regulations and requirements on the federal government to “Buy American”, or purchase American-made goods.
Amidst continued health and public safety concerns, the coronavirus pandemic has also seen increased racism and discrimintation towards those of Asian and Pacific Island descent. This memorandum works to both condemn and combat racism, xenophobia, and intolerance towards these demographics.
This memorandum calls for federal agencies to engage “in regular, meaningful, and robust consultation with Tribal officials in the development of Federal policies that have Tribal implications”.
This executive order calls for the decreased reliance on private prisons by the federal government. By “phasing out the Federal Government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities”, this order hopes to “ensure that time in prison prepares individuals for the next chapter of their lives”.
Addressing the federal government’s role in “systematically declining to invest in communities of color and preventing residents of those communities from accessing the same services and resources as their white counterparts”, this memorandum calls on agencies to address and end housing discrimination.
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