Inquiry
What I Didn’t Learn From Quitting Coffee For a Week
I sincerely believed this week would lead me to some incredible Reason Why You Need to Quit Coffee Now — you know, one of those things that makes a good headline. At the very least, I figured it would give me something to brag about while the semester took its toll.
“So, Are You Gay?”
That evening, we neglected our future concentrations and dorm situations. That evening, we talked about my gayness.
The Lines We Draw
When I came to college, I expected what you’d see in the generic college ad, where an ethnically diverse friend group of boys and girls play frisbee on the lawn. But on campus, I noticed many new friend groups seem to be made up of people from the same racial or ethnic group, same social class, or same home state.
Find My Privacy
I curiously monitored my friend’s profile as they traveled to Berg for lunch, boarded the bus to the Science and Engineering Complex for computer science, and attended a party on Friday night. It felt like voyeurism in the digital age — eerie, intimate, and startlingly addictive.
Caroline Calloway Is (Basically) Done Being a Scammer
“I actually think ultimately, in the long run, my first priority in this life is my art,” Calloway says. “If it’s: make books that live on after your death, or have a fulfilling family and be happy, I’m choosing books 10 times out of 10. I would rather make my art than be happy.”
Texas oil graphic
Oil supplies hope that there will always be a future in the Permian Basin. How can locals be assured there is a future for them?
A Sustainable Future for My Oil Town
To the locals, the basin represents much more than her products. She is the unknown mother of life’s necessities and pleasures.
True Love Revolution: The Club Where Virginity Rocks
For all of my feminist beliefs, I still find myself affected by the pro-abstinence teachings that I grew up with. If the story of True Love Revolution proves anything, it’s that these sexist doctrines can spring up anywhere — whether that’s in a Southern public school or on a purportedly liberal campus like Harvard.
Embedded ethics robot
In your role as a software engineer, if you can reasonably foresee that a certain design choice or algorithm would lead to harmful outcomes, what should you do?
What’s Going On With Embedded EthiCS?
In 2017, two Harvard professors launched the Embedded EthiCS program, hoping to “bring ethical reasoning into the Computer Science curriculum.” But few students take the program seriously, and many even consider it “funny-bad.” At a time when tech-ethics seems more important than ever, what’s going on?
“I Don’t Chase, I Attract”: The Lure of Manifestation TikTok
On manifestation TikTok, superstitions and unfounded techniques promise the fruition of anything you desire. The more I scrolled, the more I was told to repeat phrases, to embrace my delusions, or to use an audio for good luck.
Phone Affirmations
Before I thought of simply sparking a conversation with my years-old crush, I was repeating variations of 'I don’t chase, I attract,' convinced of its effectiveness by the TikTok creators whom I watched. But testing the concept wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had believed that such techniques were a convenient shortcut to actual change in my life.
Sidechat Inquiry
It’s easy to focus on scooters and mascots, easy to ignore the conflict simmering below the surface of certain posts as you scroll, and scroll, and scroll.
Dying Lotus
I don’t want my sexuality to be socially meaningful or my pleasure to be politically important. That feels so laborious.
Why Sidechat Matters
Sidechat allows us to imagine an institution more socially coherent than the insular circles we traverse daily.
To Revel in An Asian Body
As I reflected on my own relationship to racial fetishization, I discovered that it was overwhelmingly forged through ambiguity: ambiguous interactions, ambiguous responses, and ambiguous feelings. The instances that prompted my immediate, visceral disgust felt secondary to the instances that left me uncertain, on the precipice of being shoved into a tired cultural script but clinging to the hope that I’d hold my ground.
Trap On Trial
Still, several questions remain unanswered: Do the supposed “traps” of trap music outweigh its value? Can you evaluate the “right” way to musically reconcile with injustice? How should Black Americans communicate exasperation and emergency and unrest?
Harvard and Me
I was the only person I knew of coming to Harvard from South Africa, and, in turn, I was to everyone in South Africa the only person they knew going to Harvard — which is to say, I became Harvard.