Andrew Miller, co-editor-in-chief: Delivery robots are a stain on humanity and a chimera of our worst tendencies. Valuable time and resources, which could be directed toward housing, computers, spacecraft and countless other items of more use, are being used to deliver $20 hamburgers.
Maybe I’m coping; I delivered DoorDash on my bike during the summer before my freshman year of college. Unappreciative customers would look at me like I was a Martian, as I labored away for their food. That was my century of humiliation.
But think about it! This is what our culture promotes! Resources, microchips and money that could bring prosperity to the human race are instead directed to fuel our devilish gluttony.
Mia Hilkowitz, co-editor-in-chief: Shaboozey deserves so much more respect.
Jonathan Frey, enterprise editor: Noah Kahan is not groundbreaking. He is okay at best. But for those who hold him in the highest regard, I truly encourage you to expand your musical horizons. As a lyricist, with the most charitable interpretation, he’s inauthentic. He’s Zach Bryan without the twang. He’s modern country without the diverse instrumentation. A quick Google search tells me he was homeschooled in writing, and I’ve never heard anything less surprising. His metaphors are those of a fifth grader inspired by Bart Simpson sad edits. His sob stories are the soundtracks of microbreweries and darkness retreats. None of this is to say he’s terrible, he’s just pop music. He’s signed to Republic Records. His indie mystique is as fabricated as Taylor Swift’s on “evermore.” If you like his music, that’s fine! Everyone likes what they like. But he is no genius.
Molly Gregory, news editor: I hate Will Ferrell. His face inspires annoyance that simmers in my chest and radiates from me in waves. “Elf” is possibly the worst movie of all time, saved only by blonde Zooey Deschanel. When Ferrell joins “The Office” in the later seasons, that’s also terrible. I think all of Ferrell’s humor comes from being loud, gross or stupid, and none of these things are funny to me. Maybe he is a really nice man, but I doubt it. Do not ask me to watch “Elf.”
Jack Davis, opinion editor: Finals week has the potential to be one of the best weeks of the school year with a little effort. For me, it feels like most of the hard work is the week before, and I normally breeze through finals week. Granted, it can be different for everyone depending on what you study, but my suggestion is to not procrastinate the final three weeks of school. Digging out of that hole is what gives finals week that stressful reputation. My finals week this year should be full of rest, light review and relief that winter break is right around the corner.
Eric Cannon, opinion editor: Salad dressing ruins every leafy green it touches. Most salad eaters I know swear by dressing, but the sweet, sour or otherwise indefinable sauces and syrups undermine their bowl mate's best quality: watery refreshing-ness. Vegetables shouldn’t be sugared up by ranch, Italian dressing or whatever else — any more than a steak should be doused in ketchup. When you bite into a steak, you want to savor the steak’s native flavors. When you munch on lettuce, do you want your taste buds to get hit by a truck of strange tangs? I, for one, will enjoy what the pepper, radish and spinach give me without Big Grocery’s cover-up — or dress-up.
Jack Forrest, managing editor: We’ve lost the plot on what TV shows are meant to be. Series are not supposed to be hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars events. Don’t get me wrong, I love a high-quality fantasy or science fiction show. “Andor” is a masterpiece, and it had a price tag of over $700 millionacross its two seasons. But what makes that show good is its character work and narrative. The creators of “Andor” knew how to deploy its narrative across seasons, while still giving each episode or arc a contained story. “Stranger Things” has more in common with a blockbuster film at this point than something that’d ever air on a network. The spectacle it’s going for is best-suited for the big screen; the series finale will even show in theaters. I’d take “Andor” with the budget of “General Hospital” any day over something like Season 3 of “The Mandalorian”: a husk of a story using its massive budget to pass as a long movie.
Alayna Wilkening, managing editor: Sloths are weird and creepy. I recently met a sloth named Rico during a painting event where we got to meet and paint a portrait of him, and it was a bit jarring. I’ve never really thought about sloths more than the one in “Zootopia,” so when they brought Rico in, I wasn’t prepared for how strange he would be. Sloths make no sense, and the name “two-toed sloth” feels a bit misleading as it feels more like they have one massive toe with two claws. The people I went with were on the verge of tears about the sloth because they were so excited, and I just did not get the hype. Rico was chill and all, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit creeped out by the whole thing.
Lily Saylor, arts editor: Even though I am a “Stranger Things” fan, I think the show should have ended after the second or third season. In the first two seasons, the ‘80s-based supernatural show was creepy and dark. The Upside Down, an alternative dimension that mirrors the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, possessed an alluring mystery. The monsters, like the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer, held this same mystery that made the show scary. “Stranger Things” maintained its creepiness and kept the show interesting through strong writing and plotlines.
Now, in the first volume of the fifth season, that mystery and fear seems to have completely evaporated, and the writing quality has diminished. Almost every character enters The Upside Down with little struggle, which removes the intrigue. And, while there was still plenty of humor and lighter moments in early seasons, the script seems to have been overrun with quippy one-liners and cheesy jokes. While I do love the show and am still anticipating the release of the next volumes, I can safely say the quality of the show would have been better preserved if it had ended a few seasons earlier.
Ursula Stickelmaier, arts editor: Cheesy, slightly bad rom-coms are a vital part of the film industry. As the holidays approach and I fall further down the Hallmark rabbit hole, I have been thinking about this a lot. Yes, movies like Hallmark’s “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story” or the “After” series are objectively terrible, but they’re fun. That’s what makes them so important to a balanced movie “diet.”
I love an Oscar-worthy movie as much as the next cinephile, but if every film you watch is worthy of an Academy Award, doesn’t that just cheapen what makes it so great? You can’t have the good without the bad; it’s just that in this case the “bad” happens to be very funny. At least for me, taking a step back from critically-acclaimed films to watch something simple is often a much-needed mental break. And at the end of the year, for every memory I have of me leaving a movie with some deep, thought-provoking revelation, there are twice as many moments of me just laughing at something stupid and wonderful with my friends.
Safin Khatri, newsletter editor: Cottage cheese tastes good. Furthermore, cottage cheese and Nutella are a match made in heaven. Whenever I crave a late-night sweet treat, I make a bowl of cottage cheese mixed with Nutella, strawberries, blueberries and bananas. I always get mixed reactions when I tell people about this, but don’t knock it until you try it. You’ll love it and wonder why you’ve never tried this before.
