Coming back from Winter Break is always a struggle. Before leaving, you’re in a routine and have got everything nailed down. When you return it feels like starting everything from scratch. It’s hard to get back into school mode. This concept is what makes part of the second semester harder as a whole. Although we get more things to look forward to and more breaks, the academic part is more challenging. All of these beautiful breaks we get make the school part all the harder once the break has ended. In the first semester, despite it feeling like a never-ending marathon of school work, you find a nice rhythm in the consistency.
Additionally, what makes the back hard is having to come and live again by the school’s sleep schedule. Over the breaks, I consistently go to bed at around 3 am and don’t wake up until the afternoon the next day. Bering back at school and having to wake up at 7 am or earlier is a harsh reality check. All I want to do is sleep.
You know what’s interesting? All California high schools are required to have an 8:30 start time now. Go figures it began the year after I left. Anyways, I would much appreciate this enacted at OVS, after all, it is what Gavin Newsom wants and how can we be OK with disappointing him?
My favorite player of all time is Neymar Junior. I grew up watching and idolizing Neymar even though he played for a team called Santos which was not my hometown team, I still loved him. When he made his significant transfer to Barcelona in 2013, people began to catch onto his skill and Brazillian flair. He’s one of the most fun players to watch with his flashy skills and funny dances when he scores, he’s one of the best dribblers to ever touch the ball. The way he controls the ball is beautiful and he has solidified himself as the 3rd best player of our generation. Even though he’s been criticized for things and has had a few scandals in the past he’s a great player and a great person and has his own charity organization based in his hometown of Sao Paulo. I love him as a person and a player, and I’m so glad I grew up watching and idolizing him.
The best reality documentary on youtube is a Vice series titled “North Korean Labor Camps” where they sent a Canadian Journalist, Shane Smith, to investigate the hermit kingdom and bring back cultural learnings with him.
It has everything: politics, humor, wit, fear, camaraderie with absolutely random people, realities of everyday life of common people, getting banned and kicked out, and going into the endless unknown (Siberian Tiga) like a spaceship.
It’s in a blog, video diary format with a pretty bad camera (it was 10 years ago), and it’s just so cool. All seven parts of the series are just insane. He gets in trouble with the FSB, there’s a car chase in the wilds of Siberia, and he befriends the local mob. My favorite part though is all the random people that just helped and tagged along: a cop, ex-chief of police, freelance journalist, and some crazy Russian guy who saved the journalist from angry authorities.
It all started in North Korea, with a video titled “We Tried Sneaking Journalists into North Korea.” In it, you see how unsettling and just off North Korea feels, at least 10 years ago. Anyway, soon he finds out that Koreans are being sent to logging camps for like several years at a time in Eastern Russia and so begins the aforementioned series. I want to do something like this one day.
Besides what he manages to uncover, what’s most shocking is how calm the journalist was despite the tense circumstances. From intimidating drunk guys on trains to North Korean camp leaders telling him no, he just kept his cool and kept asking questions. That’s a Journalist!
Since I was about nine years old, my dad made sure to put a pretty large emphasis on the importance of investing. Now, about eight years later, my portfolio has gone really well. In 2013 I invested in Apple and in 2017 I invested in Nvidia. Both were very good calls but it’s Nvidia and Apple, it’s not like I was making some crazy call option or short given that I have been invested in some of their and the economy’s biggest growth periods. I’m no day trader. However, after taking business math and becoming somewhat adept at reading charts, and having a surface-level understanding of trading and all its complications, I have learned a lot of really sad realities of trading in America. Such as the fact that 89% of all stock equity is owned by the top 10% of investors. However, after going down the lovely rabbit hole of Investopedia, Yahoo Finance, and my favorite Finance Podcast: The Trillionaire Mindest I’ve learned about the sad reality of Insider Trading, especially in politics.
Even though the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge(STOCK) act has been in place for almost ten years, that has not stopped anyone. For example, the speaker of the house who many people likely know to be Nancy Pelosi. What you probably didn’t know, is that she is a massive Inside Trader. What I know for sure is that Nancy and her Husband have not stopped trading on congressional knowledge. Many people don’t see anything wrong with a Congress member trading individual stocks as literally, every other person is not allowed to. As of early this year, 59 Congress members were identified by Insider and other organizations as actively violating the STOCK act. FIFTY-NINE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS. That’s over half the Senate or over ten percent of total Congress members. That may seem like a small number but that’s only people who are obviously violating it. That doesn’t count any potentially savvy investors or anyone who may be in the yellow zone of violating the STOCK act. In a time where economic policy directly affects some companies that make more money than some countries, it’s pretty integral that these people are unbiased in their policymaking. This just isn’t the case, these people are continually beating the market because they are trading on congressional knowledge because I know for a fact that 60 different people are on the level of Warren Buffet. And that raises the age-old question: how the hell do these people even mildly care about you when they can make hundreds of millions of dollars off of the economic policy THAT THEY MAKE. Imagine being allowed to trade on stocks that your actions directly affect, before anyone else can, and the only reprimand is a two hundred dollar fine. OUT OF ALL THE GOD DAMN MONEY, THESE STUPID POLITICIANS MAKE(over $100,000 a year and millions in investments) ALL THEY GET IS A $200 FINE. That’s not even a drop in the bucket, it’s a drop in a lake. But by all means, your lovely politicians care.
In F block Journalism, we are tasked with writing 1 blog per week, which sounds like it would be no problemo. But it’s not. A lot of work goes into these 1 paragraph idea dumps, but not much of that effort goes into the writing. It’s all in the ideas. I would have to say that 85% of writing a blog is coming up with the idea. That shit is not easy. I mean how can you be expected to come up with an idea out of nothing, that is entertaining or interesting to you, and the reader. It’s a small scope of topics that are interesting and easy to write about without creating a sermon. The blogs are a surprising hurdle to overcome in this class. Boy, is my life hard.
I was shocked when my friend told me that she thought I was really into politics because I never considered myself a political person.
She also said she has always been told by her parents never to mention politics with friends.
Why is politics such a taboo?
We all have come from different backgrounds, received different education, and read different books. Even within the same country, there are left-wing and right-wing, communist and green parties. Of course, people will have disagreements.
While it is true that many people don’t care about politics at all, we are given the right to believe in what we believe.
Another friend of mine met her ex-boyfriend online, my friend is from China and the ex-boyfriend is German. They argue constantly over political issues. Eventually, they broke up, and neither side changed their beliefs.
Does that mean we should try to not mention it in daily conversation? I, at least, believe that gives us more reason to talk openly about it and learn from different perspectives.
I’m from the U.S., so it shouldn’t be surprising that I have a vendetta against England. There’s literally no way to explain how it started other than that I’m from the U.S.. I’ve just uncontrollably despised England since I was born. Anyways, here we go.
They drive on the left side of the road
Driving on the left side of the road is just fundamentally wrong. It doesn’t make sense. The majority of people in the world are right-handed, so theoretically, people should drive on the right side of the road. Also, pretty much every country other than the ones that used to be controlled by England drive on the right side of the road. By the law of “majority rules,” England is incorrect.
Hear me out on this one. Yes, the metric system makes a lot more sense for generic measurements, HOWEVER– using kilometers per hour is stupid. I know that pretty much all of Europe uses kilometers per hour and Celsius, but this article is about England specifically so I’m gonna pick on them. Using Celsius and kilometers per hour is dumb because they have no standard of what’s too much or too little. Hang in there, I’ll explain. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is way too cold, and 100 degrees Fahrenheit is way too hot. And 0 miles per hour is too slow while 100 miles per hour is too fast. Celsius not only doesn’t apply to the human body, but it has no reasonable standard of being too hot or cold. Like 0 degrees Celsius isn’t incredibly cold, but a human would die at 100 degrees Celsius. Celsius was a measurement system created for water, not humans. And I think it’s convenient that there’s the same metric of what’s too big or too little between Fahrenheit and miles per hour. This reasoning might sound stupid, but I’m sticking by it.
This one is really dumb. I’m not even gonna try to defend myself. I just think their accents are unattractive. Australian accents? Wonderful. Scottish accents? Great. German accents? Really pretty. English accents? Gross. The only good thing about their accents is that they’re really easy to mock.
Like, in this economy? Something’s gotta be wrong with them if they think having a monarchy and a democracy at the same time is a smart idea. I mean, I don’t know much about how a monarchy works, but I know that it didn’t work out well for France, so I’m gonna assume it’s a bad idea overall. Plus, the royal family mostly works as a publicity stunt. They should just get rid of it.
Boris Johnson sucks so much. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that a good amount of people in England agree with me, but I’m still gonna hold it against them. I don’t like him.
Since I’ve already hated on them so much, I guess I’ll put in something I like about England.
Russell Howard is from England
Russell Howard is a comedian with his own show from England. He’s really funny. I love him. He’s probably the only good thing that came out of England.
I hope you enjoyed reading my passionate ranting about hating England. I don’t get super patriotic very often, but I definitely whip out the stars and stripes when England comes up in conversation. I will never stop arguing for why I don’t like England.
In my Law and Society class, we have a mock trial in which we try to prosecute somebody for some crime. This mock trial happens to be the prosecution of Goldilocks, and I must say Goldilocks does not seem innocent in any way. Goldilocks broke into the house of three bears and decided to ransack the place. She ate all of their food, sat in and broke their rocking chairs, slept in their beds, and jumped through the bear’s window to run away, all throughout a pandemic. Despite being the age of 7, Goldilocks comprehends that what she had done was wrong, otherwise, why would she run? Under the basis of Goldilocks understanding her crimes, she would be tried as a minor, rather than her being pardoned due to infancy. Goldilocks will be facing time, with charges such as Vandalism, Larceny, and Burglary. I believe Goldilocks should rot in prison until the day she dies. Dirty criminals like her have no right to live among law-abiding citizens.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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