This is a half list, half internet roundup. Have a good one!
1)Biggie- main reason: not needed.
Biggie Smalls is undoubtedly the best rapper of all time. His lyrics were just as good as Tupacs but were presented with a much better flow. Also, bro was very large.
PC: Discogs
2)Action Bronson- main reason: shows, music, size, working out.
Action Bronson is my favorite rapper and chef and whatever he is of all time. His shows on vice are all incredible, his music has become my favorite of any rapper, his cookbook and olive oil are fantastic, and his workout journey recently has transformed him from short and wide to literally looking like the incredible hulk.
VC: Munchies
3)Rod Wave- main reason: good-ass music.
Rod Wave makes my favorite music to sing. He doesn’t get enough credit for his voice, which is actually really good, as most people tend to focus on the fact that he is 350 pounds and 5’6. Bro is wide.
VC: Rod Wave
4)Big Pun- main reason: size alone.
He’s 700 pounds. That’s all.
VC: Big Pun
5)Rick Ross- main reason: pears.
Monster is a top 5 song of all time, and also just about the only Rick Ross song I can name. He is just on the list for his two biggest fat guy moves of all time: pretending he likes pears and owning an insane amount of Wing Stops. “I eat pears now and shit like that…shout out to all the pear.”- Big Boss Rick Ross
VC: Spencer Mutsch
Honorable Mentions:
DJ Khaled- main reason: antics.
DJ Khaled is without a doubt the most interesting man alive. He documents everything on his Snapchat, from crashing a jet ski to getting lost on a jet ski. He always feels the need to drop motivational inspirational quotes that make no sense and always must say the most random stuff. He truly lives the most mysterious and magical life. He quit on hot ones after one wing but said “even tho I stopped I ain’t give up”. Though he doesn’t rap and his production career is questionable, he still films himself lathering his big ass with soap in his shower in his mansion in Miami. Enjoy some of his best moments as compiled below.
I haven’t really been into Taylor Swift’s music since elementary school, but I really like the 10-minute version of All Too Well. Here are my favorite lyrics from it.
“Til we were dead and gone and buried Check the pulse and come back swearing it’s the same After three months in the grave”
Love the metaphor here. I feel like I’ve also been in a toxic, loveless relationship when I hear this lyric.
“You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath”
If your partner is trying to hide your relationship when you’ve told them you don’t want to, that’s a red flag. They’re definitely doing something shady if they’re completely against having a public relationship when you want one.
“And you call me up again just to break me like a promise So casually cruel in the name of being honest”
This lyric is really pretty. I love it. I don’t like people who say mean things and then try to excuse their words because they’re “just saying” or “just being honest.” Like, it’s not that hard to not be a jerk.
“You said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine And that made me want to die”
This lyric definitely sums up the fundamental problem with Taylor’s relationship with the unnamed man (who is Jake Gyllenhaal). Taylor was only 20 when she started dating a 29-year-old. It might not seem like a big gap because they were both legal adults, but that’s the same age gap between a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old. That perspective makes the age gap clearly inappropriate. Also, Taylor was barely an adult. She had only been of age for two years, whereas Jake had been an adult for over ten years. She realizes later that he took advantage of her because she was young and is ashamed of it.
“But you keep my old scarf from that very first week Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me”
Here’s another lyric that points out the problem of their relationship. Her scarf reminds him of innocence because she was barely an adult when he started dating her. She was young and innocent, and she didn’t realize that their relationship was inappropriate until it was over. Jake went after her because she was young, pretty, and didn’t know any better.
“Wind in my hair, you were there You remember it all”
This lyric is a reprise of the end of the first chorus. Taylor changes the lyric from “I was there I remember it all.” to address Jake and say “you were there you remember it all.” It points out that Taylor wasn’t solely at fault for ending up in a bad relationship with someone too old for her. Jake was also there, and Jake knew exactly what he was doing. He remembers everything too, but he doesn’t have the same shame around the relationship that Taylor does. Taylor didn’t know that the relationship wasn’t okay, but Jake did and he pursued her anyways.
“And I was never good at telling jokes, but the punch line goes I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age”
I love the blatant call-out. It’s also completely accurate. Jake’s current girlfriend, Jeanne Cadieu, is 25 years old. He’s 40 years old. It doesn’t take a psychologist to realize all the reasons why this isn’t okay at all, but for reference – Jake would be 21 years old (the legal drinking age in the U.S.) while Jeanne was 6 (in 1st grade in the U.S.). With an age gap this big, it doesn’t matter if they’re both of legal age right now because it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a huge gap in maturity, experience, and understanding of right and wrong. The age gap is completely ridiculous and frankly disgusting.
In conclusion, Jake Gyllenhaal is a creep and a borderline pedophile. If this statement seems like an exaggeration, consider the fact that if Jake was attracted to a 25-year-old when he was 40 and a 20-year-old when he was 29, it’s reasonable to assume that he was attracted to minors when he was in his early and mid-twenties. He has a pattern of dating people that are much younger than him.
I really like this song even though the content is sad. I reccomend listening to it.
I thought this would be a cool thing to research and write about. I’m not super into astrology. I have Co-Star (an astrology app) and I know my big three signs, but I don’t really know what the signs mean. It’ll be fun to see what I learn while writing this post.
Please be respectful even if you don’t believe that zodiac signs actually indicate these traits in people. Also remember that the science of zodiac signs existing is real. Astrology is a pseudoscience, meaning it’s not scientifically proven, but the way your zodiac signs are determined is astronomy. Your zodiac signs are calculated based on positions of planets and constellations, so that part isn’t a matter of spiritual belief but rather scientific belief.
First I’ll do an introduction to the concept of zodiac signs. The zodiac signs are based on twelve constellations that exist in our galaxy, the Milky Way. These constellations are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pisces, and Aquarius. Since planets and stars are always moving due to gravitational pulls, the positions of the constellations at the time of your birth is going to be different from nearly everyone else. While many people will have the same sun signs, I would assume that you share an identical chart with probably one or two other people in the world.
To calculate your complete and accurate zodiac chart, you need to know the date, year, time, and location of your birth. You probably can’t do this yourself since it would take hours of research to find the positions of the planets and constellations at the exact moment you were born, so there are apps and websites that will calculate your chart for you.
Your chart tells you the zodiac signs corresponding with where the sun, the moon, and the planets (including Pluto) were when you were born, as well as the sign that was ascending/rising when you were born.
There’s also houses which relate to the constellations and their general locations in the galaxy, but I honestly don’t understand them at this point so I won’t try to pretend I know what the significance of the houses are.
Like I said before, I’m just going to analyze my big three signs in this post. The post would get really long if I analyzed all my signs, and I would probably have a meltdown from my brain trying to process all the information.
Also, for people who don’t know much about astrology, your “big three” are your sun sign, moon sign, and ascendant/rising sign.
Gemini Sun
Your sun sign is the sign that was aligned with the sun and the earth when you were born. Sun signs change in about 30 day increments, or approximately every month. These signs usually start a bit more than halfway through a month. For example, Gemini season is generally considered to be from May 20 to June 20. The exact days of the seasons usually vary by a day or two year to year because the tilt of the earth’s axis slightly changes the way that the constellation aligns.
In astrology, sun signs tell your identity, personality traits, and your role in life. Let’s see what astrology says about Geminis.
Geminis suns are generally described as curious, spontaneous, adaptable, clever, and extroverted. I’m not really an extrovert, but otherwise that’s pretty accurate. I’m pretty sure I get those traits from my ADHD¹ though, not being a Gemini.
The trait mainly focused on for Geminis is flexibility. It’s said that Geminis crave options and the ability to fluctuate between different activities. Having to choose definitively makes Geminis nervous. However, they also need to have many options open for them if they’re going to make an important choice. That’s pretty accurate for me, but again, these could all be ADHD-related.
The Gemini constellation is the twins Castor and Pollux from Greek and Roman mythology. Geminis are said to be “two-faced” because of the way they change in every circumstance. This trait is, again, related to my ADHD. It’s literally masking, which is when a neurodivergent* person suppresses their traits to seem neurotypical**. I now have a feeling that a lot of the descriptions of my signs are going to be things that I feel or do because of my ADHD.
Co-Star says that since my sun sign is in my 4th house, I “distinguish [my]self from others through [my] home and family” (www.costarastrology.com). I’m not sure what that means, but thank you, Co-Star.
Your moon sign is the sign that was aligned with – you guessed it – Earth’s moon and Earth when you were born. The location and the date of your birth is the most important for finding your moon sign because the sign depends on where the moon was in relation to where you were born. It changes about every two days because the moon orbits the earth.
In astrology, moon signs dictate your emotions.
Pisces moons are supposedly empathetic, sensitive, kind, and vulnerable. I don’t really see it. I guess I could come off as empathetic, but really I just hyper-analyze people so I can mask my neurodivergency better. I’m sensitive when it comes to animals and fictional characters, but otherwise not really. I mean, I hope I come off as kind, but I wouldn’t say that’s one of my main qualities. I’m not really vulnerable either.
Co-Star says my moon sign is in my 2nd house so I ” find security and safety through money and material possessions.” Yeah, I see that one.
Your ascendant/rising sign is the constellation that was on the Eastern horizon when you were born. The rising sign is highly variable because it changes every two hours because of the movement of the earth.
In astrology, rising signs describe how you appear to other people.
Capricorn risings appear serious, capable, and ambitious, but also insecure and unsure about the future. That makes sense to me. I’m pretty serious in my classes and get annoyed easily when people are goofing off. I’d say I’m capable. If I want or need to do something, I’ll do it. I also have high goals for the future, so ambitious sounds right. Insecure and unsure about the future also resonate with me. That kind of connects to my Gemini sun and being indecisive. When I think about the future, I’m not sure what path I want to take and I get worried that I’ll choose something that I won’t actually like doing.
Co-Star says my rising sign is in my 1st house, but it doesn’t elaborate on that fact and I have no idea what houses mean, so I guess that’s it for my rising sign.
Well, I didn’t relate to everything that astrology said about me, but that’s okay. It was cool to see the different interpretations of my signs. Maybe I’ll analyze the rest of my placements in another post.
Footnotes:
1 – These are traits commonly associated with or caused by ADHD, but having these traits does not inherently mean you have ADHD.
* – Neurodivergent refers to a person with a mental disability which causes them to have a different neurotype (brain setup) than the majority of people. People considered neurodivergent have ADHD, autism/ASD, FASD, and/or many other disorders.
** – Neurotypical refers to a person who isn’t neurodivergent.
I tested positive for Covid over winter break and it t’was not a fun experience. I had no symptoms, except I slept for 13 hours the night I tested positive. I had to quarantine for 10 days and it sucked. The only good that came out of my quarantine was that I came out of retirement for my Fortnite career. Having Covid was not an enjoyable experience, I could not hang out with friends, I could not go to the gym, and I could not go to work. I highly recommend not getting Covid.
So, as many of you already know, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched a couple weeks ago. Now that might not seem like such a crazy thing, but it most definitely is. This telescope is the most complex telescope humankind has produced to date, it has the ability (hopefully) to see the first light emitted from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago. Now that fact is confusing to some, how can we see back in time? Well, basically, light has a speed of 299 792 458 m / s to be exact (approximately 670616629 mph). We measure this in terms of distance, as lightyears. Say a super bright lightbulb is turned on somewhere ten light-years from earth, it would take ten years for the light to reach us so that we could see it. Now if we take that principle and scale it up, the further we look, the longer it’s taking for us to see that light, so if we look at something 13 billion lightyears away, then we are seeing 13 billion years in the past, and since the universe is constantly expanding finding something 13 billion lightyears away is not very difficult. Anyway back to JWST, it will be in an orbit we have called “L2” which is just behind the Earth so it will constantly be in Earth’s shadow, it will be 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the earth, which is far past the moon. From that orbit, it will take pictures. A lot of pictures. Of course, our time with the JWST is limited so NASA has allocated certain hours for researchers for an approved project. This telescope will bring in a new era of research, we may learn the origins of the universe, and if not we will still learn so many things from this telescope. Things like planets with potential life, we will learn about the formation of galaxies, and many many more things. I am excited to see the pictures this incredible telescope will take.
My music taste fluctuates a lot, and I’m constantly finding new songs to play on repeat until I hate them. Here are the songs I’ve been playing nonstop for the past week or so.
Tend the Garden by Gang of Youths
This song has such beautiful music, and it’s pretty sad. I mean, that’s to be expected from Gang of Youths; they did also make the song Achilles Come Down. Like Achilles Come Down, it’s a narrative, and it’s sang from the perspective of a father who presumably did something horrible and won’t ever forgive himself for having to leave his children. It’s a really poetic song and there’s a good amount of fairly obscure Biblical references, so if you’re into that kind of thing, definitely give it a listen. (Or a million listens, like I’ve done.)
This song is so fun to listen to. The music is a perfect blend of upbeat and chill. Joji has such a beautiful voice, too. It’s a really sweet love song and isn’t really sad. Good to listen to if you’re just looking for good vibes.
This song is totally different from the other two, but it’s so good. It’s basically another version of Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd. The rhymes in it are super clever. If you like artists like cupcakKe, Megan Thee Stallion, and Cardi B, you’ll probably like this song.
Those are my favorite songs right now. They definitely all have very different vibes, but I listen to all of them all the time. I hope if you check them out, you like them too!
Do you remember when we got an alert about the new virus, the Coronavirus (COVID-19), and we were all so scared about it in 2020? People die every day, plus, we know nothing about this new virus. We stayed home and used Rubbing alcohol to spray everywhere when we got home right away. We began to lose the ability to connect with the other person. Sometimes we call our family or friends saying Hi to them and talk about how they are doing recently just to try to imagine we were talking to a “real” person. After a year in online class or work, we lost the motivation to do anything, we only have that little energy left to keep scrolling on our phones. Watching the public prank videos on Youtube from years before, and started to imagine when am I going to talk and meet new friends after the pandemic. At last, we all laughed and cried to celebrate the 2021 new year at home.
It’s only been two years but feels like it happened a long time ago.
When Omicron came up almost at the end of 2021, it didn’t scare anyone much. I noticed that people started to see this type of virus as a common cold. People don’t wear masks around, even gather with another person in the same room. People tell others that they have COVID, but they don’t care about it as long as they know they are fully vaccinated. Time has changed the way we see or think about the virus. The Covid deaths have begun to spike quickly after people gathered to celebrate the 2022 new year without putting their masks on. However, I wish we could go back to “normal” life when we all go to school or the amusement park without having our masks on.
Philosophy seems distant from young children, but early exposure to philosophy and philosophical thinking can benefit children’s future development.
A lot of times, kids can come up with questions that are hard to answer, like “What is space?” “What is right and wrong?”.
Obviously, we can’t explain Einstein’s theory of time relativity to them when they ask what is the meaning of time. These questions are mostly either involving too many different concepts, or there is simply no absolutely right answer. This is when philosophical thinking comes into play, children can learn and develop their own answers.
By learning various concepts, children can improve in academic learning and form a more organized understanding of the world.
Some people may argue that it is too early for children to start “thinking about thinking” or it could be overwhelming. And yes, it is a possibility. Philosophy for children doesn’t need to include obscure terminology or deep philosophical history. Basic themes like Logicism and elementary ethics are enough and comprehensible for elementary or middle school students.
French students are required to learn philosophy in the last year of secondary school. Educational systems around the world should consider adding philosophy to the curriculum.
Recently I have devoted a majority of my free time to watch a popular show known as Ozark, In this show, a financial advisor named Marty Byrde launders money for a Mexican cartel led by Omar Navarro. This intriguing show has made me question the difficulty and danger brought on by working for the cartel. In the show, the money laundering is the easiest part, with the true difficulty pressuring the financial wiz when the cartel’s enforcer demands millions of dollars through a plan that Byrde made while grasping at straws, with his life on the line. Marty’s predicament is an interesting one as his life is at stake not due to his own actions, but because of his business partner named Bruce. Bruce messed with the gas gauges on the trucks that move the money-making them appear heavier, allowing him to skim money from the cartel. Bruce’s ingenious strategy was uncovered when the cartel’s enforcer got him to tell him in a very large bluff. Bruce’s decision is the only reason why Marty is in danger.
For this reason of other people being the sole reason why Marty and his family are in danger, I question the difficulty of actually working with this fictional cartel. I understand it may not be broadcasted as a direct correlation to a real cartel or their actions, but if I was working for this cartel alone, I believe I could become successful. It seems to be nothing more than keeping your head down, doing your job, doing it well, and doing it right. By following these four self-help tips, I could prosper in this minacious work environment. In my opinion, the difficulty would come in the numbers. Although Ozark paints money laundering as a walk in the park, I believe I would face real difficulty in making millions of dollars simply appear. Marty Byrde truly is a miracle man in this right and in the right of evading the cartel for so long, however, I think I could be a valid replacement with a small crash course on laundering money efficiently. Not that I would do it 😃.
Over the summer, I had one homework assignment for AP Psychology. It was to read Forty Studies That Changed Psychology and write two paragraph summaries for ten of the forty studies that caught my eye. In normal fashion, I read only ten of the studies and wrote the paragraphs the night before the due date. One of the studies that caught my eye was a study called Masculine or Feminine … or Both? that explored gender in psychology and proposed the idea that instead of masculinity and feminity being measured separately based on sex, they would be two variables on the same graph. Not only did this study introduce the idea of androgyny, but it also completely changed how psychologists studied gender.
The study was done by a professor who gave her students a list of positive attributes and asked her them which ones she felt were desirable to the opposite sex. This made it so that it strictly abided by gender norms in society. She then took the list and turned it into a test in which different attributes were listed with an “agree-disagree” spectrum with masc attributes contributing as negative variables and femme contributing as positive variables. She then made scoring guidelines: anyone -.05 or under was on the masc spectrum, anyone 0.5 or over was on the femme spectrum, and if the score ranged from -0.49-0.49, the person would then be considered “androgynous”.
In 1974, this was one of the most progressive gender studies in human history as it suggested that gender attributes weren’t exactly tied to sex. However, this study was done in 1974, not only have gender studies come a long way, but some of the research methods are outdated. For example, the attributes that are labeled “masculine” or “feminine” are only based on hetero-normativity and do not consider same-sex or other forms of attraction. Although it is likely a lot of the attributes will stay the same, some might change which is very important if something like this is to be measured. Then there’s the possibility that androgyny as a measurement of gender is outdated as well.
I’m not saying that we should all remove androgyny from our vocabularies altogether, as it is a good adjective for someone who has physical attributes of both sexes. What I do think, is that it limits psychological studies of gender as it still somewhat adheres to the idea that there are only two real classifications/identifications of gender. Realistically, a study such as this is really more useless than anything. In today’s world, there are so many gender identifications such as non-binary that completely exclude masculinity and femininity altogether. It might even be better to exclude gender identification in psychology altogether as it is extremely difficult to study something that has an actively growing number of variables.
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