Residents flood the iconic La Rambla to protest overtourism and its effect on their home city of Barcelona, Spain. On July 6, 2024, an unexpected splash of water punctured the postcard image of a sunny day in Barcelona. Around 2,800 anti-tourism protesters filled the city’s streets, hoisting “Tourists Go Home” banners and aiming plastic water guns at visitors dining along the crowded boulevard of Las Ramblas. What appeared at first to be a theatrical stunt quickly drew in

To work together effectively to address climate change, we ought to change the way we discuss it. Almost every week, a new infographic circulates on Instagram Stories, often featuring bold text and a somber image, highlighting the worst impacts of climate change. Infographics and other communication efforts like these seem to be widespread on social media, news outlets, and in group chats. Although well-intentioned, this negative, emotion-based communication may be counterpro

A clinician gently holds a patient's hand, representing hospice's focus on dignity and comfort at the end of life. When we hear the word “hospice,” some may intuitively visualize death, grieving, finality, and the act of providing comfort in anticipation of loss. By definition, hospice serves as a specific type of palliative care provided to individuals with terminal illnesses, focusing on dignity and quality of life. To fully understand how hospice has continued to evolve to

Young students in a classroom excitedly learn to read—a positive sign in early childhood development. In the US today, 44% of public school students are behind a grade level in at least one subject. In 1996, about 9% of students in grades one through twelve attended summer school. By 2024, that number had jumped up to 13%. Here in the Ithaca City School District, the New York State Education Department flagged nearly half of the schools for failing to meet state standard

A photo of the Constitution of the United States of America. At the University of Dayton, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked that “the paramount truth of democracy is process.” The judiciary comprises an essential part of this process. However, non-originalist methods are fundamentally tainted by personal preferences, failing to uphold an objective process. Living constitutionalism posits that the meaning of the Constitution evolves based on social norms. How does an unelected

A high-speed train in Taiwan that is similar to the fleet of vehicles planned for California’s high-speed rail. For years, progressives and environmentalists have understandably promoted California’s massive $40 billion high-speed rail proposal as the most transformative transportation development in America and a long-overdue project that will help to reduce the disparity between the United States and other developed countries in terms of miles of high-speed track. While Cal

Confirmation following ticket purchase for the Noah Kahan: The Great Divide Tour. It is no secret that concert tickets have become increasingly hard to secure. While traveling over February break, I listened to Noah Kahan in the airport after trying, and failing, to get tickets to see him live at Citifield in July. With the busy Presidents Day weekend travel trends, I wondered why my seat on the plane was any different from those seats in the stands. Airlines don’t allow fly

A wind energy farm in Haiyan, Jiaxing, China. As nationalist sentiment and political tensions continue to permeate across the planet, multinational cooperation in the fight against climate change has clearly become less of a priority for most major powers. The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report ranked “geoeconomic confrontation” as the number one short-term threat, trumping “extreme weather events” and “pollution,” which fell from second to fourth and sixth

Data center infrastructure in the United States. In Lansing, New York, a town of roughly 12,000 just north of Ithaca, New York, hundreds of residents packed into a middle school auditorium last fall. They were there to confront representatives of a company most of them had never even heard of. TeraWulf, a digital infrastructure company, had signed an 80-year contract on 183 acres at the old Cayuga coal plant site to build a data center—a facility housing the servers that po

In February 2019, Oswego Community Hospital, a 12-bed Critical Access Hospital in southeast Kansas, pictured above, abruptly closed. The organization cited financial instability arising from low reimbursement rates and high volumes of uninsured patients as factors contributing to its closure. This closure exposed how fragile rural health infrastructure has become. When a rural hospital closes , headlines tend to focus on abandoned emergency rooms and extended ambulance routes

Two federal law enforcement officers during a field operation in New York and Texas. TikTok has inundated users with videos of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents ripping people out of their homes before promptly putting a phone to their faces, seemingly to capture their facial profiles and input information into a system. ICE recorded Alex Feinberg after he took a video of ICE agents at a Portland, Oregon, gas station. This occurrence with ICE is

The starry night sky with a view of our Milky Way. Have you ever gazed at the night sky and marveled at the Milky Way stretching across the darkness? For most of the world today, that simple pleasure is disappearing. Over 80% of people can’t see a clear night sky, and one-third can’t spot the Milky Way due to light pollution. The culprit works beyond city lights: satellites and other space instruments streak across the skies, reflecting sunlight back to Earth. Without strong

What once was a familiar sign of opportunity is now just another piece of marketing. Generation Z is entering one of the most difficult entry-level job markets in modern American history. The unemployment rate for recent graduates is approximately 5.6%, and the widening inequality gap between upper- and lower-class Americans is worsening living conditions for new-grad hires. Research from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research shows that students who graduate

Armed black student activists leaving Willard Straight Hall on Cornell University's central campus. At 2:00 a.m. on April 18, 1969, a group of primarily Black students, who were members of the Afro-American Society, joined some of their Latino peers in deciding to stage an occupation of Willard Straight Hall on Cornell University’s central campus. These protesters sought to highlight the university’s bias against students of color, criticize its judicial system, and denounc

Obama and Medvedev sign the Prague Treaty, 2010. On February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between Russia and the United States expired after sixteen years of operation. The treaty, modeled after previous arms deals dating back to 1991, limited the number of Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles to 700 and the number of nuclear warheads to 1,550. The deal also placed restrictions on Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 painting Pollice Verso depicting the passing of judgement on a fallen gladiator through the downturned thumb. Note that this painting is subject to great historical debate, with some scholars claiming that the closed fist signalled life and an upward thumb death. Beyond specifics, the policy remains true—and imagery powerful. In ancient Rome, as the triumphant gladiator towered over his defeated opponent, the colosseum would turn its gaze to the empero

Two Black technologists collaborate on a program together. One day, Allison Bland, a media specialist from Princeton University, was driving through Brooklyn when Google Maps told her to “turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard.” It was a clear error on behalf of the technology, which erroneously interpreted the “X” in the street name as the Roman numeral for ten instead of the street’s actual reference to the African-American revolutionary, Malcolm X. It is a mundane error tha

A healthcare professional fills out medical forms. The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law, reshapes numerous pieces of legislation, particularly those related to healthcare, education, and the allocation of public funding. While the media has covered the changes to Medicare and Medicaid eligibility as well as the restructuring of loan payments, the implications on college students caught between the intersections of these policy changes are often not di

The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine & Processing Facility is the only active and scaled rare earth mining and processing facility in the United States. Owned by MP Materials, the facility recently secured an unprecedented deal with the US Department of War to ramp up domestic production of rare earth elements. Rare earth elements refer to a group of seventeen metals that contribute to the defining technologies of the 21st century. From electric vehicles to fighter jets, rare

A U.S. banknote. While families gathered outside to watch fireworks at the end of our block every Fourth of July, my family stayed indoors and watched them on TV. The sharp cracks of the fireworks reminded my parents of the bombings they encountered during the Vietnam War. Growing up as a child of Vietnamese refugees, I heard my parents’ stories of bombs dropping at midnight and families rushing into basements to escape the impact. It has been fifty years since April 30, 1975