November 16, 2022 (Vol XXXV, Is. V) - Binghamton Review

From the Editor

Dear Readers,

Hey, everyone! Welcome to this new issue of Binghamton Review. As Thanksgiving seems to be the “theme” of this entire month (somehow overshadowing National Epilepsy Awareness and my own birthday), the spirit of gratitude has somehow overtaken me and puppeteers my body like a corporation would a politician (SLY REFERENCE to our nation’s politics). As I see sunlight bleed through colorful leaves, I feel thankful that I’m here to experience it. I can’t help but feel grateful for all I have. SIKE! You can ALWAYS own more—BE more. Why feel satisfied when you can purchase?? Why fix what you can throw away?? Wanting things propels the meaning of your existence. PURCHASE! WANT! CHASE! BUY! CONSOOM!!!

Sorry, I blacked out for a moment there. The truth is, I WOULD be thankful if I wasn’t holed up put ting together this issue on the night of my 21st birthday, when I should CLEARLY be legally drinking myself into a coma. I mean, that’s basically tradition, right? On the bright side, there are so many things for you to be grateful for. The Bing Review, for instance. We put our blood, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids into writing enough pages to fill this issue.

You may be wondering why there’s an emo turkey on the cover. First of all, he’s swag as fuck. Secondly, his name is Sparky. Thirdly, I was planning to make a joke along the lines of “Local emo turkey doesn’t mind Thanksgiving, says dying would be metal.” This would go along with the second prong to the joke, “Town turkey prostitute also speaks up, says she ‘wouldn’t mind being stuffed.’ As much as I wanted to execute this gag with visuals, I’m scared that if I put boobs on a sexy turkey it might reinvigorate Binghamton University’s furry community, and after the “Sexy Baxter Incident,” that’s a risk I’m NOT willing to take.

There are plenty of other things to be thankful for. Your job, for instance (if you’re currently employed, which we here at the Binghamton Review are not), as this is what justifies your existence. Turn to page 6 for more about work ethic in “Workin’ 9 to 5, a Way to Make a Livin’?” by Midas Leung.

Did you do your civic duty last week? And no, I’m not talking about municipal shit. Voting is a fun thing you can do with your friends, if you had any. Read “Should Everyone Vote?” by Arthur O’Sullivan as he considers questions such as: Should everyone vote? Should everyone have the right to vote? Will the authori ties ever find that body I threw into the Susquehanna River in 2016? Those first two and more on page 5. Finally, I legally need to plug my own article. Listen to me very carefully: You MUST read “The Online Romanticization of Mental Illness” on page 10. You want to become more educated on how American culture has shaped our perception of mental health. You also want to contribute to our next issue and give us approx imately one hundred thousand dollars directly to the Review’s bank account.

Well, that’s all for this issue. To learn more, you can look to your left at the table of contents, or further into the issue to find out the old fashioned way. Also, I’ll be expecting that money before December comes around. Peace out!

Sincerely, Madeline Perez

Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found or accepted on our campus. We stand against tyranny in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the principles set forth in this country’s Declaration of Independence and seek to preserve the fundamental tenets of Western civilization. It is our duty to expose the warped ideology of political correctness and cultural authoritarianism that dominates this university. Finally, we understand that a moral order is a necessary component of any civilized society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.

Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole.

Advice Column

Ioffered to give you all life advice. These were your ques tions.

Egads, my Thanksgiving roast is ruined! What am I to do?

What if you were to purchase cat food and disguise it as your own cooking? Probably better than Nana’s pot roast, I’ll tell you that.

Let’s say, completely hypothetically, that I just so happened to discover a cult in the basement of the Newing dining hall, performing some grody human sacrifices. Should I stop them? How would I? What if someone in Binghamton Review was there, pulling the lever that lowered some poor Harpur fresh man into the lava?

We assure you, dear reader, that these advice column ques tions are completely fabricated for comedic purposes. There are not, and have never been, true questions in the advice column.

I’m going home to a politically divided family for Thanksgiving. My dad and I are republicans; my mom and sister are demo crats. My grandpa browses the weird hard-right catholic part of the internet, and my grandma reads Glenn Greenwald. What should I expect? How do I cope? This is not a joke.

Well, if your family loves each other, there realistically won’t be a problem. That’s where you come in. You should start as many pointless arguments as possible—make it so your fam ily never wants to be near each other again. Then you never have to worry about what to bring to Thanksgiving dinner in the future, giving you more time for that deranged shit in the Homework Folder you’ve been meaning to try.

Ok so last Thanksgiving, I decided to bring my anthropomor phic My-Little-Pony-inspired furry-fleshy animatronic sex doll 3000 with extra hyper-realistic moans built-in to dinner. My family’s pretty chill, so I was expecting her to be an interesting conversation piece, but to my surprise, nobody talked much. I don’t have much of a question here. I just want to know, do you think that I should buy the upgraded 4000 model this year?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving-themed flick?

Madeline: Freebirds

Dillon: Groundhog’s Day

Shayne: ThanksKilling

Arthur: Halloween

Sid: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

It’s November and I haven’t heard Mary Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You nearly enough. How do I get into the Christ mas spirit before it’s too late?

I hope you burn in hell.

What are some good Thanksgiving pick-up lines for when I’m going to Sizzler that night?

What the fuck is a sizzler? Is that some special type of grill? Just cook the turkey in the oven like a normal person. If you need pickup lines while cooking Thanksgiving dinner, here are some suggestions. “These mashed potatoes aren’t the only thing I’ll be sticking my dick in tonight.” “Out of all of this food on the table, you’re the only thing I’m interested in eating.” “You look taller, cousin!”

Do you ever just… drink the ethanol they use to sanitize stuff?

Are you saying you don’t drink it? I can’t help but down the stuff whenever I see it. Like the artificial sugar of a diet Pep si, it just burns so good. Although, since I went blind I can’t pursue this pastime any more. I can only locate it by smell which has proven much more difficult.

My wife has been yelling at me ever since I left my kid at the Rat on Court Street, but in my defense, the kid had bad vibes tbh. How do I get her to see this?

Show your wife all the ways your child is better off at the Rat. Constant food, drink, and shelter, education opportunities with all the college students around, plenty of work opportu nities… Plus he’ll be cool af after railing all that coke.

How do I keep Donald Trump distracted for the next two months while the Georgia Runoffs happen?

Carrot and stick.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

No. I’m a person, not a day. Also, I would be an autumn day, because I’m falling for you. ;)

I keep hearing my name in crowds, but nobody’s there to say it. I keep seeing shadows move, but there’s nothing there to cast it. How do I answer the call of my psyche?

Clearly, you need to lay off the meds for a few days. You can’t answer your psyche if you’re inhibiting your own abilities.

Need life advice? Email manager@binghamtonreview.com for more wacky, quirky, and zany responses.

Should Everyone Vote?

By Arthur O’Sullivan

Much like that time when I slept with my girlfriend’s twin, I have two important questions:

1. Should everyone have the right to vote?

2. Should each person with the right to vote do so?

As confused as the Smith sisters were when I asked them last March, I am nevertheless confident that these questions are essential to the proper functioning of our American democ racy.

In case you haven’t noticed, we had an election last week, where DE MOCRACY IS AT STAKE, if dem ocratic (the party, not the eternal concept) messaging is to be believed. Exciting stuff, ain’t it? The one prob lem is that, although this issue comes out after the election, I have to write this baby before then. So I don’t know whether republicunts will retake Congress, destroying the democraps’ peaceful and prosperous paradise which they created over these past two years under glorious chairman Biden, who makes the sun shine and the rain fall upon our amber waves of grain. I don’t know whether the tyrant femfash pansy Hochul will be ousted by Ayatollah Zeldin, who will spend all of January purging New York of the con cept of women, restoring this august state to the homosexual-Sharia-pilled paradise it once was. I don’t know that anything will happen, and if you think that I’m going to write multiple drafts—or worse, edit this logorrheic mess of an article—on or just before production night to account for what ever happens, well, you can go join Binghamton Review getting an office and a Harpur Student entering the Kingdom of Heaven in the “things that will never happen” corner…

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, voting. Again, if you ha ven’t noticed, there was an election last week, and you may have been told somewhere between ten and ten quadrillion times to “register to vote guyssss!” or “remember to apply for

an absentee ballot folx!” or some vari ation on the theme that no matter how little you know about politics, it is not only your right but your moral im perative to vote (for democrats). Well, that parenthetical jab isn’t entirely fair: Republicans are plenty enthusiastic about “energizing the base” in demo graphics with lower voter turnout on average. Although the old people of the greatest and the silent generation have long been loyal to the right (and have nothing else to do in their senes cence other than get angry about stuff they read on weird right-wing internet sites), they’re beginning to die and get replaced by the baby boomers, who somewhere in their LSD-from-thesixties-addled mind are still able to form the thought “It’s election day. I better vote for Hubert Humphrey or else that crook Nixon will win!” Thus, republicans are forced to play the game of getting stupid and ideological young people to vote for them, too!

Which brings me to the crux of this article (ok it doesn’t, but I’ve al ready gone on two incoherent tangents and I’m running out of space): if we want to maintain a functional demo cratic system in this country, we need to iron out a few wrinkles in our pres ent attitudes towards voting. Hence, I ask the two questions which began this article; hence, I shall end this article with their answers.

The first question “Should ev eryone have the right to vote?” is easy enough. Yes.* Next question. (*As suming you are a citizen of this coun try. I don’t see why Bashar Al-Assad should be allowed to vote for our pol iticians. One could also argue about edge cases such as incarcerated felons and non-naturalized children of illegal immigrants, but still, our “represen tative democracy” by definition will not be representative without at least near-universal suffrage.)

The second question, “Should ev eryone with the right to vote do so?” is a little more interesting. I’ve already described the present dogma preached

from the pulpits of Instagram by the priestly “influencers” to their youthful parishioners, which reprove the re fusal to vote as “supporting one’s op ponents” (coincidentally, the same as the influencer’s). Third-party voting is similarly out of the question, since ev eryone knows that a major party nev er tries to regain potential voters (he said, sarcasm dripping from his pen like blood from his lips). But should we take these dogmas as, well, dogma? Will DEMOCRACYTM perish with out Joe Fratboy skipping his Tuesday morning Sociology class to vote for “the one that gets me the most bitches lmao”? I vote nay.

The idea that everyone, especially young people, needs to vote is a conve nient fiction spun up by desperate par tisan hacks to win short-term political victories at the expense of long-term political sanity. When every election since Adams becomes the EXISTEN TIAL BATTLE FOR DEMOCRACY, those without the historical knowl edge to see through the derangement (i.e. young people and baby boomers) will themselves become deranged. To

force everyone to vote, regardless of their political or practical knowledge, dilutes the votes of those with practical and concrete interests (say, the carpen ter who votes for a Democratic con gressman to expand Medicaid, but a Republican mayor to curb crime) with those of half-baked ideological mo tives (say, the B.U. freshman who took an anthropology class). Unmooring politics from practicality likewise un moors the polis from sanity. This may allow for short-term political victories for ideologues. Still, to those I say, “but for Biden?” Happy Thanksgiving, and go Jets!

“It’s election day. I better vote for Hubert Humphrey or else that crook Nixon will win!”

Workin’ 9 to 5, a Way to Make a Livin’?

By Midas Leung

If you ever watch the news between elections or when a politician is get ting bashed, one of the main statistics they bring up is the number of jobs available to the population. Although the amount of jobs has been increas ing, we see that most are being given to those who don’t necessarily have degrees but rather people who have connections.

Just before COVID, I didn’t know what to do with my life, and I didn’t know how my life would continue again after COVID hit. As the pan demic continued, it made me further question what to do with my life. Though I thought I had a solid idea of what I wanted to do, life just loves throwing shit in my way. So, because of my indecisiveness, I lost my chance to go to Binghamton University for the fall of 2021. At first, I thought it was going to be a relaxing vacation for a couple of months before I would go to Binghamton for the spring semes ter. It dawned on me, after seeing my family leave every day from home to do work or school while I did nothing, I realized I was slowly becoming the very thing I despise: a discord moder ator. So I started to adventure further out of my comfort zone and decided to ask around for jobs, or really any thing I could do to make money. I was soon given an opportunity to get a job at a bar as a dishwasher. I was nervous because, even though I wanted this job, deep down I really did want to do nothing.

Right before going to what I thought was the interview, I practiced in my head what to say and how to say it without stuttering. Walking through the doors, I met the owner. To my sur prise, he said “follow me” and showed me to the kitchen where he introduced me to everyone. Had I just got a job only by asking around? In fact, yes. I thought finding a job was going to be the most difficult part of the adult world, but it didn’t turn out that way. At that time, I just reserved my stress for worrying about future interviews.

Once I started to work, my mother started to be really proud of me, which was great until I found out I would be working mostly nights. Now all I had to do was find something to occupy my day. At the time, all my friends were just starting college, so I couldn’t do anything with them. Alas, I decided to wise up and get a second job.

Through the power of family and friends, I was able to work at what I call a “sweatshop.” In reality, it was one of the coldest places I have ever worked.

I don’t know how 9-year-olds survived during the industrial revolution, be cause I worked almost 12 hours each day and I could barely bring myself to keep using that hydraulic press by day, and dishwashing by night. At first, it was a really great job—squishing things together with a press was fun enough—but it became mind-numb ing to do 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I knew it wasn’t going to end well for me; I would get headaches constantly and I was truly suffering, but I would just power through and say that “col lege is expensive,” which, after seeing the meal plan at Binghamton, was a very correct statement. As bad as this is to say, COVID finally came as a blessing in disguise as it gave me an excuse to stay out of work.

After working for a month I re

alized why there was a stereotype of men committing domestic violence. I would get extremely irritable if some thing did not go my way, and after coming home at 1 am from a night shift, I would always pray to be left alone and go to sleep, but my mom for whatever reason would be awake and then say “take out the trash” like damn, b**** you got three other kids to make them do it (jk mom luv u <3).

After working like a dog, I final ly got to leave my family and the city to go to Binghamton. I really loved it, maybe because I was trapped with my family for 2 years, but something about being left alone is an amazing

“It dawned on me, after seeing my family leave ev ery day from home to do work or school while I did nothing, I realized I was slowly becoming the very thing I despise: a discord moderator.”

feeling. All-in-all, if you have a job, great! If you don’t, go do something about it you bum.

Clean the Dishes!

By Dillon O’Toole

As I sit here at my desk procrasti nating my various assignments due tomorrow (who needs sleep any way?), I wonder how I got to the point of actually writing this article. My ini tial plan for this issue was to rework an article I was writing about some video games (you know, the usual fare from me). Depending on how much time I end up having this week (and also how much content we get for this issue), you may end up reading that reworked article at some other point in this very same issue. I felt this needed some sort of preamble to the actual content of the article, so here we are in this para graph. Anyway, let’s move on to the actual introduction.

I would never label myself as either organized nor a clean-freak. In fact, I would say that I’d benefit from having better cleaning habits of my own spaces, but the cleanliness of one’s private spaces is not the point of this article. Instead, I want to focus on how one treats common spaces, espe cially for those living together. Perhaps it’s due to me being a former boy scout, but I have trouble leaving areas in a worse condition than I found them in. Whether in nature or civilization, I often find myself trying to help others clean up. Hell, I’ve even offered to help clean up after a party while I was com pletely wasted. The point of this is that I think spaces shared between or by other people should be held to a higher

standard of cleanliness than one’s own personal spaces.

This brings me to my apartment, one that I share with several room mates. My apartment consists of bed rooms, and a shared kitchen/living room area. I don’t care how my room mates live in their own bedrooms, it isn’t my problem. I do care, however, about how we live in our shared space. Now, I won’t name names in this piece because that isn’t right, but one of my three roommates is really shit ty at cleaning up after themselves (I also will referring to them in a gender neutral way, so all of you people who think it is funny to say “oh they/them isn’t a real pronoun” can go fuck you self because you are not only hateful and unfunny, but you’re also stupid). This roommate in particular leaves the kitchen in great disarray: they don’t clean the stove after using it (and they somehow manage to get egg over ever fucking piece of it and then leave it there to dry); they leave their dishes unrinsed (this is the part that real ly pisses me off) in a pile in the sink for days at a time despite us having a dishwasher (there is a pile in the sink right now as I type this); and they don’t clean the dishtowels after using them (it’s even worse since they are mine to begin with). This complete disrespect of our common area gets my blood boiling faster than anything else in my life. I can’t even drink the anger away

because if I leave my bottle opener on the counter they will somehow make it sticky with whatever random shit they cook.

So, you may find yourself ask ing, “Dillon, why don’t you just talk to them about this problem? Words would surely solve this issue.” To you I can only say that I have talked to them, which did work briefly i.e. they stopped leaving the dishes in the sink for about a week (as far as I am aware they still have never cleaned the dish towels themselves despite me asking), but then they went right back to not cleaning the dishes for several days at a time (I’m going to ignore their inability to clean properly as well, since I will routinely find utensils that were “cleaned” that still blatantly have smudges or food on them). I also just tried doing all the dishes myself, but to be honest with you I really don’t want to wash the dishes both before and af ter I want to use them. As a result of them failing to comply with my simple demand of cleaning up after them selves, I just don’t use my own dishes or kitchen. Instead, I use plastic uten sils which I know are clean (I would use real ones but, like I said, the sink is so full of dirty dishes that it makes it hard to clean them). I’m really glad I never have to live with this person again following the conclusion of the spring semester, although I do feel bad for whoever they will inevitably end up rooming with after this year.

So, what can you, the good read er, take away from this? Make sure you clean your common areas, it’s good roommate etiquette. If something or someone starts to become a problem, stamp down on it immediately. Learn from me, I was too complacent and too compliant for far too long. If you don’t want to gamble dealing with a problem like this, it’s probably best to live by yourself. Now, I need to see if I can make it until graduation without snapping or yelling at them for a few hours straight.

Thanksgiving Bingo

By Our Staff

A Thanksgiving Recipe to Make Your Wife Leave You

By Martha Stewart’s Tax Accountant

Ididn’t have an easy life growing up. I didn’t have an easy life shrinking down. The days, weeks, months, years, decades, and half-century of my life have been filled with execrable excre tions of the devil into my outstretched hands. When I was born, the doctor said, “Well Miss Bloom, I tried my best, but he came out alive!” When I was growing up, my dog tried to put me down. When I graduated high school, the teachers threw a party when I left. When I got my CPA li cense, I single-handedly created the depressed-accountant stereotype. The one light of my life was Ilse, my wife. Her sparkling yellow teeth, luscious ly thinning hair due to male-pattern baldness, and girlish emaciated figure enraptured me when I first saw her in that crack den. We were wed in a pic turesque Korean laundromat by a se nile Baptist priest who later hung him self in that same place. We spent our honeymoon cruising the Greyhound (“Ridin’ the dog,” we called it) from Binghamton to White Plains, barely able to keep our crabbed, bony hands off of each other, nor our eyes open to the reality around us, gazing only into each other. Norman Rockwell himself couldn’t have captured the idyll. But now, there is a fly in the ointment, an eyeball in the soup, a thorn in the rose, a poison in the nec tar, a bone in the drumstick, a sex scene in an otherwise good movie: I hate my wife. You see, like most Generation X males, I have a gene inherited from my ancestors which induces me to despise the opposite sex after about age 50. That heaving, braying bellowing laugh, which once cast me into the efferves cent reveries of rapine, now grates on me like a cheese grater grates on the cheese that is my skin into this rec ipe which I am to shortly reveal. Her rattling frame, which once pumped my blood harder than climbing up a

flight of stairs too quickly, now haunts me whenever I close my increasingly sunken eyes. Her shining yellow teeth, with which she would adorably nibble on my scalp in more halcyon days, have all but fallen out, except for Old Chomper, which she uses to chew the peanut butter soup she makes for me every Sunday (I’m severely allergic—I know because once my mother figured it out, she would send me to school with not one but TWO PB&J sand wiches every day). I loved Ilse with all my heart, but three heart failure inci dents by age thirty have left it bereft of the capacity to love as it once did. To recap: I hate my wife, and I want her to leave.

Despite this, I inherited my father’s cowardice, and like him, I can not bring myself to formally confront my wife, nor even divorce her quietly. No! I am proudly a man of inaction. I have always let things happen TO me, never to react, never to get angry, but always to be Kierkegaard’s Knight of Resignation (I should get around to reading again). If I am to be relieved of her, my bête noire, SHE must be the one to leave. To that end, I must expose her sole Achilles heel, the one treasure kept through the strife of her life but for me: Thanksgiving. To her, Christmas cheer is a farce; Halloween frights are a bore; the “hope” of Easter has long since been extinguished. But the idea of Thanksgiving, a feast for which you count your blessings, rekin

dles her dispirited heart enough to live another year, a miracle for which she gives eternal thanks. Thus, to finally make her hate me enough to leave our Johnson City studio apartment, I must target that one point of failure: I must ruin her Thanksgiving.

As you may guess, stuffing is beyond our means, cranberry sauce too fancy. Turkey is a distant dream, one which Ilse can’t see. But cheap potatoes, fair and true, preserve us in our misery. Her favorite meal, which makes her squeal, are mashed pota toes. Without anything else available, I would make my personal specialty: an elegant mashed potato feast involving a special ratio of russets and Yukon gold potatoes, Irish butter, black and white pepper, green onions, a pinch of cayenne, and a little bit of love. Beyond all things, this feast was what made Ilse love me, the provider of succor. To make her hate me, I must profane this sacred moment, to betray her with the cold agony of Iscariot. This Thanksgiv ing, in the year of our Lord 2022, I must serve a mashed potatoes feast that says nothing more than, “I hate you. Leave.” Hence begins A Thanksgiving Recipe to Make Your Wife Leave You:

1. Purchase a pouch of IdahoanTM In stant Mashed Potatoes.

2. Follow the instructions on the back.

3. Serve, and under no circumstances enjoy.

The Online Romanticization of Mental Illness

Mental illness comes with more than just a diagnosis. As stated by Wulf Rössler in The Stigma of Mental Disor ders, “There is no country, society or culture where people with mental illness have the same societal value as people without a mental illness.” Societal stigma against mentally ill people is an ever-changing form, shaped through education, media, and their effects (or lack thereof) on individuals. Our culture can greatly affect how we understand mental illness, perceiving it through a warped lens of trends, music, television, and more recently, social media. While doing wonders for ‘awareness’ that these disorders exist, these representations are often more harmful than helpful in giving accurate information to the gen eral public. Mental illness needs to be both taken more seri ously and freed from the thousands of wacky connotations it’s gotten wrapped up in throughout the decades.

During the ‘60s, care for the mentally ill began to shift from mental asylums to more humane independent com munity centers and outpatient treatments, facilitated by phar maceutical advancements at the time. Now that mental illness was out in the open, it garnered more attention from sociolo gists and scientists. Letting their biases on the authenticity of mental illness sway their thinking, they wrongly perpetuated the idea that the consequences of mental health disorders were brought about by how psychiatry was organized. Basically, they blamed diagnostic labels and medications for “creating” mental illness. In 1975, this belief was illustrated in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, where the mentally ill would be better served anywhere else than under the thumb of “Big Psychiatry.” The idea that mental illness ‘really isn’t actually so bad haha’ and only becomes harmful when people ‘make a big deal out of it’ has persisted and remains one of the biggest societal obsta cles to mental health treatment today.

Flashforward to the futuristic ‘90s. Mood rings were taking the continental U.S. by storm, skateboarding got real ly popular for some reason, and music as a whole had finally started getting good. The “age of anxiety” of the ‘60s insidiously became an “age of depression” by the mid-’90s, and we saw this reflected in our media. For the first time, depression was not the societal death sentence it once was. It was… cool? Movie conflicts started to opt for a more complicated “man vs. self” dynamic, especially by the late 90s. Mental-health-related hits like Girl, Interrupted and The Virgin Suicides (both 1999, the well-known best year for American film) showed us that wom en struggled with these feelings too (sometimes in a way that was more palatable to audiences, but I’m not getting into that right now.) Grunge music focusing on self-loathing and being a virgin defined a decade. Suddenly, everything was very I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.

Bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, and Weezer (along with a billion others that became popular during this time),

By Madeline Perez

wrote songs about feelings of worthlessness, depressed mood, and thoughts of suicide, choosing to write their songs most likely using a DSM-5 symptom generator. Culturally, a feeling of loneliness had swept over the youth. Divorce rates had been rising, bullying was really cool at the time, and both parents had to work in order to make sufficient income. Contrary to The Who, the kids were not, in fact, alright. Luckily, depression and other mental health disorders were no longer hidden away as strictly as they once were due to these cultural changes. This is not to say the stigma disappeared—it was very much real and pervasive at the time—but people were becoming better at ac knowledging their problems and seeking treatment. All in all, I see this as a win. (But that’s not to say depressive disorders weren’t growing in prominence too. Anti-depressant use nearly doubled, which I don’t think can be chalked up to just ‘more people were seeking treatment’. )

By the mid-90s, internet message boards had become a huge game changer for communication, for better or worse. On one hand, people suffering from things like abuse and men tal illness could talk to people in similar situations, befriend others that understood them better, and find better resources and ways to cope. Going from a community where no one you know has the same problems to the internet could help many feel like they weren’t alone. On the other hand, this further isolated people from their real lives and sometimes put them in situations where things like self-harm, isolation, and eating disorders were normalized and even encouraged. And I don’t say normalized like “oh, this is a thing that exists,”. I say nor malized like “oh, this is a thing that isn’t necessarily wrong so you don’t need to seek help for it.” Many of these have persisted to this day, as even pro-anorexia (aka Proana) forums still exist, promoting tips on starvation diets, pills, purging, and pictures of anorexic people known as “thin inspiration” (a.k.a. Thinspi ration). While music and movies were a big influence on ways people got exposed to or understood mental illness, nothing would or will ever come close to the effect internet communi cation sites and social media has had on perceptions of mental health.

During this time, themes of addiction also started becoming prevalent. We saw the first opioid epidemic wave, with heroin becoming widely popular (though not as popular as prescription pills. Don’t worry though, heroin will have its time. And by that I mean 2010.) Like depression during the time, it seemed to be taken lightly, normalized, and trendy. “Heroin-chic” was popularized in the early ‘90s, a style char acterized by paleness, dark under-eye circles, and an emaciated type of thinness normally seen in addicts. This bled into the 2000s as eating disorders practically became a part of pop cul ture, represented in media as a trivial thing that young women did, rather than anorexia being portrayed as the serious mental

illness (with the highest mortality rate) that it is. Being a victim of addiction, abuse, and mental illness made you different. It made you less ‘complacent’ in a society that chose to hide away anything gruesome or dark. It made you privy to intense suffer ing, transforming you into a more ‘real’ person who has known the full spectrum of human emotion. Right? Doesn’t suffering make you smarter, sharpen your priorities, cutting away the ‘truly important’ from the trivial? Wrong. Very wrong.

That’s not to say that it can never shape someone’s life for the better. Many believe that experiencing suffering has made them more empathetic to the feelings of others, and I don’t deny that. However, it can also put you on a different path, believing that the suffering of others is trivial compared to what you’ve gone through, and if no one helped you when you needed it, then others are equally undeserving. The learned empathy can also become more extreme, turning into a code pendent obsession where if you can prevent other people from going through what you went through, that could somehow ab solve your pain from the past. There are plenty of other, healthy ways to learn how to be empathetic that don’t cost you years of suffering.

As a general trend, those who are aforementioned victims of addiction, abuse, and mental illness do not have bet ter, or more ‘real’ lives. Their priorities can be warped by their experiences in unhealthy ways that have the potential to hurt the people around them. As the saying goes, “hurt people hurt people.” True reprioritization and wisdom comes from healing from traumatic experiences or learning to manage mental ill ness or addiction. This is what helps people grow, what makes people empathetic, and can help lead to a fulfilling life.

Current day, we are seeing an online romanticization of mental illness. (Hey! That’s the title!) On social media sites, like Twitter and TikTok, an increasing number of people are flaunting negative traumatic experiences. This is perfectly char acterized by the “grippy sock clout” trend, where people who have been admitted to mental hospitals (where grippy socks are put on patients—a practice common in all hospitals, actually) have coded inside jokes about the experience. Basically, ‘only people who have gone through what I went through will get this.’

I’m not telling anyone how to cope with their disorder; if joking about it to thousands is what helps, then it helps. But when people’s only education about the disorder is jokes online, it can provide a very warped view of the seriousness of certain mental illnesses. It also leads to many feeling like the more traumatic experiences they have, the more valid their opinions are on the topic, the more ‘real’ their pain was, and the more attention they should get from strangers online. It’s a disturb ing trend, and I’d argue it leads to people focusing more on the

worst experiences of their lives, rather than trying to heal from them. I mean, in a world where pain = popularity, why would you ever want to heal?

It’s sad to say that in some cases, people play up their ex periences, sometimes making them up completely. While this is difficult to prove (and people should be taken at face value until proven otherwise), there have been instances of people making up disorders such as Tourette’s in order to garner fame by talking about their experiences, all while interrupting them selves with forced tics. It’s important to keep in mind that most people are not lying, but have trouble understanding healthy ways to reach out to others for help. A lot of these people need sympathy they’re not getting from the people in their lives, or don’t have resources to get professional help. Instead, they unhealthily turn to strangers who they know will most likely give them positive attention. This has been happening for years, and stems from one huge societal problem: people don’t know how to help others with mental illness or disorders, don’t take it seriously, and will not accommodate those in their lives who have it.

The concept of online self-diagnosis has also been grow ing in popularity, and mainly is the result of people who meet some of the symptoms of a disease or disorder, but not enough to be diagnosed, seeking the accommodations and validity they think diagnosed people receive (this is not including those who would be diagnosed but do not have resources to seek help). The thought that ‘maybe, if I were diagnosed, people would be more empathetic toward me. They would understand that I have a real, bonafide diagnosis that proves my feelings are not trivial’. This behavior is harmful, as it leads to the belief that other people who are actually diagnosed might also be making it up. This is not to mention the fact that no one should want their symptoms to be worsened in order to feel like their expe riences are valid or to be taken more seriously.

The way to prevent this from happening is not to shame those who engage in these behaviors. These people are already hurting, and while “attention seeking” is always viewed as neg ative, needing attention is not a negative thing. The only way to prevent these behaviors is to support the idea that one doesn’t need a diagnosis for their negative experiences to be taken se riously, to be accommodated by others, or for being valid in one’s differences. We need to approach this issue with a sort of real-life radical empathy, accepting others for who they are, diagnosed or not, and understanding when they need someone to listen, advise, or help. Employers need to be cognizant of this and stop treating their employees like robots who should nev er have problems that affect their work performance. Schools should adopt different testing and work practices that are more flexible for students’ stress levels and comfort. Most important ly, we need to be accepting of everyone’s differences, and not assume that emotional problems or specific hang-ups do not make someone ‘weak,’ ‘attention-seeking,’ or ‘weird.’

The worst-case scenario of this idea is some people tak ing advantage of accommodations when they don’t necessarily need to. The worst-case scenario of the alternative is millions of people who need consideration not receiving it, and having potentially damaging experiences as a result. We are all human, so let’s be humane. Peace out!

Parallel AES Algorithm for Performance Improvement

The era of the so-called “Inter net of Things” (IoT) has resulted in an ever-increasing number of connected people and devices. In 2015, more than 15 billion devices were connected, and in 2019 that number reached nearly 26 billion. By 2025, this number may reach 75 billion devices worldwide. While enjoying the services brought about by the IoT, there is increasing scrutiny on the security of its technol ogies, especially after infamous hacks and leaks of the prominent social me dia sites, celebrity personal devices, and even our own university.

The following lists some of the ways in which devices connected to the IoT are vulnerable to threats and attacks: First, hackers can physically access devices, as most of them oper ate without human engagement; sec ond, attackers can spy on devices while linked to wireless networks (e.g. un secure public WiFi); finally, malware can damage and disrupt a computer system through encryption of data, theft of sensitive data, and keylogging and cataloguing user activities. To ensure security of the IoT, confiden tiality, safety, and availability of data remain paramount for the users there of. Though encryption algorithms are used for ensuring confidentiality, for instance, these encryption techniques decrease availability. Likewise, digital signatures and Message Authentica tion Code (MAC) are used for safety purposes, at the expense of confidenti ality and availability.

In many cases, traditional secu rity systems are not enough to stop hackers who steal sensitive informa tion. Thus, while systems may vary in requirements, IoT security-technol ogy must be used to build protective frameworks such as smart-home se curity and smart-car safety. Encryp tion-decryption technology plays a vital role in protecting our personal information and sensitive data, with

algorithms being the keystone of this technology. Therefore, if these algo rithms are implemented efficiently, then an effective security system is al most guaranteed.

When data is transferred over dif ferent computer networks, it is neces sary to protect it through encryption. The most common algorithm for do ing so is called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Some other types of security include symmetric encryp tion, asymmetric encryption, Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), and El liptic Curve Digital Signature Algo rithm (ECDSA). The AES algorithm includes a complete structure for en cryption and decryption of sensitive data, which is the reason it is used worldwide. It can be easily implement ed in software or hardware while also able to meet both modern security re quirements and speed of communica tion required by modern applications. When using AES, it is near-impossible for potential hackers to gain access to the original data. In fact, there is no evidence attackers have been able to decrypt sensitive data while AES is implemented. AES has the ability to handle three key sizes: 128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits. Encryption at 128 bits (AES-128 encryption) is imple mented on the MicroSD card module with ESP32. This has many advantages because it includes Bluetooth and WiFi accessibility, a 32-bit CPU, support for various protocols [such as Inter-In tegrated Circuit Protocol (I2C), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), and Uni versal Asynchronous Receiver-Trans mitter (UART)], and also it is designed to support the work done for projects of IoT. AES is trusted as a standard by the US government and many other institutions. It is more than six times faster than the Triple Data Encryption Standard (TripleDES), and is used in many texting applications (such as WhatsApp), computer platforms such as VeraCrypt, and many other tech

By Hrishitva Patel

nologies. AES-128 is thus the most accepted encryption standard in the world for cyber security due to its per formance, as only one key is used for encryption and decryption so the key is the same on both ends of users. It is highly efficient in 128-bit format, but it also uses 192-bit and 256-bit keys for the encryption of heavy-duty tasks. AES can largely be used to tackle all attacks, except for the attack which at tempts to decrypt data using all possi ble combinations of 128-bit, 192-bit or 256-bit encryption.

On the other hand, a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is also commonly used around the world. A GAN effectively trains itself to achieve its programmed end through repet itive trial-and-error and immense sample sizes. GAN’s algorithm is made up of two internal sub-models: the generator and the discriminator. The generator is able to create fake “sam ples” with random noise, while the discriminator differentiates between samples to determine whether a given sample is fake (i.e. not in alignment with its target) or real. After various samples are differentiated, the genera tor “forwards” the feedback generated from the discriminator, and enhances the subsequent fake sample such that it is more difficult for the discriminator to differentiate between real and fake samples.

There are different types of GANs used for various purposes. The “Va nilla” GAN is the simplest type, made up of two internal models’ generator and discriminator. The generator and discriminator do the job of classifica tion and generation of images by using multi-layer “perceptrons” (the algo rithm by which a discriminator differ entiates samples). Conditional GAN (CGAN) is the supervised technique by which the generator and discrim inator is provided with additional in formation (e.g. class, label, etc.) to find the conditional. Deep Convolutional

GAN (DCGAN) is an experimental GAN in which the generator uses a “deep convolutional network” which results in the generation of high-res olution images that can then be dif ferentiated. The activation function of Rectifier linear units (ReLU) is used in the generator in all but the last layer. This is because in the last layer a Tanh activation function is used, whereas in “Discriminator Leaky-ReLU,” an activation function is used across all layers, cycle GAN is made for trans lations of images to other images. Take a dataset of horse images, for instance: one can create “mapping functions” to translate the images into zebra images. Generative Adversarial Text to Image Synthesis GANs are capable of find ing a similar image to another image in a dataset based only on a text de scription of the image. Info GAN is an advanced version of GANs which are capable of an unsupervised learning approach that allows it to disentan gle representations. Super Resolution GAN (SRGAN) is a type of GAN used to make low quality pictures into more detailed pictures in a process known as Domain Transformation.

A GAN framework was first pro posed in 2014 in which two models were trained: the first model trained was a generative model and its purpose was to capture the data distribution; the second model was the discrimina tive model which calculated the proba bility of a sample of the data collected. Multilayer Perceptron defined both networks, and the whole system was trained with Back Propagation. For the training of the GAN, a Minibatch Sto chastic Gradient Descent algorithm was implemented. A Gaussian Parzen Window was set up to calculate the probability of the test’s data set.

An Adversarial Learned Infer ence (ALI) within the GANs frame work was proposed in 2016. Four datasets were used: CIFAR-10, CelebA, SVHN, and ImageNet. In the CelebA dataset, a lower misclassification rate of 3.00 ± 0.50% was achieved. Cele bA achieves 17.05 ± 1.49, and SVHN achieves 7.42 ± 0.65.

A Randomised Neural Network (Rand NET) was proposed in 2017

to perform unsupervised outlier de tection. Auto encoders with ensemble frameworks based on reconstruction error rate were used. These encoders were connected with each other ran domly to achieve improved training time and diversity. Adaptive sampling methods were used to increase the speed of the training process and they led to major gains.

A Conditional GAN was pro posed in 2018 that jointly learns the generation of high dimensional image space and the inference of latent space. This model consists of two encoders, a decoder and a discriminator. Three types of dataset were used: MNIST, CI FAR and X-ray security screening. To compare the effectiveness of the model on the three datasets, AUC and Run time were implemented. The Condi tional GAN model proved itself to be able to achieve both high Runtime and AUC.

A Bidirectional GAN (BiGAN) was developed in 2018 which utilises an encoder to simultaneously learn to map input samples (x) to a represen tation (z). This was done to avoid re covering unapparent representations, a computationally expensive step. Two Datasets, MNIST and KDD99, were used in this method. The highest anomaly scores known as A(x) were calculated and classification were done in terms of the anomalies.

An entropy based K-NN mod el was proposed in 2018 to perform outlier detection in Wireless Sensor Networks by measuring the distance types and value of K (the number of the nearest neighbour). A real time dataset was used to achieve a highest accuracy of almost 86 %, with K’s value approaching the limit of 2 as the eu clidean distance was approached.

In 2019, various machine learn ing techniques, and their respective patterns of scanning data, were used to detect malware in large scale IoT net works. Three Machine Learning classi fication algorithms were implemented including: K-NN, Random Forest and Gaussian Naive Bayes approaches. Performance of K-NN was best among them, achieving the highest accuracy, F1 score, precision, and recall.

The Hidden Markov Model (HMM) approach was implemented in 2019 to identify abnormal activities that can occur in a smart home envi ronment. Two kinds of data were used, Behavioural data and Network data, to detect the abnormal behaviour. This approach achieved 97 % of accuracy.

References

Agrawal, R. (2021, November 12). An End-to-End Introduction to Gen erative Adversarial Networks(GANs). Retrieved from www.analyticsvidhya. com: https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/ blog/2021/10/an-end-to-end-intro duction-to-generative-adversarial-net worksgans/

B. Joyce Beula Rani, P. L. (2020). Outlier Detection in IoT Using Genera tive Adversarial Network. International Journal of Scientific Research in Com puter Science, Engineering and Infor mation Technology.

Chunxue Wu, B. J. (2020). WGAN-E: A Generative Adversarial Networks for Facial Feature Security.

Kiya, W. S. (2020). A GAN-Based Image Transformation Scheme for Privacy-Preserving Deep Neural Net works. 28th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2020).

Mohammad Al-Mashhadani, M. S. (2022). IoT Security Using AES En cryption Technology based ESP32 Plat form. The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 19, No. 2, March 2022.

Rizky Riyaldhia, R. A. (2017).

IMPROVEMENT OF ADVANCED ENCRYPTION STANDARD ALGO RITHM WITH SHIFT ROW AND S.BOX MODIFICATION MAPPING IN MIX COLUMN. 2nd Internation al Conference on Computer Science and Computational Intelligence 2017, ICCSCI 2017, 13-14 October 2017, Bali, Indonesia.

Santosh Kumar Nukavarapu, T. N. (2021). Securing Edge-based IoT Networks with Semi-Supervised GANs. The Fifth IEEE International Workshop on Smart & Green Edge Computing and Networking.

Tewari, A. (n.d.). types-of-gans. Retrieved from iq.opengenus.org: https://iq.opengenus.org/types-of-gans/

Paradoxically Fun

By Dillon O’Toole

If any of you have read my article from last semester, “Yet Another Brick Wall,” you will know that I find great en joyment in video games. That article in particular talked about my appreciation for a specific genre of video game most prominently made by the developer FromSoftware. A major takeaway from that article was that you can find en joyment in a genre that many find frustrating. Don’t worry, this article won’t just be a recap of what I wrote last semes ter. I’m not that desperate for ideas (yet). Instead, I’m here to talk about another genre of games that at first might not seem as conventionally enjoyable. And, much like last time, the genre in question has a developer that I believe stands above the rest.

So what game genre could I be referring to? To day’s topic is the genre known as Grand Strategy. As you could probably guess from the name, Grand Strategy games are a type of strategy game. They typically focus on some combination of nation building, warfare between states, and resource management. It is most certainly not a new genre, as the board game Risk can be considered an early example of a Grand Strategy game. Risk as we know it to day was first released in 1959, the original 1957 version had some different rules and was released under the name La Conquête du Monde. As computer technology developed, Grand Strategy games established themselves as a mainstay of PC gaming. One of the more prominent developers of this genre to emerge was Paradox Interactive. Paradox Interactive has developed and published some of the most successful Grand Strategy games made (Paradox Interactive is the publishing arm of the company and Paradox Development Studio is the developer, so I will just be referring to the company as Paradox from here on out). For a relatively niche genre, Paradox has managed to create popular games within multiple of their series. Some of their most popular games include Crusader Kings II (CK2), Crusader Kings III (CK3), Europa Universalis IV (EU4), Hearts of Iron IV (HOI4), Stellaris, and Victoria 3.

While Paradox’s games may all be within the same genre, they all manage to have their own identity. This variation comes from a couple of different factors. One, each series has a primary gameplay focus that makes them unique. For example, both CK2 and CK3 utilize more RPG elements, with a focus on individual characters. Victoria 3, on the other hand, is primarily an economic and political simulator, and thus the development of one’s country is the primary concern rather than combat. This variety allows each game to maintain its own active player base, as demon strated by the Steam charts which frequently features each game mentioned (besides CK2 which hasn’t made as many appearances on the charts since its sequel released).

Well, each game takes place over a set period of time (i.e. the Crusader Kings games are in the Middle Ages), and

thus a map is utilized to represent the game world. While this might sound rather boring, the use of a map for the game world can invoke the feeling of playing a board game. A map is also practical for Grand Strategy games, as differ ent map modes can provide the player with necessary infor mation. For example, in EU4 the political map mode shows the various nations that exist in the game, the diplomatic map mode provides information on which countries you have diplomatic relations with as well as the type of rela tionship, and the trade map mode informs the player that they still don’t know how trade works in the damn game. Much like a board game, Paradox games have you directly move soldiers on the map until they meet opposing armies. Combat then takes place, which mostly consists of the com puter rolling dice to see if you win or lose (hope you don’t roll a 1). This is a very basic rundown of how these types of games play, as each game has its own intricacies and sys tems that may differ greatly from other Paradox games. Why do people enjoy these games? Well, the variety in historical eras between games can be enticing to those interested in said eras. This is doubly true for those who enjoy Alternate History as a genre, as the games themselves naturally deviate from history based on the players actions, and mods created for the games allow you to play through entire alternate scenarios. In my experience, these games are best played while listening to music, podcasts, or You Tube videos. They’re great games to play while I relax.

Paradox games can be very daunting to new players, and not just because they are complex titles. Due to Para dox’s post-release support, many of their games get support for years after release. EU4 was released in 2013 and it still receives updates and DLC to this day. This, however, leads to the problem of cost. While this support is great for those who may have been playing Paradox games since release, those who are looking to jump into the games now may face an enormous price tag just to access all of the available content. Paradox does offer some ways to get around the price tag: only the host of a multiplayer game requires all of the content in order for all the other players to access it, for instance. Recently, Paradox has introduced a DLC subscrip tion, which I think is a good way to let players try content which they don’t own. Finally, Paradox routinely puts their games and DLC on sale, typically once every season as well as when new content is released.

All in all, Paradox Grand Strategy games are an en grossing selection of games. There is plenty of content available to try out: the games mentioned are all for sale on Steam and some are even available on consoles, with a few included on Xbox Game Pass (both PC and console). If this article has piqued your interest and you decide to check out any of these games, don’t be afraid to have a guide handy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

PEPFAR: Giving Thanks for an Unpopular President

By Arthur O’Sullivan

George W. Bush’s international legacy is—let’s just say—contro versial. His global war on terror and tyranny appeared to increase both, especially to his enemies on the right and left. He famously entered the pres idency with a budget surplus and a functioning economy, and left it with ballooning debt and a severe recession, the effects of which still resound in countries such as Greece. Regardless of his own culpability, such crises tar nished his reputation, with the public consciousness remembering him as simultaneously a weak-willed RINO agent of “globo-homo” (the right-wing crackpot idea that free trade is turning us into gays), and also a bible-thump ing, racist-Christo-crypto-fascist war criminal who wouldn’t save a black life if his own depended on it: To quote the now disgraced rap-star,

Such an accusation proves calum nious, however, when it comes to the Bush administration’s unquestionable foreign policy victory: PEPFAR. Such an initiative, announced at a State of the Union Address in 2003, and soon to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, has garnered praise from people as disparate as Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo. If you can find a lefty who’s heard of this program, even they will begrudgingly concede that this was undoubtedly a good thing (though they may harp on Trump for cutting its budget).

What is this strange phenom enon? How could an international program founded by George W. Bush survive four Presidents, ten congress es, and the intense public and academ ic scrutiny that characterizes all of his administration’s global endeavors? Somehow, this program funded by tax dollars survives even the skepticism of

Ron and Rand Paul among the liber tarian right, as well as their Tea Party congress. How good could this plan be? Does it cure AIDS or something? Well…

The astute reader would notice that I failed to expand the name of this program, lest it give away the entire purpose of this pre-ramble. PEPFAR stands for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief: a program, by all reports, borne entirely of the Christian values by which Dubya lived (espe cially Charity). Human Immunode ficiency Virus (HIV) originated from Africa, and continues to most affect the poorest regions of Africa. Access to antiretroviral drugs and other im munodeficiency treatments, already expensive in the west, were virtually unobtainable for the average person in the sub-Sahara. Other regions, such as Vietnam and parts of South America faced a similar condition. In a stroke of humanitarian intervention—not through soldiers but doctors—Bush established a program to facilitate the transport of shipments and supplies to those areas, in hopes of saving lives.

But did it work? All of Bush’s other interventions “failed” (at least according to the left and the Trumpaligned right), so surely this brighteyed, optimistic, and expensive plan with no direct benefit to the U.S. would do the same. Following the log ic of other critiques of Bush’s interven tions, the obliquely racist contingent of American society: leftist academics, liberal technocrats, and right-wing isolationists (well, some of these might not be so oblique), would argue that for one reason or another, the peo ple PEPFAR intends to help would simply reject it, (somehow) choosing AIDS’ long and painful death rather than western biomedical treatment. In the spirit of common sense, however, PEPFAR prevailed in its task.

By 2021, roughly 20 million peo ple were given access to, and were actively receiving life-saving antiret roviral treatment for HIV (out of over thrice that number who had access to testing), allowing roughly 3 million babies to be born without infection. 1 million people were put on prophylac tic care; almost 3 million girls received preventive education and services against HIV; over 7 million orphans af fected by AIDS—either with respect to themselves or their families—received important healthcare and social sup port for their condition. At least 20 of the countries which the AIDS epidem ic once ravaged have now achieved epidemic control. In every conceivable way—humanitarian, economic, or even diplomatic—these countries now have a greater chance to flourish, or at least deal with the other crises which beset them.

There is an old truism people absentmindedly repeat when talking about the news: “If it bleeds, it leads.” Nothing is more annoying than a stock phrase actually being true. So of ten, our media focuses on the poverty, misery, and violence which oppresses sub-Saharan Africa. The phenomenon has even been given the name “pov erty porn” in reference to the cynical attempts at guilt-tripping baked into the media coverage of these events. In only focusing on the evil, and nev er on the good, compassion gives way to despair. Therefore, in the spirit of Thanksgiving—both the holiday and the virtue—we should celebrate the PEPFAR program, alongside the mil lions of lives it’s already saved.

All statistics for the were taken from the State Department report on PEP FAR for 2021 report to Congress: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2021/02/PEPFAR2021Annu alReporttoCongress.pdf

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” -Kanye West