1. Hot Dogs 2025

  I am going to talk about a classic power in the world. Money. Money is power, no matter how you look at it. You might say that money is just a piece of paper, but it is so much more. With money, you can basically do anything you want. You can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, with less consequences. With money, you can buy food, water and shelter. You can also buy things for entertainment. Money is the center of power, if you can't afford anything, you can't do anything. If you want to do anything big in your life, you will need money. Money has the power to destroy worlds. You can pay other people to sabotage other people, and if you have enough money, you can do some real damage.  With money you can also donate money to charity and research for cruises for diseases. You can do a lot of good things with money that can change the world, it's just up to you how you will decide how to use the power of money. We humans give money power, and we also really rely on t...

B eyond being the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk is also climbing the rankings of the most influential man. His involvement in the Trump administration has positioned him as a dominant figure in the most powerful country in the world, despite not even being an elected official. Whether he’s delivering speeches to government officials, securing countless government contracts, or swaying public opinion with a single tweet, Musk’s reach now extends far beyond Silicon Valley. His role now isn’t that of just business; it’s of power, control, and the ability to steer the direction of the global landscape. Musk’s ever-growing influence may scare many, and for good reason. His dominance over industries, combined with his unfiltered personality, makes him a polarizing figure in the eyes of many. However, there is a silver lining to his rise in power. He has used his dominance more often than not for the betterment of society, for instance, clean energy and space exploration. If he chose to do ...

  Photo Credit: Yu, Lily. "5 Step Vision Board (Visual Goal Setting) Tutorial." HR Raw , 26 Apr. 2018, harrow.com/5-step-vision-board-visual-goal-setting-tutorial/. Accessed 26 Feb. 2025. The power of manifestation is an idea that you can turn your dreams, goals, and desires to a reality all through your focused thoughts and actions. I believe that manifestation is one of the greatest powers an individual can have. Any words that a person speaks can come true...but it definitely is not that easy. Manifestation is not only saying to others about a multitude of aspirations you have for your life, but it is also putting in the hard work in order to attain those dreams and goals.  The Law of Attraction is a philosophical idea that positive or negative thoughts correlate with the experiences anyone faces and how they perceive their goals. If I consistently believe that I can do well on all of my chemistry tests and make progress by studying early or by reviewing my notes regularly...

  The appeal of power and the subsequent desire to obtain it is a shaping force. For all of human history, hunter-gatherer tribes, kingdoms, and countries have viciously fought to increase their power.  People of all religions revere God because of the sheer might and power their God has. It is well documented that monarchies were fraught with conniving politics and even the murder of one’s own family, all to rule the nation. The desire to have more - land, people, influence - pervades the motivations of most actions. Even in current day society, the desire for power is ingrained in practically every person. We have a whole industry based on superhero stories - people that have abilities that give them more influence, or power. Being a leader is one of the most respected positions in society, from the line leader in second grade being respected, college admissions factoring in your demonstrated leadership, to the fan bases that gravitate towards political parties. Simply put, ...

Photo Credit: “Mahashivratri Wish 17.” MahaShivRatri. Isha, https://isha.sadhguru.org/mahashivratri/downloads . Accessed 26 Feb. 2025.  Today is the auspicious day of Mahashivratri, which directly translates to “ the grand night of Shiva. ” This day, Shiva, who is the destroyer and first yogi, married Shakti, who is the embodiment of energy. Their marriage is sometimes considered the first love marriage of the universe as Shakti went through immense penance in the form of Parvati, meditating for 107 years before finally pleasing Shiva, who is a recluse, and convincing him to marry her. Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) is based largely on the quest to question everything as well as learn the science behind why everything happens. As such, Shiva and Shakti represent important aspects of the world. “ Lord Shiva represents the constitutive elements of the universe, while Shakti is the dynamic potency, which makes these elements come to life and act. ” In other words, Shiva is a representat...

Controlling the Narrative A lone person sees a truth beyond that of their understanding. They shout into the abyss to fight against what they see. Yet their voice is drowned out by a sea of lies, and the truth is relative in relation to the story told. The power of a narrative is one relegated to the background, partially because reminding people of its power actively weakens its power. But just like in outer periods of history, in the current world of the world wide web the power of information is equally critical in its ability to affect people and their decisions.  In many ways the internet has democratized the spread of information more than ever before, with people having access to stories from every corner of the globe, and able to spread their stories with a broader reach than they could ever imagine without the internet. An army of a million could conquer the world in previous centuries and now many people can build a following of that size purely over the web.  But wi...

       When sitting at my desk, mulling over ideas for my last blog on the topic of power, it occurred to me that there was only one direction I was interested in taking for this grand finale—finding my own power (and how you can find your own too).      I still remember my first Model UN conference like it was yesterday. I showed up to Foothill High School alongside my fellow delegates, and I strode with a stomach-churning mix of anticipation and anxiety to the classroom where my c ommittee was being held. It was a fictional crisis committee based on Percy Jackson, meaning that the situation we were thrust into was constantly changing and evolving as time went on. As I stood up to give my opening speech, I could feel my legs begin to tremble as sweat suddenly drenched my palms. With smudged notes and frantic eyes, I attempted to produce a coherent sentence. But looking around the room at all of these accomplished, successful high schoolers, my blazer...

  With the continuous development of technology, artificial intelligence has become increasingly prevalent in the contemporary world. From simple chatbots to self-driving cars, AI is reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace, making developments that are unforeseeable if viewed from just a few years ago. Rule-based, repetitive occupations such as data entry, customer service, and transportation jobs are already being replaced, with CNN asserting that ”41% of companies worldwide plan to reduce workforces by 2030 due to AI.”  Upon researching this information, take a guess at what the first result was. That’s right, it was Gemini, Google’s own AI software. It went from “AI may provide unreliable information” to being on the forefront of your Google search, and who is more reliable than good old Google? The citation of AI has already been implemented by many prestigious universities, such as Brown University in Rhode Island. As AI continues to become more sophisticated, it as...

                 Right now, I’m sick, and despite having a full day “off” from school, I’ve been able to do nothing but sleep. When I started the day, I told myself I would get everything done. This meant finishing my POAS, doing all my essays for summer programs, doing SAT practice, and generally finishing all my pending work. In retrospect, the fact that I woke up at 11 A.M, only to blow my nose, should have foreshadowed my utter lack of productivity.  At around 1, after I ate my breakfast (lunch), I tried to do my POAS. I opened the doc, and tried writing, and what came out sounded like my younger sister stole my computer. Try as I might, I literally couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound like a third grader wrote it. I spent more time blankly staring at the document - my nose itchy and tingly, and chills wracking my body - than actually working.  Finally, when my mom came in to check on me, she told me to give up ...

Everyone knows what the internet is. In today's world, it is a necessity for almost everyone. People can search up how to do pretty much anything on the internet. People also use the internet as a main way of communication. If the internet goes down, then you are stranded without the endless void of information. If the internet goes down for good, I believe that civilization would destroy itself because most people rely on the internet to do a lot of things. Everyone would lose their main way of communication with each other. People would also have to learn how to read maps since people have now relied on direction from our phones. Maybe it would be a good thing if the internet went down, more people would go outside and be social in person and get more exercise, but we are in a world were people's lives would be over if they don’t have the internet. A lot of peoples jobs revolve around the internet, so a lot of people would become jobless. If the internet went down, people c...

P hoto Credit: Romalewski, Kate. "I Was on Track to Spend 17 Years of My Life on Screens." Chalkbeat , 2 Nov. 2023, www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/11/2/23942334/smartphone-addiction-instagram-tiktok-snapchat-screentime-scrolling/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2025. Media is one of the most powerful forces in society now and has been for the past couple decades. From receiving political updates from the news to the newest Met Gala outfits that celebrities are wearing, media plays a vital role in how the public perceives these issues and pop culture as well.  Social media has an immense impact on our lives nowadays since platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok permit viewers to raise awareness about issues that may not be highlighted in society. For instance, the social media hashtags surrounding the Black Lives Matter movements and the Me Too movement brought more attention to the issue, gathering support from activists all around the world who firmly believed in racial equality ...

The Ladder Up Confucianism is one of the oldest ideas in the world, which has spent a large chunk of its existence having people debate whether it is a religion or a philosophy. Most of its tenets focus on different relationships between people, with the five main relations being ruler and ruled, father and son, older sibling and younger sibling, friend and friend, and husband and wife. However, there is another lesser known tenet of Confucianism, and one deeply ingrained into the fabric of Chinese culture which stresses the importance of education. The imperial examination system in China is one of the oldest meritocratic institutions in history, which in many ways continues on even today. At its core, it provides a great chance for in theory any person to rise up the social ladder regardless of class. In practice, most of the time it was only the wealthy who could afford an education, but in very rare cases, someone with extreme talent managed to rise from a poor peasant to on...

  Photo Credit: Esher, M.C. “M.C. Esher's "Drawing Hands", perhaps the most recognizable example of visual paradox.” LinkedIn, 21 Aug. 2023, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/picasso-paradox-varun-nayak/ . Accessed 10 Feb. 2025. In the present day, people often misunderstand that power is only realized if it is exerted. However, from history, we can learn that the people who wielded their power the least seem to be the most loved and respected. Particularly, Roosevelt’s quote, "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far" exemplifies this idea of using power as both a shield and a weapon rather than using it to display strength.  Large empires such as Alexander the Great’s were built upon this misuse of power; but, they quickly fell apart when they were unable to sustain this amount of power. In fact, when looking back at the Cold War, countless lives were saved because both the US and the Soviet Union decided to present their military strengths as threat...

       I would consider myself to be a very chaotic person. I have no planner, only a vague checklist in my brain of pressing deadlines. My room is in a perpetual state of varying degrees of disorder. My bedtime fluctuates wildly, from 10:00 PM to 3:00 AM with almost no in-between. However, one thing that I’ve prided myself on for as long as I can remember is my ability to form and keep routines. I believe that having a solid routine for certain things can define your productivity and your general mood, adding a sense of stability to an otherwise unpredictable life.      Take my mornings, for example. I begrudgingly drag myself out of bed, wash my face and brush my teeth, and then start my skincare routine in a very specific order. I spray on my toner, rub in my serums, apply liberal amounts of moisturizer, and finally, top it all off with sunscreen. Although my products may change from time to time, the routine remains unchanged. In fact, I don’t thin...