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Posts published in “Opinions”

13 ways to escape the semester in Western Mass

We’re about to enter the twelfth week of the semester, which means that Thanksgiving break is so close we can smell the pumpkin pie. It also means we’ve been in the throes of midterms for a while now, so I thought I’d share my favorite places to disappear to both on and off campus when things get a little overwhelming.

How video games can change your life

The things you are introduced to as a child can set the trajectory for the rest of your life. While I’m not sure that I would introduce a child to video games at age 5, as I had been, nothing has set the trajectory of my life more than video games. My twin brother and I started playing video games at age 5. For two years, we only had one game: “Mario Party 5.” We also only had one video game console for those two years — one video game console, with one game, for two children.

Numbers cannot be our refuge from refugees

Migrant caravans are nothing new in U.S. history. In the past decade, the U.S. Border Control has arrested 5,042,872 people from Mexico and the Northern Triangle (made up of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador): 3,867,886 from Mexico, 446,220 from Guatemala, 378,080 from Honduras and 350,686 from El Salvador.

Someone tell the tech moguls that rocketships won’t solve our problems

Earlier this week, I was looking up Stephen Hawking’s posthumous book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” and was immediately taken back to my high school computer science teacher’s lectures on some of these big questions. Hawking’s book discusses artificial intelligence, a superhuman race and the potential end of humanity. Light stuff, right? I remember sitting in class around 2012, while my 70-something teacher assured us that Jeff Bezos was building an empire and working towards taking over the marketplace, shutting down high street stores entirely. His claims didn’t sound credible to me at the time — I was just trying to stay awake. But now I’m wishing I listened to him a little more intently.

The right to truth

“Crisis pregnancy centers” and “faith-based pregnancy centers”: I have a problem with both names. First of all, I think the word “crisis” only adds to a pregnant person’s anxiety, and secondly the phrase “faith-based” breeds misconception; a pregnant person has the right to allow their religion to guide their reproductive decisions, whether they choose a faith-based center or not.