On "YOLO"

     YOLO, an acronym for "You Only Live Once," has a good message behind it. Unfortunately, its meaning has become lost to the vast majority of society, who mainly use the term as an excuse for acts of stupidity. Examples include:


Concerned witness: You're really going to climb on top of that building? You're going to break your neck!

Less than smart person: YOLO!

On Nuclear Weapons

     The Marshall Islands, a very small island nation in the Northern Pacific, is suing the nuclear powers of the world. In 1970, a treaty know as the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, became law. It has since obligated the nine nuclear weapons states to peacefully negotiate international disarmament. Here we are, forty-four years later, and the nuclear powers of the world continue to expand and modernize their arsenals. No negotiations with a real goal of nuclear disarmament have taken place. But now, a small nation, with a population of only around 68, 000 people are aiming to face up the world's superpowers in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

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On Net Neutrality

Earlier, I talked about the Amazingness That is the Internet. Sadly, in recent months that Amazingness has been threatened. For so long, there have been regulations to safeguard against abuse of the Web. Now they've come under fire. In the United States, a Supreme Court decision struck down the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) rules on Net Neutrality. Essentially, they made sure that internet service providers, or ISPs, wouldn't have the power to make some websites faster than others. They protected the Internet from major corporations paying enormous amounts of money to ISPs to increase the speed of their online traffic, at the expense of websites that didn't have millions upon millions of dollars to spend.

On the Amazingness That is the Internet

     A hundred and fifty years ago, if you wanted to talk to somebody in a different part of the world, you sent a letter. That letter would be collected by a mail man, who would take it to a sorting centre. From there, it would be shipped to a major post office hub, where it would get sent to your friend - eventually. Now, we just send them a message on Facebook, or through a text.The internet has revolutionized how we communicate, how we learn, even how we listen to music.

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On the Crisis in Ukraine

Hello, people of the internet! You may have already heard about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Essentially, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, mobilized Russian troops and annexed the Crimean peninsula, located in the South-East portion of Ukraine.

Thoughts on the Vlogbrothers

In my last post I mentioned being a Nerdfighter. It struck me that I should maybe elaborate on what, exactly, that is. By technical definition, a Nerdfighter is someone who is made entirely of awesomeness, but commonly, we're simply defined by our love of the Vlogbrothers, and our goal to decrease worldsuck. The Vlogbrothers are namely Hank and John Green, which are names you might just recognize. John is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and An Abundance of Katherines. Hank is the founder of VidCon, Scishow, EcoGeek, and numerous other organizations. They are both heavily involved in the YouTube channel Crash Course, which you can find here, and The Foundation to Decrease Worldsuck.

On Fandoms

I have a confession to make. Before we progress our relationship any further, I should tell you... I'm a Whovian. Not only that, I'm also a Nerdfighter! I know what you're thinking, "Oh, that poor lost soul." You may even be right about that, but let me ask you one thing: if you could own your very own TARDIS, wouldn't you?

Thoughts on Digital Graveyards

There’s a country in Africa. This country is named Ghana. Ghana is where we send our technological leftovers. In Ghana, there are several places known as “digital graveyards”. They're basically what the name implies. There are countless organizations, countless organizations that we support that send hundreds and hundreds of metric tons of unusable, irreparable, sometimes toxic, e-waste. Why? Why do you think? Money. Yes, it’s cheaper to send tons of technological waste to Africa, marked as a donation, than it is to properly dispose and/or recycle it.

Thoughts on Veronica Rossi's Under the Never Sky

Under the Never Sky, written by Veronica Rossi, is a classic YA dystopian novel. The story, told from two different points of view, focuses around Aria, a sheltered young adult who's been banished from her "pod." The pods were apparently built to house humanity after a great war called "The Unity." When Aria is thrown out of her pod, an Outsider named Perry comes to her rescue. As they voyage across deadly terrain, and face countless dangers together, they're forced to depend on one another.

What, if Anything, do we owe Developing Nations?

Hundreds of thousands of people die every year due to some illness or injury that could have been treated. Countless preventable deaths have happened in the past ten years, simply because some people aren't able to access any kind of healthcare. Our society boasts of our selflessness, and of our charitableness. I ask you then, why are we so easily able to turn a blind eye to so many horrors. I'm perfectly aware that it costs a lot of money to send healthcare to poor people in Africa. I'm perfectly aware that the people up on Parliament Hill feel as though they're not responsible for another nation's people, and they would be right. So why then, do I feel like those deaths are crimes?

Thoughts on Human Curiosity

Human imagination is incredible. We are the only species in the universe (and it's a big place...) that we know of that creates things of beauty and art. We direct films. We write books. We cook food. We study physics. We wonder. Those are all things that are, as far as we know, unique to us. We're all flying through space at thousands of miles an hour, desperately trying to find our place in a universe that is constantly expanding at an unimaginable rate. The fact that I can even begin to comprehend that is extraordinary.