Brown and (Usually) Blue: Sounds for the soul
By Ishaan Rajiv Rajabali | February 20In honor of Black History Month, I thought I’d dive (or rather, dip my toes) into jazz’s journey to Bombay for this week’s edition.
In honor of Black History Month, I thought I’d dive (or rather, dip my toes) into jazz’s journey to Bombay for this week’s edition.
While walking through the Res Quad during the past few months, you may have noticed the sticky note “H>M” and “M>H” signs displayed in the Houston Hall and Miller Hall windows, respectively. But which one is actually better?
PECOTA stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. It’s a fancy way of describing a system used by the organization Baseball Prospectus to predict the MLB standings in a given season, which it does every year. Let’s just say I’m not too crazy about the algorithm — and not just because it doesn’t have the Chicago Cubs winning the National League Central. These are, in my opinion, the five most insane PECOTA projections from this year’s iteration.
In the words of Eminem, “Guess who’s back, back again?” Spoiler alert, it’s me. I’m back and hungrier than ever. So, this column is back too, allowing me to rant and rave about my eats at Tufts.
Let’s start this column out strong with a recent favorite read: “Writers and Lovers” (2020) by Lily King. This novel is smart, fun, reflective and just an all-around great read. It’s guaranteed to make you feel the full range of emotions, prompting you to laugh one second and cry the next. Narrator and protagonist Casey Peabody is very lovable in her awkwardness and determination to make it as a writer. We see her face the complexities of life: grief, love and, of course, geese. More on the geese thing later…
Taking a psychoanalysis class this semester brought me to a frightening realization — most of the dreams that I remember upon waking up are war-related nightmares. The dreams have a repetitive plot that always revolves around the aftermath of Russian attacks: burned-down buildings and dying family members. On Feb. 10, when a Russian drone attack caused the fire that killed at least seven people in Kharkiv, that dream partially came true.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill and Lil’ Kim deconstructed barriers that negated the artistic expression of female rappers in mainstream hip-hop music. In their records, the trifecta explicitly and implicitly subverted patriarchal binaries. Fundamentally, these rappers envisioned liberation through the expression of female sexuality, romance and emotions.
This week’s focus is on the Norris Trophy, which is awarded to the best defenseman of the NHL season.
Here are my big questions for every conference in the college basketball Power 6.
My friends think of me as a modernized, reincarnated Plato. My philosophical mind has been compared to Kant, Aristotle and many other great philosophers. Oftentimes, in the hallway of Hodgdon Hall 2.5 (the floor I call home), we debate and converse about the values and ethics of life into the wee hours of the morning.
Now, I have colloquially described my college house as “The Cheese House,” firstly, because my roommate (now abroad) is Coby Formaggio, founder of the current Tufts Cheese Club, and because I am from the grate state of Wisconsin. Refusing cheese feels a little blasphemous, and yet, I blaspheme.
For today’s publication of T Time, I decided to cover Maverick Station and the surrounding neighborhood. You may ask, why cover Maverick? My answer – it has a cool name.
My room back home in Bombay (or Mumbai, depending on who you’ve heard it from) faces the Arabian Sea. I’ve gone to sleep listening to the soothing lull of waves since before I learned the meaning of the word, walked past couples posing against clear blue skies and admired crimson west coast sunsets, especially since my foray into Instagram. But the rose-tinted glasses (or filters, if you will) of social media can’t hide the reality of where we’re headed.
If there’s one thing that many Americans can agree on, it’s that they dislike the IRS. The Internal Revenue Service is a federal agency responsible for collecting and administering federal taxes. The IRS primarily ensures that everyone pays their taxes, often by auditing individuals or businesses, and processes requests for tax refunds. It’s understandable the IRS is not popular, especially as 56% of Americans feel their tax burden is unfair and a majority state that the complexity of the American tax system “bothers them a lot.”
After two consecutive weeks at uphill locations, I decided to book a trip downhill this week to cook up some bean quesadillas in none other than Hodgdon Hall. Hodge is known for a lot of things — the convenient Food-on-the-Run dining location, forced triples and its disorienting floor plan all come to mind. Unfortunately, the student kitchen should not be added to the list of things that make Hodge stand out.
Compared to the rest of the world, American television is infamous for its glossiness. Whereas British soaps and Italian reality TV shows tend to feature girls-next-door and regular Joes (Giuseppes?), US shows are chock-full of toned abs, low-cut tops, gleaming white teeth and other trademarks of the young and fit.
It’s Aug. 18, 2023. My friend and I had bought last-minute tickets to see the Chicago Cubs play the Kansas City Royals at Wrigley Field. A Cubs win should have been a safe bet — they had been playing good baseball since mid-July, but more importantly, Kansas City was an abysmal 39–84. Unfortunately, Bobby Witt Jr. had other ideas.
The singular thing I’m most excited for as the elite domestic season begins in the lead-up to the Olympics is Gabby Douglas’ elite comeback. Douglas competed in the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics, becoming the first Black woman to win the Olympic All-Around with her 2012 victory.
I arrived in Rabat, Morocco just over a week ago. I was, of course, immediately struck by cultural differences: everyone eating out of the same dish at dinner, an immunity to Western cultural influence that I’ve seldom experienced and the sheer amount of time many people spend sitting at cafés, drinking tea. Yet the first thing I want to write about in this column is not my cultural observations but what my host mother told my roommate and I over dinner the other night. A conversation which I ruminated over and concluded must be the mindset with which I approach my semester abroad in Rabat.
In April 2021, the NCAA decided that first-time transfer student-athletes would be able to immediately suit up for their new schools, eliminating the one-year sit-out policy. Just a couple of months later, the NCAA suspended its prior rules on name, image and likeness that restricted players from receiving any compensation. The combination of these two significant changes to college athletics made for a whole new landscape in college basketball, along with other highly competitive sports.