Columns

Columns

Moments ‘til Madness: The key clashes of opening week

By Owen Short | October 29

The first day of the NCAA hoops season is less than a week away. We’ve already had our first taste of basketball, with a plethora of great NBA games kicking off the league’s opening week. Not only that, but the college preseason exhibition games have been highly competitive this year. This is almost entirely thanks to the rule change implemented in January, which allows these matchups to be streamed and officially scored for the first time.

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Columns

A Jumbo’s Journey: midterms are calling OUR phones

By Ben Rachel | October 29

Well here we are again. Midterm season. Let’s do some math together. This is my third year writing “A Jumbo’s Journey,” equating to just under five semesters. Given that each semester comes with a midterm season — some lasting months — this makes midterm piece number five. Wow, I am quickly losing content.

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Columns

The Bigger Picture: Choose boldly, choose whenever you can

By Linda Huang | October 29

Humans are born to think that we are capable of developing a sense of basic autonomy and agency — the abilities to govern ourselves, free from external control or influence, and to make choices for ourselves to achieve an intended goal. From an early age, we learn that our frontal lobe will develop as we age, allowing us to eventually make independent decisions for ourselves and live life as we want.

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Columns

An everyday art tour: A living collection

By Sophie Herron | October 29

The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University spans 281 acres with a collection of more than 16,000 plants. Rodney Eason, director of horticulture and landscape at the arboretum, can recognize these plants by sight and tell their stories by heart.

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Columns

Munching with Max: Learning to strike out

By Max Druckman | October 27

Those of you who know me will understand that the 50% of my brain not occupied by food is concentrated on baseball (I know, scientists have already asked to study it). Most of the time, this arrangement isn’t productive — thinking about Trader Joe’s Buffalo Chicken Dip doesn’t help me when staring down a 3–2 count. Other times though, my dual thought processes can be fruitful.

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Columns

Almaty: The city of night buses

By Max Turnacioglu | October 24

The bitter memory of a homophobic stand-up routine continued to curdle in my mouth as I looked out into the street beside me. A few cars idled at the light, but the night was otherwise silent. Trolley Bus No. 8 was nowhere to be found. In a night already punctuated by poor jokes, this may have been the worst: my phone lay dead in my pocket — willingly discarded in the name of challenge — and my only guide home was a Soviet-era Russian–English dictionary, with pages 28, 31 and 79 dog-eared as an ingenious reminder of which buses I needed to take.

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Columns

Worth Going Broke?: On your parents’ dime

By Eloise Bernstein | October 23

Even the best dining halls at Tufts can only do so much, and, after over a month of the same options every day, I’m desperate for something new. (Sorry, Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center!) Even Hodgdon Food-on-the-Run, my beloved, can get tiring after having salads or Chipotle-style bowls for almost every meal during the week. As much as I want to get the most out of my meal swipes, there is no way I’m setting foot in a dining hall this weekend while my parents are in town.

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Columns

The Intangibles: LaVar Ball and a parent’s ambition

By Jonah Cowan | October 23

LaVar Ball deserves credit for painstakingly molding his three sons, Lonzo, LiAngelo and LaMelo, into elite basketball players and celebrities from their earliest years. The three brothers became a sensation in 2016 at Chino Hills High School, and now two of them are established NBA players. The middle child is a rapper. But what happens when the manufacturing of children into elite athletes fails?

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Columns

High Fidelity: Clipse returns home triumphant on ‘Let God Sort Em Out’ tour

By Kasra Salehi | October 23

Pusha T and Malice are on top of the world, and they know it.

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Science

Dissertation Diaries: Machlan Sawden

By Demarie Hao | October 22

Welcome to the sixth installment of “Dissertation Diaries.” We will be highlighting Machlan Sawden, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Shruti Sharma Lab at the Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

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Columns

Yours Truly, T: The art of waking up with a smile

By T | October 22

I eased the door open, letting a sliver of golden morning light slip into the dim room. My two friends were fast asleep on the bed, cocooned in a jumble of plush blankets. From beneath a subway cloud of white sheets, a few strands of my best friend E’s blonde hair peeked out.

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Columns

Road to the World Cup: Mexico modernizes, Infantino plays politics

By Antonia Toro | October 21

Mexico is not simply relying on its history as a two-time World Cup host (1970 and 1986); it is actively working to modernize its security infrastructure. Mexico City, which will host the tournament’s inaugural game at the Estadio Azteca, recently selected the firm Amper to lead a technological modernization of its centers of Command and Control (C5) specifically in preparation for the World Cup. This update, involving new infrastructure and the latest version of the GEMYC-D system, aims to enhance public safety and optimize operations across the metropolis.

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Column

Forgotten Fronts: The junta’s Golden Triangle

By Alexander Degterev | October 21

Burma, rife with instability from decades of military control, has become a steadily growing hub of international crime.

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Columns

Evanescence and the Beautiful Foolishness of Things: Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’

By Isabella Jin | October 21

For centuries, the East and West have existed as what seem to be distinct entities — so different in culture and ideology that the art they produced reflected those stark differences. While Western art focused extensively on perspective and individual expressionism, East Asian art maintained its historical lineage of searching for “essence” in life and depicting the philosophical ideas of Buddhism and Daoism. However, as suited to the adventurous spirit of the great explorers, cultural exchange between the two was an inevitable historical product that brought excitement and revolution. 

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Columns

Love to Hate: Kyrie Irving

By Brian Becker | October 20

He’s a box office superstar talent, bringing fans through the turnstiles. Pundits might even argue he’s the most watchable player in the NBA with his shifty step-backs and silky smooth layups, moves that he practiced growing up in his West Orange home without a backboard square. While fans are left in awe from his on-court craftsmanship, his off-court controversy has ruffled at least a few feathers and even prevented him from showing up to work.

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Columns

Moments ‘til Madness: What to make of the preseason Top 25

By Owen Short | October 16

With about three weeks to go until the opening tip of the college hoops season, we finally have the first official Associated Press Poll of the 2025–26 season. Most of the names and general rankings aren’t very surprising, given all the time spent analyzing these now mostly finalized rosters, but ...

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Column

The Bigger Picture: Let Maggie Cheung tell you about wealth and identity

By Linda Huang | October 16

On my flight back to Boston from Hong Kong, I watched “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” (1996), a Hong Kong film directed by Peter Chan and starring Leon Lai and Maggie Cheung — the perfect ending to my summer. The bittersweet emotions this romantic melodrama evoked quickly earned it a place at the top of my list of Hong Kong classics, despite its poorly translated English title. The original Chinese name, “Tian Mi Mi,” literally means “Sweet Honey,” a far better description of the film’s tender yet heartbreaking tone.

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Columns

A Jumbo’s Journey: And the universe said…

By Ben Rachel | October 15

Telling people that I am a part of a DJ duo is super strange. It’s not because of the actual act of DJing, but because my first-year self would probably have a heart attack if I told him what I was doing with my time. My partner and I are going into our second year as the DJ duo known by the name rnr.dj (everyone should go follow on Instagram: @rnr.dj_).

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Columns

Almaty: The city of blisters

By Max Turnacioglu | October 10

The following is your complete insider’s guide to running a half-marathon in Almaty with minimal training — in nine easy steps!

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Column

Through Indigenous Eyes: Tribe-run tourism

By Sorsha Khitikian | October 10

After spending our first night with a family member in Las Vegas, my mom and I hit the first destination on our road trip: the Grand Canyon. A bucket-list item for both of us, we decided to make the most of the drive. Along the way we stopped at cool sites such as the Glen Canyon Dam and Wahweap (where I even got to touch the Colorado River!). But by far the standout of these stops was Upper Antelope Canyon.

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