Month: March 2020

Passion 6: Celebrities complaining about the quarantining

So with the corona virus outbreak, everyone is practicing self-quarantining. That includes all people:poor, middle class, and even the rich.

If you have any common sense whatsoever, you know that the group that the coronavirus is affecting the most is definitely the poor. As with any type of tragedy, they are hurting the worst as many of them are out of their jobs and do not have enough money to pay rent or keep up with the mortgage payment. This is why the stimulus checks exist in order to keep these people afloat amidst the global pandemic and economic depression.

Despite all this, the people who seem to be complaining the most about just how hard their lives are rich people. It’s absolutely unbelievable how ignorant and idiotic these people are. I saw a video of Cardi B crying about how she was eating cereal. She was upset because she had to eat cereal instead of being out at a sushi restaurant. She is in her 6 million dollar home and can’t stand it. Also Sam Smith was posting pictures of them crying because he couldn’t spend a week in his 12 million dollar house.

Another thing that was super cringey is the Imagine video that Gal Gadot and several other celebrities put out of them singing the famous John Lennon song. It was supposed to be uplifting, but it came off as very dumb since they are singing about not having any possessions yet they all have millions of dollars.

Eric Andre and several other celebrities poked fun at this video by making their own video where they sing lines of the song Slob on My Knob. Its super funny and pokes out just how stupid the Imagine video is.

I’m not trying to knock all rich people here since there are some who are using their widespread influence in order to spread the word on how serious the coronavirus is and how we should all take it as such.

I just think in general we idolize celebrities too much and its kind of crazy to see them complaining when they have millions and millions of dollars.

Civic Issue #4 Deliberation Nation

I think that overall, our deliberation on whether or not standardized tests should be put to rest and the one that I attended on food insecurity went extremely well.

I think that the food insecurity group had a better setup since they were in the Hyatt lounge area so there setup was a lot more comfortable and spacious. Ours was kind of an awkward setup since we were all put into a crowded circle on the stage at Webster’s cafe. However, in the case of the food insecurity group, there was another group having their own deliberation in the area right next to them. This wasn’t that distracting but there were a few times that they were a little loud. For ours, there were lots of people in the cafe area, but they really had no impact on the discussion itself since we were all packed into such a small area.

In terms of participation, I once again think that both groups did a very good job in making people feel comfortable with sharing and sparking a thought-provoking dialogue. In ours, there were very little if any times where there was an awkward silence. This was mostly because of the fact that we chose a topic that was so relatable to all students since we’ve all had to go through standardized testing as part of our college admissions process. That was probably the biggest challenge for the food insecurity group, to explain what food insecurity is and why it is a problem for students. This didn’t get in their way as they obviously knew that they had to deal with that at the beginning of their deliberation and they handled it beautifully.

For the three approaches, the food insecurity group did a very good job of separating their solutions by size. I forget exactly what they had but they focused on food insecurity on an individual scale, as a Penn State problem, and then as a problem for the whole state of Pennsylvania. This really helped as it showed how this problem can be addressed on several different levels. In contrast, our three solutions were just three different approaches to dealing with the national problem that is standardized testing. I think that this made more sense for our approach because it is a problem that everyone faces and is always thought of on a national scale. In both cases, I think that each group chose the correct scale to compliment the solutions to the specific issues.

I think that the main difference between my group’s deliberation and the one that I went to was the environment. At the Hyatt, it seemed very professional and the group even dressed semi-formal to match. This led to the deliberation feeling like an intelligent discourse. But at Webster’s, the vibes were much more casual and that led to our conservation and dress code being very chill. This didn’t take away from the quality of our deliberation but instead enhanced it by making it more of a natural flowing conversation that we might have actually all had outside of an assignment for our CAS class.

Coronavirus testing

I know that the only thing that everyone is talking about is the coronavirus but that’s because it’s only that seems to matter at the moment. I think that I am in the same boat as everyone else in that this is crazy.

One of the biggest things that has been concerning in America is the lack of testing available to the citizens. China, South Korea, and Italy have all performed hundreds of thousands of tests yet the United States has less than 50,000 performed so far.

Its also very interesting that over half of the NBA players have been tested. Lots of them needed testing because of the recent exposure of many of their players such as Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant, etc.

Also many of the other people that have been revealed to positive have been celebrities. This makes sense because many people are going to get it, celebrities included, but its kinda weird that there are so few people are getting tested yet all these move stars and NBA players are getting tests yet most of the general public don’t have access to it.

Like 50% of NBA players have been tested but almost none of their staff has been reported to be tested even though they’ve been in direct contact with the players who have it.

I guess it makes sense that these rich companies and rich people are getting the tests because they can pay for it but its just kind of messed up that there are lots of people who have symptoms and haven’t been able to receive tests. And there are lots of workers in the healthcare industry who need tests as well.

Another thing that is interesting is that the United States has performed some of the least amount of test per capita and per million people. We need to step it up if we are going to get ahead of this outbreak and prevent the deaths of millions of our citizens.

PAS #4 Award Shows

I was about to write my 5th passion blog and my peer evaluations, then I realized that I hadn’t written my fourth passion blog yet.

Whoopsie.

I guess I was too focused on the deliberation nation assignment that I forgot we had other assignments happening at the same time. Not sure if this will be worth any points, but might as well write it right.

 

I’m going to use this passion blog to talk about award shows. I know I’m pretty late since awards season has passed, but I was thinking a lot about it today. Mostly how little awards matter yet they still do.

 

I was looking mostly at the Grammy’s as their credibility is extremely low. I was listening to music on the way to class and a throwback appeared: Macklemore’s Thrift Shop. Undoubtedly a bop, this song radiated through the radio when I was 12. Everyone loved it. The accompanying album, The Heist, was pretty good too. But then I remembered, and got mad, that it won best rap album of the year beating out Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and most notably, Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece Good Kid MAAD City. That album is an instant classic, masterpiece, and one of the greatest albums, not just rap albums, of all time. And it lost to Macklemore. That is incredible to me.

I remember too that at the time the general public and music industry realized how incredibly wrong this choice was saying that Kendrick got robbed. And he really did.  Kendrick has shaped himself into one of the greatest rappers of all time with an outstanding discography consisting of Section 80, GKMC, TPAB,  and DAMN. All of which are absolutely incredible and all of which are better than The Heist. Yes, even Section 80. I’m not trying to take anything away from The Heist either which I do believe is a great album. In fact, I just listened to The Heist in its entirety while playing Madden. And now, I’m halfway into listening to GKMC for the millioneth time.

This is just one example of dozens, if not hundreds of times, that the Grammy’s got something wrong. And its not just the Grammy’s. The Golden Globes, Oscars, and all of the other ones always get certain things wrong. This is because it is all just the opinions of a bunch of rich people which means that it probably doesn’t reflect the view of the general population or industry.

Still, I pay attention to who wins Best Picture. I don’t know what that says about me but I do.