The most lonely I’ve ever been in my life was during my first year and a half of college. I was an out-of-state student adjusting to a new world without much guidance. Perpetually sick, one week I had a cold, next week a fever, rinse and repeat from September to…

Excited to show everyone the cover art for my book why do you pilot an EVA?: Essays on Neon Genesis Evangelion. The art was done by Oxcoxa…

WNBA star Brittney Griner, jailed because she carried vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, was release yesterday. She had been imprisoned in Russia since a week before their invasion of Ukraine. Griner was released in exchange for Viktor Bout, a notorious arms dealer. Though many rejoiced at the…

This whole ordeal with Kyrie is a convergence of things. Kyrie Irving is one of, if not the, most skilled basketball players ever (though personally, I give that designation to Kobe). He is a black man searching for answers; trying to excavate a history he can be proud of and…

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water follows a mysterious circus-girl named Nadia who carries a jewel called the Blue Water. At the start of the series (directed by Hideaki Anno), Nadia runs into a young French inventor named Jean who helps escape a trio (Grandis, Sanson and Hanson) trying to…

I recently read that the first novel in recorded history was published in Japan. It was called “The Tale of Genji,” completed in the early 11th-century by a woman later given the name Murasaki Shikibu. A few years ago, I found out that printing existed in Asia hundreds of years…

Set in 1923 in the Taishō era Japan, Mars Red follows Yoshinobu Maeda, a colonel who heads secret unit (Code Zero) of vampires for the Japanese army. In the anime series (which is based on based on a play by Bun-O Fujisawa), Maeda and his clandestine crew as they go…

The term “coon” (short for racoon) stems from American slavery. Traversing from plantations to pop culture, it is based on white society’s idea of Black intellectual inferiority. When this charge is levied within the Black community of the present day, it’s an accusation that the person is performing anti-Black stereotypes…

The free speech, cancel culture, deplatforming, self-censorship debate about academia is well-trodden, so I hope readers forgive me for the lack of set-up. I rather get straight into it. I think we fetishize debate, particularly in academia, in ways that just aren’t realistic. This discourse is more often than not…