Items

• 
  2022-03-30

  Have a Wedding Budget? Expect to Spend More Because of Inflation

  This story from the New York Times by Danielle Braff talks about the rising costs of weddings as a result from COVID. Couples mentioned in this story go on about how just the basics are more expensive than they used to be. Ms. Alvear-Beceiro and Mr. Klebba, despite not spending extra on things like food, decorations, and music, had a wedding budget that topped $30,000. Zola, a wedding planning site, said that a third of the 468 participating vendors had losses of $50,000 or more due to couples postponing weddings in 2020. Supply chain shortages later on have also helped increase the overall costs, and many businesses are still trying to operate to pre-pandemic levels. Due to rising costs, some couples are choosing to scale back the festivities. Shannon Bernadin, after looking at the costs of wedding venues with her husband, decided to have a wedding at a friend's house and use thrifted outfits, along with homemade decor. All in all, this article demonstrates the changing economy and how that has impacted the wedding industry and how people plan weddings.
• 
  2020-08-11

  Ipads and Chromebooks: The New Notebooks

  Following the reopening of schools through the virtual world a number of students across the country were faced with a new problem. They lacked the technology needed to attend their online class. Schools who fell under the title 1 classification , which is where children from low-income families make up at least 40 percent of the enrollment, were disproportionately affected by this problem. These families which often consisted of more than one child simply couldn't afford multiple computers. As a result many kids were still unable to attend their classes or do any work at all. This lack of technology was a problem that not only younger kids faced. Students ranging from all ages had to adapt and make due with whatever technology they had or were forced to go out to buy another computer.So in order to help fix the problem for younger students schools began to hand out chromebooks and ipads. By providing them with the technology to access their new classroom setting they could begin attending school again. While there were still other problems such as the lack of internet, handing out chromebooks and ipads definitely had a positive impact by providing a number of students with these new school supplies.
• 
  2021-06-01

  hermit HERALD, ISSUE 116

  Ransomware made easy
• 
  2020-06-23

  SRVUSD Budget and Reopening Protest Photographs

  These are unpublished photographs I took while reporting for my school's newspaper, The Californian. These photographs show the people who attended the protest, including a mixture of students and parents. There are also a variety of signs showing various motivations for protesting. This entry is connected to the "San Ramon community protests SRVUSD spending and issues with remote learning" submission.
• 
  2020-06-27

  San Ramon community protests SRVUSD spending and issues with remote learning

  This is a news article I wrote about a protest for my school newspaper. The protest was convened to support the ability for students in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District to be able to return to school for the 2020-21 school year, and to oppose raises for district management and certain purchases made by the district. The protest occurred on June 23, 2020, at the SRVUSD offices in Danville, California.
• 
  2021-03-16

  Student enrollment is declining...where have Arizona Students gone?

  This article highlights the declining enrollments of students in Arizona and their absence, so too does the funding disappear. According to the featured article, the combination of an approximate loss of 10% percent of the student population coupled with a drastic cut in the funding levels has significantly impacted the financial operations and organization of public school districts. The enrollment loss is mostly concentrated on the elementary levels, yet a notable loss of enrollment in high schools is of some concern. Declining enrollment not only affects the students' ability to develop important critical thinking and life skills, but in-person instruction should aid the student in recognizing the workload that comes with advanced degrees and education. Another option offers students the ability to learn through the hybrid instructional model.
• 
  2020-02-24

  My Coronavirus Experience

  In the beginning of the pandemic, I immediately realized how a large portion of the public was not focused on the virus itself, but the racial controversy of the virus' origin. This was unnerving to the core, because it is a fact that COVID-19 came from China. While it was unacceptable to accept this as fact, MERS literally stands for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. It is clear that there was a pro-CCP agenda being pushed in the background when propagating the "COVID Safety" spiel. As time went on, more and more inconsistencies began popping up. Beauty and barber shops closed, but Nancy Pelosi is more than welcome to get her hair done. Masks become required to enter any building or participate in society at all, but when the new President was sworn in, the spectators were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and masks were few and far between. What my story says about the pandemic is that while we may have had a real potential global crisis, I believe things were skewed, twisted, and flipped so that it is most convenient for those who hold the power, and not done in the best interest of the American people. An example of this in real life was how the Los Angeles Lakers, Ritz Carlton, and Bank of America (per store) were able to get PPP loans, drain the pool of PPP money, and leave small business owners fighting for crumbs. I have linked a Washington Post article below that expands on the PPP loan problem and how our government failed small business. The pandemic I fear will have long-lasting, Orwellian effects on our society in the sense that those in power will continue to use fear mongering to control the public through COVID. Even though a vast majority of the population has already had it and are building antibodies, Western European-style, 1940s era vaccination cards are beginning to circulate. I fear these cards will be the new "gold star" or "Scarlet Letter'', except those without it would be barred from society, rather than those with it. In my opinion, COVID today is what AIDS was in the eighties. Lots of unanswered questions, lots of fear, and government intervention so that free thinking is minimized. These three, and you have a perfect recipe for controlling the masses. Both diseases were politicized to death, and public opinion of the disease swung back and forth with politicization. If AIDS was blown up to the proportion that COVID was, I couldn't imagine the backlash the political and science communities would get from a certain demographic of people who are very vocal and have a statistically higher likelihood of contracting HIV. I hypothesize that pandemic would turn into pandemonium. With that, my experience during quarantine was as expected. Mental health suffered due to lack of human interaction and ability to go outside, and physical health suffered due to inability to go outside and lack of motivation which was connected to mental health. The main positive thing from the pandemic I can identify is the performance of my stock portfolio. Even though I lost my job due to COVID, I was still able to afford rent, food, and supplies to stay hunkered down in my new $900/month prison for my three month sentence. Another big positive from the quarantine was my savings. The pandemic helped me realize how much unnecessary or emotional spending I do. It helped me point out lots of bad habits I have so I can work on fixing them. Things like spending money when I'm sad, and identifying vices that hold me back in my day-to-day. While the pandemic brought a lot of negatives to me and the world around me, I believe there are some positive things to take away from it. Opening your mind to more than what the government feeds you, appreciating every moment you have, embracing new hobbies, and learning how to maneuver through change. These are all things the pandemic has taught me, but if I had the option, I wouldn't do it again. In terms of being a part of history, simply by living you are a part of history. I was at Sloan-Kettering in NYC with my family getting a life-extending cancer treatment for my father when 9/11 happened. He was one of three patients that day because while in surgery, the first plane hit the towers. The rest of the patients to be seen that day were canceled. I suppose the point I am trying to make is that history is subjective. 9/11 wasn’t 9/11 to me. 9/11 was the day I was blessed with enough time to make some foundational memories of my father before he passed. It can be argued that since I have been invested in GameStop since November, I was a part of history there too. I went to the Game 7 Cardinals vs. Red Sox World Series Game in Fenway Park. The game that broke the Bambino Curse. Again, it could be argued that I was a part of history there too, except my three year old self was asleep for the last two innings. History is subjective, and every day, everyday people like you and I make history. Historians and memoirists will use these events in the future to write articles, make movies and tv shows, write books, and extrapolate many other kinds of art from it. However, most often historical stories are told through a lens of subjectivity, and because of that, eventually all history becomes skewed to the point where it is indistinguishable from fable.
• 
  2020-12-01

  Nova Scotia government has spent $580M so far responding to the pandemic

  This article details how much money the government of Nova Scotia allocated to different sectors of the Nova Scotian economy during the pandemic.
• 
  2020-12-04

  NP View: How Justin Trudeau killed the balanced budget

  An article talking about national debt and speculating that the pandemic has changed attitudes towards national finance.
• 
  2020-11-12

  Quebec's $1.5 billion Plan to Restart Economy

  Quebec has been one of the hardest hit provinces during the pandemic. This plan hopes to revitalize the economy by investing in workers, "buy local" initiatives, and research. This will also come with a deficit for next couple of years.
• 
  2020-09-11

  New Mexico Governor Calls for Marijuana Legalization to Assist with COVID-19 Budget Loss

  In a publicized Covid-19 update, the New Mexico state governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham briefly discussed the possibility of the legalization of cannabis. Grisham believes that the taxation and revenue from the legalization would benefit New Mexico’s economy. In the live briefing, Grisham states that New Mexico needs to “look for innovative ways to increase economic activity”. She discusses how the revenue will not fix the entire problem, but it is a way to help fill the “Medicaid gaps”. New Mexico has lost revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and this might be a way to create new revenue and jobs.
• 
  2020-06-03

  Invest in Communities, Defund the Police

  Despite of Covid, people are fighting for social justice.
• 
  2020-05-30

  Budget Cuts in New York...But not for Police and Prisons

  This article highlights (at least for me), where our nations priority lay. Educational services always take the brunt of our nations cuts. It is so unfair to our children. Don't they know that education spending will decrease the need for prisons?
• 
  2020-06-22

  Trump slowed Covid-19 testing

  This is a news article discussing the U.S. president purposely slowing the Covid testing.The president thinks if we test less we will have less positive coronavirus cases.The idiocy of Trump trying to slow tests is why the United States has the largest amount of coronavirus cases.It makes me angry that he could not use funds allocated for testing and he should be held accountable for it.it is honestly disgusting and people are paying for his foolishness and pride with their lives.
• 
  2020-04-03

  Yakutians ask to stop the disastrous health care reform (Якутяне просят прекратить губительную реформу здравоохранения)

  “In the appeal to the head of the republic, we cited as an example letters from the junior medical staff of the Kobyai medical ambulance station of the Kobyay ulus, residents of the national Evenki kyuptsa of the Ust-May ulus and the primary trade union organization GBU RS (Y)“ Yakutmedtrans ”.
• 
  2020-05-29

  Middle School - Final Staff Meeting, Budget Cuts, & Student Population

  Staff Meeting 5/29/2020 Agenda: Wrap up the year Reflection: Today we learned that our Title 1 funding will not be increased and most will be cut for the next year. We are losing 2 staff members because of this cut and that leaves us in a place where we need to find elective classes for 240 students next year. We additionally lost another elective teacher this year as her funding was moved towards an instructional coach position. Middle schools are also in a unique situation right now as we are experiencing a drop in our attendance numbers. This drop is because our students right now were born during the economic recession of 2008 and the years immediately following. The 2008 recession is credited with a drop in the birth rate from 2008 to 2010. There were tears on our meeting as teachers are frustrated with our system moving forward. Our district was very fortunate to have the finances to weather this original economic storm but as we look forward we have learned that we don’t have the money to keep everyone on staff.
• 
  4/01/2020

  Missouri Governor Cuts Higher Education Budget in response to Pandemic

  Newspaper Account