I met Kenny a few months ago, shortly after I arrived at Caltech. He was the first person to welcome me to the Observational Cosmology group. When he started mentoring me, I had not yet committed to the group, so I expected him to give me some readings and maybe meet with me weekly. Instead, he met with me every day to show me how the cryostat’s cooldown cycle worke
Happy New Year to the loyal readers of my wildlife column! With ample winter rain and a lower likelihood of wildfires this year, it feels fitting to begin the term by turning our attention to aquatic animals and the ecosystems they inhabit. Although Southern California is generally dry, humans have long built artificial water systems to satisfy their aesthetic desires. Caltech is no exception. The campus hosts several iconic water features: the turtle ponds in Throop Memorial Garden, the Caltec
In March 2021, a digital collage file by the artist Beeple sold for an astonishing $69 million at Christie’s auction. The buyer of this NFT (non-fungible token) didn’t receive a physical object or exclusive rights to the art – essentially, they paid for a certificate of ownership recorded on a blockchain. In practical terms, what they bought has no intrinsic use: it’s a JPEG image anyone can copy. As one tech reporter put it, NFT buyers are often “just buying bragging rights and an ass
I’m sitting here three days later, and I still can’t get it out of my head. The movie, I mean. Wicked. I went because everyone was going and I needed a break from studying for finals and maybe because I was curious about all the hype but I wasn’t expecting… this. I wasn’t expecting to leave the theater feeling like someone had reached into my chest and rearranged everything. I can’t quite explain it properly. It’s like when you’re looking at yourself in a mirror and suddenly see something you’v
Why Running From Pain Makes Everything Worse It sounds counterintuitive, but trying to avoid all suffering can make you more miserable. If your life is organized around avoiding discomfort—skipping hard classes, avoiding difficult conversations, numbing out with Netflix and social media—it’s not working, is it? You’re not happier. You’re just… numb. Beneath
This past summer I was fortunate enough to have been awarded a San Pietro travel prize. This enabled me to travel to Germany, Austria and Switzerland – countries I’ve wanted to travel to ever since I took my first high school German class seven years ago. I visited Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, Innsbruck, St. Moritz and Zurich – an assortment of locations that were chosen to help me experience the culture of those three countries while also fulfilling personal interests. These included visiting the
Happy New Year, Tech readers! Time to review the final three coffee shops featured in the 2025 Pasadena Coffee Passport! Two issues ago, I reviewed Highlight Coffee, Coffee & Plants, and Jameson Brown Coffee Roasters. This time, I have explored the last three coffee shops of the fourteen shops in the passport! Home Brewed Bar Pa
The Language of Mountains The sound is unmistakable. Click-clack. Click-clack. Hard plastic striking frozen asphalt. It is the music of 5:00 AM, played out in the dark parking lots of the Dolomites. I was three years old when I first learned the rhythm of it, my small, gloved hand lost inside my father’s palm. The air didn’t just smell like winter; it smelled of his black coffee steaming from a silver thermos and the sharp, metallic scent of snow guns working through the night. We did
Disclaimer: This is satire. Mostly. Let’s talk about the familiar experience of falling for someone on a campus so small that it may, in fact, be a social experiment. The experimental design: one insulated campus the size of a city block, two gossip cycles and maybe three eligible romantic candidates. Each has disqualifying traits, yet no one’s left to take their place. You find yourself obsessing over someone, not because they’re especially attractive or even vaguely capable of emotional de
Last term, Caltech cosplayed as Stanford for a week. Fortunately (or unfortunately), it was not a prank, but instead a large filming operation for the upcoming film “The Love Hypothesis,” an adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s novel of the same name. A sizable film crew worked at multiple locations across campus, capturing scenes in Kerckhoff, on Bechtel Mall, and most noticeably, around Caltech Hall Pond. Many students (your author included) wondered why filming occurred here instead of at Stanford.
I’m Not That Girl (The Anthem I Didn’t Want) “Don’t dream too far / Don’t lose sight of who you are / Don’t remember that rush of joy / He could be that boy / I’m not that girl” I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after this one. Just sat there in the stall crying, trying to be quiet. It felt embarrassing, but also, I couldn’t stop because it felt like something inside me was finally breaking open. It’s not even about the boy. I mean, it is, but it’s bigger than that. It’s about being t