The email pops up on my screen: of course, today is FoodFest! Who knows what surprises Tom Mannion—the mastermind of it all—has planned for us.

There is an inner crack that runs through women’s journeys in science—the hesitation, the feeling of being out of place. But as Leonard Cohen wrote, that’s how the light gets in.

With the academic year starting up, our Caltech fall athletes have been working at their craft since before everyone else arrived on campus.

Living in small, rural communities and learning organic farming techniques. In between our university semesters.

The Houston heat wrapped around me like an invisible shield as I navigated the city with the strange feeling that I was not walking to a lab or a museum, but to something that provided silence. The Rothko Chapel is hostile to sound: black walls, enormous canvases, light that doesn’t so much illuminate them as permeate through like some ancient sigh.

When the sky turned red from wildfire smoke and the acrid air stung the eyes of Southern Californians, a different kind of fire emerged—one lit by the pens, lenses, and voices of high school and college journalists.

I stayed awake at 2 a.m. during my first week at Caltech, sitting on my bed surrounded by half-unpacked boxes. On one side was a physics problem set that I didn’t understand, and on the other was this small book everyone whispered about—the little t. I initially thought it was some campus oddity, like an inside-jokes dictionary I hadn’t learned yet. But curiosity eventually got the better of me. I opened it.

Hi, friends!

Contrary to a certain rumor, this year’s Senior Prank did not involve placing a Cybertruck on the roof of Beckman Auditorium. Instead, we celebrated Nobel Laureate Prof. Kip Thorne’s 85th birthday following the transformation of Beckman into the wedding cake it’s often called. Festivities included a music-synchronized light show and Kip-themed treats: Kipcorn (popcorn), Kippy candy (cotton candy), atomic fireballs, starburst, cosmic freeze berry star clusters, star lollipops, Kipper snacks (sardines), and Milky Ways. It was truly an out-of-this-world party that bent the fabric of spacetime!

It is well known that A.I. companies have red-teaming, RLHF, and guardrail teams specialized in protecting against hate speech, bomb-making, or any crazy idea that pops into a person’s destructive mind. However, even with protection, the A.I. can be “tricked” and bypass the blockade, creating monstrosities. If there are psychopathic humans capable of manipulating and convincing crowds, just imagine a tool built with data from the entire internet.