Column

Ingest gossip cautiously By ABHINAYA KASAGANI — akasagani@ucdavis.edu For years, I have shirked participating in gossip, believing it to be the product of idleness. Gossip has always felt invasive, but its modern vilification led me to reconsider why exactly I react so poorly to the spread of information, despite it remaining one of the few […]

While the order invokes competition with China, Trump’s chip export policy tells a different story   By MILES BARRY —mabarry@ucdavis.edu   On Dec. 11, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring a national policy framework for artificial intelligence,” claiming that the United States is in a “race with adversaries” for artificial intelligence […]

Social media’s attention economy thrives on relationship insecurity   By ANJALI IYER — amiyer@ucdavis.edu   Most of us are entirely uncritical of the content we consume on social media — at least I certainly am. After a long day, it’s undeniably cathartic to turn off your brain and embark on a never-ending scroll through Tiktok […]

We are lonelier than ever and our t-shirts aren’t helping   By MILES BARRY — mabarry@ucdavis.edu   Walk through any American airport, thrift store or mall, and you’ll encounter a peculiar genre of clothing: the antisocial t-shirt. To name a few: “You Read My Shirt. That’s Enough Social Interaction for today”; “Rules for Monday: don’t […]

Exploring the connection between grass and colonial history   By SABRINA FIGUEROA — sfigueroaavila@ucdavis.edu   One time during a Christmas family gathering, my aunt told us about a neighbor who had taken pictures of their outgrown, unkept lawn (they had just moved in) and posted these photos on a community Facebook page for the whole […]

Exploring New Year’s resolutions and how to make them stick   By VIOLET ZANZOT— vmzanzot@ucdavis.edu   Almost 24 full hours of life in 2026, and I already feel the effects of my resolution. It’s pretty embarrassing, actually. Deleting TikTok and Snapchat — my goal for the year — doesn’t feel like it should be novel […]

Calls for a salary cap are misguided at best and greedy at worst   By THEO KAYSER — tfkayser@ucdavis.edu    Many are arriving at the presumption that “the Dodgers are ruining baseball” after the recently concluded 2025 Major League Baseball (MLB) season. Such a conclusion has its merits on the surface, especially if one were […]

How nostalgia has become our quiet rebellion By NEVAEH KARRAKER — nakarraker@ucdavis.edu Second-hand clothing, once frowned upon, has now become aspirational — the targeted style exudes nostalgic mid-90s to early 2000s vibes. Presumed iPad-raised generations have now openly adopted flip phones, along with other forms of older technology. Everything appears to have inverted. This sudden […]

Algorithmic playlists mark a further evolution of art as a commodity   By THEO KAYSER — tfkayser@ucdavis.edu    When you open your phone in the year 2025, you instantly become the subject of a competition between every possible website, app and advertiser, all of whom are fighting tooth-and-nail for your attention. Unsurprisingly, this pattern applies […]

How cartoons satirize the current social, political and economic state of the world   By ABHINAYA KASAGANI — akasagani@ucdavis.edu   To preface this article, let me start by saying that I would not question it if it turned out that my first words were, in fact, “TV;” I might as well be making my way […]

The Internet is quick to extract political implications from album covers or lyrics — but how useful is this commentary?   By GEETIKA MAHAJAN — giamahajan@ucdavis.edu   There are more than enough reasons for the general public to dislike any celebrity. Like the rest of us, they are flawed people. But an endless well of […]