6. Caspian Seals 2026

When someone says “American food”, what comes to mind? The answer is typically pizza, hamburgers, french fries, hot dogs, or mac and cheese. However, have these foods actually originated in America, or are they just a part of American culture? Pizza originated in Italy, french fries in France/Belguim, mac and cheese in Europe, hot dogs in Germany, and hamburgers also have roots in Germany. These are just a few of the many “American” foods that didn’t actually originate in America. That’s not to say that America did not invent any culturally significant foods, because we certainly have! America has invented potato chips, banana splits, and THE chocolate chip cookie. Image Credit: Baking A Moment If you think about it, many foods in America weren’t created here but are still such a big part of our culture. This illustrates how American cuisine has been influenced by foods from all around the world, creating a mix of traditions. And as America has come to love these foods so much, we have...

I’m not usually one for TV shows and movies, but there is one show that I discovered a few years ago and have never missed an episode of. That show is Dark Winds , which premiered in 2022, but is set in the 1970’s based off of Tony Hillerman’s crime novels on the Navajo reservation in the American Southwest. It centers around the tribal police solving dangerous cases but also dedicates substantial time toward exploring the main characters’ use of the Navajo language as a tool to gather valuable information on the job.     Photo credit: AMC I liked being the center of attention in elementary school, where classmates would come to me asking how English words could be translated and how it would sound in my second language. Most of them at that point had never met someone that could carry anything other than an English conversation, so it naturally piqued their interest to have a chance to hear something different. The big point for them was really the aural part of this: t...

  Week 5: The Double Standard of Accents – 10/21/2026 [9:49] Back when I just moved to America, I had a really heavy Indian accent and was made fun of. There was another girl with the same situation as me—immigrating from Spain, however being treated much better than I was, even with the Spanish accent as people thought it was maybe cool.  This made me wonder why people did not like my unique of an accent and why a Spanish accent is seen as more acceptable. Is it because of the way the American media represents us? The way TV Shows portray Indians as stereotypically as they could and represent them as ‘comedians’ when it's really just to make fun of them indirectly. For example, in a kids show called “Hey Jessie”, Ravi, who represents Indian culture, has a deep accent. Luke, who is white himself, sees a guy with an Italian accent getting all the girls and says “Guys with the accent gets them all” however then looks at Ravi and adds “Well, some”.  ...

Have you ever been to the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Ontario? I hear that they’re beautiful and astonishing places, but according to Google Maps, you can’t visit them. If you live in America and try to view these places by scrolling to their locations, different names appear. You see the Gulf of America and Lake America. Sure, you can still search for their old names manually, but isn’t discovering places by exploring a map part of the fun? In the past year or so, Trump has and continues to call for the change in names of famous locations across America, even if they border other countries as well. Many believe that this is just his way of distracting Americans from other issues. However, he might actually believe that this is beneficial. Who knows? It certainly doesn’t seem like a pressing issue to me, especially when America has much larger issues on its plate, like the fact that the national debt has surpassed $40 trillion. Just the other day, Trump, once again, called for the renaming...

I’ve realized I’ve been analyzing a lot of things, unlike some of you who have been getting personal, or at the very least reading someone else getting personal–and that’s inspired me! This is between my dad and me: how we look nothing alike (only my mom disagrees, of course), and how we’ve been treated the same despite this distinction.  Not trying to spill my dads secrets or anything, but being a first-generation half Asian boy in the 1970s made him anything but American. Like him and the three other non-Asians here at the time, he was harassed verbally and physically, and was assumed to be Chinese because no one could even attempt to tell the difference back then. Slurs were just regular words because of the economic recession that led to the intense hate of Asians . Whenever someone looked at him, they would immediately think “ This guy’s not American. ” Especially being Korean in a time post-Korean war, there was a certain type of silence around his seemingly unknown ethnic...

Image credit: Joshua Katz, via Business Insider Growing up, I used to watch a lot of movies and TV shows, and most of them centered around characters from the U.S. I’d watch characters with a “Southern” accent, characters with a “New Jersey” accent, and even those with a “Midwestern” accent. Yet as weird as it seemed, I nor anyone around me seemed to have one of those accents. They just sounded like the boring NPR reporters that would come up on the TV after my parents switched the channels. What I did not know was that this feeling was not unique to me. In truth, the idea of an accent is a matter of recognizing differences in speech relative to your own. And the concept of Standard American English complicates this further. Even though it’s recognized as a standard for formal or institutional writing, we tend to assume that means it lacks any features and is built upon unmarked pronunciation.  Separating institutional formalities from our understanding of a linguistic baseline is...

When the modern, Tik-Tok-brainrotted child thinks of Kendrick Lamar, they often refer to a Black man grinning eerily at the screen, often screaming “mustard” or being paired with mangoes. However, that was not the case back in the 2010s, when Kendrick Lamar rose into the ranks of hip-hop, cementing himself as one of the greatest rappers in the genre. His influence during this era hardly extended to just music, though—no better song illustrates that than “Alright.” Released as track 7 on his sophomore album To Pimp a Butterfly , “Alright” sees Kendrick Lamar reflecting on his past struggles and announcing his assurance in how, despite the oppression of black people, they are going to be “alright.” In this case, being “alright” does not mean complacency with the current state of race in America; rather, a determination that the US will be able to change its racist ways and move towards a better society. However, without a movement, the message of this track remained a wishful hope by the...

In the last blog, I said that a new prompt would definitely rejuvenate my creativity, and this next blog would be super cool and good. Apparently, I lied. “America” is such a hot topic, and I feel like I have so many ideas on it that I’m not sure how to pick a single thing to talk about without it bleeding into other subjects and big things. So, although there are plenty of things wrong with America, I wanted to keep it simple for this first blog and talk about something I love about our country.  Although this does not apply to all of America, and is probably a product of living in a place like the Bay Area, I love that I have been able to experience so many different cultures in just one place. I love how many different types of people live here, and I love that they’ve brought different traditions and ideas with them. I love that I can buy nearly any type of food you can imagine, and I can’t imagine living anywhere without this variety. If you told me I would have to live in a ...

“You look just like your sister!” is a phrase I have heard so many times; I don’t think it would even be possible to count. I hear this comment from just about anyone, whether it’s my family, friends, or even strangers. And while my sister and I do not see the resemblance, it seems that nearly everyone else is able to, apparently including our phones, as we can unlock each other’s phones through Face ID! Growing up as my sister’s younger sibling is interesting because it feels like we are basically the same person, but at the same time, like we couldn’t be any more different from each other.  Beyond just having similar features, my sister and I possess many more similarities, such as having incredibly similar music taste, a similar sense of humor, and practically the same set of values. We were even born on the same day and time, despite her being four years older! It can often feel weird to have so many things in common with someone else. However, these similarities are definitely...

We all have our own personal beliefs; some being private and others public. You probably hold these beliefs close to your heart, but if you were to see someone attacking one of them online, would you defend it? I mean, it really depends on what they’re attacking, right? It could be someone saying something about chocolate being disgusting, or they could be saying your choice of religion has no place in America. Ultimately, it comes down to how hurt you are by the other person or group, and how willing you are to put yourself in the public view to support those ideals. If you do decide to become a “keyboard warrior”, what does that say about the kind of person you are?  Let’s just say that a person replies to an Instagram post that goes against a core belief of theirs. Why’d they do that? Do they really care about the issue? Let’s also say another person sees that reply, and they agree with it, but they choose to scroll past it. Why’d they do that? Do they really care about the issu...

  Riddhi Charan Week #4: Why I Connect to Michael Scott I think the psychology of having a favorite character means to see yourself in them is so cool! For example, my favorite character is Michael Scott from the TV show The Office, illustrates a well meaning, however often clueless, character. He craves approval and believes he is an excellent boss and comedian, even though his jokes are frequently unsuccessful , creating awkward situations.  Despite Michael’s persona of oversharing and lack of self awareness, he genuinely cares about his employees and wants them to feel like a family since he’s been lonely most of his life. I find Michael’s complex character the most relatable as he portrays a chaotic, yet caring human being instead of the stereotypical perfectionist that most TV shows display.                                                    ...

Image Credit: English Like A Native Accents are a notorious way of humor, it’s a quick and easy joke about a group of people or topic that unites not only the group being made the joke, but also everyone else. But why is that? Because of the underlying context people already have about someone with that particular accent. Like if someone was trying to make a joke about being privileged, they would do a proper, posh, British accent that communicates that class and status on a deeper level than just saying it. This, of course, has a lot of bias and personal opinions along with it, but it also doesn’t really do anything seriously negative because a posh Britain and their accent already conveys educational and financial benefits. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why accents exist in the first place: to differentiate the standing or region of a particular group from the rest without having to explicitly say so.  Continuing this proper British accent example, it’s actually called " re...

       We live in a community that has more non-monolinguals than monolinguals. In America, this is an incredibly rare thing. Believe me, as someone who hails from a place where being able to say words in, wait for it, a foreign language (gasp!) is mindblowing, our Fremont (and even the wider Bay Area) microcosm is very special indeed.      Using various languages basically creates multiple spheres of myself. Every new language you learn is a new bridge that is built, which can connect you to someone totally unexpected!      But not everyone has the opportunity to become fluent in a second language. At least not in the traditional sense. But what if we expand our definition of what qualifies as a “language”? Specifically, if we expand this bridge to music and consider it as a language, then surely many others can also attest to the cohesive properties of sharing a language with someone else.       Music is very muc...

We often think, if an alien arrived on Earth it would return with a rather bleak view on humanity (assume it had the required cognitive capability to do so). We’ve warmed and acidified the oceans, driven species to extinction, and repeatedly found ways to turn our own inventions against us. Tangentially, I mean, we’re making a bit of an assumption. If alien life is anything like we know life on Earth is, their society would likely maximize wellbeing, even if it meant extreme resource depletion. Thus, assuming what an alien might walk away with is extremely arbitrary. But it also points us in the direction of a weird but fascinating effect. Take a chicken for example. It wakes up in the morning, eats to satiate its hunger, and executes instinctive decisions. A person on the other hand, could wake up with immense grief and drive to do something to help the environment. Would get up one day with a drive to inflict harm or malice on nature or Earth? A ccording to the Intergovernmental Pane...

After writing three whole blog posts on the topic of identity, I had become sufficiently convinced that I was out of ideas and had nothing left in my brain to write about. In my desperate state I googled “identity questions” and hoped for the best from there. I scrolled through pages of possible options to write about, and stumbled upon one that asked, “When was the last time you cried?”  This question gave me pause, because for most people I guess that would be a pretty deep question that would bring up a lot of emotions. Maybe even something that would reveal an important part of your identity.  However, my answer was pretty simple: yesterday! And, funnily enough, for nothing at all deep or important. Thinking about this question now, my answer actually did reveal something important about my identity. My tendency to be moved to tears has always been part of me, ever since I was very little. The last paragraph of my “I Believe Poem” was all about it actually. It isn’t someth...

  It was 1 AM, in a Chengdu hotel room. I was on a trip in the Sichuan region with other Chinese-descent teenagers from across the world; it was our last day before we all headed our separate ways: some in buses and cars, others in trains and planes. The “cohort” of kids that I was in, having formed close bonds with each other and with people from other countries, decided to spend an all-nighter together, in one hotel room. The intimacy in the room (NOT SEXUAL) offered room for conversation, crazy activities, and demented screams. Yet, that night, I felt more disconnected from my peers than ever. Due to sleep deprivation and a feeling of alienation, I was not feeling my best. In fact, I was trying to keep the disappointment and shame that I felt being helpless in most situations from my group—that day, my roommate had an emotional breakdown over being unable to speak or understand Chinese, an outburst which had left me dazed and conflicted over how to assuage him. Back to the hotel...