U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin found that the Defense Department’s actions against Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, violated the company’s constitutional rights and lacked sufficient legal justification. The ruling blocks a designation that threatened Anthropic’s access to military contracts and could have affected its business with other companies that work with the federal government.

The case emerged from a dispute over two uses of AI that Anthropic has said it will not support: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

Anthropic had allowed the U.S. government to use its models for a broad range of national security purposes, including on classified networks. However, the company maintained that current AI systems are not sufficiently reliable to make lethal decisions without meaningful human control and that using its technology for large-scale surveillance of Americans could threaten civil liberties.

The Pentagon sought broader access, arguing that commercial AI systems purchased by the government should be available for any use permitted under U.S. law and Defense Department policy. The disagreement escalated earlier this year after negotiations between Anthropic and the department failed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth subsequently designated the company a supply-chain risk, while the president directed federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products. Anthropic sued the government in March, arguing that the measures were retaliation for its refusal to change its policies.

The designation was particularly significant because supply-chain authorities are ordinarily intended to protect government systems from security threats such as sabotage, infiltration or compromised technology. According to Reuters, Anthropic was the first American company to be publicly designated a supply-chain risk under the procurement provision used by the Pentagon.

Anthropic argued that the label could cost it billions of dollars in lost business and damage its reputation with companies seeking government contracts. The government said its decision was based on national security and contracting concerns rather than Anthropic’s views on military AI.

Justice Department lawyers disputed that the Pentagon needed confidence that an outside company could not interfere with systems used in military operations. Officials said Anthropic’s restrictions raised concerns about relying on technology whose permitted uses remained partly controlled by the company rather than by the government. Lin rejected this justification through a 59-page ruling, which concluded that the measures imposed on Anthropic were “illegal and baseless” and found that the government had retaliated against the company for criticizing its approach to AI. She ruled that the Pentagon’s actions violated Anthropic’s First Amendment protections as well as its right to due process under the Fifth Amendment. The judge also questioned whether Anthropic posed the type of security threat that the supply-chain law was intended to address.

The ruling does not require the Defense Department to purchase or use Anthropic technology. While the Pentagon remains free to select other AI companies for government contracts, the decision limits the government’s ability to use national security authorities to penalize a company because of a disagreement over the conditions under which its technology may be used. Anthropic welcomed the decision and said it remained willing to work with the federal government on national security applications of AI.

The company’s legal disputes with the Pentagon, however, are not fully resolved. A separate case involving another government measure that could affect Anthropic’s access to civilian federal contracts remains pending.

The Defense Department has been expanding its use of AI, with private technology companies playing a growing role in military systems and operations. Those systems are increasingly being considered for tasks ranging from intelligence analysis and cybersecurity to logistics and battlefield decision-making. At the same time, some military officials and technology companies have raised concerns about relying on AI in situations where errors could carry serious consequences.

Anthropic’s position has distinguished it from some of its competitors. While the company has said it supports most national security applications of Claude, it has maintained restrictions around autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance even when those limits threatened its relationship with one of the world’s largest technology customers. This controversy has also highlighted an unresolved tension in the government’s growing reliance on commercial AI.

Unlike traditional military equipment, many of the most advanced AI systems used by governments are developed and continuously updated by private technology companies. Those companies may maintain their own rules governing how their products can be deployed, even when the customer is the federal government.

For the Pentagon, the question is whether a private supplier should be able to restrict lawful uses of technology purchased for national defense. For AI developers, this debate concerns whether entering the defense market requires them to surrender safety policies governing technologies they created.

The court’s ruling does not resolve that broader debate, but it establishes an important limit on how the government may respond when a technology company refuses its demands. As AI becomes more deeply integrated into national security operations, similar conflicts over who controls the technology (the companies that develop it or the governments that deploy it) are likely to become increasingly consequential.

In 2026, that formula doesn’t seem to work. AI is changing which skills companies need almost faster than universities can teach them. Employers are placing greater emphasis on work experience. Apprenticeships and professional certifications are becoming alternatives in some industries. Programmers can demonstrate their abilities through GitHub rather than a computer science transcript; designers through portfolios; entrepreneurs through businesses they have actually built.

So, some of you might be wondering: in this stressful economy obsessed with pure skill, does attending a renowned university still matter…?

The frustrating answer is (and I feel for all of the stressing high schoolers out there): Yes, but not in the same way it once did.

The college degree is not exactly dead

Americans with bachelor’s degrees still earn substantially more on average. In 2025, full-time workers aged 25 and older with bachelor’s degrees had median weekly earnings of $1,578, compared with $966 for workers whose highest qualification was a high-school diploma. Master’s degree holders earned $1,876 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Unemployment was also lower among bachelor’s and master’s degree holders (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Now, these numbers do not mean the degree itself caused the wage gap. Of course, your major, profession, ability, family background, location and many other factors matter. Nor do they account for tuition, student debt or years spent outside the full-time workforce.

Still, the data make one thing pretty clear: higher education remains economically valuable. Employers have not abandoned degrees either. An Indeed analysis found that 19.3% of U.S. job postings required at least a bachelor’s degree in November 2025. After controlling for changes in the types of jobs being advertised, degree requirements had also edged upward since early 2024.

So we can see that the revolution is not that employers have stopped caring about education, it is that education increasingly has to compete with something else, which is proof that you can actually do the job.

“Where did you study?” = “What can you do?”

Nearly 70% of employers surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers said they use skills-based hiring, up from 65% the previous year. Meanwhile, the share screening candidates by GPA fell from 73% in 2019 to 42% (NACE).

Globally, this shift is similar. The World Economic Forum found that 81% of surveyed employers expect to use work experience to assess candidates through 2030, while 48% expect to use direct skills assessments. Only 43% expect university degrees to remain part of their assessment process.

Thus, employers are not necessarily replacing degree with skills, they’re just moving toward finding a pristine combination of degree, skills, and experience.

For students, that makes entering professional life harder, which makes their high school and college lives much harder. Nowadays, employers want practically everything: internships, technical knowledge, portfolios, successful passion projects, and overall both hard and soft skills.

AI is definitely accelerating that shift (unsurprisingly).

The World Economic Forum estimates that nearly 40% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030, with AI and big data among the fastest-growing areas of demand. NACE’s 2026 update found that 10.5% of entry-level job postings already require AI skills. A diploma certifies what someone studied, but in the rapidly changing industry, employers increasingly want to know what that person can do now.

What can we do to avoid the traditional and sometimes grueling 4-year college method?

Well, AI is one of the clearest examples! Researchers analyzing more than 10 million British job vacancies found that formal higher-education requirements in AI-related jobs declined by about 15% between 2018 and 2023. Meanwhile, AI skills were associated with a 23% wage premium, compared with about 13% for a master’s degree (Oxford researchers in Science Direct).

That does not mean a few machine-learning tutorials are more valuable than graduate school. AI positions remain highly educated overall, and advanced roles may still require master’s degrees or PhDs. But it does suggest that knowledge that is scarce, current and demonstrable can sometimes be more valuable than an additional credential or degree. That creates opportunities outside the normal four-year pipeline.

Apprenticeships combine paid employment with structured training. A U.S. Department of Labor evaluation found that registered-apprenticeship participants experienced stronger employment and earnings outcomes than comparison groups, including community-college students.

Associate degrees, vocational programs and licenses can also lead to lucrative careers. Air traffic controllers, for example, had median pay of $148,080 in 2025, and one pathway into the profession involves an associate’s degree rather than a bachelor’s (bls.gov; faa.gov).

Then there are less formal routes too, such as coding portfolios, online courses, freelance work, entrepreneurship and industry-specific training. But a certificate by itself is not a magical substitute for Harvard.

The World Economic Forum found that only 14% of surveyed employers expected to use online certificates as a hiring signal through 2030. What employers valued far more was experience, especially soft skills that cannot be replaced by AI and are not directly learnable in college. The strongest alternative to a degree is basically evidence. Employers want to see a functioning app. A successful marketing campaign. A rare amazing apprenticeship. A published investigation that has impacted journalism somehow. A cybersecurity project. Revenue from a business. Work performed for an influential client. Employment is now similar to “show not tell” like back in kindergarten, only a hundred times more intense.

What about a master’s degree?

Master’s holders earn more on average than bachelor’s holders, but that category includes everything from computer science and engineering to history and fine arts. Averages cannot tell an individual whether another two years and potentially tens of thousands of dollars will pay off.

So you don’t even have to ask “Would having a master’s degree make my résumé better?” because it probably would. But consider asking yourself “What opportunity does this master’s degree unlock that I cannot reasonably reach another way?”

If the answer is a licensed profession, specialized technical knowledge, access to a recruiting network or a career where graduate education is expected, the investment makes sense! Yet if the answer is just “employers might be impressed since I got an Master’s in Yale,” two years of relevant work experience could be a more formidable competitor.

To my fellow high schoolers:

I suppose the main message here is that the bachelor's and master's degrees still matter, but they are no longer the best and only path to success. In an AI-driven labor market, experience, networking and demonstrable skills may matter just as much.

So, to students panicking about getting into the “right” college or securing the perfect job, remember that one admissions decision will not determine your entire future. And you’ve probably heard the same thing many times and might not believe it. That’s fine, because I’m also going through that stage. It’s hard to believe that college doesn’t define your entire life since many people stil recognize college degrees as basically your name tag.

Nevertheless, I still believe that getting into a prestigious university can open many doors, but it is not the only place where you can build a meaningful and successful career for yourself. Focus not only on where you are accepted, but mostly on how you can showcase yourself according to your personal best (your best values, talents, and passions) regardless of the degree.

Comment on this post if you have any thoughts on the importance of BA and MA degrees and if you’ve actually tried going through a different path to get where you are today!

What is Suneung, South Korea’s Life-Defining Exam?

The College Scholastic Ability Test, better known as Suneung (CSAT/수능), is South Korea’s national standardized exam used as a major factor in university admissions. First introduced in 1994, Suneung replaced earlier entrance-exam systems in an effort to evaluate students’ academic ability through a more standardized national test. Since then, it has become one of the most important events in the Korean education system, taken each November by hundreds of thousands of students in subjects such as Korean, mathematics, English, and social or natural sciences. Over time, the exam has grown into far more than just an admissions test. Because scores can heavily influence which universities students can attend, Suneung has shaped high-school teaching, private tutoring, and even broader ideas of academic success in South Korea.

Suneung is often defended as one of the fairest parts of South Korea’s university admissions system. Everyone receives the same questions, sits the test under standardized conditions and is judged according to the same scoring system. Compared with admissions criteria that can depend on subjective evaluations, expensive extracurricular activities or personal connections, that consistency has real value. But an exam can be standardized without being a complete measure of a student.

What is the controversy behind it?

Suneung is highly effective at doing one thing: ranking hundreds of thousands of students according to their performance on a limited set of academic subjects on a particular day. The problem begins when that ranking becomes a proxy for something much bigger, such as intelligence, potential, and even future opportunity.

The OECD has repeatedly warned that South Korea’s secondary education system has become excessively centered on university admission. Its 2022 review of Korea found that the emphasis on measurable abilities in subjects such as mathematics, Korean and English can come at the expense of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication. Those skills are harder to squeeze into a multiple-choice answer sheet, but they are hardly less valuable in university or the workplace.

That raises an obvious question: if schools say they want students who can question, create, communicate and solve unfamiliar problems, why does one of the most consequential measurements of their ability capture so little of that?

The consequences extend far beyond test day and into economics. In 2025, South Korean families spent 27.5 trillion won ($19,966,353,000) on private education for elementary, middle and high school students. Although total spending declined from the previous year, spending among students who actually received private education reached a record average of 604,000 won (~$438) per month. For participating high-school students, the figure was 793,000 won (~$575) per month.

Those numbers complicate another common defense of Suneung: that because everyone takes the same examination, everyone competes on equal terms. The questions may be identical. The preparation is definitely not.

An OECD analysis found that private-education spending in Korea rises sharply with household income. In its 2024 economic survey, the organization also found a positive relationship between private tutoring participation and academic achievement. The OECD concluded that Korea’s intense competition for prestigious universities has significant implications for social inequality.

To its credit, the Korean government has repeatedly attempted to address these problems. “Killer questions” (notoriously difficult questions that critics argued pushed students toward private academies) were removed from Suneung beginning in 2024. Yet the OECD concluded that previous attempts to reduce private tutoring have struggled because they failed to address deeper forces behind the competition, including the enormous importance attached to elite universities and divisions within Korea’s labor market.

What’s changing?

This month, the National Education Commission began considering reforms that could introduce short-answer and essay questions to Suneung and expand written assessments in high schools. A citizens’ panel of 203 people is meeting this weekend to discuss proposals that could eventually become part of the country’s 2028–2037 national education development plan.

However, changing the shape of the questions does not necessarily change the system surrounding them. If an essay section becomes important enough for admission, hagwons will have every incentive to teach students how to master that section too. Concerns have already emerged that written-response testing could create another private-tutoring market and deepen educational inequality. Korea therefore risks fixing the “surface” of Suneung while leaving its deeper problem untouched.

But simply abolishing Suneung would not magically create fairness. A system based much more heavily on essays, interviews, extracurricular activities and teacher recommendations could introduce its own inequalities and subjectivity. Wealthier families can purchase admissions consulting and extracurricular opportunities just as they can purchase test preparation. Even the OECD has cautioned that more subjective admissions criteria can create concerns about fairness.

The main problem (in my opinion)

I personally never understood the value behind Suneung. What is the point of learning literally every subject ranging from English, Korean, social science, Korean history, career/employment, foreign language, and math all for a single test? That’s just like intentionally putting students through hell since the day they were born. Nowadays, there are families that set their children up for success in college admissions for Seoul national University (top #1 college in Korea) since the day they are born. There are kindergarteners out there who are prepping for college when they can’t even do multiplication or do their ABCs. Why is everyone trying to grow up so fast? The mantra of “enjoy your childhood while you still can” doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore, and that is just depressing.

The worst part is that there are so many students who excel in Suneung through years and years of practice. But they never learn anything permanent from all of their hard work. For example, here is a normal English quesiton from the test:

Even as a fluent English speaker, I struggle to answer this question. And Korean students can solve this under 2 minutes tops through intense training. But what appalls me is that as soon as the test is over, their brains seem to undergo a thorough deep-cleansing. Because they cannot remember anything.

Students can’t read full English novels. They can’t talk to English-speaking foreigners properly. Yet they can solve these impossible-level questions? Something clearly does not add up. This directly tells me that Suneung is ultimately destroying students’ ability to actually absorb information and honestly their humanity. Suneung and Korea’s college-focused culture forces students to literally become like AI models that absorb an enormous amount of information in a given period of time, then forget about it after immediately, sort of like how you make ChatGPT memorize something in a chat, and you delete the chat and it promptly forgets everything you said.

It is quite ironic how a country that values education and success the most also deteriorates students’ learning ability and long-term memory the most.

Still, I believe that the “correct answer” should not be between keeping Suneung exactly as it is and throwing it away entirely. Keep a national exam if Korea needs a common academic benchmark, that’s fine. But make it one source of information rather than an educational gravitational force around which high school revolves. Universities can evaluate sustained school performance alongside broader forms of academic work, while the government can continue working to make those measures transparent enough that reducing Suneung’s role does not simply replace one inequality with another.

Overall, reform should start from a different question.

Not: How can we design a better Suneung?

But: What do we actually want twelve years of education to produce LONG-TERM?

That is one of several major changes coming to Facebook and Instagram after Meta reached a settlement with U.S. attorneys general on August 26. The agreement requires new restrictions on how teenagers use the platforms and could cost Meta up to $18 billion over the next decade, according to Reuters. It resolves lawsuits accusing the company of designing its platforms to keep children engaged, misleading the public about risks to young users and improperly collecting data from children under 13.

The settlement is significant not simply because of its price tag. For years, debate over teen social media has centered on what parents and young users should do differently; this agreement puts considerably more responsibility on the platform itself.

Under the settlement, users under 18 will face a default two-hour daily limit shared across Instagram and Facebook. Teenagers can only turn the limit off with parental permission. Access will also be blocked by default between midnight and 6 a.m., while most notifications will be muted during school hours from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Meta says teenagers will also receive reminders after every 15 minutes of continuous use and additional prompts when they reach 60 and 90 minutes of daily use.

In 2023, a U.S. Surgeon General advisory found that as many as 95% of Americans ages 13 to 17 use social media, with about one-third reporting that they use it “almost constantly.” The advisory also reported that adolescents spending more than three hours per day on social media faced roughly twice the risk of mental-health problems such as symptoms of depression and anxiety. At the time, teenagers averaged about 3.5 hours of social-media use each day. Those findings do not mean that three hours on Instagram automatically causes depression because researchers have repeatedly cautioned that the relationship between social media and mental health is complicated. But they do help explain why a legally enforceable time limit is more than a cosmetic change.

Time is only one part of the settlement. Meta will hide likes (not just dislikes) and reaction counts from teenage users by default and strengthen systems designed to determine whether someone has entered a false age. The company has already begun using AI to examine contextual clues, such as references to school grades or birthday celebrations, when estimating whether an account may belong to a minor.

Yet, this agreement stops short of fundamentally rebuilding Instagram. It does not require Meta to eliminate targeted advertising or personalized recommendations for teens. Reuters also reported that the settlement does not directly resolve concerns about some types of content Meta’s own researchers have previously linked to negative experiences, including intensive recommendations of fitness and beauty content to teenagers with existing self-esteem concerns. Unsurprisingly, that gap has already drawn criticism.

Arturo Bejar, a former Meta safety engineer who testified during the case, argued that the settlement could amount to “safety theater”: measures that reduce usage without addressing the harmful experiences teenagers may encounter while they are actually online. Internal Meta testing also previously found that hiding like counts produced, at most, modest improvements in users’ experiences and did not significantly change overall well-being measures.

Other experts see more value in the agreement. Dr. Jane Conron, a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, told Reuters that mandatory usage limits could help some young people, particularly those who struggle to disconnect from social media. At the same time, she questioned whether teenagers would voluntarily choose the non-algorithmic feed Meta is required to offer.

That is the central weakness of the settlement: it tackles how long teenagers use social media more aggressively than what happens during that time.

Still, dismissing the agreement would overlook what has changed since Meta’s restrictions are no longer simply optional wellness tools. Most will auto-apply to teenage accounts, and many of the settlement’s requirements are expected to remain in place for 10 years.

The effects could extend beyond Meta. Part of the company’s settlement payment depends on whether competitors including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube introduce comparable protections. Meta has publicly called on TikTok and YouTube to adopt similar limits, arguing that restricting teenagers on one platform may simply push them toward another.

So, overall, whether these measures make social media itself a safer place is a much harder question, and one that an $18 billion settlement has not yet answered.

I’ve seen plenty of YouTube videos, blogs, and posts about how AI slop and “Gen Alpha parenting” is ruining Gen Alpha’s attention in class and basic overall intelligence. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every single Gen Alpha; but the concern over education mainly surrounds their population.

The problem with lack of attention, common sense, and independence among students originated in Gen Z with the official introduction of multiple AI models. However, this problem has elevated drastically with the majority of Gen Alpha and younger Gen Z. Their severe technology struggles stem from three root causes: hyper-stimulating and addictive screen design from infancy, the loss of foundational computer troubleshooting skills due to "idiot-proof" modern user interfaces, and an over-reliance on generative AI that bypasses critical thinking.

Here is a quote from an anonymous teacher that I found that summarizes the entire situation perfectly:

“Kids don’t read. Kids aren’t bored, so they don’t get creative and do hands-on things. The schools and parents don’t push the kids, so they can’t handle anything. There are no consequences for failing, and thanks to No Child Left Behind, they move on regardless. They have no critical thinking skills and the attention span of a gnat. You can literally tell them the answer, and they can’t write it down…they just don’t have the basic skills to function.”

It’s widely established nowadays that children just physically and mentally cannot live without an electronic device. This applies to every single child of every age, including infants—you can most certainly find numerous TikToks about the “trendy” Gen Alpha parenting method where you just give your crying kid an iPad and all problems are solved. And that’s the first step a child can take to becoming literally braindead.

Ever since learning about this particular issue, I’ve always wondered about two things.

1. How would colleges function with this new braindead population?

2. Why are Gen Alpha “illiterate” in technology when they’re constantly exposed?

So let’s tackle these two questions.

What is the future of schools and colleges?

AI is obviously transforming education faster than schools can adapt. While AI has potential as a learning tool, it’s also simultaneously creating a generation of students who may struggle to develop the critical thinking, writing, and problem-solving skills that previous generations were forced to practice (as part of basic education).

For Gen Alpha, the first generation to grow up with more addictive social media and AI from childhood, this shift could fundamentally change both K–12 education and higher education.

This does not mean every student will be negatively affected. There will always be exceptionally talented, curious, and disciplined students who’ll use AI to enhance their learning rather than replace it. These students may become even more capable than previous generations because they can combine pre-existing human knowledge with powerful technological tools. The concern lies with the broader population: If large numbers of students become dependent on AI to complete assignments, summarize readings, solve math problems, or write essays (like so many students already do) many will reach college without mastering the skills those assignments were originally designed to teach. Especially with the “No Child Left Behind” system, which I’ll say that it’s a very unwise system, there’s a higher risk of students not even mastering basic reading comprehension at the level of high school and graduating with perhaps a fifth grade reading level. Now wouldn’t that be catastrophic in college?

Elite universities face a unique challenge. Ivy leagues and top 100 universities have historically assumed that their incoming students/applicants possess excellent analytical reasoning, creativity, and academic discipline. If those assumptions become less reliable, I wonder if admissions offices may begin placing less emphasis on polished essays and grades (which AI can increasingly influence) and more emphasis on difficult-to-fake supplemental application parts to assess genuine ability, whatever those might be. This shift could definitely reshape the admissions process itself, such as how universities might increase the use of in-person interviews which most colleges recently don’t do, supervised writing assessments, oral examinations, research portfolios, and long-term project requirements with verified mentorship for evidence of original thinking developed over several years. Rather than asking whether students can produce impressive work, colleges may increasingly ask whether students truly understand the work they submit.

Ironically, AI may make elite education both more accessible and more competitive. Students with limited educational resources can use AI tutors to learn concepts that were once difficult to access. However, because AI also raises the baseline performance of everyone, schools and universities will search for qualities that AI cannot easily replicate.

The defining divide of Generation Alpha? It’s not going to be between students who have access to AI and those who don’t. Instead, it’ll be between students who allow AI to replace their thinking and students who use AI to amplify it. As AI becomes universal, independent thought will undoubtedly become the rarest and most valuable educational skill.

Will Gen Alpha become “technologically illiterate?”

Gen Alpha is described as the most technologically advanced generation in history, and for many good reasons. As previously mentioned, they’re the first generation to grow up surrounded by smartphones, tablets, AI assistants, and algorithms from very early childhood. However, we’ve seen that constant exposure to technology doesn’t necessarily produce technological literacy. In many ways, it produces the opposite.

For much of Gen Z and earlier Millennials, using technology required understanding it thoroughly first. Installing software, troubleshooting computers, navigating file systems, using command prompts, or just fixing WiFi connectivity were common experiences. Many learned how computers worked because technology demanded active engagement. Today’s devices, by contrast, are designed to hide that sort of complexity. Apps replace folders, Claude literally organizes your files for you, and cloud storage replaces local file management. Technology has become easier to use while simultaneously becoming more difficult to understand.

This distinction matters since a student who spends eight hours a day online is not automatically technologically literate. They probably know how to edit TikTok videos, surf around social media, or generate AI-written essays, yet struggle with basic computer tasks such as evaluating online sources independently for a research project and recognizing AI slop. AI amplifies this problem since rather than encouraging students to investigate why an answer is correct, AI often encourages them to accept an answer immediately because that is its main purpose: Comfort.

Over time, instead of learning to solve problems alone like past generations, students may learn to ask increasingly sophisticated prompts while understanding less about the underlying systems. This is not because Gen Alpha is less intelligent than previous generations! They’re maturing in an environment optimized for speed, convenience, and instant gratification, that feeling of instant relief where you don’t have to do anything by yourself. We already see this everyday with algorithms minimizing effort, predictive text finishing sentences, recommendation systems making “Watch Next” choices for you, etc. When technology consistently removes cognitive effort, opportunities to develop those skills naturally become less frequent.

Digital literacy should be a priority

The solution is not to reject AI or digital technology altogether because it just doesn’t work that way. We have to live side by side with AI and the increasingly addictive social media platforms/algorithms somehow. Instead, I think education should shift from teaching students how to use technology toward teaching them how to question it. Most of the public schools and even the majority of private schools don’t teach digital literacy as part of the core curriculum, and this is a huge mistake! Digital literacy should be included in the curriculum in somewhat shape or form, whether that be a club, elective, aseembly, or class, so students can actually understand how the constant exposure of tech and AI before it’s too late.

As Gen Alpha and younger future generations enter high school, college, and eventually the workforce, educators should prioritize critical thinking, digital literacy, and intellectual independence alongside academic achievement. Ultimately, the future of education depends not on how advanced AI becomes or how social media becomes more addictive; it really depends on schools and parents to determine how much tech exposure is actually good for the students and to spread as much awareness as possible about how to use technology as a productive advantage for their future, not just for useless entertainment like another AI-generated Fruit Love Island series.

A chart of the most livable and unlivable cities in 2026. Photo Courtesy of Visual Capitalist.

You’ve probably seen this image floating around in your feed and the news for the past two weeks. If you haven’t, this is a chart ranking the most livable and unlivable cities in 2026, both the Top 10 and the Bottom 10. In this article, I’ll be explaning the reasons behind each Top 10 city’s placement.

How are these countries even ranked? Each city is given a rating based on 30 factors in five categories: stability, healthcare, culture/environment, education, and infrastructure.

Top 1: Copenhagen, Denmark 98/100

This is a no-brainer. Copenhagen won last year as well as the most livable city in the world, and it has rarely dropped below #2 (often competing with Vienna). Denmark consistently reports among the lowest homicide rates in Europe (around 1 homicide per 100,000 people, varying slightly by year), with very low rates of violent street crime compared with most major cities. For public transportation, about half of Copenhagen residents commute by bicycle on a typical day, reducing congestion and pollution. Copenhagen also has the metro running every few minutes and an extensive S-train network as well as plenty of city buses. Therefore, with less carbon emissions caused by transportation and usage of renewable energy, Copenhagen’s environmental impact is impeccable. Denmark overall uses renewable energy such as wind electricity, which together with bioenergy and solar photovoltaic make up over 80% of the electricity mix (IEA).

Copenhagen also features a universal healthcare system which means residents generally receive care without worrying about insurance status or major out-of-pocket costs for essential services. Education in Copenhagen is also consistently ranked among the best in the world since the system is primarily tax-funded and free at state-run schools. Mandatory education lasts for 10 years (ages 6–16), with a strong focus on student well-being, critical thinking, and social collaboration (Denmark.dk and New York Post).

Like how Denmark is widely known as the “happiest country in the world,” Copenhagen claims the most livable city for two years in a row.

Top 2: Vienna, Austria 97/100

Vienna has been a top contender for the #1 spot against Copenhagen for the past few years. Vienna placed second with 95 in stability, 100 in healthcare, 94 in culture and environment, 100 in education and 100 in infrastructure. (EIU) The perfect healthcare score reflects strong availability and quality of public and private medical care, access to medicines and general national health indicators. Its infrastructure score tells us that the city also has dependable public transport, road networks, utilities, and quality housing. Vienna lost only a few points relative to Copenhagen because its stability score was five points lower and its culture-and-environment score was one point lower. Even so, three perfect category scores show why it remains one of the most consistently liveable cities in the index!

Vienna also doesn’t play around with renewable energy. Over 50% of the city is covered by green spaces, including the massive Vienna Woods, and it boasts a pioneering eco-friendly public transport network, pristine Alpine tap water, and extensive climate-adaptation initiative (Vienna Business).

So yes, Vienna is definitely a top contender in the Top 10.

Top 3: Melbourne, Australia 97/100

Melbourne also scored 97 overall, with 95 for stability, 100 for healthcare, 96 for culture and environment, 100 for education and 96 for infrastructure (EIU). Among the top three, Melbourne had the strongest culture-and-environment result, reflecting the city’s extensive cultural, sporting, dining and consumer amenities. The perfect healthcare and education scores confirm that Melbourne has excellent access and quality, while the infrastructure score of 96 shows that transportation, utilities, housing and international connectivity are highly developed though not flawless.

Therefore, Melbourne ranks highly because it combines strong public services with a rich cultural environment rather than relying on only one standout category. It is well balanced in all aspects of what makes a livable city.

Top 4: Sydney, Australia 97/100

Sydney received 95 in stability, 100 in healthcare, 94 in culture and environment, 100 in education and 96 in infrastructure (EIU). Its category profile is almost identical to Vienna’s, except that Sydney scored slightly lower in infrastructure and matched Vienna in culture and environment.

Sydney also has perfect healthcare and education scores, which highlight that the city has highly accessible, high-quality services, while the 96% score in infrastructure points to stable roads, public transport, airports, etc. Sydney’s culture/environment score is still excellent, but climate discomfort, congestion or other environmental and urban pressures can prevent even globally prominent cities from reaching 100 in that category. Still, as someone who has visited Sydney when I was younger (and during Christmas too!) the climate there was amazing and I remember Sydney’s community culture and public transit were definitely not disappointing!

Top 5: Zurich, Switzerland 96/100

Zurich scored 95 for stability, 100 for healthcare, 94 for culture and environment, 100 for education and 96 for infrastructure (EIU). Its profile is virtually the same as Sydney’s, but rounding and the underlying unrounded figures placed Zurich fifth.

Zurich’s 100% healthcare and education scores really demonstrate the strength of Switzerland’s public and private institutions, while its infrastructure score reflects dependable transport, utilities, and housing. The EIU also reported that both Swiss cities in the top ten experienced declines in culture/environment scores in 2026, which explains why Zurich fell three ranking positions even though it remained exceptionally liveable. EIU attributed the 2026 declines in Zurich and Geneva's culture and environment scores to high local prices and a strong Swiss franc, which collectively weighed heavily on consumer spending, tourism demand, and general leisure accessibility.

Top 6: Geneva, Switzerland 96/100

Geneva received 95 in stability, 100 in healthcare, 92 in culture and environment, 100 in education and 96 in infrastructure (EIU). Like Zurich, it benefits from outstanding medical care, education, safety and urban systems. However, its culture/environment score was the lowest among the European cities in the top six.

Because this category represents 25% of the final score, even a relatively small drop has a noticeable effect. Geneva’s sixth-place ranking therefore does not suggest poor cultural life! Rather, it means that under the EIU’s combined assessment of climate, censorship, social restrictions, recreation, food, culture and consumer availability, it performed slightly below its closest competitors. So Geneva shouldn’t be ruled out as a top contender just yet.

Top 7: Osaka, Japan 96/100

Osaka earned perfect scores of 100 in stability, healthcare and education, plus 96 in infrastructure, which is impressive to put it mildly. Its main limitation was its 87 culture/environment score, the lowest in the top ten.

Osaka’s perfect stability score comes from the city’s extremely low risks from violent crime, civil unrest, terrorism and military conflict under the EIU’s methodology. Its transport, utility and healthcare systems are also obviously among the best assessed globally. However, the culture/environment category includes climate comfort, humidity, consumer choices, social restrictions and cultural availability; Osaka’s dense urban form and humid climate reduce that score even though it remains culturally vibrant.

One thing I was curious about Osaka was that Osaka used to be in the Top 5 (it was Top 2 in 2021)… so what happened? Historically, its slight drop from peak rankings was primarily caused by the rebound of Western European cities and shifting EIU criteria following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions (Time Out Worldwide).

Top 8: Adelaide, Australia 96/100

Adelaide scored 95 for stability, 100 for healthcare, 91 for culture and environment, 100 for education and 96 for infrastructure (EIU). Now we’re seeing a trend where all Top 10 countries mostly have perfect healthcare and education results and nearly perfect infrastructure scores.

Adelaide’s culture/environment score was below Melbourne’s and Sydney’s, which may reflect its smaller scale and somewhat narrower range of cultural, sporting and consumer offerings compared with Australia’s largest cities. Still, a score of 91 is exceptionally high, and Adelaide’s balanced performance shows how a well-functioning, moderately sized city can outrank much larger global centres!

Top 9: Vancouver, Canada 96/100

Vancouver received 95 in stability, 96 in healthcare, 97 in culture and environment, 100 in education and 93 in infrastructure (EIU). The culture/environment score was the highest in the entire top ten, reflecting its strong recreation, natural environment, cultural life and consumer amenities.

However, its infrastructure result of 93 was lower than those of most other top-ten cities. Since the EIU infrastructure category includes the quality of roads, public transport, international connections, housing, energy, water and telecommunications, problems such as housing availability and transport pressures can reduce the score.

Vancouver was nevertheless the only North American city in the global top ten, so it righteously deserves the recognition!

Top 10: Tokyo, Japan 96/100

Tokyo completed the top ten with perfect scores of 100 in stability, healthcare and education, together with 93 for infrastructure and 89 for culture and environment (EIU). Its stability score reflects Japan’s low violent-crime risk and highly orderly urban environment, while its healthcare and education systems received the maximum possible marks.

Tokyo’s infrastructure remained excellent but scored below Osaka, possibly reflecting the complexity and pressure created by operating one of the world’s largest metropolitan systems. The EIU noted that Tokyo’s culture/environment score improved in 2026, helping it rise three ranking positions despite its overall score appearing unchanged after rounding.

Conclusions

Across the top ten, every city earned 100 in education, and most earned 100 in healthcare. This incredible fact shows that liveability rankings depend heavily on dependable public institutions. These cities are not ranked only because they are wealthy or attractive; they combine strong medical systems, high-quality education, low security risks and reliable infrastructure. Western Europe remained the highest-scoring region overall at approximately 91.7, followed closely by North America at 90.4 (EIU).

Disclosure: One limitation is that this index was originally designed partly to help organisations assess expatriate hardship allowances. It does not directly measure every personal concern, such as income inequality, housing affordability as a separate category, social belonging or whether local residents personally enjoy living there. Therefore, a city can score very highly despite expensive housing, and a culturally dynamic city can rank poorly because conflict, healthcare or infrastructure problems overwhelm its strengths.

Comment on this if you’re interested in a Part 2 where I explain the Bottom 10!

Disclaimer: Since these are very new models, some of these tips might not apply in the future as more information about the models are released. However, these are based on available information published by OpenAI and my experiences.

Brief Comparisons

GPT-5.6 Sol: The deepest thinker of them all.

Great for: Complex research, deep analysis, difficult writing, advanced coding

Weaknesses: Very slow (it took 16 minutes to find me 3 news articles on corporate governance with Sol Work mode, while the 5.5 High Intelligence version finished in 5 minutes) and very limited/expensive (only Pro users can access it fully, while Plus users can only ask 3-4 requests before it puts you on time out).

This model is definitely not for the impatient, but it is the most intelligent model of ChatGPT so far, and it will rarely disappoint you with its answers. If you can sacrifice your time and patience for a deep and thoughtful answer, Sol is the best model.

GPT-5.6 Terra: The balanced all-rounder.

Great for: Everyday professional work, drafting, revising, moderate research

Weaknesses: Might miss nuances that Sol usually catches. For example, if you want it to make an argument, it will give you a good plausible argument without realizing it’s very generic. It’s also not the best at following too many instructions at once if you have a strict criteria for an assignment. It’s also weak on highly technical tasks like scientific work and cybersecurity.

Use it if you’re someone who frequently does everyday work that doesn’t take too much effort and depth.

GPT-5.6 Luna: Speed specialist & the most affordable

Great for: Brainstorming quick ideas, summarizing, classifying things, repetitive tasks

Weaknesses: Weakest deep reasoning, risk of generic writing, more likely to accept and submit flawed answers/sources, not ideal for fact-sensitive work

As the easiest and most convenient model to use, this model comes at the cost of being not so factual and being a little sloppier than the other models.

How to Use Sol

If you are new to using Sol, here are some tips and tricks that I found helpful:

1. Be more explicit in your instructions than you ever have before.

For example, I usually ask the GPT-5.5 Instant model to: “Hey, give me some ideas for a new Substack post.” But Sol, being a nerd, works better with very detailed instructions that specifically ask it to generate, criticize, eliminate, and choose (multi-step reasoning prompts).

So it’d be better if I told Sol something like this: “Hey, generate ten AI-related post ideas, eliminate anything overdone, rank the remaining ideas by originality and relevance to journalism, and explain what argument I could make in each. That way, it gives me a detailed answer that won’t disappoint.

2. Ask for a premortem.

“Premortem”: a strategic exercise where a team assumes a project has failed, and works backward to determine the causes.

Let’s say I wrote a news article for a newspaper. For usual ChatGPT models, you can just upload the file and say “make it better.”

However, Sol would prefer a prompt like this: “Assume this article receives criticism for being shallow. Identify the five most likely reasons, then revise the argument to prevent them.”

You really can tell Sol likes to overwork itself, but its innate analytical nature gives you more of a benefit if your prompts are also more analytical and thought-provoking to generate deeper answers.

3. It likes steps.

If you want Sol to write your English essay or your research paper or whatever other draft you need to write, don’t just tell it to write the final draft and paste the requirements.

Sol performs especially well with steps because it can preserve all that complexity before compressing it into polished writing. So something like this:

• Research the issue.

• Map the disagreement.

• Identify a strong thesis.

• Challenge the thesis.

• Develop the structure: paste requirements here

• Write a rough draft.

And then let Sol compress all those steps into a concise piece for you.

4. Use higher reasoning only when the task needs it!

In standard ChatGPT, Medium, High, and Extra High are all powered by Sol on eligible plans. Higher settings give it more reasoning effort, not an entirely different knowledge base. So it doesn’t get any smarter, it just takes more time to consider and carry out the task you gave it.

• Medium: outlines, ordinary research, giving feedback

• High: major essays, source comparison, complicated analysis

• Extra High: difficult investigations or problems where one unnoticed flaw ruins the result (delicate tasks like math)

How to Use Terra

1. Use it as an editor, not a replacement writer.

Unlike Sol that can create basically everything, Terra is better at editing things that you have already created. I’ve tried generating an essay with the same prompt of “What is the central message or lesson the author wants the reader to take away from the book To Kill a Mockingbird?” Terra did a nice job, but it definitely could not beat Sol when it came to in-depth passage analysis and providing evidence with quotes. But when I asked Terra to revise one of my English essays from a year ago, it gave me five amazing points of feedback that I’ve never received from my teacher nor thought about before, so I was very impressed!

2. Give it a quality threshold.

Since Terra isn’t as in-depth as Sol, it sometimes values completing its task over giving the best possible answer. So give it a threshold:

“Don’t give me every acceptable idea, give me ideas you would rate at least 8/10 for specificity and originality.”

3. It likes ONE step.

Unlike Sol that loves multiple steps, Terra is best for one-step tasks. Like:

• Convert notes into an outline.

• Convert an outline into interview questions.

• Cut this essay by 200 words.

4. Use Sol and Terra side-by-side.

They both have their strengths, so I tried using a workflow like this and it was highly efficient:

• Sol: determine the argument & all the strategies

• Terra: draft sections, summarize sources, format notes, produce variations

• Sol: perform the final check & identify flaws

• Terra: Revise everything based on Sol’s feedback

5. Don’t underestimate Terra’s coding skills.

Although Sol leads on coding, Terra was close on several coding evaluations: 63.4% versus Sol’s 64.6% on SWE-Bench Pro and 87.4% versus 88.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 (from OpenAI).

For debugging or making websites, Terra might be the rational choice!

How to Use Luna

1. Don’t use Luna for judgement.

You can definitely use Luna to produce ideas and brainstorm, but once you’re done with that, I recommend you leave the decision-making to Sol. Sol is the most logical model after all, and it actually takes time to make the best judgement. Use Luna to expand your possibilities and resources instead!

2. Have a strict output format.

Small fast models generally perform well with a clearly bounded job:

Ex) “Research articles and only give me: title, publication date, category, and paywall status.”

3. Add a “Do Not Infer” rule.

Luna might screw you by offering plausible guesses to an inference question. So when you ask it to summarize a scientific paragraph for you or a similar task like that, add a do not infer rule so it doesn’t give you misinformation.

4. Don’t assume that Luna is worst at every single task.

Luna reportedly exceeded Terra on BenchCAD without Python (63.1% versus 62.3%) and was nearly tied on some professional evaluations according to OpenAI.

So “bigger model” does not mean it wins in every task. Sol has the strongest overall database, but Luna can still match larger models on constrained tasks.

My Conclusion

Best absolute quality: Sol

Best value: Terra

Best speed & scale: Luna

I hope some of my tips help you while using these three new models. And please keep in mind that for Sol, intelligence levels like “Extra High” and “Pro” depend on the type of plan you have. Terra and Luna are available through modes such as ChatGPT Work, Codex, and the API so far.

Comment on this post if you have further tips to share with the community!

For someone who just figured out the definition of ESG two weeks ago, I should probably not even be writing this. After all, I’m not an expert on this field. Despite my lack of ESG knowledge, I’ve grown fascinated with ESG recently and am continuing to find and read articles about it every day. However, I’m noticing how ESG reporting is very sparse. ESG-focused news platforms like ESG Dive or ESG Today (which you should definitely check out since they’re interesting) are stocked with intriguing ESG articles, but they upload maybe 1-2 articles per week, and it’s been a huge disappointment. As I began to notice how the number of ESG news articles has been dwindling, it led me to the question:

Why ESG is Considered Dead

ESG is not dead, it has simply become harder to talk about. It’s not fully dead since many companies still use the ESG framework to actually make a positive impact on the planet, regulate corporate governance, and enhance their attractiveness toward investors (because a company focusing on sustainability is always a good look), but it’s also considered “dying” due to political backlash and greenwashing accusations from critics. Most importantly, some companies can’t help but dislike ESG because it goes against their priority: profit.

ESG makes you attractive to investors; your company is sustainable, it has committed to defending employees’ human rights, and everything is corruption-free. Who doesn’t like that? But we can’t forget that the creation of ESG forced companies to confront their carbon emissions, resource dependencies, and climate risks for the first time. ESG has brought climate, biodiversity, and sustainability into all decisions, which explains why some critics think ESG’s purpose is to greenwash. Now ESG has become political because it is controversial to the heart of business: profit vs. just transition + sustainability. Because of this, ESG has learned to stay quiet to avoid all the hate.

ESG is Just Hard to Report

Part of the silence doesn’t just come from controversy. ESG is naturally a difficult sector of journalism. If we look at good old political news, they have a built-in rhythm to them: just add some data about votes, write about statements/interviews, update on elections, and make everything look controversial. Economic news has numbers that keeps everyone on the edge of their seats, like job reports, inflation data, earnings calls, currencies, and stocks.

Unfortunately, ESG doesn’t have a “rhythm” or a pattern. A company's emissions don't change from one random Tuesday to the next. ESG disclosure standards vary wildly across states and countries, and most of the "exciting story" is buried in annual reports that take a lot of expertise to interpret. Basically, ESG doesn’t give people the “It Girl” headline; it doesn’t seem relatable and it’s far less exciting than what we see in media currently.

Why We Still Need ESG Reporting

None of that makes ESG less important. If anything, it's the opposite! Decisions being made right now about carbon neutrality targets, labor standards along with workers’ human rights, and sustainable finance will shape the next few decades in ways that are much harder to undo than a single election cycle.

If we look at the situation right now, all three parts of ESG are suffering. The World Bank dropped its goal of contributing 45% of its lending resources to climate change projects. Sustainability isn’t really the number one priority for governments and companies around the world except for some members of the EU, especially regarding the rise of AI. Fewer than 2% of companies worldwide have closed the gender wage gap (Source: Equileap) and more than 35% of enterprises around the globe reported that one of their main issues is corporate corruption (Source: World Bank Enterprise Surveys). So we can immediately tell that there’s still much necessary work to be done regarding ESG.

Journalism might be the only real check left. Companies have every incentive to describe less of what they're doing. If nobody's taking the time and effort to track the gap between stated commitments on reports and actual tangible practice, that gap simply goes unmeasured. Without awareness, the only accounts of what a company is doing are the accounts that company chooses to give.

Bringing Back ESG Visibility

So how can people like me, normal people who don’t own their own company or don’t know much about ESG, help bring ESG back to the spotlight? I think there’s three simple ways:

• Read the trade coverage that already exists, and share it!

  ESG Today, ESG Dive, and similar outlets are already doing the journalism work. The gap comes fro distribution, not reporting. Forwarding one of their stories into a group chat, your LinkedIn, your Substack, or other platforms does more than any single click on a mainstream site. Just like a new iPhone or a new burger at McDonald’s, ESG news also needs interested people to move information across the Internet outside of its usual bubble.

• Ask your fund, not just your company.

  Most people’s exposure to the broader economy runs through a 401(k) or index fund, not a direct stock purchase. Asset managers vote on shareholder proposals on your behalf, often without you ever seeing how. A two-line email asking your provider how they voted on ESG proposals costs you five minutes and puts a real question in front of someone whose job is to answer it.

• Notice the word going quiet, and make it known to the public.

  If you’re an ESG enthusiast, and a company you follow drops “ESG” or “sustainability” language between one annual report and the next (or in an advertisement or a post), post it and discuss it online. You don’t need expertise to notice a disappearance. You just need to be paying attention, which most people currently aren’t.

My Personal Answer

Dead things stop moving, but ESG hasn’t stopped moving yet. I feel that it’s just stopped narrating itself, because for the first time, narrating itself is more controversial than the issue it is narrating about.

In conclusion, I’m unsure if ESG awareness will ever increase over the next few years, even if everyone on the planet follows the three potential steps I mentioned above. But right now I’m simply happy to say that my appreciation for and knowledge of ESG and journalism has definitely grown.

Misconception 1: All research GPT models can browse the web and do your work for you.

If you want GPT to research online sources for you, do NOT assume that models like ScholarGPT and SciSpace can freely browse the web just because they are the most popular research/analysis GPT models in the app. I originally thought these GPT models could freely browse the web by themselves, but they are not designed to be mini Google with unlimited internet access. They’re usually built to be research assistants that search specific indexes, paper databases, uploaded PDFs, or their own connected tools. So they’re not best for you if you are the type to ask “Give me this, this, and this immediately for my research paper.”

Misconception 2: ChatGPT can just automatically memorize all your preferences as the conversation goes on.

If you have an overcomplicated assignment with a bunch of criteria, put all of the criteria into one document and send it. However, don’t forget to tell it to commit the document into memory in the prompt; otherwise it’ll literally forget everything in the next chat. Ask it to use the document as the rulebook for the current task, and paste the criteria again in new chats.

Misconception 3: Always use High Intelligence since it’s the best and smartest.

For my specific research task, I didn’t notice enough difference to justify always choosing High. They take approximately the same time to research/analyze data, so you don’t need to prefer one intelligence level above another. High intelligence does not automatically make it the best. Besides, Medium intelligence saves you more time since its thinking time is usually less. Less thinking time ≠ dumb.

Misconception 4: ChatGPT is hardworking in every task since it’s a supercomputer.

ChatGPT can act like a very lazy researcher unless you force it to be diligent. For my assignment, I asked it to find me international articles about gender and diversity in the workplace that were: 1) published after June 25th, 2) using a constrained list of sources, 3) did not mention specific industries/companies, 4) did not focus on a specific country or continent. While it was thinking, I went ahead and did my own research and found two articles that fit my criteria. But GPT just gave up on me and said:

“There are genuinely no international articles that fit your strict criteria and were published after June 25th. I recommend you search later…”

It was such a ridiculous answer that I kept bugging GPT to find one no matter what. And surprise surprise, after two more searches, it gave me a fantastic article after diligently thinking for 11 minutes. So don’t forget to grill it until it gives you what you want.

Why is it even lazy in the first place? ChatGPT prioritizes “satisficing” when it answers you. Satisficing means “a decision-making strategy that involves selecting the first available option that meets your minimum criteria, rather than spending time and energy searching for the absolute optimal solution” (Wikipedia). It looks for a satisfactory answer but not always the best possible answer. ChatGPT also has an overhelpful tendency! Sometimes it gives “almost fits” results because it is trying not to come back empty-handed. That can look lazy because GPT relaxed your standards instead of saying, “I found nothing clean.”

Misconception 5: ChatGPT will understand its own mistakes through repetition.

Asking “Why?” often improves future answers more than saying “Research again.” I kept telling ChatGPT that it was “wrong” whenever it gave me an article that didn’t fit my criteria, but that did not make either of us more efficient. So instead of telling it that it is wrong and telling it to research again, I recommend that you first ask: “Why did you think this article fit?” “Why do you think this is the best source?” After GPT reveals its reasoning and you find the flaw, you can target those flaws to make your future searches much better.

Misconception 6: Starting a new conversation that continues the same topic is just a useless hassle.

Many people find that ChatGPT having conversation limits is very annoying. I used to think that too, because whenever I started a new chat, it completely forgot my criteria! However, it was surprising for me to know that starting a new chat produces more original research. If you ask GPT the same request five times (ex. “Give me more articles on sustainable finance surrounding Korean enterprises”), the answers become more similar (I ended up having the same article all five times). They don’t become more diverse because ChatGPT is so infuriatingly simple: Previous reasoning influences future reasoning. So ironically, starting a new chat can help you get more productive and fresher results.

Misconception 7: Showing anger and harshness can sometimes make ChatGPT work harder to please you.

I recently heard that some people show anger or curse towards ChatGPT because they believe it will get GPT to work harder or produce more accurate responses. Not exactly. I too have had my fair share of angry outbursts with ChatGPT, but it never helped me out in any way. I’ve tried: “These don’t fit any of my rules, give me more articles!”, “Why do you keep making the same mistakes, you’re literally a supercomputer,” and “Just look at the document I gave you again!”

As you can imagine, nothing productive happened. I definitely developed my skill in keeping my cool while working with ChatGPT. The more precise you are with your feedback despite all your frustrations, the less time you have to spend being angry. So don’t substitute your precise feedback with cursing or yelling.

I hope my beginner tips help you on your journey to training ChatGPT to be the best research assistant of all time. If I had known these tips before doing my first research project with GPT, it would have saved me a bunch of anguish, time, and energy.

Let me know if you have any more questions in the comments. Best of luck!

An illustration of a world map with printed foreign languages. Photo Courtesy to Flickr.

As an international student, I remember wondering as a kid why do I have to learn English. As a student that miraculously mastered English years later, I felt the exact same way when I started Spanish.

Learning a new language sometimes immediately triggers a negative effect on people. You might be thinking that you are too old to learn something new, that a new language requires more studying, and that you will never use it in your life. If you are someone who feels this way, I can relate. However, the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover” applies perfectly in this scenario. I have learned over time that with language arts, the external side of it looks like torture (millions of vocabulary words, dozens of tenses, the endless lectures of culture and history), but this “torture” quickly turns into an invaluable experience for all ages.

Teens, why should you learn a language?

It is true that learning a new language takes many hours and drains your energy. After a few grammar quizzes and Duolingo reminding you to keep your streak for a week, you will feel wretched. But we teenagers have this tendency to look at the down side of things because pessimism is apparently the new norm. For example, in my English class, two-thirds of my peers think in this way: “I have an in-class essay today? Great, I'm going to fail this.” I’m not saying this way of thinking is wrong, but I do think it is one of the reasons why some people do not even attempt to learn a language. Whenever you face something you have no idea about, it is natural to avoid it immediately, especially if you are a teenager. But I urge you to see foreign language arts in a different lens than pessimism.

For teenagers, being bilingual is one of the best advantages they can have in their lives, especially for improving academic performance. Learning a language particularly helps with subjects that require a strong, retentive memory and a flexible interpretation of word problems, such as math and science. Foreign language studies often require you to practice daily through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. How ridiculously difficult, all to learn a couple of phrases, right? Personally, I remember how I took at least three hours out of school to learn English and master it before I came to the United States. And it is not like I can stay a master of English as soon as I move to an English-speaking country; I still had to speak and listen to it every day to remain confident in my skills. The same applied to Spanish after I started at an American school, and learning Spanish was basically starting the journey with English all over again. You can imagine how exhausted I felt about that.

HOWEVER, since balancing three languages at the same time took an umimaginable amount of brainpower, I found myself developing a larger memory bank and improving in multi-tasking and problem-solving. A year ago, I could only memorize ten facts about cell structure in biology class; now I can memorize twenty facts about gas laws in chemistry class. Also, as someone who struggles with word problems in math (I absolutely despise them), they used to be my nightmare in exams. Now, they actually seem tolerable, and that is definitely an achievement. The amount of information that I could memorize in my other classes grew twice as much by my second year of learning English and Spanish together, which was fascinating. All I did was read Pride and Prejudice and do a couple presentations on the history of Columbia.

The miracles of multilingualism go beyond pure academics. For my fellow high school students, are we worried about deciding our college major and finding a job? Absolutely. Multilingualism also helps with exploring career options. I never knew that I would become interested in international relations until I learned English. This passion of mine grew when I started learning Spanish. While learning a new language, it is normal to gradually learn about the language’s origin and culture alongside the mechanics. Sure, the numerous lectures about foreign policy from my English teachers and field trips to culture museums with my Spanish class sometimes seemed like a pain, but these two languages were what helped me find an interest and fuel me with the ambition to pursue it in the first place.

Like me, you can also seize the opportunity to be interested in foreign affairs or cultural studies if you are an arts, humanities, and sociology type of person. But I’m not about to ignore STEM lovers; recalling my point about the correlation between foreign languages and academics, learning a language also contributes to strong writing skills, research skills, and critical documentation skills. STEM career options often require one to be capable of effective documentation, scientific communication for publishing scientific journals, presentation of technical information, and analysis. The essay writing, reading, and presenting you do in your language classes are all actively preparing you towards this.

Still not convinced? Perhaps this stat will help: Even if you have not yet chosen your dream career, multilingual students increase their employability by 35% and earn 5-20% higher salary compared to monolingual students. Plus, the more languages you know, the more you can expand your own networking opportunities in the globalized workforce. (Source: St. Augustine College)

Adults, stop thinking it is “too late.”

The idea that “the earlier you learn a skill, the better you are at it” is commonly acknowledged. Unfortunately, this idea has prevented many adult polyglots from reaching their true potential.

The adult brain does not have limitations. In fact, a study by Cambridge University reports that adults are “able to piece together the rules of a language more quickly” than children. Also, more than 21% of adults who learn a language report that their chosen language quickly became a hobby or passion (Source: Talker Research survey). For instance, one of my foreign language arts teachers is fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and they are currently trying out Arabic. Even though they do not need to learn any more languages, they mentioned to me one time that it is a fascinating experience to partake, and that they have more languages they want to learn, such as Japanese. Learning a new language is practically guaranteed to make you feel more open-minded and feel motivated by personal fulfillment rather than strict necessity; if children feel this way after learning a language, why can’t adults?

Learning languages also has incredible health benefits, including delaying dementia and Alzheimer’s by up to five years by enhancing your memory. You can almost think of it as a healthy workout for the brain that protects cognitive decline. By listening to new rhythms and sounds of a new language, you constantly stimulate your brain in exciting ways. This way, foreign languages not only boost the brain, but also one’s mental health by keeping you active and engaged to learn something new.

There is also a myth among adults that learning is restricted to childhood, but the brain has lifelong neuroplasticity, which means it continues to reorganize and form neural connections. Liberty Language Services studies that as adults become more proficient, their brains restructure, sometimes engaging both hemispheres for comprehension, demonstrating significant structural plasticity. So you can rest assured, and dispel the myth that it is too late to start learning a new language once and for all.

What Can You Do?

For those of you who have the motivation to start learning a new language, here are a few steps that I have personally taken before.

1. Find a reason why you want to learn your chosen language. You will need to recall this purpose whenever you start to feel lethargic about learning it, so that you prevent yourself from giving up halfway. Without a motive, why do we even learn anything in the first place?

2. Second, you do not have to study so intensely right away. Start small by installing language apps like Duolingo and exploring a new culture (or if you are at school, join a foreign culture club!). Sometimes watching TV shows with mixed English and foreign dubbing help as well. After all, I learned my first few Spanish words by watching Dora the Explorer.

3. After you find a study method that you like, commit to it as your new personal routine. As someone who sometimes had that internal battle of “Should I study or not today?”, setting up a daily routine eased that battle. It also helps you avoid developing unhealthy habits like procrastination. Procrastination is your worst enemy!

Learning a new language might not click with you right away, but if you stick with it, it might just become one of your favorite activities to do. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or want more quick tips on how to kick-start your new foreign language studies journey!

In 2019, Colorado enacted the ban to protect gay and transgender minors subjected to conversion therapy, a discredited practice that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation through aversion techniques and other medical interventions. This harmful method is widely condemned by medical organizations, as conversion therapy has often been linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior in patients. However, the justices determined that banning conversion therapy would go against the principles of the First Amendment.

Justice Neil Gorsuch stated that the First Amendment “stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views,” and that conversion therapy reflected how the First Amendment supports every American’s right to free thought and expression. Banning conversion therapy might also violate the First Amendment by preventing the free exercise of religion and stopping counselors from working with clients who wish to align their sexuality with their religious convictions, which they see as a matter of faith.

Alongside Justice Neil Gorsuch, mental health counselor Kelsey Chiles, currently working as a therapist in Colorado, also argued that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy interfered with her ability to help patients experiencing confusion about same-sex attractions and gender identity. She publicly disavowed using controversial practices and described her work as helping patients who “have a goal to become comfortable and at peace” with themselves. Additionally, Chiles stated that parents of LGBTQ+ minors found it difficult to find therapists able to freely discuss gender identity with their children without restrictions by the law. Chiles had already sued over the Colorado law in 2022, and lower-level courts had declined her request to pause the enforcement of Colorado’s ban.

The majority decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who agreed that Colorado’s law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The justices claimed that most conversion therapy consists of talk therapy, a treatment based on verbal communication between an individual and a licensed professional, thus posing no physical threat to the patients.

Despite the Supreme Court’s and Chiles’ justification, controversy surrounds the seemingly “wrong” ruling. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to dissent from this decision, arguing that her colleagues were wrong in protecting individuals seeking to overturn conversion therapy bans, and Jackson explained that “such professionals are already subject to a number of other restrictions” in the medical business. On social media platforms, Colorado’s Attorney General Phill Weiser remarked that the ban does not violate the First Amendment, as therapy is different from other types of free speech since it is a form of health care that the government has a responsibility to regulate.

The most impactful resolution is yet to come from the Supreme Court, as the court plans to hear another case regarding the Colorado ban in October and to hand the decision back to the lower courts for further scrutiny.

You have probably seen countless, frivolously expensive shopping hauls on social media driven by a trend. From 2025-2026, there were many trends that constantly targeted everyone’s pockets: Dubai chocolate, 24K gold Labubus, Starbucks bear cups… need I continue? While the occasional fads are seemingly harmless, recent social media trends are dangerously supporting overconsumption.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane back to the days when ten-year-olds were conquering the halls of every Sephora in the country. If you have ever listened to employees’ stories on social media, you have heard them say how children were not afraid to ask their parents for a thousand dollars to buy some extra Laneige. Their excuse: “Everyone has this, so I need it too!” However, this excuse is growing old. It was reused by people stocking up on piles of Dubai chocolate, by kids purchasing Labubus in every size and color to hang on their backpacks, by the hundreds of civilians racing to the nearest Starbucks at 3 a.m. to get a bear cup, and by influencers buying twenty different products for a single morning shed.

There is nothing wrong with people spending their money however they like, but overconsumption is a different story. Last week, I listened to a friend ranting about how her parents refused to buy her the newest Kayali perfume, and I wondered why she wanted it, because she had already bought a different scented spray just last month. When I asked for the reason, she told me that all her other friends used the new spray every day at school. While her desire seems reasonable, she was purchasing products with a desperate mindset and normalizing spending on a whim.

Overconsumption mainly encourages consumerism motivated by desperation to follow the “norm,” and companies target teenagers’ insecurities to convince them to buy needless products. This toxic consumerism targets 51% of America’s teenagers, according to a 2024 survey from Common Sense Media, inevitably leading to the deterioration of teenagers’ mental health. Buying what everyone has comes with the price of less individuality and nail-biting anxiety over following every trend.

Not only is overconsumption extremely harmful for mental health, but it also completely disregards the planet’s health. Gunilla Olsson, the director of the United Nations Children’s Fund Office of Research-Innocenti, claimed that most high-income countries deal with their waste from overconsumption by sending it overseas to be “recycled.” However, these products often end up in landfills, and the toxic chemicals inside of most products take decades to decompose, serving as a poisonous burden for developing countries. There is sometimes a need for brand-new gadgets, but the consumption of products born from fleeting desires aids in environmental destruction and low self-esteem across the globe.

So, the next time you go shopping, I urge you to ask yourself: “Do I really need this?” It might seem like a redundant question, but it is a golden opportunity to reflect on your own consumption and to become a smarter consumer.

For the past few decades, scientific studies and research has already demonstrated to us that repeated interruptions disrupt our concentration. In 2002, it was first revealed that people experience an interruption every eight minutes. In 2005, Dr. Glenn Wilson at London’s Institute of Psychiatry proved that distractions at work had a profound effect on IQ; workers distracted by emails or phone calls saw a ten-point fall in their IQ, and 21% of the research participants reported that they would interrupt a meeting to respond to an email immediately. For most office workers, constant interruptions also led to a harmful loss of a good night’s sleep. In 2008, Nicholas Carr, an American journalist and writer, mentioned how “immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy.” But now with his frequent use of the Internet, his concentration drifts after a few pages, and he gets “fidgety” to desperately look for something more exciting to do. The situation worsens in the 2018 study led by UK’s telecoms regulator, Ofcom, discovers that people check their mobile phones every 12 minutes during the day, and 71% reported that they would never turn their phone off.

Why are our devices so efficient in their job of distracting us? The answer is simple: technology triggers constant craving, which results in us turning into dopamine addicts always waiting for the next notification, the next scroll, the next hit of distraction. For instance, I used to never have trouble sitting alone at dinner and staring into space without feeling a pang of desire for entertainment. Nowadays, I cannot sit still for one minute without reaching for my phone to watch a video or surf the Internet. While doing homework, I also used to be able to focus on an assignment for hours on end; today, my concentration is fragmented by opening new tabs, responding to texts, and watching movies in the middle of studying. Doing nothing and focusing on something that actually matters feel radical now. Sitting in silence feels like torture. Ironically, that is exactly what our minds need—time to breathe, wander, and stare into space without the need of stimulation.

Some would say doing nothing to entertain ourselves is madness, but in this digitally overstimulated generation, it is the best way to reclaim one’s mind. In fact, thinking of nothing can even improve our focus by clearing out the unnecessary thoughts that quickly fill up our brain. We are overstimulated but under fulfilled at the same time in our daily lives and chase trivial bursts of pleasure while gradually losing capacity for our own thoughts. The harm of digital overstimulation is not immediate, which makes it more dangerous: we forget what it feels like to truly concentrate, sit down, and do something of our own accord. Relearning that skill of focusing means resisting the endless scroll, setting clear boundaries with our screens, and embracing boredom occasionally to give our minds permission to wander freely again. Whether it is through meditation, journaling, exercise, or drawing, it is necessary for us to preserve our overstimulated minds in a world that profits from our distraction.

On October 4th, 2025, Sanae Takaichi was elected ruler of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on the party’s 70th anniversary. Her victory came after she triumphed against Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi in a runoff vote. Takaichi’s political prowess, dedication, and support from Taro Aso, the former prime minister, all contributed to preparing her for a more high-stakes, prominent role. For Takaichi, her new position is a complete twist from her youth—once, Takaichi worked as a TV host, drummer, and a car enthusiast; now, she faces the challenge of gaining the trust of all Japanese civilians and support a country constantly battling low birth rates, natural disasters, and geopolitical tensions.

As Japan’s first female prime minister, Takaichi has the opportunity to redefine the nation’s political and social priorities, as well as steer Japan toward sustainable growth. She has already made economic plans to use “strategic fiscal spending” to boost employment, consumption, and economic growth. Her proposals include income tax cuts and cash payouts to households. She also advocates for large-scale investments in sectors such as AI and biotech for “crisis-management investment.” Before the election, she announced her strategy of strengthening Japan’s economic security by investing heavily in domestic chip factories, nuclear power restarts, renewable energy projects, and futuristic industries like clean tech. Through these methods, Japan does not have to rely on international imports, and the country will not be as vulnerable to global price shocks or supply chain breakdowns. Takaichi has made it clear that her overall vision for the nation is to make Japan more self-reliant and resilient.

Despite her promising economic goals, the social and cultural positions Takaichi holds are met with controversy. Her beliefs lie in old-fashioned views on women and gender equality, stances that have the potential to further decrease Japan’s score in the Gender Inequality Index. While she has pledged to increase the number of women in her cabinet, she is known to support the imperial family’s male-only succession. She views equal pay for men and women “as a threat to traditional values,” and is opposed to allowing married couples to each keep their separate surnames. Given her conservative values, many are skeptical whether she will push reforms on gender equality or LGBTQ+ rights. So far, Takaichi is unlikely to make the most socially liberal reforms in Japan, but there is a possibility that she will push for symbolic changes in gender representation because it has a visible impact. Her current agenda is to prioritize nationalism, conservative norms, and reinforcing traditional values.

Takaichi’s rise represents both progress and paradox; a historical record-breaking female leader that ironically cherishes controversial, traditional values. Her economic policies could mark the beginning of a stronger, self-reliant Japan, but the question that remains is: Will she let the same spirit of renewal reach Japan’s social and cultural aspects of life? As the first female prime minister, this is her chance to prove that progress can mean more than growth alone—genuine progress will come with modernizing both Japan’s markets and mindset. Nevertheless, despite all the praise and controversy surrounding her, what she chooses to preserve and change will define her role in Japan’s history.

For many fans, the allure of horror lies in the thrill it provides. Exposing ourselves to terrifying acts can sometimes stimulate us in a positive way, in the form of excitement. For example, I experience the most pleasure during an adrenaline rush at the most fearful moment in a horror movie and so do 10% of the population according to CSP Global. Whether it is a startling scene, a foreshadowing pause, or a grotesque image, horror provokes strong bodily responses. The quickening pulse, sweaty palms, and heightened awareness all resemble a human’s natural fight-or-flight response, just like in real danger. This kind of controlled excitement can be as exciting as riding a rollercoaster. Horror feels like an escape from the boredom of daily life and shakes the audience out of the ordinary in a way few other genres can.

Another reason people are drawn to horror is the confusing paradox of seeking fear in a safe setting. If we are in a setting where we are experiencing a “safe” fright, the suspense feels real, but the stakes are not. Experts refer to this as “controlled fear,” which is a chance to brush up against danger while knowing you are safe. The safety net or horror allows audiences to confront zombies, killers, ghosts, clowns, and more supernatural threats without genuine risk, making the fear enjoyable for some. I often find myself surprised of how horror causes me to feel anxious yet giddy simultaneously; what would be a life-or-death situation in real life magically transforms into entertainment when seen through the lens of fiction. I think the main appeal is that I am in charge of the fear—if it gets overwhelming, I can always remind myself that it is not real, which is something you cannot do in actual danger.

Now that we understand the psychology behind loving fear, what kind of individuals love horror more than others? Researchers suggest that an individual’s personality plays a major role in determining whether they enjoy or despise horror. Those who naturally crave thrills are more likely to seek out horror-related experiences, while those who have less of this trait find these experiences unpleasant. As an occasional restless individual, I sometimes crave horror because it provides me with the jolt of adrenaline I need for entertainment. Empathy is another factor that is often psychologically associated with horror. Audiences with less empathy are generally more comfortable with horror since they can handle the gore and the characters’ suffering. On the other hand, those with more empathy have a difficult time enjoying horror, such as how I tend to get squeamish during disturbing scenes.

Gender, age, and surprisingly even GDP per capita also appear to matter. A survey published by Sage Journals found that younger individuals, especially men, are more likely to be fans of horror than women. For instance, women may favor horror films that conclude with a happy ending, whereas films with brutal scenes appeal to men. Another research project by the Harvard Business Review analyzed various box offices from 82 countries, and they discovered that countries with a higher GDP per capita consumed more horror than those in lower-income countries. Researchers suggest that when a country’s resources are scarce, people may lack the psychological safety net needed to enjoy fear, but this is an assumption that still needs further analysis.

Horror is more than for just a cheap scare—it serves as a mirror of our intricate psychology. Whether we chase horror for the rush of energy, the relief of the safety net, or to the bonding that happens in the dark, horror reveals our odd desire to brush up against danger. Perhaps that is why, no matter how much it unsettles us, we keep coming back for more.

“Sometimes the veneer of intelligence is not enough.” -Doug Lenat

Artificial intelligence has dramatically evolved over the past few years, and it is steadily growing in popularity. Daily tasks, such as writing emails, doing homework, and more are becoming easier to do. The era of students stressing over their writing assignments is over; AI writing tools can whip up a paper in seconds. Unfortunately, it is difficult to spot the difference between an AI-written paper and a student-written one. So, how can you tell?

According to a survey in K-12 Dive, 70% of high school students used AI for schoolwork in the 2023-2024 school year. Because AI writing tools overcome writer’s blocks and improve the quality of their work, students are using AI as a writing assistant. Although AI is helpful for grammar checks and outline planning, a 2025 Vox survey revealed that 15% of high school students in public and charter schools have neglected academic honesty by using AI to complete an entire writing assignment. As a result, many schools have become wary of using AI in schoolwork as it enables cheating. Caution towards AI usage is beneficial for the students’ education, but CDT recently found that one in five students have been accused of using AI to cheat on a writing assignment without proof. The elusive nature of AI writing was hitching both students and teachers on a confusing ride. Luckily, there are a few tricks to determine whether AI has had a hand in students’ writing (or even teachers’ writing).

The trick is to look for these anomalies: Details, transitions, and rhythm. For example, in a literary analysis, AI would usually write the analysis without specific quotes. If it does use quotes, look at the citation and check the location in the book. You will not find the quote. Next, if the analysis has transition words such as “Moreover,” “Furthermore”, etc. in every paragraph, that is another signal. A naturally written analysis usually contains sentences starting with “The” or “It” and other pronouns, especially when it comes to students. Finally, AI often writes in balanced, equal sentence lengths. If 80% of sentences have a similar length and structure, it is a red flag.

Outside of schoolwork, what about every student's favorite topic: Application essays? Students have many application essays to write for college, and those who are overwhelmed resort to AI to help write some of their essays. However, students must write personal statements comprising of their own unique tone, and AI fingerprints are easier to find. In my experience, I tested ChatGPT to write about traveling and explain how it reflects the person I am today after feeding the prompt details about my personality. There were three things I immediately noticed.

First, the detail was lacking. I clearly gave examples of some of my favorite trips in the prompt and ordered it to focus the essay in one experience. Of course, it never followed my instructions and added snippets of my diverse experiences throughout the essay. Second, AI cannot write in creative language. For instance, I wanted to write about the joy I felt when I first visited Paris, and I would have described my feelings similarly to that of a refreshing Starbucks drink after a scorching day. Instead, AI contains no personality in its writing; it used the phrase “a rollercoaster of emotions,” an overly cliché expression. Third, AI is inept at being “random”. In personal writing, I tend to find myself jumping between tones. I love skipping from serious to comedic, or silly to reflective. ChatGPT’s essay felt like Mapo tofu without any seasoning.

Doug Lenat once said, “Sometimes the veneer of intelligence is not enough.” AI writing is one example. All we can do as a community is to properly know the guidelines for using AI in work, and how to accurately tell if something is written by AI. The next time you come across a suspicious paper, try using AI yourself and instructing it to write a paper on the same topic. At the end of the day, AI should be a tool for working smarter when you already know your stuff. 

“Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart.” — Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted

Did you know that a cage home in Hong Kong is about the size of a prison cell in the US?

A cage home is a small living space that is barely large enough for a bed and few other items, typically found in Hong Kong. Cage homes have existed since the 1950s as a “temporary" housing solution for low-income workers. Unfortunately, they aren't really temporary now. Today, more than 200,000 people live in cage homes despite Hong Kong being known for its wealth. 2025 has actually only worsened the issue, particularly because of the intense heatwaves that Hong Kong has experienced this summer.

Most cage homes do not come with a window nor a functioning air conditioner. Hong Kong has hit record-high temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius and higher at least 50+ times this summer. However, in an unventilated cage home, the indoor temperature nearly skyrockets to 36-41 degrees Celsius. That's a temperature where people can't even breathe properly, and that is exactly the type of torture the people of Hong Kong underwent this summer in their cage homes.

This isn't just about the heat. In a space that is often 1.5 to 2 square meters, cage homes exposed residents to frequent fire hazards, poor ventilation, and infection. These all lead to skin conditions, headaches, dizziness, heat stroke, and sometimes even death if treatment is delayed. According to a CNN interview, more than half of the cage home residents have reported signs of worsening skin conditions, nausea, and intense dizziness. The pressure of it all forces most of them to live their lives outside for meals (since there's no kitchen), exercise, work, and to get fresh air.

So, what are the solutions… if any can take place? Although these solutions are unlikely to be taken place immediately, there are steps that can be taken over time.

1. Emergency Relocation! Why not convert empty hotels, offices, schools, gyms, and using vacant spaces in general to temporary housing? It saves time on construction and benefits the people.

2. Ban Substandard Units! There should be a legal minimum/maximum flat size so that cage homes never appear again.

3. Buy & Fix Old Buildings! As the government and nonprofits sometimes purchase aging walk-ups, convert them to safe social rentals.

4. Force the Developers to Contribute! They usually target luxury buyers, but they should be required to set aside affordable flats in every project.

5. Guarantee Tenant Protections! Cap the rents based on each individual's income, prevent sudden evictions, and ensure that every tenant at least has some legal Protections.

There's no immediate solution that can complete change Hong Kong's housing system. However, these steps and more can be taken over the next few months or years to turn around the lives of many. The sooner Hong Kong confronts this issue head-on, the better the summer & all the seasons will feel like!

I miss the news from back when I was in first grade. Everything was more laid-back a decade ago, even politics (which is impossible.) Nowadays, I can't go a day without seeing President Trump’s face or footage from the Israel-Gaza War, the Russia-Ukraine War, the Big Beautiful Bill, all the crap that's going on.

As a teen who seriously needs inner peace, I really hate the news currently. Go ahead every news channel on TV, feel free to just dump an overload of news about how the world is dead at this point on me every day. I despise how I have to process every outrageous news simultaneously while never getting a chance to reflect on one specific event that I really care about whenever I watch TV. In this channel, I'm going to be discussing just one event per week. One issue I care about and a lot of others do too.

This channel is where I tell you guys about a certain news that caught my attention, talk about the situation, discuss my opinions and reactions, make some good or bad predictions, and also ask about what you guys think I should cover next.

You can read along. Or not. I'll just be here writing either way.