Student: I feel like these people should just, like, go to college and join a frat instead of flying off to join ISIS. Like, they just want to be part of something. So join something else, like, even the YMCA
Overheard in the slums
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Jack and/or Jill: Full Design
This week, the Nass conducts a social experiment on BeReal, predicts the next 70 campus construction projects, and determines which famous philosophers are totally like 10/10 cuties.
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70 of Princeton’s Next Big Construction Projects: A Nass List
PRINCETON BUILDS: A doomsday bunker, an embassy for Bumble ambassadors, a cold brew river, and 67 other projects.
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THE PHILOSOPHICAL FIVE (my very objective opinion on the best and worst philosophers of all time)
“Also known as the father of all philosophy (daddy?) Socrates is the original playboy. Everyone, and I mean everyone, fangirls over him.”
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We Added 200 Strangers on BeReal, and We’re Never Opening the App Again
“Hypothesis: people our age around the world are alone during a significant portion of their waking hours. And hypothetically, BeReal is the perfect observational device.”
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On electromagnetism, bodies, and the nature of overthinking
“We sit together, our two bodies close, but not touching. They say that opposites attract, but there is a void between us, a siren.”
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Jane’s Addiction
“She saw eyes that enjoyed staring, ears that indulged in eavesdropping, and a mind that ruthlessly analyzed what her senses discerned. She saw hands that took these findings and selected food accordingly, cut food accordingly, chewed food accordingly.”
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Raising Interest Rates: Full Design
This week, the Nass gets its heart broken, writes fiction about disordered eating, and logs delirious entries in a Dream Journal.
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A Haibun for our Fallen Leaves
“Short breaths are suspended like smoke, naked against the frail air.”
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The Glass Cracked
When the glass on a train cracks, strange and impossible things reveal themselves to the protagonist in this speculative fiction piece.
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A Trip to the Orangerie
“In many ways my trip thus far had been haunted by Benjamin; every glimpse of the underground Metro lights, the carefully planned streets, the dimly lit bookstores brought some passage, some fragment of prose from his works to mind.”
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All My Dreams Wrapped Up in a Little Ball
Chaos reigns alongside Homer Simpson in this writer’s Notes app dream journal.
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Last Summer
“Fairy-tales like this weren’t supposed to be true. He felt that if he didn’t say anything, then none of it was real. And if it wasn’t real, it couldn’t possibly be taken away from him.”
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Tongue Tied
In-between three languages, a writer reflects on how study abroad has opened her eyes to the creative opportunities in language.
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Time to BeeReal: Full Design
This week, the Nass surveys ten movies, discovers the stories written in olive leaves, and juggles three languages.