BINGHAMTON REVIEW
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From the Editor
Dear Readers,
What’s up gamers? It is I, the humble Copy Desk Editor (I think that title makes a little more sense than “Copy Desk Chief”), who must take over for now. As the construction virus spreads to even the farthest corners of campus, midterm exams come creeping up on us, and the dining hall prices keep inflating like the fanart I saw when I was 12 (that’s a JOKE, for any family members or acquaintances who may be reading this), it can be tempting to fall down into a deep, depressing spiral of blackpilled doom. I can’t quite stop that from happening, but at least we have some premium slop to distract you along the way. And I’m not talking about the chicken fries from Tully’s or the bowls from Chick-N-Bap, but WORDS! ON A PAGE! Your teachers probably told you that writing couldn’t be as entertaining or useful as the stuff you see on TikTok or YouTube Shorts, but we are here to prove you wrong.
For this issue’s feature, check out Liam Steele’s review of The Nightfly, which is as much an album as it is a window into the culture of the mid-1900s. For something more pedagogical in nature, you can see my article on Page 6, where I discuss what the right balance is between lenience and strictness in teaching. If you like response articles, Victor Ostling defends America’s mythologization of its founding document. For more recent politics, check out Nicholas Aparicio’s spread of articles on pages 10 and 11. If you’re still looking around for some academic clubs to keep you sane, see if the advertisements on pages 12 and 13 pique your interest. And I saved the “best” slop for last with my two-page yapping about Minecraft on pages 14 and 15. A pretty stacked issue overall, if you ask me.
Enjoy the run—I mean the issue,
Our Mission
Binghamton Review is a non-partisan, student-run news magazine founded in 1987 at Binghamton University. A true liberal arts education expands a student’s horizons and opens one’s mind to a vast array of divergent perspectives. The mark of true maturity is being able to engage with these perspectives rationally while maintaining one’s own convictions. In that spirit, we seek to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and offer alternative viewpoints not normally found on campus. We stand against dogma in all of its forms, both on campus and beyond. We believe in the tenents of free expression and believe all sudents should have a voice on campus to convey their thoughts. Finally, we understand that mutual respect is a necessary component of any prosperous society. We strive to inform, engage with, and perhaps even amuse our readers in carrying out this mission.
Views expressed by writers do not necessarily represent the views of the publication as a whole.
Angelo DiTocco
Advice Column
We offered to give you all life advice. These were your questions:
Hello how do I write an article
What helps me out the most is putting “make it look like I wrote it” somewhere in the prompt
Which site is better for a DMV road test around here? Endicott or Binghamton?
Don’t even think about scheduling the test until you have the mandatory 5000 hours of practice, but I’d put my money on Endicott
Why is the water so low at lake lieberman by c4?
Thirsty.
Are Spiedies really worth the hype?
Dumb question. The pride of Southern Tier sandwichmaking will always be worth it. P.S: Food and Fire Taphouse in Johnson CIty makes the best ones.
How do I cope with the fact that I’ll never be as cool as super monkey fan club?
1 million jugs of berserker brew
I just found out that this campus used to have a campus bar way back when. How do we bring this back?
You should know by now that fun and games will not be tolerated at the Premiere SUNY.
My roommate keeps going shopping without me. How do I get him to wait for me?
Written by our Staff
I want to start attending Binghamton Review meetings, what should I do to prepare?
Pregame every meeting.
How can I have a fun weekend?
Mix Cutwater with Four Loko. That is all
I use Binghamton Review as an outlet to express my deepest darkest feelings. Is this cool?
Best meal from walmart for a quiet break on campus?
Rotisserie Chicken (~$6.50 and theyre seasoned) and French roll ($1.50 plain, $1.95 garlic) half of each makes 1 meal. For best results, eat with hands for the true ancient experience. Heals the soul.
Why is my roommate on the toilet for so long?
Probably watching NFL x Saddam Hussein edits
I really love my girlfriend, but last month, I kissed a man while high and it was the greatest experience of my life. How do I convince her I’m 100% straight?
Consummate your relationship in public, or else it was always a lie
I started my part time job at McDonald’s, is this considered Blue Collar work?
Only if you’re surviving off Monster and Marlboro Reds
Now that Tylenol shouldn’t be taken while pregnant, what should replace it?
OxyContin and alcohol
Where are all the earthy black girls on campus?
They only appear to you if you are pure of heart and deserving. Keep dreamin bud.
What do we know about the Binghamton Pisser?
Not much is known for certain, besides the fact that this man most certainly resides in College in The Woods. Vibes alone dictate as much.
Why is Flightreacts a top 3 human of all time?
Do white people really have culture?
Go over to your white friend’s house, sit down with some turkey burgers and coleslaw, watch a 1 hour video essay on lost media, and weep, knowing that you were a fool.
What do we think of the newest independent state, bougainville
If I walk through the construction zone, HYPOTHETICALLY of course, what’s the worst thing that could happen to me?
Woe, OSHA sanctions be upon ye
I overloaded myself with 25 credits. Big mistake. Least painful way to go?
Get crushed by a fridge, if you know what I mean.
Ay u got coffee???????
Number 45, milkshakes
I already bombed my first exam. And I’m talking bad. Like the class average was a 54 and I got a 13. How cooked am I?
Degree or no degree, you’ll still be on the side of the road begging for spare crypto wallets. Don’t sweat it.
How much we stealing this semester?
500 gluten free brownies
Is there anything worse than hell?
Waiting in the drive-through at the Vestal Mcdonalds, only to get a burnt burger with NO CHEESE!
You know how white women will try to pet ANY animal, like even if it’s a bear? How are they so brave?
Huh, maybe the Man vs. Bear thing wasn’t sexist after all, they’re just nature freaks.
What are the best dank offensive meme pages to follow on insta? I’m talking NOT for snowflakes, real dark edgy humor.
proud.wigger posts bangers on the regular (a BLACK member of the e-board wrote this answer, we are NOT being racist here)
Need life advice? Email review@binghamtonsa.org for more wacky, quirky, and zany responses.
Should We Be More Like Fletcher?
By Angelo DiTocco
Recently, my friend Justin (the one who inspired me to psychoanalyze Fred: The Movie) showed me the movie Whiplash. This movie follows an aspiring drummer, Andrew Nieman, as he struggles with his abusive music teacher, Terence Fletcher. Throughout the film, Fletcher is seen cursing out his students, calling them slurs, throwing chairs at them, and even blaming Nieman’s parents’ divorce on his “poor” drumming skills. Towards the end, we learn that Fletcher has a method to his madness: He wants to weed out people who aren’t determined to be the best of the best, and he believes that if he compliments his students, they’ll become complacent. It’s not enough to make me not hate him, and it doesn’t make the rest of the movie any less uncomfortable to watch, but it does add an extra layer of nuance that separates the movie from Marvel-tier slop. More importantly, Whiplash got me thinking about how today’s school system can be too soft at times.
Throughout my high school and college experiences, and especially after COVID hit, I’ve encountered excessive lenience in all its forms. One social studies teacher had a pattern of saying “From now on, I’m not accepting any late work,” only to keep giving in and accepting it anyway. A chemistry class of mine was curved so hard that my friend failed every test and still walked out with a B. One professor even allowed us to use our phones during exams, simply trusting that we would restrict our usage to the calculator app. Lastly, one gen-ed I took had discussion questions that were automatically graded purely by word count, so I just wrote satirical questions and responses similar to some of my less serious Review articles.
So what’s causing teachers and professors to be so lenient these days? First, there’s the fact that it’s just easier to be lenient, as it means less assignments to grade and less time spent in the classroom. Second, there’s external pressure from others: Administrators want to inflate their school’s graduation rate to get more state funding, angry helicopter parents will argue relentlessly with harsh-grading teachers, and students are more likely to respect a professor if he’s “chill” or the class is an “easy A.” Lastly, instructors of “unimportant” classes may believe that being lenient is better off for the students anyway, as it allows them to focus on more important things. After all, a mediocre high school student won’t need global history for his future job in a trade, and a computer engineering student like myself doesn’t particularly need a rigorous knowledge of microeconomics.
More recently, I’ve found myself on the other end of this relationship as a TA, where I too must find the right balance between being strict and lenient. The class itself is called Digital Logic Design, and it’s basically the bread and butter of computer engineering, so it’s pretty important that students come out with a strong understanding of its concepts. But as with any other instructor, the three factors I described above can tempt me towards excessive lenience as well.
First, I sometimes find myself wanting to be lenient for my own sake. In a big classroom full of students all raising their hands for help, it can be tempting to check off a group whose answer is 75% right so I can move on to the next group. Second, although I don’t really face any pressure from my superiors, I would be lying if I said I don’t care about what my students think of me. If I force them to do everything properly, will they complain behind my back? Probably not, but I might as well err on the side of being a chill guy.
The last factor’s effect on me is perhaps the greatest and most nuanced. There are times when I think a question is a bit too tricky or I disagree with its wording, and I’ll often give students a hint towards the right answer or simplify the question a bit because I think it’s only fair. Furthermore, each lab ends with a tedious “synthesis” process, in which students must mindlessly wait up to 15 minutes to transfer their code onto a circuit board. Why should I force them to spend all that time in the lab doing nothing when I can look at their code and confirm it’s already correct? Once it starts getting late, I’ll just spare them of that kind of torture, and the professor agrees with this. But one might argue that if they don’t see their logic circuit correctly working on the board, they aren’t getting the true hardware design experience.
Over the past few years, I’ve come to recognize that a strict teacher can actually be better than a lenient one in some respects. Last year, I worked in a group under a project advisor who was demanding of us at times. This advisor encouraged us to add extra functionalities to our project, urged us to thoroughly document everything we did, and was not afraid to express her disappointment when she caught us slacking. Of course, she was still a far cry from Fletcher, but she did know that if she just nodded her head and said “good job,” we’d end the year with an unfinished project. Although a special snowflake would swiftly go to RateMyProfessors to write a scathing review, my team and I were extra motivated to lock in on the project, ending up with better results than we could have imagined.
Although Terence Fletcher from Whiplash is obviously an extreme example of a demanding teacher, it should be reasonable to think that teachers should encourage their students to do the best they can and fully learn the curriculum. This is especially true for an important foundational class like Digital Logic Design. I would say I’ve done a decent job at balancing strictness with lenience as a TA so far, but there is definitely room for improvement. I might not need to force the students to wait 15 minutes for their logic circuit to synthesize, but I can certainly take an extra few seconds to let them think more deeply about their work and make sure they actually understand what they’re doing.
The American Mythos
By Victor Ostling
In the last issue, our friend wrote a brilliant article on our country’s litigious and overzealous approach to its constitution. Its—for lack of a better word—cynicism is sound and necessary, but perhaps we need an argument for a sentimental attitude toward this country’s founding. The romanticization of our nation’s founders is found among many to be trite, but among others—who teach history at Hillsdale and visit reenactments—perfectly satisfactory. Many would rather go bald than begin a sentence with “our nation’s founders” as I have just done.
America may think of itself as a nation par excellence (and quite dogmatically so), independently of the essential characteristics of the civilizations that came before it. But when a patient gives their psychiatrist a summary of their own character, the doctor knows this characterization says something about the patient, and is not true at face value. Observed in this manner, America seems to follow many of the “rules” that most countries throughout history have. This is exemplified most in the fact that, despite its self-proclaimed secularism, it has a profoundly spiritual mythology.
“The Apotheosis of Washington” by Brumidi–a fresco painted on the central rotunda of the Capitol. Apparently, this is a secular country.
Every country, almost without exception, has a founding myth. This is especially true of civilizations from the distant past. For England, it was the myth of King Arthur and the Grail (or perhaps Hengest and Horsa). Rome was famously the heir to Troy by way of Aeneas and his she-wolf-nursed descendant Romulus. In that myth appears Queen Dido, from whom Tunisia and Carthage claimed their lineage. Every country before a certain point legitimized their states’ authority by claiming descent from an original, non-human and spiritual source. The founders of ancient Greek city-states had, through some hero or another, traced their lineage to the gods, while the kings of medieval Christendom had done so back to Adam and Eve.
While there are no grails, underworlds or flaming shields, the romanticization and respect is very similar.
Newer countries, of course, do not explicitly have legends like these, and yet something similar emerges. Something as simple as a romantic narrative of the nation’s history or its founders demonstrates that this “instinct” hasn’t gone away. The most jarring example can be found in our own nation. Despite claiming in many ways to follow the antithesis of these old-world superstitions, America has a remarkably metaphysical approach to its own founding. The story of the American Revolution, as told in the traditional manner, holds the founding fathers at the same heroic status as King Arthur, Aeneas, or Diomedes. While there are no grails, underworlds or flaming shields, the romanticization and respect is very similar. Even the “Apocrypha” of this mythos like George Washington’s cherry tree or Ben Franklin’s lighting-kite were taught to us as children. I might add that the circumstances of our victory in this war are miraculous in and of themselves: to the sentimentalist, this would suggest a real, metaphysical influence, and not just a useful fiction.
If it is a fiction, why is this feature of our culture valuable, rather than just natural? This is a more difficult question to answer. The fact of the matter is that this is the stuff culture is made of. There is no meaningful culture to be derived from a legal document. It is the context in which things like the Magna Carta or the Constitution are penned that gives them legitimacy. Yes, there are philosophical arguments that ground our constitution, but there is no culture to be derived from logical arguments, either. If a culture is what we desire, then it must be found in the romantic, the “literary,” and the metaphysical, as I think this “experiment” has yielded some mixed results.
By Liam Steele
The Nightfly: A Jazzy Glimpse into the Midcentury Mindset
Donald Fagen, the pianist frontman of 70’s rock band Steely Dan, always had more to offer musically beyond the group’s usual cynical and sometimes dark wiles. Fagen is an avid science fiction fan, and considers himself something of a “futurist,” a view which would be on full display with his first solo album, 1982’s The Nightfly. This Grammy-nominated gem was unique in many rights. It was one of the first ever albums to be digitally recorded, and its production helped pioneer early drum machines, making it a futurist concept piece both by design and in listening.
This album opens with what is by far its hardest hitter, “I.G.Y.,” a reference to the International Geophysical Year, an initiative from 1957-1958 focused on furthering the study of Earth and putting an end to the drought of scientific interchange between west and east. It led to the creation of the Antarctic Treaty, as well as the launch of the first satellites, beginning with Sputnik I, but it also establishes this album’s setting. The hope and aspiration of the IGY with its many emerging
technologies excited young minds like Fagen, who was a young boy at the time.
Our main character... pretends to be into 60’s jazz musician Dave Brubeck in an attempt to win her over, not unlike the performative male of our time.
The song echoes this excitement, with Fagen’s great vocals gushing over futuristic comforts. “90 minutes from New York to Paris undersea by rail,” a longtime theoretical project. “Perfect weather for a streamlined world,” hinting at programming earth’s weather. “A just machine to make big decisions,” building on the excitement of the advancement of computers, which had evolved from a term for a woman with math knowledge and a calculator to a marvelous machine capable of sending us into space. This song will always hold a special place in my heart because of how much it fully explores this dreamer’s view of the future from the late 50’s, where apparently, “by ‘76 we’ll be a-okay.” It even references the Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical megastructure built around a star that directly harnesses its energy, with Fagen inviting us to come play in “The city powered by the sun.” It’s as though this song was meant for Fagen to establish his credibility as a real dreamer of the time, so that listeners can be sure the rest of the album is pure quality. “There’ll be spandex jackets, one for everyone” with even the new and emerging synthetic fabric being a source of great wonder.
Another standout track, “The New Frontier,” follows a teenager inviting a girl to party in his Father’s backyard fallout shelter. Interestingly, this is one of only two music videos featuring Fagen’s music; no Steely Dan or Walter Becker track would gain such privilege. Research into this track also revealed that it is named to reference a 1960 speech by John F. Kennedy of the same name. This track borrows many key words from the speech, including young minds being pioneers of the aforementioned “new frontier,” and it references the advancement of the sciences for the betterment of mankind, and its harm, in the form of the weapons of mass destruction that place the characters in the bunker in the first place. This speech, like the declaration of the I.G.Y. in the opening track, establishes real-world anchors aside from Fagen’s own lived experience to lay down the setting and themes he seeks to take us through.
This playful tune follows the boy gathering all manner of booze and emergency provisions for the perfect “summer smoker underground.” Swept up in the wonder of “pretending it’s the real thing,” our main character regales his date with shallow compliments and pretends to be into 60’s jazz musi-
cian Dave Brubeck in an attempt to win her over, not unlike the performative male of our time.
After concluding that the girl “has the right dynamic” for the new frontier, our narrator invites her to stay in the shelter all night long, and after “really getting to know” her, they’ll “climb out into the dawn.”
The structure of the song, with each verse jumping between schmoozing the girl and gathering everything needed for the “wingding” does a lot to frame the youthful perspective it comes from, with the haste of it all exemplifying the album’s theme of young minds swept up with the splendor and contrasting uncertainty of the new age. I wish I could say something about this theme mirroring the modern day, what with us being the next pioneers up, but to reference JFK’s speech once more, it feels like there’s a lot more peril than opportunity, too many unfilled hopes and too few unfilled threats. Perhaps it’s up to us to again take up the mantle of the pioneers he spoke of to forge a new future. Finally, another standout track I’d like to share is “The Goodbye Look,” the second to last track, which serves to focus on the more perilous side of the new world, and how the blind and blissful swooning over the new age leads to trouble. The narrator of this more tropical track finds himself enjoying stay in Cuba and reminiscing on the fun parts of it as one of two remaining American citizens on the island amid the takeover of a new authoritarian regime. “The embassy’s been hard to reach,” he naively remarks, as dissidents are rounded up. He writes this off as “a bit of action, behind the big casino by the beach,” as a casino is a capitalist monolith and likely opposed to the values of good old fashioned communism. Amid ques-
tioning from a colonel, the narrator pours up a Cuban breeze with his fellow American, before resorting to a connection that can get him off the island, as he knowingly announces that “They’re arranging a small reception just for me, behind the big casino by the sea.” The titular “goodbye look” is our narrator’s term for the look from the regime’s enforcers, well, enforcing. In the chorus, knowing what happens, having “read the book” himself, our narrator puts together that he’s on the receiving end of such a look, and has to flee. Exploring a threat of the new age, and one outside of the US for that matter, expands this album’s scope, while still digging deeper into its main concepts. Interestingly enough, this track, and the final track on the album, were later covered by Grammy-winning jazz singer and composer Mel Tormé, an artist whose work inspired the album in the first place. In their original forms, these songs show clear inspiration from Tormé, and the covers are a perfect marriage of Fagen’s new takes on the genre and Tormé’s timeless performance of it.
While The Nightfly is a perfect, compact package of indepth, concept-focused goodness, it is only the beginning of Fagen’s Nightfly Trilogy. It is followed by Kamakiriad, a much more imaginative sequel exploring a road trip in a much more positive speculative future, and Morph The Cat, a concluding chapter influenced by the events of 9/11/2001 exploring a more grounded and all-too-real reality. The Nightfly is the shiny, rippling surface of Fagen’s solo work, and brimming, lively depths await beyond, all reflecting his wild imagination, sharp wit, and undeniable musical talent.
The Excuse of Democracy in Ukraine
The Russo-Ukrainian war hasn’t been an exact success for Ukraine. We’ve downgraded the means of victory from driving Russia out of pre-2014 borders to celebrating that the Ukrainian government hasn’t collapsed. This war is being propped up by the United States and has been pushed hard onto American citizens. The justification? Ukraine’s right to “sovereignty” and to “democracy” needs to be protected against the threat of scary Russia. This justification is pretty insubstantial for multiple reasons. First, democracy cannot be manufactured, no matter how many dollars we throw at it. Secondly, the United States has a track record of disregarding sovereignty when it threatens our interests. If we remove this excuse of “democracy and sovereignty,” we see that war is being waged for power games whose benefits don’t outweigh the costs.
First, democratic societies don’t form overnight. The current Western democracies arose through centuries. The Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, the Magna Carta, the Black Death, Westphalia, the Enlightenment, the French, Industrial, and the 1848 Revolutions all led to the democratization of the West. Democracy has to be a natural movement throughout society. The West believed opening up economically to China in the 1970s-2000s would liberalize them and make them our allies. Instead, it made the country wealthier without its people being any freer. The same stubbornness to democratization happened in post-Soviet Russia. Why? The formation of these large states (in terms of land and population) was based around a central authority to protect its citizens from outside threats or internal disarray. These citizens continually traded freedom for stability and even do so today. They can be imperial, communist, or authoritarian, but the central government will always maintain tight control. In Africa, societies have typically been very decentralized and tribal, due to high geographic and ethnic divisions. The few large kingdoms, like Kongo and Dahomey, were decentralized and clan-based. The transatlantic slave trade decentralized Africa further by driving people away from settlements and roads to avoid enslavement. When Europeans formed arbitrary colonies, implemented ethnic patronage systems, extracted wealth out of the continent, and then left these states to become “democracies”, failure was inevitable. Africa experienced dictatorships, corruption, civil wars, ethnic cleansings, and mass animal poachings. Democracy didn’t occur in Africa, because it was unnatural. Afghanistan’s democratization failed too. Why? There was no effort within the state itself. The population had greater loyalty to tribal/ethnic connections rather than a weak, American-supported, central government which couldn’t even burn the poppy fields or end bacha bazi (sexual slavery of boys). Only strong, non-democratic governments have unified that land.
This proves that Ukraine cannot be “made” into a democracy, as no state can. It is an extremely corrupt country with very little history independent of Russian rule, formed in the shadow of Soviet collapse. On the Corruption Perceptions Index in
By Nicholas Aparicio
2024, Ukraine ranked 105th out of 140 countries. Ukraine has been described by Freedom House as a “hybrid regime”, a statistic which has worsened since the war began. So when Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Adam Schiff, Tom Cotton, and Joni Ernst claimed this war is for “democracy”, that is completely laughable. “Sovereignty” also collapses under analysis, considering America’s history. Iran wanted to nationalize its oil industry, prompting the CIA to overthrow their elected prime minister in 1953. Guatemala had its government overthrown in 1954 by America to protect the interests of American companies. Brazil elected a leftist leader in 1964, whom the US bullied out of power. Chile elected a socialist prime minister in 1970, so we helped orchestrate a coup in 1973. Gaddafi wanted to create an African currency to rival the dollar, backed in Libyan gold and oil. So NATO intervened in Libya for “the safety of protestors”, despite being a defensive pact, not an offensive one, resulting in Gaddafi’s overthrow. There’s a long list of American-backed coups, to varying degrees of involvement, proving that America could care less about “sovereignty” or “democracy”.
If the government knows it cannot manipulate Ukraine into a democracy, and has proven itself to only act for American interests, then what interest is in Ukraine? Ukraine has never been a traditional ally, or large trading partner, and has no resources that we lack. The real interest is that this will allow America to project power right onto Russia’s doorstep. Any rational look into this power game exposes it as unnecessary and dangerous. Russia hasn’t been expanding, NATO has. NATO added multiple countries to the alliance in 1999 and 2004, including Russian neighbors. In 2008, the Bucharest Summit Declaration stated that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become NATO members, alarming Putin, who didn’t want the military alliance to expand, as expressed in a 2007 Munich speech. The Ukraine messaging worried Putin again when the Biden administration seemed very open to admitting Ukraine into NATO in 2021. The two countries Russia has invaded since then? Georgia and Ukraine. No countries were previously attacked. There is no reason to “contain” Russia when it has been reactionary, not offensive. Therefore, the hyperbole of Putin potentially steamrolling into Berlin is unrealistic, nor is the Russian army even capable of doing so. So there isn’t even a viable interest in projecting power, except to bully Russia into submission, which led us to the mess of today.
In real democracies, the citizens deserve to understand the reasoning behind the decisions of their elected officials. Using idealism isn’t a real strategy when people’s lives and taxpayer dollars are being lost. Democratization cannot magically appear, it’s a process which takes decades, if not centuries. To use democracy and sovereignty as justification for this war is an insult to the two concepts and to the American citizenry’s intelligence. Spending $175 billion to intimidate a nuclear armed adversarial power is a complete waste of American taxpayer dollars and weakens our stance in the international community.
Why Race Realism is Wrong
By Nicholas Aparicio
Race realism has arisen in reaction to multicultural ideals, uncontrolled migration, and the obstinence of certain migrants to assimilate. Race realism ideology claims that there are inherent biological differences between peoples of the world. These differences are the supposed reasons why civilizations of Europe have advanced further than the non-European societies. These differences are used to enshrine white European supremacy and justify xenophobia. While I am against multiculturalism, non-assimilation, and unregulated migration, race realism is a heavily flawed ideology.
One of the claims of race realism is that European societies have been more advanced because of “biological European intellectual superiority.” Race realists also claim “there is no such thing as magic soil,” making it a reflection of the people. This neglects geographical context in human development. There is an actual factor of soil fertility, based on how rocky or acidic it is, determining agricultural viability. There’s biological factors of the animal and plant resources and their domesticability. Even deposits of metals and natural resources are key for metallurgy and industrialization. Another factor is the ability to reach locales with resources your people might lack. Deep natural harbors and navigable rivers are vital, as water travel has historically been cheap and fast, compared to land travel. Barriers like mountains, forests, large oceans, and deserts negatively impact trade to obtain certain resources. All of these factors combine in the formation of civilizations.
Now let’s turn to Sub-Saharan Africa, a continent attacked by race realists as failing to advance until colonialization, due to their “inferiority.” The Sub-Saharan continent lacked domesticable animals, had few staple crops to support civilization, ocean on three sides, the Sahara desert on the other side, few significant navigable rivers, mountains, rainforests, and a coast devoid of harbors. Even the vertical orientation of the continent meant that whatever resources did reach the continent had to go through various geographic barriers, and adapt to different climates, slowing advancement. The pre-Colombian Americas had an abundance of staple crops including corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and squash. Yet the Americas’ vertical orientation made it a millenia long process for these crops to adapt to multiple climate zones, and mountain ranges to reach the different peoples. Travel challenges also hindered cultural diffusion. Lacking domesticable animals made it exceedingly difficult to travel, communicate, create calvaries, limited agricultural production, and tied more labor to farming.
Instead of focusing on the out-of-character advancements of Eurasia, we tend to analyze the conditions of the Americas and Sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty is humanity’s starting condition, not wealth. The success of Eurasia came from having staple cereal crops, earlier than the Americas or Africa. They had animals with the appropriate temperaments to be domesticated. Many race realists also forget that Asia was equal to or ahead of Europe for centuries. China was responsible for gunpowder, paper, and the compass. The Middle East and India had multiple sophisticated societies which spawned many useful technologies as well; compare 11th century Baghdad to any contemporary city in Europe. Europe’s close proximity to these lands helped them obtain technologies to improve
upon. When Europe pulled ahead during the industrial revolution, it was very circumstantial. English isolation from continental wars, a system of capital accumulation, improvements in farming, and abundances of coal and iron all allowed England to industrialize. These technologies spread through nationstate Europe, and allowed for the Western golden age to begin.
Race realists also lack an understanding of culture, and conflate it with ethnic differences. The truth is, culture comes from state formation (or lack thereof), and state formation comes from the aforementioned geographical context. China fell behind in modernization because their state was a rigid, centralized entity made for order and protection. China’s state enabled a culture which did not value foreign technology. Western culture evolved based on Roman principles from their conquests (determined by geography). The Catholic Church outlawed cousin marriage, making the family unit, and preserved Roman ideals of organization, civics, and hierarchy. Then Enlightenment forged individuality, weakening absolutism. The nation state in the West, fueled by capital generation, replaced the stagnant feudal economy due to the black death and political revolutions. Banking formed as protection for gold currency, and evolved into complex loaning systems. This all led to the modern West. Africa has had little state success because the people are deeply divided in language and culture based on extreme geography, making unification rare to impossible. When colonies made arbitrary borders and states, there was failure without uniting European rulers. Northern Italy is more prosperous than impoverished Southern Italy. However, the Norman conquerors established a feudal system of wealth extraction, which subsequent rulers, and de facto mafia rulers, preserved. African Americans face higher rates of poverty and violence, with lower education and economic success. This isn’t from racial inferiority but because of “honor culture” diffused from Southern Whites. The people living in the hinterlands of Britain valued honor and vices in their short-dangerous lives further from civilization on the island. Fights over insults and recklessness defined these peoples, whose descendants brought these behaviors to the American south. They then diffused cultural traits to Southern African Americans. Northern-born black draftees in WWI scored higher on Army intelligence tests than Southern-born white draftees, according to A.F Montagu’s studies. Only after the Great Migration was there a shift in urban-black culture. England had the geographical benefit of proximity to Europe, allowing them to adopt new innovations before Ireland. Roman organization aided by the church also helped. They then exploited Irish divisions to conquer them. Haiti was a hellscape French slave colony made for pure exploitation by the ruling class. The Dominican Republic was a forgotten Spanish colony which had a faded plantation economy giving way to small-scale farming and ranching, and centralized around the capital. So it isn’t hard to tell which state would be more successful.
This all to prove that it’s not about ethnicity. It’s about geography creating cultural circumstances. Frustrations over migration and multicultural policy are understandable, but blaming racial differences is counterproductive to preventing these actions.
The Ranked Article
By Angelo DiTocco
There was once a time where I would constantly look back at the “glory days” of the 2010s and lament about how COVID “ruined everything,” but since then, I’ve learned to give credit to the modern age when it is due. We might not have 24-hour service anymore, but at least we can go see a movie in theaters without having to book a ticket days in advance. Most importantly for me, I can actually talk about my favorite game without the fear of being banished to the social shadow realm. The passage of time turned “Don’t bring up Minecraft around the huzz!” to “Hey, stranger, wanna see my redstone computer?” As the pop-culture-illiterate person I am, I will not be watching the latest Marvel movie, and I will not be watching the Super Bowl come February. What I will be watching, however, is the Minecraft Speedrunning Ranked Playoffs, in which the game’s best players will compete for $5000.
Minecraft is a sandbox game, meaning there is no official progression or end goal. As such, there are a myriad of different ways the game can be speedrun, from playing through custom maps to completing parkour courses to acquiring whatever arbitrary item comes to mind. However, there is a “main category” that people think of when they mention Minecraft speedrunning, which involves starting from scratch on a randomly generated world and defeating the “final boss,” the ender dragon, to reach the game’s credits.
Minecraft speedrunning itself has been quite competitive since 2020, but it was revolutionized in 2023 with a new game mode called Minecraft Speedrunning Ranked, often shortened to just “Ranked.” This is an unofficial mod that allows players to queue up and race against opponents. In this game mode, luck is standardized between the two players to keep things fair. They are not only given identical copies of the same world to play on, but one that is filtered to have key structures and resources nearby, ensuring fast-paced gameplay. The mod comes complete with an Elo rating system: The player who beats the game first gains Elo, and the loser, well, loses Elo. As I write this article, my Elo sits at a humble 1472, but top players tend to reach Elo ratings of 2500 or even more.
Just like in real sports, Ranked has its own seasons that last a couple months each. At the end of each season, the runners with the highest Elo get invited to the playoffs. This tournament is in a single elimination bracket format where each match is determined by a Best of 5 (or Best of 7 in the finals.) 16 runners enter, but only the top three get a piece of the $5000 prize pool. The playoffs are overall a great showcase of skill, and it’s always fun to watch them live. I won’t pretend that every single match is exciting—sometimes, one player is clearly better than the other, and it’s an easy 3-0. But occasionally, you get a match that is so intense and so cinematic that it has you on the edge of your seat the whole time. You’ll notice I didn’t explain exactly what happens in a Minecraft speedrun, and that’s because I plan to do it now as I walk through one of the greatest Ranked matches of all time. (Unfortunately, I’ll have to assume you have a basic knowledge of Minecraft, because otherwise, this article would
be way too long.)
Let’s set the scene: It’s the round of 16 in the Season 7 Playoffs. With it only being the first round, no one is really expecting anything crazy to happen. The only clue that we have is the matchup itself. On the left, in seed 3, we have Feinberg, and on the right, in seed 14, we have “hackingnoises,” or Hax for short. Feinberg is an all-time great known for his decision making, his extremely consistent playstyle, and his absolute dominance over another category called All Advancements. Hax, on the other hand, is a slightly newer runner known for his pure speed and mechanics. Both runners are incredibly talented, having held the #1 Elo spot in the past, and yet only one will advance to the quarterfinals. Despite Hax’s underdog status, he has managed to win two games so far, while Feinberg has only won one. This puts Hax at match point, only needing to beat Feinberg one more time to win the round.
As the countdown finishes and Game 4 officially begins, both runners spawn into their copies of the world with a ruined portal nearby. They each loot the chest next to the portal to find a rare item: a golden sword enchanted with Looting II, which multiplies enemy loot drops. Again, both runners get this, so it doesn’t tilt the match in anyone’s favor, but it does mean that we’re going to see some wicked fast gameplay. Both players stock up on blocks and food before entering the nether, which they do two seconds apart.
The two runners then “e-ray,” using their debug screens to detect entities in their field of view and find the direction of the nearest bastion. Once there, the goal is to aggro as many piglins as possible towards you, trap them in a hole, and trade gold with them to obtain ender pearls and other resources. Feinberg and Hax opt to take different routes through the bastion, and both players execute their routes nearly flawlessly. But as fate would have it, Feinberg’s route put him in a different part of the bastion that was a bit closer to the next structure: the nether fortress. This keeps him at a growing lead as he throws an ender pearl to enter the fort. The timer shows 3:33, which is absurdly fast for a Ranked match, and this is before the Looting II sword takes effect.
Feinberg must now look for the blaze spawner while killing any stray blazes he sees on the way. Naturally spawned en-
emies are one of the only luck factors that isn’t standardized by the Ranked mod. Feinberg gets decently lucky here and finds two blazes, which he kills with the Looting sword to get 5 blaze rods. He needs 6 rods in total, so he continues looking for the spawner.
Meanwhile, Hax’s pearl lands on the fortress at 3:48, a whole 15 seconds behind. But that all changes when there are not two, but three blazes right next to him. He makes quick work of these three blazes, immediately catching up to Feinberg as they both get their last blaze rods and exit the nether at the same time. It is now anyone’s game.
Back in the overworld, both runners throw an eye of ender that points towards the closest stronghold. They measure the exact angle at which the eye points and use a calculator to determine the exact coordinates of the stronghold (yeah, that’s allowed). Since 1 block in the nether corresponds to 8 blocks in the overworld, both runners are using the “double travel” strategy, which involves going back to the nether and building a second portal to reach the stronghold much quicker. Hax is a mere 3 seconds ahead of Feinberg as he goes back into the nether. What complicates things further is that the two runners were in different parts of the fortress, so their ender eyes pointed to different strongholds. This is also uncommon, and it introduces some variance as they must now navigate through different sections of nether terrain to reach the stronghold coordinates. Hax’s terrain ends up being a bit easier, and his lead on Feinberg is now bigger than ever.
But it’s in the stronghold where disaster strikes. Runners use a strategy called “preemptive” where they use their debug screens to scan for a mob spawner, which gives them the general direction of the end portal. Occasionally, though, other entities or mob spawners can interfere with the data, making the strategy unreliable. This is exactly what happens to Hax, and he can’t find the portal room! Time is ticking, with Hax frantically checking other directions of the maze, his significant lead now disappearing as Feinberg finally reaches the coordinates of his own stronghold. If Feinberg can get a clear reading of where the portal room is, he’ll take back his lead and most likely win the match.
But he doesn’t. We’re now in a rare situation where both players are running around the stronghold, checking each and every possible direction and hoping they can find the portal room before their opponent. The match is now in a state of limbo, its fate almost entirely based on who stumbles upon the portal room first.
This goes on for an agonizing minute until Hax finally finds it, filling in the portal with the ender eyes to enter the end dimension, where the final boss resides. After a rough start and a neck-and-neck late game, victory is finally within reach for him.
Being the top runner that he is, Hax is going to attempt the metaphorical slam dunk of Minecraft speedrunning: the “zero cycle” end fight strategy. This involves bridging out from one of the obsidian towers to reach the ender dragon and using beds as explosives to kill it while it’s in the air. But this strategy comes with its own variance, as one of ten different towers can generate at the location. The tower on this world happens to be the tallest and hardest, and Hax must play near-perfectly in
order to build the setup in time. He gets to the top of the tower and begins bridging out. But unfortunately, he fails to place the last few blocks in time. He bails out on the zero cycle and goes back down to the surface, where he must now rely on a random dragon perch to do the “one cycle” strategy as a backup. This can take anywhere from a few seconds to three minutes. Suddenly, Feinberg has a chance again.
45 more grueling seconds pass as Hax waits for the perch and Feinberg looks all over for the portal room. Eventually, Feinberg finds it and enters the end. If he wants to stay in the tournament, he has to hit this zero cycle. And in this moment where it matters most, he channels his inner LeBron and throws a pearl that lands perfectly at the top of the tower. Unlike Hax, he makes it to the setup in time and begins exploding beds, taking out big chunks of the dragon’s health at a time. But will it be enough?
6 beds later, Feinberg deals the last blow to the dragon and finishes the zero cycle. The dragon just needs to fly down to the central end fountain and the game is over. Hax’s dragon finally perches, but it’s too late at this point; Feinberg’s dragon is already out of health.
“Feinberg has made the advancement [Free the End]” the game chat reads.
“We’re going to a Game 5!” the commentators declare. Undeterred, Hax places bed after bed on top of the end fountain and kills the dragon to win the game.
Wait, what?
Since Hax had to wait for a perch, his dragon was already at the end fountain, so it began dying instantly, while Feinberg’s dragon had to spend a few seconds flying down to get there. In the end, Hax won by just two seconds, making the match 3-1 and putting him in the quarterfinals. (He then went on to get 3rd place in the tournament and take home $500.) Remember, this was merely the round of 16, the first round of the playoffs. What’s incredible about these tournaments is that a match like this can happen at any time.
The match I just covered was from the Season 7 Playoffs. As I write this article, we are in between Season 8 and Season 9. If any of my multi-page rambling about an 8-minute block game sounded interesting to you, you might wanna stay tuned for the next Playoffs tournament in a few months. And as I struggle to get my own account to 1500 Elo, I can only dream that one day, you’ll see me there too.
