Mrs. Ho's 11th Grade AP Lang 2022-2023

  Whether you use Spotify or Apple Music, you have to admit Spotify is better. I remember my dad mentioning ‘The Playlist,’ a show about Spotify’s origins. I haven’t quite had a chance to watch it, but we’ve discussed how revolutionary Spotify was as a company.  It was founded on- as I was writing this, I freaked out, apparently, Spotify is one day older than me- April 23rd, 2006 , and launched later in 2008. At this time, you would typically have to buy physical copies of an album like CDs, or you could pirate it. Pirating grew as access to the internet increased, but download time was lengthy, and it wasn’t easy to find the song you were looking for.      The first “streaming” service was Napster, but it also required you to download the song with the possibility of viruses. Napster was problematic because not all songs uploaded were licensed; it took possible money from artists and their record companies.  Daniel Ek worked with Martin Lorentzon to crea...

In this blog, I am discussing some new or important issues plaguing the game.  Apex Legends has had many issues, most of which I would attribute to the company owning the development studio (Respawn Entertainment), EA or Electronic Arts. As I stated in my first blog on Apex, EA is notorious for being greedy regarding microtransactions, and unfortunately, it applies to Apex. Although Apex Legends's situation is not as bad as some other games, it is far from perfect. Many can argue that the free game abuses its high prices and does not reinvest enough into improving the game. I understand that companies need profit, but for a game that made $2 billion in revenue since launch and a projected $1 billion a year for future years, the whole system is running with absurdly little money reinvested.  The tournaments are partly funded by specific (tournament-related) in-game purchases, which is done in many games, but for apex, a large amount of the prize is derived from these specific p...

During this past Thanksgiving break, my family and I went on a trip up to Orlando to spend some time together. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was when I and my brother went to the Orlando Magic game. On the 25th of November, the Magic were set to play the Philadelphia 76ers, and although the outcome was not what we were hoping for, it was still a thrilling game to watch. We started the night by arriving at the arena about half an hour before the game began because we knew that there would be a lot of traffic and it would be hard to get into the arena. The traffic was so bad that my parents ended up dropping us off 2 blocks away from the arena and we ended up walking the rest of the way. Once we entered the arena, I was surprised at how nice and clean everything was and how pleasant the scenery was. We walked to our seats and were impressed by how close the seats were to the court, even though we bought the tickets for cheap and at the last minute. They had the entertai...

  If you asked me 2 years ago where I would think I would be in life now, my answer would definitely be far from what it became. During the terrible covid year of 2020, my parents began having talks about leaving Canada. They both were truly tired of the lifestyle we had in Toronto and wanted a change. It was in the summer of 2021 when I found out that my parents decided to officially move to Florida. During my first reaction, I was honestly excited. Regardless of the fact that I was pretty happy with where my life was during my time in Toronto, the idea of a complete reset sounded amazing. However, I did not realize that a complete “reset,” is a lot harder than it seems and that there are a lot of obstacles that come with making the life-changing decision of moving countries. The biggest hardship that came with leaving was being far from my family, specifically my grandparents and cousins. I was fortunate enough to have one of my grandfathers come live here with us, but everyone e...

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. It's a time to spend quality time with family and friends. It's always a joy to have extra days off from school to relax, hang out with family, and eat a lot of food. This year, my brother Noah flew down from school in Philadelphia. He also had the week off, so neither of us was busy. Spending time with him was nice, as I don't see him often since he goes to school so far away.  Usually, we spend Thanksgiving morning preparing the house to be clean for our grandparents to come over. We also usually cook a lot of food, and my brother and I are responsible for baking a few desserts. This year, however, was not a typical one. My grandparents could not come to Florida this year, so we got a little lazy and decided to spend the day at the beach instead. After some discussion, we also realized that nobody was really excited about the turkey anyway, so we decided to have a barbecue. My mother decided that maybe we should at lea...

  Monkey See, Monkey Do (I Mean That Literally)           There are three main stages to memorization: Encoding, storage, and retrieval.          No monkeys yet, but stay with me here.           When you learn something, the information enters your brain at the encoding stage. It's stored with the most barebones effort it can get away with until it's either lost as short term or retained as long term. If you focus more on it, whether on purpose or by chance, it enters your memory storage. Now you've officially learned something in theory. Applying it practically is the final stage: retrieval, which is self-explanatory. You've retrieved the process you learned, and can now apply it.          This is the simplest explanation for memory I can give without going into variants with observational learning and the like. Be grateful that I didn't try to lure you in with...

            Movies such as Interstellar, Bladerunner 2049, and American Psycho are usually the types of films I enjoy watching. However, one aspect of screenplay that really motivates me to watch a certain movie is the cinematography and world-building. Director Wes Anderson is famous for his unusual take on these two aspects of film which immediately drew me to his 2012 movie: Moonrise Kingdom.  Moonrise Kingdom premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received critical acclaim for its visual symmetry, warm color palette, and themes such as young love, to name a few. The movie follows two 13-year-old kids, Sam Shakusky and Suzzy Bishop, who feel alienated from society as they are a bit different from the other children. As they meet at the town play, they become pen pals and learn about each other's lives and grow to love each other. A year later, they make a secret pact to reunite and run away together which sends the town into chaos as ev...

    My Thanksgiving was far  from boring. In fact, it was a mix of awkward, alarming, and hilarious. And, of course, delicious! My dad, stepmom, and sister along with our cousins ate at the Thanksgiving dinner served by our neighborhood clubhouse. I sat next to my favorite cousin Ella, who is a hilarious seven year old. I was immensely enjoying my stuffing (my favorite Thanksgiving food), when a man at another table began to have a heart attack! We watched in alarm as the man was carried away by the ambulance. While this was going on, my family was also dealing with some awkward drama, which started when my cousin's fiance whispered right before the family photo, "Are you sure I should be in the photo? What if things don't work out?" This definitely caused tension between them and others the rest of the night, but Ella and I decided to remove ourselves from the drama and enjoy a wonderful meal of turkey and pumpkin pie. My stepmom, Dayana, chose to be unproblematic a...

  A Great Thriller It had been a while since I watched a movie, so this past weekend, with  my brothers, I decided to watch one. I had no plans of watching a movie, but while scrolling through tiktok, I saw a clip from a movie that looked amazing. I realized I had heard of the movie before but I couldn’t remember if I had seen it before. Nonetheless, I told my brothers we would watch it later. The name of the movie is Captain Phillips. I’m sure several of you have heard of it before and maybe have watched this movie. The movie was released in 2013 and takes place on a US containership that is sailing towards another country. On this route over sea, the ship must pass through the Somali coast. I'm sure most of you have heard about Somali pirates and can imagine how the movie will play out. One of my favorite things about action movies like these is that they are pretty often based on true stories. After finishing the movies, I love looking up and reading into the real story. ...

 Both Sides of a Rusted Coin Instead of writing about one of my favorite video games, hobbies, or movies, I decided to write about something a little closer to home this week. Literally. For the last week, I promised myself that I would sit down and write something meaningful. I landed on writing about my mom’s and dad’s houses and how living in two different houses impacted me growing up. I’m not going to dump a bunch of trauma in this blog because as much as I’d love to write every single essay about the abuse I went through as a kid, it’s just not the type of cheery stuff you put in a blog post for high-schoolers to read. (Usually. If you’re reading some weird screwed-up teen trauma drama blog, in which case, please send it to me.) Instead of trauma-dumping, I’m going to talk about my childhood, which might sound synonymous to those who know me, but it’s not; shut up. My mom’s house has always been in a gated community, and it’s been a safe environment for me as I grew up. My mo...

Holden Leder Week 10 A Weekend in the Cayman Islands Over this past weekend for Thanksgiving break, my family decided to take a short vacation to the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands are a set of small islands south of Cuba and roughly an hour flight from Miami, the perfect and most time efficent overseas vacation. On the first day there, my sister and I unfortunately had to take the first afternoon to do homework: me working on SAT practice for this upcoming Saturday and my sister getting ready to graduate college. The next day, Saturday, was much more eventful. My dad and I had the opportunity to take a helicopter tour of the islands which was awesome. We flew over the water to where many stingrays gathered at Sting Ray City, then went "Helicopter Surfing." For those who don't know what that is, the pilot dove the helicopter downwards forcing everyone to float in their seat for a few heartracing moments, then return to normal. I know understand why my mom and sister d...

Would you feel comfortable traveling to a country that is openly arresting, assaulting, and discriminating against Jewish people? Would you feel comfortable traveling to that country even if they said you are welcome as long as you do not display the fact that you are Jewish? Would you want to support any event happening in that country? Last week Rebecca wrote about the World Cup and some controversies towards the games being held in Qatar. I’m going to specifically focus on Qatar's stance on LGBTQ+ rights and how that affects the World Cup. First, let’s start with some background. Qatar has many criminalizing laws towards LGBTQ+ in place, specifically towards gay men. They include the prohibition of sex between two adult men or women which is punishable for up to 7 years in prison , the execution of married Muslim men found engaging in sex, and the criminalization of men seducing other men to commit ‘immoral actions’. In October, the Human Rights Watch reported that LGBTQ peop...

  Barbie and Gentrification          This title may seem a little unbalanced to you at first, but I promise it's related. I know "Barbie" is two syllables and "gentrification" is five, so if you put their word weights on a scale it would end up horrendously uneven. I know you're thinking that. If you aren't, you're definitely at least considering it now that I said something, but I swear that these topics are connected.          A bit ago , I watched Barbie: Princess Charm School with my little brother. The commoner protagonist, calling herself Blair Willows even though we all know she's actually just Barbie, gets a scholarship to —you guessed it —a school that trains princesses into their poised and precise Mattel molds. It's a very entertaining movie overall, and if you ignore the mildly racist stereotyping, Camp Rock talent show-esque music, and that one British woman that only exists to give speeches in a special acc...

       I love Thanksgiving for one reason: the amazing food. Yes, there's also giving thanks and all that, but let's admit, the food is the best part. Every Thanksgiving I eat until I'm full, and then I eat some more. I'm very much looking forward to eating all the foods only accessible on this day that comes only once a year. This is my rating of Thanksgiving foods from least great to greatest. 1. Cranberry Sauce I don't know why people like cranberry sauce so much??? I try it every year to give it another chance and every time I come to the same conclusion: cranberry sauce is just bad. 2. Turkey I know, know, how could the most popular item on the Thanksgiving table be my least favorite? Well, I think turkey is totally overhyped. First of all, it's much dryer compared to other meats such as chicken or brisket. Second of all, turkey just tastes pretty bland in my opinion. Overall, turkey is mid. However, I still love a good turkey, gravy, and stuffing combo.  3...

Making a spin-off series work is difficult in and of itself, but when it is the spin-off of probably the greatest TV series of our generation, creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould had set themselves nearly impossible criteria to match. However, with “Breaking Bad” being my favorite TV show of all time, my expectations for “Better Call Saul” were still through the roof. Saul Goodman had one of the most interesting personalities in Breaking Bad, and going into his past to see how he became the person he is had me extremely excited. The show met every one of those expectations, and if anything surpassed them. It was made with absolute perfection and left me wondering if Breaking Bad was still my favorite show. Each season just got better and better, showing the development of Jimmy McGill to becoming the infamous Saul Goodman. Jimmy became a lawyer because he aspired to be like his brother, Chuck McGill. Chuck was a very educated man and an extremely successful lawyer, holding his own ...

This past weekend I took a trip to Boston to celebrate and surprise my grandfather for his 85th birthday. My parents and I took a super early morning flight on Friday, which allowed us to arrive in Boston by noon. Once we landed in Boston, we drove straight to my grandparents' apartment and spent the whole day with them until we had to leave and pick up my brother. My brother, Noah, arrived late in Boston from his train ride from Philadelphia. After picking him up, we drove to my uncle's house, where we stayed for the weekend. As soon as we got home we went straight to sleep because we were all tired from traveling. The next day was my grandfather's birthday! We had invited two of his best friends, whom he has known his whole life, to surprise him at the birthday brunch. When my grandma and grandpa walked into my uncle's house for brunch, he was so surprised and happy to see his family and friends together. We spent the whole day together at my uncle's house. Having...

Earlier today, both the Junior Varsity and Varsity Donna Klein Eagles faced off against Trinity Christian Academy and both sought out the victory. For the JV team, this was their season opener, and this is what all their practices have been leading up to thus far. The game started well for the Eagles. They were able to keep a steady lead throughout the first half, while also staying consistent with the number of rebounds and points they were scoring, in addition to limiting the number of turnovers. By the end of the first half, they gained a hefty 20-point lead. Once the second half started, their fatigue was quite obvious. They were not scoring as many points as they previously had and were not hustling back on defense or for the rebounds. Luckily, they were still able to play well enough to come out victorious, and secure their first win of the 2022-2023 season. Following this victory, the Varsity team aimed to achieve the same goal as the JV team accomplished. To support the Var...

I am currently at the Palm Beach International Airport waiting to board my delayed flight to Philadelphia. I love paying attention to the people around me and thinking about who they are and what their life is like. There's a girl sitting across from me, probably in her late teens or early twenties. She is wearing the classic teen girl airport fit: sweatpants, a sweatshirt, socks, and slides. She is, as most teenagers are, intensely focused on her phone, an iPhone 12 with a lavender phone case, which lays in her right hand. The phone is most likely on Instagram based on her swiping ratio. A Grande Starbucks drink fills her left hand; it’s one of those strawberry pink, solely aesthetic drinks. She has a light purple manicure and slightly too obvious fake eyelashes. I assume she is traveling alone, possibly a college student visiting her family for Thanksgiving.  An older couple is sitting next to her, maybe around their late 70s or early 80s, definitely Jews. They are splitting what...

Those who are my friends or have read my last two blog posts have probably heard me say “Apex Legends”. This blog post is meant to expand on the information and opinions presented in the last one. In the last blog post, I mentioned some of the battle pass’s positive attributes and have another to add. Unlike Overwatch 2, Apex Legends has actively worked to make completing it easier by redesigning several challenges that used to be dependent on a gamemode that was largely unplayed for various reasons. Good job Apex! I also mentioned the amazing lore of apex legends and in this blog post, I plan on explaining as many of my favorite (but oversimplified) bits as I can fit (I love so much of it)!  Apex legends has amazing lore that has been expanded upon for years. In my last blog post, I mentioned it occurred in the same story universe as Titanfall and many characters or organizations make a reappearance through name or relation to the characters of Apex: Characters such as Kuben...

  I am always looking for new movies to watch. Animated, horror, dramas, rom-coms, you name it.  Today, I delved into the realm of Tubi rom-coms. Tubi is a free streaming service, albeit, with ads, that has a surprising range of content. Once my brother and I saw the title “Oy Vey, My Son is Gay,” we knew we had to watch it. This movie has to be one of the best worst movies I have had the privilege of watching.  The movie's plot seems simple, but the more you think about it, the weirder it gets. The first challenge of the movie is the aforementioned son referenced in the title, Nelson Hirsch, attempting to come out to his parents. A full 30 minutes were dedicated to Nelson and his parents' misunderstanding and talking circles around each other. Finally, Nelson builds the courage to come out in the middle of his cousin’s wedding ceremony. As the movie's plot finally progresses, we see that this movie is not actually about Nelson Hirsch but his parents. Nelson barely even...

  A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about soccer and mentioned the World Cup. If you haven’t been paying attention or seen my last blog, this year, it is controversially being hosted by Qatar.  The kick-off game was between Qatar and Ecuador, with a 2-0 win going to Ecuador. The most shocking game personally was Argentina’s loss against Saudi Arabia. Argentina, Brazil, Germany, and Italy are known to be some of the best teams; this year, Germany qualified in 11th place, and Italy didn’t even qualify.  In 2009, Qatar and four other countries bid to host the world cup; in 2010,  FIFA chose Qatar  to be the 2022 host. The win by Qatar alone caused doubts in FIFA with accusations of corruption.  Once it was decided, Qatar brought in foreign workers to build the stadiums, leading to suspected thousands of deaths caused by heatstroke and improper work conditions. This number is misleading, and more information can be found here . Al Bayt (“the House”) Stadium...