Here are my predictions for the 2024 season, with each team’s 2023 record in parentheses. 10. Tampa Bay Rays (99—63)The Rays are tough to place. They’re coming off a fantastic regular season but will likely be missing their two best players — shortstop Wander Franco for legal issues and pitcher Shane McClanahan for Tommy John surgery — in 2024.
Honorable Mentions:Austin Riley, 3B, Braves; Francisco Lindor, SS, Mets; Julio Rodríguez, CF, Mariners10. Matt Olson, 1B, Atlanta BravesOlson has been one of the game’s best sluggers for the past several seasons. Since 2021, he has 127 homers and 353 RBIs with a .902 OPS, and he’s missed only six games in that span.
Typically, I structure my munching around a specific theme or location. However, for this edition, I’m relaying a valuable life lesson — your plan may not always pan out the way you expect, kids. In the iconic words of Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” And so, due to my meal planning failures, I present a menagerie of munching.
So, maybe hip-hop is dying? Currently, out of the four major streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music, Apple Music is the only platform with hip-hop/rap as the top genre. On the remaining three platforms, coinciding with the leading global music genres, pop music is the No. 1 genre.
On March 7, the International Relations Program at Tufts hosted an intimate screening of the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol.” The film reveals a unique first-person perspective of the siege of a Ukrainian port city of almost 500,000 residents by the Russian army in the spring of 2022. Director Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and producer Vasilisa Stepanenko were the last remaining journalists who stayed in the area during the initial stages of the full-scale invasion and were thus able to capture the war crimes committed by the Russians in Ukraine.
E. Lockhart’s “We Were Liars” holds a special place in my heart. I’m in awe of the way Lockhart pushes the bounds of typical fiction writing. She mixes in unique line breaks so that her book sometimes reads like a poem. She also creates incredible metaphors, like the witch in the first novel, that are so vivid, they have stuck with me to this day. I haven’t reread the book in over two years and I still think about it all the time.
This week’s focus is on the Hart Memorial Trophy, which is awarded to the league’s most valuable player. The MVP is the player who is determined to be the most important to their team’s success through outstanding on-ice performance.
In a post-COVID-19 fitness era, in-person workout classes have regained popularity and traction, especially among students and 20-somethings. These energetic group workouts and sessions foster a greater sense of community through movement and accountability, motivating the attendee to perform their best. From classics like SoulCycle to newer options like The Energy Barre, the ever-growing fitness empire in the Boston area has options for everyone.
Throughout my tenure at Tufts, I’ve learned that there are three constants of college: work, tiredness and sickness. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t been at least one of those constants. Even as I write this article, I am stressed from midterms, tired from the Tufts gardeners who have decided that 7 a.m. on a Monday morning is the best time to mow the lawn and sick from my third iteration of the freshman plague. Nonetheless, no matter how sick or tired I — or anyone at Tufts — may be, the continual stream of work never ends until the semester does. And, of course, this persistent stream of work also inherently disregards our genetic desire to dilly-dally. In turn, it forces us to lock in. Tufts, and schools in general, deny us of our innate trait of monkeying about and pressurizes us to get in line.
I spent my Saturday afternoon baking three batches of chocolate chip cookies, totaling 42 little treats that I could bring to the CS TA soccer game (yes, an entire six-team soccer league consisting exclusively of teaching assistants for the Tufts Computer Science Department). I’ve (mentally) committed to bringing cookies to make up for my lack of skill on the field.
For today’s column, I performed what I am calling a “Green Line Extension World Tour” on my way to visit Union Square station. In my travels, I passed through all sixGLX stations plus Lechmere. For those interested in visiting Union Square, you can take the Green Line from the Medford/Tufts station to Lechmere and then transfer to an outbound Green Line D.
If you came across Mira Nair’s modestly wholesome Instagram account in this age of social media, you’d be surprised to learn about the pathbreaking director behind the account “pagliji,” literally meaning ‘crazy lady’. Her bio reads “film and theater director,” but her filmography? That is dreams, love, madness and more.
A classic divide among Tufts students is the uphill vs. downhill debate. Students who hail from dorms uphill boast a convenient location to the Academic Quad, proximity to the Green Line and close access to friends who are fellow ‘uphill-ers.’ Downhill residents, on the other hand, have easy access to the larger (and some would argue better) dining hall that is Dewick, are close to the Campus Center and have a short walk to Davis Square. What about the students who are not truly uphill or downhill residents, though? To see what it’s all about, I brought my kitchen supplies to The Court at Professors Row (specifically, 93 Professors Row) to cook up an easy yet delicious evening snack: pizza bagels.
Last weekend was the second weekend I spent in Rabat since the beginning of the semester. My host mom decided to commemorate the special occasion by having a quintessential Moroccan Saturday: We went first to the Souk Sebt, a massive flea market about an hour away from Rabat; then we went to a traditional Moroccan hammam, a communal bathhouse prominent in the Muslim world; then, of course, we had an enormous Moroccan dinner.
American politicians often lambast so-called shadow governments and praise the necessity of accountability in politics. Yet, what if I were to tell you that there is a parallel system in the U.S. primarily supported by the rich and powerful, with little transparency and actively funded by the U.S. ...
This week’s focus is on the Jim Gregory Award, which is awarded to the best general manager of the season. Each year, one general manager is honored as the best in assembling their team for that season.
If New York is the city that never sleeps, Washington, D.C. is the city that always eats.
Hip-hop is dying. Well, ‘traditional’ or ‘real’ hip-hop — at least, to many hip-hop critics, media outlets and fans — is dying. Yet, Killer Mike won the 2024 Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song over artists like Travis Scott and Metro Boomin, pioneers of melodic, modern trap rap.
It’s officially conference tournament time. On Monday, the Athletic Sun Conference already had their first-round matchups. For the next two weeks, we’ll have a plethora of great games to watch to get us ready for the Big Dance. The ASC can be almost as unpredictable as March Madness, but here are my best attempts at who will be getting an automatic bid from the Power 6 conferences.
Touring Europe during your time abroad and craving an affordable meal away from tourist traps? Here are two sandwich shops that I still think about. Thank me later.
