Story by: Jin Wilson. An integral part of the holiday season for some is the presence of Santa in the plaza of your favorite shopping mall. Whether it be a volunteer Santa collecting money for animal shelters and other charities, or one listening to a kid's wishes, their influence is integral to the spirit of Christmas. In the midst of this chaotic holiday season, an arising employment problem has impacted these jolly, bearded bundles of joy. It may be due to the worker's movement, where underpaid or underappreciated workers have gone on strike for better conditions, or maybe the ongoing pandemic, but nevertheless the world is in dire need of Santa. They bring Christmas spirit, but the role that Mall Santas play in the preservation of innocence in children is even more integral.

The way kids are raised is critical to the way their personality develops. The innocence kids carry with them throughout their youth influences the outlook they have towards the outside world. Shattering the innocence they have early on can make them jaded and pessimistic towards the world around them. This might lead to crippling the early joys that children could be experiencing. Though it may be holding the truth back, giving children the time to enjoy a world unfettered by reality is more important. A major part of that innocence is the idea of things like the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus being around. If suddenly all traces of Santa or the Easter Bunny disappeared without a trace, kids around the world would be heartbroken, and the revelation of these characters that they all looked forward to being a figment of the mind would absolutely ruin their outlook on imagination, not to mention a significant dip in that contagious Christmas spirit that spreads so easily.

To find a more general consensus, I conducted a poll with the AAHS student body about their experiences with Santa, how they felt seeing him, and what age they were told the truth. From the results I gathered from 35 participants, 80.6% had their picture taken as a kid, but the reactions the responders had were diverse to say the least. Most reactions were positive, but some felt scared or intimidated by him, and some cried. The average age at the time of the truth being unveiled is 9-10 years old, but there were outliers like 6, and a couple jokesters who said "What? Santa's real." Overall, the general consensus was that Santa was a big influence on kids in at the very least our school.

The way the world is viewed is very dependent on the experiences you had as a child. Whether it be your home life, your friends, or even such a small thing as believing in Santa, these experiences can make or break your viewpoints. To kids, Santa is just as real as you or me, and he not only brings joy to all that see him, but he also keeps the idea of magic alive. The absence of these Mall Santas may not seem like a big deal, but to many kids, the fact that a red-suited jolly old man won't be there to hear their deepest desires is a sure-fire way to dampen that ever-so-special Christmas spirit, and by extension, the innocence that makes youth so wonderfully unique.

Story by: Jin Wilson. In July of 2021, a power plant opened near Seneca Lake. The company manning the plant's operation is Greenidge Generation, LLC, and the plant's owner is an equity firm called Atlas Holdings. Nothing too big of a deal, right? Power plants open all the time, and extra power is a good thing. In this case, however, this power goes not to the people, but to a computer server mining digital currency. Digital currency (often known as cryptocurrency) and other subcategories of the digital economy push the average power usage through the roof. But hold on: what exactly is cryptocurrency? How is it “mined”? And how exactly does this affect the environment if it’s all happening online?

What is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is a form of digital currency, like Bitcoin, Dogecoin or Ethereum, derived from various online methods, one being "mining." Mining is when people use expensive and powerful computers to decrypt transactions on a blockchain. A blockchain is a series of internet transaction ledgers that record crypto transfers. As people transfer cryptocurrency, the transaction needs to be decrypted to be verified to the person receiving the transfer. A person decrypts a block (or ledger) using programs that are specifically made for this type of decryption. When a computer finishes a decryption on the chain for a transaction to be verified by the blockchain, they are paid in cryptocurrency, which they can then use to transfer for goods, and the cycle continues. Mining is also used to create new forms of cryptocurrency. Each computer that is programmed for decryption is referred to as a node, and nodes are stationed all around the world. Around 8,000 of these nodes are stationed in the Greenidge Power Plant. Usually nodes are singular, and are stationed at people's houses. These nodes are usually mining around the clock.

As for how these cryptocurrencies are priced in terms of physical currency, it comes down to the tried and true concept of supply and demand. As the demand for these cryptocurrencies rises, the price for them rises as well, since the supply decreases in availability. A cryptocurrency might start out as being worth pocket change, but as more people buy it, the price per unit will rise, eventually to the point where instead of a cent, it's a full paycheck's worth. It's comparable to the stock market, where the price of the item relies completely on the demand for the item. In reality, cryptocurrency has the same concept of value as paper money. The paper is actually worth nothing, but we assign an intangible value to it, and when that value is nationally accepted, the paper is now worth that value. However, the difference between the dollar and a payment of cryptocurrency is that the dollar's value is assigned by the government, and is unwavering. While cryptocurrency constantly wavers, its value can be influenced by anything, from a scandal to a discovery, to simply a celebrity saying they don't like it.

How does this affect the Environment?

This can’t have a notable impact on the environment, right? Wrong. With this rise of cryptocurrencies, power usage is reaching record levels. Along with this rise comes concerns for the environment. Regarding our local area, the power plant is fueled by natural gas and produces warm water. The disposal of warm water into Seneca Lake can change the climate of the lake, potentially harming the local fish and fauna. It is also pumping carbon dioxide into the surrounding area, which produces a more acidic rain, and could degrade the farms and their crops that are close to the plant. The University of Cambridge predicts that cryptomining takes up around 114.47 TWh (Terawatt hours) of power a year, which is about 38 TWh more than the entirety of Chile in 2020. If this power usage continues to increase, our already looming environmental disaster point will be sooner than anticipated.

What's an expert's view on the subject?

I asked my father, Christopher Wilson, an HPC Technologist at Corning Research and Development Inc. what he thought about Cryptocurrency and the effects it has. He thought that "the idea of Crypto was interesting," but he was unhappy with the effects it's causing to the environment. Wilson believed that it would eventually grow to a climactic point, then crumble because it rose too high. He then remarked that after the fall, maybe a single unified and stable currency could rise from the shambles. He expressed distinct distaste about the power plant, saying that "it's so close to where we live," and that "everything around the power plant could suffer because of the emissions." On the topic of power usage, he said that "There's a couple methods around, but until quantum computing becomes widespread, there's not much that will drastically cut power cost." Quantum computing is its own rabbit hole, but one major thing it's great at is decryption, which would make the normally hours-long process of decryption take a fraction of a second.

Wilson’s final word on crypto was that "Investing isn't a good idea nowadays, as a lot of the big currencies have stabilized." This means that the prices of most major cryptos have plateaued, and that investing wouldn't yield much net profit at this point.

If cryptocurrency is to continue to be a viable digital economy, the methods of mining must become far less costly on our environment. At its current rate, the environmental damage caused by cryptomining will continue growing in severity until something is done. Who would've thought something fully digital could potentially cause such a large impact on the physical world?

Story by: Jin Wilson. As of recently, there seems to be a resurgence of fat 80's icons on the cinema screen. Both the iconic Italian plumber Mario and the world's most famous fat cat Garfield are both getting fully animated films in 2022. Mario is a universally popular and recurring video game character, as memorable as the likes of Mickey Mouse and Homer Simpson, so him getting a new movie was inevitable, but Garfield? The last Garfield movie was in 2006, and it was a pseudo-animated live-action movie with lower than average reviews with aIMDb rating of 5.0/10, and the last piece of Garfield media ended in 2016, with The Garfield Show, which received slightly higher ratings, getting a 5.5/10. One has to ask why the cat is back so suddenly on the big screen, and I believe I have the answer. The real reason behind the resurgence of the orange feline is not nostalgia or popularity, but ironic enjoyment online.

Online humor is a volatile and consistently changing form. The most recent age of online humor is referred to as "post-ironic", which means things you once thought were bad become genuinely good and funny to you. Garfield has become one of the main benefactors of this age, surpassing his popularity in the past. Online communities like r/imsorryjon, a subreddit with over 750k members dedicated to the creation of disturbing drawings mainly based on Garfield, and r/garfieldminusgarfield, based on the idea of removing Garfield from the various comic strips and portraying Jon, Garfield's owner, as crazy. These communities have popped up recently, with r/imsorryjon being created in 2018. These communities are a small part of Garfield's growing fanbase, with many more communities on the rise on sites like Twitter and Instagram.

I consulted local Garfield enthusiast Maria Graziano, senior, about when she got into Garfield and why she likes it. Graziano said that she didn't enjoy it as a kid, but as she grew older, she "looked back at the dry humor and liked it." She remarked that her love of Garfield started ironically, with memes he was featured in, but then she began to relate to him, stating that "the idea of this disgruntled cat surrounded by nightmare-inducing amounts of loud and peppy characters that drive him insane is relatable." Graziano owns a notable amount of Garfield merchandise: 2 shirts, 2 plush animals, 2 collection books of the Garfield comics, and a Garfield figurine. She says that her favorite item is a plush with a drawstring that when pulled can say 2 different phrases, but due to its age, the phrases will glitch together sometimes. She believes that the cat's popularity came from ironic relatability to the teenagers of today. As a closing remark, she expressed gratitude at being chosen for the interview, and said that "the lasagna cat really speaks to me deeper than others may be able to fathom."

Garfield is a comic strip that wasn't popular when it came out, it came and hung around, without receiving any limelight, but through it all this cat has been an everlasting icon of cynical enjoyment. This movie could be exactly what the series needs to be brought into the new generation, and perhaps finally get a solid grasp on the stage. Even if it took a lot longer than expected, with many mishaps and a couple miserable movies, I'm personally glad that the rotund feline finally got his time to shine.