Love is in the air! Or is that a gas leak? With January now over, it seems that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, leaving many people to reflect on their romantic love lives — or lack thereof. It may seem like everybody you know around this time is in a romantic relationship, despite what teen romance statistics suggest. Keep reading, and you’ll come to learn that love has not only been recognized to take many forms, but that self-love is just as worthy of celebration as romantic love, that you deserve it regardless of your romantic relationship status, and that the notion that the opposite is true is philosophically bunk.

Psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton M.D. writes in the Psychology Today article titled These Are the 7 Types of Love about the many different forms love can take — borrowing loosely from classical Greek literature. Among these is “philautia” — often described as self-love, or self-esteem.

It should be noted that while yours truly does not agree with some of the commentary present in the previously mentioned article, the framework of love presented as a complex set of various manifestations of our values, each playing a different role in our lives, still holds true. So while our more curious readers may be shocked to read statements from our sources arguing that promiscuity is a crutch on which people of little self-esteem lean on to inflate their personal value, note that we at the Bear Necessities do not endorse these biased generalizations — despite finding truth in other parts of what the article has to offer.

Burton states that self-love is, “the matrix through which we think, feel, and act, and reflects on our relation to ourselves, to others, and to the world.” It is then, I would argue, through self-love that we find confidence, self-preservation, healthy attitudes, and belief in our personal values — all vital aspects to living life to the fullest. It is for this reason then that self-love is — at least — just as worthy of celebration as romantic love.

Unfortunately, there is a commonly documented societal pressure (one felt more heavily by the AroAce community) to be a part of a romantic relationship — to the extent that the condition of not being in one may be interpreted as a negative reflection of one’s character, their value as a person, and, therefore, their deservedness of self-love.

This idea that one's deservedness of self-love is dependent on the condition that they are receiving romantic love is both incorrect and blatantly harmful. Everyone naturally starts life absent of a romantic relationship, and — because self-preservation is dependent on the existence of self-love — arguing that people must gain the previously withheld right to acquire self-love later in life, through romance, is incompatible with the agreeable moral notion that every human being is created equal, has an inherent value, and is therefore worth preserving.

Besides, it should be obvious that there are good people in the world who, for one reason or another, aren’t in any romantic relationships — even if they are pursuing romance in general — yet absolutely deserve self-love and self-respect. That is to say: someone may be alloromantic, single, and ready to mingle — but that doesn’t mean they’re an incel or a creep.

So, if you’re facing Valentine’s Day this February and you’re feeling left out, that’s okay. It’s okay to want that experience of being in a healthy relationship — but don’t let it prevent you from celebrating yourself. Be your own Valentine! It doesn’t have to be sad; it can be empowering. Get yourself a tasty treat; express yourself through your medium of choice; do something that makes you feel happy and of value — and if you feel in this moment that such a thing has to involve other people, that’s also valid. Share love and kindness with those you love platonically. We are social creatures, after all — and platonic relationships are also just as important as romantic ones. Most importantly, recognize the fact that you are worthy of self-love. Valentine’s Day is about love, so love yourself!

At the Brown School, there are two gender neutral restrooms. There is one on the first floor and one on the third floor. Before Cubs' Corner, there was only the one on the third floor and many students were pushing to get another one to make it more accessible to students who need it. Even after the first floor restroom opened, many did not know about it. Before many people knew about the one on the first floor, the third floor one was often closed.

Gender neutral restrooms are put into place to make transgender and non binary students comfortable. However, there are some people who do not understand that. Last year, many students who needed that restroom were forced to either hold it or go somewhere they did not feel comfortable, because some students decided to skip class to hang out in the gender neutral restroom and caused faculty to close it.

I, along with many others, believe that closing the gender neutral restroom is a punishment to innocent individuals. As mentioned previously, the restroom is often closed because of the bad behavior of some students. While the blame cannot be placed specifically on cisgender students, students under the trans umbrella are less likely to do something that would close off a safe space from other transgender students. 

Yes, the gender neutral restroom isn’t the only one being closed. However, many believe it’s the most important one, because if you can’t go to one of the gendered restrooms, you can still go to the gender neutral restroom. Closing it not only closes it for people who only feel comfortable there, but also for people who are in classes close to that one, like Alex or Mike’s class, and are about to be sick or just need to get to a restroom fast and don’t have time to run down the hall to the girls or boys restroom.

Closing restrooms is a common practice at many JCPS schools, but the only time the bathrooms seem to be closed at Brown are when students make a mess of the bathroom or students do something against the rules in the bathroom. Rather than directly punishing the students involved and having an investigation, they punish the innocent kids who just need to use the restroom.

Usually, schools that close bathrooms close them during classes or during passing periods to discourage students from skipping class by hiding in the restrooms, but usually it doesn’t deter them. This sentiment stands for the Brown School closing its gender neutral restroom to deter students from skipping class. It normally does not work, and just causes them to look for a different place to skip or smoke.

Amazon is a company that we all rely on to get our packages delivered to us, but many individuals have looked into the company and found how horrid the company is. It is imperative that companies that treat their employees badly should be exposed and looked into by bigger government bodies.

So why do I say that Amazon doesn’t treat their employees correctly? Well, maybe we can start with not allowing the employees of the company to unionize and making active union-busting efforts with an incident in Alabama. Workers in Besser, Alabama have surprisingly said no to unions, but this was not a decision made by the employees. Instead the employees have testified to Amazon making a coercive environment to basically force employees to vote against unions.

But why would there be unions in the first place? Good question. Maybe it's because Amazon franchises pressure their employees to meet quotas to the point where they can’t use the bathroom during their delivery runs, resorting to relieving themselves in containers one would find in a truck, such as a bottle. But some may argue that this is simply a myth, as Amazon themselves deny this. But a testimony from Chris Smalls says otherwise, saying that managers actively enforced the cruelty just so they had enough time to meet quotas, even being fired because he took a bathroom break

Where is this money generated from Amazon’s profits heading to? Well, Bezos himself. But does he pay taxes to fund the government? Allegedly, no- but he cheats the system, having his profits spread in assets so he could avoid having to pay taxes on his revenue.

Now what could we do about this? Protest, Boycott, Unionize. Do anything to fight back against the big company that treats it's employees poorly. If we press hard enough, if we fight back with enough people, we may be able to change Amazon as a company to suit the employees instead of overworking them

From Hive to Mastodon, it’s no secret that — ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October of 2022 — people have been flocking to alternatives. Among these is Cohost.org, a social media website developed and operated by a small non-profit software company called Anti Software Software Club. (No, that is not a typo.) 

Launched on June 28th, 2022 — Cohost is relatively new, 100% worker-owned, moderated entirely by humans, and already establishing itself as a unique alternative to Twitter. The platform’s extensive text formatting tools and limited HTML and CSS support allow users to spice up their posts and even create interactive art — but is it really that promising? How does Cohost stack up compared to other social media websites? That’s what this article is all about, as we here at the Bear Necessities are here to bring you our verdict on Cohost! Spoiler warning: it’s overwhelmingly positive.

From its small team of passionate developers, Cohost emerges as already vastly ahead of the curve when it comes to fostering a healthy online ecosystem with a consistently positive user experience — thanks to its unique inclusion of certain features, and the intentional exclusion of others. 

“Basically every unhinged compulsive behavior that is fostered by Twitter or Facebook is muted or vanquished entirely,” says @IsHeOughtTo, a frequent user of the website. “...what’s left [are] the posts by the people I follow in the order they made them, and when I reply to someone it’s us talking in a small room, not immediately turned into a televised debate for a worldwide audience of ghouls.”

Cohost is ad-free, and does away with the trope of algorithmically-generated content feeds adopted by most social media platforms. Instead, a Cohost user’s home feed is split into two timelines — a “latest posts” feed that only shows content by followed accounts from newest to oldest, and a “bookmarked tags” feed that shows posts with tags which a user follows.

The effect this gives to the user is a sense of proper control over what they see on Cohost. Following an account actually matters, because — without the pestering of unsolicited content recommendation — you’re more likely to actually see a followed account’s posts. This also gives more value to the tagging system when it comes to finding new content.

Speaking of — within the context of what mainstream platforms are currently capable of, the tagging system on Cohost is nothing short of innovative. Building off of Tumblr, tags are added separately from the posts themselves — preventing distraction from what’s actually being said or shown, and therefore allowing the ecosystem to actually incentivize using the tagging system (unlike on Twitter or Instagram). 

In addition to regular tags, Cohost also allows the user to add special types of tags called content warnings, which hide the post behind a click-through. Users can specify what content warnings they wish to see through by default — including the built-in “18+” content warning for adult content, if said user is 18 or above. Users can also specify which vanilla tags they wish to be treated as content warnings. This intricate system — including parts of it we don’t have time to go over — adds to this sense of security, safety, and control that one has when it comes to what content they see on the platform.

There are some blind spots in Cohost’s current system, however. It can occasionally be difficult to find new content, and the comparatively small size of Cohost’s ecosystem limits the platform’s ability to act as a way of spreading news — one of the few niches that Twitter has arguably filled well. Some community-invented tags have emerged in response to these shortcomings, including “#news” and “#The Cohost Global Feed.” Integrating these tags in an official capacity, similar to what was done with the 18+ tag, could help mitigate or fix these issues. Adding an additional news-focused home feed could also do some good.

Anti Software Software Club states that they are aware of these issues, and are constantly looking into ways to improve the already-promising platform. Whatever solutions they come up with, it will be interesting to see where Cohost goes from here.

One of the often overlooked parts of the Brown School environment is the eSports team. Most don’t even know anything about it because it is mentioned so infrequently. With eSports teams being on the rise, you would expect this team in particular to have some sort of investment put into it. But unfortunately, you would be incorrect. The Brown eSports team is so restricted that it has formed more into a gaming club after school than an actual eSports team. Now why do I say this? Well a myriad of reasons, mostly involving the restrictions that JCPS imposes on electronic use in the first place.

Starting off, every eSports team does need a sponsor to actually be a team rather than a group of people just playing video games. Our eSports team sponsor, PlayVS, already has a limiting roster of games, the most notable being Super Smash Bros Ultimate and League of Legends. We have a ton of players who would play Smash, which would give us a lot of potentially great players in the Smash Brothers scene, at least in JCPS. Though there is another problem with this ambition.

According to our eSports coach Andrew Boling Technical limitations from JCPS IT prevent us from even using PlayVS’ website as it is NOT approved software for use, and we can’t play any game from Nintendo due to the roadblock of Nintendo Switches, which I will admit is practical. It does feel the slightest bit infuriating, as it feels as if the JCPS IT doesn’t want to even begin tackling the problem that is our limitations. 

But why is this a problem? It cuts off many potentially amazing players from actually competing in a tournament, students such as Benjamin Ingram a champion material in the Smash Brothers scene, yet they are held back because of the restrictions I have distinctly covered. And if there is only one eSports team that fills in a small niche, I must ask: Why have eSports in the first place?

In conclusion, though we can’t change how the JCPS firewall works, we can find other sources to play competitively, such as Bellarmine University, which is hosting an eSports event through March 17th-19th. If enough support comes through for our eSports players, the eSports team could become more of a team then a club.