Founding Era Blog

    I know the supreme court has a lot of power. they can say whether something was wrong or against the law or not, and what they say essentially goes. But something I didn't know about them is that they have a lot more on their plate than I had once thought before. They go through so many questions and hearings of people, but I only really thought they dealt with the most serious of cases. instead, they actually hear out everyone that brings up their case to that level of court. The videos sad they had an average of 16 years, with some of them serving almost twice as long, outlasting the presidents that appointed them as a justice by decades, which is pretty crazy to me.

    I think the most important takeaway is that the supreme court, at the end of the day, are just people doing their job to maintain order and law in our country. Sure, there may be some cases that we may think unfair or that we don't agree with, but if it is against the law or constitution, then so be it.

Something I found most surprising about the supreme court is that they are able to just stay in office for decades. I get it if they are good at their job and fair with it, but 32 years? I feel like that is a bit too long of a time for someone to sit in the supreme court.

I don't know if the videos changed my way of viewing them, but it definitely showed me some things that I didn't know about before. I typically see them as the justice of America, and I'm not sure if that will change unless something would point out otherwise.

Internet Privacy: On & Offline

    Privacy is a big thing for me. I'd like to keep my information to myself and those I trust. I get tired of receiving spam call after spam call whenever my school asks for my information, be it my email, phone number, or anything else, and after listening to the Ted Talks in class, I found out it can be much worse than just spam calls or emails. I always had the impression that the government knew almost everything, but after realizing that not only can they get access to it but people in other countries get that information? that was a bit surprising. Social media companies selling the information of millions of people just sounds illegal, but due to many loop holes in their ToS and being a private company, they can practically get away with whatever they want. And with the government using their power to, in a way, threaten these companies, they can just fork it over to the government officials just because they gave a veiled threat.

You have companies like twitter that hide what the are doing with the whole twitter files investigation going on right now. How they censor certain people because the government wants them to, or because they just don't like what you said.

You also have companies like Instagram, where it feels like they are always advertising something you just talked about with your mom or friends over the phone. It also feels like once a month they send me a message asking if i tried to sign in from Brazil or Russia and as confirmation, they send me an email. so there is clearly a leak somewhere about information.

My Five News Sources

    Obtaining information about what's goin on around us is a good habit to have in this day and age. Staying informed and educated about these topics can help people see what is going on all across the globe about political affairs from country to country, stocks about your favorite company and even how your local bakery is doing after their follower count on social media has sky rocketed. Here are the 5 news sources I use to get my information. I don't often check the news, so i'm not the most informed on many issues or current events.

Social Media

 

Social medial has been around for a while now, and there are many accounts out there that report information to the public much like any other news source. You can find a politician you like, follow them and then see what posts they have. I personally try to find people that are as unbiased as possible that look into a bunch of other news sources and report both sides as a middle man.

National Geographic

I mainly use National geographic for a lot of the environmental news and stories. I get a lot of their magazines and see what some of the photographer have been up to and some of the research that is done about the environment and also some really cool discoveries from around the world.

New York Times

I use NY Times mainly because I get their magazines pretty often and check their website every now and then. They report about a bunch of issues and current events, so they have a good variety to pick from what you want to read about.

USA Today

Like The New York Times, USA Today covers a lot of different stories, though it focuses solely on what is going on in the US. It's good for finding out what's happening in your country.

Apple News

Apple news is not one that i use often, though I hear about a lot of people who use it and are happy quite happy with it.