On the globe’s, Vic’s, and The Strand’s climates
You may ask why we are in a UFO with Rion’s cat Lucila, mascot of Vol .65. It’s ‘cause we’re blasting off into 2023 with out-of-this-world content for you, our beloved Strand readership. It’s also because we’ve decided to abandon our planet and search for life elsewhere. Can you blame us?! But on our journey beyond the stratosphere, we noticed something: Earth is a scary, beautiful place, full of kittens, and diamonds, and waterfalls, and oil spills, and inter-campus rivalries, and maybe even a sprinkle of dread.
We decided we might as well kick off the year with a bang, a Big Bang, and an exploration into the future. The Futuristic Issue is full of deep-dives into explosive, out-of-this-world topics, including tech take-downs, an exposé on subterranean matters, and the loss of the goldmine that was Z-library. The start of 2023 has been an odd mix of tumult and what feels like the calm before the storm. Record warm temperatures in Toronto following the end of 2022’s ‘storm of a decade’ give the illusion that winter arrived and passed in an instant. And yet, the sweater-weather we are all enjoying is a chilling reminder of the greater global climate crisis. On the other side of the globe, Pakistan’s city of Karachi just recorded a record breaking air-quality of 442 AQI on January 12 and it turns out “Exxon made ‘breathtakingly’ accurate predictions in the 1970s and 80s” about how bad carbon dioxide emissions would get.
Meanwhile, Victoria College has been filled with a similar sentiment of eerie calm. Most courses are fully in-person while just a year ago they were online for the first six weeks of Winter term; student laughter fills Ned’s Cafe and the Cat’s Eye, and we’re once again able to enjoy the sweet, sweet taste of a Caffiends London Fog. Yet, the Fall term wrapped up with a raucous VUSAC caucus, leaving students with more questions than answers, and even though the Winter semester is well underway, rumours are that some are still waiting for their final grades from last term…
In this issue, you will find no shortage of page-turning articles, packed to the brim with everything you need to know to kick off the Winter term. In Opinions, Charmaine Yu exposes the Trinity Times for their questionable editorial practices. Over in Science, Yuna Lee discusses what the new Avatar film tells us about climate change. In Features, your EICs and Features Editor unpack Victoria University’s investments in oil and their attempts to soothe student outrage amidst community calls for divestment.
Speaking of the future, the launch of our Fall Magazine, Fluidity, is happening on Friday, January 20, from 5-7 pm in the Cat’s Eye. By the time you’re reading this, it will have already happened, but we hope to have seen you there anyways! And if we didn’t, we hope you will stay well in the time before our next issue, out on February 7.
