Author Archives: Frankly Speaking

A Better Voting Alternative

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“Vote for only one.” It’s written on most ballots, on most races, between the name of the race and the names of the candidates. But why is a ballot with multiple filled bubbles void? And what is this “excellence” thing people do at Olin?

To start, the system used by the U.S. and most other national governments is plurality voting, a.k.a. “first-past-the-post”. In this nearly ubiquitous winner-take-all electoral system, each person gets one vote, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Critics of plurality cite various negative mathematical and historical consequences of elections carried out in this fashion and generally hold up instant-runoff voting, a.k.a. “transferable voting”, as a fairer single-winner electoral system that is more conducive to healthy democracy—“the alternative vote”.

But is instant-runoff really better than plurality? Well, yes. But is instant-runoff really the best alternative to plurality? By most metrics, not really no.

Despite the fact that instant-runoff receives by far the most attention and discussion of all alternative electoral systems, there are numerous systems that are far better suited to choose our elected officials than either plurality or instant-runoff. 

To aid in comparisons, let us distance ourselves from real politics and consider a vote for the new state capital of Texas. The five candidates are Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. In this scenario, geographical location is an analogue for political alignment. That is, voters, distributed according to the real population distribution of Texas, will vote for the cities that are physically closest to them.

Figure 0. The map of Texas that will serve as the basis of this discussion.

It’s not immediately clear from looking at it which city is best to lead, so let’s hold an election.

With plurality, it’s straightforward. 23% of Texans vote for Dallas, 17% for Fort Worth, 23% for San Antonio, 10% for Austin, and 28% for Houston. Houston has the most votes, so it wins!

But wait. Is Houston really the best choice here? I mean, for one thing, 72% of Texans voted against it, among them the nontrivial western vote that sees this as the worst option.

For another, Dallas and Fort Worth are practically one city, and if they ran together, their combined voter base would be 40% of the population, enough to handily beat out Houston. 

This is the spoiler effect: when two similar candidates run separately in a plurality election, split the vote, and lose where either of them could have won. The spoiler effect is the most commonly-cited flaw of plurality voting, and there are two common Band-Aid® solutions to it.

In the U.S., we have primaries. That means that similar candidates organize into parties, which then each choose a single nominee to run on behalf of all of them. In our example, Dallas and Fort Worth can team up as a single Northern Party. Taking the western vote, Fort Worth wins the nomination and goes on to the final.

Figure 1. The hypothetical party line with which our primaries operate.

However, in practice (as you may have noticed), such systems typically come to be dominated by exactly two parties. San Antonio, Austin, and Houston also team up as an opposing Southern Party. The South primary nominates Houston by the same pluralistic mechanisms as before. Then, Houston collects a 52–48% lead over Dallas and wins again.

This is kind of an improvement. At least now that we’ve seen the direct showdown between Fort Worth and Houston, we know why Dallas–Fort Worth didn’t win: given the choice between them and Houston, voters chose Houston.

It still wasn’t a very enfranchising election for western voters, though. Those in El Paso didn’t see anyone in the final election that they liked at all.

Beyond that, primaries are problematic for other reasons. They require voters to go to the polls twice each cycle—a biɡ ask for some—and they give immense power over our democracy to political parties, which it’s easy to forget are private organizations.

The other common solution is runoffs, a.k.a. “the two-round system”. An election governed by runoff voting starts off as an ordinary plurality election, but if no candidate earns a majority of the votes (or some other threshold), all but the top two candidates are removed and the ballot is run again (this is called the “runoff election”).

In our first scenario, the two top winners were Houston and, by a slim margin, San Antonio. In the runoff, San Antonio picks up western voters but, unable to win over Dallas and with a smaller core base, loses to Houston 58–42%. The final candidates were different, but the results were the same.

Western voters at least felt more enfranchised in the final election this time. That combined with the fact that runoff systems don’t automatically let political parties choose who ends up on the ballot makes runoffs solidly better than primaries. It still requires of voters multiple trips to the polls, though, and the result was still an eastern extremist.

Both of these issues are corrected by instant-runoff voting. Instant-runoff, as you might have guessed, is an expansion of the runoff system. It allows many runoffs to be virtually held while only requiring voters to ever go to the polls once per election. It does this through a ranked-choice ballot.

First, every voter ranks the candidates from best to worst. Then, a plurality election is held, with each voter’s vote taken as their top choice. If no candidate earns a majority of the vote (or, again, some different threshold), then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. The votes that went to that candidate then go to the candidate that those voters ranked second. This repeats until one candidate has a majority of the votes.

Let’s return to Texas, and assume that each voter ranks the candidates from nearest to furthest. The first vote is the same as our plurality vote, then. The most votes one candidate has is Houston’s 28%, while the candidate with the fewest is Austin with 10%. Since Houston has no majority, Austin is eliminated.

Austin voters are divided four ways on whom they would choose next, with most turning to San Antonio. The new tallies come out to 23% for Dallas, 19% for Fort Worth, 30% for San Antonio, and 28% for Houston. Still no majority, so Fort Worth drops out next.

Unsurprisingly, Fort Worth voters mostly favor Dallas next, bringing it up to 40%. San Antonio’s number rises to 31%, and Houston remains at 28%. Having fallen behind, Houston becomes the final elimination.

Now this is the final showdown voters wanted to see. The two contenders represent a broad spectrum of geography, so while not everyone is completely satisfied, pretty much everyone has someone they at least like a little. Those who had voted for Houston are split, but most of them prefer San Antonio, handing it a 55–45% victory over Dallas.

The process is a clear improvement on plurality and its cousins. The spoiler effect is practically eliminated, as one of a pair of similar candidates will always be eliminated before the other. Because every voter is effectively consulted on every elimination (without requiring them to turn out multiple times), voters should feel more enfranchised, and the resulting candidate should better represent the whole of the population.

It’s still not the best answer, though. What if I told you that Austin, prior to its early elimination, had 49% of second choice votes? Or that San Antonio is actually farther from the average Texan than Houston? While instant-runoff is intuitive and spoiler-free, it’s far from mathematically sound.

A more advanced ranked-choice system is Condorcet voting. This is technically a family of electoral systems that includes Schultze, Ranked-pairs, Kemeny–Young, and others.

In a Condorcet election, the winner is the candidate who would beat every other candidate in a one-on-one election, if such a candidate exists. In the uncommon event that it doesn’t, the winner depends on which Condorcet algorithm is used.

Final tallies in Condorcet voting take the form of matrices: for each candidate i and for each candidate j, how many voters prefer candidate i over candidate j, or equivalently, by how many votes would candidate i beat candidate j? The answer is

⮟i, j⮞ D. F. W. S. A. A. H.
D. 0% +2% -9% -20% -5%
F. W. -2% 0% -12% -19% -4%
S. A. +9% +12% 0% -54% -17%
A. +20% +19% +54% 0% +33%
H. +5% +4% +17% -33% 0%

The only city with no negatives in its row is Austin, so this time, Austin wins! At last, we have the one true capital of Texas. I didn’t want to spoil it earlier, but Austin is actually closer to the average Texan than any of the other contenders, so this is the best choice in my opinion.

So does this mean that Condorcet is the better “alternative vote” for which we’ve been looking?

Well, it still has its issues. Most importantly, it’s on the complicated side. It didn’t take as long for me to explain as instant-runoff, but expressing the final tallies did require tabular formatting.

Plus, there’s the question of what to do when there is no Condorcet winner. It’s very uncommon—I didn’t see it in any of the 51 simulations I ran—but it does happen. As I said, each algorithm has a way to select a candidate in that situation, but they’re all different, and most of them are themselves pretty complicated.

Then there’s Arrow’s theorem, which basically states that no ranked voting system can be both fair and logical, but that’s a whole discrete analysis rabbit hole I don’t want to fall into.

What if I told you that there was a third alternative about which almost no one talks that consistently achieves the same results as Condorcet, brings back the simplicity of plurality, and always has an unambiguous winner?

This is score voting, a.k.a. “range voting”, “point voting”, “evaluative voting”, “utilitarian voting”, “libertarian voting”, or “capitalism voting”. Score voting is simple and intuitive: each candidate is rated, say, from 0 to 10, and the candidate with the highest average score wins.

Running the Texas election again, we now assume each voter rates the candidates linearly by distance, normalized so that each voter gives at least one 0 and one 10. We now see Dallas get a 4.5/10, Fort Worth 4.4/10, San Antonio 3.8/10, Austin 5.5/10, and Houston 4.3/10. Austin wins again. Even though next to no one would place Austin as their first choice, it’s the one city that everyone can agree is a little bit better than average.

Despite the fact that score is way simpler than Condorcet, they usually get the same answer. In my simulations, whenever they disagreed, it was because score chose a smaller, slightly more central city. That results from the fact that score takes magnitude of voter preference into account while Condorcet knows only polarity.

Score is, in many ways, the ultimate electoral system. Still, there’s one last alternative about which I would like to talk: the special case of score voting where the fineness of the ratings is reduced to two levels, 0 and 1.

This is approval voting, or as we call it at Olin, excellence voting. Approval can be described as plurality with the one alteration that voters are free to vote for as many candidates as they like. The candidate with the most votes (the highest predicted approval rating) wins.

The points in approval’s favor are very different from those in score’s. In approval voting, voters can no longer express the magnitude with which they like or dislike candidates; only whether they approve or not. This reduction in information often leads to worse results.

In the case of Austin, its distance from the other major population centers is such that a handful of people like it a lot, and a lot of people dislike it a little bit. That’s what enabled it to rise above 5/10 last time. In approval, those preferences become pure likes and dislikes, pulling Austin down to 43% approval. The other cities, which polarized more evenly, fare similarly to as they did with score: Dallas gets 46%, For Worth 46%, San Antonio 34%, and Houston 39%. This time, Fort Worth wins by 0.1% over Dallas.

As I’ve stated before, Austin was, mathematically speaking, the best choice. It was preferred by voters over every other candidate when compared directly, and it was closer to the center of population than any other candidate.

But does it really matter? Fort Worth is actually only 7% farther from the average Texan than Austin, and, looking at the map, it’s not obvious that one is significantly better as a capital than the other.

I ran this simulation with all fifty states plus Washington D. C. (that one was pretty unexciting), and Texas was the only one that gave me four different results for seven different electoral systems. Most of them got the same capital no matter what was used.

That’s why, in spite of score voting’s mathematical superiority, I think that approval is the electoral system voting reformists should pursue. It’s a good enough improvement over plurality that can easily be expanded into full score voting later if public opinion favors it. Its similarity to plurality makes it more likely to catch on than instant-runoff or score, and it requires no modification to existing polling procedures beyond the removal of “Vote for only one” from the ballots.

But then again, there’s always [strong Arrow’s theorem](xkcd.com/1844).

In any case, happy voting this upcoming cycle, and remember: the other party is not the enemy. The Annunaki are.

Thanks to the Center for International Earth Science Information Network and the International Center of Tropical Agriculture for the population data I used.

Welcome!

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Welcome back, and to all you fresh faces, welcome to this year’s first issue of Frankly Speaking!

For all you fresh people, Frankly Speaking is Olin’s student unofficial student-run newspaper, which means we publish almost anything and we do it for free.

A big thank you to our returning editor Kai Loewenstein and a big welcome to new editors Erika Serna and Duncan Hall. We’re here to add commas and help your articles be the best they can be.

Finally, let me introduce myself, Editor-in-Chief, Sophia Nielsen. For those of you that don’t know me. I’m a senior and recently-converted MechE. I have a deep love for Gilmore Girls the reality TV show Survivor.

If you would like to join our staff, shoot me an email at snielsen@olin.edu.

We can always use help editing, posting articles to our website, doing layouts, and distributing, and since this is my last year, I need all the help I get from non-seniors to keep the paper alive.

As always, we depend on contributions from Olin students, faculty, and staff to fill it with content. So if you have any opinions, inspirations, or printable talents, consider submitting them to your favorite unofficial student-run newspaper.

For more information (and submission guidelines that make my life significantly easier) go to franklyspeakingnews.com. 

Horoscopes From a Sober Contributor

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Welcome back to Olin! I hope you all had wonderful summers despite the Mercury retrograde that brought chaos (primarily in the realms of technology and communication) for almost the entire month of July. Hopefully the past few weeks of Mercury’s post-shadow period has brought some calm and organization, which will surely prove key as another academic year begins.

 

Looking forward to the next few weeks, there are a few events of astrological significance worth considering. Each of these will have slightly different impacts on each of the signs (most notably, Libra and Virgo), but their overarching effects are fairly general.

 

While both the sun and Mercury will be in Virgo for the first half of the month, Mercury will enter Libra on September 14th, nine days earlier than the sun. While any negative effects during the period where the two planets are not conjunct should not be strong, expect strong thinking and communication from the 23rd on. Sending out that when2meet you forgot about until three weeks into the semester might not be as much of a nightmare as you expect. 

 

As with each month, there will be a full moon. This month’s full moon is in Pisces, which means that emotions may run strong towards the middle of the month as well – maybe save that radically honest teaming feedback session for the second half of the month when everything is a little more relaxed. It is also possible that the full moon will be in constellation Phoenix, so maybe Olin was the right decision all along, or maybe not. I’m not good enough at math to tell you for sure.

 

In general, September brings forward a period of transition – as the sun moves from Virgo to Libra with the Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) on Monday, September 23rd, we celebrate the start of another semester and yet another opportunity not to get into our co-curricular of choice while bracing for longer nights and forthcoming problem sets, team projects, and all-nighters. 

 

Furthermore, each individual sign has concerns they ought to keep in mind in the following month – these are just a few general notes. For more detailed suggestions, I suggest you generate your natal chart. 

 

Aries (Mar. 21–Apr. 19): Aries, your ruling planet is Mars. While Mars is in direct motion this month, it will fall conjunct with the sun on September 2nd. Even though its effects may feel subtle, welcome changes in your thinking and identity as you start the new school year, even if the impacts of the decisions you make feel distant. This is the semester to take that experimental class after all. 

Gemini (May 21–June 21): Mercury rules both you and Virgo. While Virgo will feel stronger impacts from the sun this month, note that the variety of Mercury transits this month will impact both of you, but Gemini will likely feel them more strongly. While this might feel chaotic at first, enjoy the novelty of a relatively benign yet varied experience this month. After all, the bubble would be a lot more boring if we did not try to shake things up sometimes.

Cancer (June 22–July 22): The moon rules you, and it will be full in Pisces on September 14th and a New Moon in Libra on September 28th. While this shift from emotional and ever-changing stimuli to a more balanced and static way of thinking might feel jarring and make you restless at first, enjoy the opportunity to relax and remain productive at the same time. Just because you are suffering more does not necessarily mean you are achieving more.

Leo (July 23–Aug. 22): After an eventful summer, this might be a quieter month for you. Your ruler is the sun, so take advantage of when it is in Virgo for the first half of the month to reorder and re-prioritize. You have a busy (and exciting!) semester ahead of you, so you might want to finish unpacking your belongings before it is time to start packing them up again. 

Virgo (Aug. 23–Sept. 22): The sun starts the month in Virgo, promising you a powerful beginning to the month. Channel this energy into getting organized for the beginning of the semester, but don’t be afraid to be bold with how you go about this. It is time to consider reimaging your laptop (but back up your data first!) or joining (or dropping!) another club or team. 

Libra (Sept. 23–Oct. 23): Libra season starts towards the end of the month. If you were born in September, the positive impacts on your thinking and identity will take effect sooner – those who are on the cusp of Scorpio may feel restless in anticipation. This will pass. the second half of the month should go smoothly for you, consider that both the sun and Mercury are in your sign and Venus, your ruling planet, is in direct motion. No need to worry if the semester starts off slowly – there is plenty of time and energy left for you.

Scorpio (Oct. 24–Nov. 21): Scorpio, your (modern) ruling planet is Pluto. Pluto, the planet of the underworld and personal transformation, is in its final month of retrograde in Capricorn, which is a serious sign. Pluto is generally in retrograde for five months out of the year, and it’s winding down reminds us that there is still plenty of opportunity for serious self-reflection and to make a plan of action for the next chapter. Keep your learning goals ambitious and your schedule realistic. 

Sagittarius (Nov. 22–Dec. 21): Your ruling planet is Jupiter, which has been in Sagittarius for almost a year now, bringing you confidence and opportunities for personal growth. While there are still a few more months where this is the case, Jupiter will square Neptune on September 21st, so you may be more easily mislead during this time. Trust your instincts; confidence is not always competence. Don’t join that random Babson student’s startup, especially if they will only pay you in equity.

Capricorn (Dec. 22–Jan. 19): Saturn, your ruling planet, has been and will remain in Capricorn until 2020. While this long-standing transit has likely shaped your personal sense of duty and belonging over the past few years, the past few months of Saturn retrograde gave you a chance to break away from reality. On September 18th, Saturn will go direct again, so note that you will need to confront some difficult truths and get back to what actually matters. You can drop a class/club/job if it feels like the right thing to do, and call home once in a while.

Aquarius (Jan. 20–Feb. 18): Your ruling planet, Uranus, has been in retrograde and will be for a while. The most notable point of concern for you is that Mercury will be trine with Uranus on September 1st. While all signs will feel the effects of this transit, you likely will have the strongest response when this report brings you exciting news and/or the opportunities to make new friends. Your intuition is powerful right now, and your energy will help you reconnect with old friends and make new ones.

Pisces (Feb. 19–Mar. 20): Most notably, this month’s full moon falls in Pisces. While all of the signs may experience more intense emotions at this time, the effects may linger for longer for you, especially as your ruling planet, Neptune, remains in retrograde. This does not need to be stressful – take advantage of this opportunity to engage with creative opportunities, but make sure to wear safety glasses.

Don’t Vote for Bernie Sanders

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Hot Take, here we go! So I wanted to talk about the future of the Democratic Party, and the rapidly escalating 2020 Democratic presidential primary is a great way to frame this discussion. Also, I haven’t gotten any angry emails yet, so what better way to change that then by trashing your favorite politicians?

Admittedly, trashing isn’t really the right word. I quite like Bernie Sanders. However, he is not representative of the future of the Democratic Party, and he is not a good candidate for president. Now, before I continue, I would like to emphasize that while connected, “being representative of the future of the Democratic Party” and “being a good Democratic candidate for president” are not the same thing. Please do not conflate them.

Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way first: Bernie Sanders is old and white in a party whose voter base is anything but. The problem is more than surface level though. Despite recently making strides in the right direction, Bernie has still failed to find substantial support from women and people of color. Furthermore, he represents the far left wing of the Democratic Party. It is true that mainstream Democrats have moved to the left, and it is possible for a politician to be liberal and still representative of the party. However, in our hyper-liberal bubbles, it is easy to forget that Democratic voters as a whole are not that liberal. Polling consistently shows that the majority of Democratic voters want to see their party move in a more moderate direction, not a more liberal one. Ultimately, Sanders is an ideological warrior. He is not known for compromise or moderation; he is known for being a socialist. This is not what holds together the Democratic Party.

I think that people tend to vastly overestimate Sanders’ electability. He certainly performed well in 2016, but he is simply not what people want. Like Donald Trump, Sanders received a massive boost from the unpopularity of Hillary Clinton, but he still solidly lost the primary. Meanwhile, old age and socialism are two of the least desirable traits voters look for in a candidate. Now, you might say to me, “Bernie is actually a democratic socialist, and that’s totally different,” or “Bernie isn’t really a socialist,” and you would be right. However, I can assure you that the greater American public could not care less. For more concrete evidence, we can turn to the 2018 midterm elections. The Sanders-inspired OurRevolution movement supported numerous Bernie-esque candidates, and nearly all of them failed. The idea that Bernie Sanders would be able to turn reliably Republican districts blue was proved false. Instead it was moderate Democrats who led the party to its house majority.

Now that I’ve angered half of you, I’ll anger the other half by telling you that Beto O’Rourke is also neither representative nor a good candidate for the Democratic Party. Unlike Sanders, he is young and more subtly progressive. However, also unlike Sanders, he hasn’t staked out hard policy positions. In short, Beto gives good speeches, but it is nearly impossible to figure out what he actually stands for. His previous voting record is uneven, and he falls behind nearly all other current candidates when it comes to staking out policy views. As I mentioned previously, the success of the Democratic Party hangs on pushing specific policy. Broad ideological battles and speeches are the territory of Republicans. O’Rourke may be inspirational, and I’ll take him over Cruz or Trump any day, but he will not be able to effectively hold together the Democratic coalition.

Besides 2020 electability, what does the future of the Democratic Party look like? In addition to the surface level visuals, like more representation of women, POC, and young people, it’s about being willing to compromise and reach out. It’s about taking concrete policy positions and, when in a position to do so, working to make gains on these even if it means compromising. In our era of polarization and constitutional hardball it’s easy to forget that bipartisanship and cooperation are not just good politics, they’re what Democratic voters are looking for. Being liberal is okay, but that can’t be all that you have going for you. Instead it’s about putting your stake in concrete policies rather than an ideology.

If you’re curious what current primary candidate is best, I’m afraid I’m not ready to put that down in writing just yet. Should you really want to know, you can come ask me in person, but I’m saving my official endorsement for some time closer to the actual primary. I hope you all have a great summer! Hopefully I’ll be back in the fall to talk about the future (or potential lack thereof) of the Republican Party.

 

Introduction to Oltilip

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wafe ‘olin. olsunkwelwel wel min es piasaki puket um oltilip on.

Now, you’re probably wondering, “What does ‘oltilip’ mean?” “What language even is this?” “Jeezum crow, not another one of these?”

Oltilip (/oʊ̯lˈtɪləp/; Oltilip: [olˈtilip]) is the auxiliary language that I’ve been constructing for the last year. Its limited phonology, free word order, and oligosynthetic tendencies make it, in my opinion, a far superior potential international language than Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, or any of the other major auxlangs. Let me show you why.

First of all, the phonology. Oltilip uses only the seventeen phonemes that, collectively, are present in the majority of languages. These are

  • e [ej~ɛ] as in “fake”,
  • a [a~ɑ] as in “mars”,
  • o [ow~ɔ] as in “door”,
  • i [i~ɪ] as in “‘zine”,
  • u [u~ʊ] as in “fruit”,
  • y [j~i] as in “yeet”,
  • l [l~ɾ] as in “language”,
  • w [w~u] as in “warner”,
  • n [n] as in “ninja”,
  • m [m] as in “mills”,
  • h [h~x] as in “hottub”,
  • c [t͡ʃ~ʂ] as in “chart”,
  • s [s] as in “suite”,
  • f [f~ɸ] as in “flat”,
  • k [kʰ~ɡ] as in “LaTeX”,
  • t [tʰ~d] as in “time”, and
  • p [pʰ~b] as in “plain”.

You’ll notice that all of these letters are pronounced pretty much how you’d expect with the exception of c, which is pronounced in the Malay fashion. Stress falls on the penultimate vowel. It should go without saying that each letter is only ever pronounced one way.

There are some punctuation markers, as well. ‘ precedes loanwords; . ends sentences; , indicates pauses; 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are shorthands for nul, kan, tos, san, fol, lim, cah, pit, hat, and mes; and a few other less important things.

And that’s all you need to know to start speaking! Let’s try some examples. kwe (“quay”) means “yes”. nyo (“nyo”) means “no”. wafe (“waffay”) means “hello”, “goodbye”, or “yay!”, and waso (“wassoe”) means “fuck!”. kon yot pulanelon on means “where is the bathroom?”.

The morphology is where things start to get interesting. Oltilip words are composed of CGVGC syllables, with the only restrictions being the disallowance of yi, iy, ey, wu, uw, and ow. Nouns end with consonants, verbs end with vowels, and grammar tokens can end with anything (there are no adjectives and adverbs, as concepts like “blue” and “quickly” are treated as verbs: nila, “be blue” and yala ip, “while being fast”.

The only mechanism in Oltilip resembling inflection is the derivation of antonyms: a root’s antonym is obtained by replacing each letter in it with that letter’s opposite. e goes to o, i to u, y to w, l to t, n to k, m to p, h to c, and s to f. Thus, the antonym of fe, meaning “want”, “like”, or “good”, is so, meaning “dislike” or “bad”.

This may seem overly complicated for a language that strives to be easy to learn. However, this system is not meant as a productive derivation route, but as more of a mnemonic. Learners will not memorise the letter pairs right away, but as they learn words conventionally—memorising each antonym separately—they will gradually become familiar with it, to the point where they can use so as a clue should they forget the word for “want”.

Next is the vocabulary. By making use of extensive derivation, Oltilip gets by with only 368 basic roots. Naturally, these are sourced from languages all around the world (19, to be precise), with more weight placed on commonly-spoken ones. 19% of the words are derived from Mandarin, such as ci, “try”, from “试”. 9% are derived from English, such as mo, “be more”. 1% are derived from Xhosa, such as ti, “say”, from “thi”.

The main way Oltilip derives these is through compound words. There are two kinds. The first is quite straightforward: two or more words are combined to form a word that is related to both of its constituents, with the part of speech of the latter. sun (“sun”) plus kwelwel (“time”) makes sunlwel: “day”. Adding ol (“this”) makes olsunkwelwel: “today”.

The second is more precise. A series of words that have a meaning when used together can be codified into a single compound, whose meaning may be broader or carry more connotations. For example, the sentence particle wa, which makes a sentence exclamatory, plus the word fe forms the sentence wa fe, “How good it is!”. The compound word wafe is thus an interjection meaning “How good it is!”, “yay!” or, in the right context, “hello” or “goodbye”.

Words with regional or cultural significance and highly technical words do not count as roots, and are taken from the language with the strongest ties to that concept (with the restrictions on iy, etc. lifted and a ‘ prepended to mark it as a loan). Thus, the word for “German people” is ‘toyc, and the word for “liter” is ‘lithe.

Finally, we reach the grammar. An Oltilip sentence broadly comprises postpositional phrases. Each of these comprises a noun and a postposition, the postposition specifying the role the noun plays in the sentence. There are eleven postpositions, most of which are pretty straightforward. wel marks the time of the action, yot marks the place, uat marks the tool, ip marks the manner or method, etcetera.

Then, there are es, on, and um. These mark the arguments of the action. In English, the arguments of a sentence are usually the subject, direct object, and indirect object, which are distinguished by word order. Every sentence must have a subject, and a direct object is a prerequisite for an indirect object. Because of this, English is called a nominative-accusative language.

Oltilip, on the other hand, is an active-stative language. This means that arguments don’t cleanly fall into the categories of subject, direct object, and indirect object. Instead, Oltilip uses the categories of agent (the entity that initiates the action), patient (the entity affected by the action), and theme (the entity the action references or targets). Furthermore, rather than using word order to mark them, Oltilip uses postpositions. The agent is followed by es, the patient by on, and the theme by um.

This system reduces the number of verbs needed, because concepts that seem independent in English, such as”obtain”, “give”, and “receive”, can be reduced into a single verb, tueki. If Papyrus simply obtains some spaghetti, then ‘papaywas on tueki ‘espaketi um. If Undyne gives it to him, then ‘antayn es ‘papaywas on tueki ‘espaketi um. If you want to emphasise that he receives it from her, then you might say ‘papaywas on ‘antayn es tueki ‘espaketi um. The order of the postpositional phrases is completely free.

Many verbs, like ki (“start” or “become”), tend to take subordinate clauses as arguments. Luckily, subordinate clauses are extremely simple in Oltilip; just drop a sentence inside another sentence, using it as a noun.

For example, if I cause you to become familiar with Oltilip, then we can take the sentence puket on piasa oltilip um (puket means “ye” and piasa means “be familiar”, so this means “ye are familiar with Oltilip”), and plop it into the sentence min es ki _ on (min means “me”, so this means “I cause _ to start”): min es ki puket on piasa oltilip um on. It works because the postposition chain um on (or a verb followed by a postposition) clues the listener into the fact that there is a subordinate clause ending there. It can be ambiguous where the subordinate clause begins; if this is the case, the particle ke can be inserted before the puket for clarity.

There is a significant shortcut here in that verbs that take subordinate clauses as patients can be inserted into said clause immediately following the subordinate verb. This structure is called an auxiliary verb, and is analogous to the English concept, but backwards. For example, the above sentence can be written somewhat more succinctly as min es puket on piasa ki oltilip um. The two verbs can even be compounded into a single verb, piasaki, which means “familiarise” or “introduce”.

The final critical piece of grammar is the relative clauses. Relative clauses in Oltilip are simply formed by taking a clause and, optionally, inserting the relative pronoun l. For example, the sentence et on lyotkwenu, “it gets away”, can be rearranged into the noun phrase l on lyotkwenu, “the one that gets away”.

Here, too, is an important derivation technique: l on is pronounced as a single word and, for many intents and purposes, is a single word, lon, meaning “one that”. This also holds true for the other postpositions: les and lum are corresponding relative pronouns for the other arguments, lwel is “the time when”, luat is “the tool with which”, and lip is “the way that”.

These pronouns can also be compounded to their verbs to form nouns. lyotkwenulon (“one that gets away”) means “escapee”, tilip (“way that one says”) means “language”, and piasakiluat (“tool with which one introduces”) means “introductory guide”.

These play nicely with noun phrases in Oltilip, which are also quite simple. Multiple noun-like phrases can be placed adjacent to each other to represent the intersection of their meanings. As a simple example, myawf means “cat”, while nila means “be blue”. Therefore, nilalon means “blue thing”, and nilalon myawf or nila myawf means “blue cat”. We can specify even further by tacking on et, meaning “it”, “she”, “he”, “them”, or “that”, to make it et nila myawf: “the blue cat”.

And that’s all there is to it! I hope you can see that Oltilip’s powerful derivation systems and simple grammar would make it an excellent international auxiliary language. na site calu, kunelon.

Ground Zero

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Cold, dusty air cascaded into the room, sending papers flying and the tablecloth flapping. The fabric that Olive had painstakingly laid out suddenly careened across the room. As her eyes followed its path, they caught on the shadow of a burly figure towering in the opening. Olive rose from the table, but the figure had already heaved the vault door shut and spun the locking wheel into place with an echoing creak and deafening silence. The scavenger pulled the scarf down off her nose and peeled the goggles off her face. The crust of dust left behind widened her eyes into a spooked expression, even though her face was exhilarated and ruddy from the exercise. She stomped her feet on the shreds of the doormat.

“What did you find?” Olive retrieved the scrap of fabric from the floor and brushed it off as if nothing had happened. Emberline shook her head sharply in an attempt to dislodge the sand stuck in her hair. After getting her fingers stuck trying to comb it, she gave up and shrugged the canvas knapsack off her shoulders.

“A few things. Odds and ends.”

“Where’d you go this time?” Olive asked, used to her roommate’s brusque answers. She grabbed a broom leaning near the door and swiped the dust into a corner. A losing battle, but one Olive was determined to keep fighting.

“The houses down on the water.” The scavenger unzipped her jacket and cracked it off her torso to hang. It retained her shape, the husk of a human form. Olive shivered. “Apparently the houses built for hurricanes also held up to the apocalypse pretty well.”

“That’s not somewhere you’ve been yet, right? Did you find anything? Anything from Before?” Olive prompted hopefully. Emberline paused, enough time for Olive to note the rips in her patched cotton sweater. She made a mental note to wrestle it from her friend long enough to sew them up later.

“Maybe.” Emberline looked around for a place to put down the bag. Scraps of cloth, buttons, and the remains of an old chair cushion had claimed the table, so she chose the chair instead. Its one metal leg knocked on the wood of the floor. She unclipped the buckles and started pulling objects from the top. Olive couldn’t contain her curiosity. She left the broom and guiltily crossed her arms on the back of the chair to get a glimpse. Emberline first pulled out a bottle. It seemed, spectacularly, to be intact. She rubbed a section with her sleeve. The light from the oil lamp shone straight through it. The bottle was glass. “I couldn’t find the lid.” She shrugged as she handed it over.

“This is great,” Olive breathed, and continued to scrub away the grime.

“I’ve got some cans, too. A tad gross. Ah, here. Color.” It was rare to find cans with any decoration left on them, even rarer to find one uncrushed. As Olive thumbed off the dirt, she found the exterior to be tinged a bright green. Her face lit up.

“I know just where this should go.” She crossed the room and held it up next to an orange can already on the shelf, one that faintly still read anta in big white letters. A cactus poked its head out from the ripped aluminum, a rare and precious survivor. “Not that I have a plant for it. Someone in town might.” But Emberline had already moved on.

“I got some scrap metal for Allison… some plastic for Marco. Wood from a picture frame. Maybe Kat will want it.” Olive tapped her fingers on the shelf. So it was just a practical run, then.

“Seriously? You went to a new house and didn’t find anything to bring back for me?”

“Olive. You know scavenging is what keeps our community running.”

“Yeah yeah, I know. We can’t manufacture anything ourselves anymore, spare me the lecture. I just… I don’t know. They had so many cool things. They knew so much. It’s a shame to have lost everything.” Olive crossed the threadbare rug to the wall of memorabilia. Papers, black disks with holes in the middle, anything with a picture or a logo that Emberline had found over the years in the ruins of the city, Olive had catalogued and labelled.  

“… And whatever this is.” Emberline made sure she had Olive’s attention before pulling out a flat, round object and thrust it at her. Olive took it skeptically. It used to be mostly white, but layers of age and use had turned it into a murky yellow. Still, small blue dots spattered the disk. Some of them were connected by lines in little clusters. The object had several layers, and a scalloped edge peeked out from the middle one in several places, as if asking to be turned. Attempting to move it would probably be futile. Calendar dates and times ringed the border. The words “The Night Sky” were stamped across the middle.

“What is this?” Olive asked. Emberline continued to shove the things they weren’t keeping back into the sack. She shrugged.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Seems that maybe, you could see things above you, Before. Like in the paintings.”

“Above you?”

“Yeah. Instead of just the dust.” Olive stared down at the disk and traced the lines with her fingers.

“I’ve never seen dots in those pictures, though.”

“Maybe it’s a map. Maps have dots.”

Olive scoffed. “Of what? The sky?”

Emberline smacked the dust off her hands and went to the porcelain water basin. “Maybe there was more. Before.”

“Well, there’s no way to find out,” Olive sighed. She returned to the table and set to painstakingly rearranging the pieces of cloth that had been scattered by the wind.  

“What if I said there was?” Emberline said slowly. Olive perked up.

“What? What do you mean?”

“If I said there was a way to see over the storm.”

Olive scoffed, grabbed a pin, and stuck it through a carefully marked line. “If there was, wouldn’t we have heard about it by now? Between you and the other scavengers, if you were going to come across something you would have.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Emberline said carefully. “There’s a place.” Olive gaped.

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“…Will you take me?”

Emberline looked up in alarm.

“Really? You hate outside. It’s not close.” Olive straightened her back. She didn’t quite know why, but she needed to prove herself.

“I can handle it.” Emberline raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I’m scared! Happy? But if there’s a chance to know what this means…” Olive hopped up and crossed to the shrine of relics. “I want to at least try.” Emberline stared her down long and hard, seeming to weigh her determination.

“Well then. Gear up. Let’s go on an adventure.”

 

Scarves. Goggles. Gloves. Boots. Long strips of cotton to cover anything and everything else. As they stood by the door preparing to leave, Emberline held up a hand. She reached out and, as gently as she could with the gloves on, tucked in the loose fabric around Olive’s face. Luckily the scarf hid her blush.

Emberline hoisted a coil of rope across her torso. Then, a thumbs-up sign. Olive nodded.

She braced her bent knees against the floor as she hauled on the spoke to open the hatch. Olive plunged into the storm as quickly as possible. Her friend followed on her heels and let the door slam behind. The storm was so thick today that Olive couldn’t see her own feet. The two clasped hands, like two otters in a river, and dove into the current.

Emberline know the way best, so she led, her left hand trailing the ruins. This part of the trek was always a blur for Olive. Her nose itched, but nothing could be done. Instead she focused on putting one foot in front of the other, following her tether of sinew and flesh through the haze of sand and dust. A sudden gust shoved her, and it was only Emberline’s tight grip that kept her from falling into the dune.

In the back of her mind, Olive wondered how Emberline did this every day.

The wind swirled around the two girls in eddies and flurries, tearing at their clothing and pelting their goggles. It took a few moments for Olive to stop scrunching her eyes so tight, a defense mechanism she had to consciously unlearn. As always, being outside was eerie. On the one hand, Olive felt claustrophobic, as if the very air itself was trying to smother her, bury her. At the same time, once away from the wall, there was no way to tell where the world was. For all she knew, her right side could be open for miles. Or, maybe there was another building five paces away. But unless she ventured out there, it would remain a mystery.

They rounded a corner. The view didn’t change. Olive was acutely aware of the warmth of the breath in her scarf, worrying her heat might fog up the googles.

After a long period of nothingness besides the wall, a tall pole suddenly materialized out of the flurry. Time to cross.

Emberline uncoiled the rope. With large, gloved, clumsy fingers, she wrapped a loop around Olive’s waist and cinched it tight before tying herself into the other side. A few feet remained between them, just enough to bend down comfortably. They linked arms and cast off, into the abyss.

There were only 23 steps between the post and the other wall. Sometimes 24 or 25 for Olive, because her steps were shorter.

One. Two. Three.

As they ventured further, the wind picked up, sending grains of sand down the street in a river of dust.

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

Olive clung tighter to Emberline. She tried not to think about what would happen if they got separated somehow. There’s no telling what direction she might get off in. No markings on the walls to know which way was home.

Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

And there it was. The next wall. Olive heaved a sigh of relief. She was not built for this. She clung to the wall, as if it would run away if it slipped through her fingers.

Emberline gave the thumbs-up sign. Olive half-heartedly returned the gesture, peeled her hands off, and tromped on after her friend.

 

The building they came to had no door. They fought through several opposing, violent air currents to force themselves in and duck through the archway. Inside, the storm was slightly calmer, but the ground was still covered in feet of sand. It had once been a grand foyer. Olive could see the ceiling through a haze of dust, far higher than the ceiling in their bunker, even higher than in the community building.

“Have you been here before?” Olive asked, her voice muffled through the fabric.

“No,” Emberline replied happily. “Marco told me about it.” She stomped around the old foyer, peering through every opening she found. Finally a metal door in the back seemed promising. Emberline put her shoulder on it and pushed. It gave way with a metallic screech. Sand and dust seeped into the next room. “Stairs. Come on.”

Olive followed her through the door. A staircase made of metal grating crossed back and forth above her head into the distance. Just looking up made her head spin with vertigo.

“We’re going… up?” she asked meekly.

“Well, yeah, of course,” Emberline replied. “Above the storm.”

“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.”

“You okay?” Emberline asked.

“Yeah.” Olive nodded and took a large gulp of air. “It’ll be fine. It’s better than being outside in the storm.”

“Let’s go.”

As they climbed higher, the air slowly cleared. Eventually the two of them were able to pull the scarves from their noses and the goggles from their eyes. Each time they stepped, the metal groaned under their weight. It echoed in the narrow space, down the floors, a jarring reminder of how easy it would be to fall, of how much space was between them and solid ground. At every other crossing, a doorway led into what used to be the main building. Sometimes there was a door. Sometimes barely the frame was left, and they could glimpse the rotten tables and chairs that used to populate the floors.

After just a few levels, Olive’s energy sagged, and they had to stop. This happened several more times, until Olive lost track of how many floors they had ascended. Forty? Fifty?

“I don’t think I can make it,” Olive panted. Emberline pursed her lips. Somehow, she had barely broken a sweat. Maybe that’s one of the perks of being a scavenger, Olive thought.

“Here. I’ll see if the end is close. Hang tight.”

“Yeah yeah. I will.” Olive leaned against the railing and let her breath recover.

When Emberline came back, her eyes glowed with excitement.

“What? What did you find?” Emberline shook her head, grabbed Olive’s hand, and dragged her up the stairs. Olive stumbled along.

“Where are we going?” Olive let herself be led up another flight of gridded metal steps. The walls around them were stone, and in places, they had started to give way. The holes grew in size until Olive could see straight through them. The jagged holes should have been windows to – to –

Oh. To that.

Entranced, Olive tugged Emberline towards one of these gaps, yearning for a closer look. She resisted.

“Trust me,” Emberline repeated emphatically. “One more.”

The staircase narrowed to the width of a singular human. The incomplete walls closed in. But through a rectangular opening just above, perhaps a doorway of some type, was open space. Olive blinked and craned her neck to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks. Beyond that door was the outside. And it was clear. As they neared this phenomenon, Emberline stepped in front.

“Close your eyes,” she instructed.

“But – look – ”

“I know. Just… trust me a little longer.” Olive glared at her friend, who raised her eyebrows mischievously. Finally Olive sighed, smiling, and closed her eyes. Emberline narrated the rest of their climb, holding both of Olive’s hands and, presumably, walking backwards. “Three more steps… alright, forward just a bit…” Olive’s boots hit concrete, and braced herself. She expected the wind and dust to batter her face, but none came. Emberline led her forward and slightly leftward. Olive could hear the roar of the storm, as if from far away. Her hands were placed on a low concrete wall near her waist.

“Alright,” Emberline sang. “Open away!”

Olive did. Gasped. Blinked. Blinked again. Turned in a circle, eyes widening, staring at the sky. Emberline grinned at her, pleased.

“What is that?” Olive whispered.

“I think it’s what’s on that map of yours. The Night Sky.”

Olive felt woozy. She tried to steady herself on the low wall, but failed and fell on her bum on the concrete.

Firstly, Olive had never seen so much empty space in her life. Tall buildings of varying heights and states of destruction dotted the landscape, so far away they couldn’t be reached with any length of rope they owned. There were maybe two dozen, most of them stretching even higher than their perch. The columns seemed to be floating, as the sandstorm rolled and crashed about their bases, obscuring the ground beneath them and into the distance.

And above that…

Olive couldn’t comprehend what was above the buildings. Most of it was dark, but scattered around the void shone pinpricks of light, like grains of sand on a clean surface, but glowing, as if each one was a lantern being held aloft by some great being in the sky.

And that’s what Olive decided she was staring at: the sky.

There was so much… space. Emptiness, between her and… whatever those speckles were.

The world was so… big. In every direction.

Emberline sat next to her, legs slightly spread, knees up. Somehow, very calm. After a moment, she reached back into her bag and placed the circular map on the ground between them. Then she grabbed a candle and lit it.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she said. Olive took the map reverently. She held it up to the light, expecting to see some similarities. It seemed pretty clear that the dots on the map were the lights in the sky. Unfortunately, the two seemed not to match at all. Olive tried turning the map upside down, but to no avail. She even turned it around and checked out the back. Emberline sensed her frustration.

“May I?” she asked. Olive grunted her assent. Emberline lay down on her back against the concrete and held out her hand. Olive put the map into it and joined Emberline on the ground. They held the map up and tried again.

“I think I see one,” Olive gasped. “Look. There’s this weird ‘W’ shape…” She pointed at the map, then at the sky. “Kinda looks like those over there?”

“Yeah,” Emberline agreed. “It says… Cass-eye-oh-pie-ee-ah. Huh.” Olive laughed.

“That’s so cool! Almost sounds like a name.”

“Could be.”

“I wonder who she was. Must have been pretty great at something to have part of the sky named after her. Maybe she was a famous singer. Or artist. Or actor!”

“Doesn’t even look like a person.”

They studied in companionable silence, glancing between the map and the sky. Since they found one cluster, Olive looked nearby to search for another. Failing in that attempt, she moved elsewhere.

“Hey, check that out. Kinda looks like a pan.”

“A pan? …Ah. I see. Is it on the map?”

“Well, it connects a few more stars than that. Looks like it has legs. It says… ‘Ursa Major.’ What do you think that means? It looks kinda like a dog to me. Allison’s dog, the one she named after that picture we found. What’s her name again?”

“Adele?”

“Huh. Okay, I see it.”

They found a couple more of these clusters of lights. They had names like ‘Orion’, ‘Gemini’, ‘Perseus’, and ‘Leo’. Names that meant nothing to either of them.

“This is silly,” Emberline declared, dropping the map to her side.

“Wha- what?” Olive spluttered. She was having fun finding the particular lights that made up a cluster. Each one came with a little spurt of pride. But Emberline went on, something she didn’t normally do. So Olive listened.

“We don’t know what any of this means. I assume they’re the names of these dots with lines between them, but… those names don’t mean anything to us.” She turned her head to look at Olive. At this angle, their faces were incredibly close. Olive was glad for the darkness. She could feel the heat creeping into her cheeks at the proximity. “Cass-eye-oh-pie-ee-ah might have meant something to someone a hundred years ago, but now it’s just a name on a map. We don’t know who it was, or if it was even a person. Doesn’t that feel strange to you?”

“I don’t know,” Olive replied. Her heart sunk to realize her friend didn’t cherish this bit of history the same way she did, but she didn’t need Emberline to know that. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You know what we should do?” the scavenger said after a long silence.

“What’s that?”

“We should give them new names.”

“What?”

“The clusters. Who says we need to use the same names they had before? Probably made by some weirdo who had nothing better to do than lie outside and look at lights in the sky. Doesn’t make any sense. Let’s give them new names.” At this, Olive could feel a bit of warmth in her gut.

“You know, I like that,” she said. “Where should we start?”

“Hmm. Well, there’s the pot-looking thing. What was it called before? Ursa something? Major? Didn’t they notice it looks like an animal?” Emberline chuckled. “I still think it looks like Adele. How about that for its name?”

“That’s amazing. I love it.” Olive looked around for something else familiar. Her eyes alighted on a string of three bright stars in a row. She peeked back at the map. Orion. “Okay, my turn. That one. Three stars across. The one we thought looked like a person. Well, it looks like the guy on the poster I have at home. With the whip over his head. Oh shoot, what was the name?” Olive bit her lip. Emberline lifted herself up on one elbow.

“I know which one you’re talking about,” she said. “Brown hat? Very dramatic looking?”

“Yeah. Hmm. Oh! It’s something like… ah… Diana Jon?”

“Diana Jon. Beautiful. Up there in the sky. Hello, Diana.”

“Your turn.”

“Ooh, yeah. Let’s see.” Emberline lay back down and crossed her arms across her chest. Olive smiled at the intense look of concentration that scrunched up her friend’s face when she was deeply in thought, cast in amber by the candle between them.

“There. There’s two lights up there, and two lights down a ways. A pillar, like the buildings.”

“And what are you going to call this pillar?” Olive prodded playfully.

“Something dramatic. Ground Zero.”

“Ground… what?”

“Ground Zero. I heard it on Marco’s radio once. I think they were talking about this place. The entire city, I mean. Not just this building.”

“Ground… zero. That’s so weird. Like, you haven’t started counting yet. Zero. Or, maybe, there’s nothing left to count.”

Emberline thought about it. Olive could see the gears turning in her head.

“It feels like it could be either. The beginning, or the end.”

Olive stood up and moved to the low wall. The unforgiving sea of eternal sand and dust stretched into the horizon: an expanse of a desolate storm, devoid of hope. But above it was a different sea, a sea of wonder, an unexplored abyss of magic lights, new names, possibilities. Emberline joined her at the edge.

Olive reached for her hand.

“I hope it’s the beginning.”

 

Horoscopes by Drunk Editors

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Aries (Mar. 21 – Apr. 19): Friends or a group with which you’re affiliated could propose a flunnel. This might seem like a great sneedle, Aries, so you’re likely to go for it. You will probably have a zizzer-zazzer-zuzz.

Taurus (Apr. 20 – May 20): An opportunity to do some extra nizzards outside the scope of your regular floob-boober-bab-boober-bubs could present itself to you. Take it, Taurus.

Gemini (May 21 – Jun. 20): You might be extremely busy now. Invitations to large vippers, small snuvs with close nerds, and intimate evenings with romantic loraxes might come up today.

Cancer (Jun. 21 – Jul. 22): Unexpected quimney’s could wake you up to the possibility of fizza-ma-wizza-ma-dill opportunities, Cancer.
Leo (Jul. 23 – Aug. 22): If you aren’t romantically involved, an yuzz, obsk, or other wumbus into your neighborhood might bring an exciting new diffendoofer into your life.

Virgo (Aug. 23 – Sep. 22): Mon that you may have been hoping to use to better your kweet or hakken-kraks could suddenly come your way today, Virgo.

Libra (Sep. 23 – Oct. 22): When you run errands today, check the whisper-ma-phones in local businesses. Today you might find the sneetches you crave right in your midwinter-jicker.

Scorpio (Oct. 23 – Nov. 21): Ooblek received today excites your imagination and encourages you to start a new artistic or creative project. Stories, bar-ba-loots, truffula trees- all could come together in your mind and form an idea that could change your life.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 21): Floob-boober-bab-boober-bubs is the word for today, Sagittarius. A lot of physical and mental energy, as well as murky-mooshy, might lead you to aim for goals that others consider too risky or schoppity-scholpp.

Capricorn (Dec. 22 – Jan. 19): New career goals may come your way with the current lerkim opening up possibilities.

Aquarius (Jan. 20 – Feb. 18): Fascinating new information could arrive today from jill-ikka-jast or the sala-ma-goox, opening up new educational opportunities.

Pisces (Feb. 19 – Mar. 20): A sudden burst of rink-rinker-fink and humph-humph-a-dumpher could lead to additional income for you, Pisces.

The Sunrise Movement

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I arrived at the address just as another young couple was knocking on the door.

“Are you here for the Sunrise thing too?” I asked.

They smiled but were spared response when a twenty-something guy opened the door, leaning out: “Sunrise Movement viewing party? Come on in.”

Sunrise is the young people’s climate action movement. It’s led and mostly peopled by high school and college students. The ask? Sweeping climate-based reform for the United States that transforms the economy.

Specifically, Sunrise is organizing for the Green New Deal. According to sunrisemovement.org, the Green New Deal’s goals are:

To achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
To create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
To invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
To secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all people of the United States for generations to come; and
To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.

My take? It’s the first American reaction on the scale of the climate change crisis that’s being taken seriously.

I showed up at the viewing party to get an idea of the plans, the urgency, and the local community.

The viewing party was at somebody’s house– our host looked up to smile welcome as we came in, then returned to hooking up his laptop to the big screen.

The kitchen table was collecting snacks– veggies, homemade cookies, Tupperware containers appearing as guests began to fill the room. The three couches were full, so I set myself up on the floor, chatting with an older guy who’s also involved in transit reform.

Our viewing party was one of three in the immediate vicinity, and it was standing room only as people continued arriving– we were watching a video panel call, broadcast nationwide.

There were three speakers: Sunrise’s head of training, who took the call from her dorm room; one of the early leaders, who has deferred college for a year in order to devote his time to leading Sunrise in Massachusetts; and Naomi Klein, public intellectual and activist.

They spoke for an hour, describing the need to get climate change as a central topic of the presidential debates in the next election, outlining a plan of mounting pressure on representatives, and urging us to hold our reps accountable for our visions for a better future.

When the call stopped, the room buzzed with ideas: plans to visit offices, art builds for sit-ins, ways to reach out to each other. It’s electric to be in the room– an issue that has been stagnant for so long is finally seeing change, and we feel it.

Groups like this are meeting all around the country: making a plan, taking power. Strangers, introducing themselves to each other to make common cause.

Sunrise is a youth-led movement. They’ve grown from thirtyish college and high school students to a national movement of thousands. It’s Do Something in action, as people realize that the people are us, the moment is now.

If climate change scares you, if regressive politics frustrate you– this is an invitation. Political action looks like individuals, deciding to show up.

There isn’t a Sunrise hub yet in Needham, but there could be one. Go to sunrisemovement.org/hubs and click the “Start a Hub” button– they’ll help you get started fighting back against climate change.