As violence in recent days has escalated drastically in Israel and the Palestinian territories, protesters in Fort Collins came together in Old Town Square to stand in solidarity with victims in a peaceful demonstration for Palestinians.  Tawfik Aboellail, an associate professor at Colorado State University, began the protest by speaking on the importance of peace […]

The third annual Queer Spectra Arts Festival, held May 22-23, 2021, is welcoming 43 LGBTQ+ artists from 13 different countries to showcase their work in a virtual celebration. This year’s theme “The Queer & Now” invited artists to explore the ideas of queer space and time through a variety of multidisciplinary work including dance, photography, sculptures, paintings, zines, films and more. 

The Festival’s Roots

The festival, started by dancer Dat Nguyen along with fellow dancer Emma Sargent and University of Utah graduates Max Barnewitz and Aileen Norris, intends to bring together queer-identifying artists from various disciplines and cultivate safe spaces for LGBTQ+ artists to engage in conversations about art and identity. Artists from many backgrounds share their work as a part of the festival, including those with and without formal training, providing a platform for young artists who are traditionally less privileged in access to arts and academia. 

The festival’s audience will be able to take part at the event in several ways, including interacting with virtual gallery space and live-streamed performances. Zoom-based workshops and artist-led panel discussions are a conduit of the festival’s mission to create space and conversation and include the Body Curiosity workshop, Tales of Magiclandia workshop, Queer Futures panel and Slumber Party! panel.

Notably, the Slumber Party panel pays homage to the bedroom as a uniquely queer space, one that became critical to art-making as numerous artists had to create their dances, photographs, paintings and more in their bedrooms during the global pandemic. A unique and new panel at the festival, the intention was to foster a real and informal conversation about art in intimate spaces. 

New Year, Still Queer

The festival’s keynote speaker is the award-winning Timothy White Eagle, a University of Utah alumnus with a BFA in Theater.  With decades of artistic exploration, he creates art in mediums including objects, photography, performance and installed space. Other artists featured in this year’s festival include visual activist Andrés Juárez Troncoso; fashion designer and collage artist Parviz Abdullayev; Irish YouTuber, comedian and musician Neil Farrell; movement deviser, improviser and performer Amanda Maraist; BYU contemporary dance major Joey Anderson; oil painter Nataly, SLC printmaker and designer Margot Apricot; and many other artists that represent a vast variety of intersectional identities and styles. 

“The Queer & Now” Queer Spectra Arts Festival is a unique and inspirational space to explore the intersections of art and identity and celebrate the diverse experiences of queerness. It offers an inclusive platform for LGBTQ+ creators to share and discuss while dismissing the boundaries and barriers often imposed upon art, academia, and identity and centering, “a diverse array of voices, backgrounds, experiences, cultures, mediums, and artistic disciplines in order to celebrate queer artistic expressions.”

The Queer Spectra Arts Festival is free to attend but the organizers encourage attendees to make a donation of $5-10 to cover production costs and support LGBTQ+ artists. Audiences can find the full festival schedule, gallery and artist statements and profiles on their website.

h.graham@dailyutahchronicle.com

@_HeatherGraham_

The post The Queer & Now: The Queer Spectra Arts Festival Returns appeared first on The Daily Utah Chronicle.

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Learning how to lose

I’m no fan of Giannis Antetokounmpo, but when I was 16, I wrote him a poem. As the terminal exit led him home after his team was eliminated from the 2019 NBA Playoffs, I told him, “You are my MVP on Thursday nights when every piece falls firmly into place and they call you a king, and you are my MVP on Tuesday nights when defeat forces your head down in a humble realization that you are not invincible, and you will always be my MVP on all the nights in between.”

A bit dramatic for an athlete who represents a state I associate with cheese, but this is how loss distorts my reality: Suddenly, a four-game losing streak for the Milwaukee Bucks is comparable to the second flooding of the earth, and I write so many eulogies that I feel like my entire personality is made up of sports teams who screw up when they need to be clutch.

It used to scare me, the almost visceral response I’d have to losses that weren’t mine to own: short-lived playoff runs, torn ACLs, Kawhi Leonard buzzer-beaters. I would let the disappointment hang heavy on my shoulders, trading an entire day’s worth of productivity for useless wonderings of “What if this” and “What if that” as if my manifestations would change the overall outcome.

In retrospect, I was merely learning how to lose.

When I was younger, I never considered sports to be anything more than just casual entertainment. It is easy, after all, to get swept up by the beautiful words and shiny trophies, forgetting that there are bigger lessons being taught than just how to win.

Sports taught me how to love, how to pick a side and commit, for better or for worse. I’ve had my brief flings: The years in middle school when my friend bamboozled me into supporting the Patriots, the two weeks in 2019 when I yearned for the Warriors to fall, the Nationals’ inspiring World Series run against the Astros that same October. I’ve also met my forever teams: The scarlet and gray of my hometown Buckeyes, the quiet persistence of the still-blossoming Rams. I know how these relationships work, and I know I have enough unconditional support to go around.

Sports forced me to sacrifice. I scheduled meetings and hangouts around the matchups I wanted to watch, woke up early for games catered toward an East Coast audience, spent my money on tickets and jerseys, praying that the players whose names I took the time to learn would not betray me. I gave sports my seasons. I put in the work. I loved my teams right.

So it is a blessing, I suppose, that when sports lets me down, it lets me down gently. Inconsequentially. I react and react, screaming my lamentations and feeling cheated, but at the end of the day, it is just a game. It is just a couple of men throwing a ball around, hoping to get from one end of the field to the other. If I reach, it’s almost like a metaphor for life.

Sometimes, when I lose perspective in the face of loss, I harken back to one of my favorite Damian Lillard quotes: “Pressure, nah. Fam, this is just playing ball. Pressure is the homeless man, who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from. Pressure is the single mom, who is trying to scuffle and pay her rent. We get paid a lot of money to play a game. Don’t get me wrong — there are challenges. But to call it pressure is almost an insult to regular people.”

This humility — this is how I heal. This is how I slowly rearrange my priorities, game after game after game.

It is a beautiful microcosm, these sports worlds we carve out for ourselves. We grow up in them, we love and trust and commit for the sole purpose of learning how to get our hearts broken. We write indignant poetry to cope, find a better lover in revenge and circle back to the same thrill and hope that is addicting enough to be considered a vice. We break enough times that the pain yields rationality. We break enough times until we have finally learned how to lose.

Contact Cynthia Ge at cge@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

UC Berkeley to begin in-person instruction at start of fall semester

Sunny Shen/File

As students and faculty continue to look forward to the first semester of primarily in-person instruction since spring 2020, UC Berkeley announced Friday that the first week of instruction will be held in person.

The decision was influenced by a possible vaccine mandate for all UC campuses, according to a campuswide email from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. In a previous announcement, campus said the first week of instruction will be remote to allow COVID-19 testing for returning students and staff.

The widespread availability of vaccines and improving local public health conditions also informed campus’s decision, the email added.

“Students, staff, faculty and academic appointees should make every effort to be fully vaccinated before arriving on campus,” the email reads. “If you were vaccinated at a non-UC Berkeley vaccination site, please upload your vaccination information through the secure eTang portal as soon as you are able.”

Most UC campuses will also begin the semester with in-person instruction and more details regarding the return to campus are being finalized, the email added.

Check back for updates.

Aditya Katewa is the executive news editor. Contact him at akatewa@dailycal.org, and follow him on Twitter at @adkatewa1.

The Daily Californian

After putting together solid rounds of 3-over par and 3-under par on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, the Georgia Southern men’s golf team knew they needed to go low to potentially make the national championships.

Through the first nine holes, it looked like the Eagles had done just that. The five GS golfers wrapped up the front nine with a cumulative score of 9-under par, which put the team in a tie for fifth and in position for a national championship appearance.

Luke Dasher and Mason Williams both recorded a double bogey on the back nine, while the team combined for a total of nine additional bogeys. The Eagles found just three birdies as a team on the back nine to shoot a disappointing 9-over par.

The overall performance of even-par was enough for the Eagles to finish in eighth place, nine shots shy of fifth place.

“We did our best,” said head coach Carter Collins in a tearful interview. “I’m very proud of them. They put their best foot forward this week and Eagle nation should be extremely proud of everything they did this year, but especially this week.”

Three of the five golfers who participated in the regional will return to the Eagles team next year, while Brett Barron and Jake Maples will say goodbye to the GS program.

In ‘Riders of Justice,’ a soldier, 3 researchers and confirmation bias walk into a gloomy bar 

Zentropa Entertainments/Courtesy

Grade: 3.5/5.0

Content warning: sexual violence

Someone, no clue who, must have wondered what would happen if John Wick lost something more important than a dog. “Riders of Justice” is a gloriously different film, but the answer, in terms of John Wick, is a whole lot darker. 

There won’t be any deja vu while watching “Riders of Justice.” Director Anders Thomas Jensen (co-credited for writing) has made a fabulously idiosyncratic revenge thriller. It opens with a simple, smart scene. A girl wants a blue bike for Christmas, but the vendor only has red. So the innocent girl sets off a chain of events that leads to the death of military man Markus’ (Mads Mikkelsen, stony, calculated, overflowing with violence) wife. As the film opens, there’s plenty of meat about “what ifs” and how decisions intertwine — a puzzle the film obsesses over. 

If the opening sequence sometimes strays into being lethargic, Jensen has caught himself by the point Markus’ wife is sheared away, along with the wall of a train. Probability researchers and best friends Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann) turn up at Markus’ house, insisting with statistical certainty her death was the byproduct of the assassination of a witness testifying against a biker gang.

A few turns later and a Carhartt jeans-wearing, emotionally stunted Markus is killing a gang member, researchers in tow. Perhaps his daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), was right to tell him to accept free therapy. The film’s compositions — thematic and visual — often rely on distinct contrasts. So does its sense of humor, such as the size difference between Otto and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro), a facial recognition expert that got roped in to track down that guy that befell Markus’ rage, plus the next dozen bad guys. (Otto is wrapped up on a slice of the bed, Emmenthaler, spread-eagle, occupies the other three quarters.)

Such contrasts make “Riders of Justice” a distinctly fun movie. But Jensen isn’t playing around, and he chases each gag with a gut punch. Underlying the fun pokes, “Riders of Justice” is the vehicle for some very disturbed characters. They’re not distressed in the same way: Markus is Markus, Otto suffers from the horrors of a drunken car crash and Lennart from a sexually abusive childhood, while Emmenthaler struggles with personal confidence.

Further below this trauma is a distinctly queer narrative run by the supporting cast. “Riders of Justice” is kind enough not to hit viewers over the head with that, however. Sexuality is never overt — it’s even modestly ambiguous here — but Lennart was clearly abused by a man as a child, and he has a rapport with Emmenthaler like that between two fiery exes. While Markus wages war with the gang, the supporting characters mark their crusade against the homophobic slur-slinging gang members.

Where “Riders of Justice” goes wrong is its refusal to make a clean break from the typical. The supporting characters are refreshingly unique — we haven’t even gotten to the rescued sex slave — but their haunts are not. Haven’t we had enough of connecting queer people with pedophilia? The inspired characters risk dissolving into their woes, becoming figments of the past instead of revelations of the future they’re verging on. The fact remains, however: These are some of the most singular characters to grace screens as of late, even if they need some fleshing out. 

The same goes for the rest of the film. So often, Jensen makes brilliant, but dark and subversive forays into ingenuity, only to scurry back to the revenge thriller’s rigid form — an origin story leads to platitudes, and so forth. “Riders of Justice” comes so close to rethinking it all, and it does throw away some action movie standbys, but inevitably locks into schema. We end up at a guns-blazing standoff at Markus’s house that imperils Mathilde, because we must. 

As the film closes, however, Jensen seems to call himself out. It won’t spoil to say everything’s tied up in time for a warm and fuzzy Christmas, except Markus. He’s still much the same as he was. Even as Otto — who, like the other characters, has built himself up — gives Markus a kind glance, “Riders of Justice” itself seems to say, “suck it, loser” to the convention-bound macho.

Contact Dominic Marziali at dmarziali@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

The University welcomed residents into a new 162-bed dormitory and wellness center located on 450 Brook St. May 9, marking the opening of the first new dorm in nearly 35 years. The building will also house the University’s health and wellness services. 

By locating health and wellness services inside a residence hall, the University aims to create opportunities for community building, peer education and outreach focused on mental, physical and psychological well being, according to a University webpage for the dormitory. 

This residence hall will have unique programming run by student residents in collaboration with health and wellness services. Examples of programming include students teaching yoga or active listening skills to their peers, as well as participating in mini-grant projects to implement interventions with the support of BWell Health. Students will shape what programming is offered based on areas of wellness that interest them.

The first floor of the hall is dedicated to housing health and wellness facilities: Counseling and Psychological Services, Health Services, BWell Health Promotion and Emergency Medical Services. It also hosts a large common space for students, Paul Dietel, assistant vice president of planning, design and construction, told The Herald. The upper floors are for student residence; one side of the building is suite-style living and the other contains singles. 

Each suite has four bedrooms, a common living room, a bathroom and a kitchen. Each floor of singles contains multiple single-occupancy bathrooms and common rooms. Every room has air conditioning, and water bottle filling stations are dispersed throughout each floor. 

Currently, mostly upperclassmen are residing in the residence hall for the summer semester. Health and wellness services are scheduled for a phased move-in by August 9, said Craig Barton, University architect and professor of the practice of history of art and architecture. The unique health and wellness programming will begin in Fall 2021, and prospective residents had to apply for residency by May 16. 

Current student residents have expressed excitement about living in 450 Brook St.  

“I love it. My quality of life has improved and I like how new everything is,” said Summer Residential Counselor Charles Wang ’22. “The best part is the location, as the dorm is right next to the gym, Andrews (Dining Hall) and CVS.”

SRC William Zhang ’22 agreed that the space is “super nice” and that residents are really glad to be there. “This vibe is so different as compared to other dorms,” he said. “It’s more modern, contemporary, newer, brighter and lighter.”

The construction of the building began in March 2020 — right at the onset of the pandemic — according to Dietel. The University was able to continue construction throughout the pandemic by implementing new health and safety features. 

“The University was committed to keeping (construction) going and it was quite remarkable,” Dietel said. “I cannot tell you how excited we are about this project. Finishing ahead of schedule and ahead of budget is something we are very proud of.”

The hall was originally set to open in August 2021, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the switch to a tri-semester model, the University asked the construction crew to accelerate the project to complete it for the summer semester, Dietel said. In order to meet this deadline, the crew hired additional construction staff and had to work 10-hour work days six days a week.

After adhering to COVID-19 precautions such as physical distancing, masking, daily symptom tracking and temperature checks, the construction team was able to complete the project in time for summer residents to move in, Dietel added. 

The construction of the building emphasizes sustainable living by using recyclable carpet tiles, floor-to-ceiling glass windows to maximize natural light, occupancy sensor lighting that harvests daylight and laminated timber flooring, which is known to sequester carbon, said Barton. 

SRC Ciara Sing ’22 said that the floor-to-ceiling windows in the building enhance the living experience. “They bring in a lot of air and light unlike typical dorms and they are a nice component of the building,” she said. “The whole building is glass so it does open the space and make it more welcoming unlike the other dorms on campus.”

Jonathan Leite ’23 described the dorm as “very clean and welcoming.” 450 Brook St. is “the nicest dorm I’ve been in on campus,” he said. “The rooms are really airy, the windows are enormous in all the rooms and the common spaces have really excellent natural light.”

The construction crew will add green roofs and a green wall by the end of the summer, Barton added. The building is not run off of fossil fuels, placing the University one step closer to achieving a carbon free campus by 2040.  

Barton explained that the design of the building, which has a balance of private rooms and gathering spaces, took into account the interests and concerns of students. “As we went through in planning and conversation with student groups, these were the kinds of options they wanted in their housing — the ability to have a private room but also to construct their own community,” he said.

He added that the building also “makes for a balance between the public and private component” through a first floor accessible to the entire Brown community and private, single rooms. Barton notes that the major difference of 450 Brook St. from other dorms on campus is its special health-centered programming, more kitchens, single occupancy bedrooms and more opportunities for public and private gatherings through lounges. 

Associate Vice President for Campus Life Koren Bakkegard agreed that the design closely supports the programmatic and experiential goals of the building. 

“Offering a combination of four-person suites and singles clustered around common spaces and shared kitchens, this upper-division residence has been designed to provide private living space and communal amenities where students will come together to share their holistic wellbeing practices in community with each other,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. 

Student residents have largely expressed happiness and gratitude to be living at 450 Brook St., already dubbed “the Welly” by residents. 

SRC Maria Zhou ’22 said she greatly appreciates her new living space. “It’s definitely just gorgeous, and I love how everything is new from the furniture to the appliances in the kitchen.”

In the coming months, the space will continue to evolve as health and wellness services relocate and programming begins. 

“It will be interesting to see how students interact with the professional services,” Zhou said, “and I’m excited to see how that’s going to work and how those two communities will mix.”

Artificial intelligence system Dr.Fill wins American Crossword Puzzle Tournament

Anthony /Staff

This year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament was won by an artificial intelligence system named Dr.Fill. UC Berkeley researchers played a role in Dr.Fill’s creation.

The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, or ACPT, annually gathers contestants from around the world to tackle eight original crossword puzzles. This year, the top ACPT performer was not a human but was instead an artificial intelligence system built in part by a team of UC Berkeley researchers.

According to Will Shortz, crossword editor for The New York Times and founder and director of the ACPT, this year’s tournament was held virtually and had a record number of 1,287 contestants. While the tournament was built for human competitors, the AI system that “won,” named Dr.Fill, competed unofficially, Shortz noted.

Dr.Fill solved the final puzzle in 49 seconds, according to a Berkeley Engineering press release, more than two minutes faster than the top human contestant.

“Crosswords are generally considered to be a uniquely human activity, because they involve hard-to-program elements like real-world human language and knowledge,” Shortz said in an email. “Dr. Fill’s performance is a tribute to human ingenuity in developing AI.”

Dr.Fill’s success is attributed to a collaboration between Matthew Ginsberg, the original creator of Dr.Fill, and a team of UC Berkeley researchers from the Berkeley Natural Language Processing, or NLP, Group, according to the press release.

According to Dan Klein, campus professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, the UC Berkeley team included himself; campus doctoral students Nicholas Tomlin, Eric Wallace and Kevin Yang; and campus undergraduate students Eshaan Pathak and Albert Xu.

Tomlin had been working on building an automated crossword puzzle solver since last year. He pitched the idea to researchers at the NLP Group, and the group began working on the Berkeley Crossword Solver, or BCS, an AI system that focuses on reading crossword clues and generating possible answers, according to Tomlin.

“There are two phases to solving a crossword,” Klein said. “First, you have to brainstorm possible answers for each clue. The second phase is to take all those possible answers and figure out which ones go together on the grid.”

According to Klein, the BCS focuses on the first phase of crossword solving via a machine-learning model. The BCS was trained on approximately 6.5 million pairs of clues and answers, Klein noted. By solving several example crossword puzzles, the BCS learns and updates its algorithm as it makes mistakes.

The second phase of crossword solving is managed by the existing Dr.Fill system, which identifies the best guesses to place on the crossword grid, according to Tomlin. Klein added that because the BCS also computes the probabilities that each of the possible answers is correct, Dr.Fill can clearly weigh its options when determining the correct grid layout.

Klein noted Dr.Fill’s performance in the ACPT is an “exciting milestone” for the field of natural language processing.

“If you had asked me two weeks before the competition, I would have told you that we probably weren’t going to win this year,” Tomlin said in an email. “I’m still amazed that we won.”

Contact Amudha Sairam at asairam@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter at @AmudhaSairam.

The Daily Californian

Cal bets the Farm, earns first series victory over No. 15 Stanford in 7 years

Isabella Ko/File

Stanford may be known as “the Farm” by many Bay Area locals, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many animals on campus larger than the particularly obese squirrels overfed by students. Perhaps the only other creatures on the Farm are the underdogs that frequent Klein Field — No. 15 Stanford is rarely overwhelmed by those that visit, evident from its 13-8 conference record without a home series loss.

The Bears have likewise hosted plenty of foes in their own den just across the Bay, but none are quite so unwelcome as the archrival Cardinal. Cal was slated for an uphill battle against highly ranked Stanford last weekend, but in the comfort of Evans Diamond’s confines, the Bears entered the series as underdogs and left as top dogs.

When all was said and done, Cal rode off with its first Big Series win against the Cardinal since 2014. Stanford is the third highest-ranked Pac-12 team behind only No. 6 Oregon and No. 7 Arizona, and the conference series loss was the first of its kind this season for the Cardinal. The Bears improved to 12-12 in the conference for a .500 win percentage that is keeping the door to the postseason open just wide enough for Cal to eke through if it wins the final two conference series left on its schedule.

On Friday, Stanford won the first game of the weekend in commanding fashion thanks to pitcher Brendan Beck’s career-best 12 strikeout showing — the righty allowed only two runs over eight innings of work, and his pitching proved quite a hard row to hoe for Cal. Despite Cole Elvis’ and Quentin Selma’s solo shots off Beck, the Bears were unable to put their paws to the plow and fell to the Cardinal 9-2 on Friday evening.

“We do have some guys that haven’t played a lot especially in the conference, so it’s about them getting experience and understanding what it takes to be successful in this league when you’re starting to face some tougher pitching, some different pitch mixes and obviously being pitched a little differently with runners in scoring position,” said Cal head coach Mike Neu. “There’s some parts of this game at the higher level that become a little more difficult.”

But Cal took the bull by the horns Saturday in what was nothing short of a last-gasp chance to keep postseason hopes afloat. The Bears were down 4-3 with just three outs between them and a disappointing end to a promising season. Sophomore Nathan Martorella, who was 3-4 on the night, snuck a leadoff double through the defense. A single and a quintessential stolen base from Darren Baker put Steven Zobac at the plate with no outs and the bases loaded, and a scorching two-run single through center sent the winning runs home. The miraculous walk-off win Saturday was the Bears’ sixth of the season, and the barn burner forced a rubber match the Cardinal was hardly expecting.

The Bears went whole hog Sunday after Martorella and Baker once again loaded the bases, this time for senior Quentin Selma, whose knack for going yard paid off at a critical juncture in the game and season at large. Selma pulled a bomb to right field for a go-ahead grand slam in the fourth, cracking the game open for Cal to make hay while the sun was shining and peel ahead 8-1 by the end of the inning.

The bullpen proved priceless yet again as Cal’s pitching depth complemented its offensive heroics, with everyone from starters such as Grant Holman to closers such as Mitchell Scott combining their talents to stave off Stanford and seal the 9-5 win.

The nonconference matchup at Stanford on Monday slipped out of Cal’s control after an early lead devolved into five innings spent knotted at 6-6. After nine pitching rotations and 12 innings of donkey work, the Bears succumbed to a deep single by the Cardinal that scored its winning run and edged Cal 7-6.

“We have to get more comfortable in those uncomfortable situations,” Neu said. “I think we’ve been trying to do a little too much instead of allowing the game to come to us and just doing what we would normally do when you get a pitch to hit and put a good swing on it.”

Now three for three in series against ranked teams this spring, the Bears will have extra moxie and morale as they face a brutal final stretch of the season. The team’s next opponent is No. 18 UCLA followed by No. 6 Oregon to cap off the season, and Cal needs series victories against at least one team for a shot at making the postseason. All of its eggs are in one basket now, but hey — you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs first.

The series against UCLA will kick off Friday at 6 p.m. at Jackie Robinson Stadium.

Emily Ohman covers baseball. Contact her at eohman@dailycal.org, and follow her on Twitter @emilyohman34.

The Daily Californian