My capstone project focused on designing and fabricating a left-handed camera harness and grip to enhance accessibility for individuals with disabilities, particularly those affecting right-hand mobility. Motivated by a friend’s inability to operate conventional cameras due to design flaws, the project aimed to address a significant gap in accessible design within the feild of photography. The iterative process involved collaboration with a seamstress and leveraging resources from the robotics team to refine the design and ensure durability. Through prototyping and testing, the final product incorporated custom components and a unique latch-and-release system, allowing for easy detachment and maneuverability. Alongside technical challenges, the project fostered a sense of community, emphasizing the importance of inclusive design grounded in user feedback and collaboration. This project highlighted the complexities of translating design concepts into tangible solutions and the significance of effective communication in understanding user needs. Despite initial setbacks and uncertainties, the project culminated in a transformative tool that not only addressed a specific accessibility issue but also inspired passion and innovation within the engineering community. Moving forward, the project aims to share its design openly, promoting accessibility and inclusion in photography equipment beyond its immediate scope.

Link to bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CDOmh3_ebudFlgktEVKsC1iSWizCNF1WGP3exZu5WFg/edit?usp=sharing

Beyond The Cuckoo’s Nest: Analyzing Authoritarian Dynamics in Ken Kesey’s Book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” and The Contemporary World Of Managers

In the maze that is the modern workplace, where the echoes of the proverbial “rat race” reverberate through the corridors of a corporatized society, the compliance demanded by authority finds its counterpart in the soulful yet automatic refrain, “Good Morning, Miss. Rat-ched” as aptly stated by McMurphy on page 86 of Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. This adjustment in address where “Ratched” is innocuously muddled down to “Rat-ched,” echos a rebellious but subtle confrontation that binds the autocratic nature McMurphy is portrayed to inhabit in this novel. It also echoes what modern workers have been calling the “Rat race” which is a term used in reference to the relentless, competitive, exhausting, and oftentimes monotonous pursuit of inevitable self-defeat encapsulated within the corporate ladder. In response to McMurphy’s greeting and question, “How’s things on the outside?’ Miss Ratched responds “You can’t run around here in a towel!” A response that serves as an immediate reminder of the power structures previously established. The life of Miss Ratched outside the hospital is no business to McMurphy not because it is simply irrelevant but because McMurphy simply has no place in society. Apparently to Miss Ratched’s account that is plainly evident in the fact McMurphy parades himself around the commons in a towel. Such a man in Nurse Ratched’s eye is incapable of understanding what it is like to be normal that is why she feels compelled to get these men to conform. It is her job after all.

Ironically McMurphy’s elegantly poised derogatory remix of Nurse Ratched’s name was supposed to signify Nurse Ratched, much like the patients and staff of this ward painted in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is indeed a rat. If we are to believe it is the nurse’s managerial duty to help the hospital better remold these men back into society we must be open to the idea that the nurse and other staff members alike are to effectively be the only representatives of the “outside” and the values and structures the “outside” would have reflected to the average reader at the time. But through Nurse Ratched’s actions and the sacrifice of oneself, (being everyone else in the ward) we see how the guiding autocratic structures of the outside world creep their way into the hospital.

Autocratic structures have been in place within our society for quite some time now even during the 50s when this book takes place. Parallels can be drawn from the examples of condensation, passive aggressiveness, and conformity throughout the novel. “Don’t you think we’d better climb back into our nice toasty bed?” says Nurse Ratched to Chief Bromden pg. 143, a man perceived in the hospital to be deaf. What is particularly scary about this first example is the fact Nurse Ratched knows Chief is deaf yet she carries on with her language and the usage of words like “we”, “you”, and “our” which all insinuates the illusion of choice. It blunts the sharp edges of authoritarian demands making them look more collaborative and self-serving. The reality, as we see immediately after, is that Bromden chooses that he does not want to go to bed but still, the Nurse aggressively sets her staff on Bromden and they proceed to lock him down to his bed. Bromden is then left in his bed locked up forced to cope with the reality in front of him pg.144 “she figures it’s on account of working evenings among a whole ward full of people like me. It’s all our fault, and she’s going to get us for it if it’s the last thing she does. I wish McMurphy’d wake up and help me.”

Through Nurse Ratched and her managerial stylings comes forth an admission of guilt. Nurse Ratched has her sights set on strict conformity and submission, in Nurse Ratched’s eyes the correlation between a patient’s inability to adhere to her exact instructions and misbehavior and the subsequent punishments dealt out to the patients as a result of that are entirely justified. “You men are in this hospital because of your proven inability to adjust to society.” pg. 144 As a result of this thinking inspired by beliefs fostered within the outside world any opinion or right proposed by these patients is completely invalid as she is sure, using failure to adhere as a soul justifier that the patients are incapable of knowing what is truly best for not only the hospital and overall community but also themselves. That is why I felt it was imperative Ken Kesey introduce a personality like McMurphy to the ward.

McMurphy is a con man, con men don’t like to be conned, and because of that he is particularly good at seeing through the various masks the inhabitants of the ward seem to hide behind, from uncovering Bromden’s lie of deafness to cheating the patients out of their cigarettes. But a man with such an intuition is a dangerous thing for any structure grounded in conformity. He initially detests the adherence to the culture Nurse Ratched was trying to pose within the ward. Eventually, after time it has become overwhelmingly apparent to Nurse Ratched that McMurphy’s failure to adhere would become the ward’s greatest perceived threat. This only begins to affect McMurphy when he finally realizes Nurse Ratched has the ability to extend his sentence at the ward indefinitely if she so desires “You got to swallow your pride sometimes and keep an eye out for old Number One.” pg. 165 McMurphy vehemently exclaims after ditching his original plans of antagonizing Nurse Ratched as a result of this newly acquired piece of knowledge. This instance of submission is telling of the true pressures such a hierarchical framework can have on even the strongest of personalities. It is also the first instance in the book that I began to feel a sense of helplessness, that there is no escape for these men, and that ultimately the fate of these men’s lives will forever be in accordance with the merits of their “caretakers”.

In conclusion, the dichotomy between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy is stark, and that is for a great reason. Pitting these two characters together serves as a fantastic lens into the relationship between the managed and the managers within contemporary society. It puts on display in some of the most extreme of ways the authority we grant professionals and managers in our lives. Nurse Ratched and the significance of the “outside” and how McMurphy so innocently assumed that meant anything exposes the overlap between the scenes and attitudes depicted within this novel and how they may reflect the manifestations of our current reality. In doing this Ken Kesey demands the reader to reflect on the relationships they may have with authority and hierarchy in their day-to-day lives, just as he did when preparing this novel.

Amjed Washaha Mrs. Giknis English 1 5/20/2021 Social Media Impact On Sexually Based Cybercrimes In my last two posts, I covered social media’s negligence towards sexually based crimes. These crimes were anything from the distribution and sale of child pornography and the posting of unsolicited nudes from all genders and ages. We also provide photo evidence of online criminals interacting and advertising their illicit goods. We discuss statistics such as “child pornography of images had increased 1500% since 1988! Also, there was a 375% increase in the amount of child pornography websites between February of 2001 and July 2001. You can find the previous post here. The #megalink problem isn’t a secret nor is it located in a dark and inconspicuous alley somewhere on the internet. No, it’s right out there in the open for the world to see sometimes even appearing on the front page of Twitter. Twitter users are now trying to combat #megalinks by flooding the hashtag with photos and tweets unrelated to #megalink’s content. Many YouTubers are on our side as well. For example Youtuber “SomeOrdinaryGamers” made a 9 minute video explaining the situation. Feedback suggests that the video was rather successful gaining 968,421 views and 44,000 likes as of publication.
The attempts made by Twitter users against #megalinks are an easy and effective way anyone can help. It keeps the innocent distracted but may one day also move the #megalink community to other platforms. I also think the attempts made by Twitter users are quite humorous. You can often find memes and jokes when investigating. Here we see a user flooding the #megalink thread with something a little more friendly. Link from the Legend of Zelda series. Source: Twitter

YouTubers the likes of SomeOrdinaryGamers may also bring a lot of press to the situation. I mean 968,000 people is a lot of people, if they all shared the video once we could have millions of people that didn’t know about these disgusting acts of sexual assault, harassmet, grooming, etc… Sadly all these attempts aren’t nearly enough to put even a dent in the plans of the #megalink criminals. My agent of change mission was to stop this problem before it even happens. In my research, I’ve concluded that most of these criminals have suffered early childhood trauma or mental health trauma such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, etc… My idea is to implement a Peer Mediation program in SLA that will help students combat issues such as trauma or mental health issues. In order to make this happen, I’ll need the support of fellow SLA staff and students. I will assign trustable and reliable students hand picked by fellow advisors and staff. From there we plan on creating a safe environment for students to openly converse and socialize with fellow students. If this program goes as planned, students should leave the program knowing that they have added at least one more person to their lives that will always be there for them. I’ve worked as a mediator of other programs in the past and they went well in most cases. Getting in touch with the school counselor Ms.Siswick was rather easy and she was very cooperative and seemed genuinely interested in improving the wellbeing of SLA students and our community and for that, I am greatly appreciative. I have yet been able to complete my goals as of yet and the preparation and implementation of this program will begin in the 2021-2022 school year. I do believe that I have a solid plan and I can’t wait to put it into action. I really enjoyed this project even though I haven’t fully completed it as of yet. It pushed me hard and made me come to a realization of how bad the world can be sometimes. I learned a lot, statistics for these acts really shocked me. The number of child porngraphy can compare with the amount of legal porn out there which is absolutely disgusting and is a realization that I am constantly reminded of. I definitely could have made this program happen within this year but with the barriers, online schooling has imposed I didn’t feel comfortable having students talk about what could be serious problems over a screen, the fear of recorded conversations was a huge concern for me. For you, the people help us by contacting Twitter advertisers which you’ll find on the next page, and continue to flood #megalinks with appropriate content. Thank you to all of those trying to make a difference!

Twitter support→ support@twitter.com List of top 5 investors and emails: .The Vanguard Group, Inc. (Email): institutional@vanguard.com .Morgan Stanley. (Email): prospectus@morganstanley.com .BlackRock Fund Advisors Inc. (Email): complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk .SSgA Funds Management, Inc. (Email): geam_web@ssga.com. .ClearBridge Investments LLC. (Email): info@clearbridge.com

Amjed Washaha Mrs. Giknis English 1 22/3/2021 Social Media Impact On Sexually Based Crimes Hello, did you know that in 2013 researchers have concluded that the number of child pornography images had increased 1500% since 1988?! Also, there was a 375% increase in the amount of child pornography websites between February of 2001 and July 2001, just five months apart! Now imagine how high that number has increased with the new modernization of computers and cybersecurity. Now if you don’t see the problem here you aren’t blind you choose not to see. This inspired me to do my own investigation into this topic. As I discussed in my earlier post, Twitter the infamous social media platform know primarily for political nonsense and cancel culture has some serious issues with the exchanging and sale of unsolicited pornography of not only minors but adults as well. Adults that are ignorant to the fact that their private photos and videos are being sold and exchanged on sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. With the amount of users apps such as Twitter have you would expect that moderation for things such as this would be good and looked after well no Twitter does nothing to fix this issue only if you report the user directly will Twitter do something. Well then report all of the accounts right? There are so many accounts that it would be impossible for me to do so and even if I do these accounts are what we call “throwaways” which are accounts that have to link to the user and can be “thrown away” at any time. After they are removed or throw away their account they just make a new one and start their operations up again. Source: Twitter Names and hashtags covered to prevent the advertising of illegal activities It doesn’t take much to fully understand what is going on here. But there are some things to explain like what does “S2R” mean, well it means “send to receive” this is a tactic these criminals use to obtain a greater stock but also make sure you are an actual buyer and not a cop or someone that is just trying to toy with them. Amongst other things we see one user state that they have 100 gigabytes of material on deck which for comparison is around 20,000 songs or in our circumstances around 200 hours in standard definition video or even 100,000 photos according to “Kenstechtips.com”. When you think about it this is one person amongst thousands in this world and he already has enough material to last him a lifetime. Now, do you see the problem?

If you have keen eyes you will see that all of these posts are very recent with the oldest being only made a day before this article was written (24/3/2021) and one even been made only nine hours ago. Source: Twitter

In this snapshot, I have made the decision to not cover the search bar. The hashtag “Megalinks’ ’ refers to an anonymous file-sharing application known as “Mega.nz”. I do not hold Mega.nz accountable for the actions we see displayed here as their services help small businesses and developers share data without the fear of the data being compromised. The reason I have decided to share this information with you is that I have come to the realization that anyone looking to purchase this crude material will go above and beyond to obtain it and it is quite easy to obtain information on this topic. From what we have concluded these accounts are “throwaways” and they share material using anonymous methods, the combination of these two tactics offers these criminals total anonymity. So what is being done about this issue? Nothing on Twitters’ part at least, Twitter hasn’t even issued out a statement on the matter. As of March 25th, 2021 the only action taken against these criminals has been mass reportings and floodings of the threads. Users will “flood” the hashtag “megalinks” with gifs and memes shaming the child pornography market as shown in the image below. Reporting doesn’t do much but this flooding tactic has a lot of potentials to help hide the users selling the nefarious photos and videos.

Here we see a user flooding the #megalink thread with something a little more friendly. Link from the Zelda series! Source: Twitter
What can you do? Even though users can make new accounts at anytime mass reporting can get the seller off the platform and make them move to more discrete and harder to reach parts of the internet. Although this might not solve the problem it will make it harder for first-timers to purchase and get addicted, it will also shield children from stumbling upon such vulgar media. Email Twitter, emailing twitter’s support center can help inform twitter of these criminals’ existence. If all else fails hit them where it hurts their wallet! Contact investors let them know what is going on in the company they have money invested into. And finally, be safe whilst doing research for this project I had to cut out many things for as it was too vulgar for a school setting I also stumbled unwarranted photos whilst looking through threads while the photo is down now I cannot say for sure if it was re-uploaded again. Thank you for reading let us make a difference!

Twitter support→ support@twitter.com List of top 5 investors and emails: .The Vanguard Group, Inc. (Email): institutional@vanguard.com .Morgan Stanley. (Email): prospectus@morganstanley.com .BlackRock Fund Advisors Inc. (Email): complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk .SSgA Funds Management, Inc. (Email): geam_web@ssga.com. .ClearBridge Investments LLC. (Email): info@clearbridge.com

I started this project when it was assigned in my english class during the first month of my freshman year. It was a wild first year project but I expect nothing less from 2020. I created this piece in Philadelphia and the entirety of the story takes place here in philly, my home. The beginning of this pandemic started almost a year ago now so it’s hard to pin point exactly how my story began, but I can safely say it started as any normal cliche pandemic movie or book starts. “I never expected it to end up like this, but I guess we just didn’t want to think what this plaque could really turn out to be” Type Deal. If it wasn’t already obvious as to how my story relates to this, this story reflects on my thoughts and experiences during the pandemic. It encompasses the coming weeks before lockdown and how my school reacted to these sudden closings of schools through out the district.