Ah, Cards Against Humanity. The epic drunk-and-bored game of the early 21st century.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, here are the rules:

• Most of the cards are white and are nouns.
• The others are black and are questions or fill-in-the-blank types.
• Each turn, one player pulls a random black card.
• Then the other players put down a white card they think is funniest when paired with the aforementioned black card.
• That original player (who pulled the black card) picks his or her favorite pairing.
• The person who played that white card gets a point.

It’s Apples to Apples, but horribly and hilariously offensive. I called alum and co-creator of CAH Ben Hantoot ’09 to get his blessing for a Brown University expansion pack. He said it was chill. He was on his Bluetooth, driving what was probably a really nice car, what with all the big money to be made in board games these days. We had a funny conversation about smoking weed on Governor Street and the difference between Canadians’ and Americans’ card preferences, which you can read in Post- Magazine HERE. (I’m not going to pull a Jonah Lehrer and write the same article for two publications, even though I am not Jonah Lehrer and no one would care if I did.) All I can say is that I’m proud to attend the same school [wipes away single tear] as this modern genius once did. After Binder, let’s give Hantoot an honorary degree.

So here it is: the Brown University Expansion Pack. We hope you’ll mix them in with the original game, which you can download free on the Cards Against Humanity website. The card “Controversial Herald opinion articles” deserves to play in the big leagues. I, for one, will be at the GCB with these bad boys if you wanna hang out. Take a look after the jump.

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As we come to the end of another glorious season of Brown Athletics, it’s important to take a second to sit back and think about all the wonderful moments we’ve spent watching Brown teams succeed on and off the field this year. Let’s dash through season recaps for every one of our 37 varsity sports:

Baseball: A 7-33 finish, including 3-17 in Ivy League play, marks a successful and unprecedented effort by the baseball team to win even fewer games than last year’s nine. They did push #2 LSU to the wire in a narrow 4-3 walk-off loss, though, so that’s something.

Basketball (Men’s): A 7-7 Ivy League record was a big improvement on last year and good for a tie for third. Memorable wins included a comeback over rival Providence and eliminating Princeton from league title contention with a beatdown in the season finale. Sean McGonagill ’14 was named first-team All-Ivy; Cedric Kuakumensah ’16 was name Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year. Show the fuck up to their games next year, please.

Basketball (Women’s): 3-11 Ivy and 9-19 overall records were nothing to write home about, but women’s basketball alum Lindsey Gottlieb ’99 coached Cal to the Women’s Final Four, which is pretty damn cool.

Crew (Men’s): Hard to figure out, since apparently men’s rowing isn’t an NCAA sport but is still varsity (?). I don’t know. Anyway, Brown has had another great season, losing only to No. 1 Washington and Ivy rival Harvard. (I think. Crew results are really hard to understand.) The year will conclude with Ivy and National championships in late May/early June.

Crew (Women’s): The NCAA sponsors women’s rowing, so this one is easier to figure out. Brown is ranked 12th and fresh off an Eastern Sprints victory heading into Ivy and National championships in late May/early June. Sounds promising.

Cross Country (Men’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, but didn’t qualify for nationals after finishing 11th at Northeast Regionals.

Cross Country (Women’s): A bunch of Brown students ran distances that would kill you or me, and finished 8th at Northeast Regionals. Standout Margaret Connelly ’14 placed 7th to qualify for Nationals, where she finished 130th out of 253 runners.

Equestrian: The team placed third at Ivies and sent three riders to Nationals. Honestly, the results of this shit are totally indecipherable, but I can report with some certainty that no one from Brown won the national championship. Still, it sounds like they did pretty well.

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Clyde Lawrence ’15, the soulful musician behind “Wake Up” and a filthy cover of “Toxic” (really though), is at it again. This time, he’s debuting his soon-to-be-viral music video—take notes, BuzzFeed et al.—titled “Welcome Back Emma” right here on BlogDH.

Without giving too much away, it seems like a certain sophomore was really, really, really looking forward to a certain British actress’s return to Providence this January. The guy put together a super romantic dinner in the basement of Olney House (!!) and even feels a little bad that we made Emma cut her hair. We particularly like the idea of renaming the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies after a Watson with a little more… name recognition. Maybe someone who has a bit more “magic” to her.

Clyde also has a new album out titled Homesick. You can check it out on Spotify or on his YouTube channel. “Emma,” you should check him out too.

The U.S. Department of Education recently released a list of the top 25 freshmen retention rates of private colleges and universities. The difference between consecutive rankings here comes down to a fraction of a percent—Brown has an average retention rate of 97.5 percent, coming in at an unlucky a respectable thirteenth place. According to a Yahoo! news report, this officially renders Brown the school with the thirteenth happiest freshmen. The equivalency being presumed between retention and happiness can be easily deconstructed and dismissed, but it’s easier just to point out how irrelevant Yahoo! is.

Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones that mark these statistics as a measure of our  happiness—HuffPo and CBS News, among others, do the same. We always find it disconcerting when studies attempt to calculate the amount of happiness someone has (or a group people have), but in this case it is particularly discomforting as Princeton is ranked happiest. Sorry, but if this letter situation is happening at your school, you can’t win the happy-go-lucky award. Also, Princeton sorta just sounds sad. (Whoever said orange was the new black was seriously disturbed.)

We commend these sites for trying to gauge our happiness, but laugh at their shortcomings. [Read more →]

Finals suck, but The Great Gatsby soundtrack doesn’t. In the midst of this stressful time, music is always a great thing to turn to. So instead of flipping the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel for your English final, take a listen to The Great Gatsby album instead.

Our thoughts on this new soundtrack? It’s pretty damn awesome and drenched in pleasurable sounds. Using jazz and instrumentals, each track commingles two different eras, creating unique and modern notes that resonate within the twenties. Did F. Scott Fitzgerald ever imagine this would happen?

Who knows? But it did – and we like it. Check out our breakdown of each track after the jump. [Read more →]

Onward, to arrogance and elitism!

Dear President Paxson,

With our campus recently filled with dialogues of divestment, sexual assault, and same-sex marriage, I can imagine that you are looking for a respite from the demanding life of a university president, a job that requires you to curate a safe, empowering environment for thousands of brilliant students, taking into account our needs and social awareness.

Unfortunately, I cannot give you that respite.

You see, I’ve kept another pressing issue locked up inside me. It started as a joke, then suddenly became real, in a cataclysm of fiery, uncouth emotions: confusion, anger, astonishment. You have left me reeling, Christina.

I speak, of course, of your Batman endorsement.

I can sense a shocked denial approaching. Nay, you are on record. Last winter, during a UCS “Fireside Chat” — Ah! what pleasant names we give the propagation of evil! — you offended a nation.

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Freshman year, where did you go? As reading period continues, I’ve procrastinated taken some time to reflect upon the past few months. Here are a few things I’ve learned as I tearfully bid adieu to my first year at Brown. A special shoutout to my predecessors Slev and Neil Armstrong Jason for writing previous years’ incarnations of this post; some of the items on their lists were just too real to avoid in this year’s version (see asterisks). Good to see the freshman experience remains (mostly) unchanged.

1. The right hand door of Jo’s does not open, despite my persistence both before and after midnight.

2. Wednesday nights are a thing. So are Thursday morning classes. (Mornin’, City Politics).

3. I am not part of the FishCo generation.

4. Rock, not Scili.

6. The housing lottery stresses me out more than anything at Brown, but I guess that’s not saying much.

7. Hillel is arguably the nicest building on campus.

8. Wandering around Keeney on a Friday or Saturday after 1 a.m. is great fun. If you sit in a hallway long enough, you are guaranteed to meet new friends.

9.  It’s a week, not a weekend.

10. Talk to your roommate. He/she has much more friend potential than it seems–and even if you don’t become inseparable, they’ll always be there for you.*

11. The RISD Museum is on Waterman and Benefit. You should go.

12. Make “class friends.”

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It’s an almost universally agreed upon fact that Facebook changes suck. We like our social networks reliable and unmodified, gosh darnit! So when the cover photo was introduced, we were naturally all a bit hesitant.  Two profile pictures? We initially thought to ourselves. What is this hootenanny?

But Facebook users are narcissistic embraced the cover photo and utilized it as a form of expression, posting awkwardly-sized, rectangular images of everything from their favorite place to their favorite artist.  After some thorough Facebook stalking research, we deduced what each type of cover photo says about you:

The Beyonce: We feel your pain. Other Beyonce fans are tough to find; you’ve got to broadcast your obsession in the off chance you’ll get a couple of likes from some fellow Bey enthusiasts hiding out there somewhere. But seriously, this ubiquitous choice isn’t all that bad. You’ve got good taste in music… and humans. Sadly, you don’t win any creativity points.

The nature scene: “This website is pretty nice I guess,” Zuckerberg worried to himself the night he conceived the cover photo, “but it needs more sweet pics of people standing in front of mountains.” The nature cover photo became an instant staple. Today, you can’t stalk for long without coming across a picture of dirty people standing in front of a lake. For the most part, these send the right kinds of messages. You’ve got an adventurous side, you’ve seen some incredible sights and you know how to take a decent picture. Unless you pulled it off of Google. That’s not okay. [Read more →]

The newest edition to Providence’s eclectic Wayland Square is The Olive Tap, an artisanal olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting emporium. I think we can all agree that a solid bread-olive oil-vinegar combination can elevate any meal. Looking to impress your next dinner companions? Searching for a way to enhance your favorite salad dressing recipe? The Olive Tap is your next stop for perfecting your future culinary creations.

The Olive Tap, located at 485 Angell St., offers you the opportunity to sample and purchase the finest Extra Virgin and flavored olive oils and balsamic vinegars of Modena. Choose from the rows of oil and vinegar dispensed directly from their sealed “Fusti” (serving tanks). The basic premise is as follows: you walk in, greeted by rows of shining silver containers of oil and vinegar, terrines of French bread, and as many tasting cups as you can hold. You’re welcome to try one or all of their delicious offerings, mixed and matched, with bread or straight out of the serving cup, shot style. With flavors ranging from White Truffle Olive Oil to Espresso Vinegar, the  permutations are endless. If that isn’t enough, The Olive Tap has an enormous collection of culinary sauces, marinades, gourmet pastas and international specialty foods for purchase. [Read more →]

Sunil Tripathi (middle) with his sister Sangeeta ’04 and brother Ravi ’09.

The Herald reported on Tuesday that the men’s crew team discovered a body in the river by India Point Park. Officials ID’d the body Thursday morning as Brown student Sunil Tripathi, the ProJo reported. He was last seen on the night of March 15.

On the Help Find Sunil Tripathi Facebook page, the Tripathi family expressed its grief, but thanked the several thousand people who maintained hope and helped to lend a hand in the process: “Your compassionate spirit is felt by Sunil and by all of us.”

President Christina Paxson informed the community of the Sunil’s death a little after 11 a.m. on Thursday. President Paxson’s email included details of Sunil’s hobbies, time at Brown, and details about grief support. “Sunil will be remembered by all who knew him for his gentle demeanor and generous spirit,” she wrote.

BlogDailyHerald is taking submissions from friends, family, and other loved ones for a memorial to Sunil Tripathi. We will publish the submissions on our site. Please send messages, photos, or artwork to blog(at)browndailyherald(dot)com.

We here at BlogDH send all of our love and good thoughts to the Tripathi family.

Read President Paxson’s full email after the jump. [Read more →]