Soil Compilation

Music
When We Were Young in Las Vegas, 2025 Festival Preview

This weekend, Las Vegas will host the fourth edition of When We Were Young. A festival celebrating the scene out in the desert holds more than you’ve bargained for as 53 bands take on 4 stages in 1 day. A whirlwind for every pair of vans and fishnets in the pit, it’s Christmas in October for many. Here is your stage by stage preview of When We Were Young 2025.

Online Content
Ethical Gaming: Choices, God, and “How Fish Is Made”

Developer Wrong Organ’s existential horror game “How Fish is Made” left me with some deeper questions about the nature of choice in the broader context of our existence. If the only way forward is death, does it matter what choices you make in the meantime?

Sports
Heartland Domination: All Iowa as the Hawkeyes shutout Wisconsin, 37-0

Iowa silenced Camp Randall with a statement 37-0 shutout over Wisconsin, reclaiming the Heartland Trophy for a fourth straight year and notching their first road shutout against the Badgers since 1929. Behind Kamari Moulton’s breakout performance and a smothering defense that snagged two interceptions from defensive linemen, the Hawkeyes looked every bit like Big Ten contenders.

The University of Iowa sent out an email to students on Friday which detailed their plans for reform following the Iowa City Police Department’s recent use of teargas and flashbangs against peaceful protestors–inducing a seizure for one protestor and knocking others unconscious. In the email, they acknowledge “calls from members of our campus community to cut ties with the Iowa City Police Department”. Student Government demanded this same action in a mass email sent just moments before the University’s. After a paragraph discussing how the University must be a “driver of change” they list the plan’s steps. Any decrease of … Continued

Keep reading...

Mistake Levels There are mistakes – misguided or wrong judgement. Writing this piece at night was not the problem. Drinking coffee that keeps one up past 3 AM? That was misguided judgement. Then there are dumb mistakes. An example here is when NASA burned a $125 Million Mars orbiter vehicle thanks to not converting thrust calculations from English units to the metric system. True story, that happened. We’ve come a long way as a species. That was a dumb mistake for the world’s brightest minds to make. Finally, there are dumb, avoidable mistakes. These are when we not only had … Continued

Keep reading...