Cat Zhang

1 week ago | bombmagazine.org | Cat Zhang

Who is Julian Castronovo? According to Google, he is a twentysomething Chinese American filmmaker who graduated from Brown University’s Modern Culture and Media program. Predictably, he vapes and likes Thomas Pynchon; he makes low-budget experimental films for which he coins bogus-sounding neologisms like “inverse autofiction,” as if “autofiction” weren’t already confusing enough.

3 weeks ago | thecut.com | Cat Zhang

Photo: Luigi W. Morris “The people that I know in Gaza, they’re starving,” Angela, a bartender and Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York, tells me. It’s a Tuesday afternoon at the end of May, and in an hour, she and seven other students will gather on the steps of the university’s graduate center in midtown to kick off an indefinite hunger strike.

1 month ago | thecut.com | Cat Zhang

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Jenny Berger Myhre, Getty Images, Retailers Like a great gust of wind, the Norwegian singer-songwriter Jenny Hval sweeps up debris from the outside and carries it into the room. “When I perform, I’m always aware of the fact that this is the year, this is the month, Trump did this last week,” she tells me.

1 month ago | thecut.com | Cat Zhang

Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty Who’s actually doing well in this country? The majority of Americans don’t earn enough to afford even a basic quality of life, with costs rising and the average person drowning in over $105,000 of debt. The job market is shrinking, leaving recent college grads — along with everyone else — to submit hundreds of applications into the void. Oh, and there could be a recession coming. But don’t worry! Tech billionaires and weapons manufacturers are thriving.

1 month ago | thecut.com | Cat Zhang

Photo: Eduardo Munoz/REUTERS Ideally, college is where you learn who you are, what you stand for, and how to apply those beliefs. It is where you’re taught to uphold liberal values like justice and truth in service of a better world. On Wednesday, NYU Gallatin commencement speaker Logan Rozos honored this mission.