Welcome and welcome back, Comets! While it’s only natural to lament the end of brat summer, look on the bright side: you’re reading AMP! We know that we’re the thin barrier between the start of the new semester and your rapidly eroding mental states, so we want you to know we’re here for you (until it becomes inconvenient for us). Aren’t you lucky?

With that, we should address the biggest things first. To all who celebrated, we hope you had a fantastic Lez-Out July! Between Charli XCX’s “brat” album and the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan, lesbians have been eating good (and eating out) all summer, and we want to recognize that and encourage everyone to keep up the good work. Safely. And, further on queens making monumental achievements this summer, the 2024 summer Olympics recently concluded! While there are always feats of human performance to acknowledge, especially like those of Simone Biles and her five gymnastics techniques only she — and no one else in the world — can do, we want to give a special shoutout to Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who won gold and almost got infamous transphobe J.K. Rowling to shut up for once. To be clear: Khelif is not trans, but it is this fact that has spurred discussion on what it means to be a woman, trans or otherwise. To our trans readers: you are Sick As Hell and we love you :).

Oh yeah, and some 34-time convicted felon got shot in the ear recently. Nobody really gives a shit about that, but shortly after, Biden dropped out of the presidential race, giving us a Democratic nominee in Vice President Kamala Harris! Like Biden, she’s still supporting the systematic destruction of Palestinians, but at the very least she…isn’t Trump, and therefore hopefully won’t regress the country by like 200 years? If nothing else, neither she nor her pick for vice president, Tim Walz, are both unconscionably genocidal AND have also been found to have questionable search engine results involving dolphins and women. Nor have they been accused of having sexual relations with a couch. Let’s just…keep an eye on everything for now, maybe?

Also, to our commuting freshmen: UTD hates your ability to park. This will be true for the entire time you attend school here, and we’re sorry. Welcome to UTD.