Politics

conspiracy theories coronavirus

Conspiracy Theories and Other Stories

By Anya Ow / February 20, 2020 / Comments Off on Conspiracy Theories and Other Stories

I’m beginning to fear my family’s Whatsapp chat. My Chinese Singaporean parents are in their late 60s and aren’t very good with technology, but sadly they’ve learned how to share videos and memes on the platform. Despite the Singapore Government’s crackdown on fake news, quite a few things they’ve shared won’t exactly meet any sort […]

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scams

Fantastic Scams and How to Avoid Them

By Anya Ow / January 30, 2020 / Comments Off on Fantastic Scams and How to Avoid Them

I fell for a scam recently. It was one of those phishing emails, set up to look like something they’re not, leading to a landing page that usually asks you for credit card or personal details. In this case, it was a Woolies email about a “survey that I’d done”, arriving only days after I’d […]

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What To Do When You're Expecting (Climate Change)

By Anya Ow / September 26, 2019 / Comments Off on What To Do When You're Expecting (Climate Change)

September 20th saw hundreds of thousands of people in Australia turn out in a massive climate strike, joining millions around the world. Speeches kicked off at 2pm and the march began around 3ish, with schoolkids supported by a variety of adults, including many businesses that signed on to the strike under Not Business As Usual. […]

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The Fake News Plague

By Anya Ow / September 21, 2019 / Comments Off on The Fake News Plague

In the lead up to the trash fire that was the 2016 US elections, there was a rash of conspiracy theories about the Democrats and Hillary Clinton that were spread around by conservative media and trolls. Some were somewhat believable–like the one where she was supposedly Very Ill With Some Unnamed Illness, after footage of […]

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The Disney Monopoly

By Anya Ow / September 7, 2019 / Comments Off on The Disney Monopoly

When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was still in uni. I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a game where you play a kid with huge shoes, big spiky hair, and unrealistic clothing called Sora. Sora wields a “keyblade”, and goes on adventures with Donald Duck and Goofy through different “Disney/Square Enix worlds” such as the […]

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The Rise of Evil Photoshop

By Anya Ow / July 30, 2019 / Comments Off on The Rise of Evil Photoshop

Photoshop isn’t always bad, I tell myself as I open CNN and notice that the latest news involve Trump appearing in front of a doctored Presidential seal featuring a Russian-styled two-headed eagle holding some golf clubs. Given it was for a conservative student summit, apparently it was all a mistake thanks to time crunch, but […]

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The Restaurant Pay Reckoning

By Anya Ow / July 24, 2019 / Comments Off on The Restaurant Pay Reckoning

“I wish I could steal $7 million dollars and only get fined $200,000,” said a friend of mine when the scandal broke. If you’ve been on the news or Aussie Twitter recently, you might have seen that George Calombaris, one of the judges on the popular reality TV cooking competition Masterchef Australia and restauranteur of […]

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Long Live Avocado Toast

By Anya Ow / June 29, 2019 / Comments Off on Long Live Avocado Toast

The avocado toast thing just will not die. In May, Financial Counselling Australia researcher Mia Shelton said at an FCA conference in Melbourne that “Financial difficulties for young people are very real and it’s not just about avocado on toast.” It’s a cutesy little reference thrown out for the conference attendees, who we presume are […]

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Ethical Advertising

By Anya Ow / June 19, 2019 / Comments Off on Ethical Advertising

I’m in a movie theatre, waiting for a film to start. My friends and I tend to watch blockbusters because we’re easily entertained. With the world slowly burning down around us, it’s nice to spend a couple of hours every weekend pretending that tech billionaires would invest their money into armoured flight suits and personally […]

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Pulling Ads in Protest

By Anya Ow / June 5, 2019 / Comments Off on Pulling Ads in Protest

Every morning, after I feed the cats, make breakfast, I open my MacBook and curse myself. “Twitter,” I say, “what’s the worst thing that happened while I was asleep?” YouTube’s algorithm has been curating home movies of unwitting families into a catalog of semi-nude kids, we found. YT often plays the videos after users watch […]

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