News this week included: HDB resale prices dip (slightly) for first time in almost seven years; free (for now) autonomous public shuttle rides begin operations in Punggol; “quiet cracking”, when employees show up to work but internally struggle with pressure and uncertainty, affects 30 percent of workers here regularly; medical cost inflation is projected to hit a record high of 16.9 per cent in 2026; seizure of a record 830kg of Asian pangolin scales, from some 2,200 pangolins, enroute from Indonesia to Cambodia; a pre-school teacher responds in CNA to a proposal by the WP’s Gerald Giam to keep preschools open later; an explainer on universal basic income by the WP’s Jamus Lim, arguing that Singapore should raise the threshold for Workfare to S$3,500; an analysis of UMNO’s Rumah Bangsa and the quest for ‘Malay unity’ in Malaysian politics by Ariel Tan of RSIS in ST; an ST story about why Terengganu’s residents are content with just the mosque, the river and the sea; an NYT investigation into the links between Binance and Iran, featuring, but of course, a Singaporean bungalow; and Singapore’s plans to become a gold trading hub. (Yes, we’re the hub of hubs.)

Below are the issues we explore in depth.

Politics: Assistance or interference?

“Hi mr baey.

I urgently need some help.

My girlfriend/fiance was denied entry into SG by ICA for no given reason. She is of Thai nationality and a graduating university student.”

Thus began a 6am plea in July 2024 by a Singaporean man to Baey Yam Keng, then MP and now minister of state in the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and the Ministry of Transport. Baey interacted with the then stranger over Instagram, collected details over e-mail, and then forwarded an appeal to the commissioner of the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA). The Thai woman was soon allowed entry into Singapore. And last week, Baey shared a heartwarming story, with ultrasound images, of the transnational couple’s pregnancy in Singapore. The man messaged Baey on the day they married, and invited him to their child’s one-month celebration. (Their baby is due this June.) 

Reactions to Baey’s post were generally positive, including from somebody who’s “not really a fan of your party but I like what you did”. But there was also the inevitable criticism about political interference in the work of civil servants. This harks to the unique triangular relationship between citizen, civil servant, and politician in Singapore’s democracy. Singaporeans have direct access to politicians, even the most senior, through weekly meet-the-people sessions. They can raise all manner of issues, from problems with mosquitoes, parking fines or electricity bills, to, and good luck with this one, gripes with Singapore’s position on the genocide in Gaza. When the MP feels the concern is one that warrants an appeal—usually for a so-called “bread-and-butter” issue—they might send a letter on the appellant's behalf to the relevant government agency. 

Fans have long cheered the access, and, even if said issue isn’t resolved, at least the comfort of being heard by one’s elected representative. Sceptics have criticised the culture of patronage it fuels, and the implicit deification of the political elite. Why does Singapore’s supposedly efficient bureaucracy need guidance in its daily work from politicians? Is theirs the only power that matters? There will also always be the suspicion of political bias. Does an appeal from a PAP MP carry more weight than that of a WP MP? A related concern is around which people and issues are deserving of godly grace. Baey’s post came in the same week that Fadiah Anwar, Malaysian lawyer and NUS PhD graduate, was denied entry by ICA (for alleged radicalism and incitement to violence). Presumably any appeals for help there might have fallen on deaf ears.

Yet Baey’s post will confound liberals because he was addressing an apparent systemic prejudice close to our hearts. He included a screenshot of the man’s interpretation in 2024 of their problems. “We have not broken any laws, she just fits under the profiling for Thai women and it’s really a disgrace to Singapore’s image for tourism.” Ouch. Has the efficient machinery been primed to watch out for South-east Asian women who visit often, as she did, because they’re suspected of sex work? Who knows. Whatever the case, the system, like those elsewhere, can run roughshod over individuals in the name of “the greater good”. Even as we strive for more transparent immigration processes and decisions, and a more egalitarian distribution of power in society, perhaps it’s worth cheering a political intervention that helped one woman, her new husband, and their child-to-be.

Some further reading: In “Backwards SG: the past and future of public deliberation in Singapore”, Max Yeo assesses many forms of citizen-state engagement, including “the Meet-the-People-model of representative government, where one’s MP is seen as either a glorified letter-writer or a vehicle for airing policy grievances in Parliament.”

Society: Deplatformed

When Facebook introduced its News Feed in 2006, it ignited a firestorm of protests from college students, then the platform’s main users. Some didn’t care much about John and Amy getting together; others didn’t want Facebook time-stamping their status updates at 11am when they were supposed to be in class. Company chief Mark Zuckerberg urged users to keep calm and carry on. “All the most interesting stuff that’s going on is presented to you,” he said helpfully. The feed mutated: personalisation arrived in 2008, the insidious “Like” button began feeding its algorithm in 2009, and when native ads—sponsored posts mimicking regular ones—popped up alongside the infinite scroll a few years later, Facebook’s enshittification was well under way. 

It was around this time that smartphones became mass-market products, their adoption driven by cheaper models; faster, more reliable and affordable data; and the rise of apps that keep users in thrall for hours. Facebook’s US$1bn ($1.3bn) 2012 acquisition of photo-first, mobile-friendly Instagram was a masterstroke. Instagram is estimated to have earned around US$32bn in ad revenue (S$41.3bn) for the company in 2025. The first generation of smartphone native youngsters flocked to it; by 2015 more than half of all teenagers in the US alone were on Instagram. As with Facebook, tweaks followed: an algorithmic feed recommending content beyond one’s followers, a push towards video via Reels, and subtle nudges into a mutually validating cycle of views, likes, and comments. The feed itself remained infinite, an unending drip of dopamine into developing primate brains, many ill-equipped to wean themselves off it. 

And so we nurtured “The Anxious Generation”, millions of teens, tweens, and pre-teens caught in a time-warping, mind-bending 21st century miasma that toyed with their insecurities and wrecked their mental health. Among them was Kaley, a 20-year-old who started suffering from anxiety and depression at 10, and body dysmorphia at 13. Last week, a jury in Los Angeles held Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Google (for its YouTube platform) liable for intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harmed Kaley. The US$6m (S$7.7m) in damages is chump change for the two, but the verdict could open the floodgates for similar ones in hundreds of such cases currently before courts across the world.

Even as tech companies wonder if they’ll have to tinker with their precious algos, the regulatory noose is tightening. A few days ago, Indonesia banned under-16s from social media; Malaysia will do the same later this year, and further afield, a plethora of European nations are considering at least some restrictions. Singapore too is studying curbs on some features. It has in the meantime rolled out new regulations requiring age verification checks on certain apps.

Numerous issues need to be ironed out—parental responsibility, free speech (albeit not here), efficacy, and the depoliticisation of youth now used to getting their news from and organising on social media to name just a few—before a socio-regulatory framework acceptable to most takes shape. Indeed, the debate is still ongoing about the nature and extent of social media addiction among teens. Amidst these varied approaches, movements, and policies is an emerging and encouraging central skein: deeper scrutiny of how tech companies continue to the modern youth’s anomie.

Society: And what about the modern elder?

Known online as “Game Grandpa”, 90-year-old Yang Binglin went viral last week after completing “Resident Evil Requiem” unaided: no guides, no walkthroughs, only handwritten notes to track its puzzles and clues. Yang took up gaming in 1996 after retiring as an engineer, and decades later set the Guinness World Record as the oldest male gaming streamer at 87. His latest feat makes a compelling case for active ageing online, for the supposed cognitive benefits of screen time in later life, and perhaps even against much earlier claims of “digital dementia”. 

Yet, concerns about teen addiction to social media and phones are now extending to retirees and the elderly too, who are “increasingly living their lives through their phone”. Buoyed by free time, limited mobility and loneliness, many are spending hours on end online. As one exasperated daughter lamented: “I am constantly begging my mom to put her phone down, every time I see her she is just mindlessly scrolling. I swear her attention span is GONE.” 

It was not long ago that the chief worry was that older adults would be left behind by a widening digital divide, and become more socially alienated as Singapore pushed towards becoming a Smart Nation. Ironically, the anxiety has flipped. Seniors are now seen as too connected, too often, for too long. But what is to be done? Tackling problematic smartphone use among older adults requires respecting their autonomy, not asserting control over it. That means giving them the tools to exercise self-restraint through better digital literacy and healthier screen habits. A clinical neuropsychologist described the three Cs of behaviours that technology could help with: complexity, connection, and compensatory. People engage in complex activities and boost social connections, supposedly good for the ageing brain, while also compensating for cognitive decline, for instance, by setting reminders to take medication. It won’t be easy. Digital platforms are designed to maximise engagement and encourage continuous use. As Professor Gemma Calvert, a neuroscientist and neuromarketing pioneer, explained: “You tell yourself, ‘Just one more second’, and that second stretches on.” 

As the population ages, and regulations restrict teen use, older adults are becoming an important market for tech companies: they often have more spare time and greater spending power. Smartphones will only become more ubiquitous, and more essential to everyday life. To counter the risks of screen addiction—and its sedentary and isolating effects—society will have to find ways to draw seniors back into the physical world. This could mean families and communities also getting off their phones to create inclusive, inter-generational activities that give our seniors a reason to look up from their screens.

Earth: Parched, poisoned, and burned

When humans fight, the more-than-human world feels it. Not always in expected ways. The mass slaughter of native Americans by Iberian conquistadors in the 1400-1500s may have triggered a planetary cooling, paleoclimatologists hypothesised, because “the depopulation of so much cultivated land allowed for the regrowth of carbon-devouring tropical forests”, writes Sunil Amrith in The Burning Earth. By the time of the first world war in the early 1900s, we’d settled into a more familiar rhythm, with war inflicting damage on the planet: American mangroves and rainforests razed, and rivers polluted, as the war machine quenched its thirst for oil; chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gases, some of the 190,000 tonnes of chemical agents released into the air; soil poisoned, still toxic today; and half of the 16m horses “conscripted” dead, through bullet wounds, barbed wire, and exhaustion (the average lifespan of a frontline horse was 10 days). Subsequent 20th century events would sear in our imagination the names and sights of planetary peril, from Vietnam’s Agent Orange to Iraq’s burning wells. Amrith writes about the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Meeting years after the second world war, they chose four words to describe the crimes: genocide, ecocide, biocide, earthocide.

And now, Iran. A recent analysis by the Climate and Community Institute estimates that over 5m tonnes of carbon dioxide have been emitted during the first two weeks of war. That is equivalent to the emissions from 1.1m petrol-powered cars over a year, or more than the total climate pollution Iceland generates annually, and represents over US$1.3bn (S$1.7bn) in climate damage. These emissions come from the massive fuel consumption of military equipment as well as the destruction of infrastructure that releases carbon into the atmosphere. The bombing of oil refineries and the sinking of tankers have surely contaminated air, water and land, with consequences for decades to come, not just the “black rain” that douses Tehran’s residents. The Institute warns of rising costs to come, including as French and UK ships sail to the Middle East, and more countries possibly enter the fray, “thereby increasing emissions via ‘defensive’ posture”. The aftermath will be worse. “As the US continues to press on in its ill-conceived quest for ‘energy dominance’, fossil fuel production will be expanded in the name of energy security, locking in emissions from extraction infrastructure for decades. In addition, the emissions that will be generated in clearing rubble and then rebuilding are the biggest cause of emissions in any war.”

It’s gratifying that climate science is far more advanced today than it was in 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, nevermind centuries before. We know what we’re doing. While the human lives lost in the Middle East will dominate headlines, it’s important that we also recognise the devastation to the planet caused by our addiction to fossil fuels—not simply in their base extraction and use, but when wars are fought (at least partly) over them. “No kings”, “No war with Iran”, or whatever your chant, remember that it’s also on behalf of the voiceless biospheres and beings we have always lived with, and whose fates are intertwined with ours.

Some further reading: “Three days of Operation Epic Fury: a rapid overview of environmental harm in Iran and the region” by the Conflict and Environment Observatory

Sport: A night at the National Stadium

In the microsecond between Mirajul Islam swinging his right foot and the ball ricocheting away off the left post, a force-field of sound escaped into the tarry sky above the National Stadium. Some 6,000 white-clad Bangladeshis behind the goal roared as one; their lone green and red flag jerking up in hope before subsiding in dismay. It was the 79th minute of the Asian Cup qualifying match between Singapore and Bangladesh, with the hosts leading 1-0. That was the closest they came to equalising. 

In sporting parlance, the game was a “dead rubber”; Singapore had already qualified for the Asian Cup and Bangladesh could not. But for the Bangladeshi fans it may as well have been a cup final. For long stretches, save the moments after Singapore’s goal, six thousand drowned out twenty-five. They’d been streaming in since early evening—twos, fours, dozens, and scores making their way across Stadium Walk, Geylang Road, and Kallang Wave; gathering for the pride, connection, and rootedness our shiny home so often denies them. None could have begrudged them the joy of an equaliser had Mirajul’s shot gone in, not purely from solicitude but also because their team, propelled by the talismanic Leicester City midfielder Hamza Choudhury, deserved it.

For the 24,000-odd Singapore supporters, the night was an outlet for the optimism that has gripped many since the youthful Gavin Lee led our Lions to a first ever continental joust on merit. (We’d qualified automatically once before as tournament hosts.) Lee himself may have winced at the short film commissioned by the Football Association of Singapore charting his journey from a boy falling in love with the game to an impassioned boss geeing up his charges. It was part of the larger pre-match pageantry designed to wring every drop of rare goodwill from a fanbase so often disappointed. At half-time, two earnest youngsters went around exacting promises from all to do the “wave” right at minute 50. “Feel”, it seemed we were being told. “Feeeeel”.

It wasn’t necessary, really. There was plenty of good feeling already swilling about in the incessant drumbeats, in the hum rising to a clamour every time a player in red glided within shooting range; and in the young boys in the row below ours fascinated in equal part by the action on the pitch and in the stands. It was certainly swilling about in the sea of red that surged and swelled as one when (the half-Welsh, half-Malay) Harhys Stewart put Singapore ahead in the 31st minute (it did hurt a bit though when the excitement led to some spillage of a S$16 half-pint beer). Old-timers with memories of the old Kallang rocking to 120,000 stomping feet and swaying hands were less impressed but even they felt something of the 1990s stirring to life. Nostalgia fed, perhaps, by the presence of not one, not two, not three but four Fandis—the three brothers were on the pitch either side of the break, sister Iman sang during. May their exploits bring us together like their father’s once did.

Arts: Let’s get in formation

Let’s say you’re a group of 18 dancers, and you’re practising a particularly tricky formation. Your instructor is trying to explain where you need to go as two groups of nine merge, separate, fan out, and somehow all end up in the right place without tripping over each other. What do you do? One particular group emptied their pockets of all the coins they had, from five cents to a dollar, crouched down and spread them out on the smooth concrete, moving each coin around by hand, trying to remember if they were a particular 20- or 50-cent piece—like trying to follow a sidewalk game of three-card monte, that classic sleight-of-hand scam. 

Complicated formations are some of the biggest headaches for choreographers manoeuvring dozens of dancers. One of them was Wilfred Tan. He trawled through app after app, but could never find the features he wanted, whether that was how props might affect a dance work, or how one change in formation could affect the next. So he decided to build his own app. You can drop your own soundtrack in, and rotate through a three-dimensional view of the stage. Flocks of coloured circles—each representing a dancer—expand and contract across the screen. (Tan quickly realised he needed more help, and roped in his brother whose expertise is in user experience and user interface—UX and UI.) Choreographic now helps dancers around the world visualise complex formations, from K-pop to krump. It’s also garnered enthusiastic reviews from choreographers across a dizzying range of genres and geographies—a dance school in Gloucestershire, a krump team in Germany, a ballet dancer from Georgia, US, and an “Indonesia’s Got Talent” finalist—and Tan’s also incorporated feedback from his global fans into the app. Apps like these also ride the popularity of arena competitions such as Super 24, hosted here in Singapore, where teams of 24 dancers are judged in the round, with judges stationed on all sides of the 8m-by-8m stage, instead of just in front. The Filipino winners of the 2024 edition clinched the grand prize in a torso-baring, tattoo-flashing homage to local mythologies, rotating and tumbling around each other with the surgical precision of a military band and the loose swagger of national heroes.

Choreographic is also a go-to platform for the aspiring dancers who occupy the underground atriums and mirrored walkways connecting our malls and train stations—a far more affordable and accessible option than a dance studio. Some of them had a rude shock earlier this year when they arrived at their usual rehearsal spot at Marina South Pier MRT station to find the floor-to-ceiling mirrors frosted over. (As a compromise, dancers can now reserve a 6m-by-6m sanctioned mirrored space nearby for their rehearsals.) It isn’t the first time Singapore’s relied on hostile architecture to terraform its public spaces and rid them of less desirable constituencies “blocking pedestrian flow at this high-traffic area”, which in other cities may have been simply part of a tapestry of charming chaos. Tan Shin Bin, assistant professor and urban planning expert, told the BBC: “[What should] give us pause is really whether the decision was a well-considered and fair one...Whose needs are being prioritised as legitimate, and whose desires are deemed secondary?” Many agreed. “It’s places like this that allow us to actually experience cultural identity. So you have to sacrifice a little convenience,” went a comment on TikTok. “That’s a price I think we should be willing to pay.”

Arts: Two Eponines, one stage

Nathania Ong is vibrating with nervous energy. With every sentence, she’s careening between a crisp Received Pronunciation accent—that clipped, stress-timed standard of upper crust British English—and the relaxed, syllable-timed sing-song of Singlish. She’s the Singaporean girl of the West End, the first of us to land a role in the classic French Revolution musical “Les Misérables”, playing the tragic heroine Eponine. And she’s shivering in her seat because she’s sharing a sofa with the person who defined the role: Disney princess, musical theatre trailblazer, singing sensation, Lea Salonga. The Filipina legend and the Singaporean ingénue are also sharing a stage for the first time in “Les Misérables The Arena Spectacular”, which runs till May 10th at Marina Bay Sands. Salonga’s the cool ballast to Ong’s jangly enthusiasm in an inspired interview pairing brokered by CNA. The practised veteran quizzes Ong about her origin story, then bestows upon us her own choice anecdotes: she trots out an encounter with Anita Sarawak to establish her connection to the Singapore canon, then seduces a contemporary demographic by confessing that she relies on K-pop pantheon BTS to hype herself up for a show. 

Salonga, who originated the role of Kim in “Miss Saigon”, is a near-impossible act to follow. She was the first Asian actress to nab a Tony award, and you (or your children) have probably sung along to her Mulan, Princess Jasmine or, more recently, her cameo in Oscar-winning “KPop Demon Hunters”. Her Eponine is delicate and defiant; Ong plays her with a tender wistfulness. This time, Salonga plays Madame Thénardier, an unscrupulous innkeeper who’s one of the musical’s buffoonish antagonists. It can be a sign of the times for actresses who find themselves typecast as grandmothers and crones; Hollywood luminary Meryl Streep once lamented: “When I turned 40, I was offered three witches in one year and I realised this was the way my career was going to go: they don’t know what to do with women past a certain age.” But Salonga seems unfazed. She cites the abrasive striptease artist Mama Rose in the musical “Gypsy” as a dream part: “If the thought of it terrifies you, it might be worth doing.”

Alyanna Nicole Lauzon, Abhishek Mehrotra, Corrie Tan, Tsen-Waye Tay, and Sudhir Vadaketh wrote this week’s issue.

Letters in response to any blurb can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.

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