Pelican Edition 6 - Expose by UWA Student Guild

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CONTENTS EDITION 6 - EXPOSE PAGE SEVEN: CAMPUS NEWS ‘Campus Story’ by Deni Campbell PAGES EIGHT AND NINE: CAMPUS NEWS ‘Campus Updates’ by Courtney Withers PAGE TEN: COMEDY ‘Wake Up Sheeple!!’ by Daniel Defendi Cartoon by Holly Carter-Turner PAGE ELEVEN: LIFESTYLE ‘How Can We Enforce Workplace Rights?’ by Cameron Carr PAGES TWELVE AND THIRTEEN: LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘A Good Man’ by Sophie Hunt PAGE FOURTEEN: DIVERSITY ‘exposed as hated / hateful; or, adventures on public transport as a trans person’ by Elanor Leman PAGE FIFTEEN: MUSIC ‘Exposure Dollars: The Unfortunate Reality of Free Music’ by Susannah Wong PAGES SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN: SCIENCE ‘Exposing Frauds in the Scientific Community’ by Jack Logan PAGES EIGHTEEN AND NINETEEN: LIFESTYLE ‘Exposing Myths and Legends on Campus’ by Francesca De Nuccio and Courtney Withers PAGE TWENTY: SCIENCE Microscopy photographs from PLNT2204 by James Haley PAGE TWENTY-ONE: ART ‘Expose’ by Ei Hnin Words by Bayley Horne PAGE TWENTY-TWO: NUDES Ei Hnin Jack Logan Holly Carter-Turner PAGE TWENTY-THREE: NUDES Isabelle Yuen Elena Perse

PAGE TWENTY-SIX: NUDES Caleb Cheng and Kyle Pauletto Campbell Williamson PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN: NUDES Paris Javid Deni Campbell PAGES TWENTY-EIGHT: NUDES Max Silbert and Nicholas Warrand Caitlin Sharkey PAGE TWENTY-NINE: LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘Between My Ribs’ by Caitlin Sharkey ‘soul searchin.’ By Natalie Poon PAGES THIRTY AND THIRTY-ONE: TECHNOLOGY AND GAMING ‘Instagram: Democratic Platform, or Public Tool for Censorship and Discrimination?’ by Cleo Robins PAGE THIRTY-TWO: ARTS AND DESIGN ‘In Light and Darkness: Revealing the Public Bathrooms of Perth’ by Riva-Jean Lander PAGE THIRTY-THREE: FILM ‘The Hidden Self’ by Boa Antahputro PAGES THIRTY-FOUR AND THIRTY-FIVE: ECONOMICS AND FINANCE ‘A Puddle Too Deep to Step Out Of’ by Brian Khoo PAGE THIRTY-SIX: LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘Pupils’ by Ellie Fisher ‘Traces’ by Ellie Fisher PAGE THIRTY-SEVEN: SPORTS ‘Adam Goodes and Playing the Ball’ by Campbell Williamson PAGES THIRTY-EIGHT AND THIRTY-NINE: DIVERSITY ‘King’ by Merlin Hoskins PAGES FORTY AND FORTY-ONE: POLITICS ‘How Disinformation Exposes our Polarised Society’ by Timothy Bell PAGE FORTY-TWO: SPORTS ‘A Tale of Basketball, Wheelchairs and Poop.’ by Bayley Horne PAGE FORTY-THREE: FILM ‘A Rage in Harlan: Documentary and Power’ by Lachlan Serventy

PAGE TWENTY-FOUR: NUDES Cameron Carr Francesca De Nuccio

PAGES FORTY-FOUR AND FORTY-FIVE: POLITICS ‘LET’S BREAK SOME SHIT’ by Matt Bryan

PAGE TWENTY-FIVE: NUDES Courtney Withers Elanor Leman

PAGES FORTY-SIX AND FORTY-SEVEN: LIFESTYLE ‘We Won a Lottery? Exposing Pelican’s Spam E-mails’ by Bayley Horne and Stirling Kain 3

CONTRIBUTORS EDITION 6 - EXPOSE

Aston Clarke’s Mum thinks he’s such a handsome young boy. Bayley Horne sent me his author bio but I don’t remember what it was and I’m too lazy to scroll back through messages. Boa Antahputro is in love with Will Toledo and never went to oovoo javer. Brian Khoo is glad to watch FC Barcelona at 4am again. Caitlin Sharkey was once targeted by a stand-up comedian and has never been the same. Cameron Carr can navigate Rock Tunnel in Pokémon Yellow without using flash. Campbell Williamson took way too long to crank out four-hundred and fifty words. Cleo Robins only gets writer’s block when asked to write fifteen funny words about herself. Courtney Withers would prefer to be referred to as ‘Campus News Fraud’ from now on. Daniel Defendi is a person that we invented to fill this space. Deni Campbell believes hermit crabs should not be kept as pets. Ei Hnin has been obsessed with catching train shots for the past few weeks. Elanor Leman says “Yes, but not with you." Ellie Fisher prefers not to be exposed. Francesca De Nuccio still doesn’t go here. Holly Carter-Turner: *I lost the game*. "Jack Logan" is only the latest alias assumed by a dastardly fraudster. James Haley is regretting making INT his dump stat. Matt Bryan swears Arbonne isn’t a pyramid scheme! DM him to receive a fifteen percent consultant’s discount x Don’t let his Hawaiian shirt fool you – Merlin Hoskins is very sad. You can always find Natalie Poon procrastinating by reading thriller books! Riva Lander enjoys discovering good design in unexpected places.

Rose Willis is named after a flower: the Willis flower from Southern Zambia. Sophie Hunt is an arts student filled with tea and existential dread. Stirling Kain is about to graduate, and only had one panic attack about it. Susannah Wong likes drinking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. Timothy Bell, aka Borat Belowski, is a Russian spy and media contributor for Pelican and RT. Xander Sinclair Is judging all of the contributors for chosing Ararat’s over Campus Kebabs. Also Odyssey was a perfectly good edition!

SUB - EDITORS ARTS AND DESIGN: Riva-Jean Lander and Abigail Macleod CAMPUS NEWS: Courtney Withers COMEDY (he calls it ‘HUMOUR’): Rupert Williamson DIVERSITY: Elanor Leman ECONOMICS AND FINANCE: Millie Muroi and Brook Lewis FILM: Lachlan Serventy and Amy Papasergio LIFESTYLE: Cameron Carr and Francesca De Nuccio LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING: Elena Perse and Isabelle Yuen MUSIC: Susannah Wong POLITICS: Christine Chen SCIENCE: Paris Javid and Deni Campbell SPORTS: Campbell Williamson TECHNOLOGY AND GAMING: Caleb Cheng and Kyle Pauletto

EXPOSE PRESITORIAL BAYLITORIAL STIRLITORIAL

It’s hard to believe my term is almost over! It feels like only yesterday I was unlocking this office for the first time and figuring out whether I should sign off emails with “Kind regards” or “Warm regards”. I always felt like kind regards was too impersonal but ultimately followed the rest of the pack. I am looking forward to signing off my emails with “Best wishes” instead very soon.

I would like to formally apologise to the University Dramatic Society for having to witness me take my nude, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of having an actual pelican cover my junk. But now it’s printed, so I guess you would’ve seen it anyway. Oh well, UDS controls half of Pelican as it is so they knew it was coming.

There is something about a pandemic that really exposes us. During isolation we seemed to take the time to focus a bit on ourselves, whether it was having a go at baking bread or trying out online yoga for the first time. We also had a moment of checking in with our friends – actively checking in with them, through zoom parties or socially distanced teas. Some of those habits we took up seemed to slip away so quickly as things returned to normal. I hope that we can take a moment to pick a few we want to take forward, and keep being kind to each other.

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank the contributors, the sub-editors, and the Guild itself, for trusting a dyslexic psych major to run a magazine. You’ve all done a wonderful job to elevate Pelican above what we expected. But most importantly, I would like to thank Stirling for keeping me sane throughout the year. I couldn’t have done it without you, and I’m glad to call you my friend.

Being a student rep isn’t easy. Whether you’re on the Guild, in a club, or heading up a FacSoc, we all take on long hours, without pay and often without thanks. I think it’s important to recognise the invaluable contributions so many students put forward throughout the year. I’d like to take this opportunity to wish Emma Mezger and her team all the best for 2021 - I am sure they will do a fantastic job. Best wishes,

Bre Shanahan 107th Guild President 6

See you all around,

The covers for Pelicans bygone have been raunchy. We went the decidedly non-raunchy route. This cover conveys a different type of nakedness – intimacy of the utmost fraternal kind. Bayley and I have been through some really weird times. I think I’ve seen Bayley cry more than I have cried, but he has definitely seen me shout a lot more. We have shared the absolute peaks of excitement, and troughs of disappointment, anger, resentment. We have made emergency calls to British police together. I wanted the cover to convey our relationship in that way. We’re both a little awkward at times – you can see that. This job has put us in very close quarters – this time, in a shower – and we’ve shared a lot of our lives together in a very short time.

Bayley Bayley has been consistently kind to me when I absolutely did not deserve it. You’re a good egg, Baybiscuits. Stirling

CAMPUS STORY WHILE EDWARD SNOWDEN WAS OUT PARTYING, I STUDIED THE BLADE

OR, HOW I EXPOSED A UNI WITHOUT REALLY TRYING BY DENI CAMPBELL

I’ve been out of UWA for almost three years now, only to return earlier this year on the cusp of COVID to write for Pelican. Although The Ref has undergone massive changes (again), arguably the biggest change since my graduating in 2017 has been my perception of the University itself. Much like Mark Corrigans’ Business Secrets of the Pharaohs, this article blows the roof off the entire system as we know it, and lets you in on the world of secrets behind the lies that have been fed to you through your degree. For example, as a wide-eyed Guild sub-committee member, I believed the introduction of the Club Collaborative Zone was the single most important event in Western Australian history. Now I see it for what it really is; an exclusive version of the first floor of Reid Library, where only students with three hundred plus likes on their Guild Election profile pictures go to study just enough to scrape a cool ‘C’ in Introduction to Business Law. I always knew the University was full of pompous wankers, but I didn’t realise the extent until recently when I was shopping for clothes. Did you know an Oli fleece jacket costs $220? I didn’t.

NOW, I’M LEFT THINKING ABOUT ALL THOSE SURFER DUDES AT UNI WHO DON’T WEAR SHOES, AND ACT LIKE THEY LIVE IN A VAN FULL TIME JUST TO IMPRESS HOT CONSERVATION BIOLOGY STUDENTS. STOP PRETENDING TO BE A FREELANCE SEMI-PRO STANDUP PADDLEBOARDER, AND SHOW ME YOUR PARENTS’ TAX RETURNS!

Another thing I’ve learnt since I left UWA is that although I was a fucking moron, so was basically everyone else. Don’t be scared of people, especially people in clubs. UWA O-Day and Club Carnival are two of the most intimidating days on the university calendar. Unfortunately, everyone at these events either knows a whole bunch of people, or is desperately trying to be quirky and relatable enough to make friends. Don’t get sucked in. Every single person involved in a party club, like EMAS, or Leisure, was a huge dweeb in high school, and has since gone full turbo after listening to a couple of EDM songs. Arty clubs are also traps. The boys on these committees will break your heart just as hard as those at drum and bass music festivals, but to the soundtracks of Neutral Milk Hotel and Arcade Fire. As jaded as I’ve become looking back on my time at UWA, I still have faith in one University institution: social sport. This is where most of us will peak, and this is 100% confirmed. I believe it was Matthew who said, “Live by the frisbee, die by the frisbee,” (Matthew 26, 26:52). Although I’ve basically Chelsea Manning-ed the shit out of UWA, it doesn’t take away from the fact that I took student life completely for granted, and university was an absolute dream in comparison to full time work. One day you will all realise that eight am lectures are money for jam, and no one who is on campus for less than twenty hours per week should be complaining.

Honestly, uni students spend so much money to uphold a certain aesthetic, and I’m jealous. Don’t throw those clothes away, otherwise you’ll move out of home and start living in the same black hand-medown work pants everyday. Pool Party at the Reflection Pool. 30th Nov, 12pm. Be there.

CAMPUS UPDATES BY COURTNEY WITHERS

Expose… what a theme to end this year on. I feel like it’s time to throw away all of my ethical journalistic values, and become the next TMC Hollywood Reporter for this spicy edition (I’m joking, of course). My biggest secret – and I think it’s well and truly time to share it - is that I’m a fraud. A Campus News fraud, in particular. Despite my title, I actually don’t go to this university! *gasp*

I KNOW THIS WILL BE A SHOCKING REVELATION TO SOME OF YOU LOYAL PELICAN READERS, BUT IT’S SOMETHING I HAVE BEEN NEEDING TO GET OFF MY CHEST FOR QUITE SOME TIME. Although I spend pretty much every waking hour at UWA, scoping stories and interviewing people, I actually don’t study here. But I have really enjoyed being Pelican’s Campus News Editor this year, despite my scandalous backstory.

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Enough about me, and my secret (which is bigger than the reveal of ‘A’ in Pretty Little Liars) - it’s time to get back to what’s been happening on campus since the last edition. The biggest campus update? What went down at Guild Elections this year. The polling for Elections took place between September 12 and September 15, with the end of blackout from September 3. The provisional vote announced that Emma Mezger will be the 108th Guild President. This year’s announcement came earlier than expected, which is possibly the result of the low voter turn-out. The official results were announced following the deadline for postal votes, September 24. There were also several short-term bans of candidates from campaigning during polling week, due to new tighter penalties surrounding misconduct. These rules were announced by the UWA Student Guild administration on September 11; the announcement detailed that the length of these bans was determined by Guild administration, and based on the severity of the candidate’s action. This year’s elections looked a little different, too. Changes included only every second polling booth being used, to maintain social distancing; no lecture bashing (thank God); the presence of stalls outside the old Co-Op; postal votes being extended by an extra week; and a partridge in a pear tree.

Maybe it’s about time you switch to a marketing degree.

CAMPUS UPDATES

‘AVIN A BALL

THANK YOU, AND GOODBYE

Some fun campus events of late included Women’s Week, run by the Women’s Department in Week Five, and Pride Week, run by the Pride Department in Week Six.

This year has been a whirlwind - but we did it! We’ve held events again; we’ve been back on campus; we’ve moved to digital; and we’ve overcome challenge after challenge. We’ve continued with our studies, despite everything, and I think we’ve all grown stronger.

The all-important Guild Ball took place on September 25, which acknowledged the hard work of UWA’s clubs and societies, and their additions to the student experience on campus. The big award winners included:

It’s been my pleasure providing you with campus news/commentary/gossip/banter, if that’s even what you want to call it, despite it all coming from a UWA Campus News fraud.

•

Best Club — Uni Games

•

Runner Up Best Club — FABSOC

•

Best New Club — Philosophy Society

•

Best Club President — Julia Schwab (University Dramatic Society)

•

Most Inclusive Club — EMAS

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Best Welfare Outreach — UWA Psychology Society

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Best Club Engagement — Photography Club

UWA

Cheers to you, and cheers to this year almost being fucking over. I apologise for swearing, but this edition is called EXPOSE, after all.

Undergraduate - Courtney

Side note — is there a Best Student Magazine award? Just curious/asking for a friend. Us here at Pelican are wrapping up our year with Pelly Prom on October 30, to celebrate with everyone who has contributed towards the magazine this year. Screw the Guild Ball, I just wanna go to Bali.

WAKE UP

SHEEPLE!! BY DANIEL DEFENDI

[Editor’s Note: This is a work of satire.] Fact: George Bush was on the UWA campus the day before the September 11 attacks. And by George Bush, I of course mean George Q. Bush, an elderly regional farmer visiting from Katanning. Coincidence? Yes. He was here with his wife Beverley, representing the Cotton Industry of Australia. That’s right, the C.I.A. You may think to yourself (and rightly so) - what is the C.I.A. doing sniffing around, smelling things, travelling around and smelling things with their big smelling noses, nosing around our business and smelling around? Firstly, calm down, Mr. Nose. And secondly, it was Mel Gibson. Yes, Mel Gib’s son, the UWA gardener. Mel is part of a shady Illuminati cabal involving the world’s most powerful leaders; I’m talking Johnald Crump, Gill Bates, and Obaba. These guys gather each year by the light of the full moon to join their fusion rings together and beam your personal data back to their lizard elders. Serious dick move. The only reason Marc Suckleberg isn’t with them is because he was born from a giant egg laid in prehistoric times, which even they think is weird. So how do I know all of this valuable information? I have failed every unit I have ever taken at UWA, so I’m still around to expose these blatant conspiracies. My student debts are as large as Hilary Clinton’s secret African mine, and like her workers, they will never be paid.

Factoid Alert: lizard people run the government. JFK? Lizard person. Rove from the telly? Lizard person. Aunt Cath and Uncle Steve? Not yet, but they will be. I mean, this is just simple, basic stuff. Everyone knows that the Ronald McDonald clown puppets are implanting intel chips straight into your brain so they can control you through the nuggetverse. We know this. It’s obvious. What we don’t know is why Grimace defected from their cause to lead the resistance. So, in conclusion, 7 West Media, in conjunction with the Area 51 aliens, under the supervision of the time travelling Egyptians, are releasing fluoride chemtrails in a fiendish plot to cover the fact that Tupac’s still alive. Visit my poorly subscribed YouTube channel for shaky 144p footage that will confirm this.

CAPTION WINNER: ROSE WILLIS “ADAM, EVE, AND SNAKE TRIED TO GET GOD TO JOIN THEM AT LIFE DRAWING, BUT HE WAS TOO SELF-CONSCIOUS.”

Speaking of UWA, have you ever had a coffee from those Rocket fellas over by the Ref? Well, if you have, then you’re part of their tetrahedron scheme of human enslavement dating back to J. D. Rocketfella himself. Is that double whipped iced grande soy mochaccino worth it? I sure hope so, Stalin!

CARTOON ARTIST: HOLLY CARTER-TURNER

Want to meet a bisexual on campus? Hold a plant sale!

HOW CAN WE ENFORCE WORKPLACE RIGHTS? BY CAMERON CARR

I have been working in hospitality for four years, and have many friends who have also worked in hospitality for much longer. I can confidently say that George Calombaris isn’t the only one screwing over workers. Unfortunately, from a mixture of job necessity and complacency, we’ve gotten to a point where businesses engage in unethical practices as a means to survive. Or, perhaps more worryingly, workers aren’t just afraid to speak out, but are ignorant about their rights.

intentionally underpay workers and undermine rights. What has gradually happened is the creation of workplace cultures which facilitate workplace abuse. In my experience, this is often an idea that the success of the business is greater than the individual. This manifests in workers ending their meal breaks early when there’s a lunch rush, for example. These cultures then become expectations. It’s these expectations that not only erode our rights, but make them very difficult to protect.

It is important to discuss what worker’s rights are, and how we understand them. Fundamentally, workers’ rights are a mandate to protect our best interests from business owners and bosses. This includes ensuring a minimum wage, protections for contract workers, and creating systems to report abuse, such as the Fair Work Commission.

I think the key is education. Firstly, workers are more likely to be informed of their rights and at the very least will be able to identify when workplace abuses are occurring. A great way to do this is through the school system; maybe it’s because I went to private school, but I can’t remember ever being taught about tangible workers’ rights. What minimum wage is, what casual loading and unsociable hours are, how awards work – educating about all of these are fairly simple concepts will make a difference.

Many of us view our own workers’ rights as being somewhat individualistic. If we are happy to miss a lunch break or stay back for free every now and then, it’s our own choice. For me, it’s difficult to reconcile this idea of whether governments or workers should be enforcing these rights. We know that governments systematically fail to protect and provide for citizens (look no further than the controversies surrounding welfare and NDIS payments). On the other hand, I don’t think workers - potentially as young as fourteen and a half - should be burdened with calling out workplace abuse by themselves. This is especially true when workers are often treated in different ways, making collectivism difficult. The question becomes: how can we enforce workplace rights? For the most part, I don’t believe that businesses are making a conscious effort to

Secondly, and more challengingly, is educating employers. This is also an issue when you have business owners who have been doing things their own way for potentially decades. What I hope will change is that owners, when informed of workers’ rights, will feel obligated to ensure them. This relies on an idea of human decency, so merit that point as you will. Overall, exposing bosses and media scandals can help raise accountability for how businesses run. But, until we educate people, encourage informed decision making, and hold governments to account to act, our workplace rights will never be safe.

You know what’s attractive? Wearing your leavers jacket from four years ago.

A GOOD MAN BY SOPHIE HUNT

Sunlight gleams off the coffin. I catch myself staring and turn away, the gauzy fabric of my dress slipping on the seat beneath me as I shift. I’ve been sitting for too long. Beside the pulpit, a man laughs from a framed picture, his wrinkled face lit up with pleasure and breathless vitality. Carefully combed silver hair, deep crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. His teeth are stained from cigarettes and chocolate. We are packed tightly in pews, all hunched shoulders and downturned mouths. My cousins are silent in the row before me. A man walks up to the dais, sharply dressed. Neat white collar. The air is heavy with grief and my mother’s perfume. The man pauses, hands resting on the pulpit. The cross hangs high on the wall behind him, bathing in the light pouring through the stained-glass windows. He takes a deep breath, and the room seems to lean in. “We are gathered here today to remember … Fat birds glided lazily on the soft breeze. The air whispered stories of summer, carrying the scent of pollen, fresh flowers, of fertile earth. Daisies and dandelions peeked up, ready to be plucked. Children raced through the grass, tumbling and shoving. Laughter floated languidly. One girl lounged in the grass, watching her cousins play. A drop of sweat ran a finger down her spine, and she closed her eyes. Blood flowed slowly through her veins, warm honey. She could almost forget that with every breath, she came closer to returning inside. Grass tickled her face, and the warm earth cradled her body. This could be heaven. The room is too hot. A man in the row beside me digs a flask out of his breast pocket and takes a discreet swig. I fidget.

the pews, the podium, her hollow cheekbones. She clears her throat. The children trotted down the path, feet dusty red. They followed the fence, dodging burrs and spindly weeds. The girl hung back, taking deep breaths of the heavy air. One hand trailed along the fence as she walked, each step slower than the last. Apprehension fluttered through her small body. A fly drones around my ears. I fold my hands in my lap to keep from swatting it. The girl was last through the door, last to the table, last to finish dessert. The others vanished, claiming exhaustion and busy days. The girl sat between her parents, a bowl of ice cream melting before her. Across from her sat a man, his silver hair neatly combed, and an elderly, rail-thin woman. The faded floral of the wallpaper was drenched in a dusky, orange glow. The girl’s parents and grandparents traded pleasantries as her gaze drifted. Pictures and figurines cluttered every surface, books stacked haphazardly or stuffed between pieces of fine china. The room felt achingly small, crammed with useless belongings and thick with the smell of old coffee and dust. Her mind wandered to the sunbaked park. The room quietened. Finally, the elderly woman stood up, gathering empty bowls. The girl’s parents followed her to the kitchen, chatting anew about work, and school, why they never had time to visit. The girl slid off her chair, ready to escape. The stink of cigarettes approached, the silver-haired man placing a bony hand on her shoulder. She flinched. “Do you want to see my plane collection again?” She didn’t want to.

The girl was awoken, bleary-eyed, with the grass still murmuring in her ears. Dinner time. The sun-warmed earth begged her to lie back down, to close her eyes. She couldn’t. Cold crept through her veins, setting her teeth on edge. Yet around her, the song of spring played on: the buzzing gnats, the low-hanging sun warmed her skin and the dirt beneath her toes. Treetops blazed in the golden afternoon sun. The man steps down from the pulpit. Agonisingly slowly, an elderly woman approaches. The room is silent. Weak rays of sun dance cast shadows across

His fingers were cold. Warped as they were, she knew they were stronger than her own. She said ok. The woman looks waifish upon the podium, dwarfed by the high ceiling and bent by her crushing sorrow. My nails dig crescent moons into my palms. He led her down the carpeted corridor. She followed,

Nothing is yellow in the world and yet lemons are the second best yellow fruit. Suck shit lemons.

with small steps and tight lips. They reached the door: white plasterboard, unassuming and flimsy. It locked from the inside. Her fingers were limp in his grip. The cramped room was nauseatingly familiar, filled with an array of model planes, delicate and carefully painted. On her first visit to the room, the girl had studied each one carefully. Up close, she saw the tiny brushstrokes, pictured her grandfather’s knobbled hands clutching his tools, trembling in the pursuit of perfection. Only on her third visit did she notice one chip in the undercarriage of a blue fighter model. Through the window on the far wall, the girl could almost make out the park. Magpies swooped, landing in nests or perching on wires. Evening rays filtered softly through the trees, spun sunlight.

the racing car nerd, and poor time-manager I am, I had booked to watch the Formula One night race the evening before jetting off for a week travelling in Thailand – and this, as I’d soon find out, was definitely not a good idea. I watched the cars, had a beer, partied with a Dutch who’d come all the way to Singapore to get sunburned and yell about Max Verstappen, and then headed home for an early night. A nap, for three hours. Awake at 4am for a 7:50am flight? No problems at all. Or so I thought.

She didn’t like secrets.

Ninety texts, forty missed calls, and twenty-three Facebook messages later, I open my bleary eyes to meet 6:32am staring back at me. My apartment was forty minutes from Changi Airport, and if my stress levels were any higher, I’d transcend to the next astral plane. I grab the bag that my singular brain cell had the foresight to pack, pull on my Formula One jumper, and sprint through my apartment complex, somehow managing to call a cab in the process. I get into the cab, and the driver - a sweet Singaporean granddad - asks me what was wrong. I croak out through my tears, ‘flight…at…7:50,’ and he nods in the rear-view mirror.

She nodded.

Cue the most incredible drive of my life.

The elderly woman pauses at the edge of the pulpit, half turned as if to walk away. The stained light sculpts her into a collection of angles and shadows. I am transfixed. Then she leans once more into the microphone. Her breathing hitches.

This man must study the Fast and the Furious in his spare time. Forget Lightning McQueen - this man is speed. He drifts his blue Prius taxi through Singapore’s morning traffic, the pinnacle of finesse and master of the roads, and gets me to the airport in twenty-five minutes. No words necessary, this man is the hero I never expected to meet, but absolutely needed.

The man ran his hand up her arm. He rubbed the back of her shoulders, the neck of her dress. His fingers lingered. Her throat tightened. Time stretched like warm toffee, sticky as the sweat beading on his forehead. A few strands of his combed-back hair had fallen in front of his face. “You know that this is a secret, just between us?”

“There has never been such a good man.” Murmured church.

agreement

rumbles

throughout

the A quick scan of my passport and I’m through immigration, and into the waiting hugs of my friends. Half an hour later, I’m on my plane to Thailand – but not before tipping my cab driver as much as I could.

A good man. Back in the day, when I had some money, and we all had our freedom, I lived in sunny Singapore. Being

Don’t Formula One and travel, folks.

Some people play Playstation. Some play Xbox. I play myself.

ADVENTURES ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT AS A TRANS PERSON BY ELANOR LEMAN

WHEN YOUR EXISTENCE, YOUR VERY PRESENCE, IS APPARENTLY SO INTOLERABLE TO SOMEONE THAT THEY FEEL THE NEED TO PHYSICALLY DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM YOU.

The experience of people just conspicuously moving away from you on public transport doesn’t seem to be something you ever quite get used to. Sometimes they throw you a look, sometimes concealing, sometimes briefly failing to conceal - a look of what might be disgust. Sometimes they just move away, to a different seat down the train or the bus. Sometimes they are willing to stand. There’s humour in it, certainly, especially when they feel the need to move down an entire train carriage, or when there are numerous people standing around you and your free seat, but there’s also something less buoyant. Although, I suppose one has to see the funny side in being so loathed by society where one can. It’s the paradox of being exposed to the world as a trans person, visible, and yet also being exposed usually not to express hate in the form of slurs and physical violence, but rather the silent shaming of being moved away from with harried looks. I should add that it happens more often when with a partner, too - I’m sure this isn’t just a trans experience, but a queer one more broadly - although in the time it’s been since I started to transition, I’ve felt it far more. Even after those years of this treatment from the public, there’s still a strange feeling that settles in the guts when it happens. When your existence, your very presence, is apparently so intolerable to someone that they feel the need to physically distance themselves from you. What can I, what should I, do, or say? Accept the occurrence and keep

my head down, lest this relatively minor affair escalate into something much worse, probably. Certainly, the violence that society visits upon us is often far more devastating. And yet, this is what I feel compelled to write on. This, this subtle, perhaps insidious notion that I am dangerous, contagious, outcast from the company of polite or acceptable society. But, then again, am I guilty of this, too? Sometimes, I move away from people on the train - a family with small kids, or someone playing loud music without headphones, perhaps. I try to do so inconspicuously. But does my very presence on a bus or a train, my very image that I presume is perceived at times to break gender norms, act in a similarly discomforting way? Maybe it does. I can be thankful, at least, that our culture has bred a public transport etiquette that usually espouses non-confrontational behaviour. And that, unlike someone blasting their music or eating messily, I’m not actually breaking the rules of public transport. But I despise the notion that illegal = ethical, or vice versa. It is far too easy to conceive of a future in which being publicly queer - or queer at all - is illegal. It is already the reality that being publicly queer is a disturbance to society, a threat to tradition that evidently causes physical waves, as well as cultural. I like to think that I’m above being hurt by the actions of random strangers on the bus. Every now and then, when this happens, I realise that I’m not quite immune to this - this tiny yet emblematic manifestation of the contempt still harboured in our world for difference.

Turn to page 32.

EXPOSURE DOLLARS: THE UNFORTUNATE REALITY OF FREE MUSIC BY SUSANNAH WONG

“Those industry fat cats try to put a price on my music, but it wants to be free” – K. K Slider, Animal Crossing: Wild World In Nintendo’s popular pandemic distraction game franchise Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there’s a certain village musician by the name of K. K. Slider. K. K is your typical hippy type – and, therefore, is anti-industry. He supposedly rejects selling his own music, instead insisting ‘it wants to be free’. In later games, you can buy his songs for three-thousand, three hundred bells, or approximately thirty-three US dollars each (yes, apparently there really is a bellUSD exchange rate). The hypocrisy of a fictional guitar-playing dog aside, K. K. does raise a contentious point. For many, music is not only a hobby, but an income stream. So why should it be free? K. K.’s flippant attitude, harmless as it may seem, endorses the idea that being paid for music is inherently evil. It’s a nice attitude in theory, but realistically, one rooted in fiction. For many, music is work. It’s a way of making a living, and is enjoyed by billions of people. If the music is being heard by consumers, getting paid for it seems like a logical extension. Despite this, most aspiring musicians have accepted that in their industry, there is only one way in – exposure. Playing for exposure, or ‘exposure dollars’ as it’s become known, is the practice of musicians’ performances being remunerated with only the remote chance of being seen by people who will widen their fanbase or advance their career. Again, it’s a fine concept in theory, but in practice, it doesn’t hold up. In some respects, working for exposure sets a precedent, giving venues, event

organisers and even consumers the impression that you’ll work for free in the future. Unfortunately, this situation isn’t relegated to the music industry, either. Virtually everyone under the age of thirty can relate to signing their working week away for nothing, in the vain hope of earning a job at the end of it. And in the impossible employment climate of 2020, it’s become a necessary evil. Not helping matters is the revenue model of the modern music industry. With physical media all but dead, many turn to digital music platforms for a source of revenue. Despite the multibillion dollars at play, major music platforms like YouTube and Spotify provide exposure for artists (or so they claim), rather than actual pay. In 2020, the average Spotify payout per stream is only $0.00318, just under a third of a cent – hardly enough for a living wage, even for the services’ top tier artists. For consumers of media like ourselves, there’s a growing and unavoidable demand for free, instant content driving the industry. It’s a trend not set to change any time in the near future. To get ahead, we have to start from zero. Should you have to work for exposure dollars? No. But the sad fact of the matter is that in reality, you probably will.

UNFORTUNATELY, THIS SITUATION ISN’T RELEGATED TO THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

“Hi, I’m Sarah and I’m addicted to the Quobba Gnarning jelly cups.”

EXPOSING FRAUDS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY BY JACK LOGAN

SUCH CASES DEMAND THAT WE ASK NOT THE MOTIVE OF SUCH FRAUDS, BUT HOW WE CONTINUE TO BE DUPED BY THEM.

In 2015, one of the most promising advances in medical science was exposed as a billion-dollar deception. Theranos was an American biotech company founded by Elizabeth Holmes in 2003, promising cheaper and more convenient blood tests. With a CEO bearing no qualification whatsoever, and attracting little investor attention, it seemed like just another start-up doomed to fail. However, this all changed after Holmes filed a patent for a revolutionary wearable tool that would administer doses of medication, monitor blood levels, and adjust the dosage as needed. By 2013, Theranos had amassed over seven hundred million dollars in investor funding, which Holmes accepted on the condition that she would not reveal how the patented technology worked. It all seemed too good to be true. Arrivals to the company’s website were greeted with an image of Holmes holding up a tiny vial of blood, proudly declaring that with such a minute amount, Theranos could test for anything from high cholesterol to cancer. Two hundred and forty other tests could be conducted with the technology, and this advertised figure was good enough for most observers. It was only when scientists both within, and independent of, Theranos began noting discrepancies between what was promised and what was delivered — the total number of successful tests being closer to fifteen than two hundred and forty — that Holmes’ credibility began to unravel. Much of the ensuing media circus focused on Elizabeth Holmes, the person; dropping out of university, emulating Steve Jobs (turtlenecks and all), and insisting on secrecy. In their rush to create a celebrity from a case of scientific deception, these reports completely missed the point; as scientists, as academics, and as members of the general public, such cases demand

that we ask not the motive of such frauds, but how we continue to be duped by them. In Holmes’ case and others, their initial success required the cooperation, ignorance, or incompetence of other scientists involved. In 2006, American medical researcher Dr Anil Potti reported that he had found genetic markers in tumours predicting which patients would respond well to certain forms of cancer therapy. Potti’s breakthrough was described initially as “the Holy Grail of cancer research” – but, ultimately, “one of the biggest medical research frauds ever”. Clinical trials of Potti’s approach enrolled over one hundred cancer patients, received millions in government funding, and published over a dozen papers on the subject over the next three years. However, fellow researchers couldn’t reproduce Potti’s data, and it was later found that he had altered his findings to make drug response predictors look more accurate. While it may seem as though Potti acted alone in producing and publishing his data, this was not merely a case of an egotistical scientist going rogue. It was a case of bad science; of researchers blindly accepting data that seemed perfect, rather than subjecting it to the investigative rigours that the scientific method demands. In short, they fooled themselves. With advances in communication technology, it is now easier than ever to exchange findings with those both in the scientific community, and the wider public. It is entirely possible that this has increased, rather than decreased, incidences of scientific fraud. This tends to arise in cases of ‘science by press conference’, whereby researchers place a disproportionate focus on publicising results in the media.

The Masked Singer reminds me that Australia has no celebrities.

Perhaps the most notable example is the 1998 publication that linked a measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism spectrum disorders, and ultimately earned primetime promotion in UK news headlines. The editors of the respected British medical journal in which it was published, The Lancet, did not notice data had been manipulated by one of the authors, Andrew Wakefield, to stress this connection; nor did they uncover that Wakefield had received over £84,000 ($150,000 AUD) in support from solicitors seeking evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers. It took six years for the paper to be retracted, by which time Wakefield’s minimally opposed and extensive publicising of his work in the media, both at home and abroad, had swayed a considerable portion of the general public. The publishing of his manufactured findings, accepted by both colleagues and editors, led to an immediate drop in vaccination rates in the United Kingdom, and encouraged a global anti-vaccination movement that persists to this day. As with Holmes and Potti, Wakefield’s actions relied on the complacency, ignorance, or incompetency of dozens of others. Scientist Horace Freeland Judson has affirmed that researchers and journal editors are not easy to deceive, but rather permit scientific fraud on the basis of ego. In his book The Great Betrayal: Science in the Culture of Fraud, he notes that most influential academics obtained their seniority from research publications rather than through their teaching or practical skills. To suggest that such positions were attained in a corrupt system reduces their professional status.

percent of retracted papers in the previous decade were done so due to falsification of data, and that such cases have increased in incidence over that time. While it remains unclear whether this can be attributed to a greater incidence of fraud itself, or more effective means of policing it, one cannot, on the other hand, be sure how many papers containing manipulated data have escaped retraction. The cases examined above paint a picture of a problem that is multifaceted in nature. Under pressure to justify research funding, scientists must resist the temptation to modify or fabricate results, even if it means producing a report of little consequence. Journal editors also have a duty to be vigilant in identifying and exposing falsified data. Similarly, investors and the general public must be mindful of innovative and unprecedented scientific claims that seem too good to be true. While I cannot confidently state whether we have become better or worse at spotting hoaxes and frauds, it remains our ethical responsibility, above all else, to seek truth in science.

A 2011 STUDY FOUND THAT ROUGHLY TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT OF RETRACTED PAPERS IN THE PREVIOUS DECADE WERE DONE SO DUE TO FALSIFICATION OF DATA

What’s more, the actions — or inaction — of editors make it difficult to discern trends in academic fraud. A 2011 study found that roughly twenty-five

If you don’t think High School Musical 2 is the best one you don’t deserve rights.

EXPOSING MYTHS AND LEGENDS ON CAMPUS BY COURTNEY WITHERS AND FRANCESCA DE NUCCIO

COURTNEY’S MYTH-BUSTING:

THE WALK FROM THE BUSINESS SCHOOL It’s the time of day that’s dreaded and hated by all. Your last ounce of strength from the fucking hardest day of studying at Reid - amongst people that are clearly not there to get any productive work done - is now spent walking to your next class at the Business School. Some have likened the distance to playing a full game of competitive social sport, or doing a full Relay for Life, or even requiring more strength than Bob Hawke’s beer record - and we’re here to set the record straight. Google Maps is a lie and a cheat, and I will fight them on this calculation. According to Maps, the walk from the Business School to Reid will take around fourteen minutes, and is approximately one point one kilometres. Google Maps fails to take into account the various pit stops made to shed tears about how far you’re actually walking; to contemplate for a few minutes about whether it’s actually worth continuing to walk there if you’re going to be as late as you already are; and concluding that, yes, you must continue on your journey - because you wouldn’t dare be seen on a Whoosh bike.

THE CLOCK TOWER I’m not one to spread fake news, but I do believe a lady lives inside the UWA Clock Tower. I don’t know where this myth comes from, or how it came to exist, but legend has it, this lady has lived within the Clock Tower for the past one-hundred years, surviving off various food scraps brought to her by crows. A bit of a Fiona from Shrek moment, she waits at the

top of this tower, surveying the views, and taking various snaps for Open Day content. Some of my friends have even tried to visit this lady before by attempting to find the secret door to her tower. They were unsuccessful on their mission. She is the eyes and ears of campus, and runs the entire University from inside her Clock Tower. UWA Student Guild? Run by the Clock Tower Lady. The Tav? Also run by the Clock Tower Lady. Pelican Magazine? Run by the Cl— I’ve said too much.

THE SUNKEN GARDENS This one is really trippy, so buckle in. We haven’t tested the theory yet, but legend has it that the limestone in the Sunken Gardens is actually a whisper wall, and contains the voices of the various past Guild Presidents. Just like any whisper wall, this one can answer your deepest and darkest questions, guiding you through any situation with Guild Election commentary. Legend even has it that during the Guild Election season, the campaigning voices at the fast lane outside Reid can be heard simultaneously in this whisper wall, trapping the various Guild hacks and their political endeavours inside with them. Just a shame that campaigning can’t only exist within this wall :(

People join the ukulele ensemble at uni and think they didn’t waste their degree.

FRAN’S MYTH-BUSTING:

REID LIBRARY Now for your favourite hangout, Reid Library. Or, as I like to call it, ‘Have a fucking social reunion Library.’ According to UWA folklore, the ground floor of Reid was built for the only purpose of making UWA students struggle to study, and would therefore force them to remain at uni for an extra few years. Want to know the reason why? It’s because certain losers - year twelve students included - take it upon themselves to ‘study’, which actually means gossip, listen to music (without headphones), and microwave their shit-smelling food which stinks out the entire premises. However, one would rather experience this than remain trapped on the third floor, in which studying in peace also consists of having to listen to couples get it on in the ‘soundproof’ study rooms. Stick to level two. Or better yet, use Reid for the purpose it is intended to serve.

JUMPING THE MOAT We could not write this piece without mentioning the infamous tradition of jumping the moat. Legend has it that the first and only ever successful moat jump was made by a small, hairy and big-nosed... duck, named Richard - Dick for short. Every piece proof footage of others ‘jumping the moat’ is fake. Just some great editing skills, to be honest. Many have tried, yet none have survived. Students have spent many hours trying to calculate the perfect trajectory and velocity required to clear

the water and take a shortcut from the café terrace on the other side. However, every attempt has been a failure resulting in many leg grazes and high levels of embarrassment. Oh, remember Dick the Duck? Yeah, he and his family are actually spies employed by the University, and paid for with your SSAF fees, takes only with turning in students who attempt this BNOC activity.

UNIFI Now, I am not one to circulate conspiracy theories - but here is one that is sure to make you think twice. Telstra are paying UWA to make their Unifi so terrible that students have no other choice but to use their hotspot. The only flaw in this is that most of the time, getting proper reception is just as tough a task, which makes me think the owner of Telstra was definitely an ex-Curtin student. By the time your assignment submits using Unifi, you may as well have used a typewriter and handed it in hard copy. There are positives to this shit situation, however. For example, did you know the majority of UWA students are now top-scorers on the Google Chrome dinosaur game? The strangest thing about all this - which is yet to be solved - is the concerning fact that Unifi won’t ever work in the library. However, make your way down to the carpark, and you are guaranteed internet access... equal to that which you would find in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

No one wins the Guild Elections. We all lose.

PHOTOGRAPHER: JAMES HALEY

“THE CLOSER YOU LOOK, THE COOLER PLANTS GET.” Parenting tip: If you notice your child has a lot of empty Gatorade bottles, you might want to check the length of your garden hose.

IMAGE COURTESY OF EI HNIN

HNIN EI KYAW WIN When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? When one of my leg is outside the blanket…. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Neither, I can only afford Chinese Canton leftovers What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Is there such thing? If I met Clive Plamer, I would… say “Donald Trump wants his slogan back”. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? More animal photos.

HOLLY ‘MUM’ CARTER-TURNER When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? I spontaneously got my seconds done and didn’t tell anyone. My family didn’t notice for a month until mum found the cleaning spray in my room… “WHAT DID YOU GET PIERCED?!” My ears! Just my ears... Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Ararat What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Edition 1 If I met Clive Plamer, I would… say ask him how Titanic 2 is going. I’d also ask if he uses purple shampoo to keep his hair so bright white. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? All of my unpaired socks, my Club Penguin account, and my first-born child.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? When I threw up and dropped a beer bottle on the floor just as my parents arrived home. Sorry Mum. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Nothing beats the convenience of a kebab place on campus during an evening Reid sesh. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? ODYSSEY, if only because it reminded me of my copy of Homer’s epic that’s been collecting dust on my shelf for years. I’ll read it one day, I promise. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… say ask him what he thought of the article I wrote about him in Pelican’s ODYSSEY issue! What are you leaving Pelican in your will? One day I’ll vanish without a trace, and all the drafts of all my unwritten Pelican articles will appear overnight in the magazine office.

JACK ‘PASTY WHITE’ LOGAN

Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? While I wouldn’t say I’m bisexual, I am bi myself :(

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Every time I have to introduce myself to the class with a personal ‘fun’ fact (almost finished my degree, and I still don’t have one) Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Kebabs all the way! What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? ODYSSEY forced me think about the Odyssey – did this make me want to cry a bit? Maybe so. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… start swinging What are you leaving Pelican in your will? A lingering sense of disappointment

ELENA ‘NOT ELEANOR’ PERSE

Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? Being gay isn’t a scale, it’s a competition and I’m winning

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? I forgot my lines in a school play once due to stage fright. I was never quite the same since. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Neither. I’ve been off-campus for most of this year due to COVID travel restrictions. please let me back in. please. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? My call-out post for MEMORY got a show-stopping four likes. I am still not over it. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Who? We don’t know her in this house What are you leaving Pelican in your will? All of my rough poetry drafts that have been sitting in stale word documents collecting dust. Pelly, these are for you with love.

ISABELLE ‘IZZY’ YUEN

Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? A solid 6 I reckon. Pack it up, Kinsey scale.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? every time I forgot sunscreen Campus Kebabs or Ararat? The answer is Greek Streats What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? This one cause I’m nakey If I met Clive Plamer, I would… cough on him at the airport What are you leaving Pelican in your will? My HECS debt

CAMERON ‘CENTRIST’ CARR

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? In the shower Campus Kebabs or Ararat? I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I do not attend this university. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Still don’t know what the fuck Odyssey means so yeah, edition five. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… keep my one-point-five metre distance. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? All of my rough poetry drafts that have been sitting in stale word documents collecting dust. Pelly, these are for you with love.

FRANCESCA ‘FRANNIE10’ DE NUCCIO

Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? An air conditioner. If you know, you know.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Being on campus during Guild Elections. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? I still don’t go here. I’m an innocent bystander, and want no involvement in this matter. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? ODYSSEY - I still don’t know what the fuck that means. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Interview him on my new podcast, “Don’t Get to Know Your Possible WA Premier”. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? A complete transcript from my interview with Returning Officer, Mary Petrou, and Guild Managing Director and Executive Officer of the Executive Management Committee, Tony Goodman. You’re welcome.

COURTNEY ‘CAMPUS NEWS FRAUD’ WITHERS

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Entrusting this nude to Microsoft Outlook, probably. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Definitely Ararat’s. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Shh, I can’t answer that. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Roll for SAN loss. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? A large old mansion rumoured to be haunted, but you have to spend the night in it first to get it. Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? Both, and then some.

ELANOR ‘GENDER’ LEMAN

THE SELF-PROFESSED “TWO SEXIEST SUB-EDITORS”, CALEB CHENG AND KYLE PULETTO KYLE PAULETTO

CALEB CHENG

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Realising how visible my apartment is from the street. To my neighbours, I say sorry, or you’re welcome, depending on your tastes.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Walking to the line to vote in the Guild elections.

Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Bringing food from home like the fucking mature-age, cheap-ass nerd I am. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? How could I possibly choose, they were all so terrible. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Put my headphones in. Can you imagine what that’s dudes laboured breathing would sound like? What are you leaving Pelican in your will? All my organs. In fact, let me use this platform to tell y’all to REGISTER TO BE AN ORGAN DONOR RIGHT FUCKIING NOW! - donatelife.gov.au/register-donor-today

Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Ararat - that insurance payout has brought their kebabs to the next level What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? The one with all the naked people in it that one was really weird. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Ask him if he would like to contribute to the gaming and technology section of next Pelican print edition What are you leaving Pelican in your will? Planning on uploading my consciousness to LMS so I’m going to live forever.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? ? My family and I were shit talking my sister while she was clearly listening and within earshot. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? The staff at Campus Kebabs gave me a serviette for my troubles once. Meanwhile, the folks at Ararat refused my request for a marketing interview, and I’ve never gotten over it. I’m going with Campus. What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? There was no Sports section in the ARRIVE edition, and it showed. If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Thank him for uniting all West Australians under a common enemy. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? My dignity. Pelican can do with it what they will.

CAMPBELL ‘CAMPBELL’ WILLIAMSON

DENI ‘REDACTED’ CAMPBELL When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? When I was fourteen, I sent a photo to a friend while I was on the toilet and I didn’t realise the screen was bigger than my last iPhone so she got an eye full of boob. I’ve only stayed friends with her because I don’t trust she’s deleted the photo yet. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Ararat always

If I met Clive Plamer, I would… [redacted] What are you leaving Pelican in your will? Seven guppies and thirty on the way. Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? Stirling-leaning but Bayley-curious

What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Probably this one because I’m still on probation at work and if my boss finds this I could get let go.

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? I always feel the most emotionally exposed in the parking lot of a Maccas at 2am. Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Depends — where am I drinking? What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? This is a trick question - they were all terrible. (I’m kidding I<3Pelly) If I met Clive Plamer, I would… ask for the link to his OnlyFans. What are you leaving Pelican in your will? My collection of cursed objects, curated with love. Bonus Question: On a scale of Bayley to Stirling, how gay are you? I’m not sure where you’d place “knee-high rainbow toe socks” on that scale, but that’s where I’d be.

PARIS ‘LOCAL CRYPTID’ JAVID

MAX ‘SAX MILBERT’ SILBERT

NICK ‘THE SUGAR’ WARRAND

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Probably my circumcision

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? When my friend called me a softboy

Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Ararat

What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? Collectively were the ones I didn’t write for

What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? All the Pelican editions I wrote for

If I met Clive Plamer, I would… kill him (in a video game) (parody)

If I met Clive Plamer, I would… Do I have to?

What are you leaving Pelican in your will? Bob Hawke’s desk (I’m going to steal it from the Pelican office)

What are you leaving Pelican in your will? An actually quality article

When have you felt the most EXPOSEd? Someone caught me looking at bread on my phone Campus Kebabs or Ararat? Ararat What was your least favorite edition of Pelican in 2020? ODYSSEY??? If I met Clive Plamer, I would… leave What are you leaving Pelican in your will? The sticky bra I used to take my nudes

CAITLIN ‘*IN A SADDER, MORE DISAPPOINTED TONE* CAITLIN’ SHARKEY

SOUL SEARCHIN.

BETWEEN MY RIBS

“It is impossible to write and not expose your soul” - Nitya Prakash

I know this all by heart

BY NATALIE POON

BY CAITLIN SHARKEY

twisted into the pit of my stomach It’s churning, sinking, tossed

Oh how we express without knowing

Volatile recollections beneath my skin

Myriad ideas plucked from secret places For telling a tale equates to showing

You know, it’s not quiet when I’m alone

Like a star shining bright as always

Because there are whispers creeping, cloaked in night

Alone and longing to belong

And when I wake there is no daylight

Somewhere an ink fountain spurs

to filter in between closed blinds

Inspirations run wide and deep Like stars few and far between

Those earliest mornings feel worse than my latest nights There’s a heaviness held, suspended above

The words whispered to each other

until it collapses, crushing its way into me like

From their structure within pages

the heaviest anchor digging into the ocean floor

The words of midnight scribble Intertwined like mangrove roots

Because my fingertips remember what they have touched

Remember throwback readings from the past Romance, fantasy and the classics

and my lungs remember where they’ve been breathed

How we search and wonder in class

and it’s imprinted on the back of my eyelids

Attempts to fly off into the clear blue yonder

and they’re waiting for my eyes to roll back so they can see the light of day again

To feel with and for characters is to feel ourselves too

If you exposed me you would not find all of me

Alive and awaken with daydreamers alike

but only the bones I want you to see

For what is writing without intent

This flesh is filled with fragrant fibs

Announce to them what it ought to be

so that the closest you will ever get is if you read between my ribs

I miss Blockbuster.

INSTAGRAM: DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OR PUBLIC TOOL FOR CENSORSHIP AND DISCRIMINATION? BY CLEO ROBINS

In 2014, when a fledgling Instagram was only beginning to be a mechanism for self-promotion and artistic expression, Canadian photographer Petra Collins (@petrafcollins) posted a bedazzled self-portrait of her legs and lower torso. It was rather benign, akin aesthetically to an advertisement for an independent lingerie or swimwear brand; the translucent wash coating the image was the same shade as Collins’s briefs. However shortly after it was posted, the photo - and Collins’s account were removed entirely from the Instagram app. The catalyst for the mass reporting and eventual censorship seems to be Collins’s pubic hair, which committed the heinous crime of being, well, visible. At the time, Collins was a professional artist who worked with the likes of Gucci and Wonderland magazine, and expressed her disbelief that “the general public wanted to censor [her] body,” and by extension, her work. Instagram is an excellent tool, not only for artists and professionals, but for the general public to express, explore, and impress as we desire. Instagram, among other social media applications, has signalled a shift in power to the masses, due to the way the app decentralises the traditional structures of the media landscape. Anyone who’s anyone can post photos and videos of their choosing, without having to jump through the contracts, residencies, scoutings, and publishing hoops of the professional domain. But there are still rules. Instagram’s rules. In their Community Guidelines, Instagram outlines the sort of content that isn’t allowed in our feeds. Their second heading, which demands that people post photos which are “appropriate for a diverse audience,” is of particular interest when looking at the deletion of Petra Collins’s account. Instagram’s official guidelines stipulate that “content that shows sexual intercourse [and] genitals,” is prohibited.

There is nothing which says that pubic hair is outlawed, and Collins’s photo was not an actual violation of Instagram’s guidelines – it was just an affront to certain groups. Because Instagram employees supposedly don’t have enough time to peruse the site for Community Guideline violations, the app relies on a contentious system whereby users can report ‘offensive’ posts in an attempt to have them removed. This function is one of the aspects of Instagram which make it, in principle, so democratic; the app is being regulated by the people, for the people. But if Instagram is an online microcosm for a political democracy, then it certainly faces many of the same problems as the system.

REPORTING IS DEMOCRATIC AT FACE VALUE. BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, INSTAGRAM AND ITS EMPLOYEES ARE THE ONES WHO SIGN OFF AND ENACT CENSORSHIP. The general public has a significant amount of influence, but decisions are made by those controlling the system, meaning that Instagram chooses which reports get paid attention to, inadvertently acting with bias when it chooses which posts are ‘offensive’ enough to delete. As the censorship of Petra Collins’s account shows, Instagram has a clear focus on what sort of content isn’t allowed on their app - even if this isn’t specified in their official guidelines. More sinister than the censorship of body hair is the app’s discrimination against women of certain races and body shapes. In their guidelines, Instagram says that they do not allow any images of “female nipples.” In the last ten years, photographers, artists and models have been pushing the boundaries of this

Starting to think the Hunger Games universe is an improvement on our current one.

INSTAGRAM MUST ADAPT AND EVOLVE INTO A PLATFORM WHICH ALLOWS ARTISTS, AND WOMEN, TO CONFIDENTLY SHOWCASE ALL ASPECTS OF THEMSELVES AND THEIR WORK.

guideline, as part of the (largely online) movement #freethenip. The premise of the movement is equality, or more specifically, the right of women to walk around topless without social stigma. As valiant as this crusade is, in the gradual embracement of #freethenip by big apps like Instagram, significant demographics have been pushed out of the conversation by censorship. #freethenip charts its official history back to 2015, and while today it is not uncommon to see provocative pictures of celebrities posing naked on many Instagram accounts, the movement has actually done little in achieving equality for all women. Very recently, this August in fact, the discriminatory Instagram censors reared their ugly heads once more. British photographer Alex Cameron (@alex_ cameron) posted some of her work to Instagram pictures that she took of the Black plus-sized model Nyome Nicholas-Williams (@curvynyome). NicholasWilliams was topless, but posing so as to avoid overt nudity, firmly within Instagram’s specified guidelines. Not long afte,r however, the photos were removed, and Nicholas-Williams’ account threatened with deletion. Nicholas-Williams and Cameron used their platforms to voice their disappointment in the app for removing the images, while “millions of pictures of very naked, skinny white women can be found on Instagram every day.” (The truth of this statement can be duly confirmed by a quick scroll through the account of supermodel Emily Ratajkowski (@ emrata).) The most disappointing aspect of the controversy was that even after Instagram officially restored the original photos and apologised to Nicholas-Williams, re-posts of the photos, collected under the hashtag #iwanttoseenyome, continued to be deleted demonstrating the ingrained problem of Instagram’s algorithmic bias. It is ironic that Instagram’s specifications about nudity are nested under the heading of “appropriate

for a diverse audience.” The fact is that semi-naked images of a larger black model are more likely to be removed than those of a nude, skinny white woman. If there is ever to be true equality, as #freethenip claims there should be, Instagram must adapt and evolve into a platform which allows artists, and women, to confidently showcase all aspects of themselves and their work. Instagram has to move away from its current approach, which preferences harmful traditional stereotypes of beauty and gender. #iwanttoseenyome should not exist, because we should see Nyome, and women like her in our feeds, on our billboards, and in our films and TV shows. Like with all controversies which bring attention to the deeply ingrained biases of our society, there is a hope that change will be enacted. And Instagram does seem to be acting – or, at least, interacting with the right people. Author and content creator Stephanie Yeboah (@stephanieyeboah) took to Twitter to report a Zoom call which she had with Instagram, in which she discussed the censorship of Black plus-sized bodies with representatives of the app. The representatives assured her that they had “changed their policy on how they review seminudity,” and that Instagram is also “retraining their staff on the topics of bigger bodies and nudity.” Change seems to be afoot – it remains to be seen whether these specific changes will have visible effects on censorship. Perhaps Instagram is an app that signals a shift in power to the greater majority, but this is harmful when the members of the general public who have strong, unwarranted opinions on other people’s bodies are the only ones being listened to. Social media apps have power, because we interact with them so frequently. They must use this power to create a public that is truly democratic, not one which perpetuates harmful stereotypes and promotes systemic discrimination. Here’s hoping that Instagram’s new initiatives are reflected by a public consciousness which is similarly informed and accepting.

I don’t trust Aussies who watch the NFL. Bayley watches the NFL. I don’t trust Bayley.

IN LIGHT AND DARKNESS: REVEALING THE PUBLIC BATHROOMS OF PERTH BY RIVA-JEAN LANDER

BREAD IN COMMON (RESTAURANT, FREMANTLE) In this Fremantle restaurant, the mood is set from the moment you stand up from your seat, and begin walking to the bathrooms. A walkway leads to the back of the restaurant. On one side is a dining area, packed with jovial conversation, and on the other lies a large, theatrical open kitchen. This walk allows the time to enjoy the reinvented, historic space - built as a pharmaceutical warehouse, and now stripped back to a classy, yet homely eatery. At the end of the kitchen, thick concrete walls and a concrete ceiling form a corridor to the bathrooms. The air thickens as it is cooled by the earthy material. The room itself is dimly lit from downward-facing lights under the mirrors.

IMAGE CREDIT: DARIA SHEVTSOVA VIA PEXELS.

Entering a public bathroom for the first time is a scary experience. They tend to fall into one of two opposing categories, and walking towards one makes even the non-believer pray that the room falls into the better category. While these rooms are often thoughtlessly added as a necessity, they are truly an opportunity to complete a well-designed building. Here’s a sample of public bathrooms done right.

STRANGE COMPANY (BAR, FREMANTLE) The doors to these bathrooms are stumbled upon in the alcove of a dimly lit corridor. Entering the room, it takes a moment to adjust to the darkness before venturing further. Painted black walls and dark fixtures typify the space. Behind a single cylindrical stone hand basin is a floor-to-ceiling opening that houses a shallow garden, where tall bamboo shoots erupt from a bed of slate grey pebbles. Light filters into the bathroom from the ceiling above this opening, creating a feeling of candlelit tranquillity and solitude. This space is serene and meditative.

While light drapes over the faucets, the glow is enveloped in the shadows of black walls and floor tiles. This moody darkness is uplifted with timber window frames and a red brick feature wall, striking a precarious balance between intriguing darkness and raw beauty.

TRINITY ARCADE, LEVEL TWO (CBD) In stark opposition to those previously described, this space revels in the capabilities of modern lighting. With high windows, wall-mounted spherical lamps, and Art Deco glass pendant lights, the polished white tiles and porcelain fixtures shine. Here, any hint of dirt or grime is mercilessly exposed and eradicated. This room lacks atmospheric shadows, and is clinically removed from nature. But not all is lost – it holds its own vintage beauty. Copper faucets and taps adorn stand-alone antique vanities. Mounted above each, the Art Deco mirrors are spaced with mid-century frosted glass wall lights. Completely committed to embracing this theme, the cubicles are even equipped with high-tank toilets and pull-chain flushing systems. This room is a heritage buff’s playground, and a place where spotless luxury takes on a dedication to a rustic, old-school aesthetic.

The layers of shadows and contemplative darkness make it a place of reprieve from boisterous conversation, and the chaos of spirited strangers.

Turn to page 43.

THE HIDDEN SELF BY BOA ANTAHPUTRO

As you read this, you may be in a public place: Reid library, a cafe, a room with friends, or on the bus home. You are exposed. Others sit and stand around you, their presence shapes your actions, your appearance, your existence. You understand yourself in reference to how others see you. Even those who claim to not care still require the affirmation of others. Maybe, as you read this, you are alone. Within the solitary confines of a room, your existence is affirmed only by yourself. It is in this private place, to which we all return, that we may truly be ourselves, where we may find comfort and safety and reveal all things we hide. It is this privacy which is transgressed in Michael Hanneke’s 2005 film Caché (Hidden). The narrative is simple yet effective: the Laurent family receives a set of videotapes, recording for hours the exterior of their house. The tapes reveal nothing explicitly damning nor interesting about their lives. There is no threat of a physical act of violence which endangers the safety of the family, and the perpetrator isn’t asking for a ransom to be paid. The videotapes simply communicate one thing: privacy is no more, for you are being watched. It is this act of ‘being watched’ which truly separates the public from the private. In regard to the public, we accept it. Although the degree we want to be watched ranges from reservation to encouragement, we still accept that once we enter the public sphere, others may watch us if they choose to do so. Georges Laurent, the patriarch of the family, accepts this reality as a public figure in the media. This is especially true in our age of social media, as we, similar to Georges, construct the ways in which we are watched, and create our public façade. More often than not, this façade fails to truly reflect the authentic private individual with the insecurities and defects we fear would be rejected by the world. Conversely, in the private sphere, being watched is a breach, a violation, an injustice. Rightly so. In a world

increasingly connected and shared and streamed, privacy becomes one of our greatest possessions, and surveillance its greatest enemy. It is under unwanted surveillance by an unknown figure that causes the Laurent family begins to unravel. As the videotapes continue to arrive at their doorstep, and the contents become increasingly revelatory, the mistrust and paranoia between Georges and his wife, Anne, increases. Rather than opening up to one another and communicating their anxieties and insecurities, both recede further, and begin to walk the path alone. While there is an external threat, the real damage to the domestic lives of these characters comes from internal insecurities, and an incompetence to truly connect; the invisible invasion from the outside causes an implosion within the family. The foundations of this stereotypical white, upper-middle class family crumbles underneath the pressures to maintain its illusion of stability, as the couple become strangers to each other. This feeling of estrangement and alienation - not only from others, but from oneself - is ultimately the central theme of Caché. Unlike other mystery thrillers, the question of ‘whodunnit?’, although addressed, isn’t central. The film functions more as a character study of the psyche and internal lives of the Laurent family. Hanneke’s point is not to ask who the ‘other’ is, but in what way does this ‘other’ change how we see ourselves. We hide so much of our authentic selves from the public that when we are forced to look in the mirror, what we see is that the ‘other’ no longer resides external to oneself - the outsider is within. As Anne Laurent states, “people do anything to avoid losing what they have”, and what we, and Georges, have is the private self. Although most of us may not share the dark history of Georges’ childhood, each of us shudder at the thought that others may know what we’ve worked so hard to hide and repress.

Put your Wii Bowling high score on your resume and watch the job offers roll in.

A PUDDLE TOO DEEP TO STEP OUT OF BY BRIAN KHOO

Oil and gas companies have been patching up holes through debt raising, but COVID-19 has exposed the industry’s ability to be sustained.

For some time now, oil and gas has been identified as a sunset industry – and there is good reason to think that. Even before the pandemic, crude oil prices were pushed well below levels seen in 2011. In 2018, the USA - under the Trump administration - became the largest producer of crude oil globally, led by the shale states of Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The rise in supply, coupled with falling demand for oil and gas amid greater adoption of cleaner energies, has led to the collapse of the once heavily relied-upon industry. By mid-April this year, WTI crude futures turned negative. This was on the back of a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, two heavyweight oil producers, as well as COVID-19, which severely limited travel by cars and aviation alike. Few remain optimistic that the industry will be able climb out of this hole. The COVID-19 pandemic has all but confirmed the oil and gas industry’s demise. Despite a production cut agreement by OPEC earlier this year, reduced demand means that the price of WTI Crude still hovers around US$40/barrel - The New York Times reports air travel numbers to one-third of last August’s figures. [Figure 1]

Low oil prices have led to dramatic declines in the earnings of oil producers across the world. In the June quarter, Royal Dutch Shell made an impairment charge of US$16.8m on their books, whilst its competitor, BP, made a loss of that magnitude. Furthermore, the Royal Dutch Shell Board decided to cut dividends for the first time since World War Two. Saudi Aramco, another oil giant, who listed last December as the world’s most valuable company by market capitalisation, reported a 73% year-on-year fall in profits for the second quarter, albeit still profit making. Not all shale oil producers can count their blessings, however. During the first half of the year, a grand total of forty-seven oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy in the US and Canada, twenty-five of them being oil and gas producers, according to Haynes and Boone. The mass culling of such companies comes as no surprise, given how heavily geared the industry has been in recent years. Even Saudi Aramco, one of the better performers among its peers, was forced to borrow to maintain dividend payments, leading to net debt climbing to 20.1% of its total capital. Things are worse for BP and Royal Dutch Shell, which have gearing positions well in excess of 30% of capital.

Fig 1: Source: Yahoo! Finance

Screw your star sign, what flavour UP&GO are you?

High debt is not something that has been developed overnight, either. In 2018, forty-three oil and gas companies filed for bankruptcy. Last year, EP Energy was wound up due to its inability to repay some $5b in debt. It seems like it took a black swan event, and the largest economic downturn in almost a century, to finally expose oil and gas companies. [Figure 2] The collapse of oil and gas has often been a case of when, not if. Over the past few years, investment by such companies have fallen. In 2019, upstream spending was 43% lower than it was in 2014, according to the IEA, who also predicts investment this year to be a third lower than last. The dramatic fall in investment in recent years comes as a result of consumers shifting toward cleaner energy sources. For example, as demand for electric vehicles have increased, a greater emphasis has been placed on improving battery life. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, has recently announced the development of a ‘million-mile battery’, more than eight times the life of a standard car battery. Whilst this may sound expensive, many are confident that wide-scale adoption of this new technology would mean the investment will eventually pay off. The forward-looking stock market certainly agrees, with Tesla’s stock price increasing more than 400% since the start of the year, whilst BP’s has almost halved.

According to The Economist, renewable energy supply could rise to 25% in 2035, and 50% by 2050. Contrastingly, BP’s global outlook for oil and gas demand in 2018 forecasted consumption of such fossil fuels to plateau by mid-2030. Newly revised figures amid the COVID-19 pandemic even shows that it may have already peaked in 2019, under a net-zero scenario (where net-zero emissions would be achieved by 2050). For many companies in the industry, this is horrible news, and CEOs would have to implement an operational overhaul if they are to remain a going concern. BP has announced its intentions to increase low-carbon investments by 1,000% within the next decade, before turning into a carbon-neutral company by 2050. With the Presidential Elections nearing, President Trump is unlikely to encourage such behaviour, given his administration’s popularity amongst the American shale oil producers. As the price for WTI Crude falls below US$40/barrel again, the incumbent President might turn towards OPEC once more to cut production - but it is unlikely that either Trump nor OPEC nations can do enough to prevent the fall of the oil and gas industry.

Fig 2: Source: The Economist

Nine microwaves in the Ref seems a tad excessive.

pupils BY ELLIE FISHER

The weight of eyes. You know the sensation. Familiar. You know how to prevail against it. You know how not to look, when not to look. You also know the power of your own gaze. You understand the fine gradations between a glance, a stare, the turn of a head. That moment when eyes catch, when looks electrically graze. That second, for an infinitesimal age, when lines of sight cross, and send a buzz across the nerves.

traces BY ELLIE FISHER

It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative – whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. - Sylvia Plath

Your face is turned, your dark eyes busied. The street is emptying of people. Only the rain fills it now, a rain that washes the stones of the buildings clean of daytime glances. Damp air: you wish it were nicotine clouded. Your sunglasses are perfectly useless, marbled with the pelting droplets. Yet you wear them, as is your wont, to guard against prying eyes. You prefer it this way, wandering the streets incognito, imagining yourself a man of mystery. You smile, lips parting over slightly crooked teeth. But she’s just a trace of a remembrance, not much more. Clenched with cold, you contract within your coat. There’s a coffee shop ahead. You need your caffeine. Artistic fingers trembling slightly on the sleek metal handle, your boots step over the threshold. Outside, just as within, something is missing.

UWA Love Letters rides a fine line between desperate and even more desperate.

ADAM GOODES

AND PLAYING THE BALL BY CAMPBELL WILLIAMSON

The Adam Goodes booing controversy might have been one of the most emotionally charged and socially divisive periods of recent sporting memory. This is not surprising, given that it was a debate centred largely on the significant and serious issue of racism. However, I don’t think that saga had to conclude the way it did - with a dual premiership player and dual Brownlow medallist essentially booed into retirement. I believe that the situation, and its boos, were exacerbated by the media’s binary framing. The booing was either definitely racist or it was definitely not, and nuts to the middle ground. I’ll begin with an assumption. I don’t think that the booing of Adam Goodes was motivated exclusively by racism. I think that booing football fans were motivated by an inconsistent collection of reasons. While racism, regrettably, was a motivating factor for a lot of those supporters, I don’t think that these other reasons can accurately be labelled ‘racist.’ The dubious merit of these other reasons, including that Goodes was politicising sport or playing for free kicks, has been critiqued in other articles that are available online. These articles take a considered approach, identifying the unsound logic underpinning the most commonly cited arguments against Adam Goodes. I think those sorts of articles are helpful to building constructive dialogue. However, during the saga, I found that such constructive dialogue was often overshadowed by less considered, more confrontational language. There are always going to be shock-jocks who are

motivated by profit to make bold, provocative claims. Yet, as the saga intensified, legitimate and influential figures also made similarly provocative comments. The most glaring example was AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan’s 2015 statement that all fans who continued to boo Goodes were racist. Of course, these comments were motivated by an admirable desire to overcome racism, but I believe that these sorts of demonstrative statements were counterproductive to this goal. The problem is that they disparaged individuals, rather than their ideas, and because of this, these types of comments were likely perceived as personally insulting. Correct or not, this provocation likely meant that booing individuals were less likely to self-reflect, and less likely to change their behaviour, leading to more racist behaviours. These sorts of totalising statements didn’t engage with the inconsistent and specific motivations of supporters. They didn’t constructively expose any faulty logic that needed redressing; they simply asserted that all fans who continued to boo were being racist. This minimised the chances of specific, constructive debate, and allied all booing supporters, whatever their motivations, against Goodes and the AFL administration. And I think that these unfortunate realities are worth considering. The majority of us want to overcome racism. And to do this, I think, it’s worth resisting the urge to paint a diverse group of people with diverse motivations as simply racists, with scant critique of each specific argument. In short, I think that to constructively overcome racism, we should each play the ball, not the person.

Anyone wanna start a professional handball tournament at uni with me?

KING BY MERLIN HOSKINS

CW: blood, mental illness, self-harm, alcoholism, drug-use. Who on this wretched Earth is not tormented by their own vices? Made to suffer and self-flagellate under the all-consuming weight of what we should have done, what we should have been. What you should have been. Your dreams take the form of you beating the shit out of yourself, dripping with sweat, knuckles bloody, fists raining down upon your own miserable visage, until you are a puddle of broken flesh. You wake warm and still, the arms of your lover bracketing you. You look in the mirror, and think ‘man, fuck this guy.’ Your eyes are blown out and dark - it’s been a long time since you’ve had a good night’s sleep, and longer than that since your slow spiral into insanity hasn’t been written over your body. You tell yourself you can’t help it, without even knowing whether that’s true or not. It doesn’t matter. Your fingernails work their way under every ridge, every tear they can find. And if they can’t find any, they’ll make them. You’ve just graduated from leisurely ripping off the ends of your fingernails to pulling out whole chunks of them.

Blood pools in your nail beds; there’s something deeply, sparklingly addictive in the pinpricks of pain that dance up your spine. This is how you keep it at bay. This thing - this need - that threatens to devour you. You consume yourself first. It escapes you sometimes, and that’s where the ghost-pale lines on your forearms, on your ankles come from. You wish you could say you hated it. Hated this - hated being like this. But you don’t. You have a short album on your phone of scarlet spiderwebbing over your arms, red on tan. But your favourite part is when they’re just short of fully healing, and you can drag your senses across the raggedy, criss-crossed lines on your skin. Your brain is always on - always whirring - always feeling and you can never ever turn it off. You think about everything that’s wrong with you. How twisted and mangled your body is compared to how it should be - nerves and fat and flesh in all the wrong places. Your mind feels like the archetypal mathematical input-output machine. Only your function is wrong, somehow. You have all these thoughts, this swirling mess inside of you, and it seems that you can never express any of it in any way that’s meaningful.

Future historians won’t be able to explain Ben Shapiro singing WAP.

AND IT FEELS LIKE YOUR BRAIN IS FULL OF BUBBLES AND YOU ARE SWIMMING INSIDE OF YOURSELF. YOU ARE NOT.

Lately, you’ve figured out that you can turn off the machine with rum and cider and fizzy little sweet things that roll off the bottle and into your skull. And it feels like your brain is full of bubbles and you are swimming inside of yourself. You are not. You are twenty-three and you are descending rapidly into alcoholism. Normal people don’t Google ‘am I an alcoholic quiz au’. Normal people definitely don’t keep thinking about how they should stop drinking so much, and then open another can of cider.

You are a prisoner in love with their jail.

Normal people never think that they don’t deserve to be functional.

You are drinking all the time, and your breath tastes like ethanol. Your arms bleed and your legs ache. Your eyes sink ever-deeper into your skull. Everything hurts. You are wearing your self-destruction like a king.

You tried to book an appointment with a therapist, but they weren’t taking on new clients until November. You’ll hang on until then. You have to. There is no option to not be okay. There’s too much depending on you. You are held together with caffeine and duct tape - your nerves raw and exposed in the cold winter air. You think of Anne Sexton. You are an English major and you think of Anne Sexton - you think - your heart knows that you are fleeing on a donkey.

You have no personality when the sight of your own reflection doesn’t make you vomit. When your smile doesn’t split your face apart and your laughter doesn’t make you feel like crying. This is the only way for you to be. It’s a little like being a hologram, what you imagine a real person to be like. Solid from far away, but wispier and less corporeal the closer you get.

The loser of the 2020 US Presidential Race will run for Guild President in 2021.

HOW DISINFORMATION EXPOSES OUR POLARISED SOCIETY BY TIMOTHY BELL

CW: sexual assault, racism

While Australia was ablaze in the early months of the year during the devastating Black Summer bushfires, the hashtag #ArsonEmergency began to trend on Twitter. Despite findings by the scientific community that the bushfires were not caused by arsonists – rather, climate change which increased the intensity and frequency of fires within South and Eastern Australia - the hashtag #ArsonEmergency continued.

Dr. Timothy Graham, a lecturer on social network analysis at the Queensland University of Technology, has revealed that, similar to the way bots and trolls from the Russian Internet Research Institute (IRA) were engaged in disinformation over social media to influence the 2016 US presidential election, China is likely responsible with the artificial production of three-hundred and fifteen Twitter accounts that produced the hashtag #ArsonEmergency.

NewsCorp was quick to pounce on hashtags promoting arson as the cause in the attempt to perpetuate climate denial. Discourse became fixated in debates over wild conspiracy theories, including blaming “eco-warriors” for lighting the bushfires in a deliberate false flag operation; doubting the existence of climate change; attributing the cause of the fires to lightning; and falsely accusing the Greens for not supporting backburning and bushfire hazard reduction legislation. The fact that many of these unfounded conspiracies, fuelled by disinformation, were up for debate in the first place exposes the confronting reality and vast extent of political polarisation in Australia today.

Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns work by using present social divisions to sow confusion, in the attempt to decay media and institutional trust within democracies. Therefore, disinformation is an echo chamber of pre-existing rhetoric within society, and can only work with a receptive audience. What has been exposed by disinformation campaigns is the vast political rifts that exist in Australia, leaving us vulnerable to disinformation. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has stated that the level at which foreign interference responsible for disinformation during the bushfires was minimal, and that ideologically driven groups

People will say “let’s Skype” and then use Zoom. This says a lot about society.

DEMOCRACIES ARE NOW THEMSELVES UNDER ATTACK FROM THE FORCES OF GLOBALISATION AND TECHNOLOGY.

should take the brunt of the blame. Media outlets, politicians, and the public have been widely responsible for perpetuating disinformation to push an ideological platform which undermines objective realities and makes “alternative truths” that contradict those of experts. ASPI has also uncovered Islamophobic disinformation campaigns in the US and Australia pursued by QAnon that links the bushfires specifically to “Muslim arsonists.” What becomes abundantly clear, reflecting on the bushfires, is Australia’s susceptibility to disinformation, due to the polarisation of political beliefs. The Australian bushfires are by no means unique examples of disinformation exposing vast social divisions—it is a truly global issue within the digital era. Discontentment with the liberal policies of the European Union has been particularly divisive across that region, and immigration within Europe has been an issue easily ignited through Russian disinformation campaigns, where rising xenophobia and nationalism were used as hotbeds to expose division. In 2016, the Lisa case demonstrated how a polarised environment can lead individuals to fall victim to disinformation. Lisa, an ethnic Russian youth living in Germany, went missing. Russian disinformation campaigns subsequently manipulated Islamophobic rhetoric within the country to fabricate a story that she has been taken and raped by a gang of three Turkish men. In the short period between the news of her disappearance breaking, and Russian disinformation spreading to mobilise German domestic division on the EU’s migration policies, there were calls to create rapid upheavals; ban Muslims immigration; and increased hate speech. The truth, however, was that Lisa had voluntarily run away from home for thirty hours, and testified she had not been raped. Globalisation and advancements in technology were

initially hailed by democracies for exporting the free flow of media and speech across borders, coming as a blow to autocrats seeking to limit free expression. As mediums for communications developed, so did the tactics of the authoritarian governments who have used connectedness as a state tool to polarise and divide societal cleavages with disinformation. Democracies are now themselves under attack from the forces of globalisation and technology. After Australia’s experience with political polarisation from the Black Summer bushfires, one would expect the memory of the toxic state of division to be fresh in the public’s memory. However, the COVID-19 outbreak, and subsequent circulations of medical conspiracy theories on the fringes of society (such as ideas around the deliberate creation of the virus in a Wuhan Lab, or deliberately under-emphasising the severity of the virus), has demonstrated that this is not the case. Something which particularly stands out is the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Michael McCormack, appearing on Q&A and alluding to the Black Lives Matter Movement being responsible for causing the second wave in Victoria. Despite knowing very well - due to previously being factchecked on the same statement made, which had proven to show no link between BLM protesting and COVID-19 - the Deputy Prime Minister deliberately made a misleading statement directed at those protesting for social justice. This, despite his never wanting to condemn those at the height of Victoria’s second wave engaged in anti-lockdown protests. The spread of deliberately misleading information for partisan purposes leads Australia closer to the dangerous end of political polarisation, which overall weakens trust in national institutions during periods of crisis.

Big Chungus was the height of comedy; it’s been downhill ever since.

A TALE OF BASKETBALL, WHEELCHAIRS AND POOP. BY BAYLEY HORNE

The year is 2008. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are about to fight a formidable NBA Finals campaign. The absurd levels of tension in this decades-long rivalry will explode onto the court, with Kobe Bryant trying to will his Lakers to victory against the Celtics’ ‘Big Three’ in Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and, of course, the hero of this saga, Paul Pierce. Right from the opening jump, you can feel the intensity of the players and weight on their shoulders as they try to bring home a win over their greatest competitors. This is what basketball should be. And then, not even halfway through the third quarter, the unthinkable happens. Paul Pierce goes for a layup, lands awkwardly on his foot, and immediately clutches at his knee. It was one of those injuries you watch and immediately wince at out of pure empathy. It was rough, possibly career ending, and everyone in the stadium knew it. As Paul Pierce left the arena on a wheelchair, so did the Celtics’ chances at winning this series. Except, that is not what happened. Not even five whole minutes after being carried off the court, he returns from the locker room completely unscathed. His foot appears to have been magically healed, and he goes on to help the Celtics win by ten points. At the time, everyone was just excited to see a superstar like Pierce be completely fine and healthy, but in the days after, rumours started to spread about the true nature of the ‘injury’. A video emerged onto Youtube titled “Paul Poo Pierce – Poo Stain”, seemingly showing that Paul Pierce had shat himself whilst playing the game and faked a leg injury in order to go to the toilet and change underwear.

Immediately, this theory took off online, and seemed to have some credible evidence along with it. A small stain on the back of the all-white uniform they were rocking; the supposed change in underwear; the small hesitation Pierce took before falling to the ground; the miraculous comeback. It all seemed plausible. But there were many doubters, particularly in the media, who could not seem to find any of this evidence in their own research. They wiped away this story as a mere injury scare - that once the initial shock wore away, Pierce realised he was not injured, and came back to flush the Lakers’ hopes and dreams down the toilet. The Celtics would go on to win the series 4-2, but the “Wheelchair Game” would go on to haunt Pierce’s career for eternity. But then, in 2019, the unthinkable happened. Pierce, now a commentator for the NBA, was asked live on air about the infamous game and theories about shitting himself on the court. After eleven years of silence on the matter, he responded in a way that would shock the basketball world: “I have a confession to make. I just had to go to the bathroom.” Justice. Vindication. Peace. Paul “The Truth” Pierce had finally admitted to what we had all known in our hearts - that this grown-ass man had shat himself back in 2008. The clip rapidly went viral, gaining more coverage than even the NBA games being played that day. He tried to roll back his statement, claiming it was just a joke, but no one believed him. He had cemented his poopy legacy in the same manner Scott Morrison did in Engadine. There’s no recovery from this. Paul Pierce and poop will forever be tied together in holy matrimony.

Has anyone else noticed that iPads just disappeared?

A RAGE IN HARLAN: DOCUMENTARY AND POWER BY LACHLAN SERVENTY

BY THE TIME KOPPLE ARRIVED, HARLAN COUNTY LOOKED A LOT LIKE A COUNTY AT WAR. Voices are hard to hear now. There’re so many out there that it’s hard to drown out the voices that don’t matter. It’s even harder to find the voices that do. Of course, it’s almost always been like this. Before everybody and anybody could have a voice, only the powerful could. Radio, television, newspapers, periodicals, and so on were all owned by the upper crust. Now, as then, being able to hear what is important provides a daunting, almost off-putting set of challenges for us. For a brief period of time, however, it wasn’t like this everywhere. From the end of World War II up until the early nineties, there was a small collection of disparate individuals - some that would never have heard of each other - that were committed to telling stories. Technology had become accessible to a wider group. Documentaries became a democratic art, or at least as democratic as things could be in the twentieth century. At any given point, some hippy, or college student, or working-class kid, or community organiser, could pick up a camera and try to catch lives as they unfolded. To let stories spill out in front of them. Barbara Kopple was one of those college kids. A psychology major, Kopple opted to make a film instead of writing the usual term paper. She soon discovered that film was what she really enjoyed. After leaving college, Kopple started her own production company. It was around this time that she heard of place in Kentucky, called Harlan. A small, working class, very poor part of the U.S., Harlan was a coal mining town. Almost all of the men in the county were miners - or had been, before atrocious working conditions caused horrific health consequences. In 1973, around the same time that Barbara Kopple started her small production company, the miners of Harlan went on strike against Duke Power Company. They were protesting for

better working conditions, and a more favourable contract. By the time Kopple arrived, Harlan County looked a lot like a county at war. Kopple began to film what would become Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976), a documentary that would win her an Academy Award. Yet, outside of the interest that she had in Harlan as a subject to film, Kopple noticed that her presence at the strikes drastically changed the actions of those involved. Strikes in dirt-poor counties and states were far removed from the concerns of the urban Eastern and Western U.S. They often never amounted to more than a minor blip on the radar for most Americans. Many companies used this opacity to their advantage, breaking strikes with brutal force and often dangerous tactics. It was Kopple’s camera that changed things this time. The lethal anonymity that strike-breakers had relied on before had dissipated. Her camera became a weapon for the strikers. This is not to say that the strike-breakers of Harlan gave up. In fact, Kopple details the murder of Lawrence Jones, a young miner and striker. The strike-breakers had shot him on the picket line. Now, however, there were witnesses. No longer just the socially-disempowered miners, but the camera. Lawrence Jones’ murder was documented and disseminated. He was a martyr, not just for the strikers, but for anyone who would listen. Not long after, the Duke Power Company conceded. The strikers had won. It was no longer possible for the powerful to suppress their workers. The camera was an unavoidable judge. Kopple had given the strikers, once powerless, a voice they’d never had. Those once used to power now had their abuses thrown back at them by their abused. All because of a piece of celluloid.

You just lost the game.

LET’S BREAK SOME SHIT A defence of property destruction and rioting in the name of #BlackLivesMatter BY MATT BRYAN

Incited by the murder of George Floyd in the streets of Minneapolis in May, the persistence of the #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement throughout the US has been stunning, at the very least for the extent of property damage and rioting that has ensued. Across the world, footage of smashed shopfronts, toppled monuments, burning cars, and hooded protesters have dominated media coverage of the marches and rallies. Accordingly, the narrative of BLM has been hijacked. No longer is it about Floyd, or police brutality, or Black oppression. Instead, this coverage spins a terrifying tale of lawlessness, violence and chaos, of pointless anarchy, and criminal opportunism. It presents an image of the riots divorced from their context - and in doing so, it strips the movement of its greatest source of power. For those of us viewing the movement through television screens and Twitter feeds, there is bound to be swathes of finger-pointing, head-shaking, and privileged condemnation of the destruction. In attempting to justify the chaos, there is a natural inclination to pathologise the culprits, painting them as ‘outside agitators’ or ‘opportunistic criminals’ that are tainting the efforts of the more ‘legitimate’ peaceful protesters. We try to seclude the violence and destruction, distancing it from the movement itself. In separating the broader BLM movement from the actions of these few individuals, we seek a return to the privileged luxury of the status quo, ignoring the fact that the status quo is exactly what is trying to be changed.

But what if we restrain our sensibilities, and view the issue from a different perspective? What if this property damage is something beyond a mere rush of blood to the head? What if they’re not all aggravated, emotional outbursts, but are instead precise and cogent political expressions against a system that has consistently refused to hear the message? Under this conception, the events surrounding the movement are hardly riots—a term loaded with visions of senseless and irrational violence. Instead, they’re uprisings, akin to the sort that we owe many of our existing rights to today. History has demonstrated that physical rebellion, rather than purely passive protest, is a necessary step to major societal revolution. After all, the nation of the United States was itself a product of social upheaval against British colonial forces. The Boston Tea Party in 1773, largely credited with the ignition of the American independence movement, involved the destruction of almost forty-two tonnes of privately-owned tea in protest of taxation imposed by the British government’s Tea Act. On the incident, the US Founding Father Samuel Adams wrote that it “was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights.” In the 18th century, the perpetrators of the revolution saw it necessary to forgo property rights and lawand-order in the pursuit of what they saw as a vitally important cause. In 2020, if Black lives and liberation are considered similarly vital causes, then we must also understand the necessity of actions that transgress our conception of normality.

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These comparisons aren’t limited to the distant past either. In 1969, the Stonewall Inn - a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village, NY - was the site of arguably the most significant tide-change in the history of LGBTQIA+ liberation. The Stonewall Rebellion, as it has become known, was born from the consensus amongst the community that the incessant harassment and brutal actions of police would no longer be tolerated. For five days, violence waxed and waned around the Inn and surrounding neighbourhoods; activists throwing coins, bottles, and bricks at police, torching rubbish bins, uprooting parking meters, and even attempting to set fire to the Inn while police were barricaded inside. Although Stonewall didn’t initiate the LGBTQIA+ rights movement, in its aftermath exposure, concerted activism and a movement organisation surged. There is no doubt that at the time, the movement constituted criminal violence and destruction. If we accept the fact that this was a necessary step in LGBTQIA+ liberation, it is hypocritical to suggest the same isn’t true for #BLM. The most common argument against the current riots is that the same ends could be reached via peaceful protest and government petitioning. While this seems to be attractive, it largely ignores the arduous history of Black liberation, and how in the one-hundred and fifty-five years since slavery, the efforts to reach complete racial equality have been thwarted by a system resistant to change. As H.R. Lossin points out in her recent article in The National, whilst it does not hold any apparent political or moral value in itself, property destruction has the inherent power to coerce. While peaceful protest is certainly

important, so is applying a form of power that has the capacity to realistically reach into the elitist and capitalist sanctum of modern politics. To have a rigid attachment to ‘peaceful’ protest relies on a conception of democracy that simply no longer exists in the United States. In 2014, a landmark study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page exposed the concerning extent to which the social and economic will of the average American citizen fails to translate into legislation, as compared to those of elites and corporate lobbyists. The study concluded that, unlike these latter groups, ‘mass-based interest groups’ and ‘average citizens’ collectively have “little to no independent influence” on US federal government policy. To believe that the current protests should abandon the coercive power of disobedience in favour of some illusion of a responsive government is naïve at best, and oppressive at worst. While destruction and violence are not revolutionary acts by themselves, when they are infused with the political intention such as that of the BLM movement, they gain the coherency and potency that can affect revolutionary change. While the visions of chaos and seemingly directionless violence may continue to fill our screens, we must remember that when pursuing major political change, there comes a time where enough is, quite simply, too much. Where too many lines become crossed, and too many innocent lives are taken by state-sanctioned violence. Where Black lives have to matter more than maintaining the status quo.

Butters the Campus Corgi is running for Lord Mayor of Perth.

WE WON A LOTTERY? EXPOSING PELICAN’S SPAM E-MAILS BY BAYLEY HORNE AND STIRLING KAIN

Thousands of emails come through Pelican each year, but sometimes we get some very special ones in our junk folder that make our hearts fill with joy. Here is a small sample of what we have to wade through. We assure you that every e-mail text has been reproduced exactly as it appears in the original e-mail. For once, errors of grammar and spelling are not our own. E-mail addresses and other identifying details have been redacted, because we don’t trust you lot to know for certain that these e-mails are attempts of fraud, and we don’t want to get sued if people lose their livelihoods.

Thu 10 Septmber-2020 7:22AM

Thu 17 September-2020 12:20 PM

My Dear Friend,

Hi,

Greetings to you and your family from my sincere heart. It might be a surprise to you reading from me again as I had written an earlier mail to you but without response. Presently, I’m in the hospital where I am undergoing treatment for Easophagal Cancer. Today my Doctor told me that I will not live up to 60 days. I am Mrs. Laura Eidenberg, widow to the late Colonal Andre Eidenberg, former deputy defense attache to Benin consulate in Czech Republic. My husband was killed by those who were envious of his position in the same office. Now there is 8, 3 Million Dollars my late husband deposited in a bank, in overseas.

Hope you are doing great.

Before his death he vowed to use his wealth for the orphanages. I have decided to donate this money to an individual, who will utilize it in fulfillment of the last request of my husband. Reply with your full names, phone number, address and occupation. I will give you more details after consideration. You can contact me in this Email: [email address]. Yours Sincerely, Mrs Laura Eidenberg Cancer, murder, diplomats - this email has it all. I’m intrigued by the idea that Laura couldn’t just give the money to orphanages in Benin, but has to go through a random stranger in order to do that. I guess if you wanted to feel good about all the money you are going to be scammed out of, this is the one for you! Although, judging by when this email was sent and when we are publishing, she’s probably passed away. Oh well.

We can get your website on front page of Google, yahoo, Bing. I will happy to send the ‘Proposal’ and ‘Pricing’ further more. Warm Regards, Alexis It’s the quotation marks that confuse us here. The threatening aura around ‘pricing’ honestly terrifies us, like they are going to demand a kidney each. Also, I’m pretty sure the only way to get to the front page of Bing is to viciously destroy a Macbook as a sacrifice, so not too sure how Alexis could help with that. Thu 17 September-2020 8:04 PM Good day, My name is Mrs. Rohani Abdul Karim a nationality of Kuwait. I am married to late Dr. Mahmud Abdul Karim who worked with Kuwait embassy in India for nine years before he died in the year October 2015. We were married for twenty years without no child. He died after an illness that lasted for long four years. Before his death we were both a good Muslim. My late husband before he died deposited investment fund with the Reserve Bank of India. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer and also tested positive for Corona Virus and right now I am receiving treatment in London hospital UK. I am seeking for your honest assistance to transfer this money to your account to support and donation to help the orphanage, helpless poor children who

Gonna apply to be a shopping centre Santa just so I have a reason to be this fat.

is suffering from this deadly Corona Virus Pandemic without any good medical treatment. I will also register your name and introduce you to the bank that will make you as the new beneficiary of this money so that the bank will recognise you and advise you what to do for the successful transfer of this money to your account as soon as possible before I die. Please do contact me on my email for more details. Remain blessed, I wait your reply. Yours Mrs. Rohani Abdul Karim [e-mail address] Yet another orphanage and Oesophageal cancer combo! Did some scammers run research about the most devastating forms of cancer? Because it seems like too specific a choice to just be randomly used multiple times - but then again, what do we know. Also, the first time COVID-19 has been brought up in any of these emails - you would think that they would be onto it immediately as an easy strategy.

Sat 4 October-2020 10:50 PM Hey pelican! Let Them Working For You ARE YOU READY ? But if you spend it all without saving to and multiplying it… Even if you earn a high-income, you’ll still be broke. Type the word “Multiply” if you hear what I’m saying. And if you want to know how to earn a high-income by running your own digital marketing agency. You can’t Find That’s Courses In Another Famous platform Its Only Here and In Udemy With Hight Price $$$$$ D’ont Lose The Opportunity Freedom challenge. Its Just 9.99$ To Change Your Life

Thu 01-October-2020 3:51 AM Good day, Please did you received my message? Mrs Caroline Wood No Caroline, we did not ‘received’ your message. Please don’t send it again. Fri 02-October-2020 12:47 PM I am Vice Chairman of Hang Seng Bank, I have Important Matter to Discuss with you concerning my late client. Died without a NEXT OF KIN. Send me your private email for full details information. email me at E-Mail: [email address] Regards Mr.Fung We are confused on who is sending this email, as the email address is linked to a ‘Dr Raymond Chien Hang Seng’. Maybe Mr. Fung is an alter ego, like Sacha Fierce or Ziggy Stardust? Wed 16-September-2020 4:12 PM Dear Sir, I am a broker linked with high profile investors who are interested and willing to fund you in any current project you are undergoing, as they are privately seeking means of investment portfolio globally.

expanding

their

To this end, we seek to know the possibility of going into partnership discussion with your company within your present scope of business. Should you be interested to engage us for a more detailed discussion on the

And

aforementioned proposal, we would be happy to do so in whatever medium you

I’ll see you in class.

find much more appropriate for this engagement. I look forward to your favorable response.

I think the only way to break this down is to go line by line. Who’s working for us? What are we ready for? What are we spending? We don’t really feel comfortable writing ‘multiply’ like they want us to. We are running a digital marketing agency now? Apparently, this is the only course on a famous platform - good for them! What the hell is a freedom challenge? Why is the dollar sign after the price? WHAT CLASS?

Thanks. Mr. Robert Mueller What the hell is Robert Mueller doing sending scam emails? After running the investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia, we thought you would be kicking it back on a beach in the Caribbean after a very successful career. Apparently, the grind don’t stop when organising amazing business deals.

It’s easy to forget the entire country was on fire at the beginning of this year.