Jom

09/12/2025

In the 1990s, teacher counselling was the closest thing teenage kids, grappling with the feverish pressures of growing up here, had easy access to. There certainly was a stigma attached to those who sought professional help outside. But in recent years, certainly amongst younger, more privileged colleagues and friends, “therapy” has become so normalised that those who don’t go for it can sometimes look like the outcasts.

Stigma still exists, of course, in many circles here and around the world. And today, heralding a completely new evolution in the discipline, people have a far more private way of seeking help: the AI therapist. Nicole Chan, a writer who “unpacks the intersections of culture, identity, and modern work through a South-east Asian and Gen Z lens”, helps us make sense of this technology, and the forces driving it.

Read now: https://www.jom.media/the-ai-will-see-you-now/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

What happens when we turn to machines that approximate humanity, for our very human troubles?

08/12/2025

Jom belajar bersama-sama. Let’s learn together.

Jom works with students, researchers, teachers, and business leaders to foster rich, intellectually diverse discussions.

If you’d like to engage Jom for events, panel discussions, workshops or coaching, reach out to us at [email protected]! Additionally, we are always accepting story ideas/pitches, send them to us: bit.ly/pitchtojom

𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡:
- Asia Research Institute, NUS
- NUS’s Regen Asia Summit
- PARIMA Singapore
- Raffles Girls’ School
- Singapore American School

Photographs courtesy of Jamie Lim (),

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom (link in bio).

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

05/12/2025

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐃𝐞𝐜 𝟓𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘁𝘆:𝘽𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣
This week, Singapore announced it’d open an embassy in Mexico next year, our first in the Spanish-speaking world. (A nod to the “global south”?) Mexico gets bad press for drugs and violence, but it’s also a vibrant middle-income country with artistic splendour, deep anthropological and indigenous histories and, likely a corollary, contemporary ecological sensibilities. What might this next interaction between our societies produce?

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲:
🇺🇸 Anjani Sinha
🧑🏼‍⚖️Raeesahgate’s conclusion
🧑🏼‍💻Depression treatments
💨SEA’s winds of fate
🏠The young and the homeless
🕸️Artistic webs

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: http://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-051225/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Anjani Sinha; Raeesah-gate finally closes; new treatment modalities for mild depression; South-east Asia’s winds of fate; the young and the homeless; and more.

03/12/2025

Jean Hew, Jom’s former head of research and employee #1, has taken a break from the yoga teacher’s life to reprise her old literary self. Recall her essay on Taylor Swift and the teenage experience, or the one on the Goh report and streaming in schools, or another on the concept of the traditional family unit in Singapore

In an odd way, there are elements of all three in her review today of “Amoeba”, a new Singaporean coming-of-age film that’s been winning plaudits globally. Many of you don’t read our Arts pieces, evidenced in our latest reader’s survey too, but if we could just implore you again. Our “Arts” pieces are not traditional Singaporean “reviews”. They’re pieces of criticism that we hope offer windows into numerous worlds. Two big ones here are the way teenage girls at elite schools feel their way to rebellion, often clumsily; and the origins and contortions of Confucian order in the Singaporean context.

Read now: https://www.jom.media/girl-gang-the-intimate-rebellions-of-amoeba/

Photo by Juliana Tan, courtesy of Akanga Film Asia.

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

A distorted Confucianism in service of the state may not allow open mutiny but rebellion can still flower within, as Tan Siyou’s award-winning film “Amoeba” movingly shows through its schoolgirl protagonists.

28/11/2025

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐍𝐨𝐯 𝟐𝟖𝐭𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

𝗘𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵: 𝗔 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 “𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁” 𝗯𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴
Bereft of inspiration after magicking the cosmos into being, the master of creation summoned his architect: make me something new. The frazzled underling smoked up for 21,000 years before creativity sparked. He blended an elephant’s skin, a horse’s hooves, a hare’s ears, a crocodile’s eyes, a bear’s brains, and a lion’s heart. In a stoned flourish, he also fused the two horns of a celestial bull and placed it atop the snout. Pleased, the boss breathed life into this “masterpiece of the art of imperfection” and released it into the mortal realm. Even in the mesmerisingly fertile universe of Asian mythology, the rhinoceros’s origin story stands apart.

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲:
🗣️ Lawrence and the Chinese
🧬 Genetic testing and designer babies
3️⃣ More executed
🦏 Rhino magic and tragedy
🦜 Birds in the city
🖼️ MetaKovan and NFTs

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state:https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-281125/

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Lawrence Wong incurs Chinese ire; our designer future; more executed under MDP for drugs; rhino woes; avians and architecture; and more.

27/11/2025

Three executions—one on Nov 26th and two on Nov 27th—are scheduled for this week. If they go ahead, Singapore will have executed 17 people in 2025, the highest in about two decades.

Capital punishment has long been justified by its perceived general deterrence and public support. We interrogate both notions and call for an honest and evidence-based conversation about the death penalty.

This video is in collaboration with Jo Teo (), and draws from Jom’s recent essay: “The death penalty: seeking an honest conversation”. Read it in full: https://www.jom.media/the-death-penalty-seeking-an-honest-conversation/

25/11/2025

Some weeks ago, we wrote about the incredible sighting of a Rhinoceros Hornbill, believed to be extinct here, in the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. More devoted readers of Jom might recall the first time this creature—its huge orange bill crowned with a magnificent, scarcely credible red horn—first appeared in our pages. It was more in memoriam, in a piece in last year’s print issue, which we’ve republished online.

Much more than an elegy, Xiaoyun Neo’s essay is a call to resist the attention economy and embrace the natural world around us.

“By rerouting our frazzled, digitally stimulated attention, we can acknowledge the biodiversity around us, and slowly welcome more and more nonhuman actors into our reality.”

https://www.jom.media/winged-woes-a-historical-look-at-birds-in-singapore/

Illustrations by Jay Wong for Jom and graphics from Canva

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

The recent sighting in Sungei Buloh of the Rhinoceros hornbill, thought to be locally extinct, brought joy. It was a sobering reminder too, of what we’ve lost in our headlong, heedless rush toward modernity.

21/11/2025

𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐤: 𝐍𝐨𝐯 𝟐𝟏𝐬𝐭 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓

𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝘆 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗝𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗶
On Facebook earlier this month, Sari Kartina Abdul Karim, a woman living in the Netherlands, posted an open letter breaking “50 years of silence”. She is a significant chapter in the interrelated histories of gender and religion in South-east Asia. In 1974, Sari Kartina, then 26, became the first Malay woman to undergo gender-affirming surgery and the first Malaysian trans woman to be married with the authorisation of an Islamic religious official.

Before transitioning, she worked as a hotel receptionist in Singapore when she met and fell in love with Abdul Razak Othman, a canteen stall owner. Abdul Razak fully supported her intentions to undergo what used to be called “sexual reassignment” surgery. In the 1970s, Singapore was Asia’s leading hub for the procedure, pioneered by the famous obstetrician and gynecologist SS Ratnam

𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲:
🤳🏼 TikTok and performative charity
🍽️ Eat well, age well
🤖 Robotics for kids
1️⃣ Sexual prowler, Ken Lim
2️⃣ Sexual prowler, Achraf Arjaouy
🫱🏽‍🫲🏾 Intimacy coordinators
🥋 Stunt performers

🇸🇬 Read “Singapore This Week”, Jom’s weekly, opinionated update on our city-state: https://www.jom.media/singapore-this-week-211125/

Photographs from Facebook/Sharina Abdul Karim and Canva

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Philanthropy on social media; malnutrition among the elderly; the downstream effects of childhood privilege; the sleazy Ken Lim and Achraf Arjaouy; the first Malay woman to undergo gender-affirming surgery, in 1974; Singapore’s only stunt school closing; and more.

18/11/2025

What does the 38 Oxley Road saga reveal about us as a people?

Read now: https://www.jom.media/the-bougainvilleas-outside/

Photographs from Canva

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom: jom.media/membership

Our writer remembers visiting Lee Kuan Yew's old house, and asks: what does the 38 Oxley Road saga reveal about us as a people?

17/11/2025

Historian Sunil Amrith’s “The Burning Earth” has won the British Academy Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. Congrats! In July, Sunil was a guest on Jom Cakap to discuss the book and the roots of the global environmental crisis with Faris Joraimi, Jom’s history editor.

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom (link in bio).

17/11/2025

2/3: Historian Sunil Amrith’s “The Burning Earth” has won the British Academy Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. Congrats! In July, Sunil was a guest on Jom Cakap to discuss the book and the roots of the global environmental crisis with Faris Joraimi, Jom’s history editor.

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom (link in bio).

17/11/2025

1/3: Historian Sunil Amrith’s “The Burning Earth” has won the British Academy Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. Congrats! In July, Sunil was a guest on Jom Cakap to discuss the book and the roots of the global environmental crisis with Faris Joraimi, Jom’s history editor.

We believe the best way to fund deep, meaningful journalism is through our community of readers. This ensures we are accountable primarily to them. If you like our approach, and our work, do subscribe to Jom (link in bio).