Recent

As malatang stores take over the streets of busy cities, have you ever wondered why it has become so popular? Have you ever thought about how you should open up a store yourself so you can always have a nice bowl whenever you feel like it? You’re not alone. 

The terms ‘stealth wealth’, ‘frugal chic’, and ‘quiet luxury’ have crept and whispered their way into fashion and lifestyle discourse in recent years.

The terms ‘stealth wealth’, ‘frugal chic’, and ‘quiet luxury’ have crept and whispered their way into fashion and lifestyle discourse in recent years.

The AI boom is here. Once confined to the walls of academia, AI now has potential in virtually every sector of the economy. But its ever-increasing presence poses serious challenges for Australia’s energy transition.

Have you noticed terms like “67”, “skibidi”, and “rizz” floating around your social media, or even in public? Has there been a large increase in overly-stimulating AI short form videos plaguing your feed lately? Well, you’re not alone.

Every year, more than 1.4 billion units of clothing are imported into Australia, and over 880 million are sent to landfill (more than half the amount imported). The rate at which we’re buying new clothes isn’t changing, even in a cost of living crisis. In fact, Australians buy an average of 56 new items of clothing each year, and are the largest consumers of new clothing per capita in the world. 

For many, this year’s February marked a festive ramp-up towards the seventeenth: Lunar New Year and the commencement of the Year of the Horse. Across East and Southeast Asia, streets are awash in crimson and gold, night markets brim with the scent of sizzling delicacies, and laughter accompanies the exchange of red envelopes. As the seventh of the twelfth Chinese zodiac animal, the Horse represents freedom and breakthrough (Fargo, 2026). Accordingly, the Year of the horse emphasises a stage of life where people make bolder decisions, being in motion rather than standing still.

Capitalism has been the foundation on which powerhouses such as America have built their economy. However, the newly elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, built his campaign on advocating for change which fundamentally opposes this ideology. Is this change confined to a single state? Or is it a more telling sign of the world’s turn on capitalism?

Anyone who has studied first year economics will recall the basics of the production theory: when labour input rises, total output should follow. While this sounds simple in theory, Australia’s economic reality has thrown a real curveball into the equation. Despite the fact that we are working longer hours, aggregate output has barely seemed to budge. In the year to March 2025, labour productivity fell by 1%, while multifactor productivity crawled up just slightly by 0.1%.

A key concept familiar to game theorists is bargaining: the study of how surplus should be shared among rational agents (Thomson, 1994). In simple terms, cooperative bargaining seeks for a fair way to split the gains from cooperation. When both sides are willing to work together, these solutions can lead to outcomes that make everyone better off. While terms like “Nash equilibrium”, “Pareto efficiency” and “mixed motive” may sound abstract, we likely encounter bargaining all the time. This essay aims to explore the everyday examples of bargaining, illustrating how fairness and strategy shape outcomes in all kinds of negotiations both within and beyond white-collar settings.