Archive

Te Petihana Te Reo Māori

Posted 6:18pm Sunday 11th September 2022 by Rutene Rickard, Ngāti Porou, Ngā Puhi

Why do we, Critic Te Ārohi, release this annual te reo Māori issue, the one that you now hold in your hands? The surface-level answer is simple: because it is Māori Language Week, September 12-19th. Well, yes. But why is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori marked out to be these specific Read more...

Tā Moko Now, Tā Moko Forever

Posted 6:10pm Sunday 11th September 2022 by A kōrero with Kiritea Smith (Ngāi te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Tainui), Te Ariki Mana-Wagner and Sky (Ngāti Hin

Every tā moko tells a story. Every line has a meaning, connecting the body to the tūpuna that came before it. But after the arrival of Pākehā settlers, and after the repression of Māori culture, tā moko saw a decline alongside te reo Māori. Some of the artistic Read more...

DCC Mayoral Candidates Debate: Critic’s vibe check

Posted 6:07pm Sunday 11th September 2022 by Annabelle Parata Vaughan

On the evening of August 23rd, 10 Ōtepoti mayoral hopefuls, all locals, congregated in Union Hall for a night of debate and discussion with students. Lured in with the appeal of free food and subsidised drinks, there was a decent sized crowd that came out for the evening, a mix of both students Read more...

F.U.: Facebook University

Posted 7:25pm Friday 2nd September 2022 by Nina Brown

It’s no secret that University is expensive as fuck. A dick-measuring competition of who can get deeper in debt, if you will. Fees-free only gets you so far, for those lucky enough to have qualified for it. After that, it’s around $35.75 per lecture for the average student – Read more...

Raw Power: Interests Clash over Aotearoa’s Whitewater Jewel

Posted 7:17pm Friday 2nd September 2022 by Kaia Kahurangi Jamieson and Fox Meyer

Science by Beth Wishart Photos by Whitewater NZ The Waitaha crushes through West Coast boulders like a churning blade. The awa (river) is an iconic, temperamental, visually stunning and ecologically significant part of the taiao (environment), admired by all who have seen it. It is home to Read more...

From Gold Miners to Gold Diggers:

Posted 7:07pm Friday 2nd September 2022 by Denzel Chung and Lotto Ramsay

Ōtepoti was home to some of Aotearoa’s earliest non-pākehā tauiwi, with thousands of Chinese lured to seek their fortunes in Dunedin, a place they called San Gam Saan – the “New Gold Mountain”. While few intended to stay on, many were forced to, forming a Read more...

AI Can See You Naked

Posted 4:32pm Friday 19th August 2022 by Fox Meyer

CW: Explicit discussion of sexual exploitation, rape Christchurch has produced many good things over the years. It has also produced Michael James Pratt, a fugitive sex trafficker on the FBI’s most wanted list with a $70,000 bounty on his head. A database of coerced nude photos and videos Read more...

The Computer Ate My Homework

Posted 4:20pm Friday 19th August 2022 by Arlo Hill and Fox Meyer

AI is getting better and better. It’s becoming more and more popular at the same time as online learning is booming in popularity. What's stopping students from using AI to do their assignments? Who would even be able to tell if they did? As AI continues to take over jobs, and as more and Read more...

Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh Why?

Posted 3:39pm Friday 19th August 2022 by Ruby Werry

In an alternate reality, flocks of emu can be seen on the Otago Peninsula. Breathas are regularly in the ER after getting into fist fights with kangaroos on a night out. The Otago University Tramping Club has to brief their members on the dangers of bear and wolf attacks before any trip. While Read more...

We went to every single Indian Restaurant in Ōtepoti (so you don’t have to)

Posted 2:20pm Monday 15th August 2022 by Naan-cy Drew and Aloo-wis Hamilton

The year was 2020. Over a meal of our usual takeaway curry order, an idea was cooked up: “What if we ordered this exact same order at every single Indian restaurant in Dunedin?” We all know that different Indian restaurants have different definitions of mild, medium, and hot, but we Read more...

Paganism, Patriotism and Piety: What ever happened to the American Pie?

Posted 7:21pm Friday 5th August 2022 by Fox Meyer

The reason America doesn’t have mince pie is as simple as it is completely absurd: it was banned, multiple times, by religious zealots. See, America did have mince pie. And they totally frothed it - mince pie was called “Unquestionably the monarch of pies”, an “American Read more...

The Best Uniflat Complex to Hook Up In: A Guide

Posted 7:18pm Friday 5th August 2022 by Keegan Wells

The international students are finally back, and so are the Jonas Brothers. What a time to be alive. The international complexes are famous for free power, Halloween parties, and the most Americans per square metre in all of Aotearoa (not verified). Who wouldn’t want to hang out there? With Read more...

The Immigration Recalibration: what's changed (and what hasn't) for international tauira

Posted 7:06pm Friday 5th August 2022 by Elliot Weir

From this month, international tauira (students) can once again move to Aotearoa to study, work, and host the best parties on campus. But with recent changes to immigration policies making it harder to stay after graduating, and with tough barriers for anyone with health needs, will the long flight Read more...

To pee or not TP: An Unhinged Bog Roll Review

Posted 2:02pm Sunday 31st July 2022 by Lotto Ramsay

Buying toilet paper is never fun. The options are overwhelming, the strange metrics require 100-level calculus, and it’s always somehow a little embarrassing. What if someone sees you buying it and finds out that you shit? Critic Te Arohi decided to face the issue asshole-on, and subject one Read more...

Sold Down the River: What’s Going On With the ORC?

Posted 1:55pm Sunday 31st July 2022 by Elliot Weir

Air quality breaching national standards, in towns where coal is still commonly burned in houses; a rabbit plague “as bad as it has ever been” after years of no rabbit control; an understaffed public transportation system, mired by reduced bus timetables and no-shows. The Otago Regional Read more...

Tips from The Tattoo Tour

Posted 1:54pm Sunday 31st July 2022 by Ruby Werry

University is all about reinventing yourself, discovering who you really are, and the earth-shattering realisation that you ain’t shit compared to everyone else. Luckily, this particular existential dread has a remedy! Start altering your appearance, whether that’s dying your hair, Read more...

Sex Toy Review

Posted 6:15pm Monday 25th July 2022 by Critic

Sex toys can seem scary if you haven’t used them. To help us get over this fear, our friends at Adult Toy Mega Store sent us a full box of various sex toys to review - plus we’ve got a few listed here that people already owned. The office took their picks of the toys, took them home and Read more...

Sex on the Spectrum

Posted 6:07pm Monday 25th July 2022 by Lotto Ramsay

“The first time me and Shayna were having sex, at one point they kinda looked up and said ‘Do you like porridge?’” Simply looking up the keywords “autism” and “sex” returns questions like “Can you consent to sex if you have autism?” and Read more...

Sober Sex and Why we Suck at it

Posted 6:04pm Monday 25th July 2022 by Anon

The modern Dunedin love story tends to follow the same arc, albeit with a few twists and turns along the way. You’ve swiped right on that guy and his big fish, or that girl with the huge… groups of friends. You exchange a few flirtatious messages on Tinder before one of you sends your Read more...

The Critic Te Arohi Census 2022

Posted 4:07pm Sunday 17th July 2022 by Elliot Weir

Who will students vote for in 2023? What’s the most popular vape flavour? Do women prefer Twitter or Reddit for porn? How do I find love? The answers to these questions and more are mere paragraphs away. This year's census gave us plenty of interesting demographic data on the student Read more...

Hangover Cures

Posted 2:16am Saturday 9th July 2022 by Critic

Over the break, some of our reporters decided to try a variety of purported hangover cures. Raw eggs, long runs, and black coffee: it’s all in here. What worked and what didn’t? We put our livers on the line to get to the truth. Black Coffee, Nicotine and a Cold Shower A Read more...

Hyde Street Party 2022:

Posted 2:12am Saturday 9th July 2022 by Keegan Wells and Annabelle Parata Vaughan

Boomers hate it, second years love it, and freshers are banished. May 28th marked Otago University’s most anticipated day of the year: the Hyde Street Party. Run by OUSA, Hyde Street is perhaps the one day out of the year where students are entirely justified in getting absolutely sloshed in Read more...

Putting the ‘Job’ in Blowjob: Post-Pandemic Sex Work in Dunedin

Posted 6:29pm Sunday 29th May 2022 by Elliot Weir

“Work is especially different when the going gets rough –  during the convoy protests, when fuel prices spiked, when society feels the pressure – we can really tell. We are the outlet for that. It’s 2022, if you beat on your wife she’ll leave you, so hire a hooker Read more...

2022’s Righteous Riceball Review

Posted 6:27pm Sunday 29th May 2022 by Keegan Wells and Critic Staff

Ah, the riceball. There is nothing intrinsically special about a riceball. It is but simple ingredients, tucked in a pod of rice shaped into the simplest possible shape. However, there is something special about the riceball at the same time. It’s a quick lunch you could grab on your way to Read more...

Overworked, Under Pressure:

Posted 6:23pm Sunday 29th May 2022 by Fox Meyer

Dunedin’s emergency services are like the roofs of Dunedin flats: they’re not built to support everyone at once.  Already short-staffed, overworked, and overwhelmed by the pressures of Covid, emergency responders and campus caretakers are buckling under the pressure of student Read more...

Menopause: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting

Posted 1:30pm Sunday 22nd May 2022 by Ruby Werry

Menopause: the last great frontier of female biology. Well, once we get past basic female anatomy, how medicine interacts with female bodies, and not to mention general knowledge of where the clit is. Menopause is sort of like the health equivalent of sidewalk petition canvassers: everyone’s Read more...

Transmasculine periods: Men bleed monthly, too

Posted 5:19pm Saturday 21st May 2022 by Lotto Ramsay

CW: Discussions of bottom dysphoria, period dysphoria, and medical transphobia  The landscape in which we consider periods is slowly changing. The taboo that has surrounded menstruation for centuries is lifting. More period care products are widely available, commercials show red blood, and Read more...

Could you take Dunedin's wildlife in battle?

Posted 5:14pm Saturday 21st May 2022 by Elliot Weir

Many of Dunedin’s wild critters can be found throughout your adventures at Otago. Some can be your allies, some will be your enemies, but all deserve your respect: both as opponents and as original residents of Ōtepoti. It’s dangerous to go alone, weary traveller. Take this guide to Read more...

A - Z of Dunedin Artists

Posted 12:17pm Monday 16th May 2022 by Critic

  Adelaide Cara  How Does This Sound? Bathysphere  Heaven is Other People CHAII Pineapple Pizza Dale Kerrigan Noise bitch Emy Belle  Venus Is Home Frog Power  tears in heaven (reggae Read more...

Doctors of Rock, Professors of Roll

Posted 8:15pm Sunday 15th May 2022 by Sean Gourley

When you were a kid, if you ever saw your teacher outside the classroom, it could be a bit jarring. “What are you doing in PAK‘nSAVE, Mrs Dickson? Shouldn’t you be in Room 9?” Things may have changed since primary school, but going to a gig and seeing your professor on the Read more...

Your Inalienable Right to Dance:

Posted 8:06pm Sunday 15th May 2022 by Annabelle Parata Vaughan and Sebastian Rice Walsh

Dunedin is known for its music scene. The 1980s saw the rise of ‘the Dunedin Sound’ which inspired international acts like Pavement and R.E.M. The 2000s saw the emergence of the beloved surf rock genre, with acts such as Six60 dominating the New Zealand music industry. In its heyday, Read more...

Ōtepoti’s Street Art, according to Pokémon Go

Posted 2:56am Sunday 8th May 2022 by Ruby Werry

Pokémon Go will slingshot many back to the last time they were happy, full of purpose and with a sense of fulfilment: December 2016. Easily identifiable by portable chargers and narrowly avoided car crashes in their wake as they desperately tried to catch a Venusaur, most Pokémon Go Read more...

The Art of Science

Posted 2:51am Sunday 8th May 2022 by Fox Meyer

Art and science are usually displayed as two ends of a spectrum, but each field is incredibly important to the other. Being a good artist is an integral part of communicating your science accurately, and being a good scientist is key to creating the best art possible. Critic Te Arohi sat down with Read more...

Goth for Hire

Posted 2:48am Sunday 8th May 2022 by Lotto Ramsay

For such a wonderfully gloomy city, it’s surprising that Dunedin has less of a goth scene and more of a goth single frame. As a goth that crash landed in dunners I felt an immense sense of duty to my newfound home, as well as a burgeoning megalomania. In a sea of Glassons and Dickies, I made Read more...

Something Rotten in Aotearoa’s Supermarkets

Posted 2:24pm Sunday 1st May 2022 by Fox Meyer

Sanitarium is the company behind Up & Go, Weet-Bix and Marmite. They’re also owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, meaning that they get some special say when it comes to where their tax dollars go. For a company that made $10 million in profit in 2019, that’s quite the Read more...

Bush did 9/11?

Posted 2:21pm Sunday 1st May 2022 by Anonymous

Chances are, if you ask any parent, friend or relative over the age of 30, they can tell you exactly what they were doing and where they were when 9/11 happened. The impact of 9/11 still persists to this day, along with the mountains of conspiracy theories that came out of it. The conspiracies that Read more...

THE CLOUDS ARE FAKE ALSO CHEMTRAILS AND BILL GATES

Posted 2:19pm Sunday 1st May 2022 by Keegan Wells

‘Geoengineering Watch NZ’ is a Facebook group whose number one goal is “binging [sic] public awareness” about geoengineering. This includes the very real and important discussion around weather modification and chemtrails throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and the rest of the Read more...

From “e-cig” to lifestyle accessory: how Big Tobacco transformed the vape

Posted 2:14pm Sunday 1st May 2022 by Denzel Chung

It’s a rapid rebranding unlike any other in history: from clumsy, unwieldy and distinctly uncool “electronic cigarette” to sleek, ubiquitous, essential lifestyle accessory. Here’s how vapes got Aotearoa in a stranglehold: a story of powerful corporations, cheap manufacturing, Read more...

Shower? I Barely Know Her!

Posted 2:33pm Sunday 24th April 2022 by Keegan Wells

The shower in my flat is garbage.  Water pressure is flaccid at best and the temperature needs to be on mood-stabilisers drugs. So after stumbling upon the showers in Te Tumu, I wondered how many showers are around campus that myself and other shower-seeking students could to use. This led Read more...

A Piss-tory of Dunedin Breweries

Posted 2:29pm Sunday 24th April 2022 by Thomas Rillstone

Alcohol, booze, grog… whatever you call it, Dunedinites just can’t seem to get enough of the stuff. While the stereotype is often blown out of proportion, it’s certainly not without any basis in reality; Dunedin students are known to love a good drink or twelve. Thomas Rillstone, Read more...

The Great Critic Te Arohi Flat Garden Competition

Posted 2:25pm Sunday 24th April 2022 by Sean Gourley

Most of Dunedin is a concrete and shattered-glass wasteland. The only crops that grow are a large quantity of substandard housing, liquor stores and fast food restaurants. However, there are a few green spaces that, against all odds, have managed to produce life from Dunedin’s inebriated Read more...

Golf in Dunedin: Par or Subpar?

Posted 1:39pm Saturday 9th April 2022 by Keegan Wells and Fox Meyer

Ah, golf. It’s got quite the reputation. Maybe you think of it as that thing that your mates do maybe once a week to feel like they’re putting their business degrees to use. Or maybe it was your parents’ substitute for child care after they picked you up from Christ’s College Read more...

Hidden Barriers: Accessibility at Uni and across North Dunedin

Posted 1:38pm Saturday 9th April 2022 by Elliot Weir

Guy Fieri once said, "we're riding the bus to Flavortown". Except in this case, Flavortown is North Dunedin, and the bus we're meant to be riding didn’t even show up.  For many, barriers to accessibility make getting around Flav-, sorry, North Dunedin, more difficult Read more...

21st Annual Critic Fish n’ Chip Review

Posted 1:34pm Saturday 9th April 2022 by Ruby Werry & Critic Staff

We all know fish n’ chips is the meal of champions, if those champions were hungover and on their last $10. That sounds like you. So for all you champions, Critic is here with the annual Fish and Chip review to guide your next weekend feed. We reached out to the best and brightest minds for Read more...

A 4-Point Methodological Approach to Shoey Perfection

Posted 6:14pm Friday 1st April 2022 by Keegan G. Wells and Will R. Murrell

Abstract: A 4-point scale was used to determine the optimal foot vessel to utilise as a booze-funnelling device in what is known colloquially as a “shoey”. This metric indicated that a sockie is the least desirable vessel, while a dress shoe is the most desirable. Further field research Read more...

Artists, Activists, Ambassadors: when Aramoana Declared Independence

Posted 6:03pm Friday 1st April 2022 by Sean Gourley

Over forty years ago, passionate residents of a small settlement, just 20km along the coast from North Dunedin, founded the Independent State Aramoana. While it never became anything close to an genuine independent nation, they fought tirelessly against the government to prevent an aluminium smelter Read more...

The Great White: Students in Antarctica

Posted 6:01pm Friday 1st April 2022 by Fox Meyer

Will was soaking in a 250 litre drum filled with hot water. Hundreds of metres away, in a tent, someone was watching Derry Girls. In this moment, to Will, the audio coming from that TV show was the only sound in the entire world. Will was in Antarctica, at New Zealand’s Scott Base. A Read more...

Capital Gains: The Great Critic 24-Hour Trade-Up

Posted 5:46pm Sunday 27th March 2022 by Keegan Wells

I love getting shit for free. So, when I was able to swap a half-empty Billy Mav for an (obviously superior) blue lighter, I was hooked. I gave myself 24 hours to upgrade that half-empty can of shite to whatever glory awaited me. One man even offered me his children at one point, which I figured Read more...

Apps, if they were your ex-lovers

Posted 5:44pm Sunday 27th March 2022 by Fox Meyer

Ever wanted to fuck a smartphone app? Me neither, but that doesn’t mean you’ve never been curious about how loving of a partner they’d be. Critic set up an artificial intelligence to court and report on a bunch of apps, and the resulting “heartbreak index” was used to Read more...

Urbex: Exploring the abandoned world around us

Posted 5:40pm Sunday 27th March 2022 by Zak Rudin

Broken glass, dark corridors, and no electricity are all big red flags when it comes to looking for a flat, but for the students seeking an adventurous trespass onto abandoned properties, these signs are as good as gold. Urban exploration (often shortened to urbex) involves exploring human-made Read more...