At the 2026 World Cup draw, FIFA Peace Prize recipient and U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the game should really be called “football.”

“There’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn’t make any sense,” said Trump, an apparently new convert to the round-ball game.

He isn’t alone. The word “soccer” is, in some parts of the world, shunned by some fans.

Indeed, as a scholar of the sport who teaches a course called Soccer and Global Politics, I am bombarded with comments that the word “soccer” does not make any sense, and that people who use that term obviously know nothing about the beautiful game.

To me, this disparagement of the word “soccer” is not only petty and tiresome – it is also incorrect. It ignores the roots of the sport and the development of the language of the game.

Rather than making the word taboo, the football ecosystem should embrace it. To understand why, let’s go back to the beginning.

Associated to ‘assoc’ and then ‘soccer’

The game has been around in various forms for centuries, but it began to be codified in the mid-19th century.

“Association Football” was coined in 1863 to distinguish the game from rugby football, which, somewhat ironically, is played largely with the ball in hand.

British university students created their own slang at the time by abbreviating words and adding “-er” to them. Thus, “rugby” became “rugger” and “association football” was shortened to “assoc” and slanged to “soccer.”

And this term “soccer” was freely and proudly used in the British press and in public for nearly a century, until the 1980s.

In countries with other established codes of football – American football, Australian rules football and Gaelic football in Ireland – “soccer” became the dominant term. But British fans began abandoning the word in the 1980s, largely as a response to the embrace of the term in the States. And now, in the U.K. especially – but also among fans in the U.S. and Canada who present as “true” fans of the game – there are attempts to shame those who use the very term that the British invented and proudly used.

And that’s a pity. After all, using the word “soccer” has benefits. The British press continues to use “soccer” and “football” interchangeably to avoid repetitive writing. The shorter word is useful for tabloid editors when creating tight headlines. And using both words does not reveal that a person is ignorant but rather cosmopolitan.

The widespread use of “soccer” in Britain is still evident in the ongoing success of authoritative magazine World Soccer, founded in London in 1960; the TV show “Soccer AM,” which ran every Saturday from 1994 to 2023; the annual British charity match Soccer Aid; and Sky Sports’ “Soccer Saturday.” All document the enduring legacy of the term in Britain, despite the naysayers.

A shared vernacular

The beautiful game is also a universal one with a language shared by some 4 billion people.

Language evolves, and fans today equally understand “football,” “soccer,” “calcio,” “futebol” or “fútbol.”

Embracing all the variations of the beautiful game enriches the conversation. It illustrates the sport’s globalization and universal language, a shared vernacular that cuts across identities.

And besides, nobody wants the war that would ensue if American football fans were forced to find another name!

Kirk Bowman, Professor of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In years gone by, school leavers had one main chance to get into university – by finishing their Year 12 exams with certain marks.

Media coverage of Year 12 results perpetuates the idea everything hinges on your final exams. Every year it runs the same stories of star students with perfect ATARs (Australian Tertiary Entrance Rank).

In reality, the ATAR is just one way to begin undergraduate study. There are multiple paths that can take you to uni if that’s where you want to go.

One of these paths is an enabling program. How do these work?

What are enabling courses?

Enabling courses are designed to lead to a university course, usually an undergraduate degree.

They were traditionally called “bridging” programs because they bridge the gap between high school and university for students who don’t meet university entrance requirements. They are also called tertiary preparation programs (or TPPs) because they prepare students for undergraduate tertiary study. You may also hear them called “uni ready” courses.

Enabling courses are fee-free for Australian citizens, as part of a federal government push to encourage wider participation in university study.

Some students enter straight out of school or during the senior years of school. Some enter many years after leaving school and may not have completed Year 12.

Different universities in different states will have different admission requirements, for example, English language requirements. Students should check the specific website of the university for the most detailed and current information.

How do they work?

There are about 48 enabling programs offered by universities across Australia.

The courses can cover a variety of different subjects like academic writing, study skills, mathematics, science, digital literacy and discipline-specific options.

They all teach the skills you need to do well in university study, even if you have not completed high school.

The courses are taught by university lecturers who are especially focused on student support and inclusive teaching.

What’s involved?

These courses can be delivered in high schools, on university campuses, face-to-face or online.

Usually students complete four courses that relate to the undergraduate discipline they want to enter. Successful completion of these usually allows the student to enrol directly into the undergraduate program.

This can include areas such as law, communications, science, arts, education, business, engineering and healthcare, but may vary across different universities.

The programs, with four courses, can potentially be completed in a single semester, or even in a compressed study session over the summer holiday period. So, in theory, you could do an enabling course and enrol in an undergraduate degree mid-year or the next year.

To get started you can search the website of the university of your choice for “enabling”, “TPP” or “FFUR” courses and apply directly online. Also speak directly to support staff at the uni to ask what prerequisites you need to apply for the degree you are interested in.

Who can do an enabling course?

It is estimated approximately 25,000 students Australia-wide will undertake a fee-free enabling course in 2026.

Around 60% of enabling students are from equity groups who are less likely to go to uni. This includes students from regional and remote areas, students from a non-English speaking background, people with a disability or students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Enabling programs can also benefit students who experienced significant illness or disruption in their final years at school.

Or perhaps they are the first person in their family to go to university.

What does it mean for later study?

Doing an enabling program does not mean you are less able to cope with uni than peers who enrolled with an ATAR.

Data suggests students who enter degree programs via enabling courses do just as well in their studies as students who come straight from high school.

In our own experience, we see some students enjoy enabling programs more than school study – they prefer the more flexible, adult environment.

Some young people don’t know what they want to do when they leave school. So an enabling course also gives them a chance to try out higher education without incurring a debt.

Susan Hopkins, Senior Lecturer in Education (Curriculum and Pedagogy), University of the Sunshine Coast and Gregory Nash, Senior Lecturer, Education, University of the Sunshine Coast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Magnetic fields are a fundamental part of the universe. They govern how small particles – the building blocks of planets, stars, and ultimately galaxies – move through space.

We still don’t know how magnetic fields came to exist in the universe, but we do know they’re everywhere. Earth itself has a magnetic field that compasses and migrating birds respond to.

With radio telescopes, astronomers can use the light from distant galaxies to illuminate these otherwise invisible areas in space.

In our study, published today in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, we’ve used Australia’s most powerful radio telescope to create the largest and most detailed map of cosmic magnetic fields ever made.

Giant batteries that control galaxies

Magnetic fields greatly vary across the universe. Extremely dense objects, such as neutron stars and black holes, have magnetic fields thousands of billions times stronger than Earth’s own.

In the space between stars we’ve also measured magnetic fields a million times weaker than Earth’s. Despite their weakness, we know these fields are incredibly important for controlling how galaxies evolve. They act like giant batteries and store huge amounts of energy, slowing down or even preventing the formation of new stars.

But to us, magnetic fields are invisible. To find them in space, astronomers are limited to using light from distant stars and galaxies. That’s because light is a wave of electric and magnetic fields (that’s where the “electromagnetic spectrum” gets its name).

As light travels across the universe, it interacts with any magnetic fields it passes through. This will twist the direction the light is waving – we call this “polarisation”. So, light waving up and down has a different polarisation to light waving side to side.

Astronomers can catch this polarisation, especially when looking at the sky in radio waves, which are part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Seeing the invisible

Australian telescopes have been at the forefront of both radio astronomy and detecting magnetic fields since their first detection. Murriyang, CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope, was the first to detect the twisting polarisation of light from magnetic fields beyond Earth in 1962.

Ever since, astronomers have been pushing to find more and more sources that show us this twisting light. With enough measurements, we can create a map of magnetic fields in the universe.

Each point in the map is an object detected by our telescope, and the object’s light has illuminated the magnetic fields between us and that distant source. The more sources we detect, the more detailed our map becomes.

The last large map of magnetic fields was made in 2009. It has not seen a true successor in the intervening 17 years, limiting the depth and scope of the inquiries astronomers have sought to answer.

Across different areas of the universe, including our own Milky Way galaxy, we’re yet to understand the full strength and structure of cosmic magnetic fields. Not only do we not know how they came to exist, we don’t know how they’ve changed across time since the Big Bang.

To begin solving these problems, we need a new class of radio telescope.

A telescope built for speed

Radio astronomy is currently undergoing a revolution as the SKA Observatory is being built in South Africa and Australia. In preparation, a generation of telescopes, known as SKA precursors and pathfinders, are already operating around the world.

The ASKAP radio telescope is one of these precursors. Located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia, it’s made up of 36 12-metre dishes. These dishes can each see a huge section of the sky at once, giving astronomers an ultrawide view of the universe.

The flagship project to make a map of the universe’s magnetic fields is known as the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM).

In preparation for it, the telescope’s team produced the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Surveys (RACS). It’s like making an atlas of the universe. The most recent versions of these surveys have identified nearly 4 million distant galaxies, with about 2 million having never been seen before.

The magnetic sky

Our new map, called SPICE-RACS, has come from a collaboration between the two survey teams.

Our goal was to look towards every galaxy found by RACS, and observe the signs of changing polarisation caused by magnetic fields. Using the latest release of the survey, we found 350,000 galaxies of the original 4 million we could use for this.

Our collection of sources is nearly ten times larger than the previous largest, and five times larger than all observations ever combined together. As a result, we’ve obtained the largest and most detailed map to date.

The map has red colours showing magnetic fields pointing towards us, and blue pointing away, like the North and South of a compass. Most of the swirling and bubbly structure we can see is from our own Milky Way galaxy. In the fine details of the map are the signatures from even more distant parts of the universe.

The new map is already enabling new science around the world, and the data is publicly available to the research community online. In the future, we plan to combine all versions of RACS to create an even larger and more detailed map.

Meanwhile, the POSSUM project is expected to finish observations by 2030. The sharper magnetic map from this survey will open up a new window on distant cosmic magnetic fields, allowing us to see further back into the history of the universe.

Alec Thomson, SKA-Low Commissioning Scientist, Square Kilometre Array Observatory; and Affiliate, Space and Astronomy, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pride is primarily a social emotion. It is about position, confidence, and power. This is why, for the LGBTQIA+ community, collective pride is adopted as the primary emotion to fuel unity and belonging.

June is Pride Month, celebrated the world over by LGBTQIA+ individuals as a reclamation of strength. But there’s a much longer history to this emotion, which can be produced in a great variety of contexts.

The circumstances of “pride” change over time, and the way this emotion is felt is directly tied to the social, cultural and political reality of different eras, and different places.

Pride, like the diametrically opposed shame, cannot be locked down.

Tracing the history of this emotion can help us understand how it came to be the empowering concept it is today – even as certain groups try and hijack it for their own means.

Religious influence

In classic Judeo-Christian thinking, pride was originally one of “eight evil thoughts” identified by the Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus (345–399 CE), who characterised it as an overblown sense of self-importance.

Pride was also closely related to another of Ponticus’ “evil thoughts”: vainglory. This referred to an excessive, disordered craving of praise and recognition from others. Both pride and vainglory were considered vices.

Ponticus’ thoughts on these matters were widely influential, and made their way to the Western Church in the early 5th century. By the 6th century, Pope Gregory I formalised the eight evil thoughts into the seven deadly sins, with “pride” and “vainglory” bundled together.

Gregory I named the feeling of pride as the root cause of all sins. This is because the serpent found resonance in Eve’s pride and ambition – two emotions that tempted her to eat the forbidden fruit.

In the 14th century, the rising European English nobility – and an increasingly wealthy merchant class – began adapting chivalric codes.

So, despite condemnation in the church, pride became associated with slightly more positive, secular concepts of honour and glory in battle, and a strong sense of personal renown. This pride was considered more genuine, authentic and justified.

In English, however, the word was always tainted by its first meaning – no matter how impressive the justification.

A few centuries later, Scottish philosopher David Hume, in his famous Treaty of Human Nature of 1740, observed:

pride and humility, tho’ directly contrary, have yet the same object. This object is self.

Hume went further to claim the things that make us feel “proud” only matter insofar as others are aware of them. He argued the pleasurable feeling of pride came from the satisfaction of being respected and valued by others.

Pride in war, and in whiteness

In the long Western tradition, the feeling of pride is predicated on hierarchy, determining whom one should feel for, or against. This positions the emotion as politically significant.

In 1945, when Britain and the Allies declared peace, headlines flooded British and Australian newspapers decreeing “pride” for the nameless millions who had worked for six years without reward to protect the cause of democracy and freedom against an unjust and tyrannical dictator.

The Allies’ “pride” became the losing powers’ shame. German historian Ute Frevert explains that:

maintaining and restoring national honour was of vital importance to any state that claimed a powerful position within the European system, and the interests, principles and moral laws it stood for.

Honour and national pride were equivalent to power. So when these were threatened, war became justified.

In 2005, 5,000 mostly white Australians gathered at the Cronulla beach in Sydney to seemingly, “reclaim the beach from outsiders”.

The violence that ensued toward people who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent was claimed to be justified by the “pride” the white Australians ostensibly held for their country. They etched the words “100% Aussie Pride” into the shoreline – a visual display of how emotions can be employed as political weaponry.

Pride as an opposition to shame

Gay pride is celebrated in direct opposition to shame, an emotion that seeks cover and is often hidden from view. For generations, LGBTQIA+ individuals were forced to hide their identities out of social stigma and fear. “Pride” serves as a defiant, outward-facing emotion in the face of this systemic marginalisation.

As we celebrate another Pride Month, let’s remember the many ways in which this emotion has been politicised.

In the context of LGBTQIA+ communities, pride calls for belonging, tolerance, equality and acceptance.

Yet it continues to be hijacked by some in a bid to demarcate unjust boundaries, defining who belongs and who doesn’t.

Melissa Black, Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anna Wintour, former editor in chief of Vogue, once said she would “never ever wear head-to-toe black”. It’s not a sentiment shared by most Melburnians who, while still generally considering themselves fashionable, will opt to wear black all year round – and even more (if possible) during winter.

As reflected in media coverage over the years, Melbourne has built somewhat of a reputation for its love of black clothing. Why is this?

A lot comes down to climate

When it comes to assessing the “fashion sense” of a particular city, the physical factors – particularly the local climate – matter.

Melbourne is home to a temperate oceanic climate, characterised by mild to warm summers, cool winters, and somewhat consistent rainfall during the year. Its winters are among the coldest of Australia’s capital cities.

As such, the average Melburnian’s wardrobe tends to be optimised for layering. This means having pieces that can be mixed and matched throughout the year. And of course, black on black is foolproof.

As Australian historian Hilary Davidson explained in a recent piece for the Sydney Morning Herald:

People in Melbourne can dress more, and wear more black clothing because the climate is more like London, New York, Milan or Tokyo … Sydney is ostentatiously casual or more Los Angeles glam.

Place branding and identity

Beyond the weather, the culture and norms of a city also play a role in what is considered acceptable attire.

“Place branding” is an important factor in how people dress in different parts of the world. This refers to the process of branding a city, country or region to actively shape how its residents perceive it.

Generally, place branding arises naturally through a city’s history and the major events that helped shape it. Melbourne’s place brand has developed out of its everyday culture: how residents live, what they value, and how changes in wealth and immigration have shaped the city.

The place brand of a city is reinforced through residents doubling down on established narratives – such as the idea that Melburnians love to wear black.

Melbourne as a very ‘European’ city

Melbourne has strong European undercurrents. It was the site of a large influx of European immigration following the second world war, and is home to both the largest Italian community in Australia, and one of the largest Greek communities outside of Greece.

This has helped establish the Eurocentric food and coffee cultures which remain core to the city’s branding and reputation as a great place to live.

Europeans themselves have embraced black dressing at various points in history. Colour historian Michel Pastoureau, in his book Black: The History of a Color, says this started in the medieval era, when black was adopted by European courtiers, embodying royalty and true luxury.

In the 16th and 17th century, European nobles wore black for portraits to display financial power as black dye was the most expensive and difficult to produce.

Although certain cities such as Antwerp developed expertise in dyeing black fabrics, this process was only democratised in the 19th century with more widespread access to dyes.

In the early 20th century, black regained an air of European refinement, as demonstrated by French designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s little black dress concept.

The colour has retained its strong contemporary appeal through Belgian designers such as Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester and Raf Simons – as well as the Berlin techno and fashion scenes, which widely incorporate black clothing.

Melbourne as the cultural centre of Australia

Like many European cities, Melbourne is also organised around its intellectual and creative institutions. It derives its identity from its cultural appeal and heavy investment in the arts, including music, theatre, literature, fashion and design. (Although the funding that helps drives these cultures is now at risk).

Creatives, of course, are countercultural forces who are notorious for wearing black, as author and architect Cordula Rau highlights in her 2008 book Why Do Architects Wear Black?.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the “Paris end of Collins street” became home to Melbourne’s artistic community. These people brought along their stylistic inclinations with their crafts and ideas.

Since the 1950s, black has also become the preferred colour of subcultures, such as Goths and punks, who rebelled against established norms. As Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto puts it:

Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy — but mysterious. But above all black says this: I don’t bother you – don’t bother me.

In the end, Melbourne’s adoption and fondness for black clothing might very well be a self-fulfilling prophecy, aligned with its history and culture.

It may also be a way for residents to feel part of the city’s proverbial fabric, as seeing what our peers are wearing, and emulating it, is a way to signal and find belonging.

Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Enterprise, Torrens University Australia and Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“I can be smart when it matters, but most men don’t like it,” says Lorelei Lee in the 1953 comedy musical, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

This famous quip from Howard Hawks’ film sums up for us the fate of the star who uttered it. Marilyn Monroe confronted the pitilessness of the 1950s Hollywood studio system during her short career as an actor (1946-1962). Today she is primarily remembered for her highly sexualised glamorous star image rather than her intelligence, skill and political acumen.

Monroe crystallised a certain vision of 1950s femininity that chimed with the decade’s ambivalent attitude towards female independence – fascinated by but also wary of women’s increasingly public displays of sexuality.

At the centenary of Monroe’s birth, the image that endures in the public imagination has been largely stripped of voice and agency. What remains are images. There are the iconic moments from her films – most famously the white skirt billowing above a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch (1955). There are the photographs captured by celebrated figures such as Richard Avedon and Eve Arnold, and the artworks she inspired by equally iconic artists like Andy Warhol.

Her most recognisable moments have been repeatedly appropriated and reinterpreted by later celebrities, including Madonna, Kim Kardashian and Ryan Gosling.

Even when Monroe was alive, people close to her frequently claimed that there was no artistry behind her cinematic roles, rather that she was simply “playing herself”. The director Fritz Lang remarked that she simply knew what effect she was having on men, nothing more. And playwright Arthur Miller, her third husband, said that “in everything she did, she was herself”.

Joshua Logan, the director of her 1956 film Bus Stop, admired her comic timing, but she longed to play serious roles too.

Monroe herself both accepted and rebelled against her sex symbol image, understanding the power it gave her but rejecting its dehumanising qualities. “That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing,” she stated. “I just hate being a thing. But if I’m going to be a symbol of something I’d rather have it be sex than some other things we’ve got symbols of.”

Fighting the power

In 1946, becoming a pin-up enabled Norma Jean Baker (Monroe’s birth name) to escape a working-class existence and pull herself up into a different world. She knew that her stardom was largely as a result of her appeal to young servicemen conscripted into war in Korea, including African-Americans. She used her star power to fight the racism, classism and sexism of the structures she worked within.

In 1954 she forced the owners of Hollywood nightclub Mocambo to honour a contract with singer Ella Fitzgerald they threatened to break. In a 1972 interview with Ms.Magazine, Fitzgerald explained:

I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt. It was because of her that I played the Mocambo, a very popular nightclub in the ’50s. She personally called the owner of the Mocambo, Charlie Morrison, and told him she wanted me booked immediately, and if he would do it, she would take a front table every night. She told him – and it was true, due to Marilyn’s superstar status – that the press would go wild. The owner said yes, and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. The press went overboard … After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again.

In 1956, Monroe supported her then-husband, Miller, in his refusal to name names to the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities headed up by the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy in the attempt to remove perceived Communist influence in Hollywood. In 1960, she wrote to New York Times editor Lester Markel, a friend of hers, expressing her support of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Monroe also rebelled as soon as she could against being typecast as a dumb blonde. When executives at 20th Century Fox, the studio to which she was under contract, refused to cast her in dramatic roles, even after her brilliant performance in The Seven Year Itch, she announced the formation of her own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, in January 1955. She was president and her friend and photographer Milton Greene was the vice-president. Fox sued her for breach of contract.

Monroe and Fox finally settled on a non exclusive-deal that compensated Monroe for her past earnings and gave her control over future projects. Although Monroe herself did not survive long enough for her production company to make a significant cultural impact, her move paved the way for future female stars, such as Margot Robbie and Reese Witherspoon, to control their careers and the roles they are offered through founding production companies.

Monroe died before the flourishing of civil rights movements and women’s liberation in America. But in her actions, she anticipated their promotion of a fairer and more equal society. She is one of the 20th century’s most enduring icons. However, while she is remembered for her wiggling walk, childlike voice and pouty lips, behind this glamorous facade lay a hardworking, politically engaged woman who recognised and struggled against the inequities of the American society that both adored and denigrated her.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Fiona Handyside, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Got some brown bananas on the counter, or soggy salad in the fridge?

If so, you’re not alone. Research shows on average, Australian households waste about 30% of the food we buy – or 2.5 million tonnes each year.

But in a cost of living crisis, where everything from fuel to groceries is getting more expensive, wasting food feels especially painful.

These economic pressures mean more Australians are using food relief services. Many are also buying fewer fresh foods and are taking more risks around food safety.

But with a bit of knowledge and creativity, you can salvage certain foods without risking your health.

Don’t risk it

It’s worth noting, you won’t be able to rescue every bit of food. That’s because they may have become unsafe to eat.

Here are four key signs to look out for.

1. visible mould

2. slime

3. leaking liquid

4. strong or sour smells.

If you have food that has one or more of these signs, it’s best to bin it. That way you can avoid food poisoning, which can cause stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

But other characteristics, such as wrinkles, browning and dryness, are often just signs of age, not harmful spoilage.

Fruits

Brown or black bananas may look unappealing, but they are perfectly safe to use in banana bread, pancakes or smoothies. But it’s best to keep any old bananas away from your fresh ones because darker bananas produce ethylene gas, which makes other fruit ripen faster.

Old apples may look wrinkly, because they lose water as they sit. But these apples are ideal for stewing, baking or grating.

Citrus skins, such as those from lemons or oranges, go tough and dry with age. However, you can still use the zest in baked goods and marmalade, and the flesh in drinks, dressings and marinades.

If you notice any mould on larger, firm fruits, it’s generally safe to cut it off. Just make sure you chop off the mouldy section with a large margin of at least a few centimetres. But if you find mould on soft or small fruit, such as berries, it’s best to throw it out.

Vegetables

Floppy or shrivelled veggies have lost moisture, but are not necessarily spoilt. You can roast, mash or puree them, adding them into everything from soups to curries. You can also use an ice-water soak to revive leafy greens such as spinach or kale. This involves separating the leaves and soaking them in cold water for at least 30 minutes to re-hydrate them.

For firm vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and pumpkin, any damaged or bruised areas can often be cut off. With potatoes, however, look out for any extensive greening or sprouting, as these contain natural toxins that are harmful if eaten in large amounts.

You may notice a fluffy white fuzz developing on mushrooms. This usually is not mould but mycelium, which is part of the mushrooms’ root system. Mould can grow on mushrooms but often appears in isolated, brightly coloured clusters that look blue, green, grey or yellow.

Grains

It’s best to discard any mouldy bread. This is because mould spreads more easily in porous foods, such as bread and cakes. But you can save stale, mould-free bread by toasting or turning it into croutons or breadcrumbs. And storing bread in dry environments – such as a bread box, cloth or paper bag – means mould won’t grow as quickly.

You can use leftover cooked rice or pasta in stir-fries or pasta bakes within a couple of days. But make sure to promptly and properly store it in the fridge and reheat it fully, meaning to piping hot or at least 60°C. And if heating in the microwave, make sure to stir so the food heats evenly. But, always discard any leftovers that have sat at room temperature for two hours or more, as they may contain bacteria that you can’t simply remove by reheating.

Dairy

We often consume milk and yogurt straight from the fridge, without a cooking or reheating step to kill bacteria. So it’s safest to chuck dairy products that are past their use-by date. And to prevent premature spoilage, only use clean utensils to serve dairy products and promptly return them to the fridge.

If you’re a fan of soft cheeses but notice any mould, throw the whole block or wheel away. This is because the roots of mould can penetrate deep into the cheese. Hard cheeses such as parmesan aren’t as susceptible to mould, so you can often cut off any mouldy bits with a generous margin. Proper storage – for example wrapping it in wax or baking paper and placing it in a container – can help cheese last longer.

There are many ways to rescue food that’s past its prime, but not spoiled. By following some simple food safety rules, and thinking outside the box, you can both reduce waste and save money.

Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition and Food Science, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine if the only musical artists from the 1980s you had access to were Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson. Others, such as David Bowie, Whitney Houston or George Michael are not available because, we’re told, these artists fail to exhibit the same type of creativity as the other three “geniuses”.

It’s clearly madness, yet this in a nutshell is the gatekeeping situation that exists in classical music today.

Zoom back to the 1780s and the musical landscape was astonishingly diverse, with composers across the globe writing bucketloads of music not only for the church, but for theatres, salons, concerts and performance at home. And, contrary to what we seem meant to believe, none of this music was auditioned by a panel of experts with the “best of the best” selected for our moral betterment.

But what we have access to today from the classical era is the tiniest fraction of what was composed then. And of that fraction, we hear a still smaller subset, dominated by just three composers: Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven – as classical music website Bachtrack’s 2025 statistics attest.

Many significant composers haven’t survived as part of the modern classical canon. Take Marianna Martines (1744–1812), for example. She was an extremely popular Viennese composer, singer and keyboardist whose prolific compositional output was so highly rated in her own time that she was the first woman to be inducted into the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna as a “master” composer.

Performing regularly for Austria’s empress Maria Theresa and sharing the keyboard with Mozart for four-hand duets at her own popular musical salons, she was at the heart of a booming Viennese musical culture.

Where is her music today?

Talent flourishes with investment, and Martines had it all: money, time, geography, social networks and an elite education. In fact, court poet and famed opera librettist Pietro Metastasio personally oversaw her education from childhood.

Martines’ compositional catalogue is substantial, including – strikingly – several large-scale choral-orchestral works such as the impressive Dixit Dominus (1774), 12 keyboard concerti (four of which survive), and 31 keyboard sonatas (three of which survive). Her music isn’t just fine – it is exceptionally good. Just listen for yourself. So why do we not hear her music today?

It wasn’t that she lacked contemporary advocates, and it wasn’t even that she was immediately forgotten after her death. Indeed, she was significant enough to have active detractors who worked to discredit her authority, as music scholar Judith Valerie Engel details in her research.

The problem, then, was not absence of talent, nor even absence of recognition, but the failure of later institutions to keep investing in the conditions that ensure music like Martines’ is heard.

Ensemble music – particularly larger forms such as choral and orchestral music – requires a rather different type of investment. We’re not able to access it without the complex and expensive assembly of notated scores, instruments, large spaces and dozens of people with specialist skills who know how to transform those dots on the page into musical sounds.

At the root of this are repetition and publication, both in text and in sound. Text, for the obvious reason that without access to printed materials – and I mean well-edited printed materials – the music cannot be played and therefore endure.

Music publishers have long been gatekeepers of musical taste, providing editorial credibility and a supply of materials to the market. This curatorial role was usurped by record producers, who determine what gets recorded and circulated – the new modern legitimising “text” of a musical work, as it were.

Repetition is absolutely essential. This crazy process of putting dots of ink on paper to communicate complex sonic and emotional ideas means that musical works rarely reveal their secrets the first time they are played.

In re-performance and re-recording, musical problems are solved and the infinite dimensions of the possible sound worlds are explored. This dialogue between performers does two crucial things in the establishment of a work within the canon. First, it refines the quality of performance and, with that, enhances the evaluation of the work itself. Second, the frequency of performance or recording generates familiarity – a significant driver of musical preference.

My heart genuinely aches when I think about how different my own life would have been had I grown up listening to Marianna Martines’ music alongside that of her contemporaries. So many limiting myths about women’s inherent musical – and therefore artistic and intellectual – abilities might never have taken root in my subconscious.

While in general the ability to produce knowledge and exert influence is increasingly moving away from historical centres of power, public reclamation of received music history still lags far behind, despite the herculean efforts of numerous musicians, musicologists and advocates.

The good news is that listeners have more ability than ever to discover the music that moves them. The intellectual shackles imposed by commercial and academic institutions when it comes to deciding what constitutes “good” music are slowly losing their potency. There is no doubt though, we are now facing a new era of curatorial power in the form of AI algorithms that shape the discovery of music and much else besides.

However, restorative projects such as this first recording of Marianna Martines’s complete surviving keyboard works provide that essential first step of the music’s modern publication.

It is now possible for listeners to discover this music, and for musicians to begin the long, necessary dialogue with it. Only then are we able to reclaim our rightful musical heritage.

Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, Director of Performance, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.