Almost 700 rescues had been carried out in New South Wales by Friday morning as record-breaking rainfall pounds the state. Tragically, four people have died in floodwaters.

Amid the chaos, videos posted on social media show people deliberately entering or standing above swollen rivers and flooded roads. It is a pattern of dangerous behaviour that occurs frequently during natural disasters in Australia.

Filming unsafe acts for social media is not just risky for participants. It may inspire copycat behaviour, and, if things go wrong, can endanger the lives of rescuers. It’s a public health problem which requires new remedies.

Selfies in floods: a risky business

During a flood, water can be deceiving. Just 15cm of water can knock an adult off their feet or cause a car to lose traction and float. Submerged debris and contaminated water add to the dangers.

Emergency services routinely warn the public not to enter floodwaters – on foot or in vehicles. But many people ignore the warnings, including those out to create social media content.

In a startling example posted on Tiktok during the current floods, a young man stands on a mossy log which has fallen over a flooded river. The video, accompanied by dramatic music, shows swirling floodwaters surging beneath him. One wrong step, and the man could easily have drowned.

In other examples posted on Tiktok in recent days, a woman wades through murky floodwaters, and a person films as the car they are travelling in drives down a flooded road.

Similar behaviour was observed during floods in Townsville earlier this year. Residents filmed themselves diving and wading into floodwaters, and towing each other on inflatable rafts.

And during ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, social media was filled with images of people in Queensland surfing dangerous swells and wading in rough surf.

A worrying trend

Our research explores the links between social media and adverse health outcomes.

Selfie-related injury has become a public health concern. People are increasingly venturing off-trail, seeking out attractive but hazardous locations such as cliff edges and coastal rock platforms.

These behaviours can lead to injury and death. They can also put emergency services personnel in harm’s way. In 2021, for example, a woman fell into a swollen river on Canberra’s outskirts while trying to take a selfie with friends, prompting a police official to warn:

There is no photo or social media post that is worth risking your life to get. Any water rescue puts the lives of not only of yourself but those of emergency services personnel at risk.

Getting to grips with the problem

How should the problem be tackled? Previous research by others has recommended “no-selfie zones”, barriers, and signs as ways to prevent selfie incidents. But our research suggests these measures may not be enough.

The phenomenon of selfie-related incidents requires a public health approach. This entails addressing the behaviour through prevention, education, and other interventions such as via social media platforms.

In the latest floods, unsafe behaviour has occurred despite a series of official flood, weather and other warnings. Residents also continue to drive into floodwaters, despite repeated pleas from authorities.

Official warnings compete with – and can lose out to – more emotionally compelling, visually rich content. If the public sees other people behaving recklessly and apparently unharmed, then even clear, fact-based warnings can be ignored.

This is especially true in communities experiencing “alert-fatigue” after having gone through disasters before.

Sometimes, vague terminology in warnings means the messages don’t necessarily cut through. We’ve seen this before in relation to surf safety. Technical phrases such as “hazardous swell” don’t change behaviour if people don’t understand what they mean.

For warnings to work, they need to be clear and provide instruction – stating what the danger actually is, and what to explicitly do, or not do.

For social media users, that might mean spelling out not to go into floodwaters to capture content for social media.

We’ve also previously called on social media companies to be held more accountable for the dangerous content they publish – by flagging risky content and supporting in-app safety messaging, especially at high-risk locations or during extreme weather events.

What to do right now

If you’re in or near a flood zone, follow guidance from emergency services to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.

When it comes to using social media in an emergency:

• stay entirely out of floodwaters, even for a quick photo

• think before you post. Your safety is more important than your content. No post is worth risking your life

• avoid glamourising risk. Sharing risky photos or videos can influence others to do the same, potentially with worse outcomes

• follow official advice. Floodwaters are unpredictable. Warnings are issued for a reason

• use your platform for good. Share verified information, support affected communities and help amplify safety messages.

As extreme weather becomes more frequent in Australia under climate change, so too will the urge to document them. But we risk turning disasters into digital spectacles – at the expense of our lives and that of rescuers.

Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney and Amy Peden, NHMRC Research Fellow, School of Population Health and Co-founder UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, UNSW Sydney

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

You might have heard of people using tape to literally keep their mouths shut while they sleep. Mouth taping has become a popular trend on social media, with many fans claiming it helps improve sleep and overall health.

The purported benefits of mouth taping during sleep are largely anecdotal, and include claims of better airflow, less snoring, improved asthma symptoms, less of a dry mouth, being less likely to have bad breath, and better sleep quality.

As the trend has gained momentum in recent years the claims have also come to include improved skin, mood and digestion – and even a sharper jawline.

The rationale for mouth taping during sleep is to encourage breathing through the nose rather than through the mouth. When a person’s nasal passages are blocked, breathing switches from the nose to the mouth. Mouth breathing has been linked to conditions such as obstructive sleep apnoea.

But is mouth taping an effective way to address these issues, and is it safe? A new review suggests taping your mouth shut while you sleep offers limited benefits – and could pose risks.

What did the review find?

In a new paper, Canadian researchers reviewed the scientific literature on mouth taping, searching for studies that mentioned terms such as “mouth breathing”, “mouth taping” and “sleep”.

They searched specifically for studies looking at people with known mouth breathing and breathing-related sleeping problems such as obstructive sleep apnoea to understand the potential benefits and harms of mouth taping for this group.

Obstructive sleep apnoea is a condition where your airway is partly or completely blocked at times while you’re asleep. This can cause you to stop breathing for short periods, called “apnoeas”. Apnoeas can happen many times a night, resulting in lowered oxygen levels in the blood as well as sleep disruption.

The researchers found ten eligible studies published between 1999 and 2024, with a total of 213 participants. Eight studies looked at mouth taping, and two studies involved using a chin strap to keep the mouth shut.

Only two studies identified any benefits of mouth taping for mild obstructive sleep apnoea. The observed improvements – to measures such as oxygen levels in the blood and number of apnoeas per hour – were modest.

And although they were statistically significant, they were probably not clinically significant. This means these changes likely wouldn’t make much difference to symptoms or treatment decisions.

The remainder of studies found no evidence mouth taping helps to treat mouth breathing or related conditions.

What’s more, four studies warned about potential serious harms. In particular, covering the mouth could pose a risk of asphyxiation (lack of oxygen that can lead to unconsciousness or death) for people whose mouth breathing is caused by significant blockage of the nasal airways. This kind of nasal obstruction could be a result of conditions such as hay fever, deviated septum, or enlarged tonsils.

In other words, mouth taping is definitely not a good idea if you have a blocked nose, as it’s unsafe to have both the nose and the mouth obstructed at the same time during sleep.

What’s the take-home message?

The authors concluded there are very few benefits and some potential serious risks associated with mouth taping in people who are mouth breathers or have obstructive sleep apnoea.

They did however note we need further high-quality evidence to better understand if mouth taping is safe and works.

This review didn’t focus on any research relating to mouth taping for proposed improvements to mood, skin, digestion, sharper jaw lines and other things, so the researchers could not draw conclusions about the efficacy and safety of mouth taping for those purposes.

Internationally, qualified sleep health professionals do not recommend mouth taping.

If you have concerns about your sleep, the best thing to do is to consult trusted scientific sources or a health-care professional who will be able to guide you to address the underlying causes of your sleep challenges.

Trying social media trends such as mouth taping before you seek expert advice could lead to delays in diagnosing serious conditions for which there are evidence-based treatments available.

Mouth taping should definitely not be attempted in children.

It’s possible that in some healthy adults, without respiratory conditions, without significant sleep disorders, and who don’t have tape allergies, that mouth taping could pose little harm and produce some modest benefits. But we don’t have enough evidence yet to know one way or the other.

Moira Junge, Adjunct Clincal Associate Professor (Psychologist), Monash University

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

It’s nearly impossible to use the internet without being asked about cookies. A typical pop-up will offer to either “accept all” or “reject all”. Sometimes, there may be a third option, or a link to further tweak your preferences.

These pop-ups and banners are distracting, and your first reaction is likely to get them out of the way as soon as possible – perhaps by hitting that “accept all” button.

But what are cookies, exactly? Why are we constantly asked about them, and what happens when we accept or reject them? As you will see, each choice comes with implications for your online privacy.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small files that web pages save to your device. They contain info meant to enhance the user experience, especially for frequently visited websites.

This can include remembering your login information and preferred news categories or text size. Or they can help shopping sites suggest items based on your browsing history. Advertisers can track your browsing behaviour through cookies to show targeted ads.

There are many types, but one way to categorise cookies is based on how long they stick around.

Session cookies are only created temporarily – to track items in your shopping cart, for example. Once a browser session is inactive for a period of time or closed, these cookies are automatically deleted.

Persistent cookies are stored for longer periods and can identify you – saving your login details so you can quickly access your email, for example. They have an expiry date ranging from days to years.

What do the various cookie options mean?

Pop-ups will usually inform you the website uses “essential cookies” necessary for it to function. You can’t opt out of these – and you wouldn’t want to. Otherwise, things like online shopping carts simply wouldn’t work.

However, somewhere in the settings you will be given the choice to opt out of “non-essential cookies”. There are three types of these:

• functional cookies, related to personalising your browsing experience (such as language or region selection)

• analytics cookies, which provide statistical information about how visitors use the website, and

• advertising cookies, which track information to build a profile of you and help show targeted advertisements.

Advertising cookies are usually from third parties, which can then use them to track your browsing activities. A third party means the cookie can be accessed and shared across platforms and domains that are not the website you visited.

Google Ads, for example, can track your online behaviour not only across multiple websites, but also multiple devices. This is because you may use Google services such as Google Search or YouTube logged in with your Google account on these devices.

Should I accept or reject cookies?

Ultimately, the choice is up to you.

When you choose “accept all,” you consent to the website using and storing all types of cookies and trackers.

This provides a richer experience: all features of the website will be enabled, including ones awaiting your consent. For example, any ad slots on the website may be populated with personalised ads based on a profile the third-party cookies have been building of you.

By contrast, choosing “reject all” or ignoring the banner will decline all cookies except those essential for website functionality. You won’t lose access to basic features, but personalised features and third-party content will be missing.

The choice is recorded in a consent cookie, and you may be reminded in six to 12 months.

Also, you can change your mind at any time, and update your preferences in “cookie settings”, usually located at the footer of the website. Some sites may refer to it as the cookie policy or embed these options in their privacy policy.

How cookies relate to your privacy

The reason cookie consent pop-ups are seemingly everywhere is thanks to a European Union privacy law that came into effect in 2018. Known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), it provides strict regulations for how people’s personal data is handled online.

These guidelines say that when cookies are used to identify users, they qualify as personal data and are therefore subject to the regulations. In practice, this means:

• users must consent to cookies except the essential ones
• users must be provided clear info about what data the cookie tracks
• the consent must be stored and documented
• users should still be able to use the service even if they don’t want to consent to certain cookies, and
• users should be able to withdraw their consent easily.

Since a lot of website traffic is international, many sites even outside the EU choose to follow GDPR guidelines to avoid running afoul of this privacy law.

Better privacy controls

Cookie pop-ups are tiresome, leading to “consent fatigue” – you just accept everything without considering the implications.

This defeats the purpose of informed consent.

There is another way to address your online privacy more robustly – Global Privacy Control (GPC). It’s a tech specification developed by a broad alliance of stakeholders (from web developers to civil rights organisations) that allows the browser to signal privacy preferences to websites, rather than requiring explicit choices on every site.

GPC is not universally available, and it’s not a legal requirement – a number of browsers and plugins support it, but broader adoption may still take time.

Meanwhile, if you’re worried you may have accidentally consented to cookies you don’t want, you can find an option in your browser settings to delete cookies and get back to a clean slate (be warned, this will log you out of everywhere). If you want to learn even more, the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation has a project called Cover Your Tracks.

Ahmed Ibrahim, Senior Lecturer, Computing and Security, Edith Cowan University and David Cook, Lecturer, Computer and Security Science, Edith Cowan University

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

Oysters and escargot are recognised as luxury foods around the world – but they were once valued by the lower classes as cheap sources of protein.

Less adventurous eaters today see snails as a garden pest, and are quick to point out that freshly shucked oysters are not only raw but also alive when they are eaten.

How did these unusual ingredients become items of conspicuous consumption?

From garden snail to gastronomy

Eating what many consider to be a slimy nuisance seems almost counter-intuitive, but consuming land snails has an ancient history, dating to the Palaeolithic period, some 30,000 years ago in eastern Spain.

Ancient Romans also dined on snails, and spread their eating habits across their empire into Europe.

Lower and middle class Romans ate snails from their gardens, while elite consumers ate specially farmed snails, fed spices, honey and milk.

Pliny the Elder (AD 24–79) described how snails were raised in ponds and given wine to fatten them up.

The first French recipe for snails appears in 1390, in Le Ménagier de Paris (The Good Wife’s Guide), but not in other cookbooks from the period.

In 1530, a French treatise on frogs, snails, turtles and artichokes considered all these foods bizarre, but surprisingly popular. Some of the appeal had to do with avoiding meat on “lean” days. Snails were classified as fish by the Catholic Church, and could even be eaten during Lent.

For the next 200 years, snails only appeared in Parisian cookbooks with an apology for including such a disgusting ingredient. This reflected the taste of upper-class urbanites, but snails were still eaten in the eastern provinces.

An 1811 cookbook from Metz, in the Alsace region in northeastern France, describes raising snails like the Romans, and a special platter, l'escargotière, for serving them. The trend did not travel to Paris until after 1814.

French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) hosted a dinner for Russian Tsar Alexander I, after he marched into Paris following the allied forces’ defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

The chef catering the meal was the father of French cuisine Marie-Antoine Carême, a native of Burgundy, spiritual home of the now famous escargots de Bourgogne.

Carême served the Tsar what would become a classic recipe, prepared with garlic, parsley and butter. Allegedly, the Tsar raved about the “new” dish, and snails became wildly popular. A recipe for Burgundy snails first appeared in a French culinary dictionary published in 1825.

It is ironic that it took the approval of a foreign emperor, who had just conquered Napoleon, to restore luxury status to escargot, a food that became a symbol of French cuisine.

Snails remain popular today in France, with consumption peaking during the Christmas holidays, but May 24 is National Escargot Day in France.

Oysters: the original fast food

Oysters are another ancient food, as seen in fossils dating to the Triassic Era, 200 million years ago. Evidence of fossilised oysters are found on every major land mass, and there is evidence of Indigenous oyster fisheries in North America and Australia that dates to the Holocene period, about 12,000 years ago.

There are references in classical Greek texts to what are probably oysters, by authors like Aristotle and Homer. Oyster shells found at Troy confirm they were a favoured food. Traditionally served as a first course at banquets in Ancient Greece, they were often cooked, sometimes with exotic spices.

Pliny the Elder refers to oysters as a Roman delicacy. He recorded methods of the pioneer of Roman oyster farming, Sergius Orata, who brought the best specimens from across the Empire to sell to elite customers.

Medieval coastal dwellers gathered oysters at low tide, while wealthy inland consumers would have paid a premium for shellfish, a perishable luxury, transported to their castles.

French nobles in 1390 preferred cooked oysters, roasted over coals or poached in broths, perhaps as a measure to prevent food poisoning. As late as the 17th century, authors cautioned:

But if they be eaten raw, they require good wine […] to aid digestion.

By the 18th century, small oysters were a popular pub snack, and larger ones were added as meat to the stew pot. That century, it is believed as many as 100,000 oysters were eaten each day in Edinburgh and the shells from the tavern in the basement filled in gaps in the brickwork at Gladstone’s Land in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

Scottish oyster farms in the Firth of Forth, an inlet of the North Sea, produced 30 million oysters in 1790, but continual over-harvesting took its toll.

By 1883 only 6,000 oysters were landed, and the population was declared extinct in 1957.

As wild oyster stocks dwindled, large oyster farms developed in cities like New York in the 19th century. Initially successful, they were polluted, and infected by typhoid from sewage. An outbreak in 1924 killed 150 people, the deadliest food poisoning in United States history.

Far from the overabundance of oysters we once had, over-fishing, pollution, and invasive species all threaten oyster populations worldwide today. Due to this scarcity of wild oysters and the resources required to safely farm environmentally sustainable oysters, they are now a premium product.

Next on the menu

Scarcity made oysters a luxury, and a Tsar’s approval elevated snails to gourmet status. Could insects become the next status food?

Ancient Romans ate beetles and grasshoppers, and cultures around the world consume insects, but not (yet) as luxury products.

Maybe the right influencer can make honey-roasted locust the next species to jump from paddock to plate.

Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

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

In the summer of 1966, a race was on between two very different opponents. On one side was Bob Dylan, the established and bestselling folk artist. On the other was new act The Mothers of Invention, a genre- (and mind-) bending band led by avant garde composer Frank Zappa. The aim? To release the first “double album” (four-sided LP) in popular music.

On June 20, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde prevailed, pipping The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! by a single week. But the outcome was largely unimportant – not least because the first double album had actually been released six years prior, in the form of R&B singer Jimmy Clanton’s Jimmy’s Happy/Jimmy’s Blue.

But the “race” did at least demonstrate there was interest in the double album as a format – and that, with the commercial success of Blonde on Blonde (Freak Out! unsurprisingly failed to trouble the charts), the public weren’t put off by the inflated price of a two-LP set.

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The double album may have subsequently gone through a rocky patch in the 1970s when “self-indulgent” prog rockers used it to unleash interminable dreary eternities – but it remains a crucial, albeit uncommon, part of pop music. Here are some of the standouts that you may or may not have come across.

1. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast (2003)

Rumours of a falling out between Outkast members Big Boi and André 3000 were rife in the lead-up to the release of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in September 2003. The fact thia project was essentially two solo albums stuck together didn’t help matters.

Whatever the circumstances it was recorded under, the result was synapse-popping, gut-reorganising, breathtakingly adventurous music. It’s not perfect and, like many double albums before and since, critics have suggested it would have been better served trimmed down and issued as a single disc. But the benefit of the double album format is that it allows artists the time and freedom to experiment.

Across its two-and-a-half-hour running time, Big Boi and André push boundaries and create a space for hip hop to embrace its weirdness.

2. Blinking Lights and Other Revelations by Eels (2005)

American alt-rock band Eels’ sixth studio album saw songwriter-singer-producer Mark Everett (known as “E”) in reflective mood, taking stock of his entire life up to this point.

Given that his life had included his sister’s 1996 suicide, his mother’s death from cancer soon after, his father’s alcoholism and the death of his cousin in 9/11, it would have been reasonable to expect one of the most depressing albums of all time. And yet, somehow, it’s anything but.

Described by the Guardian as “one of the best albums to have arisen out of grief” and by E as “a love letter to life itself, in all its beautiful, horrible glory”, Blinking Lights manages to take all that pain and misery and turn it into something genuinely positive and life-affirming.

Recorded over several years, mostly in E’s Los Angeles basement, the album’s production veers between intricate and lo-fi. E’s singing voice – a unique combination of gruff and tender – is its only constant.

Having spent 90 minutes going through every conceivable emotion (and perhaps several more besides), we make it to the final line of the final track, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, where E tells us: “If I had to do it all again, then it’s something I’d like to do.”

After all the struggles, all the devastation and trauma, the fact he still considers life sweet enough to live all over again is goosebump-inducing: an extraordinary moment from an extraordinary album.

3. Aerial by Kate Bush (2005)

For whatever reason, the number of double albums released by male artists dwarfs those released by females. Donna Summer, Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé are among the few, and Taylor Swift almost had one with The Tortured Poets Department (technically its 15-song “second instalment” was a separate release from the first). But these are relatively uncommon examples.

As for a double album that’s been written and produced solely by a female artist – well, replace “uncommon” with “almost non-existent”.

“Almost” because in 2005, Kate Bush did it with Aerial. Her first album in over a decade, Aerial saw Bush at her idiosyncratic best. In her hands (and voice), commonplace events are made to sound extraordinary – and they’re sung to a constantly shifting palette of musical styles, ranging from baroque to dance.

It’s impossible to predict what’s going to come next, and that is joyous. Just to show how nothing is ever perfect, though, two of the tracks feature disgraced Australian entertainer Rolf Harris, whose contributions Bush removed from the 2018 re-issue.

4. The Beatles/The White Album by The Beatles (1968)

On May 30 1968, almost exactly one year after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the fab four returned to Abbey Road studios to begin work on their next album, a self-titled affair which will forever be known as the White Album.

But where do the most important band in the world go after they’ve just hit a “musically ground-breaking, hyper-influential career high-water mark”? They go bigger, of course.

Millions of words have already been written about the brilliance of the Beatles, but their prolific artistry around this period still can’t be overstated. When the White Album was released in November 1968, the band had produced a staggering 53 songs in just 18 months, spread across two albums (one a double), a double EP and four chart-topping singles. Thirty of those songs appear on this album, most of them written during the band’s meditation retreat to Rishikesh in India in early 1968.

It’s the least collegiate of all the Beatles’ albums and Harrison, Lennon and McCartney would often work on their own tracks in three different studios. But it’s also their most experimental and diverse, taking in everything from hard rock and blues-rock to saloon satire, pastoral folk, vaudeville, and avant-garde sound collage.

Its stark, plain white cover may have been designed to contrast with the colourfully trippy artwork of Sgt. Pepper’s, but it shares its acclaim, regularly making “best album cover of all time” lists.

The Beatles may have been coming apart as a group when they were making it – and the sound collage track Revolution 9 may make beginning-to-end listens a bit of a challenge – but for many of us, the White Album is still the biggest and best album from the biggest and best band.

Do you have a favourite double album? We’d love to hear about it. Let us know your pick in the comments below.

Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

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

Can you only start a boring admin task once your house is clean? Do you leave the trickiest emails to the end of the day?

Delaying a goal or task – usually to do something less important instead – is known as procrastination and it affects many of us. Most people report procrastinating some of the time, but for others it can be chronic.

While procrastination is common, it can be frustrating and lead to feelings of shame, guilt and anxiety.

Here’s why you might be avoiding that task – and five steps to get on top of it.

Am I procrastinating?

You might find yourself putting off starting something, abandoning it before it’s finished or leaving it to the very last minute.

Thoughts such as “I can catch up later” or “I’ll turn it in late” can be telltale signs of procrastination. Maybe you’ve Googled “Why do I procrastinate?” while procrastinating and have come across this article.

Other times, you might not even be aware you’re doing it. Perhaps you look up and realise you’ve been scrolling online shopping and kitten videos for the past hour, instead of doing your assignment.

Procrastination is not a character flaw, and it doesn’t mean you’re lazy or even bad at managing time. Framing it this way can make you feel even worse about the behaviour, and stops you learning the real reasons behind it.

If you want to stop procrastinating, it’s important to understand why you do it in the first place.

Why do I procrastinate?

Procrastination can be a way of dealing with tricky emotions. Research shows we put off tasks we find boring or frustrating, as well as those we resent or that lack personal meaning.

We may avoid tasks that create stress or painful emotions, such as completing a tax return where you owe a lot of money, or packing up a parent’s house after their death.

There a few deeper reasons, too.

Procrastination can be a sign of perfectionism. This is when an intense fear of failure – of getting something wrong – creates so much pressure to be perfect that it stops us from even getting started.

People with low self-esteem also tend to procrastinate, whether or not they experience perfectionism. Here, it’s a negative self-view (“I’m not good at most things”) coupled with low confidence (“I probably won’t get it right”) that gets in the way of beginning a task.

Distraction can be a factor, too. Most of us battle constant interruptions, with pings and alerts designed to redirect our attention. But being very easily distracted can also be a sign you’re avoiding the task.

For some people, difficulty completing tasks could be a sign of an underlying issue such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. If you’re worried procrastination is affecting your day-to-day life, you can speak to your doctor to seek help.

Is procrastination ever helpful?

It depends.

Some people enjoy the pressure of a deadline. Leaving a task to the last minute can be a strategy to improve motivation or get it done in a limited time.

Procrastination can also be a coping mechanism.

Delaying unpleasant tasks may make us feel better in the moment. Avoiding the task may mean we don’t have to face the possibility of getting it wrong, or the negative emotions or consequences it involves.

But this usually only works in the short term, and in the long term it’s more likely to cause problems.

Procrastination can trigger self-criticism as well as negative emotions such as guilt and shame.

In the long term it can also lead to mental health problems including anxiety and depression. Procrastinating has even been linked to poor outcomes in education – such as being caught copying in exams – and at work, including lower salaries and higher likelihood of unemployment.

So what can we do about it?

5 steps to tackling procrastination

1. Face it – you’re procrastinating. Being able to identify and name these patterns is the first step to overcoming procrastination.

2. Explore why. Understanding the underlying causes is key. Are you afraid of getting it wrong? Is your to-do list unrealistic? Or do you just love a tight deadline? If your procrastination results from perfectionism or low self-esteem you may wish to explore evidence-based treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy, with a therapist or through self-guided activities.

3. Start prioritising. Take a good look at your to-do list. Are the most urgent or important things at the top? Have you given yourself enough time to complete the tasks? Breaking a task into smaller chunks and taking regular breaks will help prevent you from becoming overwhelmed. If you’re not sure what’s the most important, try talking it through with someone. If you tend to leave the most boring things to the last minute and then never get around to them, set some time aside at the start of each day to get these tasks done.

4. Avoid distractions. Set your phone to “do not disturb”, hang a sign on the door, tell those around you you’ll be “offline” for a little while. Setting a clear start and end time can help you stick to this rule.

5. Build in rewards. Life is hard work – be kind to yourself. Whenever you complete a difficult task or cross something off your to-do list, balance this by doing something more enjoyable. Building in rewards can make facing the to-do list a little bit easier.

Catherine Houlihan, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, University of the Sunshine Coast

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

As many people sit at the wheel of their car, they are certain they know what colour is. It’s the red traffic light in front of them, the garish yellow hatchback in the next lane, or the green verge banking to their right.

Colour, as many people understand it, is the property of a thing. That light is green. The sky is blue. But scientifically, that’s not quite true. No one can experience the exact same colour as you do. Colour is a perceptual experience created by our brains.

It’s the interaction between a material, light and the mind. The way a material absorbs and scatters light affects what reaches our eyes. And colour needs to be processed by the brain.

The shape of objects and the context in which you encounter them can also shape the way you perceive colour. If you’ve ever picked a paint colour that looked perfect in the shop but turned into something entirely difference once on your walls, you’ve already encountered this phenomenon.

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This notion of colour as experience was recently shown in a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who used lasers to manipulate participants’ eyes into seeing a new colour – a blue-green they call olo.

To achieve this, the scientists used lasers to activate specific photoreceptor cells in the retina that detect green wavelengths of light, called M cones. We also have S and L cones, types of photoreceptors that detect short blue, and longer red wavelengths of light respectively. Everyone has slight variations in the number and sensitivity of these cones, so we each experience colour a little differently.

Outside the lab, the reflected light that comes into our eyes illuminates large areas of the retina, which stimulates multiple cone types. The wavelengths perceived by the M and L cones overlap by over 85%. This means that under natural conditions, the two are always activated together, but in varying degrees.

By targeting just the M cones, the scientists at Berkeley have in essence created a pure colour. Olo doesn’t have context or material conditions. It will look the same to different people.

But this isn’t the only example which shows the place of the brain in colour perception.

The most common type of red-green colour blindness, deuteranomaly, occurs when the M and L cones overlap more than they should. This reduces people’s ability to distinguish between colours in that range, without affecting sharpness or brightness.

Language may play a role in colour perception, influencing how easily or accurately we discriminate between colours, especially when languages differ in how they categorise or label colour distinctions. This highlights the gulf between an objective property and the processing of the brain.

The difference between the subjective experience of colour and the fixed, physical means of producing it means that most artists’ search for “pure” paint will fail. British artist Stuart Semple recently claimed he’d recreated olo in paint form. He called the paint yolo. But when people look at it, M and L cones will be activated at the same time. A “pure” paint is still impossible.

Semple’s Black 3.0, along with other ultra-black materials, is marketed as a “pure” black paint. It absorbs nearly all light, using a high concentration of light-absorbing pigments and a matte binder to minimise reflections. But instead of offering a pure colour, it removes colour altogether – delivering a universal experience of “black” by eliminating visual stimulus.

In truth, artists have known colour is a matter of perception for quite some time. The modernist artist Mark Rothko was notoriously meticulous about how his work was displayed. Rothko insisted that his work be hung low, with as little white wall visible as possible, in dim light.

He was shaping the experience of colour his work presented to the onlooker by controlling brightness, contrast and the surroundings. Rothko, like the scientists at Berkeley, recognised that colour is an interaction between material, light and observer. It is not just about manipulating what we don’t see, but about engineering what we do.

I have been running a public engagement programme, Transcending the Invisible, which brings together scientists and artists to explore scientific ideas through art. What I’ve been struck by most is that scientists and artists share this understanding of colour as experience.

The future of colour

Why do so many artists want to patent the blackest black, the bluest blue or the pinkest pink if they know that colour can’t be made “pure” with pigment?

Berkeley researcher Austin Roorda described having a “wow” experience at perceiving something entirely new when he saw olo.

We need to accept that colours like Semple’s yolo can create a similar wow feeling.

The work at Berkeley opens the door to a much more direct experience of colour than we’ve ever had before. Scientists in the future may map the photoreceptors and parts of the brain which process colour, allowing them to beam a range of direct and repeatable experiences into people’s brains.

It’s important to note that colour isn’t just sensory data but something that shapes how we feel, remember and connect to the world. Artists like Rothko, Van Gogh and Kandinsky had an innate understanding of that which scientists are only now starting to piece together.

Sasha Rakovich, Senior Lecturer in Physics, King's College London

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

A recent study has found a 50% decline in the use of semicolons over the last two decades. The decline accelerates a longterm trend:

In 1781, British literature featured a semicolon roughly every 90 words; by 2000, it had fallen to one every 205 words. Today, there’s just one semicolon for every 390 words.

Further research reported that 67% of British students never or rarely use a semicolon; more than 50% did not know how to use it. Just 11% of respondents described themselves as frequent users.

These findings may not be definitive. According to the Guardian, the Google Books Ngram Viewer database, which surveys novels and nonfiction, indicates that

semicolon use in English rose by 388% between 1800 and 2006, before falling by 45% over the next 11 years. In 2017, however, it started a gradual recovery, with a 27% rise by 2022.

Yet when you put the punctuation mark itself into the database, rather than the word “semicolon”, you get a quite different result – one that looks very much like a steady decline.

Virulent detractors

The semicolon first appeared in 1494, so it has been around for a long time. So have arguments about it.

Its dectractors can be quite virulent. It is sometimes taken as a sign of affected elitism. Adrian Mole, the pretentious schoolboy protagonist of Sue Townsend’s popular novels, says snobbishly of Barry Kent, the skinhead bully at his school: “He wouldn’t know what a semicolon was if it fell into his beer.” Kurt Vonnegut (whose novels are not entirely free of semicolons) said semicolons represented “absolutely nothing” and using them just showed that you “went to college”.

Other writers have expressed pure animosity. American journalist James Kilpatrick denounced the semicolon “girly”, “odious”, and the “most pusillanimous, sissified utterly useless mark of punctuation ever invented”.

The utility of this much maligned punctuation mark in contemporary prose has been called into question. British author Ben McIntyre has claimed Stephen King “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semicolon”.

He obviously hasn’t read page 32 of King’s wonderful book On Writing, where King uses semicolons in three sentences in a row.

Impeccable balance

Before I defend the semicolon, it is worth clarifying what it actually does. Its two uses are as follows:

1) it separates independent clauses, but establishes a relation between them. It suggests that the statements are too closely connected to stand as separate sentences. For example: “Speech is silver; silence is golden.”

2) it can be used to clarify a complicated list. For example: “Remember to check your grammar, especially agreement of subjects and verbs; your spelling, especially of tricky words such as ‘liaison’; and your punctuation, especially your use of the apostrophe.”

Semicolons have long played a prominent role in classic literature. Journalist Amelia Hill notes that Virginia Woolf relies heavily on semicolons in her meditation on time, Mrs Dalloway. The novel includes more than 1000 of them, often used in unorthodox ways, to capture the flow of its protagonist’s thoughts.

Other supporters of the semicolon include Salman Rushdie, John Updike, Donna Tartt, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Novelist Philip Hensher has celebrated the semicolon as “a cherished tool, elegant and rational.” In 1953, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan called it “the prize-winning supporting crutch of English prose”.

In his essay Semicolons: A Love Story, Ben Dolnick refers to William James’s deft use of semicolons to pile on the clauses. He claims this is like saying to a reader, who is already holding one bag of groceries, “Here, I know it’s a lot, but can you take another?”

“The image of the grocery bags,” observed Mary Norris, a highly respected copyeditor at the New Yorker, “reinforces the idea that semicolons are all about balance.” Harvard professor Louis Menand has praised as “impeccable” the balancing semicolon on a public service placard (allegedly amended by hand) that exhorted subway riders not to leave their newspapers behind on the train: “Please put it in a trash can; that’s good news for everyone.”

The poet Lewis Thomas beautifully captures the elegance of a well-used semicolon in his essay Notes on Punctuation:

The semicolon tells you there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a full stop. The full stop tells you that is that; if you didn’t get all the meaning you wanted or expected, you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.

As Australian novelist David Malouf has argued, the semicolon still has a future, and an important function, in nuanced imaginative prose:

I tend to write longer sentences and use the semicolon so as not to have to break the longer sentences into shorter ones that would suggest things are not connected that I want people to see as connected. Short sentences make for fast reading; often you want slow reading.

We cannot do without the semicolon. The Apostrophe Protection Society is going along very strongly. I would be more than happy to join a Semicolon Supporting Society.

Roslyn Petelin, Honorary Associate Professor in Writing, The University of Queensland

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

Spotify was started, according to its official claims, because its founders “love music and piracy was killing it”. In Mood Machine, music journalist Liz Pelly argues this is rewriting history.

In fact, she points out, Spotify founder Daniel Ek initially patented a platform around 2006, for circulating “any kind of digital content”. Only months later did he and his co-founder decide music might be the most profitable form of content.

Review: Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist – Liz Pelly (Hodder & Stoughton)

Ek grew up in a working-class suburb of Stockholm. A neighbour recalled that, while still at school, Ek had set up a website-making business – and was earning more than his teachers. Rejected for a job at Google, he founded an ad-targeting business, Advertigo. After he sold it to tech entrepreneur Martin Lorentzon, the two men registered a new company: Spotify.

‘The Google of music’

Spotify would allow users to find their desired piece of music quickly. Ek described it in 2009 as “essentially the Google of music”, Pelly writes. He had a “maniacal focus” on ensuring a user would get a virtually instantaneous response when they pressed play; no annoying buffering.

Spotify launched in Europe in 2008 and in the United States in 2011. It listed on the stock market in 2018. Spotify has just recorded its first annual profit. It is valued at over US$100 billion: more than the three leading recording companies combined.

It had 678 million users at March 2025: of them, 268 million were paying subscribers. The rest contribute to Spotify’s earnings by listening to advertisements: the so-called “freemium” model.

Boon or bane of musicians?

Music streaming now accounts for 84% of recorded music revenue, according to Pelly – and Spotify is the largest music streamer.

Initially, Spotify looked like a boon to musicians, she writes. It could save music from the threat of “pirate” downloading, which gave no payments to creators. But many musicians are critical of the low payments artists get: fractions of a cent per stream.

Spotify claims that in 2024 it paid out more than US$10 billion to the music industry. It claims nearly 1,500 artists are earning over US$1 million annually.

Spotify pays the recording and publishing rights holders, not the singers and songwriters. How much the latter gets depends on their contracts with the record companies. The system is complicated, indirect and not that transparent.

‘Mixtapes still work’ – so do playlists

Spotify gradually shifted towards playlists, to simplify the process of users selecting music. Some playlists, like “today’s top hits”, just consisted of the currently most popular songs. These are like the “top 40” format of many commercial radio stations.

Spotify also hired music experts to compile their choice of the best new releases. The compilers of the most popular of these playlists, such as the playlist “rap caviar”, became very influential. A Spotify advertisement in 2013 made the analogy between playlists and mixtapes (as featured in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity), claiming “mixtapes still work”.

Spotify also increasingly tried to increase passive listening. It introduced playlists geared to match the existing tastes of listeners and allow for how these might vary across the day. It termed this “music for every moment”: music to exercise to, background music for studying, music to help you sleep and so on. I have a playlist of songs about economics.

Ek said in 2016: “we really want to soundtrack every moment of your life”.

One of the parts of the book I found most intriguing was Pelly’s discussion of how this echoes a strategy developed by Thomas Edison around a century ago. He produced shellac 78 rpm records with titles such as “in moods of wistfulness” and “for more energy!”.

In 2014, Spotify made large investments in “algorithmic personalisation”. This suggested music similar in key, tempo, time signature, acousticness, danceability, loudness, mode and energy to whatever the user was already choosing.

This kept users “within their comfort zone (or as Spotify thought of it, their customer retention zone)”. But it meant users were much less likely to encounter new styles and artists, or broaden their musical horizons.

Generic music and AI

While Spotify denies it, Pelly claims Spotify commissions session musicians, playing under assumed names, to record very generic-sounding music, for playlists such as “chill instrumental beats”. Pelly gives an example of 20 songwriters using 500 names to produce thousands of tracks, streamed millions of times.

A “looming cloud” is the prospect AI-generated music will displace human musicians and singers in Spotify’s playlists, Pelly writes. She mentions that Spotify blocked a start-up called Boomy, which released over 14.5 million AI-generated songs – and has since struck up a partnership with Warner.

Another controversy is around Spotify’s Discovery Mode, which offers artists more promotion of their songs in exchange for accepting lower payments. But if most artists do this, the promotions cancel each other out, leaving all the artists worse off.

How Spotify is changing music

Pelly quotes an independent record label founder who says Spotify has changed the nature of the music being made.

It’s not sustainable to put out challenging records […] you have to put out records that are going to get repeat listens in coffee shops […] that are going to be playlist friendly.

This is despite some music fans saying the music they experience as “life-changing, really profound” is different from the songs they play most often.

Songs streamed are only monetised after 30 seconds. This has created “a particular emphasis placed on perfecting song intros […] songwriters would just dive directly into the chorus”. So, no more songs with long waits for the vocals, like U2, the Temptations, Dire Straits or Pink Floyd.

Artists who want their songs to appear on playlists need them to match a particular mood or context. This means songs increasingly “remain in a single emotional register throughout”.

It may mean artists are less likely to release songs with marked tempo changes, such as Dexys’ Midnight Runners’ Come on Eileen (1982), Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (1971), Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) or Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out (2004). There may still be much smaller tempo changes, such as Taylor Swift’s Evermore from 2020.

The “Spotify for artists” service provides artists with data about the streaming of their songs. A band planning a tour can see in which cities or countries they are most popular. They can even alter their set lists to include the songs particularly popular in particular areas.

But Spotify monitors use of this facility, Pelly writes – and it is not clear how they use the data. Over time, it may encourage artists to repeat aspects of their most popular songs, rather than innovate and evolve.

A serious look

The book is interesting and informative, but somewhat dryer than some other recent exposes of the tech sector. Partly this is because Ek is a less colourful character than X’s Elon Musk, or Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Pelly does not provide the witty lines of tech journalist Kara Swisher’s Burn Book. She is not a gossipy former insider, like director of global public policy at Meta, Sarah Wynn-Williams.

As an economist, I felt the book complemented sociologist Michael Walsh’s Streaming Sounds: Musical Listening in the Digital Age. Walsh describes the demand for music streaming. Pelly analyses the supply side.

Pelly rightly describes her book as a “serious look” at Spotify. It brings together a lot of useful information about the company and raises good questions about whether it is changing the music industry – and music itself – for the better.

The debate will continue, as AI increases its influence and artists become more concerned about their songs being “TikTok friendly”, as well as “Spotify friendly”. Perhaps there will be more songs like Steve’s Lava Chicken from A Minecraft Movie. Just 34 seconds long, it recently became the shortest song to make the UK top 40.

John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

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

Conventional wisdom suggests memories of past experiences can help us navigate problems in the present.

For example, if a friend told you they were having a disagreement with their partner, you might ask what they did last time they argued. If your child was anxious about a presentation, you might boost their confidence by saying “remember that great speech you did last year”.

Indeed, memory researchers have found people report a key reason they remember the past is to solve problems in the present. But does this prove that drawing on experience is a good problem-solving strategy?

How much insight do we have about whether these memories support us to solve current problems? And, objectively, does this strategy help people identify more and better solutions?

To get more conclusive evidence, we ran two experimental studies (one with 170 students, one with 340 students). In each, we instructed some people to recall previous times they were successful (we call this the “memory group”). We instructed others to recall neutral personal memories such as what they had for breakfast that morning (we call this the “control group”).

We then asked both groups to come up with as many solutions as they could to everyday problems, such as resolving a disagreement, or working in a team to complete a project.

We expected the memory group to generate more solutions to these problems than the control group. But surprisingly, they did not. Both groups generated the same number of solutions.

Does this mean drawing on the past is an ineffective problem-solving strategy, or perhaps only effective for some people?

Unpacking the link between memory and problem solving

To dig further, we asked all participants what was going on in their heads while they were coming up with solutions. Across both groups, some participants said they drew on past experiences we did not specifically instruct them to recall.

This result hinted that recalling memories might be something some people are in the habit of doing anyway, and a possible reason why our memory instructions didn’t seem to make a difference.

We therefore wondered if our instructions were only helpful for participants who do not typically use their memory to solve problems. Indeed, in a followup study with 237 student participants, we found our instruction to recall past successful experiences was useful, but only for a subset of people.

Specifically, this applied to participants who reported they don’t typically use their memory of personal experiences for problem solving. These participants came up with more solutions than anyone else.

We reasoned this was because they already had other good problem-solving strategies (for example, thinking about facts relevant to the problem or thinking laterally and creatively) and we had merely given them an additional strategy (recalling their past).

However, we found no relationship between how often participants typically used their memory to solve problems, and how many solutions they came up with.

Memories can help with difficult tasks

What do our findings tell us? Recalling a memory may be helpful for generating solutions to problems, but it is not the only or best way to solve problems.

However, recalling a memory might help more or be more important in other problem-solving steps, such as defining a problem or implementing a solution once you’ve thought of it.

For instance, some experimental evidence suggests intentionally remembering past experiences could be helpful for doing hard things, such as public speaking, exercising or overcoming a fear of heights.

One study found people who remembered a positive public speaking experience before giving a speech were less anxious, and actually did a better job. Another study found people who recalled a positive experience with exercise increased their exercise over a week, even when the researchers took into account their prior attitudes, motivation and exercise activity.

A specific positive and related memory may therefore be helpful to following through on your intention to perform a specific behaviour. Conversely, as we have found, recalling a memory might not be the best or only approach for coming up with multiple solutions to a problem.

People also report that they recall their experiences to shape their identity and to develop and maintain relationships through reminiscing. Memory of personal experiences therefore has the potential to influence many facets of our life.

Overall, our research highlights the importance of context – when, how and who is drawing on memories of past experiences to solve problems – when we consider conventional wisdom about memory.

Anne Macaskill, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Karen Salmon, Professor of Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, and Nicky Duff, Research Assistant in Psychology, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

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

The first impulse is to kick it. After all, it’s a sand sculpture. And as everyone who has grown up near a beach appreciates, if it’s made of sand, then it’s asking to be kicked. But for the wall-high protective glass, Mirrorscape, by the French artist Théo Mercier, may not have survived my visit to MONA.

On a low, curved stage sits a scene of mundane wreckage. Two utility vehicles serve as centrepieces. One is upturned, its front chassis exposed. It rests on the carcass of a two-seater lounge. A mattress is draped over the upper side of the wreck, a broken log, a signifier of the non-human world in this otherwise secular scene of anthropocentric waste, rests against the lower side.

The other vehicle is upright but seriously damaged. Another mattress rests against it. A bundle of electrical conduit spills out of the tray. A worker’s boot limps over the bedding like a deflated balloon.

Strewn around the battered wrecks are pieces of domestic infrastructure and appliances: bricks, cracked concrete slab, a washing machine, broken joists and beams, snarled corrugated iron sheets.

It’s as though a couple of ute loads of tradies have smashed into a Derwent Park bungalow and scampered off.

This scene is framed by a curved wall of brushed metal panelling, lit above by fluorescent light panels, and sealed behind a wall of glass. This glass is both a protector of the delicate eroding sculpture, and another contrasting visual metaphor employing the work’s foundational element, sand.

Commitment to realism

Mercier is a sculptor and a stage director, and the controlled composition of this scene of chaos attests to his multiple talents.

The team of sculptors – Kevin Crawford, Enguerrand David, Sue McGrew and Leonardo Ugolini – have crafted a remarkable piece.

The commitment to realism is impressive, from the quilting in the mattresses, to the indentations on the utes’ bodywork, to the creases in the sofa cushions, and the sly joke of a finely crafted sandshoe as if discarded by one of the artists as they stepped from the sculptural into the spectatorial space.

Looking closer, the human objects – utes, mattresses, sofas – merge into or out of sandstone rock faces, like those found along Derwent River, including the peninsula upon which MONA stands.

What are we to make of the deliberate collapsing of the “natural” and “human-made” in this piece?

Mercier styles Mirrorscape as a “diorama of catastrophe”. He describes it as:

a sculpted dystopian landscape […] using 80 tonnes of compacted sand […] inspired by different dark forces, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, bulldozers – the powers of destruction.

The conflation of “natural” and “man-made” here, and in the composition of the work, grates. While Mirrorscape may reflect a “man-made” landscape of disaster, precisely whose landscape is it, and who ultimately is responsible for it?

A work about class

Mirrorscape is superficially a work about class. Its blunt appropriation of the signifiers of working-class labour and domesticity contradicts the claim that the scene is an archetypal landscape, or humanity’s refuse.

Mirrorscape might be appreciated as a witty piece reflecting on the kind of “treasures” of our age that future archaeologists might excavate in a local tip. But I found it provided little connection to the contemporary subjects of our present-day disasters.

Mirrorscape is haunted, so to speak, by the figures who drove the wrecked utes, slept on the wasted mattresses. But their identities and complex lives, very much of our own time, are rendered invisible.

As a meditation on catastrophe and the “powers of destruction,” Mirrorscape offers a conservative reckoning: that the contemporary human tragedies of inequality, alienated labour, class division and the waste these produce are the “natural” order of things.

This is evident in the way the human objects merge into and out of the rock faces, each designed to erode to the common element: sand.

In interviews, Mercier stresses the work’s debt to locality, and his engagement with the working-class suburbs neighbouring MONA:

It was really important to me that everything was really strongly locally grounded, so that you can actually see your own mattress, your own car, your own catastrophe […] it’s a landscape that mirrors you.

But really, how local is this scene, and what value is there in the reflections it provokes? There is little in this sculpture that relates it directly to the place where it is displayed.

The images Mercier has chosen, while unconventional, are nevertheless generic. This dulls the potential for the kind of reflection on catastrophe that might impel a change in the minds of its viewers.

Will MONA’s well-heeled attendees recognise their implication in the human catastrophe this work seeks to capture? Will visitors from the suburbs that neighbour MONA appreciate the reflection that Mirrorscape offers?

If art is to play any role in motivating us to confront the catastrophes that are now upon us, it needs to go beyond the kind of slowly eroding stasis that is Mirrorscape’s defining quality.

Mirrorscape is at MONA, Hobart, until February 16 2026.

Robert Clarke, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Tasmania

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

We have all experienced boredom – that feeling of waning interest or decreased mental stimulation. Eventually we lose focus, we disengage. Time seems to pass slowly, and we may even start to feel restless. Whether it be watching a movie that disappoints, a child complaining that “there’s nothing to do”, or an adult zoning out during a meeting – boredom is a universal experience.

Generally defined as difficulty maintaining attention or interest in a current activity, boredom is commonly viewed as a negative state that we should try to avoid or prevent ourselves from experiencing.

But what if there’s another way to view boredom, as a positive state? Could learning to embrace boredom be of benefit?

The brain on boredom

The brain network is a system of interconnected regions that work together to support different functions. We can liken it to a city where suburbs (brain regions) are connected by roads (neural pathways), all working together to allow information to travel efficiently.

When we experience boredom – say, while watching a movie – our brain engages specific networks. The attention network prioritises relevant stimuli while filtering out distractions and is active when we commence the movie.

However, as our attention wanes, activity in the attention network decreases, reflecting our diminished ability to maintain focus on the unengaging content. Likewise, decreased activity occurs in the frontoparietal or executive control network due to the struggle to maintain engagement with the unengaging movie.

Simultaneously, the default mode network activates, shifting our attention toward internal thoughts and self-reflection. This is a core function of the default mode network, referred to as introspection, and suggestive of a strategy for coping with boredom.

This complex interplay of networks involves several key brain regions “working together” during the state of boredom. The insula is a key hub for sensory and emotional processing. This region shows increased activity when detecting internal body signals – such as thoughts of boredom – indicating the movie is no longer engaging. This is often referred to as “interoception”.

The amygdala can be likened to an internal alarm system. It processes emotional information and plays a role in forming emotional memories. During boredom, this region processes associated negative emotions, and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex motivates us to seek alternative stimulating activities.

Boredom versus overstimulation

We live in a society that subjects us to information overload and high stress. Relatedly, many of us have adopted a fast-paced lifestyle, constantly scheduling ourselves to keep busy. As adults we juggle work and family. If we have kids, the habit of filling the day with schooling and after-school activities allows us to work longer hours.

In between these activities, if we have time to pause, we may be on our screens constantly organising, updating, or scrolling to simply stay occupied. As a result, adults inadvertently model the need to be constantly “on” to younger generations.

This constant stimulation can be costly – particularly for our nervous system. Our overscheduling can feed into overstimulation of the nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system which manages our fight-or-flight response is designed to deal with times of stress.

However, when we are constantly stressed by taking in new information and juggling different activities, the sympathetic nervous system can stay activated for too long, due to the cumulative effects of repeated exposure to different stressors. This is sometimes referred to as “allostatic overload”. It is when our nervous system becomes overwhelmed, keeping us in a heightened state of arousal, which can increase our risk of anxiety.

Eliminating the state of boredom deprives us of a simple and natural way to reset our sympathetic nervous system.

Could boredom be good for us?

In small doses, boredom is the necessary counterbalance to the overstimulated world in which we live. It can offer unique benefits for our nervous system and our mental health. This is opposed to long periods of boredom where increased default mode network activity may be associated with depression.

There are several benefits of giving ourselves permission to be occasionally bored:

• improvements in creativity, allowing us to build “flow” in our thoughts
• develops independence in thinking and encourages finding other interests rather than relying on constant external input
• supports self-esteem and emotional regulation, because unstructured times can help us sit with our feelings which are important for managing anxiety
• encourages periods without device use and breaks the loop of instant gratification that contributes to compulsive device use
• rebalances the nervous system and reduces sensory input to help calm anxiety.

Embrace the pause

Anxiety levels are on the rise worldwide, especially among our youth. Many factors contribute to this trend. We are constantly “on”, striving to ensure we are scheduling for every moment. But in doing so, we are potentially depriving our brains and bodies of the downtime they need to reset and recharge.

We need to embrace the pause. It is a space where creativity can prosper, emotions can be regulated, and the nervous system can reset.

Michelle Kennedy, Youth Mental Health Researcher, University of the Sunshine Coast and Daniel Hermens, Professor of Youth Mental Health & Neurobiology, University of the Sunshine Coast

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

This week, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved a drug called donanemab for people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Donanemab has previously been approved in a number of other countries, including the United States.

So what is donanemab, and who will be able to access it in Australia?

How does donanemab work?

There are more than 100 different causes of dementia, but Alzheimer’s disease alone accounts for about 70% of these, making it the most common form of dementia.

The disease is believed to be caused by the accumulation in the brain of two abnormal proteins, amyloid and tau. The first is thought to be particularly important, and the “amyloid hypothesis” – which suggests amyloid is the key cause of Alzheimer’s disease – has driven research for many years.

Donanemab is a “monoclonal antibody” treatment. Antibodies are proteins the immune system produces that bind to harmful foreign “invaders” in the body, or targets. A monoclonal antibody has one specific target. In the case of donanemab it’s the amyloid protein. Donanemab binds to amyloid protein deposits (plaques) in the brain and allows our bodies to remove them.

Donanemab is given monthly, via intravenous infusion.

What does the evidence say?

Australia’s approval of donanemab comes as a result of a clinical trial involving 1,736 people published in 2023.

This trial showed donanemab resulted in a significant slowing of disease progression in a group of patients who had either early Alzheimer’s disease, or mild cognitive impairment with signs of Alzheimer’s pathology. Before entering the trial, all patients had the presence of amyloid protein detected via PET scanning.

Participants were randomised, and half received donanemab, while the other half received a placebo, over 18 months.

For those who received the active drug, their Alzheimer’s disease progressed 35% more slowly over 18 months compared to those who were given the placebo. The researchers ascertained this using the Integrated Alzheimer’s Disease Rating Scale, which measures cognition and function.

Those who received donanemab also demonstrated large reductions in the levels of amyloid in the brain (as measured by PET scans). The majority, by the end of the trial, were considered to be below the threshold that would normally indicate the presence of Alzheimer’s disease.

These results certainly seem to vindicate the amyloid hypothesis, which had been called into question by the results of multiple failed previous studies. They represent a major advance in our understanding of the disease.

That said, patients in the study did not improve in terms of cognition or function. They continued to decline, albeit at a significantly slower rate than those who were not treated.

The actual clinical significance has been a topic of debate. Some experts have questioned whether the meaningfulness of this result to the patient is worth the potential risks.

Is the drug safe?

Some 24% of trial participants receiving the drug experienced brain swelling. The rates rose to 40.6% in those possessing two copies of a gene called ApoE4.

Although three-quarters of people who developed brain swelling experienced no symptoms from this, there were three deaths in the treatment group during the study related to donanemab, likely a result of brain swelling.

These risks require regular monitoring with MRI scans while the drug is being given.

Some 26.8% of those who received donanemab also experienced small bleeds into the brain (microhaemorrhages) compared to 12.5% of those taking the placebo.

Cost is a barrier

Reports indicate donanemab could cost anywhere between A$40,000 and $80,000 each year in Australia. This puts it beyond the reach of many who might benefit from it.

Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of donanemab, has made an application for the drug to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, with a decision pending perhaps within a couple of months. While this would make the drug substantially more affordable for patients, it will represent a large cost to taxpayers.

The cost of the drug is in addition to costs associated with the monitoring required to ensure its safety and efficacy (such as doctor visits, MRIs and PET scans).

Who will be able to access it?

This drug is only of benefit for people with early Alzheimer’s-type dementia, so not everybody with Alzheimer’s disease will get access to it.

Almost 80% of people who were screened to participate in the trial were found unsuitable to proceed.

The terms of the TGA approval specify potential patients will first need to be found to have specific levels of amyloid protein in their brains. This would be ascertained either by PET scanning or by lumbar puncture sampling of spinal fluid.

Also, patients with two copies of the ApoE4 gene have been ruled unsuitable to receive the drug. The TGA has judged the risk/benefit profile for this group to be unfavourable. This genetic profile accounts for only 2% of the general population, but 15% of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Improving diagnosis and tempering expectations

It’s estimated more than 400,000 Australians have dementia. But only 13% of people with dementia currently receive a diagnosis within a year of developing symptoms.

Given those with very early disease stand to benefit most from this treatment, we need to expand our dementia diagnostic services significantly.

Finally, expectations need to be tempered about what this drug can reasonably achieve. It’s important to be mindful this is not a cure.

Steve Macfarlane, Head of Clinical Services, Dementia Support Australia, & Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Monash University

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

Australia has become world-famous for its wine, but the industry faces an uncertain future. Too many grapes grown amid falling consumer demand, an oversupply of budget wine, and an undersupply of premium wine are just some of the problems besetting the industry.

There are still many small and medium-sized wineries across Australia. But the industry is dominated by a few large players, as well as “vertical integration” with ownership linkages between wineries and retailers.

Just this month, a merger between global drinks giant Pernod Ricard’s Australian, New Zealand and Spanish wine brands and Accolade Wines (one of Australia’s largest winemakers) was completed, creating a new giant – Vinarchy – to be based in Adelaide with A$1.5 billion in annual revenue.

This move will involve an estimated cull of up to 50 wine brands, which speaks to a broader story of growing concentration. Numerous Australian wine companies have come up for sale in recent years, and the industry is undergoing rationalisation.

The current pressures will require an overall reduction in wine production, and a focus on premium over ordinary wines. Grape-growers and some smaller wineries are likely to be most affected.

Still the top drop

According to Wine Australia, the Australian wine industry currently has about 6,000 grape growers and 2,156 wineries. It employs 163,790 people (full- and part-time) and contributes $45 billion to the Australian economy each year.

This large size shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Wine is the most popular alcoholic drink in Australia. But troubles have been brewing for the industry for years.

Domestic wine consumption has been in steady decline, down 9% since 2016–17.

This trend isn’t confined to Australia; it is global. The decline reflects cost-of-living pressures, growing health concerns about alcohol, and Gen Z questioning traditional drinking norms.

Shifting tastes

However, the picture is nuanced. Wine isn’t a staple product; it is a discretionary purchase. Prices in Australia can range from less than $5 to well over $1,000 per bottle, and palates vary significantly among consumers.

Price is generally regarded as an indicator of quality. Wine selling in Australia in the “ordinary” price range of less than $15 per bottle is declining, but wine selling in the “premium” ($15 per bottle and above) price range is increasing.

In the face of decreased global wine consumption, Australia’s shrinking domestic market has also been faced with a steady decline in wine exports. This is problematic for producers looking to exports to offset declines in domestic sales.

A warm country

These woes are impacting the wine industry in different ways at different points along the supply chain. Let’s start with grape-growing.

The current challenge is for growers of “ordinary-quality” grapes in the shrinking marketplace. The Riverina and Riverland areas are the main grape-producing areas of Australia and achieve a low price per tonne.

There is still high demand for “premium-quality” grapes but these are generally grown in select regions of Australia, typically with a cooler climate.

Unsurprisingly, grapes from warm inland regions of Australia account for 72% of wine grape production, at an average price of $345 per tonne, whereas grapes from cool temperate regions achieve an average price of $1,531 per tonne.

The future impacts of climate change need to be assessed, and are already playing into growers’ decisions. Cooler regions are becoming more highly sought after for grape-growing.

Coupled with increased demand for premium grapes, this will make warm inland regions increasingly problematic. Unlike seasonally planted crops such as vegetables and grain, new grape vines require three years after planting before bearing decent levels of fruit. Farmers must determine the most appropriate long-term use of their land.

The challenge of standing out

Many of Australia’s 2,156 wineries are small-scale (typically privately owned). Other wineries are much larger, with extensive resources. Most consumers are largely unaware of most of these wineries – how many wine brands can you list?

Such diversity already presents a challenge for various wineries trying to market themselves. Adding to this, a large number of Australian wine brands are owned by just a few large industry players, some with links to retailers via vertical integration.

Retailers such as Endeavour Group (formerly part of Woolworths) and Coles own hundreds of wine brands. Some of these brands are marketed to look like independent wineries. Some commentators have even suggested a wine duopoly exists at the retail level.

How can wineries survive?

With the trend towards less consumption overall, and towards premium-quality wines instead of ordinary-quality wines, some wineries may need to shift their focus.

On the challenges facing the industry, acclaimed Victorian winemaker Rick Kinzbrunner told me:

We need a better balance of supply and demand and especially more emphasis on top quality wines at reasonable prices.

Why this matters to you

If you’re a wine drinker, current wine industry issues may seem irrelevant. But the ongoing oversupply of ordinary-quality wine for the near future offers plenty of price discounts.

For consumers of premium wines, given current high demand, be wary: does what you’re getting quality-wise match the price? Some wines marketed at high prices don’t have the quality to match.

Consumers may wish to increase direct contact with wineries (via cellar doors, websites and mailing lists) and independent retailers to expand their options.

Winners and losers will emerge as inevitable industry change occurs.

Paul Chad, Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Business and Law, School of Business, University of Wollongong

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

Oysters and escargot are recognised as luxury foods around the world – but they were once valued by the lower classes as cheap sources of protein.

Less adventurous eaters today see snails as a garden pest, and are quick to point out that freshly shucked oysters are not only raw but also alive when they are eaten.

How did these unusual ingredients become items of conspicuous consumption?

From garden snail to gastronomy

Eating what many consider to be a slimy nuisance seems almost counter-intuitive, but consuming land snails has an ancient history, dating to the Palaeolithic period, some 30,000 years ago in eastern Spain.

Ancient Romans also dined on snails, and spread their eating habits across their empire into Europe.

Lower and middle class Romans ate snails from their gardens, while elite consumers ate specially farmed snails, fed spices, honey and milk.

Pliny the Elder (AD 24–79) described how snails were raised in ponds and given wine to fatten them up.

The first French recipe for snails appears in 1390, in Le Ménagier de Paris (The Good Wife’s Guide), but not in other cookbooks from the period.

In 1530, a French treatise on frogs, snails, turtles and artichokes considered all these foods bizarre, but surprisingly popular. Some of the appeal had to do with avoiding meat on “lean” days. Snails were classified as fish by the Catholic Church, and could even be eaten during Lent.

For the next 200 years, snails only appeared in Parisian cookbooks with an apology for including such a disgusting ingredient. This reflected the taste of upper-class urbanites, but snails were still eaten in the eastern provinces.

An 1811 cookbook from Metz, in the Alsace region in northeastern France, describes raising snails like the Romans, and a special platter, l'escargotière, for serving them. The trend did not travel to Paris until after 1814.

French diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) hosted a dinner for Russian Tsar Alexander I, after he marched into Paris following the allied forces’ defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

The chef catering the meal was the father of French cuisine Marie-Antoine Carême, a native of Burgundy, spiritual home of the now famous escargots de Bourgogne.

Carême served the Tsar what would become a classic recipe, prepared with garlic, parsley and butter. Allegedly, the Tsar raved about the “new” dish, and snails became wildly popular. A recipe for Burgundy snails first appeared in a French culinary dictionary published in 1825.

It is ironic that it took the approval of a foreign emperor, who had just conquered Napoleon, to restore luxury status to escargot, a food that became a symbol of French cuisine.

Snails remain popular today in France, with consumption peaking during the Christmas holidays, but May 24 is National Escargot Day in France.

Oysters: the original fast food

Oysters are another ancient food, as seen in fossils dating to the Triassic Era, 200 million years ago. Evidence of fossilised oysters are found on every major land mass, and there is evidence of Indigenous oyster fisheries in North America and Australia that dates to the Holocene period, about 12,000 years ago.

There are references in classical Greek texts to what are probably oysters, by authors like Aristotle and Homer. Oyster shells found at Troy confirm they were a favoured food. Traditionally served as a first course at banquets in Ancient Greece, they were often cooked, sometimes with exotic spices.

Pliny the Elder refers to oysters as a Roman delicacy. He recorded methods of the pioneer of Roman oyster farming, Sergius Orata, who brought the best specimens from across the Empire to sell to elite customers.

Medieval coastal dwellers gathered oysters at low tide, while wealthy inland consumers would have paid a premium for shellfish, a perishable luxury, transported to their castles.

French nobles in 1390 preferred cooked oysters, roasted over coals or poached in broths, perhaps as a measure to prevent food poisoning. As late as the 17th century, authors cautioned:

But if they be eaten raw, they require good wine […] to aid digestion.

By the 18th century, small oysters were a popular pub snack, and larger ones were added as meat to the stew pot. That century, it is believed as many as 100,000 oysters were eaten each day in Edinburgh and the shells from the tavern in the basement filled in gaps in the brickwork at Gladstone’s Land in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

Scottish oyster farms in the Firth of Forth, an inlet of the North Sea, produced 30 million oysters in 1790, but continual over-harvesting took its toll.

By 1883 only 6,000 oysters were landed, and the population was declared extinct in 1957.

As wild oyster stocks dwindled, large oyster farms developed in cities like New York in the 19th century. Initially successful, they were polluted, and infected by typhoid from sewage. An outbreak in 1924 killed 150 people, the deadliest food poisoning in United States history.

Far from the overabundance of oysters we once had, over-fishing, pollution, and invasive species all threaten oyster populations worldwide today. Due to this scarcity of wild oysters and the resources required to safely farm environmentally sustainable oysters, they are now a premium product.

Next on the menu

Scarcity made oysters a luxury, and a Tsar’s approval elevated snails to gourmet status. Could insects become the next status food?

Ancient Romans ate beetles and grasshoppers, and cultures around the world consume insects, but not (yet) as luxury products.

Maybe the right influencer can make honey-roasted locust the next species to jump from paddock to plate.

Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

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

A new study has found the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which causes cold sores, may be linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

This idea is not entirely new. Previous research has suggested there may be an association between HSV-1 and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia.

So what can we make of these new findings? And how strong is this link? Let’s take a look at the evidence.

First, what is HSV-1?

HSV-1 is a neurotropic virus, meaning it can infect nerve cells, which send and receive messages to and from the brain. It’s an extremely common virus. The World Health Organization estimates nearly two-thirds of the global population aged under 50 carries this virus, often unknowingly.

An initial infection can cause mild to severe symptoms including fever, headache and muscle aches, and may manifest as blisters and ulcers around the mouth or lips.

After this, HSV-1 typically lies dormant in the body’s nervous system, sometimes reactivating due to stress or illness. During reactivation, it can cause symptoms such as cold sores, although in many people it doesn’t cause any symptoms.

What did the new research look at?

In a study published this week in BMJ Open, researchers analysed data from hundreds of thousands of people drawn from a large United States health insurance dataset.

They conducted a matched “case-control” analysis involving more than 340,000 adults aged 50 and older diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease between 2006 and 2021. Each Alzheimer’s disease patient (a “case”) was matched to a control without a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease based on factors such as age, sex and geographic region, a method designed to reduce statistical bias.

The team then examined how many of these people had a prior diagnosis of HSV-1 and whether they had been prescribed antiviral treatment for the infection.

Among people with Alzheimer’s disease, 0.44% had a previous HSV-1 diagnosis, compared to 0.24% of controls. This translates to an 80% increased relative risk of Alzheimer’s disease in those diagnosed with HSV-1, however the absolute numbers are small.

The researchers also found people who received antiviral treatment for HSV-1 had roughly a 17% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease compared to those who were untreated.

Not a new hypothesis

This isn’t the first time researchers have speculated about a viral role in Alzheimer’s disease. Earlier studies have detected HSV-1 DNA in postmortem brain tissues from people who had Alzheimer’s disease.

Laboratory research has also shown HSV-1 can trigger amyloid-beta plaque accumulation in nerve cells and mouse brains. Amyloid-beta plaques are one of the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease pathology, so this has led to speculation that reactivation of the virus may contribute to brain inflammation or damage.

But importantly, previous research and the current study show associations, not proof HSV-1 causes Alzheimer’s disease. These links do not confirm the virus initiates or drives disease progression.

Some other important caveats

The study relied on insurance claim data, which may not always reflect accurate or timely clinical diagnoses. HSV-1 is also frequently underdiagnosed, especially when symptoms are mild or absent. These points could explain why both the Alzheimer’s group and the control group saw such low rates of HSV-1, when population rates of this virus are estimated to be far higher.

This means many carriers of HSV-1 in the study may have gone unrecorded and therefore makes the link harder to interpret clearly. The dataset also doesn’t capture how often people had recurring symptoms, or the severity or duration of infections – conditions which might influence risk more directly.

Another complicating factor is people with HSV-1 might differ in other ways from those without it. Differences in health-care access, the health of a person’s immune system, lifestyle, genetics, or even education – could all influence Alzheimer’s disease risk.

So should you be concerned if you have cold sores?

The short answer is no – at least not based on current evidence. Most people with HSV-1 will never develop Alzheimer’s disease. The vast majority live with the virus without any serious neurological issues.

The “herpes hypothesis” of Alzheimer’s disease is an interesting area for further research, but far from settled science. This study adds weight to the conversation but doesn’t offer a definitive answer.

Alzheimer’s disease is a complex condition with multiple risk factors, including age, genetics, heart health, education, lifestyle and environmental exposures.

Infections such as HSV-1 may be one part of a larger, interconnected puzzle, but they are highly unlikely to be the sole cause.

With this in mind, the best thing to do is to focus on what we already know can help keep your brain healthy as you age. Regular physical activity, good quality sleep, social engagement, a balanced diet and managing stress can all support long-term brain health.

Joyce Siette, Associate Professor | Deputy Director, The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour, and Development, Western Sydney University

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

Traveldream.com.au sold discounted holidays – curated hiking tours, boutique cruises and cultural getaways through a slick website and polished social media ads. But news emerged last week that the Melbourne-based travel company has collapsed into administration, leaving customers out of pocket by thousands of dollars, and in some cases, stranded overseas.

What many didn’t know was that Traveldream hadn’t been formally accredited with the leading industry body since 2020. Its status under the Australian Travel Accreditation Scheme, run by the Australian Travel Industry Association, had been cancelled.

To make matters worse, most travel insurance policies don’t cover insolvency, meaning many customers have no way to recover their losses.

Australians are expected to spend over A$2 billion booking holidays online in 2024–25.

Big name platforms such as Booking.com and Expedia account for about 60% of this activity. But many travellers are also turning to smaller or lesser-known providers offering flashy deals and lower prices, often with fewer safeguards.

So, how can you protect yourself? Start with these five checks.

1. Don’t be swayed by slick websites or social media ads

It’s a common tactic, and one that’s hard to resist. You’re scrolling, you see a dreamy image, the price is tempting, and suddenly you’re halfway through checkout.

But a polished ad doesn’t guarantee legitimacy.

Travel-related scams are on the rise, especially involving online-only sellers.

Check for a verifiable business address, phone number and customer support. If the deal feels vague, under-priced or overly urgent, that’s a red flag.

Look for independent reviews (on Trustpilot, Tripadvisor or Google), and check Scamwatch for known issues.

2. Look at how the company engages with customers

A company’s reputation isn’t just about what it promises: it’s built on how it responds to questions and complaints. Before booking, take a moment to see how the business interacts with customers online.

Do they reply constructively to complaints? Do they offer updates or explanations when issues arise?

Also notice the tone. Does it feel human and responsive, or generic and hands-off? That can suggest how they’ll treat you after the sale.

Small signs can speak volumes. A page with thousands of followers but no visible engagement may indicate a paid audience – and a company that vanishes when things get difficult.

3. Check if the company is accredited

Another way to assess a travel company’s credibility is to check if it holds formal accreditation. This signals the company has met standards in financial security, customer service and dispute resolution.

Search the Australian Travel Accreditation Scheme register at https://www.atas.com.au, or look for Quality Tourism Accreditation. For overseas providers, check for recognised local schemes.

Accreditation offers extra reassurance, but it’s not the whole picture. Some large, reputable companies, such as Expedia, operate without it. If a company isn’t accredited, proceed with caution and focus on how bookings and payments are handled.

4. Scrutinise policies carefully

Before booking, check what happens if the provider goes bust, whether you can cancel or reschedule, and how your booking will be confirmed. Where possible, follow up directly with the hotel, airline or tour operator to make sure reservations are secured.

It’s also important to understand what travel insurance does – and doesn’t – cover.

Company insolvency is one of the most common exclusions. Unless a policy includes “end supplier failure” or a similar clause (most don’t), you may not be able to claim a refund. Always read the Product Disclosure Statement to check exactly where you stand.

Another safeguard is to pay with protection in mind. Although conditions vary by provider, credit cards may offer chargebacks if the goods or services aren’t delivered.

5. Book direct where feasible

While accredited travel agencies can be helpful for complex itineraries, like overseas trips with multiple stops or bundled services, it’s often worth booking directly with the provider when making travel arrangements online, whether that’s a hotel, airline or tour company.

Cutting out the intermediary can offer better value, including complimentary extras, flexible cancellation and full access to loyalty programs.

Direct bookings usually reflect real-time availability and pricing, reducing the risk of outdated information. You’ll benefit from direct communication and confirmation, making it easier to customise or resolve issues.

If something goes wrong, there’s also greater clarity about who’s responsible – offering stronger recourse under Australian Consumer Law.

The bottom line?

As more Australians book holidays online, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s trustworthy and what could leave you out of pocket.

Traveldream’s collapse is a reminder. Even in the world of digital travel deals, it pays to ask: is this company built to last, not just until your trip departs, but until you return home?

Madalyn Scerri, Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Hospitality, Torrens University Australia and Anita Manfreda, Senior Lecturer in Tourism, Torrens University Australia

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

A new Netflix documentary about a shirtless supplement salesman who claimed to be “natural” and was exposed as a fraud might seem like a punchline.

But Untold: The Liver King is more than just a character study of a well-known fitness influencer; it’s a case study of performative masculinity in the world of social media.

Brian Johnson, better known as the Liver King, built a brand on extreme workouts, eating raw organ meat, and evangelising about masculinity. He preached “ancestral living” and radical self-control, all while secretly using steroids.

And his rapid rise to popularity reveals how social media rewards the spectacle of hypermasculinity – especially when it leans into extreme behaviours.

Extreme self-discipline, extreme exercise, extreme eating and extreme “wellness” have all become forms of public performance on social media.

From influencers pushing steroids or “wellness” lifestyles, to the growing popularity of ultramarathons, a new model of masculinity is going viral: control your body, grit through pain, workout hard, and make sure everyone hears about it.

The rise of ‘discipline content’

Social media apps and websites such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, are flooded with content that frames pain and extreme physical effort as markers of masculine worth.

One analysis of male fitness YouTubers found they established authority and discipline through a mix of visible physical strength and affiliations with commercial fitness brands. In some cases, the influencers explicitly listed their personal records or showcased their physique post-training as proof of their “masculinity” and discipline.

Influencers also often frame extreme leanness and muscularity as indicators of moral virtue and discipline, even when achieving it has taken a negative physical or mental toll on them. The look of discipline has become more valuable than the outcome of it.

Posts are often wrapped in the language of “resilience”, “discipline” and militaristic rhetoric. Men are told to “go to war” in the gym, to “stay hard”, and to generally treat life like a battlefield.

What’s being sold isn’t stoicism: it’s pseudo-stoicism – a term researchers have coined to describe emotional suppression masquerading as strength and discipline.

Pain is the point

Strava’s 2023 Year in Sport report found Gen Z athletes are 31% less likely to exercise for health reasons compared to older generations. Instead, they are more likely to train with a focus on athletic performance – that is, to push their physical limits, improve metrics such as speed or distance, and outperform others.

The same report shows a surge in extreme endurance activity. Compared to 2023 data, uploads (activities shared with others) of gravel bike rides grew 55%, trail runs grew 16%, and ultramarathon-style workouts grew by 9%.

Take Nedd Brockmann, who ran across Australia in 2022, and last year ran 1,600 kilometres in ten days to raise money for charity – all while sharing his self-imposed physical torture.

Or take the countless fitness content creators pushing themselves through punishing routines for the camera.

These cases reflect a deeper shift of fitness being turned into spectacle, wherein suffering becomes a sign of legitimacy, and pain is “proof” that you’re serious.

Such extreme content, which is often visually striking, can also be pushed by social media algorithms. Research shows how social media platforms systematically boost content that is intense, emotionally charged, and morally loaded.

In other words, posts that provoke a reaction are more likely to get promoted. And content relating to “wellness” extremism is designed to provoke, as it is visceral, performative, and packed with motivational and self-help anecdotes.

Why this matters

This is a potential public health issue.

Social media platforms amplify and monetise these performances, often pushing the most extreme content to the top. And influencers make money, above the money made from directly these platforms, from selling supplements, gear and coaching plans. At the same time, they act in more and more extreme ways to get further amplified by algorithms.

The risks of this dynamic, for both the viewers and creators, are very real. They range from hormone damage, to mental and physical decline, to injury, and even death.

But there is also a deeper ideological harm, as young men are fed a narrow and punishing idea of what it means to be a man. They are taught pain equals purpose, and that if you’re not suffering, you’re not trying.

Where to from here?

Public health agencies need to reckon with this form of digital hypermasculinity.

Extreme fitness influencers aren’t just poor role models; they’re the product of a system that profits from insecurity and spectacle. The goal shouldn’t be to ban or censor this content. But we do need to challenge its dominance, and offer alternatives.

That means engaging young men in offline spaces, such as the Tomorrow Man project, where they have an outlet for community and relationship building.

It means creating counter-narratives that don’t mock, but model, healthier versions of ambition and masculinity. For instance, the Movember campaign’s podcast Dad in Progress explores the various challenges and experiences faced by new dads.

It also means holding platforms accountable for the way they amplify extreme content.

In the absence of healthier narratives, self-flagellation is the only thing young men will have to aspire to.

Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

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

In its most recent battle with authorities in Australia, X (formerly Twitter) has launched legal action in the Federal Court, seeking an exemption from a new safety standard aimed at preventing the spread of harmful material online.

The standard in question is known as the Relevant Electronic Services Standard. It came into effect in December 2024, but won’t start being enforced by Australia’s online regulator, eSafety, until June this year.

Compared with the social media ban for under-16s, this standard has been a side issue in the broader topic of online safety. So what exactly is it? And will it be effective at preventing the spread of harmful material online?

What is the standard?

The Relevant Electronic Services Standard contains criteria to help address the pervasiveness of harmful and illegal material distributed online. It is particularly focused on child sexual exploitation content, depictions of extreme violence, illegal drug material, and pro-terror content.

Relevant electronic services (RES) are digital services that enable user-to-user content. This includes instant messaging, email and chat platforms. The legal definition also includes some online gaming services.

Under Australia’s Online Safety Act 2021, the communications minister may exempt some services or platforms from being defined as an RES. The minister can also set conditions on the service for exemption, such as having a robust moderation service, or being a messaging service for internal employees of a company.

Some social media platforms, such as Facebook and X, may be defined as RES. That’s because they also offer user-to-user messaging services. It is sensible, then, for the Federal Court to determine whether they fall under social media codes or RES standards, or both.

The standards require RES to implement systems, processes and technologies to detect and remove child sexual abuse and pro-terror material from their services, and to actively deter end-users from distributing this material.

There are consequences for services that fail to comply. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, can issue a formal warning or infringement notice, or have the courts apply a civil penalty.

What does the standard do?

The Online Safety Act 2021 imposes obligations on RES providers, particularly regarding the handling of harmful material. This material is categorised into several classes, including Class 1A and Class 1B content.

Class 1A material typically means child exploitation and pro-terror content. Class 1B material refers to extreme violence, promotion of crime, and illegal drug-related content.

The class of content is determined by referring to the National Classification Scheme. This scheme sets standards for the ratings of films.

Class 1A and 1B material is content, texts and images that would be “refused classification” under the scheme. That is, it would be material that is usually not allowed to be distributed at all. Class 2 material is what we usually consider X-rated or 18+ material.

At the moment, the eSafety commissioner can ask a RES to remove Class 1 or Class 2 content, or the service can be penalised. However, the next step has been to work with industry to develop codes that require service providers to be more proactive in preventing Class 1 content being shared between their users.

Will the standard be effective?

X wants its platform to be treated as exempt, and governed by the similar but less stringent Social Media Code instead. Whatever the Federal Court decides, however, there are other issues to consider.

Part of the difficulty with the scheme is that it relies on harmful content coming to the attention of the eSafety commissioner. This usually happens when an end-user makes a complaint.

But our recent research, which surveyed 2,520 representative Australians and will be published later this year, found that only about 10% of users who were the target of digital harms reported them to the eSafety commissioner. Among those who had witnessed harmful content or behaviour, only 6% reported. About 40% of Australians don’t believe reporting will make any difference.

Another issue with the industry standards raised by digital rights activists is that it may require services to investigate user messages even when end-to-end encryption of messages is used. That may have serious privacy implications.

A global treaty could help

This ties into broader problems with the online safety framework.

Much of the focus has been on managing platforms and getting platforms to police users and content – a necessary approach to avoid penalising individuals and overwhelming courts.

However, service provider policing often fails to meet the norms of due process, such as transparency and the right to appeal decisions.

It also makes platforms and messaging providers the “arbiters” of free speech and censorship, instead of governments, courts and communities.

While setting standards on platforms is one part of the solution, we need to continue developing remedies to protect users. This may include global agreements and multilateral treaties, similar to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, so all countries can share the burden locally for digital harms that occur across jurisdictions, and ensure due process and the protection of privacy.

Rob Cover, Professor of Digital Communication and Director of the RMIT Digital Ethnography Research Centre, RMIT University

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

Since Ozempic hit the public consciousness as a weight-loss medication, one in eight Americans have tried it (or a version of it) to lose weight.

This is remarkable: less than five years ago, most people reading this would not have known these drugs existed. As availability of Ozempic and other GLP-1 based medications has increased, so has controversy. Are they worsening “fat stigma”? Are they safe in the long term? Why aren’t they more affordable? Aren’t they just a chemical solution to a man-made problem?

Review: Diet, Drugs and Dopamine: The Promise – and Peril – of the Latest Weight-Loss Drugs – David A. Kessler (Text Publishing)

When the former head of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr David A. Kessler, suggests answers to these questions, it is worth pausing to listen. As a GP who regularly treats patients with obesity, I found many of his arguments convincing. In Diet, Drugs and Dopamine, he writes:

We can now effectively treat obesity [with GLP-1 injectables], even if we are only masking the root cause. It may seem absurd to have one industry make us sick only to have another industry develop drugs to treat that sickness.

Provocatively, he directly likens the smoking industry of the past to today’s food industry: specifically, ultra-formulated foods, which are foods with “super-normal combinations of fat and sugar, fat and salt, and carbs and salt, that are always within reach”. These foods have been modified from their original form to such an extent they are barely recognisable, but highly palatable and easily transportable.

Speaking from experience

Kessler speaks not only with the authority of decades of scientific understanding, but with the empathy of personal understanding: he struggles with obesity himself and used GLP-1 drugs to cut his body fat in half: from 30% to 15%.

He told the Washington Post the side effects were unpleasant, including bloating, intense chills and “occasional sharp abdominal pains”. He also said these drugs could “halt the trajectory of chronic disease in the United States if used under medical supervision and by the right people”.

This book deep dives into why Kessler personally, along with millions around the world, struggles to lose weight and keep it off. He points out:

I have two advanced degrees […] I have been Dean of two medical schools. I’ve run the FDA. No-one would ever accuse me of not having discipline and determination.

If managing weight were simply about sufficient education and willpower, Kessler – for one – would not struggle with it. But he does. His book invites readers to lay down their assumptions and be open to new ways of thinking about obesity.

He is not presenting anything new. His unique contribution here is the drawing together of insights from various fields of research (addiction, endocrinology, obesity medicine), telling a compelling story about why obesity is so prevalent and difficult to treat. It is a story of many influences: including biology, psychology and even the economy.

Weight is a health issue

In some ways, this is a dense read. Kessler’s references (at the end) take up a full third of the book. But in other ways, it’s an easy read. He writes in a narrative style, weaving conversations with researchers into his personal story of struggle. In this way, he pre-empts reader arguments, showing us how his views differ from others.

For example, he gives voice to the opinions of the “Body Positivity” movement – which advocates for respect and acceptance of all body sizes – while still concluding losing weight is something we need to aim for. He recognises weight is not a cosmetic issue, but a health issue: many serious diseases, like heart failure, stroke, rheumatioid arthritis and diabetes, share obesity as a risk factor.

Our society’s failure to act on obesity will lead to increasing illness, Kessler argues. He backs this – and all his claims – with pages of data, which he presents in relatable forms. For example, 13 types of cancer have an increased risk with obesity. A man with a BMI greater than 40 gets nine years shaved off his life.

Kessler structures the book in four parts. The first, provocatively, is about the addictive power of food. This way of viewing food underpins the rest of the book. Part 2 explains the complex biology of weight gain and loss. (Spoiler: it’s not just about counting calories and exercising.) Part 3 outlines the role of GLP-1 medications in sustainable weight loss in a comprehensive, practical and nuanced way.

And the final part cautions readers not to rely purely on medication, pointing to environmental factors that have led to obesity in the first place, like sedentary lifestyles and diets dominated by unhealthy foods.

Ultra-formulated foods: the culprit

Humming throughout, rising to a crescendo in the last section, is the accusation of a prime mover behind the obesity epidemic: hyper-palatable foods that have been created this way on purpose by adding sugar, salt and fat. This results in both long shelf lives, and enjoyable sensations when eaten (for example: crunchy or soft). Creating these properties means significantly changing a food from its original state, or even creating it from scratch in a laboratory.

He wisely refuses to get dragged into discussing “ultra-processed foods” (UPFs), which have become a politically contentious topic. Debate around the exact definition of a “UPF” has allowed the food industry to distract and deflect from their potential harms. By using the term “ultra-formulated food”, Kessler neatly side-steps those with a vested interest in defending UPFs.

The problem, he contends, lies in the addictive qualities of ultra-formulated foods, which – coupled with diminished nutrient content – cause metabolic mayhem when we eat them. Our glucose levels spike and visceral fat builds up.

Ultra-formulated foods are abundant, too. There are reasonable arguments that processing food has been essential in staving off starvation. But instead of helping us avoid illness, ultra-formulated products are “weapons against our biology”.

The FDA, his prior workplace, sets guidelines around food safety, he points out. But, he asks, why there are no regulations protecting the community from food that is heavily processed to become hyper-palatable and energy dense, but low in nutrition?

What needs to happen?

Kessler’s final call is directed at both individuals and communities. He calls on us to untangle ourselves from dependence on ultra-formulated foods. And he wants communities to collectively demand a healthier future.

Kessler is methodical in his explanations, continually anticipating and rebutting potential arguments. Much of what he says is compelling – but the real question is what each of us chooses to do about it.

His take-homes in a nutshell: ultra-formulated foods are addictive. GLP-1 injectables treat that addiction. But the ultimate solution is to regulate ultra-formulated foods in the first place.

Natasha Yates, General Practitioner, PhD Candidate, Bond University

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

After two years of publishing the gender pay gaps of Australia’s private-sector companies, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has released public-sector employer data for the first time.

The report shows a stark contrast between the private and public sectors. The Commonwealth public sector has a gender pay gap of 6.4%, far less than the equivalent gap of 21.1% in the private sector.

The agency attributes a big part of the “substantially better” outcome in the public sector to the achievement of gender balance at managerial and board levels.

Women’s representation in senior and governance roles doesn’t just narrow the pay gap at the top. It can also change workplace cultures and embed more gender-equitable practices that ripple through to all occupational levels.

The agency says public-sector employers have achieved this outcome by “long-term and deliberate actions that address gender equality”. These include conducting a gender pay gap analysis and formulating a gender-equality strategy.

The public sector’s results also illustrate the power of setting targets. The Australian government has set – and now achieved – targets for women to hold 50% of all Australian government board positions.

Who’s performing well?

Of the 120 public-sector employers in the Workplace Gender Equality Agency’s dataset, 55 have a gender pay gap that falls into the target range of between –5% and +5%.

Several have a gender pay gap in total remuneration at or very close to zero. These include the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Department of Treasury, Department of Social Services and the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

A handful have a slight positive gender pay gap in favour of women, including the Productivity Commission.

Where is there room for improvement?

To support greater transparency, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency has published a searchable database of Commonwealth public sector employers. This is broken down by each department and agency.

The largest gender gaps in median total remuneration are reported by the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (50.4%) and Coal Mining Industry Corporation (31.7%).

Closer to the middle of the pack, the Australian Federal Police reports a gender pay gap of 12.2%. The Reserve Bank of Australia has a gap of 11.5%, and Australia Post 8.6%.

The data does not include elected officials such as members of parliament.

All up, half of Commonwealth public-sector employers have a gender pay gap larger than 5%, which the agency deems the acceptable maximum.

But this is still a better performance than in the private sector, where 60% of companies exceeded the 5% threshold.

How much less are women earning?

Women working in Australia’s public sector earn on average A$8,200 less per year than their male colleagues.

The data cover both the Australian Public Service (APS) (which is directly responsible for the delivery of government services) and non-APS organisations (which deliver services on behalf of the government).

Within the APS workforce, men’s average total remuneration of $128,503 compares to women’s $121,146. This equates to a 5.7% gap.

In public-sector agencies outside the APS, this gender pay gap widens to 8.8%. Men’s average salary of $127,354 compares to women’s $116,157.

In agencies outside the APS, more of this gender gap – 5.6 percentage points – is due to men being paid more in bonuses, overtime and superannuation. Within the APS, these above-base payments contribute only 1.1 percentage points to the overall gap.

The role of discretionary above-base payments in widening the gap in total remuneration is similar to the dynamics of the private sector, where there is also greater scope for individual negotiation.

Research shows negotiation practices are laced with gender biases.

More standardised recruitment, promotion and wage-setting practices in the public sector, compared with private companies, mean there’s less scope for personal subjectivity and implicit biases in hiring, promotion and salary decisions.

Turning data into action

This is the first year the Commonwealth public sector’s performance on gender equality has been published at employer level. It follows changes to legislation in 2022 requiring public sector employers to report their gender equality indicators to WGEA from 2023, similar to the obligations of large private companies.

The point of publishing gender pay gaps is to spark awareness and motivate employer action.

Three in four public sector employers report they have taken action after conducting a gender pay gap analysis. Of these actions, one in four employers have corrected instances of unequal pay.

With a heightened awareness of the benefits of flexible work, almost all public-sector employers (96%) reported “flexible working is promoted throughout the organisation”.

But there is scope to improve the practical implementation of flexible work policies.

Only 56% of public-sector employers offer an online option for all team meetings. Only 43% provide support to managers to ensure performance evaluations are not unfairly biased against staff who work remotely or hybrid. And only 5% report that management positions can be designed as part-time.

With this greater transparency, there will be opportunity to monitor changes in future to look for ongoing improvements in gender-equality practices and outcomes.

It’s in the interests of fostering a more equitable, productive and effective public sector for all.

Leonora Risse, Associate Professor in Economics, University of Canberra

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

If you’re browsing the supermarket fridge for reduced-fat milk, it’s easy to be confused by the many different types.

You can find options labelled skim, skimmed, skinny, no fat, extra light, lite, light, low fat, reduced fat, semi skim and HiLo (high calcium, low fat).

So what’s the difference between two of these common milks – skim milk and light milk? How are they made? And which one’s healthier?

What do they contain?

Skim milk

In Australia and New Zealand, skim milk is defined as milk that contains no more than 1.5% milk fat and has at least 3% protein. On the nutrition information panel this looks like less than 1.5 grams of fat and at least 3g protein per 100 millilitres of milk.

But the fat content of skim milk can be as low as 0.1% or 0.1g per 100mL.

Light milk

Light milk is sometimes spelled “lite” but they’re essentially the same thing.

While light milk is not specifically defined in Australia and New Zealand, the term “light” is defined for food generally. If we apply the rules to milk, we can say light milk must contain no more than 2.4% fat (2.4g fat per 100mL).

In other words, light milk contains more fat than skim milk.

You can find the fat content by reading the “total fat per 100mL” on the label’s nutrition information panel.

How about other nutrients?

The main nutritional difference between skim milk and light milk, apart from the fat content, is the energy content.

Skim milk provides about 150 kilojoules of energy per 100mL whereas light milk provides about 220kJ per 100mL.

Any milk sold as cow’s milk must contain at least 3% protein (3g protein per 100mL of milk). That includes skim or light milk. So there’s typically not much difference there.

Likewise, the calcium content doesn’t differ much between skim milk and light milk. It is typically about 114 milligrams to 120mg per 100mL.

You can check these and other details on the label’s nutrition information panel.

How are they made?

Skim milk and light milk are not made by watering down full-cream milk.

Instead, full-cream milk is spun at high speeds in a device called a centrifuge. This causes the fat to separate and be removed, leaving behind milk containing less fat.

Who should be drinking what?

Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend we drink mostly reduced-fat milk – that is, milk containing no more than 2.4g fat per 100mL. Skim milk and light milk are both included in that category.

The exception is for children under two years old, who are recommended full-cream milk to meet their growing needs.

The reason our current guidelines recommend reduced-fat milk is that, since the 1970s, reduced-fat milk has been thought to help with reducing body weight and reducing the risk of heart disease. That’s because of its lower content of saturated fat and energy (kilojoules/calories) than full cream milk.

However, more recent evidence has shown drinking full-cream milk is not associated with weight gain or health risks. In fact, eating or drinking dairy products of any type may help reduce the risk of obesity and other metabolic disorders (such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes), especially in children and adolescents.

The science in this area continues to evolve. So the debate around whether there are health benefits to choosing reduced-fat milk over full cream milk is ongoing.

Whether or not there any individual health benefits from choosing skim milk or light milk over full cream will vary depending on your current health status and broader dietary habits.

For personalised health and dietary advice, speak to a health professional.

Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology

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

The outbreak of the deadly “mud bug” melioidosis in north Queensland has not yet abated since it began at the start of this year.

So far there have been 221 cases and 31 deaths from the disease in 2025. This encompasses a 400% increase in cases in Cairns and a 600% increase in Townsville compared to the average over previous years.

Fortunately, case numbers have begun to drop. Queensland Health reports new cases weekly, and in the most recent reporting period – up to May 6 – seven new cases were recorded, down from a peak of 29 cases in the week to February 16.

However, people are still contracting and dying from this disease. So what’s keeping it active in Queensland, and are there any promising vaccines on the horizon?

What is melioidosis?

Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei which lives in soil, mud and groundwater, usually not causing any harm. But B. pseudomallei can cause disease in humans and animals if it enters the skin via a cut. Or it can be inhaled in water droplets and enter the lungs.

The disease generally takes one to four weeks to establish itself, meaning people don’t develop symptoms immediately after they’ve been exposed.

Melioidosis most commonly presents as pneumonia. However chronic skin infections, called cutaneous infections, occur in 10–20% of cases. Melioidosis can also lead to blood infections.

Symptoms of the pneumonia form include fever, headache, difficulty breathing, muscle pain, chest pain and confusion.

We don’t understand cutaneous infections as well as we do lung infections with melioidosis. Cutaneous infections are also less responsive to standard antibiotic treatments due to the nature of the chronic wound. For example, the bacteria can form a slimy layer called a biofilm. This can help the bacteria produce proteins which can block the antibiotics from working.

Melioidosis occurs most commonly in tropical areas, such as Thailand. But it’s also regarded as endemic in northern Australia, occurring in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Nonetheless, the scale of the current outbreak in north Queensland is highly unusual.

Anyone can contract melioidosis, but certain medical conditions can increase a person’s risk. These include diabetes, liver, kidney or lung disease, cancer, or other conditions which might compromise the patient’s immune system.

During the current Queensland outbreak 95% of cases have been in people with risk factors such as diabetes or lung disease.

How is melioidosis spreading in Queensland?

Melioidosis increases during periods of high rainfall and flooding, and this has been the case in the current outbreak. However, patterns have begun to emerge suggesting the bacterium may now be spreading in other ways.

Experts have suggested that while the Townsville cases can be explained by flooding and correlate to high levels of rainfall, the Cairns cases do not match with this explanation.

One suggestion is that the construction of the Bruce Highway upgrade south of Cairns has caused an increase in cases due to clay soil particles becoming airborne during construction.

It’s not an entirely new idea. The movement of soil during highway construction and urban expansion has been investigated as a potential mode of transmission during previous spikes of melioidosis cases in far north Queensland.

The infrastructure body responsible for the upgrade has pledged to follow expert health advice as investigations continue.

Could B. pseudomallei be evolving and becoming more deadly?

This potential change in how the disease is spreading, and the increased number of cases and deaths, might indicate the organism is evolving to spread more easily and become more deadly. Genome analysis is ongoing to determine this.

Notably, bacteria found in the environment can acquire genes from other bacteria in soil and water. This may give them enhanced abilities to survive in unfavourable conditions and be more resilient to changes in their natural habitat, as well as potentially infect human hosts more effectively.

In a warming climate with increased rainfall, the bacterium behind melioidosis is likely to be a prime candidate for this kind of change.

How about treatments and protection?

There’s currently only one way to treat melioidosis, which involves receiving intravenous antibiotics in hospital for several weeks, followed by up to six months of oral antibiotics.

Against a backdrop of urgent calls for more research and increased public awareness around melioidosis, there may be hope on the horizon.

Researchers at the University of California have developed a vaccine which produces a protein that mimics the proteins in B. pseudomallei, leading to an immune response against this bacterium. The vaccine has been successful in mouse models and will continue to a further animal trial, which, if successful, will lead to human trials.

It seems melioidosis is a problem that’s not going away.

If you live in an affected region such as tropical Queensland or the NT, limit exposure to mud and water as much as possible. If you’re spending time in muddy areas, use appropriate personal protective equipment such as gloves and boots. You can also protect yourself by covering any open wounds and wearing a respirator if you’re working closely with water.

Monitor for symptoms and see a doctor if you feel unwell. More information is also available from Queensland Health.

Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University

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

Australia’s underwhelming performance at the 2024 Paris Paralympics has raised serious questions about how well our adaptive sport system is working. The Paris games returned our lowest medal tally since 1988, from our smallest team since 2004.

This result hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Ahead of the 2032 Brisbane games, now is the time to rebuild and strengthen grassroots disability sport across the country.

To do this, we must focus on inclusive, sustainable and community-driven approaches that truly support people with disabilities from the very start.

Issues at grassroots level

Grassroots disability clubs are vital to the health of para sports in Australia.

These local clubs give people with disabilities the chance to be active, which supports both physical and mental wellbeing.

Just as importantly, they provide places where people can build friendships, feel included and develop a sense of belonging.

Many paralympians start their journey in these environments; they’re not just places to play sport, they’re key to developing future talent.

Current and former athletes have called for more and better participation opportunities in adaptive sport.

Paralympian Leanne Del Toso called for more support for women’s wheelchair basketball after Australia missed qualification for the Rio and Paris Olympics.

It shouldn’t be about funding, it shouldn’t be about access, it should be about equality.

The message is clear: we need to rebuild from the ground up, starting with a stronger and more supportive grassroots system.

What are the main problems?

Australia’s para sports system is often fragmented and inconsistent, especially compared to mainstream sports such as swimming or athletics, which usually have national pathways, structured support and a clear line from beginner to elite.

But adaptive sports are often run in disconnected ways across different states, clubs or organisations.

This system is often difficult to navigate for aspiring athletes.

Another big part of the problem is the “mainstreaming” of adaptive sport: instead of creating separate systems designed specifically for people with disabilities, many sports fold disability sport into their existing structures.

While this can sound inclusive, it often creates problems.

Research shows this approach can actually narrow who gets to participate.

Many organisations and leagues tend to follow a standard competitive model that doesn’t work for everyone, especially those with more complex needs.

Even well-meaning attempts at inclusion can backfire if they don’t involve people with disability.

That’s why researchers now believe adaptive sport only works when paired with real disability-specific knowledge, community consultation and strong systems of accountability.

Without that, we risk reinforcing the very inequalities we’re trying to fix.

Another problem is the lack of participation data.

One of the main sources of sports participation data in Australia is the AusPlay survey.

This gives some insight into who is playing sport and being active, but it doesn’t give enough detail when it comes to disability sport.

For instance, while the AusPlay survey indicates 51% of adults with a disability engage in physical activity once per week, it lacks specificity regarding the activities these people participate in.

This makes it hard for policymakers, funders and sport organisations to make smart decisions, as they don’t have enough information about who is participating, where the gaps are or how things are changing over time.

With better data, we could target resources where they’re needed most, especially in communities that currently miss out.

Some possible solutions

If we want to fix these problems, we need a different approach.

That starts with co-design: involving people with disabilities in designing the systems, programs and policies that affect them.

It’s not just about asking for feedback, it’s about giving real decision-making power.

A great example of this is Wheelchair Sports NSW/ACT, which has embraced co-design and made it a core part of its programs.

This has led to a 380% increase in membership over five years, and a record number of affiliated clubs across their network.

This success shows what’s possible when sport organisations stop designing systems for people with disabilities and start designing with them.

When people feel valued and heard, they are more likely to get involved and stay involved.

Recent initiatives, such as the new para unit launched by the Western Australian Institute of Sport (the original home of Australia’s Paralympic movement), demonstrate promising steps towards a more cohesive para sport system.

But grassroots sport isn’t about medals. While we all love to celebrate paralympic success, local sport has a much bigger role to play.

It helps people with disabilities stay healthy, feel included and connect with their communities. It can change lives on and off the field.

As we look to Brisbane 2032, it’s clear paralympic success doesn’t start at the top. It starts in the community and on local fields.

If we invest now in grassroots sport and centre people with disabilities in the design and delivery of programs, we can create a stronger and more inclusive future for para sport in Australia.

The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of Mick Garnett to discussions on the future of adaptive sport in Australia.

Katherine Raw, Lecturer, Sport Management, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Since the recent explosion of widely available generative artificial intelligence (AI), it now seems that a new AI tool emerges every week.

With varying success, AI offers solutions for productivity, creativity, research, and also accessibility: making products, services and other content more usable for people with disability.

The award-winning 2024 Super Bowl ad for Google Pixel 8 is a poignant example of how the latest AI tech can intersect with disability.

Directed by blind director Adam Morse, it showcases an AI-powered feature that uses audio cues, haptic feedback (where vibrating sensations communicate information to the user) and animations to assist blind and low-vision users in capturing photos and videos.

The ad was applauded for being disability inclusive and representative. It also demonstrated a growing capacity for – and interest in – AI to generate more accessible technology.

AI is also poised to challenge how audio description is created and what it may sound like. This is the focus of our research team.

Audio description is a track of narration that describes important visual elements of visual media, including television shows, movies and live performances. Synthetic voices and quick, automated visual descriptions might result in more audio description on our screens. But will users lose out in other ways?

AI as people’s eyes

AI-powered accessibility tools are proliferating. Among them is Microsoft’s Seeing AI, an app that turns your smartphone into a talking camera by reading text and identifying objects. The app Be My AI uses virtual assistants to describe photos taken by blind users; it’s an AI version of the original app Be My Eyes, where the same task was done by human volunteers.

There are increasingly more AI software options for text-to-speech and document reading, as well as for producing audio description.

Audio description is an essential feature to make visual media accessible to blind or vision impaired audiences. But its benefits go beyond that.

Increasingly, research shows audio description benefits other disability groups and mainstream audiences without disability. Audio description can also be a creative way to further develop or enhance a visual text.

Traditionally, audio description has been created using human voices, script writers and production teams. However, in the last year several international streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime have begun offering audio description that’s at least partially generated with AI.

Yet there are a number of issues with the current AI technologies, including their ability to generate false information. These tools need to be critically appraised and improved.

Is AI coming for audio description jobs?

There are multiple ways in which AI might impact the creation – and end result – of audio description.

With AI tools, streaming services can get synthetic voices to “read” an audio description script. There’s potential for various levels of automation, while giving users the chance to customise audio description to suit their specific needs and preferences. Want your cooking show to be narrated in a British accent? With AI, you could change that with the press of a button.

However, in the audio description industry many are worried AI could undermine the quality, creativity and professionalism humans bring to the equation.

The language-learning app Duolingo, for example, recently announced it was moving forward with “AI first” development. As a result, many contractors lost jobs that can now purportedly be done by algorithms.

On the one hand, AI could help broaden the range of audio descriptions available for a range of media and live experiences.

But AI audio description may also cost jobs rather than create them. The worst outcome would be a huge amount of lower-quality audio description, which would undermine the value of creating it at all.

Can we trust AI to describe things well?

Industry impact and the technical details of how AI can be used in audio description are one thing.

What’s currently lacking is research that centres the perspectives of users and takes into consideration their experiences and needs for future audio description.

Accuracy – and trust in this accuracy – is vitally important for blind and low-vision audiences.

Cheap and often free, AI tools are now widely used to summarise, transcribe and translate. But it’s a well-known problem that generative AI struggles to stay factual. Known as “hallucinations”, these plausible fabrications proliferate even when the AI tools are not asked to create anything new – like doing a simple audio transcription.

If AI tools simply fabricate content rather than make existing material accessible, it would even further distance and disadvantage blind and low-vision consumers.

We can use AI for accessibility – with care

AI is a relatively new technology, and for it to be a true benefit in terms of accessibility, its accuracy and reliability need to be absolute. Blind and low-vision users need to be able to turn on AI tools with confidence.

In the current “AI rush” to make audio description cheaper, quicker and more available, it’s vital that the people who need it the most are closely involved in how the tech is deployed.

Kathryn Locke, Associate Researcher in Digital Disability, Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University and Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University

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

The Reserve Bank of Australia cut the official interest rate for the second time this year, as it lowered forecasts for Australian economic growth and pointed to increasing uncertainty in the world economy.

The bank lowered the cash rate target by 0.25%, from 4.1% to 3.85%, saying inflation is expected to remain in the target band.

All the big four banks swiftly passed the cut on to households with mortgages. This will save a household with a $500,000 loan about $80 a month.

Announcing the cut, the Reserve Bank stressed in its accompanying statement it stands ready to reduce rates again if the economic outlook deteriorates sharply.

The Board considered a severe downside scenario and noted that monetary policy is well placed to respond decisively to international developments if they were to have material implications for activity and inflation in Australia.

Inflation is back under control

The latest Consumer Price Index showed that inflation remained around the middle of the Reserve Bank’s medium-term target band of 2-3% in the March quarter.

The Reserve Bank was also comforted by the underlying inflation measure called the “trimmed mean”. This measure excludes items with the largest price movements up or down.

The bank noted that it has returned to the 2–3% target band for the first time since 2021. This suggests inflation is not just temporarily low due to temporary factors such as the electricity price rebates.

In February, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock conceded the bank had arguably been “late raising interest rates on the way up”. It did not want to be late on the way down.

Perhaps Bullock is being unduly modest. The central bank looks to have judged well the extent of monetary tightening. It did not raise interest rates as much as its peers, but still got inflation back to the target.

Unemployment remains low

Last week, we got an update on the strength of the labour market. Unemployment stayed at 4.1%. It has now been around 4% since late 2023, a remarkable achievement.

This is below the 4.5% the Reserve Bank had regarded as the level consistent with steady inflation (in economic jargon, the NAIRU). But neither prices nor wages have accelerated.

Households and businesses may turn cautious

In its updated forecasts, the bank sees headline inflation dropping to 2.1% by mid-year but going back to 3.0% by the end of the year, as the electricity subsidies are removed. By mid-2027, it will be back near the middle of the 2-3% target.

Underlying inflation is forecast to stay around the middle of the target band throughout.

The Reserve Bank cut its forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) to 2.1% by December, down from its previous forecast of 2.4% made in February. It said:

Economic policy uncertainty has increased sharply alongside recent global developments, and this is expected to prompt some households to increase their precautionary savings and some businesses to postpone some investment decisions.

The unemployment rate is expected to increase to 4.3% by the end of the year and remain there through 2026.

Cost of living pressures look set to ease, as real household disposable income grows faster than population.

As the Reserve Bank governor told a media conference on Tuesday:

There’s now a new set of challenges facing the economy, but with inflation declining and the unemployment rate relatively low, we’re well positioned to deal with them. The board remains prepared to take further action if that is required.

Economic and policy ‘unpredictability’

The main uncertainty in the global economy is how the trade war instigated by US President Donald Trump will play out. According to one count, he has announced new or revised tariff policies about 50 times.

“The outlook for the global economy has deteriorated since the February statement. This is due to the adverse impact on global growth from higher tariffs and widespread economic and policy unpredictability,” the bank noted.

The US tariff pauses on the highest rates on China and most other nations are due to be in place for 90 days. But more measures may be announced before then.

This uncertainty is likely to be stifling trade, and even more so investment decisions by companies in the face of rapidly changing policies. And it will weaken the global economy.

In her press conference, Bullock said the board’s judgement was that “global trade developments will overall be disinflationary for Australia”. Not only is the global outlook weaker, but some goods no longer being sold to the US could be diverted to Australia.

Where will interest rates go from here?

The Reserve Bank’s updated forecasts assume interest rates will fall further, to 3.4% by the end of the year.

But this is just a reflection of what financial markets are implying. It is not necessarily what the bank itself expects to do. It is certainty not a promise of what they will do.

But the Reserve Bank still regards its stance as “restrictive”, or weighing on growth. So if it continues to believe inflation will stay within the target band, or the global outlook deteriorates, it will cut rates further.

John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

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

Videos of men removing their eyelashes, by trimming or shaving, have been circulating on social media in recent weeks. This trend is based on the idea short eyelashes look more masculine.

Hair can tell us a lot about our social and cultural values. As the Canadian sociologist Anthony Synnott says, it can represent embedded ideas about biological sex, such as “opposite sexes have opposite hair” and “head hair and body hair are opposite”.

But do sex differences have any basis in biology? And what about the health risks of tampering with your lashes?

If the idea of a buzzing razor coming near your eyes makes you nervous, there’s good reason.

Does sex determine eyelash length?

Most warm-blooded animals have eyelashes. Human eyelashes begin to develop in the womb at around seven weeks and by six months they are fully formed.

Typically, we have 100 to 150 lashes on the upper eyelid that grow in two or three rows. There are half as many eyelashes on the lower lid.

Eyelash length is usually around one-third of the eye’s width. Lower lashes are shorter (6–8 millimetres) compared to the upper lashes (8–12mm).

The density, length, thickness and curl of eyelashes are determined by your genetics. But there is no evidence these anatomical differences are linked to sex.

This means the idea men “naturally” have short eyelashes – and women’s are longer, darker and thicker – is based in culture, not biology.

Regardless of your sex or gender, eyelashes serve several important functions.

What are eyelashes for?

Protection

Eyelashes provide a barrier against dust, debris, bugs, bacteria and chemicals (such as hairspray and deodorants), stopping them from entering the eyes.

Tears form a fluid film that covers the eye to keep it lubricated. Eyelashes also prevent air drying out this film.

From an aerodynamic point of view, medium-length lashes (8mm) are ideal for stopping the eye’s surface from drying out. Very short lashes can expose the surface to air, while very long lashes can channel more air flow towards it.

Eyelashes also shield our eyes from glare, reducing how much light enters the eye by up to 24%.

Sensation

Eyelashes are highly sensitive, so touching the eyelashes triggers a blink reflex that makes the eye shut. This protects it from unwanted materials.

Blinking also activates the release of tears and distributes them across the eyes’ surface.

Social interaction

Eyelashes help us communicate. Blinking slowly can signal attentiveness or flirtation – and eyelashes make this more appealing.

Wearing mascara or fake eyelashes emphasises the eyelashes and can make the eyes look larger and more expressive.

So, what if you don’t have eyelashes?

People can lose their eyelashes for various reasons.

For example, chemotherapy for cancer often results in hair loss – including eyelashes – as does alopecia, an autoimmune condition which causes the body to attack its own hair follicles.

Some people also pull out their eyelashes when they are anxious or stressed.

If you can’t stop this behaviour, and your eyelash loss is noticeable and affects day-to-day life, you may have a condition called trichotillomania.

The compulsion to cut or shave hair (rather than pull it out) is known as trichotemnomania.

If you’re worried, you should speak to your doctor to get support.

No matter how hair is lost, without eyelashes you will likely feel greater discomfort. More foreign particles can enter the eye – exposing you to greater risk of infection – and you will blink more to try to wash them away.

More air on the eyes’ surface can also make them feel dry and irritated.

Is removing eyelashes risky?

Putting sharp blades near your eyes means if you are bumped, slip, or even blink, you risk injury to the eyelid or cornea (the clear, dome-shaped covering at the front of your eyeball).

Anything that goes near your eye should be very clean. If blades aren’t sterile, bacteria can lead to blepharitis (eyelid inflammation) or conjunctivitis (“pink eye”).

Will shaved eyelashes grow back?

Yes. If eyelashes are trimmed or shaved, the hair bulb and follicle (the sac surrounding the hair) remains in the skin of the eyelid, allowing the hair to keep growing.

Eyelashes grow at an average rate of 0.12mm per day, or 3.6mm a month. It could take up to three or four months for your eyelashes to grow back to their typical length.

Shaving does not affect the length, thickness and darkness of your regrown eyelashes – these will grow back the same as before (unless there has been irreversible damage to the follicle itself).

Sex, gender, and eyelashes

Perceptions of sex and gender differences in eyelashes persist, thanks in part to social norms and media portrayals.

For example, a 2023 study from the United States surveyed 319 people (142 men and 177 women) of diverse ethnic backgrounds about eyelash length in women. Men and women of all backgrounds said images of female faces with no or short eyelashes were the least attractive, regardless of ethnicity.

Cartoon characters illustrate how deeply ingrained and socially constructed these gender differences are. Compare Minnie Mouse’s long, thick lashes with Mickey Mouse, who has none.

This is not a thing of the past, as the masculine- and feminine-presenting characters of a popular current children’s cartoon Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir still demonstrate.

In reality, all bodies and features, including eyelashes, are naturally diverse.

Body autonomy means recognising that personal choices about appearance are valid and should be respected without judgement. But when altering your body, it’s important to also know the health risks.

Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology, James Cook University and Monika Zimanyi, Associate Professor in Anatomy, James Cook University

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

Nicolas Cage has made a career from his highly entertaining scenery chewing. He follows a performance style he calls “Nouveau Shamanic” – an exaggerated form of method acting where he acts according to the character’s impulses. This allows for the wild, unpredictable outbursts his characters are known for.

Cage films are also usually about masculinity: its worst excesses, the parameters restricting it, and what ennobling versions of it might look like.

The Surfer, a new Australian feature film from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, leans right into masculinity as a theme.

Our unnamed protagonist (Cage) is returning to his former Australian home from the United States. He is newly divorced, and trying to buy a beachside property to win back his family.

He takes his teenage son (Finn Little) for a surf near the property, but they are run off by an unfriendly pack of locals.

Returning alone to the beachside car park to make some calls, he is besieged there over the next several days by the same gang. They are led by a terrifying middle-aged Andrew Tate-esque influencer, Scally (Julian McMahon), who runs the beach like a combination of a frat bro party and wellness retreat.

The protagonist’s fast descent into dishevelled, dehydrated delirium as the group’s hazing escalates, fuels much of the first two acts.

Fish out of water

It is impossible to think of an actor other than Cage who could make a character like this so enjoyable to watch.

From the first moments, he seems pathetic: giving his uninterested teenage son metaphorical speeches about surfing, losing arguments on the phone with his broker and real estate agent, reeking of pomposity and desperation.

The sense of a man out of his depth is compounded by his Americanness contrasting with the particular brand of Australian masculinity the locals display. Both types are brash and entitled, but with entirely different ways of expressing it.

Cage’s distinctively American confidence has no resistance to the terrifying switches of Australian masculinity from friendly to teasing to violent.

“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they hiss at him on first meeting, forcing him to retreat, cowed, to the car park, where he remains for most of the rest of the film.

The wide-open and the claustrophobic

What a stroke of genius it is to use this single location.

Filmed in Yallingup, Western Australia, The Surfer beautifully captures the natural surroundings, stunning views and shimmering heat of Australian coastal summer.

At the same time, a confined, interstitial semi-urban feature like a beachside car park feels so bleak and uninviting. The only amenities are an overpriced coffee cart, ancient payphone and a dingy toilet block.

As a film setting, it is both a spectacular wide-open vista and stiflingly claustrophobic – a perfect mechanism for The Surfer’s psychological horror.

It must have been attractive in getting the script funded as well. With such an affordable location, more of the budget would have been freed up for a big name like Cage.

A modern Wake in Fright

With its oppressive setting, overexposed orange and yellow light and grade, and a sweaty spiral into madness, The Surfer invites comparisons to Wake in Fright, Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 brutal depiction of Australian men and their drinking culture.

Both take place at Christmas and feature an antagonist who enjoys confidently explaining their dubious moral worldview to everyone. However, Wake in Fright’s horror lingers because we know the culture remains even after the hero escapes it. The Surfer struggles a little more in landing the ending.

For the mean, violent, misogynistic villains to be defeated, it would be unsatisfying for Cage to stoop to their level. This means – without spoiling too much – Cage remains an oddly passive character throughout the film, while others perform the avenging actions.

The only way the protagonist’s masculinity can be resurrected as upright, ethical and empowering is for the character to literally turn his back on the vengeance we’ve been waiting for him to deliver.

It’s not that the film has an inarticulate grasp of its own politics, but more that the otherwise terrific script by Thomas Martin feels written into a difficult corner.

A blast along the way

I don’t want to imply that this ending means The Surfer isn’t an absolute blast along the way. A lot of the fun is in anticipating each dreadful humiliation – and it somehow turning out worse than you could have expected.

A spilled coffee leads to drinking recycled wastewater which leads to chewing on a dead rat, and we still haven’t reached the lowest rung on the ladder of indignities that Cage’s character suffers.

In less skilled hands this could feel nasty or gross, but the hallucinatory quality of Finnegan’s direction makes it feel almost sublime. And Cage’s pleading, groaning, sobbing and gibbering feel believable and relatable.

The pathos works – and it’s pretty funny too.

The Surfer is in cinemas from today and streaming on Stan from June 15.

Grace Russell, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

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

Think about how many things you have done online today. Paid a bill? Logged into your bank account? Used social media or spent time answering emails? Maybe you have used your phone to pay at a supermarket or train station.

We are all plugged in, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But with all these conveniences comes a growing risk many Australians are unprepared for: cyber crime.

According to the most recent cyber threat report by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, more than 87,000 reports of cybercrime were made in 2023-2024. That’s a report every six minutes. And that’s just what gets reported. Many people do not even realise they have been hacked or scammed until it’s too late.

Earlier this year, Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, revealed Australians lost nearly A$319 million to scams in 2024 alone. In a recent example, cyber criminals used stolen login details to hack several major superfunds in Australia and steal a collective A$500,000 of people’s retirement savings.

A big part of this worsening problem is poor “digital hygiene”. Here are five easy ways to improve yours.

First, what exactly is ‘digital hygiene’?

Just like brushing your teeth keeps cavities away, digital hygiene is all about keeping your online life clean, safe and protected from harm.

It is a simple idea: the better your habits when using technology, the harder it is for scammers or hackers to trick you or get access to your personal information.

It means being aware of what you are sharing, whom you are trusting, and how your devices are set up. Unfortunately, most of us are probably more hygienic in bathrooms than we are online.

How should you protect yourself?

Good news: you do not need to be a computer whizz to keep clean online. Here are five simple practical steps anyone can take:

1. Stop and think before clicking

Got an unexpected message from your bank asking you to verify your account? Or a text about a missed parcel delivery with a link? Scammers love urgency. It gets people to click before they think. Instead of rushing, pause.

Ask yourself: was I expecting this? Is the sender’s email or phone number legitimate? Do not click the link, go directly to the official website or app.

2. Use strong, unique passwords

Using your pet’s name or “123456” is not going to cut it. And if you reuse passwords across websites, a breach on one site means hackers can try the same password everywhere else. This is called a credential stuffing attack, and it is how the cyber attack on superannuation funds happened earlier this year.

The best move? Begin securing your online accounts by using a password manager and updating any reused passwords, prioritising your most sensitive accounts such as emails, banking and cloud storage first.

3. Turn on multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication means you need something more than just a password to login, such as a code sent to your phone or an app such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.

It is a simple step that adds a powerful layer of protection. Even if someone guesses your password, they cannot log in without your second factor.

4. Update your apps and devices

Yes, those software updates are annoying, but they are important. Updates fix security holes that hackers can use. Make it automatic if you can, and do not ignore update prompts, especially for your operating systems such as Windows, iOS or Android. However, it is important to recognise that older devices often stop receiving updates because manufacturers stop supporting older models or are not developing updates for older devices as it can be costly.

Outdated software harbours known vulnerabilities that hackers actively can target. While keeping devices longer supports sustainability, there is a balance to strike. If your device no longer receives security updates, it may be safer to responsibly recycle it and invest in a newer supported model to maintain your digital safety.

5. Be mindful of what you share

Oversharing on social media makes you an easy target. Public posts that include your birthday, where you went to school, or your pet’s name can be used to guess security questions or build convincing fake messages. Think before you post – would a stranger need to know this?

What should I do if I have been hacked?

To check if your passwords have been leaked in a breach, you can use HaveIBeenPwned – a free tool trusted by security experts.

If you have been hacked, follow the tips provided by Australian Cyber Security Centre. For example, you should change all your passwords and passcodes and use software to scan for malware on your computer.

Need more help? Visit esafety.gov.au for practical guides, especially for parents, teachers and young people.

Digital hygiene is not a personal responsibility, it is a collective one. We are connected through emails, group chats, workplaces and social media. One weak link can put others at risk. Talk to your family and friends about the risk of scams and how to avoid them. The more we talk about this, the more normal and effective digital hygiene becomes.

Because just like washing your hands became second nature during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping your online life clean should be a habit, not an afterthought.

Meena Jha, Head Technology and Pedagogy Cluster CML-NET, CQUniversity Australia

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

Each year, between March and October, large amounts of brown seaweed called sargassum wash up on the shores of Caribbean islands – choking beaches, damaging marine life and threatening tourism and public health. But a number of local entrepreneurs are hoping the seaweed could create an economic opportunity.

From the coast of west Africa to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, climate change is warming the temperature of the ocean. Seas are also becoming more acidic as water absorbs carbon dioxide. This all results in more intense growth of sargassum in the tropical Atlantic.

Small Caribbean nations are among the hardest hit. With 20 million tonnes of this seaweed washing up on the beaches in 2024, sargassum is fuelling an economic and public health crisis.

The piles of noxious seaweed on the Caribbean islands’ white sandy beaches are putting off visitors to these islands and probably dampening tourism revenues.

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The fishing sector is also suffering, with blooms of seaweed getting caught up in fishing nets, often ripping them due to the weight of the seaweed. This makes it hard for fishers to catch fish and make a living.

The sheer volume of sargassum left to decompose on land produces toxic fumes that have forced people on islands like Guadeloupe to leave their homes. These toxic fumes have been linked to serious health issues including respiratory infections, sleep apnoea and even preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy).

The sargassum problem is just one of many slow-onset events that are being exacerbated by climate change. But gradual changes get much less attention or resources to address the consequences than, say, alarming wildfires or flash floods.

Slow-onset events are also much harder to quantify than climate-change-induced extreme weather, such as worsening hurricanes or floods. Our team at ODI Global, a thinktank, recently published a study that estimated the cost of these at US$2,000 (£1,500) per person. Calculating the tourism lost each year due to seaweed inundation is trickier.

Despite these challenges, through small-scale, locally developed solutions, as well as government policies that support small businesses including helping them access climate finance, entrepreneurs can find sustainable solutions to help their populations thrive in an era of climate change.

Legena Henry, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, uses sargassum to produce a biofuel that can power cars. Johanan Dujon, the founder and chief executive of St. Lucia-based Algas Organics sells plant tonics made from sargassum and is trialling methods to convert sargassum into paper.

Meanwhile, other innovations are helping to minimise the impacts of sargassum in the region.

Andrés León, founder of SOS Carbon, a spin-off organisation from the mechanical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has designed a boat-based harvester to collect sargassum at sea to stop it from beaching and causing damage onshore.

Some islands, such as Jamaica, are using early warning systems, typically used to predict hurricanes, to predict the ocean currents that might bring a bumper arrival of the seaweed to their shores. This could give fishers up to 30 days notice of just how bad the inundation will be.

Barriers to scale up

But while small businesses are emerging, turning them into larger enterprises across the region remains difficult. As usual, small island nations struggle to get funding because investors think the projects are too small and won’t make enough money.

As Legena Henry recently told us on the Small Island Big Picture podcast, spending a few million dollars (as opposed to a few hundred million dollars) can feel administratively cumbersome for funders as they often have limited administrative capacity and large sums of money to manage.

Another issue is ensuring the benefits from any sargassum solutions flow into the affected Caribbean islands to support local growth and economic development.

Several opportunities exist for small island nations to generate some income from sargassum. They could, for example, sell licences to permit companies to harvest sargassum within their exclusive economic zones, which can stretch around many islands for hundreds of nautical miles.

They can also sell licences to businesses trialling or operating new sargassum technologies within their exclusive economic zones — for example, SOS Carbon has a patent pending for technology designed to sink sargassum to the seabed to store carbon.

Will sargassum continue to be a nuisance, or could it be an important renewable natural resource? It’s not yet clear.

Ideally, as with other renewable natural resources in developing countries, small island nations that own the sargassum need to find ways to extract a fair share of the value from that ownership, as well as selling to external companies that come in, remove it and profit from it.

With tax incentives and low-cost finance for domestic innovators, small islands can manage and sell sargassum and then use the proceeds to develop climate resilience measures.

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Emily Wilkinson, Principal Research Fellow, ODI Global and Emma Tompkins, Professor of Geography, Environment & Development, University of Southampton

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

This year 80 people put on their waders, grabbed buckets and quadrats (square metal frames), and splashed through the clear shallow waters. Once they reached one of the many sampling locations, marked by miniature floats, they threw their quadrats into the shallow water, ready to collect all the sea life that landed inside their quadrats.

No one had any idea what they might find living on the seabed until they reached into the water. Nearby, kids peered down at the seabed using underwater scopes, grandparents chuckled as they returned for a second forage.

This citizen science project combines coastal ecology and gastronomy. Our groups returned to the sorting stations to identify, count, weigh and measure each bucket of creatures and algae. A typical bucket might contain four living Pacific oysters, nine dead, a brush-clawed shore crab, four folded sea squirts and a handful of snails.

Then, we sat down together to eat a gourmet oyster dinner, prepared by Denmark’s top chefs. Organised by a shellfish gastrotourism association called Danmarks Skaldyrshovedstad, this oyster hunt (Østerjagten 2025) is a new annual festival held at the Salling Sund Bridge in the Danish Limfjorden, a 110-mile strait of water in northern Denmark.

The invasive Pacific oysters people had collected from the seabed then went on to be shucked and cooked. They were served au gratin, with wild flavour combinations, ranging from blueberry and blue cheese to shavings of prosciutto with strawberries and lime.

Most people told us they came along because of the quirkiness of this event, and the promise of gourmet food. Less than one in five people stated their interest in marine research as their reason for joining. Nobody attended the event just for the science.

As a coastal change researcher, this result was exciting – we were reaching an audience that might not normally engage. Even after participating, many people didn’t feel like citizen scientists. But when asked what they had learnt, most recalled facts about coastal ecology, as well as new ways to cook oysters.

Eating aliens

Back to the basket sample contents. Pacific oyster, brush-clawed shore crab, folded sea squirts: none are native to the Limfjorden or Danish waters. So many people were shocked to find out that their baskets were full of invasive species – these “alien species” are non-native and can compete with the resident species for both food and space.

Despite an increase in the number of empty Pacific oysters shells we found this year compared to last (indicating more oyster deaths), temperatures are rising in this estuary system. This means that conditions are becoming more suitable for the Pacific oysters and the other invasive creatures, many of which originate in warmer waters.

All oysters provide ecosystem services; improving water quality, forming new habitats and protecting coastlines from erosion by reducing wave energy. As Pacific oysters are bigger, rougher, tougher and much faster growing than native European oysters, they can have a greater impact on the environment.

This, however, is not necessarily a good thing. As Pacific oysters take over European oyster and blue mussel beds, birds which once fed on these species are left without vital food sources. The thick shells mean they have no predators once they reach a certain size. Beach goers can also be affected as the razor-sharp shells occupy previously sandy bathing areas.

Farming of the Pacific oyster has been banned in Denmark since 1998, yet despite this measure, Pacific oyster beds are now widespread and prevalent across Denmark’s estuaries. A single oyster can release between 50 and 200 million eggs during a spawning event each year meaning it is impossible to control them.

While children were discovering the joy of sea squirts, other marine scientists and I could have tougher conversations with adults about climate change. We explained that warming temperatures are clearly visible in the here-and-now of local monitoring data.

The Limfjorden is made up of a series of fjords and islands in northern Denmark which link the North Sea to the Kattergat (the sea between Denmark and Sweden). This area is characterised by undisturbed coastlines and rolling hills, as well as some famous geological sites. It is a popular holiday destination for those that enjoy being in nature, some Danish hyggelig (comfort) and seafood.

But the Limfjorden is subject to numerous pressures: eutrophication (when extra nutrients in the water cause toxic algal blooms), changing climate, fishing, dumping of dredged materials and the arrival of invasive species. Its resilience to these may serve as an ecological bell weather for the rest of the world’s coasts.

Our event highlights how we’ll have to deal with environmental issues together. One feedback form still sits on my desk, the participant wrote in Danish: “Forskning er alle mands projekt og at det har effekt.” This translates to “research is everyone’s project and it has an effect”.

This edible approach offers a new way of communicating complex issues such as biodiversity and the introduction of alien species. Oyster hunt-style events such as this offer an excellent opportunity for scientists like us to provide some food for thought.

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Dominique Townsend, Visiting Researcher, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton; Camille Saurel, Senior Researcher, Coastal Ecology, Technical University of Denmark, and Pedro Seabra Freitas, Senior Researcher in Coastal Ecology, Technical University of Denmark

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

Tin was the critical mineral of the ancient world. It was essential to alloy with copper to make bronze, which for many centuries was the preferred metal for tools and weapons. Yet sources of tin are very scarce – and were especially so for the rapidly growing bronze age towns, cities and states around the eastern Mediterranean.

Though major tin deposits are found in western and central Europe and in central Asia, by far the richest and most accessible tin ores are in Cornwall and Devon in southwest Britain. Yet it has been difficult to prove that these British deposits were used as a source for people in the eastern Mediterranean. So for more than two centuries, archaeologists have debated about where bronze age societies obtained their tin.

In a new study published in the journal Antiquity, our team analysed the chemistry and different forms of particular elements in tin ores and artefacts from across Britain and Europe. These included tin ingots found at prehistoric shipwreck sites at Salcombe and Erme, southwest Britain, as well as in the Mediterranean.

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This revealed that tin ingots from three ancient shipwrecks discovered off the coast of Israel and one shipwreck found off the Mediterranean coast of France originated in southwest Britain. The shipwrecks found near Israel date to around 1300BC, while the wreck from France has been dated to around 600BC.

Small farming communities across Cornwall and Devon would have dug, washed, crushed and smelted the abundant tin ore from the alluvial deposits in the region. The heavy sand to gravel-sized tin ore is in a layer buried under soft layers of barren silt, sand and gravel.

The tin ore is eroded from hard rock mineral veins and deposited by streams and rivers. There was simply no need for any complex and difficult mining of hard rock here. The tin would then have been taken to coastal locations where it could be traded.

It’s probable that the tin was then moved by traders through France to the Mediterranean coast, where it was loaded onto ships. It would make its way through flourishing trade networks between the islands of Sardinia and Cyprus before reaching markets in the east Mediterranean. The tin’s value would have increased immensely as it progressed along this 2,485 mile (4,000km) journey.

Tin is the first commodity to have been exported across the entire European continent. It was produced and traded at a potentially vast scale, but is rarely found in archaeological sites due to corrosion. But what we do known is that by 1,300BC, virtually all of Europe and the Mediterranean had widespread and consistent access to bronze.

We know of more than 100 bronze age copper mines from Ireland to Israel and from Spain to the southern Urals in Russia. Yet these would have been just a small proportion of the copper mines active at the time.

Given that bronze was typically made from 90% copper and 10% tin, if the copper produced by each of these known mines had to be matched by 10% tin, then tens or even hundreds of tonnes of tin were being traded each year – perhaps across distances of thousands of miles.

The volume, consistency and frequency of the estimated scale in the tin trade is far larger than has been previously imagined and requires an entirely new perspective on what bronze age miners and merchants were able to achieve. It is no coincidence that it is around 1,300BC that technologies from the east, such as sophisticated systems for weighing items, as well as bronze swords, reached small farming communities living on the Atlantic coasts.

A millennium later, around 320BC, Pytheas the Greek, from Massalia (modern Marseilles), journeyed by land and sea to Britain, which was at the edge of the known world at the time. Pytheas wrote the earliest account describing the island and its inhabitants in a book which is now lost, but which has partially survived in snippets quoted by later classical authors.

Pytheas described how tin in southwest Britain was extracted and traded off a tidal island he called Ictis, before being taken across the sea and down the rivers of France to the mouth of the Rhone in only 30 days. In our research, we provide the first direct evidence for the tin trade Pytheas described. We show that tin from the Rochelongue shipwreck, off the south coast of France and dating to around 600BC, came from southwest Britain.

While we can establish the movement of tin across the seas, we know very little about the markets on land in which it was traded. We are now working with a team of archaeologists from Cornwall to excavate on the tidal island of St Michael’s Mount, which has long thought to have been the island of Ictis described by Pytheas.

A pan-continental tin trade continued in all periods after the bronze age and, in the absence of written records, our approach, using different methods of analysis, allows us to determine whether the tin came from Britain.

Historical records show that during the medieval period, tin from Cornwall and Devon enjoyed a virtual European monopoly, with production continuing until the last tin mine closed in 1998.

Today, tin is once again a critical and strategic mineral, this time for use in the electronics industry. As such it forms a vital part of the tools and weapons of the 21st century. Cornwall’s tin production is also set to soon restart, reviving a 4,000 year old industry.

Benjamin Roberts, Associate Professor in Later European Prehistory, Durham University and Alan Williams, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Durham University

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

Looking for an example of how not to give a wedding speech? Try this. I was recently told an anecdote about guests at a wedding who became suspicious about the detached, cliched style of the groom’s speech, and the monotonous way it was read. Gathered at the reception afterwards, they asked ChatGPT to write a groom’s wedding speech. Bingo! The result was as good as identical.

Admittedly, whether you’re bride or groom, best man or chief bridesmaid, giving a wedding speech can be a scary prospect. But if you want to keep it personal and memorable, AI is not the answer.

So what is? You could do a lot worse than following the five canons of classical rhetoric, as recommended by the great practitioners of the ancient world, Cicero and Quintilian: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery.

1. Invention

The first canon of classical rhetoric is invention. That’s the process of discovering and developing the ideas you’ll use in your speech.

You can’t speak about everything, and no one likes a speech that drones on. Around ten minutes is all you need. That leaves you time for maybe six or seven events in the life of the person you’re talking about.

If you visualise those six or seven events, that will help you remember them. Is there a theme or characteristic that binds them together? Identify one or two, and use them to create a thread.

Good speakers often begin with a bit of a warm-up – maybe some light-hearted comments about the venue, or something in the news, or just a good joke. Plan to single out people in the audience for a mention or a laugh. Say something nice about the new family, or friendship groups you’ve discovered through the relationship.

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2. Arrangement

History is your best friend when it comes to arranging the order of your speech. The events you’ve chosen under “invention” happened in order of time. So lean on history and organise them chronologically.

Also, remember that many of the best wedding speeches often follow an arc from light to serious. You can make fun of your subject for a while, but nothing quite beats ending with love.

3. Style

This will vary depending on your role. Best men and chief bridesmaids traditionally skirt the boundaries of politeness, or sometimes go crashing through them (the worst best-man jokes are not repeatable here, nor anywhere else, and there’s no shortage of books dedicated to them).

Mostly you’ll be talking to a mixed audience. You can be a bit risqué without offending anyone (sexist jokes are not recommended). And because you’re likely to be talking to people you know, try to be informal – the “familiar style”, as it used to be called. That also means being personal. The speech has to sound like you.

4. Memory

The prospect of remembering a speech may feel daunting or impossible. But speaking without notes makes a huge difference to how you engage your audience.

Look into their eyes and they will be drawn in. The ancient Roman educator Quintilian was one among many orators to recommend visual analogues as a memory aid – often, the ground plan of a house, where a porch leads to a hall, which leads to a dining room, and so on. You populate each room with clues. They might be verbal or visual.

Anything that helps you lift your eyes from a script will increase your chances of getting the audience on your side.

5. Delivery

Calm your nerves by visualising the scene ahead of time. Most people visit their wedding venue before the big day, so take the opportunity to get used to the space, and then run it through in your head afterwards.

Try rehearsing the speech while you’re going for a walk. When it comes to the big day and the room is full, remember that you can’t speak directly to everyone. Instead, pick out maybe three or four people to focus on, in different parts of the room.

There are novel approaches and there are disasters. The double-act approach can work brilliantly, where bride and groom take turns to deliver a single speech, but it may need scripting. If the venue has the facilities, a slide show can work well. Picking out the various groups of families and friends and getting them to wave usually works as a good warmup.

When you get a laugh, ride it – start speaking again just as the laughter is dying down. Don’t wait for silence. If you get into a panic and can’t think of anything, just say you’re so happy that you’re speechless, and raise your glass for a toast.

David Roberts, Professor of English and University Orator, Birmingham City University

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

In Inconvenient Women, Jacqueline Kent shines a spotlight on some of Australia’s most radical and influential writers.

For Kent, these iconic women were “inconvenient” in many ways. They pursued careers as journalists, poets and novelists at times when many women were relegated to the private sphere. They spoke out against injustices, despite the personal cost. They lived unconventional lives, personally and professionally. And they embodied alternative forms of womanhood.

Review: Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970 – Jacqueline Kent (NewSouth)

The limits of the “wave” metaphor to categorise periods of feminist activism are well known. Kent explicitly seeks to recentre women who were in between the “waves” – that is, she is interested in those who came after the campaigns for women’s suffrage during the so-called “first wave”, but predated the revitalisation of Western feminism in the “second wave” of the 1970s.

These women writers clearly laid some important foundations for later feminist activists, especially those who called for more radical social upheaval.

The book’s subtitle – “Australian radical writers” – clarifies its focus. Kent does not explicitly discuss the criteria for inclusion, but it becomes clear that “radical” is shorthand for the most left-leaning women writers and activists in the first two thirds of the 20th century.

Accordingly, much of the book is preoccupied with tracing their varied engagement with political ideas and organisations. As Kent clarifies in the book’s first few pages: “These were all women who used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world they knew.”