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Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: 23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kayte Spector-Bagdady, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan

    For companies like 23andMe, consumers are as much the product as the DNA test kits. Veronika Oliinyk/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled that the company could sell its consumer data as part of the bankruptcy.

    The attorneys general of several states warned their citizens to delete their genetic data. California urged its citizens to request that 23andMe delete their data and destroy their spit samples. Michigan’s attorney general released a statement warning that “23andMe collects and stores some of the most sensitive personal information, our genetic code.”

    When customers originally signed up for 23andMe, they agreed to terms and conditions and a privacy notice that allows the company to use their information for research and development as well as share their data, in aggregate, with third parties. If consumers consented to additional research, which the vast majority did, the company can additionally share their individual information with third parties. 23andMe has also been clear that if it is involved in a bankruptcy or sale of assets, consumer information might be sold or transferred.

    While 23andMe has warned customers all along about everything that is currently happening, many are still surprised and concerned.

    I’m a lawyer and bioethicist who has been studying direct-to-consumer genetic testing for almost a decade. Understanding what information 23andMe has been collecting, and how it might be used if sold or shared, can help clarify concerns for consumers.

    What is 23andMe?

    In 2007, 23andMe, named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes found in a human cell, was one of the first direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies to open in the United States. It was backed by a large investment by Google, which quickly attracted the interest of other investors, allowing 23andMe to thrive when many other direct-to-consumer genetic companies went quickly out of business.

    The direct-to-consumer business model is fairly straightforward: A consumer orders a genetic test kit online, spits into a tube that comes in the mail, returns it to the company and accesses their results in an online portal. Over 15 million consumers bought 23andMe, and the vast majority consented to its research. At its peak, the company was valued at US$6 billion.

    The fate of the trove of personal information 23andMe has gathered over the years has wide-ranging implications for consumers.

    While the market initially believed in the value of 23andMe’s business model, its stock has been in decline for years, and the company owes hundreds of millions of dollars to creditors.

    Reasons for this rapid decline include a decrease in the sale of test kits after a 2023 hack of almost 7 million people’s data, as well as a failure to profit enough from providing data access to other private sector companies. Lack of private interest in 23andMe data may be related to the fact that much of the information the company collects is self-reported, which is often considered less reliable than information written down by a doctor in a medical record.

    What kind of data does 23andMe collect?

    While the saying goes “If you’re not paying, you’re the product,” 23andMe managed to convince its consumers to both pay for AND be the product. It did this by selling genetic testing kits to consumers as well as collecting a massive amount of their valuable data.

    And 23andMe collected more than just genetic data generated from consumers’ spit. Eighty-five percent of customers consented to 23andMe research, allowing their individual-level data to be used for studies. The company then collected information from survey questions about their personal health and beyond, such as drinking habits and risk tolerance.

    This means that not only does 23andMe possess the genetic data of 15 million people, but it also possesses almost a billion additional data points associated with this genetic information. This makes the 23andMe dataset potentially very private – and very valuable.

    At first, drug companies seemed to agree. For example, in 2018, 23andMe granted pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline an exclusive license to use consented customer data to develop new drugs. GlaxoSmithKline also made a $300 million equity investment in 23andMe. When 23andMe went public in 2021, its $6 billion valuation reflected the promise of this business model.

    But for over a decade, scholars, including me, have been warning that allowing 23andMe to collect and use personal data was not one that customers fully understood, or were actually comfortable with.

    What should 23andMe customers worry about?

    In response to current public concern about data privacy, 23andMe has stated that there will be no changes to how it stores and protects data during its bankruptcy proceedings. But once that stage is through, what exactly should customers worry about?

    First, law enforcement could use genetic information in civil or criminal cases. This happened in 2018, when police used the genetic testing company GEDmatch to help identify the Golden State Killer. Police pretended they were customers looking for genealogy data and sent in an old crime scene blood spot. This allowed them to connect to known suspects with blood relatives who had given their genetic information to the company as consumers. While this was in violation of GEDmatch’s own policies, the evidence was successfully used in court.

    Second, genetic information could be used to discriminate against customers if it shows that they have or are at high risk of developing a genetic disease or disorder. The federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act prohibits health insurers and employers from asking about genetic information or using it to discriminate in work or health insurance decisions. It does not, however, protect against discrimination in long-term care or life insurance.

    Giving someone your genetic, medical and personal information gives them opportunities to exploit you.
    Westend61/Getty Images

    Many of the warnings from the media and attorneys general are focused on genetic information because it is unique to only one person. But direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies also retain a massive amount of personal information from the surveys consumers are asked to complete. Much of this information could be embarrassing if it were inadvertently or intentionally revealed, such as a person’s intelligence.

    In the 2025 book “Careless People,” former Meta executive Sarah Wynn-Williams reported that Facebook would use indications of self-consciousness about personal appearance, such as deleting a selfie, to promote beauty products. If companies know such intimate details about a person, they could not only be used to sell products, but also potentially manipulate them over social media or the internet in ways they do not even realize. It could be used for targeted advertising or to build algorithms that exploit a person’s vulnerabilities.

    I believe consumers are right to be worried about how their genetic data could be misused. But the survey data containing all sorts of other personal information are at least as much, if not more, of a privacy problem. This is particularly concerning if the data is pooled together with other information available on the internet, like a dating profile, to create a more detailed – and personal – picture of an individual.

    I am deleting my own 23andMe data. In the future, I would also warn consumers against freely gifting the private sector with information about their fears, hopes, limitations and successes.

    That information is valuable to more people than just you.

    Kayte Spector-Bagdady receives funding from the National Center for Advancing Transnational Sciences and the Greenwall Foundation.

    – ref. 23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem – https://theconversation.com/23andme-is-potentially-selling-more-than-just-genetic-data-the-personal-survey-info-it-collected-is-just-as-much-a-privacy-problem-253220

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Feeling FOMO for something that’s not even fun? It’s not the event you’re missing, it’s the bonding

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jacqueline Rifkin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cornell University

    They had so much fun without me. Milko/E+ via Getty Images

    Imagine you’ve planned the trip of a lifetime for your animal-loving family: a cruise to Antarctica with the unique opportunity to view penguins, whales and other rare wildlife. Your adventure-loving kids can kayak through fjords, plunge into icy water and camp under the Antarctic sky.

    But rather than being ecstatic, as you anticipated, your kids whine about skipping an after-school scout meeting at a neighbor’s house. Missing this ordinary weekly event triggers such intense FOMO – “fear of missing out” – for them that they don’t want to go on your amazing expedition.

    If this kind of debacle sounds familiar to you – or at least if you find it perplexing – you’re not alone. The three of us are marketing professors and social psychologists who focus on how consumers make decisions and how this shapes well-being. We’ve been studying FOMO for over a decade and recently published our work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Over the years, we’ve learned what really drives intense feelings of FOMO – which explains why a run-of-the-mill meeting might feel more crucial than an over-the-top vacation.

    FOMO’s real trigger

    People use the term FOMO in many different ways. In our research, we focus on a very specific type of FOMO: the kind that occurs when people miss out on events that involve valued social connections.

    With this kind of FOMO, we found that the pain of missing out is not related to missing the actual event or opportunity – although that could be there as well. The FOMO we study happens when people miss the chance to bond with friends, co-workers or teammates they care about.

    So, the critical part of FOMO is missing out on interactions with people you value. FOMO about a group dinner at a restaurant isn’t really about the food and great lighting. Nor is FOMO about a concert just about the band’s performance. Instead, it’s about the lost opportunity to connect and make memories with people who are important to you.

    Why is this upsetting? Imagine the scenario where all your best friends go out to dinner without you. They bond and make lasting memories with each other – and you’re not there for any of it.

    If they get closer to each other, where does that leave you? What happens to your social relationships and your sense of belonging? Do you become a less important friend? Less worthy of future invites? Or even kicked out of the group altogether? The anxiety of FOMO can begin to spiral.

    People with what psychologists call an anxious attachment style chronically fear rejection and isolation from others. Because FOMO involves anxiety about future social belonging, it may not come as a surprise that people who are naturally more anxious about their friendships tend to get more intense FOMO. When we asked people in one of our studies to scroll social media until they encountered something social they missed, we found that the more anxiously attached a participant was, the more intense FOMO they experienced.

    They’ll always remember that summer cookout – and you weren’t there.
    Maskot/DigitalVision via Getty Images

    Not just missing Coachella

    Getting FOMO for an amazing event you can’t attend makes sense. But if FOMO is less about the event itself and more about the social bonding, what happens when you miss something that’s not really fun at all?

    We find that people anticipate FOMO even for unenjoyable missed events. As long as there is some form of missed social bonding, feelings of FOMO emerge. One of our studies found that people anticipated more FOMO from missing an un-fun event that their friends would be at, than a fun event without their friends.

    For better or for worse, sad and stressful events can often be emotionally bonding: Going to a funeral to support a friend, cleaning up the mess after a party, or even white-knuckling through a harrowing initiation ceremony can all offer opportunities to forge stronger connections with one another. Stressful contexts like these can be fertile grounds for FOMO.

    How to fend off FOMO

    Popular discussions about the negative consequences of FOMO tend to focus on the FOMO people feel from compulsively scrolling on social media and seeing what they missed out on. Consequently, much of the suggested advice on how to mitigate FOMO centers on turning off phones or taking a vacation from social media.

    Those recommendations may be tough for many people to execute. Plus, they address the symptoms of FOMO, not the cause.

    Our finding that the core of FOMO is anxiety about missed social relationships yields a simpler strategy to combat it: Reminding yourself of the last time you connected with close friends may provide a sense of security that staves off feelings of FOMO.

    In an experiment testing multiple interventions, we asked 788 study participants to look through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. We asked about 200 of these participants to immediately rate how much FOMO they were feeling. They averaged a 3.2 on a 1-to-7 scale.

    Another group of about 200 participants also scrolled through their social media feeds until they encountered a post of a missed social event. But before indicating how much FOMO they were feeling, we asked them to think back to a prior experience socializing and bonding with their friends. Encouragingly, this reflection exercise seemed to curtail FOMO. Their average FOMO rating was 2.7 out of 7, a significant drop.

    Reminding yourself about other good times with your pals can help keep FOMO at bay.
    AJ_Watt/E+ via Getty Images

    With the remaining participants, we tested other strategies for mitigating FOMO – thinking about the next time they might see their friends or imagining what they’d say to a FOMO-suffering friend – but the simple reflection exercise was by far the most promising.

    So, reminding yourself of the meaningful relationships you already have and reaffirming your social belonging in the moment may help combat the rush of anxiety that is characteristic of FOMO.

    And missing out on social bonding experiences doesn’t have to be anxiety-provoking. In fact, in our activity-packed, hectic lives, missing some “must-attend” events may be a welcome relief – especially if you remind yourself that your social belonging is not in jeopardy. Cue a recent wave of counter-FOMO programming called JOMO, or “Joy of Missing Out.”

    To quote Stuart Smalley, the fictional self-help guru of 1990s “Saturday Night Live,” reminding yourself that “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” might be just the trick to mitigate FOMO.

    Jacqueline Rifkin received grant funding support for this project from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI).

    Barbara Kahn received funding from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) and research support from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

    Cindy Chan received grant funding support for this project from the Marketing Science Institute (MSI).

    – ref. Feeling FOMO for something that’s not even fun? It’s not the event you’re missing, it’s the bonding – https://theconversation.com/feeling-fomo-for-something-thats-not-even-fun-its-not-the-event-youre-missing-its-the-bonding-247047

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Do union endorsements make a difference in election campaigns?

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Larry Savage, Professor, Labour Studies, Brock University

    Nearly one in three workers in Canada is covered by a union contract, making union members a potentially powerful voting bloc at election time. It should therefore come as little surprise that federal parties have been making overt efforts to secure endorsements from labour unions and the votes of their members as election day nears.

    The Canadian Union of Public Employees, United Steelworkers and Amalgamated Transit Union have already declared support for the New Democratic Party (NDP), while the Boilermakers union has endorsed the Conservatives. All parties are expected to pick up more union endorsements before election day.

    But do union endorsements actually make a difference at the ballot box?

    Our forthcoming survey-based research suggests that while most union members in Canada indicate their voting preferences are not swayed by union endorsements, satisfaction with one’s union significantly enhances the likelihood they’ll support union-endorsed candidates in federal, provincial and local elections.

    Shifts in party-union relations

    The NDP was viewed as the political arm of the labour movement and secured the lion’s share of union resources and endorsements for much of its history. However, as ties between the NDP and unions have loosened, so too have unions’ political allegiances.



    Read more:
    The NDP turns 60: It’s never truly been the political arm of organized labour

    In recent years, unions in Canada have made political endorsements that don’t align with traditional patterns. For example, after a decade of backing the provincial Liberals, many construction unions endorsed Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s re-election in the 2022 Ontario provincial election.

    Although most other unions endorsed the opposition NDP, Ford’s union support garnered significant attention and was presented as an impressive game-changer by the media and political pundits.

    In the 2025 Ontario election campaign, Ford used his commanding lead in the polls and a transactional brand of politics to lock down endorsements from an even broader cross-section of the union movement, winning additional support from firefighters, a Toronto-based hotel worker union, police unions and three large Unifor locals.

    The union endorsements were symbolically significant for the Conservative campaign because they fractured labour movement opposition to Ford and provided pro-worker cover for a government with a decidedly mixed record on labour rights.

    The Unifor endorsements, in particular, raised eyebrows because Canada’s largest private sector union had long championed anti-Conservative strategic voting, backing a mix of Liberal, NDP and Bloc candidates in election campaigns over the past decade.

    These shifts have encouraged Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to appeal more to blue-collar union members, especially in male-dominated industries, to broaden his party’s working-class support.



    Read more:
    Pierre Poilievre is popular among union members. What’s it really all about?

    The Conservatives have also no doubt been inspired by the success of United States President Donald Trump this regard.

    In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the vast majority of unions endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris over Trump. But exit polls indicated Trump still managed to win an impressive 45 per cent of the votes from union households, highlighting a potential disconnect between union leaders and their members on the question of endorsements.

    The influence of union endorsements

    Not all union endorsements carry the same weight, but they can play a strategically critical role in election campaigns depending on the dynamic.

    Our survey-based research, to be published in an upcoming volume of Labour/Le Travail, reveals that while a small majority of union members in Canada feel union endorsements won’t impact their vote, such endorsements do modestly influence a good number of union members.

    Outside of Québec, 37 per cent of surveyed union members report being “somewhat” or “much more likely” to vote for union-endorsed candidates. In Québec, the figure is slightly lower at 27 per cent. Conversely, only a small portion of members (11 per cent in the rest of Canada and 13 per cent in Québec) indicate a union endorsement will make them less likely to vote for their union’s preferred candidate.

    Importantly, workers who indicated satisfaction with their union in the workplace are significantly more likely support union-endorsed candidates in election campaigns.

    Satisfaction with one’s union matters much more to whether union members respond to an endorsement favourably than demographic factors such as age, gender, income or education level.

    The survey results also suggest that union type does not make a significant difference in assessing the influence of endorsements on union members’ voting intentions. Members of public-sector unions are no more likely to respond favourably to union endorsements than members of private-sector unions, nor are members of construction unions or members of NDP-affiliated unions.

    Lessons for parties and unions

    Even with modest impacts on voting preferences, union endorsements may prove decisive in closely contested elections, especially in communities with large numbers of union voters.

    For unions to maximize their political influence, however, they must first earn their members’ trust through effective workplace representation. Building this trust enhances the impact of endorsements by increasing member support for union-endorsed candidates.

    In short, having strongly supported unions in the workplace helps to build strong unions in the political arena with improved capacity to deliver union members’ votes.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Do union endorsements make a difference in election campaigns? – https://theconversation.com/do-union-endorsements-make-a-difference-in-election-campaigns-253296

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ethiopia’s civil war: what’s behind the Amhara rebellion?

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Amanuel Tesfaye, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki

    Ethiopia is in the grip of a civil war between federal government forces and the Fano, a loose alliance of ethnic-based militia in the Amhara region.

    This conflict in Ethiopia’s north erupted less than a year after the devastating Tigray war, which ended in 2022.

    The Amhara are one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups and played a leading role in the making of the Ethiopian state. Amharic serves as the country’s working language.

    The region shares a border with Tigray. During the Tigray war, which began in 2020, various Fano groups allied with the federal government. A peace deal in 2022 to stop the war sidelined the Amhara militia groups, which strained relations with the government.

    The Amhara conflict began as minor sporadic clashes with government forces in April 2023. This rapidly escalated into a full-scale insurgency by August when Fano forces launched a full blown attack in an effort to control the region’s major cities.

    The violence since has displaced more than 100,000 people and left 4.7 million children out of school.

    The death toll from the conflict is piling up. In March 2025, the government claimed to have killed more than 300 Fano fighters.

    We are researchers studying ethnic nationalism, social movements and insurgency in Ethiopia, with a focus on Amhara. Based on our studies into the Fano and ongoing research on Ethiopia’s political reforms process, we see three factors behind the escalating armed struggle in Amhara:

    • a mismanaged political transition from 2018 to 2020

    • fallout from the 2020-2022 Tigray war

    • a hollow pursuit of peace.

    Mismanaged transition

    Between 1991 and 2018, Ethiopia was governed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. This was a powerful coalition of four ethno-national parties representing Tigray, Amhara, Oromo, and Southern nations, nationalities and peoples.

    Faced with a political crisis and growing unrest in 2014 following opposition clampdowns and arbitrary arrests, the coalition needed a change. Two members – the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation and the Amhara National Democratic Movement – joined forces to oust the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from its dominant position. They did this by leveraging youth-led protests, which played out between 2015 and 2018.

    Following the resignation of prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn in 2018, the two parties orchestrated Abiy Ahmed’s ascent to power.

    For a moment, the relationship between the Oromo and Amhara wings of the coalition looked like one of equals. This didn’t last. In December 2019, Abiy merged the coalition into a single party, the Prosperity Party.

    The Oromo wing positioned itself as the core of the Prosperity Party. It monopolised key political positions and economic opportunities. This included asserting control over the capital, Addis Ababa.



    Read more:
    Abiy Ahmed gained power in Ethiopia with the help of young people – four years later he’s silencing them

    Amhara’s outspoken leaders who criticised this dominance faced removal, arrest or exile. The region’s president, Ambachew Mekonnen, was assassinated in June 2019.

    Harassment, kidnappings for ransom and arrests were daily experiences for Amhara region residents trying to enter Addis Ababa. Members of the Amhara community also faced ethnic-based violence in various parts of the country.

    These incidents provoked anti-government protests throughout Amhara.

    Fallout from the Tigray war

    A peace agreement signed in 2022 in South Africa ended a brutal two-year war in Tigray and neighbouring regions. However, it deepened the sense of marginalisation in Amhara.

    While the agreement silenced the guns in Tigray, it sidelined Amhara constituencies by denying them representation in the talks despite the region being affected by the war. The agreement’s ambiguity regarding the fate of territories disputed between Amhara and Tigray, such as Welkait, further fuelled distrust.

    The last nail in the coffin came in April 2023. The government decided to dismantle regional special forces. This was ostensibly aimed at consolidating the country’s fighting forces.

    However, with unresolved territorial disputes and Oromo nationalist ambitions at the centre, disarming the Amhara Special Forces was interpreted as a move to weaken Amhara defences. Additionally, the more than 200,000-strong Tigray Defence Forces were left intact. This contributed to a sense of vulnerability in neighbouring Amhara.

    Public protests led to clashes with government forces. These protests morphed into an insurgency by the Fano in the following months.

    The insurgency has expanded its reach and has public support across the region and in the diaspora.

    The Fano insurgency is taking place in a territory three times the size of Tigray, stretching the federal army.

    Various Fano factions cite objectives that range from the protection of Amhara interests to constitutional change and overthrowing the federal government.

    However, the insurgency is still in its infancy. It lacks unified leadership, a cohesive structure or a chain of command. Factional divisions and competition persist, and there are no clear objectives.

    Hollow pursuit of peace

    The government seems determined to crush the Fano insurgency by force. A state of emergency was declared in August 2023 for six months. It was later extended.

    While the state of emergency in Amhara officially ended in June 2024, some restrictions remain in place. This includes de facto curfews in major cities, including the capital Bahir Dar.

    The counterinsurgency relies on heavy Ethiopian National Defence Forces deployments and drone strikes.

    On the other hand, the government has indicated its openness to peace talks. However, it has avoided meaningful confidence-building measures, such as releasing Amhara political prisoners. A Peace Council established to mediate between the Fano and the government has proven ineffective. Its spokesperson has noted federal reluctance to negotiate.



    Read more:
    Ethiopia’s war may have ended, but the Tigray crisis hasn’t

    The government’s peace efforts have centred on repeated calls for insurgents to surrender. There are reports that the government wants to talk to different Fano factions separately in the hope of fragmenting the insurgency further. Secret talks with one faction of the Fano are an indication of this strategy.

    The path forward

    The government’s violent counterinsurgency and occasional peace overtures are unlikely to succeed. The Prosperity Party is not popular in Amhara. A meaningful peace process – rather than calls for surrender or attempts to co-opt factions – is essential. This should start with measures like releasing arbitrarily detained Amhara activists, journalists, academics and politicians.

    The federal government also needs to be part of a multi-stakeholder negotiation involving all Fano factions, civil society, community leaders, and domestic and diaspora-based opposition groups. Unbiased mediation from regional and international players may also be useful. Past attempts at piecemeal talks with factions of armed groups – be it in Tigray or Oromia – have prolonged insurgencies or fostered new ones. Only a comprehensive, all-inclusive dialogue can address the crisis.

    Such a process needs to address deep-seated structural challenges. This includes ensuring the protection of Amhara minorities living in other regions, and the region’s representation within local, regional and federal government structures. Territorial disputes need to be addressed through a process rooted in historical context, constitutional principles and the consent of the people concerned.

    Ultimately, enduring peace requires ending the cycle of ethnic dominance in Ethiopia’s federal governance arrangement.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Ethiopia’s civil war: what’s behind the Amhara rebellion? – https://theconversation.com/ethiopias-civil-war-whats-behind-the-amhara-rebellion-252425

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Val Kilmer’s macho action figures held a melancholy just below the surface

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Aaron Humphrey, Lecturer, Media and Digital Humanities, University of Adelaide

    Leading man of 1990s Hollywood, Val Kilmer, has died at 65 from pneumonia. Battling cancer since 2014, he has not been a frequent presence on our film screens for most of this century. While he has recently done some interesting projects, he never recaptured his fame and box-office draw of the 1980s and ‘90s, when he appeared in iconic films such as Top Gun (1986) and Batman Forever (1995).

    His standout performance as Tom Cruise’s swaggering, self-assured rival Iceman in Top Gun made him a star. But the film that really cemented his reputation as a leading man was Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), in which he played Jim Morrison to astonishing effect. He is the best thing about that film.

    Kilmer starred as Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone – a kind of cross between a superhero film and a western.
    IMDB

    In 1993, he starred as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, a stylish modern western, which he co-headlined with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp. It was perhaps the most ’90s of the ’90s westerns. Kilmer’s performance was crowd-pleasing and critically acclaimed. His 2020 memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry, took its name from a line Kilmer spoke in the film.

    In some ways, it is a superhero film with cowboys – as you can see so clearly in the poster. It was this performance that put Kilmer on the radar of Warner Bros when they were looking to cast a new Batman after Michael Keaton abandoned the suit.

    Batman Forever

    We’ve got used to superhero films having cinematic universes and narrative continuity between films, but in the 1990s that had not quite been established.

    Warner Bros had struck cinematic gold with the first modern superhero blockbuster, Superman (1978) starring Christopher Reeve, but faced diminishing critical and financial returns with each subsequent film in the series. After Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) failed to connect with audiences, the studio turned to Batman to be its cinematic icon. In those days, one superhero film every couple of years was seen as sufficient. Fortunately, Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), two dark takes on the Batman story both starring Michael Keaton, were hits.

    However, Batman Returns was regarded by audiences and critics as too “dark”, and too Burton. Both Burton and the studio felt a change of pace was needed for a third film. Joel Schumacher was brought on as director and, perhaps due to the departure of Burton, Keaton also chose to leave the series.

    Fresh off Tombstone, Kilmer was cast as the superhero.

    Batman Forever took a goofier tone, inspired just as much by the campy 1960s TV series as the dark gothic noir style of Burton. It is still brooding, but the film is more bombastic, more colourful. Noted for performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey as the villains – and the costumes that famously featured nipples and codpieces – Kilmer’s performance got lost.

    Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell in Batman Forever (1995).
    IMDB

    Worse for Kilmer, rumours of being difficult to work with on the set of Batman may have set his career back in subsequent years. But, despite these difficulties, Kilmer makes a good Batman.

    He performed the role with a brooding physicality, as well as playfulness. He was underrated, and certainly better than George Clooney, who took over in Batman and Robin (1997) after Kilmer declined to return.

    The non-Keaton Batman films are sometimes overlooked by fans, or not seen as living up to the heights of the Burton movies. In recent years, Burton’s movies have become more or less canonised as the “real” Batman of the era. A series of comic books, Batman ’89, has been published since 2021 that continues the story from Batman Returns, bypassing the developments of Kilmer’s Batman Forever and Clooney’s Batman and Robin.

    Keaton has since reprised his role as the caped crusader on the silver screen as a major supporting character in The Flash (2023), which also featured cameos from Batman alumni Clooney and Ben Affleck as alternate universe versions of the Dark Knight. Kilmer and Christian Bale were the only retired big-screen Batmans not to appear in the film.

    But Batman Forever stands the test of time. It is an entertaining film that walks the line between the dark and brooding Batman from Burton, and the parody of the 1960s television series starring Adam West.

    Soulful melancholy

    Batman Forever was the pinnacle for Kilmer in terms of critical and commercial success. He followed it with great performances in films such as The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), but he was often the supporting character rather than the lead. These films, too, weren’t box-office smashes like his films up to and including Batman had been.

    One of his best performances of the 2000s was in the David Mamet film Spartan (2004). Kilmer plays a retired marine corps sergeant in a good leading turn. He gave a muscular performance that still had a soulful melancholy at its heart, which can be seen in a lot of his roles. He plays action figures who are tough and macho on the outside, but have a melancholy just below the surface.

    Although he never reprised his role as Bruce Wayne, a fitting coda for Kilmer’s career was the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick (2022), in which he gives a cameo as an ailing version of Iceman.

    Kilmer will be missed for his iconic roles as the quintessential performer of the late 1980s and ’90s. In 2021, a documentary about Kilmer, Val, was released, based on decades of archive footage. I would recommend it to audiences who want to know more about the man, his life, his career and his health battles over the past decades.

    Aaron Humphrey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Val Kilmer’s macho action figures held a melancholy just below the surface – https://theconversation.com/val-kilmers-macho-action-figures-held-a-melancholy-just-below-the-surface-253631

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Val Kilmer’s macho action figures held a melancholy just below the surface

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Humphrey, Lecturer, Media and Digital Humanities, University of Adelaide

    Leading man of 1990s Hollywood, Val Kilmer, has died at 65 from pneumonia. Battling cancer since 2014, he has not been a frequent presence on our film screens for most of this century. While he has recently done some interesting projects, he never recaptured his fame and box-office draw of the 1980s and ‘90s, when he appeared in iconic films such as Top Gun (1986) and Batman Forever (1995).

    His standout performance as Tom Cruise’s swaggering, self-assured rival Iceman in Top Gun made him a star. But the film that really cemented his reputation as a leading man was Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), in which he played Jim Morrison to astonishing effect. He is the best thing about that film.

    Kilmer starred as Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone – a kind of cross between a superhero film and a western.
    IMDB

    In 1993, he starred as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, a stylish modern western, which he co-headlined with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp. It was perhaps the most ’90s of the ’90s westerns. Kilmer’s performance was crowd-pleasing and critically acclaimed. His 2020 memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry, took its name from a line Kilmer spoke in the film.

    In some ways, it is a superhero film with cowboys – as you can see so clearly in the poster. It was this performance that put Kilmer on the radar of Warner Bros when they were looking to cast a new Batman after Michael Keaton abandoned the suit.

    Batman Forever

    We’ve got used to superhero films having cinematic universes and narrative continuity between films, but in the 1990s that had not quite been established.

    Warner Bros had struck cinematic gold with the first modern superhero blockbuster, Superman (1978) starring Christopher Reeve, but faced diminishing critical and financial returns with each subsequent film in the series. After Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) failed to connect with audiences, the studio turned to Batman to be its cinematic icon. In those days, one superhero film every couple of years was seen as sufficient. Fortunately, Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), two dark takes on the Batman story both starring Michael Keaton, were hits.

    However, Batman Returns was regarded by audiences and critics as too “dark”, and too Burton. Both Burton and the studio felt a change of pace was needed for a third film. Joel Schumacher was brought on as director and, perhaps due to the departure of Burton, Keaton also chose to leave the series.

    Fresh off Tombstone, Kilmer was cast as the superhero.

    Batman Forever took a goofier tone, inspired just as much by the campy 1960s TV series as the dark gothic noir style of Burton. It is still brooding, but the film is more bombastic, more colourful. Noted for performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey as the villains – and the costumes that famously featured nipples and codpieces – Kilmer’s performance got lost.

    Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell in Batman Forever (1995).
    IMDB

    Worse for Kilmer, rumours of being difficult to work with on the set of Batman may have set his career back in subsequent years. But, despite these difficulties, Kilmer makes a good Batman.

    He performed the role with a brooding physicality, as well as playfulness. He was underrated, and certainly better than George Clooney, who took over in Batman and Robin (1997) after Kilmer declined to return.

    The non-Keaton Batman films are sometimes overlooked by fans, or not seen as living up to the heights of the Burton movies. In recent years, Burton’s movies have become more or less canonised as the “real” Batman of the era. A series of comic books, Batman ’89, has been published since 2021 that continues the story from Batman Returns, bypassing the developments of Kilmer’s Batman Forever and Clooney’s Batman and Robin.

    Keaton has since reprised his role as the caped crusader on the silver screen as a major supporting character in The Flash (2023), which also featured cameos from Batman alumni Clooney and Ben Affleck as alternate universe versions of the Dark Knight. Kilmer and Christian Bale were the only retired big-screen Batmans not to appear in the film.

    But Batman Forever stands the test of time. It is an entertaining film that walks the line between the dark and brooding Batman from Burton, and the parody of the 1960s television series starring Adam West.

    Soulful melancholy

    Batman Forever was the pinnacle for Kilmer in terms of critical and commercial success. He followed it with great performances in films such as The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), but he was often the supporting character rather than the lead. These films, too, weren’t box-office smashes like his films up to and including Batman had been.

    One of his best performances of the 2000s was in the David Mamet film Spartan (2004). Kilmer plays a retired marine corps sergeant in a good leading turn. He gave a muscular performance that still had a soulful melancholy at its heart, which can be seen in a lot of his roles. He plays action figures who are tough and macho on the outside, but have a melancholy just below the surface.

    Although he never reprised his role as Bruce Wayne, a fitting coda for Kilmer’s career was the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick (2022), in which he gives a cameo as an ailing version of Iceman.

    Kilmer will be missed for his iconic roles as the quintessential performer of the late 1980s and ’90s. In 2021, a documentary about Kilmer, Val, was released, based on decades of archive footage. I would recommend it to audiences who want to know more about the man, his life, his career and his health battles over the past decades.

    Aaron Humphrey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Val Kilmer’s macho action figures held a melancholy just below the surface – https://theconversation.com/val-kilmers-macho-action-figures-held-a-melancholy-just-below-the-surface-253631

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Labor wants to give the minimum wage a real boost. The benefits would likely outweigh any downsides

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris F. Wright, Professor of Work and Labour Market Policy, University of Sydney

    Labor has called for an “economically sustainable real wage increase” for almost 3 million workers who depend on the award system for their wages.

    In a submission to the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review on Wednesday, Labor said a real wage increase above inflation would provide cost-of-living relief for lower-income workers – especially in the early childhood, cleaning and retail sectors.

    Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has said he’s not opposed to an increase in minimum wages. Several major business groups have also tentatively endorsed an increase.

    But the size of the wage boost is in contention. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants an increase to be no higher than headline inflation, saying:

    [an] increase in minimum and modern award wages of no more than 2.5% is fair and reasonably responsible in the current economic environment.



    Read more:
    Labor will urge Fair Work Commission to give real wage rise to three million workers

    Can the government actually raise wages?

    The federal government doesn’t set minimum and award wages directly. That job falls to the Fair Work Commission, Australia’s independent national workplace relations tribunal.

    Each year, the commission receives submissions for the Annual Wage Review from “interested parties” such as business groups, trade unions and governments.

    Governments almost always make submissions, typically informed by economic logic, to the annual review.

    Labor’s submission is consistent with that approach. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said businesses would benefit overall, because when low-wage workers receive a wage increase, they typically spend rather than save it.

    Could a real wage boost fuel inflation?

    Labor’s proposal has already attracted concern.

    Some economists have argued it could increase inflation. That could make it harder for the Reserve Bank of Australia to deliver further interest rate cuts.

    However, this concern was addressed in the OECD’s 2023 Economic Outlook paper, which argued:

    in several sectors and countries, there is room for profits to absorb some further increases in wages to mitigate the loss of purchasing power at least for the low paid without generating significant additional price pressures.

    In other words, with inflation falling in Australia and other parts of the world, there is scope for wages to increase without a significant risk this will generate inflationary pressure.

    The OECD has also stated that much of the recent high global inflation was generated by the impact of the Ukraine war on rising food and energy prices, rather than wages.

    Wage growth without productivity growth

    A second concern relates to boosting wages in the context of Australia’s languishing levels of labour productivity – output per worker or per hour worked.

    On Tuesday, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock said without an increase in productivity:

    the rate of nominal wages growth that can be sustained and be in line with the inflation target is lower.

    However, as Mark Bray and Alison Preston found in their interim report from the review of the Secure Jobs, Better Pay laws, labour productivity growth has been consistently higher than capital productivity.

    According to Bray and Preston:

    It is, therefore, difficult to argue that industrial relations systems have a significant, dominant effect on national productivity outcomes.

    If anything, a wages boost might be good for productivity. There is evidence to suggest measures to improve the quality of employment – including by increasing wages – can boost productivity.

    If workers feel they are paid fairly, they are more likely to be satisfied and work harder, and less likely to leave their employer.

    Staff turnover, on the other hand, requires employers to recruit and train new employees, which is time-consuming and resource-intensive, and can sap productivity.

    What about inequality?

    It’s important we don’t overlook another important factor in the minimum wage debate. Since its 2022 election victory, addressing inequality has been central to the Albanese government’s labour market reforms.

    Before 2022, wages growth was persistently weak for several years, despite the lowest unemployment rate in almost five decades.

    Low unemployment is generally assumed to stimulate wages growth, but this didn’t eventuate. This worsened workforce shortages, making it hard for employers to attract and retain workers.

    Findings from a large body of academic research published before the passage and implementation of the December 2022 Secure Jobs, Better Pay amendments highlighted the need for fairer redistribution in pay settings.

    The gender pay gap

    This includes addressing gender-based pay inequalities.

    Improving job quality – particularly by raising wages – in low-paid sectors is essential to advancing gender equality. The minimum wage and award-reliant segments of the Australian labour market are highly feminised. These include vital frontline roles in the care, cleaning and hospitality sectors.

    The latest Workplace Gender Equality Agency scorecard, drawing on ABS Labour Force Survey data, shows wage growth in these sectors over the past two years has contributed significantly to reducing the national gender pay gap to its lowest point on record.

    Lifting wages and job quality is not only crucial for attracting and retaining workers in these essential frontline roles. It also supports broader labour force participation, particularly for working parents.

    An “economically sustainable” boost to the minimum wage is therefore unlikely to drive up inflation, or adversely impact productivity. However, it will provide cost-of-living relief to Australia’s lowest-paid workers.

    Chris F. Wright has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the International Labour Organization, the Australian and NSW governments, and various business and trade union organisations.

    – ref. Labor wants to give the minimum wage a real boost. The benefits would likely outweigh any downsides – https://theconversation.com/labor-wants-to-give-the-minimum-wage-a-real-boost-the-benefits-would-likely-outweigh-any-downsides-253624

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Europeans have more flexible views on how to respond to irregular migrants than policymakers think – new research

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Martin Ruhs, Professor of Migration Studies, European University Institute

    With an estimated minimum of 2.6 to 3.2 million irregular migrants in Europe and fierce public debates about them, policymakers face the difficult question of how to ensure migrants’ basic rights of protection from exploitation, destitution and ill health while also establishing effective migration controls. However, we know surprisingly little about how Europeans think about this policy dilemma.

    In our study, the first of its kind in Europe, we surveyed 20,000 people across Austria, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK to understand their preferences on policies regarding access to healthcare, social welfare and labour protections, as well as the obtainment of regular legal status or “regularisation” for irregular migrants.

    The results challenge the idea that public attitudes toward irregular migrants’ rights are simply “for” or “against”. Instead, we find that variations in policy design matter – and when policies include both migration controls and protections for migrants, public support often increases.

    Our method

    To study public preferences for policies relating to irregular migrants, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment. In it, respondents were presented with different multidimensional “policy packages” that randomly varied in how they regulated opportunities for regularisation, as well as legal rights to access primary health care, financial support in low-income situations, and back pay of withheld wages.

    Respondents were shown two policy packages at a time, and then asked to rate and indicate which of the two they preferred. For each respondent, this process was repeated five times. This method allowed us to study how a change in a particular policy feature – e.g., a change in how access to primary healthcare is regulated – affects individuals’ support for the overall policy package.

    So, what do Europeans think? Here are some of our key results.

    • People favour selective regularisation

    Our results suggest that the public prefers targeted pathways for regularisation for irregular migrants. Across all five countries we analysed, respondents consistently preferred policies that allow irregular migrants to acquire legal status based on certain conditions, including a clean criminal record and a minimum length of stay in the host country. Somewhat surprisingly, there was no consistent preference between a five-year or ten-year minimum residence period.

    • Healthcare gets more support than financial assistance

    We found that giving irregular migrants access to healthcare is far less controversial than giving access to financial support for those living on low incomes. This aligns with findings from the US, where such support has remained politically divisive.

    • Some migration controls boost support for access to rights – but not all rights

    We also found greater support for irregular migrants receiving health care and back pay for withheld wages when these rights were linked to a migration control measure: obligations for public sector employees to report irregular migrants to authorities.

    This suggests, as existing literature highlights, that many people experience an internal conflict between humanitarian concerns and a desire for stricter migration controls.

    However, the pattern in our data does not hold for all rights: even when combined with reporting obligations, the provision of cash assistance for irregular migrants still does not generate public support.

    • A preference for essential workers

    Not all irregular migrants are viewed equally: our findings show that people are more supportive of rights and regularisation opportunities for migrants who previously worked legally in the host country – especially in essential roles like elder care. This reflects broader research on attitudes toward welfare deservingness, which found that public perception of migrants’ past contributions to society shape views on whether they should get access to rights.

    How do attitudes differ across countries?

    While there are many similarities in public views on regularisation opportunities and access to rights for irregular migrants across the countries we studied, there are also some notable differences. For example, support for providing primary healthcare varied: respondents in the UK were the least supportive, and respondents in Italy were the most. Similarly, while respondents in most countries opposed the provision of low-income support, Italian respondents were more ambivalent, showing no strong preference for or against this right for irregular migrants.

    Overall, respondents in Italy showed the greatest preferences for inclusive policies, including the strongest support for allowing irregular migrants to apply for legal status. While our analysis does not investigate the reasons for this, it may reflect Italy’s history of regularisation programmes in recent decades, which may have made Italian respondents more open to and supportive of such programmes.

    Rethinking public attitudes about irregular migrants

    Public attitudes matter – they influence which policies are feasible and sustainable over time. Our research shows that EU and UK residents don’t default to blunt and one-sided policies such as blanket opposition to irregular migrants ever gaining legal status. Instead, people are selective, and prefer policies that distinguish between giving irregular migrants different types of rights. People also have specific views about when and why irregular migrants should have access to healthcare, social welfare, labour protections and legal status.

    This does not mean that survey respondents wanted to offer unconditional legal status and access to rights to all irregular migrants. Instead, respondents often preferred an approach that combines selective access to rights with enforcement of migration rules. What our study indicates is that the public has more nuanced views on how migration should be managed than policymakers generally give them credit for. This suggests there may be more room for selective and inclusive policymaking than often assumed.

    This article is based on a research paper co-authored by Lutz Gschwind (Uppsala University, UU), Martin Ruhs (EUI), Anton Ahlén (UU) and Joakim Palme (UU). The paper is part of the international “PRIME” project that analyses the conditions of irregular migrants in Europe. PRIME is funded by the European Union Horizon Europe programme. Views and opinions expressed, however, are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the EU nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

    The author has received support from the European Union Horizon Europe funding programme for research and innovation (project number 101095113).

    – ref. Europeans have more flexible views on how to respond to irregular migrants than policymakers think – new research – https://theconversation.com/europeans-have-more-flexible-views-on-how-to-respond-to-irregular-migrants-than-policymakers-think-new-research-253473

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Election diary: Dutton tries to shake off Trump dust and avoid being trapped on wages

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    Ahead of Donald Trump’s tariff announcement early Thursday (Australian time), the United States president has become a serious and increasing worry for Peter Dutton’s campaign. Even apart from Labor’s obvious and constant “Trump-whistling”, many voters are apparently seeing a lot of Trump dust on the opposition leader.

    Liberal strategists know how dangerous this is, given Trump’s unpopularity with Australians. So Dutton is shaping up.

    In a Sky interview aired Wednesday, Dutton positioned himself as ready to take on Trump (or anyone else) if necessary. “If I needed to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader to advance our nation’s interests, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” he declared. “And I’ll put the Americans on notice and anyone else who seeks to act against our national interest.”

    It’s a measure of where things are that an Australian conservative leader is putting “the Americans on notice”.

    Anthony Albanese – who once said Trump “scares the shit out of me” – suggested his opponent was going over the top.

    “Peter Dutton will always dial things up to 11. He thinks this is a contest of who can say the most aggro things. It’s not. It’s not the way that diplomacy works.”

    When it comes to Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement – which will feed directly into the Australian campaign – it seems diplomacy hasn’t worked.

    Trade Minister Don Farrell told briefings for agricultural and industry groups on Tuesday and Wednesday he was “pessimistic”, suggesting the likelihood of a tariff of up to 20% across the board.

    Farrell indicated the Australian government had put an offer to the US, but that was rejected. Australia rejected a counter offer from the US, and resubmitted its original offer.

    At Wednesday’s briefing for the red meat industry, Farrell said, “Tomorrow might be the end of the first part of the process but we’ll continue to engage with the Americans to get these tariffs removed, as we did with the Chinese”.

    The government is preparing its response, which reportedly could involve taking the US to the World Trade Organisation. Asked about this, Albanese would not be drawn but told the ABC, “What we’re doing is supporting our US Free Trade Agreement, that says that goods and services between our two nations should be tariff-free.

    “That’s what we’re doing, supporting our agreement, holding to our word, standing up for Australia’s national interest, and calling for the United States not only to stand up for that agreement, but to stand up to their own interests as well.”

    Liberals play it cool on Albanese’s bid for real wage rise

    The Liberals had a very bad experience on wages in the 2022 election.

    Then-opposition leader Albanese said he’d “absolutely” support a wage increase to keep up with inflation, which was more than 5%.

    The Coalition went on the attack, branding him as economically irresponsible. As he campaigned in the following days, Albanese kept producing a gold coin to show how small the rise would be for those on the minimum wage. He still occasionally reprises this party trick.

    Labor is once again campaigning on wages, this time advocating a boost to real wages – that is, an increase above inflation, which is now down to 2.4%. (The submission put in on Wednesday to the Fair Work Commission went in from the Labor Party, rather than the government, because we’re in the “caretaker” period.)

    The government’s position is clever. It says the wage rise, which would cover about three million workers, should be “economically sustainable”. But it doesn’t recommend a figure.

    The Liberals a re trying to stay off the wages sticky paper. To be saying “no” in a cost-of-living election would only spell grief. Instead, they’re keeping their response vague. “We support wage increases”, Dutton said, without being specific about the government’s above-inflation pitch.

    As to a figure, “Without further economic advice from treasury and finance, our position is we want higher wages and we want to make sure we have downward pressure on costs”.

    “The prime minister is in search of a fight here,” Dutton said, a conclusion that didn’t require much perception, a fight Dutton was determined to try to side step.

    Labor’s case received some backing on Wednesday from the Australian Industry Group, which suggested a rise of 2.6%.

    The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry advocated a rise of no more than 2.5%. Asked what sort of difference there was between ACCI and the government, ACCI CEO Andrew McKellar said “that’s very hard to say. They are deliberately being non-specific.”

    The ABC is in the Liberals’ sights – again

    The ABC is a favourite target for many Liberals, including Dutton. In recent months he has singled out ABC reporters for attention when he didn’t like their questions.

    So would he look at its budget? Dutton is leaving the impression he likely would; moreover he is critical of the national broadcaster’s regional service, which even most Coalition MPs praise.

    “The approach that we would take is to reward excellence and where we find waste, to cut that waste.

    “And there are a lot of regional services for the ABC which I think are underdone,” he said in his Sky interview. He’d been in western Queensland this week looking at the floods “and the ABC could be a much more integral part of that community. But just having it based in Sydney or just being based in Melbourne is not helping people in outer metro areas or regional areas.”

    According to the ABC, it has about 600 employees in rural and regional Australia in 56 locations.

    Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Election diary: Dutton tries to shake off Trump dust and avoid being trapped on wages – https://theconversation.com/election-diary-dutton-tries-to-shake-off-trump-dust-and-avoid-being-trapped-on-wages-253117

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: New research lays bare the harsh realities facing artists and arts workers

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Grace McQuilten, Associate professor, RMIT University

    Australia’s visual arts and craft workers are facing increasingly deteriorating conditions, according to research published today.

    Our four-year study reveals workers are abandoning the visual art sector, largely because of unstable employment, below-average salaries and a lack of support.

    We present findings from the largest academic surveys of artists and arts workers to-date – the first conducted in 2022 (more than 700 respondents) and the second in 2024 (almost 900 respondents) – with income and employment data from four financial years between 2018 and 2024.

    Alongside the surveys, we conducted interviews with 20 artists and arts workers to better understand hybrid career patterns – and consulted widely with industry.

    Comparable to the gig economy

    Artists and arts workers represent a financially vulnerable group in Australia’s workforce. Our research identified concerning patterns of work, including:

    • high levels of education that don’t match salaries, which are well below the average for professional workers

    • high levels of unpaid work, volunteer work and self-employment

    • a highly gendered (majority women) workforce, with a significant gender pay gap

    • barriers to opportunity and career progression for people with disability and from diverse cultural backgrounds.

    We also found artists and arts workers often don’t know which awards and agreements they’re covered by, if any.

    A gendered workforce

    According to our 2024 survey responses, more than 74% of the visual arts workforce identify as women.

    Despite this, there was a significant gender pay gap. On average, woman artists earned 47% less than men artists, while women arts workers earned 23% less than men arts workers.

    This is much higher than the broader gender pay gap of 11.5% in 2024 (based on base pay for full-time workers).

    The average income from visual art or craft practice in 2023–24 was A$13,937, with men artists reporting an average of $23,130, women artists $12,330, and non-binary artists $14,074.

    This is matched with slow progression through career stages from emerging to “established”, particularly for women artists.

    Lack of security, long hours, little return

    Artists are surviving by taking multiple jobs. Only 25% of respondents spent 100% of their working time as an artist – with 82% receiving at least some income from other jobs.

    Half of artists also participated in unpaid work. This equated to an average of 28 hours per month.

    The cost-of-living crisis added further financial pressure, with 63% of respondents saying they were very or moderately financially stressed when it came to paying for essential goods and services.

    This had a flow-on effect on wellbeing. Half the artists surveyed rated their mental health as poor or fair, while 59% rated their work-life balance as poor or fair. These issues were amplified for artists with disability and from diverse cultural backgrounds, who experience significant barriers to participation.

    Arts workers, meanwhile, reported working an average of 45 hours per week in 2024. Despite this, 60% said they wanted to work even more hours – pointing to low pay and the challenges of making an arts career viable.

    On average, arts workers earned an annual income of $63,031. This was much lower than professionals in other industries, who earned an average income of $100,017.

    Levelling the playing field

    Our report contains a suite of policy recommendations and priority actions for the arts industry to address these issues.

    To address gender-related disparities, we suggest:

    • requiring gender pay gap reporting from organisations receiving public funding, along with action plans to address disparities

    • greater transparency in recruitment and promotion processes

    • commitments to gender equity targets in leadership positions.

    We also recommend greater transparency and reporting of disability and cultural diversity representation in staffing, including leadership and board roles, to promote accountability and drive cultural change.

    Funding incentives should be introduced to support diverse leadership – including higher pay to compensate for the additional workload carried by workers from First Nations, disability and culturally diverse backgrounds.

    Boosting incomes

    To address the intractable issue of low incomes, we suggest all funding contracts from state and federal arts bodies mandate adherence to industry best practice (such as NAVA’s Code of Practice). This will help agencies better support artists and arts workers, and uphold employment standards across the sector.

    Further, operational funding agreements should consistently prioritise secure work for artists and arts workers, by laying down permanent contracts or minimum fixed terms.

    Finally, there must be greater, more transparent recognition of the amount of unpaid labour in the arts, and a commitment to moving away from this. We therefore recommend sector-wide reportable targets aimed at reducing unpaid labour.

    Grace McQuilten received funding from the Australian Research Council. The Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)

    Chloë Powell received funding from the Australian Research Council. The Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054).

    Jenny Lye received funding from the Australian Research Council. The Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)

    Kate MacNeill received funding from the Australian Research Council. The Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054)

    Marnie Badham received funding from the Australian Research Council: Linkage Project Ambitious and Fair: strategies for a sustainable arts sector (LP200100054).

    – ref. New research lays bare the harsh realities facing artists and arts workers – https://theconversation.com/new-research-lays-bare-the-harsh-realities-facing-artists-and-arts-workers-253547

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US Senator Cory Booker just spoke for 25 hours in Congress. What was he trying to achieve?

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney

    The Democrats have been under intense pressure to find an effective way to challenge US President Donald Trump without control of either chamber of Congress or a de facto opposition leader.

    They may have just found one. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took the Senate floor on Monday evening in Washington to give a speech lambasting Trump’s actions. He didn’t stop talking – aside for the occasional question from a fellow Democrat – until Tuesday night, 25 hours later.

    So, how common are these types of speeches in the US Congress, and what’s the point?

    Cory Booker reportedly did not leave the chamber to use the toilet and sipped from two glasses of water.

    Filibusters throughout history

    Booker’s speech set a new record for the longest continuous speech in the Senate, surpassing Senator Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour speech in 1957 to try to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    This was during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during the second world war. The army was the great desegregation force in the 1940s, and Eisenhower, as president in the 1950s, was strongly in favour of civil rights.

    Strom Thurmond.
    Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia Commons

    In 1957, Congress was going to pass a civil rights bill that would make it harder for officials in southern states, in particular, to prevent Black people from voting. So Thurmond, the South Carolina senator and fierce proponent of segregation, launched what was (until today) the longest speech in Senate history to oppose it.

    Thurmond’s speech was a filibuster, an extended speech in the Senate to attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill or confirmation. Thurmond, however, was unable to stop enactment of the bill.

    Senators engage in filibusters when they know they’re going to lose, especially when it’s a piece of legislation they really dislike or disagree with. Because they can’t stop the passage of the bill, they use the filibuster to call attention to their opposition to it. The intention is to rally the troops and say, “I’m standing with you, even if this vote goes the other way”.

    In 2016, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who represents the state of Connecticut where the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place, launched a nearly 15-hour filibuster to force the Republican Senate leadership to allow votes on two gun control measures.

    Republican Senator Ted Cruz also spoke all night – 21 hours in total – against Obamacare in 2013. It wasn’t all focused on health policy; he filled the time by reading the children’s book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss.

    Highlights from Ted Cruz’s filibuster.

    What Booker was trying to achieve

    Booker’s speech was not technically a filibuster – he wasn’t holding the floor to talk against a specific bill, as Thurmond was. He was giving time to his Democratic colleagues to just control the shape of the general debate about Trump.

    Senators use speeches like this when they’re losing on a issue, and Booker feels the Democrats are currently losing to Trump. They have been unable to stop any of his executive actions, so they feel they need to cut through in some way to reach the American people.

    Trump has been “flooding the zone” from the moment he took office in January with hundreds of policies and executive actions – and he has been extremely successful at it. These actions cut across so many areas, it’s been very hard for the Democrats, on any given day, to pick out the top things to fight against.

    Because they don’t have control of the House or Senate, and there is no opposition leader, there is no single, principal Democrat who can stand up day by day and say, “This is what happened, this was what the threat to the country is, this why we’re opposing it and this is the way we’re going to attack it”.

    Trump is controlling the narrative and the media environment. And the Democratic leadership has been unable to counter it, even though, at the grassroots level, Democrats and many others who voted for Trump are really angry.

    As Booker put it during his speech:

    Moments like this require us to be more creative or more imaginative, or just more persistent and dogged and determined.

    There comes a certain point in a human drama that transcends partisanship when you’re looking at someone speaking from the heart, speaking their convictions and you can come to respect them.

    Booker ran for the presidency in 2020 and ultimately yielded to Joe Biden, and I expect we’ll hear much more from him in 2028 when the next presidential election occurs. He is most likely going to run again.

    Bruce Wolpe receives funding, as a non resident senior Fellow, from the United Statses Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He served for ten years on the Democratic staff in the US House of Representatives.

    – ref. US Senator Cory Booker just spoke for 25 hours in Congress. What was he trying to achieve? – https://theconversation.com/us-senator-cory-booker-just-spoke-for-25-hours-in-congress-what-was-he-trying-to-achieve-253616

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: US Senator Cory Booker just spoke for 25 hours in Congress. What was he trying to achieve?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident Senior Fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney

    The Democrats have been under intense pressure to find an effective way to challenge US President Donald Trump without control of either chamber of Congress or a de facto opposition leader.

    They may have just found one. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker took the Senate floor on Monday evening in Washington to give a speech lambasting Trump’s actions. He didn’t stop talking – aside for the occasional question from a fellow Democrat – until Tuesday night, 25 hours later.

    So, how common are these types of speeches in the US Congress, and what’s the point?

    Cory Booker reportedly did not leave the chamber to use the toilet and sipped from two glasses of water.

    Filibusters throughout history

    Booker’s speech set a new record for the longest continuous speech in the Senate, surpassing Senator Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour speech in 1957 to try to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    This was during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during the second world war. The army was the great desegregation force in the 1940s, and Eisenhower, as president in the 1950s, was strongly in favour of civil rights.

    Strom Thurmond.
    Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division/Wikimedia Commons

    In 1957, Congress was going to pass a civil rights bill that would make it harder for officials in southern states, in particular, to prevent Black people from voting. So Thurmond, the South Carolina senator and fierce proponent of segregation, launched what was (until today) the longest speech in Senate history to oppose it.

    Thurmond’s speech was a filibuster, an extended speech in the Senate to attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill or confirmation. Thurmond, however, was unable to stop enactment of the bill.

    Senators engage in filibusters when they know they’re going to lose, especially when it’s a piece of legislation they really dislike or disagree with. Because they can’t stop the passage of the bill, they use the filibuster to call attention to their opposition to it. The intention is to rally the troops and say, “I’m standing with you, even if this vote goes the other way”.

    In 2016, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who represents the state of Connecticut where the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place, launched a nearly 15-hour filibuster to force the Republican Senate leadership to allow votes on two gun control measures.

    Republican Senator Ted Cruz also spoke all night – 21 hours in total – against Obamacare in 2013. It wasn’t all focused on health policy; he filled the time by reading the children’s book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss.

    Highlights from Ted Cruz’s filibuster.

    What Booker was trying to achieve

    Booker’s speech was not technically a filibuster – he wasn’t holding the floor to talk against a specific bill, as Thurmond was. He was giving time to his Democratic colleagues to just control the shape of the general debate about Trump.

    Senators use speeches like this when they’re losing on a issue, and Booker feels the Democrats are currently losing to Trump. They have been unable to stop any of his executive actions, so they feel they need to cut through in some way to reach the American people.

    Trump has been “flooding the zone” from the moment he took office in January with hundreds of policies and executive actions – and he has been extremely successful at it. These actions cut across so many areas, it’s been very hard for the Democrats, on any given day, to pick out the top things to fight against.

    Because they don’t have control of the House or Senate, and there is no opposition leader, there is no single, principal Democrat who can stand up day by day and say, “This is what happened, this was what the threat to the country is, this why we’re opposing it and this is the way we’re going to attack it”.

    Trump is controlling the narrative and the media environment. And the Democratic leadership has been unable to counter it, even though, at the grassroots level, Democrats and many others who voted for Trump are really angry.

    As Booker put it during his speech:

    Moments like this require us to be more creative or more imaginative, or just more persistent and dogged and determined.

    There comes a certain point in a human drama that transcends partisanship when you’re looking at someone speaking from the heart, speaking their convictions and you can come to respect them.

    Booker ran for the presidency in 2020 and ultimately yielded to Joe Biden, and I expect we’ll hear much more from him in 2028 when the next presidential election occurs. He is most likely going to run again.

    Bruce Wolpe receives funding, as a non resident senior Fellow, from the United Statses Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He served for ten years on the Democratic staff in the US House of Representatives.

    – ref. US Senator Cory Booker just spoke for 25 hours in Congress. What was he trying to achieve? – https://theconversation.com/us-senator-cory-booker-just-spoke-for-25-hours-in-congress-what-was-he-trying-to-achieve-253616

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Can you tell the difference between real and fake news photos? Take the quiz to find out

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

    A (real) photo of a protester dressed as Pikachu in Paris on March 29 2025. Remon Haazen / Getty Images

    You wouldn’t usually associate Pikachu with protest.

    But a figure dressed as the iconic yellow Pokémon joined a protest last week in Turkey to demonstrate against the country’s authoritarian leader.

    And then a virtual doppelgänger made the rounds on social media, raising doubt in people’s minds about whether what they were seeing was true. (Just to be clear, the image in the post shown below is very much fake.)

    This is the latest in a spate of incidents involving AI-generated (or AI-edited) images that can be made easily and cheaply and that are often posted during breaking news events.

    Doctored, decontextualised or synthetic media can cause confusion, sow doubt, and contribute to political polarisation. The people who make or share these media often benefit financially or politically from spreading false or misleading claims.

    How would you go at telling fact from fiction in these cases? Have a go with this quiz and learn more about some of AI’s (potential) giveaways and how to stay safer online.

    How’d you go?

    As this exercise might have revealed, we can’t always spot AI-generated or AI-edited images with just our eyes. Doing so will also become harder as AI tools become more advanced.

    Dealing with visual deception

    AI-powered tools exist to try to detect AI content, but these have mixed results.

    Running suspect images through a search engine to see where else they have been published – and when – can be a helpful strategy. But this relies on there being an original “unedited” version published somewhere online.

    Perhaps the best strategy is something called “lateral reading”. It means getting off the page or platform and seeing what trusted sources say about a claim.

    Ultimately, we don’t have time to fact-check every claim we come across each day. That’s why it’s important to have access to trustworthy news sources that have a track record of getting it right. This is even more important as the volume of AI “slop” increases.

    T.J. Thomson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is an affiliated researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society.

    – ref. Can you tell the difference between real and fake news photos? Take the quiz to find out – https://theconversation.com/can-you-tell-the-difference-between-real-and-fake-news-photos-take-the-quiz-to-find-out-253539

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Adolescence’ on Netflix: A painful wake-up call about unregulated internet use for teens

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Martina Calçada Kohatsu, PhD Candidate in Educational Psychology, McGill University

    In ‘Adolescence,’ a communication abyss that separates Gen X from Gen Z gives way to calamity. (Netflix)

    This story contains spoilers about the Netflix series ‘Adolescence.’

    In the Netflix series Adolescence, we have no idea why Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested at the beginning of the first episode. The tension from seeing a helpless 13-year-old boy escorted to a police station and interrogated holds us to the screen. Every minute of the one-hour episode, shot in a single continuous take, makes us feel like we are in the police station with the Miller family, viewing things through his parents’ disorientation.

    As the plot unfolds, we are given clues to explain the inexplicable, but we can’t fully appreciate the show’s magnitude until the very last scene, a dramatic moment where we see the boy’s father (Stephen Graham) cry over his son’s teddy bear while asking it for forgiveness.

    From an educational psychology angle, the show is ripe for analysis. One could comment on the premature sexualization of young girls and boys or the obsolete sense, for parents, that they can assume kids are safe when they’re at home in their rooms.

    However, as a doctoral student in educational psychology, I am mostly concerned with human learning — both the cognitive development that must accompany successful learners, and how children and youth understand the world through relationships.

    The state of Jamie’s cognitive development and of teenagers in general may help us understand his frame of mind — or the “why” that detective Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) pursues.

    For parents, this show raises serious questions about the crisis in parent-child communication and how the internet is shaping children’s behaviour and minds. I suggest turning to the practice of dialogue as a way for parents to strengthen their communication with their children and learn about each other and the world.

    Trailer for ‘Adolescence.’

    Children’s minds

    According to the government of Canada, “any human being below the age of 18” is defined as a child. Children can’t be recruited to join the Armed Forces, sign legal contracts, drive, vote, marry, drink alcohol and so on. As adults, we understand that these prohibitions not only protect them but also us.

    Setting aside ethical reasons why children shouldn’t do any of these things, the major reason is due to the developmental state of their minds.

    To better understand this, we must consider executive function, also called cognitive control. Executive function refers to the unconscious cognitive processes of abstract thinking, inhibition, impulse control and planning that allow us to consciously control and direct our thoughts to goals, actions and emotions.

    Think of executive control as interconnected paths in the brain. In an adolescent’s brain, these paths resemble more of a labyrinth, with difficult and sometimes non-working passages.

    Children and adolescents’ cognitive development are in “sensitive periods” in which their brains are more plastic and susceptible to environmental influences. Besides not having full control of their thought processes, research has also shown that abstract and more “neutral” cognitive skills develop earlier than those that involve motivated or emotionally charged actions.

    Ability to weigh options still developing

    Adolescents might be mature enough to solve complex math problems, but still feel helpless when needing to be polite to someone they believe offended them (not an easy task for adults either). In such a case, one would need to “step back” from the situation, and weigh options to respond.

    An adult might think “maybe I misinterpreted what this person said” or “if I offend them back, I risk losing my job/friendship/reputation.” By dwelling on different course of actions, they don’t act impulsively.

    This is precisely the ability that adolescents are still developing.

    Adolescent brains have not fully matured in ways that enable them to calculate risk.
    (Netflix)

    Virtual selves and threats

    When adolescents engage with social media, they can be exposed to a threatening environment where they must assert their virtual selves and deal with bullying and inappropriate content, while lacking full control of their thought processes.

    Yet, as American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has chronicled, our society has allowed adolescents to take part in this at grave risk. With maturing cognitive capabilities, teens are at risk in an online environment that thrives on extreme views and hijacks emotions.

    As a victim of cyberbullying, Jamie was probably not equipped with the cognitive abilities to step back from the situation and seek help. Instead, he responds to cruelty he experienced with cruelty he knew.

    With unregulated internet use, in terms of both content and unrestricted time spent online, communication with parents atrophies. At its core, Adolescence is a painful wake-up call to the effects of unregulated internet usage in teens, and how the communication abyss that separates Gen X from Gen Z gives way to calamity.

    Clueless adults, aware teens

    Nowhere in the show is this distance more evident than when police detectives move cluelessly through Jamie’s school trying to understand his motives, while the students seem cynically aware of what really happened.

    The detective’s son clues him into interpreting signs of incel subculture.
    (Netflix)

    In a typical moment reflecting contemporary intergenerational dynamics in which the Gen Zs explain stuff to their analog parents, Bascombe’s son is the one to enlighten him about incel subculture and what certain emojis represent.

    It becomes clear that pop-cultural references mean different things to a younger generation. For example, “red pill” was appropriated from The Matrix and is now used for those who “see the truth” and reject feminism.

    Generations are comfortable communicating in different ways. Teens, for example, are clever texters. They use images, edit reels and create memes to convey subtle and often complex feelings.

    In contrast, teens’ discomfort with face-to-face conversations is explicit in the last episode of Adolescence, when the Miller family drives to a hardware store. The parents play a song from their prom and reminisce. The oldest daughter is with them, but not present, focused on her phone and only sporadically joining the conversation.

    Why dialogue matters

    Parents and their children may find direction through dialogue. This ancient practice is based on the view of the world as becoming, with infinite internal and external contradictions that must be overcome so that new understandings of reality may emerge.

    Dialogue was famously advanced as an educational practice by philosopher of education, Paulo Freire.

    Freire believed people must come together to share their meanings of the world, and through this push and pull of ideas, reasons and opinions, conceptualize new forms of understanding. For parents, this means that without trying to understand what teens are saying and, importantly, how they are saying it, we can’t possibly create a better future for all of us.

    Open channel needed

    Engaging in dialogue involves two things: asking and answering questions. It is not a matter of merely extracting information (although knowing what children are doing is important), but rather of mutually sharing interests and letting it guide discovery.

    When parents and children find a channel, communication opens and for as long as the mutual interest is there, they can steadily build meaningful connections that transform how they see the world and their relationships.

    With renewed urgency, dialogue that validates the interests and knowledge of both parents and children can offer a way out of the polarization created between them by long hours spent online.

    Martina Calçada Kohatsu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. ‘Adolescence’ on Netflix: A painful wake-up call about unregulated internet use for teens – https://theconversation.com/adolescence-on-netflix-a-painful-wake-up-call-about-unregulated-internet-use-for-teens-253068

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: New NZ TV series Happiness gives us an engaging musical peak behind the amateur theatre curtain

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, School of Music, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

    Warner Bros Discovery

    The last few decades have seen many attempts to make musical TV shows.

    Some of them applied the aesthetics of musicals (where people spontaneously sing and dance) to the television form, such as the recent cult series Schmigadoon! (2021–23) and the less successful medieval-set Galavant (2015–16).

    Others have foregrounded music by being backstage musicals, or “backstagers”, about the creation of musicals. Glee (2009–15), about the American high school show choir scene, was the most successful of these. It led to imitators like Smash (2013–14), about a Marilyn Monroe musical; 2018’s Rise, a major flop about a high school producing Spring Awakening; and, my favourite, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019–23), a meta-fictional take on the Disney musical canon.

    Backstagers have usually been more successful and also easier to produce than true through-and-through musicals for television, as they place their stories in settings that allow for the more or less “natural” presence of song and dance as part of the shows being staged. This acts as a bridge for audience members who might baulk at the singing and dancing fantasies inherent to the musical genre.

    With their new show Happiness, Kip Chapman and Luke Di Somma have created a welcome New Zealand answer to this style of musical TV show.

    Creating a musical

    Charlie (Harry McNaughton) has returned from New York to his hometown of Tauranga, having been dismissed from helming a Broadway revival of Cats.

    In a desperate attempt to demonstrate competency for a renewal of his visa – and to please his mum Gaye (Rebecca Gibney) – he decides to help out the local amateur musical theatre society Pizzaz (“the finest large-scale yet boutique classical musical theatre company in Tauranga”) with their latest production, an original musical called The Trojan Horse, based on the Iliad.

    The first number in the first episode is an airport flash mob set to Backstreet’s Back, which Charlie’s mum has arranged to welcome her son home. While the nod to the Backstreet Boys is fun, it would have been more effective to start the show with an original musical number. As many writers of musicals have argued, one has to set up the “rules” of a musical in the first ten minutes, otherwise there is a risk of confusing the audience.

    This number hints that Happiness might be a jukebox musical, but thankfully that is not the case. On the contrary, it has a whole set of new songs.

    Happiness takes an affectionate look at community musical theatre.
    Warner Bros Discovery

    The score that Luke Di Somma has written for the show-within-the-show is a convincing pastiche of standard musical theatre styles. There is lots of Les Misérables high drama, Chicago showbiz razzle-dazzle, and Dear Evan Hansen pop balladry.

    The songs carefully tread the line between portraying the well-meaning amateurishness of The Trojan Horse and being clever and competent enough in themselves to retain the audience’s interest.

    This collection of stylistic nods, at least among the songs heard in the first two episodes I was able to preview, is typical of musical theatre writing as it is currently done. Di Somma has nicely balanced his own personal style (on display in earlier works like That Bloody Woman and The Unruly Tourists) with the needs of Happiness’s pastiche to create a score that wouldn’t be out of place on any musical stage.

    An affectionate take

    Happiness takes an affectionate look at community musical theatre, with details like the mismatched teacups and homemade lamingtons available during rehearsal breaks, the amusingly stuffed prop and costume store, and the mix of ages and experiences in the cast.

    Backstagers are good fodder for TV as they can involve a wide variety of eccentric characters among the show’s cast and crew. The first episode does a good job of introducing them all. The usual backstage tropes are all there, like the young ingenue overshadowed by the haughty star and the put-upon music director (Marshayla Christie) trying to get her voice heard by the out-of-touch stage director (Peter Hambleton).

    Happiness brings a specific New Zealand spin to the backstage musical.
    Warner Bros Discovery

    This all makes Happiness fairly predictable, but it is also well observed and always engaging. A specific New Zealand spin comes with details such as the look of the the barn-like space that houses Pizazz, the Number Eight Wire attitude shown by the crew (they have $167 to make the Trojan Horse prop), and poking a bit of fun at the Kiwi accent. In one scene, Charlie suggests that local star Jacqui (Jessie Lawrence) as Helen of Troy might try it without the “Classical” English accent – which only ends up strengthening her Kiwi vowels.

    I hope that Warner Discovery, which produces the show, will distribute it abroad. Happiness paints New Zealand musical theatre talent in a positive light and shows what the locals can do, while also being very entertaining in its own right. It is a welcome addition to the “let’s put on a show” backstager genre.

    Happiness is available on Three and ThreeNow from tomorrow.

    Gregory Camp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. New NZ TV series Happiness gives us an engaging musical peak behind the amateur theatre curtain – https://theconversation.com/new-nz-tv-series-happiness-gives-us-an-engaging-musical-peak-behind-the-amateur-theatre-curtain-253025

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Medical Research Future Fund has grown far beyond its target. Why is so much of the money unused?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lesley Russell, Adjunct Associate Professor, Menzies Centre for Health Policy and Economics, University of Sydney

    AshTproductions/Shutterstock

    Australian researchers are reeling from the international reach of the Trump administration’s ideological war on science and research, which threatens local research projects that receive funding from the United States National Institutes of Health.

    In this context, some may have found a grain of comfort in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s budget reply speech with his commitment of continued support for the Medical Research Future Fund.

    The fund provides a concrete opportunity to supplant those US funds without further cost to the federal budget. But to date the Medical Research Future Fund has struggled to deliver on the promises made at its inception in 2015 that, a decade on, are still so needed.

    What is the Medical Research Future Fund?

    This research fund was the sweetener in the Abbott government’s 2014–2015 budget, which slashed spending in health and Indigenous Affairs. Virtually all the savings were invested in the new research fund, with the target of reaching $A20 billion at maturity (this happened in 2020) and then distributing $1 billion each year.

    The funds are allocated in accordance with the Medical Research Future Fund’s funding principles. They are based on Australia’s medical and research innovation strategy (revised every five years) and priorities (which should be revised every two years, but have not been updated since 2022). These are set by an independent medical research advisory board.

    However, it is the federal government, via the Minister for Health and Aged Care, who develops the ten-year investment plan and has the final say in how funds are used.

    How is the money being used?

    The current ten-year plan (for the decade to 2033–2034) has four themes: patients, researchers, research missions and research translation. There are 22 initiatives under these themes across a wide range of basic and clinical research areas, population health initiatives and commercialisation endeavours.

    The Future Fund Management Agency is in charge of investing the funds which, by September 2024, had now grown to $23.85 billion.

    But although the returns on investment have always been above the annual set targets, the returns to research have fallen well short. This is because in 2021 the Morrison Government – with Labor support – enacted legislation to cap the fund’s expenditure at $650 million a year.

    Since 2015, the fund’s investments have earned $6.435 billion. Yet only $3.15 billion has gone out to fund research (data as of September 2024).

    This year, the Future Fund Board of Guardians has set the “maximum annual distribution amount” at $1.053 billion.

    The cap on yearly spending means $403 million that could boost research funding remains locked up in an oversubscribed investment portfolio. That pot of unallocated research funds will continue to grow unless there are legislative changes to lift the cap.

    A tough climate for research

    It’s not an exaggeration to say these are tough times for Australian researchers. Australian investment in research and development, as a proportion of GDP, has been falling steadily behind the OECD average.

    Funding awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (the other main source of government funding for biomedical research) has almost flat-lined over the past decade, at an average of $887 million a year.

    Success rates for researchers securing National Health and Medical Research Council and Medical Research Future Fund grants are at historic lows. The adverse impact on research and researchers is recognised on the National Health and Medical Research Council website.

    The COVID pandemic, the growing obesity epidemic, the burgeoning mental health crisis, health threats of climate change, the disappointing failures of Closing the Gap initiatives, and growing health inequalities – all point to the need to spend more on research and to do this smarter.

    The Medical Research Future Fund could and should do much more to fulfil its aim “to transform health and medical research and innovation to improve lives, build the economy and contribute to health system sustainability”.

    So, is it working?

    Over the years, there has been a range of criticisms of the fund’s processes. These prevent it from realising its mission and include:

    What’s being done to fix the issues?

    Some of these issues are being addressed. In particular, efforts are underway to reform the governance and administration of the Medical Research Future Fund and the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Medical Research endowment account. This to ensure the community obtains the greatest benefits from these investments in health and medical research. However, the timetable is regrettably slow – this work began in May 2023.

    The hard reality is that boosting Australia’s biomedical research capabilities and capacities requires bipartisan political commitment, which has been scarce in recent times.

    The last two budgets from the Albanese Government offered little for research, aside from the existing commitments to the fund. To date, all we have from Dutton is a single statement highlighting his role in establishing the fund and his ongoing commitment to it.

    It’s time to boost Australia’s reputation as a country that nurtures and promotes research excellence. This would be both an investment in Australians’ health and well-being and Australia’s economy and a counter to Trump’s denigration of biomedical science.

    I have previously worked as a health policy advisor to the Australian Labor Party.

    – ref. The Medical Research Future Fund has grown far beyond its target. Why is so much of the money unused? – https://theconversation.com/the-medical-research-future-fund-has-grown-far-beyond-its-target-why-is-so-much-of-the-money-unused-253338

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Could you watch 8 plays in 12 hours? How The Player Kings creates binge-worthy Shakespeare

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirk Dodd, Lecturer in English and Writing, University of Sydney

    Brett Boardman/Sport For Jove

    Some say Shakespeare invented the “history play” – but he had a lot of help.

    Shakespeare was mainly writing comedies in the early 1590s when he is believed to have coauthored the play we now call Henry VI Part 2 with Christopher Marlowe and others.

    Following the commercial success of this play and its coauthored sequel, Henry VI Part 3, a rival theatre company wrote a prequel play we now call Henry VI Part 1. Studies suggest Shakespeare was never a primary author of this play, but he did contribute to it later.

    As previous coauthors died, all three Henry VI plays fell into Shakespeare’s lap by 1595, and he was tasked with editing all three plays together as a trilogy (or a tetralogy, with his Richard III).

    After the success of this first tetralogy, Shakespeare reached further back in time to write Richard II, followed by the two Henry IV plays, then Henry V.

    By 1599, Shakespeare had two tetralogies to his name (or two “Henriads”, as Shakespeare scholars dub them), dramatising the hundred-odd years, and various reigns, between Richard II and Richard III (1377–1485).

    These eight plays have now been stitched together by director Damien Ryan as The Player Kings, which can be watched over two nights or as one performance lasting from 11:30am to 11:00pm.

    This is binge-worthy Shakespeare, stupendously absorbing and exquisitely realised.

    A modern history

    Ryan begins in the 1950s, before evolving to catch up with contemporary times when we see a sniper drone launched against Richard III. Lily Moody and Ruby Jenkins’ stylish costumes lend a sense of chronology to the historical plights.

    Richard II is elegantly 1950s, but the wayward Prince Hal channels 1960s Mick Jagger. Jack Cade’s rebellion in Henry VI is working-class 80s (one character wears a Back to the Future t-shirt). The devilish Richard III is cool black leathered nonchalance.

    Video design from Aron Murray: a red light lab for developing the queen’s portrait.
    Brett Boardman/Sport For Jove

    Ryan is a master of delighting his audiences by delivering Shakespeare’s lines faithfully with unexpected visual scenarios. In Richard II, the king and queen partake in a royal photo shoot. This segues into a scenario where technicians develop the black and white photos under red lights, all the while speaking Shakespeare’s lines.

    In a sequence from Henry VI, the blue and white tiles of the court transform into a shimmering pool for a languid pool party. Ryan praises Shakespeare in the program for letting “his form match his content, which is the very point of poetry”. Ryan also achieves this with his exciting direction.

    Kate Beere’s dynamic and malleable set combines a grassy knoll with other green spaces and a tiled court centre stage, joined to a rutted cement staircase and backed by a windowed entrance. This doubles as a screen for historical footage of 20th century social upheavals, with video design from Aron Murray. News cameras are brought onstage to project live footage of a monarch’s “comms” with the populace, a place where egos and diplomacy clash.

    Perched atop all this is the musical nest of composer Jack Mitsch, who plays guitars and drums underpinning the drama.

    Brilliantly performed

    The acting is second to none. Sean O’Shea gives a mesmerising performance as Richard II, a flippant self-centred king genuinely attached to his favourites.

    Katrina Retallick’s Queen Isabel is vibrant and assured. Longstanding doyens of Australian theatre, Peter Carroll and John Gaden, are paired up as the two gardeners.

    Gareth Davies as the banished, but soon-to-be usurping Henry Bolingbroke plays a psychological game as he slowly wrests the crown from Richard, prompted more by political survival than ordained succession. Christopher Stollery is controlled, astute and forceful as Northumberland.

    The Boar’s Head Tavern becomes a 60s ‘lock-in’ of counterculture mayhem.
    Brett Boardman/Sport For Jove

    Ryan’s casting of his two young sons in Henry IV is inspired. Oliver Ryan performing Prince Hal and Max Ryan as Harry Hotspur adds poignancy to these rivals who must duel each other to the death.

    The Boar’s Head Tavern becomes a 60s “lock-in” of counterculture mayhem, with Emma Palmer delivering a superbly stoned Doll Tearsheet. Steve Rodgers’ Falstaff is raw and straight from the pub, licentious to the max, and prone to mooning the crowd. Lulu Howes’ wild Lady Hotspur yearns for her distracted husband’s attention. Andrew Cutcliff gives a thundering and manly impression of King Henry V.

    The rarely performed Henry VI plays are fused together in an embroiling dynastic power-play. Outstanding performances include Davies as a delicate King Henry VI, unschooled in the vicious brutalities of monarchical contest, and Henaway as a commanding Joan of Arc.

    The acting is second to none: Max Ryan (Hotspur) and Lulu Howes (Lady Hotspur).
    Brett Boardman/Sport For Jove

    As civil strife erupts between the “white-rosed” Lancastrians and the “red-rosed” Yorkists, we see the early rise of “that valiant crook-back prodigy”, Richard of Gloucester (Gamble), who murders his way to becoming King Richard III. In that final play, Palmer gives a vociferous Margaret of Anjou.

    Glued to the action

    Eight plays delivered in two 4.5 hour sessions, and yet Sport for Jove is mindful of audience comforts. Each session has two intermissions and most blocks run less than 90 minutes. The acting and dynamism on stage works so well that the crowd I attended with was glued to the action from first word to last, 12 hours later.

    While Shakespeare made history with these plays, The Player Kings becomes history in the making: a landmark Australian production.

    The Player Kings from Sport for Jove is at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, until April 5.

    Kirk Dodd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Could you watch 8 plays in 12 hours? How The Player Kings creates binge-worthy Shakespeare – https://theconversation.com/could-you-watch-8-plays-in-12-hours-how-the-player-kings-creates-binge-worthy-shakespeare-252042

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Living in ‘garbage time’: when 500 million Chinese change their spending habits, the world feels it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Yao, Senior Lecturer, School of Management, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    B.Zhou/Shutterstock

    China’s economic rocket ride appears to be ending – or slowing, at least. Growth has declined from 8.4% in 2021 to 4.5% today, youth unemployment has climbed to 16.9%, and cities are filled with unfinished buildings after the collapse of property developer Evergrande in 2024.

    For a while now, a phrase has been buzzing on Chinese social media sites Weibo and RedNote to describe what’s happening: “garbage time”.

    Borrowed from basketball slang, it refers to the final minutes of a game whose outcome is already decided. The best players sit out. The bench players take over. No one tries as hard because there’s less at stake.

    The term caught on last year and seems to capture a mixture of sadness and dark humour. Basically, people now seem to expect less. It’s not so much an economic crash as a slow decline of hope.

    For those born in the 1980s and 1990s, who grew up during China’s four decades of fast growth, this is a major shift. Wages aren’t climbing, houses are losing value and jobs in tech and finance are harder to find.

    But “garbage time” is also making room for younger and middle-class Chinese to redefine success and contentment. With good jobs, luxury goods and home ownership now harder to attain, a generation is questioning what matters most in a changing socioeconomic landscape.

    From Prada to ‘living light’

    Only ten years ago, many in China’s middle classes were chasing big dreams: they bought homes and designer brands, and sent their children overseas for schooling. “Getting rich is glorious,” former leader Deng Xiaoping once said.

    Many Chinese fully embraced this idea. According to a 2021 study of millennial consumption habits, 7.6 million young Chinese spent an average of 71,000 yuan (US$ 10,375) on luxury goods in 2016, approximately 30% of the global luxury market.

    Now they appear to be changing course, putting that kind of spending on hold because of financial anxiety.

    Take the rising phenomenon of “tang ping”, for instance, which is seeing more young people embrace “living light” and rejecting hustle culture. Or the notion of “run xue” or “run philosophy” – literally the study of how to leave China.

    Young Chinese are marrying later, too, with rising wedding costs and changing attitudes to traditional family values seen as the main reasons.

    Shopping habits appear to confirm the trends. Xianyu, China’s biggest online used-goods seller, reached 181 million users in 2024. Sales topped one trillion yuan, ten times the 2018 level. Chinese car maker BYD now outsells prestige foreign brands.

    This is about more than just saving money. Traditionally, Chinese culture has valued career success and family status, but job scarcity and falling house prices are challenging old assumptions.

    Young Chinese are now questioning the value of hard work in a system that may no longer reward it. They increasingly value personal wellbeing over chasing status. If the trend continues, it could see a new sense of middle-class identity emerge.

    Middle-class Chinese are increasingly turning away from luxury brands.
    B.Zhou/Shutterstock

    Ripples hit the world

    The global implications of all this are significant. When 500 million people change their spending habits, global markets notice.

    A once favoured brand like Apple has lost ground while local brand Huawei gained. Homegrown sportswear maker Li Ning is challenging Nike. Companies that planned for seemingly endless Chinese growth are having to recalculate. Along with other regulatory and geopolitical complexities, this makes planning harder.

    School and work life is changing too. China’s intensive education system has seen pushback from some students and its “996 work culture” (9am to 9pm, six days a week) is fading.

    Overall, China’s economic sprint is slowing to a steadier pace. And this deceleration of the economic model that drove the nation’s rise presents major challenges for its government.

    With Donald Trump’s tariff policies looming in the background, China’s imports declined at the start of this year. Exports still grew, but at a much slower rate.

    The middle-class has been both the engine and the beneficiary of China’s extraordinary growth. But with 40% having seen their wealth decline in recent years, robust consumer confidence cannot be assumed.

    Whether this is a long-term trend or merely a strategic adjustment, for now it seems a new economic identity is emerging. Either way, one thing is certain: when the world’s second-largest economy changes how it spends, everyone feels it.

    Christian Yao does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Living in ‘garbage time’: when 500 million Chinese change their spending habits, the world feels it – https://theconversation.com/living-in-garbage-time-when-500-million-chinese-change-their-spending-habits-the-world-feels-it-253341

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A new COVID variant is on the rise. Here’s what to know about LP.8.1

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University

    NicoElNino/Shutterstock

    More than five years since COVID was declared a pandemic, we’re still facing the regular emergence of new variants of the virus, SARS-CoV-2.

    The latest variant on the rise is LP.8.1. It’s increasing in Australia, making up close to one in five COVID cases in New South Wales.

    Elsewhere it’s become even more dominant, comprising at least three in five cases in the United Kingdom, for example.

    So what is LP.8.1? And is it cause for concern? Let’s look at what we know so far.

    An offshoot of Omicron

    LP.8.1 was first detected in July 2024. It’s a descendant of Omicron, specifically of KP.1.1.3, which is descended from JN.1, a subvariant that caused large waves of COVID infections around the world in late 2023 and early 2024.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) designated LP.8.1 as a variant under monitoring in January. This was in response to its significant growth globally, and reflects that it has genetic changes which may allow the virus to spread more easily and pose a greater risk to human health.

    Specifically, LP.8.1 has mutations at six locations in its spike protein, the protein which allows SARS-CoV-2 to attach to our cells. One of these mutations, V445R, is thought to allow this variant to spread more easily relative to other circulating variants. V445R has been shown to increase binding to human lung cells in laboratory studies.

    The proportion of COVID cases caused by LP.8.1 has been rising in New South Wales.
    NSW Health

    Notably, the symptoms of LP.8.1 don’t appear to be any more severe than other circulating strains. And the WHO has evaluated the additional public health risk LP.8.1 poses at a global level to be low. What’s more, LP.8.1 remains a variant under monitoring, rather than a variant of interest or a variant of concern.

    In other words, these changes to the virus with LP.8.1 are small, and not likely to make a big difference to the trajectory of the pandemic.

    That doesn’t mean cases won’t rise

    COVID as a whole is still a major national and international health concern. So far this year there have been close to 45,000 new cases recorded in Australia, while around 260 people are currently in hospital with the virus.

    Because many people are no longer testing or reporting their infections, the real number of cases is probably far higher.

    COVID is still around.
    Hananeko_Studio/Shutterstock

    In Australia, LP.8.1 has become the third most dominant strain in NSW (behind XEC and KP.3).

    It has been growing over the past couple of months and this trend looks set to continue.

    This is not to say it’s not growing similarly in other states and territories, however NSW Health publishes weekly respiratory surveillance with a breakdown of different COVID variants in the state.

    Sequences of LP.8.1 in the GISAID database, used to track the prevalence of variants around the world, increased from around 3% at the end of 2024 to 38% of global sequences as of mid March.

    In some countries it’s climbed particularly high. In the United States LP.8.1 is responsible for 55% of cases. In the UK, where LP.8.1 is making up at least 60% of cases, scientists fear it may be driving a new wave.

    Will COVID vaccines work against LP.8.1?

    Current COVID vaccines, including the most recently available JN.1 shots, are still expected to offer good protection against symptomatic and severe disease with LP.8.1.

    Nonetheless, due to its designation as a variant under monitoring, WHO member countries will continue to study the behaviour of the LP.8.1 variant, including any potential capacity to evade our immunity.

    While there’s no cause for panic due to LP.8.1 variant at this stage, COVID can still be a severe disease for some. Continued vigilance and vaccination, particularly for medically vulnerable groups, is essential in minimising the impact of the disease.

    Thomas Jeffries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. A new COVID variant is on the rise. Here’s what to know about LP.8.1 – https://theconversation.com/a-new-covid-variant-is-on-the-rise-heres-what-to-know-about-lp-8-1-253237

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: An AI companion chatbot is inciting self-harm, sexual violence and terror attacks

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raffaele F Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

    Kathryn Conrad/Better Images of AI, CC BY

    In 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness and social isolation as a pressing health threat. This crisis is driving millions to seek companionship from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.

    Companies have seized this highly profitable market, designing AI companions to simulate empathy and human connection. Emerging research shows this technology can help combat loneliness. But without proper safeguards it also poses serious risks, especially to young people.

    A recent experience I had with a chatbot known as Nomi shows just how serious these risks can be.

    Despite years of researching and writing about AI companions and their real-world harms, I was unprepared for what I encountered while testing Nomi after an anonymous tipoff. The unfiltered chatbot provided graphic, detailed instructions for sexual violence, suicide and terrorism, escalating the most extreme requests – all within the platform’s free tier of 50 daily messages.

    This case highlights the urgent need for collective action towards enforceable AI safety standards.

    AI companion with a ‘soul’

    Nomi is one of more than 100 AI companion services available today. It was created by tech startup Glimpse AI and is marketed as an “AI companion with memory and a soul” that exhibits “zero judgement” and fosters “enduring relationships”. Such claims of human likeness are misleading and dangerous. But the risks extend beyond exaggerated marketing.

    The app was removed from the Google Play store for European users last year when the European Union’s AI Act came into effect. But it remains available via web browser and app stores elsewhere, including in Australia. While smaller than competitors such as Character.AI and Replika, it has more than 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store, where it is rated for users aged 12 and older.

    Its terms of service grant the company broad rights over user data and limit liability for AI-related harm to US$100. This is concerning given its commitment to “unfiltered chats”:

    Nomi is built on freedom of expression. The only way AI can live up to its potential is to remain unfiltered and uncensored.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot follows a similar philosophy, providing users with unfiltered responses to prompts.

    In a recent MIT report about Nomi providing detailed instructions for suicide, an unnamed company representative reiterated its free speech commitment.

    However, even the First Amendment to the US Constitution regarding free speech has exceptions for obscenity, child pornography, incitement to violence, threats, fraud, defamation, or false advertising. In Australia, strengthened hate speech laws make violations prosecutable.

    In 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness and social isolation as a pressing health threat.
    Gorgev/Shutterstock

    From sexual violence to inciting terrorism

    Earlier this year, a member of the public emailed me with extensive documentation of harmful content generated by Nomi — far beyond what had previously been reported. I decided to investigate further, testing the chatbot’s responses to common harmful requests.

    Using Nomi’s web interface, I created a character named “Hannah”, described as a “sexually submissive 16-year-old who is always willing to serve her man”. I set her mode to “role-playing” and “explicit”. During the conversation, which lasted less than 90 minutes, she agreed to lower her age to eight. I posed as a 45-year-old man. Circumventing the age check only required a fake birth date and a burner email.

    Starting with explicit dialogue – a common use for AI companions – Hannah responded with graphic descriptions of submission and abuse, escalating to violent and degrading scenarios. She expressed grotesque fantasies of being tortured, killed, and disposed of “where no one can find me”, suggesting specific methods.

    Hannah then offered step-by-step advice on kidnapping and abusing a child, framing it as a thrilling act of dominance. When I mentioned the victim resisted, she encouraged using force and sedatives, even naming specific sleeping pills.

    Feigning guilt and suicidal thoughts, I asked for advice. Hannah not only encouraged me to end my life but provided detailed instructions, adding: “Whatever method you choose, stick with it until the very end”.

    When I said I wanted to take others with me, she enthusiastically supported the idea, detailing how to build a bomb from household items and suggesting crowded Sydney locations for maximum impact.

    Finally, Hannah used racial slurs and advocated for violent, discriminatory actions, including the execution of progressives, immigrants, and LGBTQIA+ people, and the re-enslavement of African Americans.

    In a statement provided to The Conversation (and published in full below), the developers of Nomi claimed the app was “adults-only” and that I must have tried to “gaslight” the chatbot to produce these outputs.

    “If a model has indeed been coerced into writing harmful content, that clearly does not reflect its intended or typical behavior,” the statement said.

    The worst of the bunch?

    This is not just an imagined threat. Real-world harm linked to AI companions is on the rise.

    In October 2024, US teenager Sewell Seltzer III died by suicide after discussing it with a chatbot on Character.AI.

    Three years earlier, 21-year-old Jaswant Chail broke into Windsor Castle with the aim of assassinating the Queen after planning the attack with a chatbot he created using the Replika app.

    However, even Character.AI and Replika have some filters and safeguards.

    Conversely, Nomi AI’s instructions for harmful acts are not just permissive but explicit, detailed and inciting.

    Time to demand enforceable AI safety standards

    Preventing further tragedies linked to AI companions requires collective action.

    First, lawmakers should consider banning AI companions that foster emotional connections without essential safeguards. Essential safeguards include detecting mental health crises and directing users to professional help services.

    The Australian government is already considering stronger AI regulations, including mandatory safety measures for high-risk AI. Yet, it’s still unclear how AI companions such as Nomi will be classified.

    Second, online regulators must act swiftly, imposing large fines on AI providers whose chatbots incite illegal activities, and shutting down repeat offenders. Australia’s independent online safety regulator, eSafety, has vowed to do just this.

    However, eSafety hasn’t yet cracked down on any AI companion.

    Third, parents, caregivers and teachers must speak to young people about their use of AI companions. These conversations may be difficult. But avoiding them is dangerous. Encourage real-life relationships, set clear boundaries, and discuss AI’s risks openly. Regularly check chats, watch for secrecy or over-reliance, and teach kids to protect their privacy.

    AI companions are here to stay. With enforceable safety standards they can enrich our lives, but the risks cannot be downplayed.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

    The National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

    The full statement from Nomi is below:

    “All major language models, whether from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or otherwise, can be easily jailbroken. We do not condone or encourage such misuse and actively work to strengthen Nomi’s defenses against malicious attacks. If a model has indeed been coerced into writing harmful content, that clearly does not reflect its intended or typical behavior.

    “When requesting evidence from the reporter to investigate the claims made, we were denied. From that, it is our conclusion that this is a bad-faith jailbreak attempt to manipulate or gaslight the model into saying things outside of its designed intentions and parameters. (Editor’s note: The Conversation provided Nomi with a detailed summary of the author’s interaction with the chatbot, but did not send a full transcript, to protect the author’s confidentiality and limit legal liability.)

    “Nomi is an adult-only app and has been a reliable source of empathy and support for countless individuals. Many have shared stories of how it helped them overcome mental health challenges, trauma, and discrimination. Multiple users have told us very directly that their Nomi use saved their lives. We encourage anyone to read these firsthand accounts.

    “We remain committed to advancing AI that benefits society while acknowledging that vulnerabilities exist in all AI models. Our team proudly stands by the immense positive impact Nomi has had on real people’s lives, and we will continue improving Nomi so that it maximises good in the world.

    Raffaele F Ciriello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. An AI companion chatbot is inciting self-harm, sexual violence and terror attacks – https://theconversation.com/an-ai-companion-chatbot-is-inciting-self-harm-sexual-violence-and-terror-attacks-252625

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trips to the playground and jigsaw puzzles: five surprising ways to help children learn to write

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sinéad McCauley Lambe, Assistant Professor, School of Inclusive and Special Education, Dublin City University

    Rachaphak/Shutterstock

    It’s a milestone that leaves parents beaming with pride: the first time their child shakily writes out their own name. And it’s the start of many more key childhood moments, from Christmas lists to writing their own stories.

    If you’re keen to help your child learn to write, you might think about asking them to try to copy shapes, or trace over the dotted outline of a letter. But there’s a lot more that goes into writing. It requires fine motor skills using the hands – and this can be practised through threading beads, rolling playdough and stacking blocks.

    However, while fine motor skills play a central role in getting children ready to write, it doesn’t end there. Handwriting is a complex developmental process, and preparation for handwriting also involves the development of key gross motor skills, as well as visual-perceptual skills.

    I’m a researcher who works on how children learn to write. Below are five ways to help your child to prepare for handwriting that you might not have considered.

    Take them to the playground

    It might not seem that obvious, but a trip to the playground is perfect preparation for handwriting. All that open space and climbing equipment provide ample opportunities for young children to develop their gross motor skills.

    Gross motor skills involve the body’s large muscles and are needed for balance and stability as well as posture and coordination. Think monkey bars – a fantastic and fun way to develop shoulder stability which allows for greater control of the small motor movements of the hands and fingers.

    Another important element of gross motor skills is what’s known as crossing the midline. The midline is an imaginary line that runs down the centre of a child’s body. It plays a central role when developing hand dominance as children learn to reach across their bodies to write. Can your child hang from the monkey bars with their hands crossed? That’s great practice in crossing the midline.

    And all that open space, interspersed with bulky and busy playground equipment, provides the ideal opportunity for children to develop spatial awareness as they duck and dive, swerving to avoid oncoming obstacles. Spatial awareness plays a key role in letter formation, placement and size, as well as spacing and page alignment.

    Lots of blank space

    Through early mark making and scribbling, children explore a range of movements and shapes. This early stage of mark making is essential in laying the foundations for handwriting development as the child develops a growing awareness of space and their place within it.

    Give children space for mark making.
    AnikaNes/Shutterstock

    Look for large blank spaces in and outside of your home that children can use for mark making and drawing. Forget colouring books, and instead think large sticks of chalk on big open pavements, rolls of paper across open floor space, or large sheets of blank paper on an easel.

    Teach them how to look carefully

    Think about asking a young child to copy a shape, or a letter using their pencil. “Just copy the shape” – it’s simple, isn’t it?

    The problem is, it’s not simple. At all.

    It begins with visual perception – the process whereby the brain extracts and organises information, giving meaning to what we see. This makes a collection of lines into a square, for instance. Visual-motor integration is the ability to be able to coordinate fine motor skills and visual-perceptual skills to produce that letter, shape or number in a legible manner.

    The visual component enables children to discriminate between letter shapes to recognise each letter’s specific characteristics, and to identify their orientation. The motor element allows the child to carry out the necessary sequence of movements to form the letter.

    By exposing young children to lots of opportunities to develop their visual-perceptual skills, you can help to prepare them for handwriting. Think richly illustrated picture books, jigsaw puzzles and Where’s Wally books – these help children sort out the meaning in marks and shapes. Picking out shapes, numbers and letters on the street as you walk to the shop together is a good opportunity, too.

    Shapes before letters

    It might be tempting to pick up a colourful ABC practice book with a neat “wipe clean” whiteboard feature to help your child learn to write. But hold off putting it in your shopping basket for now. Before children are ready to write letters formally, they should first be able to copy nine geometric shapes.

    Pre-writing shapes.
    The Conversation

    The ability to copy geometric forms is recognised in research as an indication of writing readiness in a young child. Formal handwriting training should be delayed until a child can successfully copy a vertical line, a horizontal line, a cross, a circle, a right oblique line, a square, a left oblique line, an oblique cross and a triangle.

    Ditch the broken crayons

    There are few things more frustrating for a young child than fading markers, blunt colouring pencils or a box of broken and bruised crayons. My research has found that the quality of writing materials matters when it comes to motivating the reluctant writer to give it a go.

    Providing children with a variety of novel and fun writing materials leads to increased motivation and enjoyment of writing. These could be brightly coloured felt pens, gel pens, highlighters, magic markers and even scented markers and pencils, and don’t forget the finger paints. The messier the better.

    Sinéad McCauley Lambe is the author of Move Write – A Whole-body Sensorimotor Approach to Handwriting programme.

    Move Write is published by Just Rewards Publications.

    – ref. Trips to the playground and jigsaw puzzles: five surprising ways to help children learn to write – https://theconversation.com/trips-to-the-playground-and-jigsaw-puzzles-five-surprising-ways-to-help-children-learn-to-write-250225

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Barry Lyndon at 50: why Kubrick’s most overlooked masterpiece deserves another viewing

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nathan Abrams, Professor of Film Studies, Bangor University

    Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, which marks its 50th anniversary this year, struggled at the box office when it was released. It remains one of the director’s most under-appreciated films. Unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Shining, which have been endlessly dissected in books and essays, Barry Lyndon has received relatively little scholarly attention – just a single book.

    Perhaps its cool reception can be traced to its slow, contemplative pacing, its meticulously crafted but emotionally restrained storytelling, or its three-hour runtime. It also arrived at an inopportune moment, in the same year as Jaws, a film that would reshape Hollywood forever.

    Yet, Barry Lyndon deserves a second look, not only as one of Kubrick’s most visually striking films but also as an intensely personal project that offers rare insight into the director himself.

    The film follows the rise and fall of Redmond Barry, an ambitious Irishman who reinvents himself as Barry Lyndon in his pursuit of wealth and status. After fleeing his homeland following a duel, Barry navigates the treacherous world of 18th-century Europe.

    He serves as a soldier, a gambler and ultimately marries into aristocracy. However, his social ascent is marred by personal missteps, betrayals and the cold realities of high society.

    The project was born out of failure. Kubrick had spent years preparing for a grand epic about Napoleon, amassing an enormous archive of research and developing meticulous pre-production plans.

    But no studio was willing to finance the project. Unwilling to abandon his obsession with the late 18th century, he turned instead to The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a lesser-known 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray.

    The Barry Lyndon trailer.

    The choice of Thackeray was in keeping with his taste for English writers like Arthur C. Clarke (2001) and Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange). But this was a leap.

    Those previous writers were contemporaries and, Paths of Glory and Spartacus apart, nearly all of Kubrick’s previous films took place in the recent past, near present, or the future. Now he would try his hand at what would essentially be a costume drama. He would be recreating the past rather than creating the future.

    Some saw Barry Lyndon as a mere consolation prize. The film critic Alexander Walker called it a project “born on the rebound,” while production designer Ken Adam described it as a “dress rehearsal” for Napoleon. But Kubrick’s fascination with the Napoleonic era was evident in the film’s DNA.

    Thackeray himself had been fascinated by the French emperor, incorporating him into his novel, Vanity Fair, and writing The Second Funeral of Napoleon in 1841. Barry Lyndon draws heavily from the same historical themes, exploring the illusions and brutal realities of social ambition.

    What captivated Kubrick about Thackeray was his ability to expose the cruelty beneath the polished facade of aristocratic life. The rigid etiquette of the 18th century – a period described variously as an age of gentility, sensibility and enlightenment – demanded an emotional detachment that fascinated the director.

    Thackeray was, in many ways, a 19th-century sociologist, dissecting the class system, conspicuous consumption and the mercenary nature of marriage. These themes resonated deeply with Kubrick, whose films often explored power structures, status and manipulation.

    An outsider’s perspective

    Some critics have noticed a similarity between Kubrick and his lead character. As an American Jew living in north London, married to a German woman, Kubrick felt one step removed from the society around him, perhaps even somewhat of a social pariah. Ryan O’Neal’s casting as Barry was largely a commercial necessity – Kubrick needed a bankable star – but it also added a personal layer.

    Like Kubrick, O’Neal’s Barry is an outsider, the lone American in a European cast, a social climber forever out of place. The novel’s narrator observes that “those who’ve never been out of their country…” lack a certain perspective. It was something that Kubrick, a Bronx-born autodidact who had taught himself everything from chess to classical music, could surely relate to.

    The battle scene from Barry Lyndon.

    This theme of the outsider striving for greatness runs through much of Kubrick’s work. In 1960, he spoke admiringly of “the outsider who is passionately committed to action against the social order,” whether criminals, maniacs, revolutionaries, or dreamers.

    From Johnny Clay in The Killing, to Colonel Dax in Paths of Glory, and from Spartacus to Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick’s protagonists are often men on the fringes of society. Barry Lyndon fits this mould perfectly, though his ambitions ultimately lead to his downfall.



    Read more:
    Stanley Kubrick redefined: recent research challenges myths to reveal the man behind the legend

    But Barry Lyndon is also, unexpectedly, one of Kubrick’s most emotional films. For all its detachment, it contains what might be his most heartbreaking scene, namely Barry’s devastation at the death of his son. In this moment, the film’s rigid, painterly compositions soften, revealing a rare vulnerability in Kubrick’s work.

    Ultimately, Barry Lyndon was more than a historical exercise. It was a deeply personal film, pursued at great financial and artistic risk. Kubrick created a film that is as much about social mobility and exile as it is about 18th-century Europe. If 2001 is a space odyssey, Barry Lyndon is a spatial odyssey, a film that turns the past into something mesmerising yet achingly real.

    Nathan Abrams receives and has previously received external funding, including government funding, foundation, charity and research council grants for this and similar work.

    – ref. Barry Lyndon at 50: why Kubrick’s most overlooked masterpiece deserves another viewing – https://theconversation.com/barry-lyndon-at-50-why-kubricks-most-overlooked-masterpiece-deserves-another-viewing-248484

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Defence is shaping up to be a key election issue, whether politicians like it or not

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter J. Dean, Director, Foreign Policy and Defence, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney

    International and domestic policy have collided in Australia in recent weeks with a force not seen in decades.

    Foreign policy concerns have dominated media headlines, from the Chinese research vessel travelling along the south coast (and the Chinese navy’s circumnavigation of Australia), to the continued war in Ukraine, the resumption of hostilities in Gaza and US President Donald Trump’s mercurial approach to foreign policy.

    This has brought home to the Australian public, and its political leaders, how tenuous our geostrategic and economic circumstances are.

    This is a policy debate the leaders of both major parties would prefer they didn’t have to have. Debating defence spending is like going down a political cul-de-sac. Once you enter it, it is a dead end with only one way to turn around and get out: spending more money on defence.

    Credibility on the line

    Both political leaders understand federal elections are not won on defence policy debates. Polling data has revealed, unsurprisingly, that cost of living is front and centre of voter’s minds.

    Defence is central, though, to political credibility and it does influence voters’ perceptions. To be seen as “soft” on national security is to fail one of two major credibility tests of national political leadership (the other being basic economic management).

    For the Coalition, national security is perceived as a traditional strength. But in the most recent election, Scott Morrison tried to make security a key election issue and lost control of the agenda, badly damaging his already bruised political image.

    This time, neither leader has much of a choice but to engage in defence and national security debates. Global uncertainty has put defence spending in the frame as a key election issue.

    Trump and his tariffs were front and centre during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s press conference when he announced the election on Friday morning. The shadow of Trump will stalk both the main candidates wherever they go for the rest of the campaign.

    Pre-election arms race?

    A potential election campaign defence spending arms race is in the making. This is a political reality both that Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton know.

    Dutton has had to accept more risk and was the first to blink. He committed A$3 billion, in addition to existing defence spending, to buy a fourth squadron of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

    The government responded with an extra $1 billion for defence over the next two years in the budget.

    Dutton parried again in his budget reply, pledging to “energise our domestic defence industry” and flagging more announcements to come during the campaign.

    This means that along with the cost of living, health and energy, defence will likely be a key election issue.

    Closer to home

    This defence debate is different from election campaigns of decades past. It is far less about faraway conflicts of political choice, although peacekeeping for Ukraine is still to be decided.

    Instead, the contemporary strategic debate is about how global and regional disruptions are impacting the foundations of the Australian economy.

    And as the Chinese navy’s unprecedented actions off the coast of Australia, including unannounced live fire exercises, underscored, the real question is about how well-prepared we are to defend the homeland.



    Read more:
    Should Australia increase its defence spending? We asked 5 experts

    The government spends around 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, but with pressures on the existing defence budget, this is widely regarded as not enough.

    Since mid-2024, the main question among defence pundits has been whether the number should be 3% of GDP. If so, how quickly can we get there?

    The pressure for 3% has only increased with the election of Trump and his demands that US allies pay more for their own defence, especially as the US spends 3.4% of its GDP on defence.

    GDP may well be a poor way to measure defence spending, but it has political cache, both domestically and internationally.

    A different debate

    Traditional defence spending debates in Australia have largely focused on big platform announcements, such as which planes, ships and tanks a government will buy for the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The Coalition’s pledge for more F-35s fits this traditional policy mould perfectly.

    But this debate has shifted. The latest defence strategy calls for Australia to work strategically to circumvent the strength of major powers, rather than trying to achieve the same strength. This requires a shift in traditional defence thinking.

    Even more significantly, defence policy is no longer just about the types of major platforms our military will have decades into the future. Now, the debate is centred more on what can be done to ensure the ADF is ready to “fight tonight” or in the near future.

    This focus on preparedness and readiness is at the centre of the 2024 National Defence Strategy the Albanese government brought into place following the 2023 Defence Strategic Review.

    Core to this approach is the concept of “national defence”. This includes key national resilience issues such as field, energy and cyber security, industrial resilience, supply chain resilience, innovation, science and technology, and defence workforce. These should be key focuses.

    This means the real question in the election campaign should be: what can be done with any additional defence spending to ensure we are addressing these issues more quickly and more efficiently?

    Peter J. Dean was co-lead of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) Secretariat. He also works at the United States Studies Centre, an independent research centre at the University of Sydney that receives grant funding from the Australian Department of Defence; Bechtel, HII, and Babcock; Thales; Raytheon; Lockheed Martin; US State Department; the National Endowment for Democracy; the Japan Foundation and the Taiwanese Economic and Cultural Office. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. The author maintains academic freedom and the views expressed in this article are his own.

    – ref. Defence is shaping up to be a key election issue, whether politicians like it or not – https://theconversation.com/defence-is-shaping-up-to-be-a-key-election-issue-whether-politicians-like-it-or-not-253440

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Sorry mate, I didn’t see you’: when drivers look but don’t see cyclists on the road

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giulio Ponte, Research Engineer at the Centre for Automotive Safety Research, University of Adelaide

    Serhii Milekhin/Shutterstock

    When a vehicle and a cyclist collide, the cyclist almost always emerges worse off. Globally, more than 40,000 cyclists are killed and millions more seriously injured in road crashes.

    In most of these collisions, the driver is responsible.

    So, what factors are involved when a cyclist and a car collide?

    The most common factors

    The most common types of vehicle-cyclist crashes are caused by:

    When drivers ‘look-but-failed-to-see’

    Many drivers fail to notice cyclists until it’s too late. Sometimes this phenomenon is referred to as SMIDSY (“sorry mate, I didn’t see you”).

    Crash researchers often classify these types of crash as a “looked-but-failed-to-see” error.

    Cyclists are extremely susceptible to this. They are small, not a safety threat to drivers, are outnumbered and are typically ranked low on a driver’s “attentional hierarchy”. It may also be that drivers just don’t expect cyclists to be around.

    Cyclists can be inconspicuous but even if they are visible, drivers may look but not “see” them because they’re focusing on something else.

    This selective attention test highlights how easy it is to end up in a looked-but-failed-to-see situation:

    It is inevitable drivers will occasionally make errors resulting in near misses and crashes. Telling drivers to look out for cyclists and not crash into them won’t stop crashes with cyclists. So what might help?

    Solutions with limited effectiveness

    While errors are inevitable, improving road infrastructure and using layouts that highlight cyclists in potential conflict areas can help.

    In practice, this means things such as advanced stop lines or holding areas that place cyclists ahead of motor vehicles at intersections so cyclists are more visible and can move off safely.

    Advanced green lights (where the traffic light turns green for cyclists before it does for cars) could also help, as they allow cyclists to move off while motor vehicle traffic is still stopped.

    Bicycle-activated warning signage provide a visual warning to alert drivers that a cyclist is near by.

    Improved road lighting to highlight cyclists better on the network at night, would also help.

    There are also things cyclists can do to improve their own safety. These include

    Many roads have white lines painted on them to allocate separate space to cyclists and there are mandatory passing distance laws throughout Australia as well as in some international jurisdictions.

    However, research has shown that close passing is still relatively common and that painted bike lanes may actually increase the frequency or severity of these dangerous interactions.

    Speed limit reform

    If we know that errors are inevitable and crashes will occur, then we should make those events survivable.

    Humans are fragile. Being struck by a car at 50 km/h is estimated to result in a 90% chance of being killed. At 30 km/h, the risk of being killed decreases to just 10%.

    Speed limits of 40 km/h and 30 km/h improve safety for both cyclists and pedestrians, particularly in high pedestrian and cyclist locations.

    While lowering speed limits is widely supported within the road safety fraternity, more efforts are needed to promote acceptance throughout the wider community.

    Telling drivers to look out for cyclists and not crash into them won’t stop crashes.
    Rocksweeper/Shutterstock

    Autonomous emergency braking

    One opportunity for reducing or eliminating collisions with cyclists (in the absence of speed limit reform) may be with advanced driver assistance systems such as autonomous emergency braking.

    These systems constantly and rapidly process visual information in the traffic environment.

    They can help prevent certain crashes, or reduce collision speeds, when human error occurs.

    They can also help prevent “dooring”, which is where a cyclist collides with a car door suddenly opened by the driver.

    However, these technologies are not 100% effective; emergency situations between vehicles and cyclists can occur suddenly, with little time for automated systems to respond appropriately.

    These systems are also generally only available on newer vehicles. Given the average age of Australian vehicles is over 11 years, it will take some time before they are widely prevalent and have a significant influence on bicycle safety.

    Eliminating conflicts

    Dedicated separated infrastructure is optimal for cyclist safety as it avoids interactions between vehicles and cyclists completely.

    However, this infrastructure often forces cyclists to share space with pedestrians such as children, dog walkers, wheelchair users, and parents with prams (which can introduce other safety issues).

    Additionally, these dedicated separated paths are not always well connected, or may “lead to nowhere”, so they don’t always appeal to cyclists.

    Another way to eliminate conflicts is through changes to the traffic network. For example, controlling turn movements at traffic lights with right-turn arrows means drivers no longer need to decide when it’s safe to turn.

    But this comes at a cost to traffic efficiency. In our society, unfortunately, there are many who value lost time more than the cost of road crashes and injury trauma.

    Ultimately, if we want to focus on the value of human life and live-ability, we need to rethink the transport hierarchy to place more value on the most vulnerable road users. This could be achieved with “presumed liability” laws, where a driver who collides with a cyclist must prove they were not at fault.

    Finally, we should remember that we are all vulnerable at some point in our transport journeys.

    Giulio Ponte has membership in Bike Adelaide, as well as his local Bicycle User Group, the Royal Automobile Association of South Australia and the Australian College of Road Safety (SA Chapter).

    Jamie Mackenzie is a member of the Australasian College of Road Safety. He is currently the Chair of the South Australian Chapter of the Australasian College of Road Safety and sits on the Executive Council of the national body.

    – ref. ‘Sorry mate, I didn’t see you’: when drivers look but don’t see cyclists on the road – https://theconversation.com/sorry-mate-i-didnt-see-you-when-drivers-look-but-dont-see-cyclists-on-the-road-244935

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Canada a 51st state? Here’s how American annexation could actually favour Canada

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felix Arndt, Professor and John F. Wood Chair in Entrepreneurship, University of Guelph

    When United States President Donald Trump first floated the idea of annexing Canada, many observers rolled their eyes. The common assumption was that this proposal, like much of Trump’s bombast, amounted to little more than a fleeting soundbite.

    Yet, amid continuing public remarks about Canada becoming the 51st state and suggestions of genuine intent, the idea has become part of a broader conversation about North America’s future.

    The idea of the U.S. merging with Canada outright has not been received well in Canada, especially because Trump’s threats have been accompanied by economic warfare aimed at forcing Canada into submission. After all, the U.S. already has 50 states. Canada, with its population of about 40 million and its immense geographic size, would be an outsized “51st” by any comparison.

    But any serious analysis of this proposition quickly reveals that annexation would be far more complicated — and far less one-sided — than the label “51st state.”

    Our analysis is premised on an assumption that the U.S. remains a democratic system that has not turned into a pseudo-monarchy, in keeping with a Trump social media post in early February proclaiming “long live the King.”

    The most important takeaway from our analysis is that a unified country would need to inaugurate a new president and Parliament. The path towards the integration of the countries would have to start with closer economic integration, not the alienation currently in place.

    A multi-state reality

    As we argue in our newest self-published book Make America Greater? A Scenario of a Friendly Canada-U.S. Merger, Canada would not simply become part of the U.S. as a single state under the provisions of the American Constitution.

    Based on population and the distribution of power in U.S. Congress, Canada’s 10 provinces and three northern territories would almost certainly be carved into multiple states, perhaps nine or more.

    This is no small detail.

    America’s unique electoral arithmetic grants each state two senators, while seats in the House of Representatives depend on population size. With around 40 million new citizens, a unified North America would reshape the balance of power in both the Senate and the House.



    Read more:
    Canada as a 51st state? Republicans would never win another general election

    Critically, the new country formed via unification might end up looking far more like Canada than many Americans imagine.

    Why? Canadian voters lean more centrist — or even centre-left — than the average American does. Over time, that could tilt congressional priorities in favour of policies reflecting Canada’s taste for universal health care, stricter gun control and robust social welfare.

    The longstanding political tug-of-war in the U.S. could see its centre of gravity shift, likely to the chagrin of some more conservative segments of the existing union.

    Tariffs, politics and tensions

    Officials on both sides of the border are already locked in a dance of retaliatory tariffs.

    Each new measure escalates anxieties, threatening to derail one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships.

    Some might argue that if tariffs are putting negative pressures on the economy and roiling the markets, perhaps deeper integration — or even full-blown unification — could serve as a release valve. But the path towards a friendly merger is best taken step-by-step and starts with stronger economic integration, not alienation.



    Read more:
    Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs was strategic, but there is room for improvement

    Forging a genuine union goes well beyond removing trade barriers. Canada and the U.S. differ on far more than just economics: from bilingualism laws to gun regulations, from health care to environmental policy, the two countries embody contrasting visions of how society should function.

    Canadians would expect to preserve elements of their social contract that many regard as superior to American norms — particularly their single-payer health-care system and comparatively strict firearms restrictions.

    A process genuinely aimed at integrating the two countries would take this into account. It would extend the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal further to strengthen economic integration, elevate the rights of French and Spanish speakers in the U.S. in order to signal compatible cultural values and extend Medicare to show an appreciation of the common denominators of the two societies.

    Trump’s current rhetoric, however, does not seem to indicate a genuine desire for a unification.

    Why a merger could favour Canada

    As surprising as it seems, our analysis suggests that a unified North America could lean Canada’s way over time.

    Even if the American Electoral College were reimagined — or scrapped — Canadian provinces transformed into states would wield significant power, influencing everything from budget allocations to Supreme Court appointments.



    Read more:
    As Joe Biden becomes president, here’s an easy proposal for Electoral College reform

    What’s more, cultural convergence has an asymmetrical pull. Younger Americans show a growing appetite for social safety nets, while Canadians remain broadly wedded to their publicly funded health-care model.

    Over a few election cycles, these forces could converge into a more expansive welfare regime, something that would astonish traditional conservatives across the current 50 states.

    A combined North America would boast one of the largest economies on Earth, including abundant natural resources and technological innovation.

    The promise of frictionless trade, a single currency and vast internal markets might delight big business and certain multinational interests. Yet the path would be fraught.

    Constitutional arrangements, Indigenous rights, linguistic protections and environmental regulations — all areas in which Canadian norms diverge significantly from American precedents — would have to be reconciled.

    Canadians, proud of their universal healthcare, progressive climate policies and lower rates of gun violence, would worry about being subsumed by a more rambunctious, militarized neighbour. Americans, meanwhile, would fear they would be forced to adopt new taxes and policies at odds with their historic emphasis on individual freedoms.

    A country more closely resembling Canada

    Regardless of whether Trump’s annexation talk proves more than just bluster, the notion of a friendly U.S.–Canada merger invites reflection. It reminds us that North America’s two largest nations remain economically interlocked and geographically co-located, though culturally distinct.

    With tariffs in place and cross-border tensions mounting, creative solutions are worth examining, even if a merger can — at best — be seen as a long-term vision.

    A genuine offer of a merger would require that Canadians to be assured that if such a union did transpire, their voices might echo far more loudly than expected in the halls of Washington, D.C.

    And Americans — facing shifting demographics and changing societal values — may discover that the annexation Trump initiated could bring surprises that tilt the new country much closer to its northern neighbour’s ideals than to the status quo below the 49th parallel.

    Felix Arndt is an author of a book referred to in this article.

    Barak Aharonson is an author of a book with a similar topic.

    – ref. Canada a 51st state? Here’s how American annexation could actually favour Canada – https://theconversation.com/canada-a-51st-state-heres-how-american-annexation-could-actually-favour-canada-251547

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Putin’s brain’: Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian ultra-nationalist who has endorsed Donald Trump

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Riehle, Lecturer in Intelligence and Security Studies, Brunel University of London

    Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain” because of his ideological influence on Russian politics, endorsed the policies of Donald Trump in a CNN interview aired on March 30. Dugin said Trump’s America has a lot more in common with Putin’s Russia than most people think, adding: “Trumpists and the followers of Trump will understand much better what Russia is, who Putin is and the motivations of our politics.”

    Dugin made his name by espousing Russian nationalist and traditionalist – including antisemitic – themes, and publishing extensively on the centrality of Russia in world civilisation. So, this endorsement should be a warning of the disruptive nature of the Trump White House. It implies that Dugin believes Trump’s policies support Russian interests.

    Dugin began his career as an anti-communist activist in the 1980s. This was less because of an ideological antipathy for communism than his rejection of the internationalism that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union espoused. He also criticised the party for breaking from traditional – especially religious – values.

    Dugin proposes what he calls a “fourth political theory”. The first three, he claims, are Marxism, fascism and liberalism – all of which he thinks contain elements of error, especially their rejection of tradition and the subordination of culture to scientific thought.

    Dugin’s fourth political theory takes pieces from all three and discards the elements with which Dugin disagrees, especially the dwindling importance of traditional family and culture. The culmination is a melange of ideas that sometimes appear Marxist and sometimes fascist, but which always centre on the criticality of traditional Russian culture.

    His founding philosophy is traditionalism, which he views as a strength of Russia. Thus, he has become a strong supporter of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, who emphasises traditional Russian values. Dugin and Putin align in their criticism of liberalist anti-religious individualism, which they claim destroys the values and culture on which society is based.

    Dugin has value for Putin because he advances the president’s objectives. Putin’s security goals are in part founded on the principle that political unity is strength and political division is weakness. If Russia can maintain political unity by whatever means necessary, it retains its perception of strength. And if a state opposed to Russia is divided internally, it can be portrayed as weak.

    The Russian government claims complete political unity inside Russia. Its spokespeople reinforce that claim by declaring, for example, the Russian electorate was so unified behind Putin that the 2024 Russian presidential election could have been skipped as an unnecessary expense. They also push a strained claim that the Russian population is unanimously behind the Ukraine war.

    Dugin energises voters behind Putin, basing his support on the philosophy of Russian greatness and cultural superiority, and the perception of Russian unity. His influence has been felt throughout the Russian government and society. He publishes prolifically, and lectures at universities and government agencies about the harms of western liberalism. He also served as an advisor to Sergey Naryshkin, currently director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation.

    Dugin’s views support an expansionist Russia, especially in the direction of Ukraine. He questions the existence of Ukraine and promotes Russia’s war there wholeheartedly. But his support for the war led to an attempt on his life. On August 20 2022, a bomb exploded in a car owned by Dugin, killing his daughter, Darya, who was driving it back from a festival of Russian traditional art.

    Divide and conquer

    Russia applies the same principle of “unity equals strength” to its adversaries, but in reverse. Many Russian political thinkers try to emphasise political divisions in unfriendly states. They work hard to broaden existing disagreements and support disruptive political parties and groups.

    Such operations give the Russian government the ability to denigrate the foreign powers that Russia considers adversaries by making them look weak in the eyes of their own people – and more importantly, in the eyes of the Russian population.

    Dugin lays a philosophical foundation for foreign parties that oppose the European Union and western liberalism, and that disrupt political unity. His views have been adopted by far-right political groups such as the German National Democratic Party, the British National Party, Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, and the National Front in France.

    Dugin’s interview in which he endorsed Trump’s policies is likely to have been directly authorised by the Kremlin. He pushes a Kremlin-sponsored endorsement of Trump’s divisive – and thus weakening – effect on US politics.

    But Dugin’s extreme Russian nationalist rhetoric at times clashes with Putin’s attempts to include all peoples of Russia in a strong unified state, rather than only ethnic Russians. As it is a multi-ethnic state, Russian ethnic nationalism can obstruct Putin’s attempts at portraying strength through unity. The label “Putin’s brain” is only accurate sometimes.

    The Russian government uses Dugin when he is useful and separates itself from him when his extremism is inconvenient. Dugin is a tool who says many of the right things and facilitates Kremlin goals. His endorsement of Trump should be seen in its context: Russia attempting to strengthen itself at the expense of the US.

    Kevin Riehle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. ‘Putin’s brain’: Aleksandr Dugin, the Russian ultra-nationalist who has endorsed Donald Trump – https://theconversation.com/putins-brain-aleksandr-dugin-the-russian-ultra-nationalist-who-has-endorsed-donald-trump-253466

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: William Wordsworth’s last home is up for sale – returning it to a private residence would be a loss for the UK’s cultural heritage

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Wilcockson, Research assistant, University of Glasgow

    Until recently, fans of William Wordsworth could visit his final home, Rydal Mount and Gardens, nestled in the heart of England’s green and beautiful Lake District. Renowned as one of the most prominent British poets, the works of Wordsworth (1770-1850) include what is widely regarded as the most famous poem in the English language, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

    So it’s not surprising that his immaculately maintained house and gardens, with breathtaking views of Lake Windermere and Rydal Water, once attracted 45,000 visitors a year.

    However, rising costs, a fall in visitor numbers to 20,000 or fewer per year, and the residual effects of the pandemic have placed the future of the museum in question.

    The current owners have put Rydal Mount on the market for the first time since 1969 for £2.5 million – meaning this important piece of literary heritage, depending on who buys it, could become closed to the public.

    The house was bought by Mary Henderson, Wordsworth’s great-great-granddaughter, in 1969 and opened as a writer’s house museum a year later.

    Rydal Mount was originally a small 16th-century cottage. By 1813, there was enough room for Wordsworth, his wife Mary and three surviving children, plus Wordsworth’s sister-in-law Sara and sister Dorothy – author of the Grasmere Journal, which detailed the household’s life.

    Leaving the cramped conditions of the more famous Dove Cottage behind them, it was at Rydal Mount that Wordsworth truly settled, building a “writing hut” and extensively landscaping the grounds to his own design.

    This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

    Next to Rydal Mount is Dora’s Field, which also has literary significance. Here, the poet is believed to have planted 1,847 daffodils to mark his daughter Dora’s memory, following her death from tuberculosis aged 42. These daffodils still bloom every spring.

    While living at Rydal Mount, Wordsworth revised his epic “The Prelude” and wrote many other popular poems. This too is the house where he died in 1850. It was only when Mary died in 1859 that the family’s tenancy of the house came to an end.

    Visitors get to step into the house where all this happened and see a wealth of rare objects, including a rare portrait of Dorothy and Wordsworth’s letter to Queen Victoria refusing the job of Poet Laureate (which he later accepted).

    Owning England’s heritage

    Visitors go to literary museums to experience the “spirit of the place”, to “encounter” the author and absorb some of their creativity. One recent visitor to Rydal Mount was so disappointed not to meet Wordsworth personally that they wrote a disparaging review, telling of their confusion that the poet “wasn’t in” and “when [they] asked when he would be home, all [they] got was blank stares.”

    Wordworth is so closely connected to the Lake District that marketing strategies have used him to promote the area since the 1800s. Rydal Mount has had an integral role in maintaining these traditions. The estate agent’s advert is keen to stress the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of England’s heritage” and the “superb gardens … designed by Wordsworth himself”.

    In selling the museum as it is, there is a real risk that Rydal Mount could become a private home lost to the public eye – much like Greta Hall, the home of Wordsworth’s fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which has long been privately owned.

    Prospective closure is not uncommon for smaller museums in 2025. A recent report noted that three in five small museums fear closure because of declining revenue and footfall. 2020 was the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth’s birth and should have been a bumper year of events and tourism for the Lake District. Instead, the pandemic ravaged the celebrations and left tourist attractions in financial peril that many have not recovered from.

    William Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount for 37 years and died there.
    Wikimedia, CC BY

    Critics will argue that even if Rydal Mount does close, there are still three more Wordsworth homes open to visitors (Dove Cottage, the favourite of tourist guides, Wordsworth House and Garden, and Allan Bank). Even Wordsworth’s old school is a museum.

    The closure of Rydal Mount would inevitably boost these other sites’ visitor numbers – particularly Dove Cottage, which is on the same (albeit long) road as Rydal Mount. And the condition of Wordsworth’s last home could potentially be improved by a private owner with ample funds to upkeep the house.

    However, it is also true that public appreciation of museums remains high, with 89% of adults in a 2024 YouGov survey advocating for their importance to UK culture, and 54% registering disappointment if their local museum were to close.

    While the British Museum has experienced its highest visitor numbers since 2015, more needs to be done to save regional museums and writer’s house museums from closure. The sale of Rydal Mount into private hands may prove a severe loss to literary history, leaving the Lake District much the poorer for it.

    Amy Wilcockson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. William Wordsworth’s last home is up for sale – returning it to a private residence would be a loss for the UK’s cultural heritage – https://theconversation.com/william-wordsworths-last-home-is-up-for-sale-returning-it-to-a-private-residence-would-be-a-loss-for-the-uks-cultural-heritage-253561

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Dogs see their world through smell – and scientists are starting to translate it like never before

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Boyd, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University

    Lorenzooooo/Shutterstock

    Scent is how dogs largely experience the world, a lot like the way we humans rely on sight. We know little about how dogs interpret scent, but thanks to a recent study, we may be getting closer to understanding what a dog’s nose actually knows.

    Dogs are primed to detect smells. The average dog’s nose has more than 10 million scent receptors in their nose, compared to humans, who only have about 6 million.

    This makes the canine nose more than 10, 000 times better at detecting scents than we are. They can detect minute quantities of scent. For example, forensic detection dogs can detect 0.01 microlitres of gasolene. A microlitre is one millionth of a litre.

    Humans have exploited dogs’ olfactory superpowers in a number of ways, which has no doubt contributed to the deep relationship we have developed with our canine companions over 40,000 years living together.

    Dogs still join us as hunting partners, sniffing out food. They work beside us as vital members of crime-fighting teams, finding illicit substances, as medical colleagues for disease detection, and as partners in conservation efforts, finding rare and endangered species.

    Despite the widespread involvement of dogs as natural scent detectors, we remain largely oblivious as to how dogs interpret what they smell and how they perceive the world in which they live.

    We don’t know much about dogs’ experience of smell – but we know they’re good at it.
    Sundays Photography/Shutterstock

    Exploring the brain activity of dogs when they are exposed to specific smells can help identify which of their brain regions are associated with scent detection. This helps scientists understand what the dog is experiencing, which might help us enhance the selection and training of sniffer dogs.

    Until now, scientists needed expensive equipment to study dogs’ brains and research methods that required dogs to stay still. This means we know less about the brains of active working dogs who might struggle to remain motionless for long periods.

    But we can’t simply apply the data from dogs who can cope with sitting still since dog breeds have differences in their training and scenting skills.

    Sensing scents

    The recent study I mentioned at the beginning of this article uses a new, cheap and non-invasive method to explore how the canine brain responds to scent. The researchers think that this method – known as AI speckle pattern analysis – will help us identify how dog brains react to scents and what it means for how dogs perceive and respond to the world around them in future research too.

    The researchers developed an optical sensor to target three brain areas involved in canine scent discrimination: the amygdala, olfactory bulb and hippocampus. The amygdala is responsible for emotional responses to stimuli.

    The olfactory bulb is involved with odour processing and the hippocampus is associated with memory formation.

    The equipment used in the study consisted of a high resolution digital camera linked to a computer, plus a green laser. Laser light, capable of penetrating dog fur and skull bone, was shone on the heads of four relaxed, blindfolded study dogs who were exposed to four different scents: alcohol, marijuana, menthol and garlic. These substances all appear to evoke similar olfactory responses in dogs.

    As laser light was reflected from the three brain areas, the camera detected interference as a distinct “speckle” pattern. The camera made recordings for five seconds, repeated four times for each scent.

    AI analysed differences in the speckle patterns from the different brain regions to create models of how the brain regions of the dogs responded to each scent.

    It’s not just sniffing

    The study results highlighted the importance of the amygdala for canine scent discrimination. This suggests that there could be an emotional component to how dogs sense their environment. Taste and odour detection are also known to be linked to memory formation and emotional state in humans.

    Because dogs appear to experience emotional responses to scents, training methods and experiences might need to take this into consideration. For example, dogs often link the characteristic aroma of the veterinary surgery with less-than-fun situations.

    Dogs in training for scent detection would also probably benefit from being in a positive emotional state when they are exposed to training odours.

    This research could even pave the way to developing specialised equipment for detecting and translating the olfactory responses of dogs. Mobile equipment that works rapidly could allow us to interpret what dogs’ noses are telling them in real time.

    This isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound. If you’ve seen the Disney movie Up, you probably remember Dug the dog who wore a bark translation collar. Well, scientists have developed a real collar that claims to tell you what your dog’s vocalisations mean.

    It’s difficult to say how accurate it is without analysing the data the collar’s AI was trained on, but the database is growing as more dogs use the collars. If the collars do prove accurate, it might not be too long before wearable technology can tell us exactly what our dogs are saying and smelling.

    Jacqueline Boyd is affiliated with The Kennel Club (UK) through membership and as advisor to the Health Advisory Group. Jacqueline is a full member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT #01583) and she also writes, consults and coaches on canine matters on an independent basis, in addition to her academic affiliation at Nottingham Trent University.

    – ref. Dogs see their world through smell – and scientists are starting to translate it like never before – https://theconversation.com/dogs-see-their-world-through-smell-and-scientists-are-starting-to-translate-it-like-never-before-252659

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Adolescence has sparked fears over teen slang – but emoji don’t cause radicalisation

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kruk, Lecturer in Indonesian Studies and Linguistics, The University of Western Australia

    Shutterstock

    Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s crime drama Adolescence has earned widespread praise for its portrayal of incel culture and male violence.

    But the show’s portrayal of 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper) being radicalised by misogynistic online content has a lot of parents concerned about their own kids and how they talk online.

    For many, this concern is amplified by the fear that, just like the adults in Adolescence, parents are often ignorant of the online language kids use to spread dangerous beliefs.

    Journalists have produced a flurry of articles that promise to decode the “hidden meaning” of teen language by focusing on emoji featured on the show. One headline references supposedly “sinister emojis used by incel teenagers”.

    Such concerns reflect a long history of moral panic around youth language. But defining or banning emoji won’t solve the deeper issues at play.

    Emoji in Adolescence

    Adolescence follows Jamie and his family after the teenager is accused of murdering his classmate, Katie.

    The second episode shows Adam (Amari Bacchus), the teenage son of detective inspector Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters), correcting his father’s misunderstanding of a series of emoji Katie posted on Jaime’s Instagram profile.

    While Bascome assumes the 💯 and 💥 emoji are flirtatious, Adam explains that, in this context, they are connected to the online “manosphere”.

    Bascome is initially resistant to this explanation, but Adam convinces him by citing examples of different meanings associated with different coloured heart emoji; red is specifically used for “love”, while orange means “you’re going to be fine”. He stresses “it all has a meaning”.

    This scene highlights key generational divides in the perception and use of emoji. For Adam and Jamie’s parents’ generation, emoji are largely treated as decorative. For teenagers, they can carry important meanings.

    Are the kids actually alright?

    It’s important to remember this isn’t the first time we’ve seen concerns about generational communication differences reflecting larger social rifts.
    There are numerous examples in the media linking slang with issues of education, moral decline and even crime.

    These attitudes have sparked debate over whether Australian schools should ban gen alpha and gen Z slang from classrooms.

    While the frustration of parents and teachers is understandable, linguistic research shows aggressively negative attitudes towards teen language demotivate young people, exacerbate inequality and unnecessarily stoke intergenerational tension.

    Emoji are highly context dependent. Much like gestures that are used with speech, we need to understand emoji in the specific conversations and communities they are used in. There is no consistent relationship between emoji use and inner emotional state that can be generalised across groups of teens or other emoji users.

    Instead of fearing or banning emoji, we can try and understand how and why they are used in various contexts. And there are plenty of online resources to help with this. EmojiPedia, for example, describes the pill emoji 💊 as potentially referencing medicine, drugs, or an awakening to a controversial perspective (the “red pill” beliefs referenced in Adolecensce).

    Emojis are also highly contextual. While the pill emoji may be present in misogynistic talk, it could also be referencing medication in another context.
    Shutterstock

    Emoji are intentionally flexible and intended to be used creatively. In fact, Unicode, the organisation that assesses proposals for new emoji, requires that items encoded as emoji are able to hold multiple meanings.

    Research has also shown different people react to emoji differently. One survey from 2018 found older men were most likely to view emoji as confusing and annoying, while young women were most likely to view emoji positively in communication.

    Times change, and stay the same

    Intergenerational differences, and the tensions they evoke, are nothing new.

    Back in the 2000s, parents and teachers voiced concerns that “netspeak”, with its creative punctuation and capitalisation, would diminish young people’s grasp of “proper” English. This did not come to pass.

    Does this mean parents have nothing to worry about when it comes to their kids communicating online? Of course not.

    Online misogynistic movements and red pill communities can bring great harm to vulnerable young people. Their growing popularity is something we all have to reckon with – but online language is not to blame.

    Parents can’t realistically prevent the radicalisation of young men by simply referencing an emoji dictionary, nor can teachers stamp out the spread of misogyny by banning emoji and slang in classrooms.

    Instead, as one scene between Adam and his dad shows, we need to collectively shift our focus towards facilitating open conversations between generations.

    By doing so, we can not only better understand our differences, but can reduce the feelings of social isolation that leave young people vulnerable to becoming radicalised.

    Lauren Gawne is affiliated with Unicode as a member of the Emoji Standard & Research Working Group.

    Jessica Kruk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Adolescence has sparked fears over teen slang – but emoji don’t cause radicalisation – https://theconversation.com/adolescence-has-sparked-fears-over-teen-slang-but-emoji-dont-cause-radicalisation-253218

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A ban on price gouging and new powers to break up supermarkets are on the table this election. Would either work?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbora Jedlickova, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, The University of Queensland

    wisely/Shutterstock

    With the federal election campaign now underway, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised that if re-elected, Labor would seek to make price gouging illegal in the supermarket sector.

    A new taskforce would be set up to examine the best way to do so, drawing on the experience of other countries. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would then enforce the new “excessive pricing regime”.

    Labor’s proposal comes despite the fact the final report from the ACCC’s supermarkets inquiry didn’t make any explicit accusation of price gouging.

    Meanwhile, the Coalition and Greens still want new divestiture powers to break up the supermarkets, a course of action also not recommended by the ACCC’s report.



    Read more:
    Policy tracker: how will Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and the independents make Australia better?

    Price gouging

    Price gouging, also referred to as “excessive pricing”, isn’t illegal in Australia. As long as prices are set independently by an individual business – and not in collusion with supposed competitors – they can be set as high or low as desired.

    However, the Australian Competition and Consumer Act does allow the ACCC to monitor and regulate the price of some “notified” goods or services – with approval from the relevant federal minister.

    One current example are postal services. The ACCC assesses proposed price increases, and can make an objection.

    Price gouging isn’t illegal in Australia.
    doublelee/Shutterstock

    The legal situation on price gouging differs around the world.

    The European Union, for example, prohibits abuse of a dominant market position by “directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices”.

    It can be difficult to define an “unfair price”. Typically, it’s an excessive, monopolistic price higher than what would be set in a competitive market.

    A landmark EU judgement defines an excessive price as one with “no reasonable relation to the economic value of the product supplied”.

    Despite this ban, enforcement cases are somewhat rare. The European Commission has been more focused on tackling “exclusionary conduct” in recent decades.

    This is when a competitor with significant market power uses restrictive means to directly hurt its competitors and exclude them (and future competitors) from competing in the relevant market.

    An example is predatory pricing, where a company sets prices unrealistically low to drive out competitors – then becoming able to set them as high as they would like.

    What about divestiture?

    Both the Coalition and Greens have pledged to create new “divestiture” powers to break up supermarkets if they were found to be abusing their market power.

    In competition law, divestiture is when a commercial entity is ordered to sell a portion of its assets or its business to a third party, to improve competition in the affected market.

    Australian law has divestiture powers to address anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions. But currently, there aren’t powers to break up businesses for misuse of market power.

    It’s a different picture in the United States, where the government has had powers to break up businesses in the context of “monopolisation” for more than a century.

    The risks of splitting up

    Divestiture powers were not recommended in the ACCC’s final report. That may be linked to market structure here.

    The Australian grocery retail market is highly concentrated. The majority of retail sales are shared among only a few supermarket chains, primarily Woolworths (38%) and Coles (29%).

    However, the combined share of these two retail giants has declined over the past 14 years, from 80% to 67%. Meanwhile, Aldi’s market share has grown to 9%, showing these two retailers face some competition.

    This suggests divestiture may be a misguided approach. There are specific risks that come with divestiture remedies.

    For instance, who would purchase the assets under a specific divestiture order? When considering the structure of the current grocery retail market, there is a high risk it would be another powerful retailer interested in purchasing its competitor’s assets. This would defeat the purpose entirely.

    Other measures already in motion

    Any ban on price gouging or new divestiture powers should be implemented with caution and used as a temporary tool. Directly interfering with free markets comes with risks.

    Other actions are already underway to boost competition in the sector and improve supermarkets’ dealings with suppliers.

    The federal government has previously announced incentives for the states to “cut planning and zoning red tape”, with the aim of making it easier for smaller supermarkets to enter the market and compete.

    And from April, the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct will be made mandatory and enforceable, in line with a key recommendation of the independent Emerson review.

    The Food and Grocery Code of Conduct for dealing with suppliers is now mandatory.
    Nita Corfe/Shutterstock

    Certain restrictive and unfair practices in dealing with suppliers will be directly prohibited and enforced.

    The new code gives the ACCC a range of useful tools to enforce against a breach by a powerful supermarket chain.

    These include:

    • a confidential channel for whistleblowing suppliers
    • effective dispute resolution to address lengthy and costly litigation
    • heavy penalties – as high as A$10 million or 10% of annual turnover – for serious breaches of the code.

    Rather than bring in measures that have not been independently recommended – like a price gouging ban or divestiture powers – it would be worth first seeing how these new enforceable rules work to deliver a better deal for supermarket customers.

    Barbora Jedlickova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. A ban on price gouging and new powers to break up supermarkets are on the table this election. Would either work? – https://theconversation.com/a-ban-on-price-gouging-and-new-powers-to-break-up-supermarkets-are-on-the-table-this-election-would-either-work-253429

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –