Leettaschmidt

Websites sometimes hide how widely they share our personal information, and can go to great lengths to pull the wool over our eyes. This deception is intended to prevent full disclosure to consumers, thus preventing informed choice and affecting privacy rights.

Governments are responding to consumer concerns about privacy with legislation. These include the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). The impact of this legislation is visible as websites request permission to track online user activity.

However, many users remain unaware of the impact of these choices, or how the extent of sharing is deceptively hidden.

Websites and privacy

As Canadian policymakers grapple with updates to online privacy regulations, our research looks at when and why companies actively hide — and how widely they share — our personal data. We found that the obfuscation, or disguise, of information sharing is a strategy commonly used by websites to mislead users and raise the cost of monitoring.

Our research team has been studying website privacy issues for a number of years, specifically with respect to the sharing of consumer data with third parties as a way to monetize web traffic.

Our research has established that websites with privacy-sensitive content, such as medical and banking websites, are naturally constrained by the market in terms of their third-party sharing. These websites are also more privacy-sensitive, and so are less likely to obscure the extent of information-sharing.

We also examined the privacy abuses that occurred as people’s use of online services increased in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted research that allowed us to predict website trustworthiness by observing how they employed third parties. We discussed how opt-in privacy legislation can increase third-party sharing.

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Read more: To protect user privacy online, governments need to reconsider their use of opt-in policies

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Gathering and sharing of data

We examined third-party data collection by websites, highlighting the extensive tracking mechanisms deployed by platforms and advertisers to capture consumer information. This pervasive surveillance raises significant concerns about privacy infringement and the commodification of personal data.

Within the first three seconds of opening a web page, over 80 third parties on average have accessed your information. Some of these third parties provide services to improve a website’s functionality and performance.

Other third parties are engaged in advertising and targeted advertising, which includes scooping up and selling your most personal information. Some third parties are extremely predatory in their privacy abuses.

Our research reveals circumstances where websites actively hide how widely our data is shared. As content sensitivity increases — for example, websites dealing with sensitive personal medical information — websites reduce the level of deception compared to websites with less sensitive content.

We also found that websites that are more popular are more likely to hide their data-sharing practices than websites with smaller audiences.

Websites modify how widely they share user information and hide how much they share because it can sometimes help increase profits by taking advantage of unknowing consumers. This means that visitors are unable to make fully informed decisions regarding their data privacy.

Similar to ambiguous website privacy policies, requesting consent to collect and share information does not necessarily resolve the information asymmetry between websites and users. A common strategy is to overwhelm users with an overly extensive list of third parties that do not necessarily reflect their particular interaction.

Pervasive surveillance

Websites use a variety of techniques to keep users from understanding the true level of information sharing and its privacy implications. One deception is the use of dark patterns, defined as “user interface design choices that benefit an online service by coercing, steering or deceiving users into making unintended and potentially harmful decisions.” These dark patterns trick users into giving away their privacy.

Another deception technique relates to the lack of transparency surrounding third-party sharing. Who websites share information with depends upon a myriad of variables — the consumer never knows how or why their information is shared. Third parties can differ depending on where a user is located: third-party sharing across the largest 100,000 websites is on average higher for customers clicking from California compared to New York, for example.

Obfuscated customization occurs when the website actively tries to hide their abusive third party sharing. For example, consumers can use a Do Not Track (DNT) request: however, websites can make it difficult for users to understand the website’s response to the request, and it is very difficult to figure out what happens after the request is made.

Sometimes, websites actually track users more in response to a DNT request. In an unpublished experiment that we performed, 40 per cent of the top 100 largest news websites in the world shared your data with more third parties if you made a DNT request. Even if a website engages fewer third parties, the changes in response to a DNT request may still be abusive because they may now share data with more intrusive third parties.

Consumer responses

Consumers may use various tools to protect themselves, including virtual private networks (VPNs), behavioural obfuscation and lying about their personal information.

Simply disclosing the presence of third parties and requesting user consent is insufficient because the consumer, for all practical purposes, is unaware of the extent of third-party sharing and tracking. Because of this information asymmetry, it is impossible to know when or to what extent personal information has been shared.

The EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA contain opt-in and opt-out regulations, such as those currently under consideration in Canada. But one thing is clear: these regulations are not enough to stop websites from manipulating and profiting from user data.

Raymond A. Patterson received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.

Hooman Hidaji receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Ram Gopal receives funding from the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology at the Warwick Business School.

Ashkan Eshghi 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.

Lawmakers grilled Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and three colleagues on April 17, 2024, over antisemitism on college campuses, just four months after three of her presidential peers were summoned to Capitol Hill over how their institutions were handling antisemitism on campus following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Two of them resigned shortly thereafter. Here, Lynn Greenky, a scholar of communication and rhetoric, gives her take on how Shafik handled being in the same hot seat as her colleagues.

How did today’s hearing differ from the one on Dec. 5?

Unlike Claudine Gay, Liz Magill and Sally Kornbluth – the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, respectively – Shafik and the other witnesses representing Columbia University spoke with greater moral clarity on the issue of what constitutes antisemitism on campus. Of course, they had the benefit of being able to first see what happens when you don’t.

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, as well as David Schizer and David Greenwald, co-chairs of the Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism, and Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees Claire Shipman, came ready to acknowledge their responsibility, even culpability, in their failure to recognize and control hate speech directed at Jews on campus. Shipman in particular made it clear that Columbia is suffering a “moral crisis” on its campus.

All of the witnesses showed a lot of deference to the committee. They even thanked the committee for the investigation and asked for the committee’s help to address antisemitism on campus. In fact, Shipman concluded her opening statement saying she looked forward to the committee’s input as Columbia seeks to refocus its vision back to its core values of wisdom, empathy and respect.

What did committee members say about faculty?

Professors Joseph Massad, Katherine Franke and Mohamed Abdu were mentioned by name.

Several members of the Congressional committee singled out Massad, who on Oct. 8, 2023, described the Hamas attack on Israel as “awesome” and “innovative” in an online article, for particular scorn. Shafik promised the committee that Massad would be removed from his position as chair of Columbia’s academic review committee, whose principle function is to “assess program quality and effectiveness,” “foster planning and improvement” and “provide guidance for administrative decisions.” Shafik also indicated Massad might be fired even though his position is tenured.

While some might argue that removing Massad as chair, or firing him, infringes on the professor’s First Amendment right to academic freedom, it is unclear whether that assertion will save him. The Supreme Court has not provided specific guidance on the parameters of academic freedom. In fact, the concept of academic freedom generally refers to a scholar’s freedom to pursue inquiry, discussion and teaching within the sphere of that scholar’s research and consistent with the institution’s curriculum. Academic freedom is not the same as a professor’s individual right to speak one’s mind.

The committee’s chairperson, Virginia Foxx, a Republican from West Virginia, warned that radical faculty remain a huge problem at Columbia. She said she expects Columbia to make “tangible progress” to sanction or remove radical faculty. If not, she says, Columbia will be brought before the committee again.

Was there any conflict over what is hate speech?

Recalling a House resolution that condemned the chant “from the river to the sea” as antisemitic, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, pushed Shafik to amend her previous testimony that alluded to how the chant can, in some circumstances, represent protected political speech.

Shafik seemed reluctant to label students or faculty as engaging in hate and harassment. She tried very hard, sometimes unsuccessfully, to assert the need to balance constitutionally protected speech with the educational mission of the university.

Still, Shafik frequently testified that the policies and structures in place at Columbia prior to the Oct. 7 attack were inadequate. In her written statement to the committee, Shafik admitted that before Oct. 7, Columbia’s process for reporting allegations of hate speech, harassment and other forms of disruptive behavior needed to be simplified. She also said staff training needed to be improved. Throughout her testimony she acknowledged her personal horror at the hatred and vitriol expressed on campus both before and after Oct. 7.

What action did Shafik and her colleagues say they would take?

Shafik, Schizer and Shipman each repeated the refrain that they recognize the mistakes and failures made in response to events on campus that – according to their testimony – left Jewish students angry and frightened. They said they are working on revising policies and practices that will promote vigorous debate while protecting student safety.

As a result of some of the preliminary recommendations of Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism, the university has updated the reporting and response process regarding harassment and discrimination.

How will all this affect free speech on campus?

Rep. Foxx made it clear that continued eruptions on campus, which the House has identified as antisemitic, risk the withdrawal of federal funds.

Certainly, a college or university has a compelling interest in protecting its students, faculty and staff’s freedom, safety and integrity. However, as always, the devil is in the details. It is difficult to mediate the appropriate balance between promoting robust debate and protecting against offense. Often, when colleges and universities undertake the task, I believe it is the freedom to speak one’s mind that suffers.

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

The restrictions on how educators can teach and the lack of pay has deterred education majors, like sophomore Aidan Wright, from wanting to teach in Florida. Wright’s hesitation represents a larger issue facing Florida teachers. This year, the Florida Education Association reported a teacher shortage of over 4,000 educators. This has left “potentially…hundreds of thousands […]

It’s not at all clear that disinformation has, to date, swung an election that would otherwise have gone another way. But there is a strong sense that it has had a significant impact, nonetheless.

With AI now being used to create highly believable fake videos and to spread disinformation more efficiently, we are right to be concerned that fake news could change the course of an election in the not-too-distant future.

To assess the threat, and to respond appropriately, we need a better sense of how damaging the problem could be. In physical or biological sciences, we would test a hypothesis of this nature by repeating an experiment many times.

But this is much harder in social sciences because it’s often not possible to repeat experiments. If you want to know the impact of a certain strategy on, say, an upcoming election, you cannot re-run the election a million times to compare what happens when the strategy is implemented and when it is not implemented.

You could call this a one-history problem: there is only one history to follow. You cannot unwind the clock to study the effects of counterfactual scenarios.

To overcome this difficulty, a generative model becomes handy because it can create many histories. A generative model is a mathematical model for the root cause of an observed event, along with a guiding principle that tells you in which way the cause (input) turns into an observed event (output).

By modelling the cause and applying the principle, it can generate many histories, and hence statistics needed to study different scenarios. This, in turn, can be used to assess the effects of disinformation in elections.

In the case of an election campaign, the primary cause is the information accessible to voters (input), which is transformed into movements of opinion polls showing changes of voter intention (observed output). The guiding principle concerns how people process information, which is to minimise uncertainties.

So, by modelling how voters get information, we can simulate subsequent developments on a computer. In other words, we can create a “possible history” of how opinion polls change from now to the election day on a computer. From one history alone we learn virtually nothing, but now we can run the simulation (the virtual election) a million times.

A generative model does not predict any future event, because of the noisy nature of information. But it does provide the statistics of different events, which is what we need.

Modelling disinformation

I first came up with the idea of using a generative model to study the impact of disinformation about a decade ago, without any anticipation that the concept would, sadly, become so relevant to the safety of democratic processes. My initial models were designed to study the impact of disinformation in financial markets, but as fake news started to become more of a problem, my colleague and I extended the model to study its impact on elections.

Generative models can tell us the probability of a given candidate winning a future election, subject to today’s data and the specification of how information on issues relevant to the election is communicated to voters. This can be used to analyse how the winning probability will be affected if candidates or political parties change their policy positions or communication strategies.

We can include disinformation in the model to study how that will alter the outcome statistics. Here, disinformation is defined as a hidden component of information that generates a bias.

By including disinformation into the model and running a simulation, the result tells us very little about how it changed opinion polls. But running the simulation many times, we can use the statistics to determine the percentage change in the likelihood of a candidate winning a future election if disinformation of a given magnitude and frequency is present. In other words, we can now measure the impact of fake news using computer simulations.

I should emphasise that measuring the impact of fake news is different from making predictions about election outcomes. These models are not designed to make predictions. Rather, they provide the statistics that are sufficient to estimate the impact of disinformation.

Does disinformation have an impact?

One model for disinformation that we considered is a type that is released at some random moment, grows in strength for a short period but then it is damped down (for example owing to fact checking). We found that a single release of such disinformation, well ahead of election day, will have little impact on the election outcome.

However, if the release of such disinformation is repeated persistently, then it will have an impact. Disinformation that is biased towards a given candidate will shift the poll slightly in favour of that candidate each time it is released. Of all the election simulations for which that candidate has lost, we can identify how many of them have the result turned around, based on a given frequency and magnitude of disinformation.

Fake news in favour of a candidate, except in rare circumstances, will not guarantee a victory for that candidate. Its impacts can, however, be measured in terms of probabilities and statistics. How much has fake news changed the winning probability? What is the likelihood of flipping an election outcome? And so on.

One result that came as a surprise is that even if electorates are unaware whether a given piece of information is true or false, if they know the frequency and bias of disinformation, then this suffices to eliminate most of the impact of disinformation. The mere knowledge of the possibility of fake news is already a powerful antidote to its effects.

Generative models by themselves do not provide counter measures to disinformation. They merely give us an idea of the magnitude of impacts. Fact checking can help but it is not hugely effective (the genie is already out of the bottle). But what if the two are combined?

Because the impact of disinformation can be largely averted by informing people that it is happening, it would be useful if fact checkers offered information on the statistics of disinformation that they have identified – for example, “X% of negative claims against candidate A were false”. An electorate equipped with this information will be less affected by disinformation.

Dorje C. Brody receives funding from Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/X019926/1). He is currently affiliated with the University of Tokyo.

Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy, is treatable today – and that’s partly thanks to a curious tree and the work of a pioneering young scientist in the 1920s. Centuries prior to her discovery, sufferers had no remedy for leprosy’s debilitating symptoms or its social stigma.

This young scientist, Alice Ball, laid fundamental groundwork for the first effective leprosy treatment globally. But her legacy still prompts conversations about the marginalization of women and people of color in science today.

As a bioethicist and historian of medicine, I’ve studied Ball’s contributions to medicine, and I’m pleased to see her receive increasing recognition for her work, especially on a disease that remains stigmatized.

Who was Alice Ball?

Alice Augusta Ball, born in Seattle, Washington, in 1892, became the first woman and first African American to earn a master’s degree in science from the College of Hawaii in 1915, after completing her studies in pharmaceutical chemistry the year prior.

After she finished her master’s degree, the college hired her as a research chemist and instructor, and she became the first African American with that title in the chemistry department.

Impressed by her master’s thesis on the chemistry of the kava plant, Dr. Harry Hollmann with the Leprosy Investigation Station of the U.S. Public Health Service in Hawaii recruited Ball. At the time, leprosy was a major public health issue in Hawaii.

Doctors now understand that leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, is minimally contagious. But in 1865, the fear and stigma associated with leprosy led authorities in Hawaii to implement a mandatory segregation policy, which ultimately isolated those with the disease on a remote peninsula on the island of Molokai. In 1910, over 600 leprosy sufferers were living in Molokai.

This policy overwhelmingly affected Native Hawaiians, who accounted for over 90% of all those exiled to Molokai.

The significance of chaulmoogra oil

Doctors had attempted to use nearly every remedy imaginable to treat leprosy, even experimenting with dangerous substances such as arsenic and strychnine. But the lone consistently effective treatment was chaulmoogra oil.

Chaulmoogra oil is derived from the seeds of the chaulmoogra tree. Health practitioners in India and Burma had been using this oil for centuries as a treatment for various skin diseases. But there were limitations with the treatment, and it had only marginal effects on leprosy.

The oil is very thick and sticky, which makes it hard to rub into the skin. The drug is also notoriously bitter, and patients who ingested it would often start vomiting. Some physicians experimented with injections of the oil, but this produced painful pustules.

The Ball Method

If researchers could harness chaulmoogra’s curative potential without the nasty side effects, the tree’s seeds could revolutionize leprosy treatment. So, Hollmann turned to Ball. In a 1922 article, Hollmann documents how the 23-year-old Ball discovered how to chemically adapt chaulmoogra into an injection that had none of the side effects.

The Ball Method, as Hollmann called her discovery, transformed chaulmoogra oil into the most effective treatment for leprosy until the introduction of sulfones in the late 1940s.

In 1920, the Ball Method successfully treated 78 patients in Honolulu. A year later, it treated 94 more, with the Public Health Service noting that the morale of all the patients drastically improved. For the first time, there was hope for a cure.

Tragically, Ball did not have the opportunity to revel in this achievement, as she passed away within a year at only 24, likely from exposure to chlorine gas in the lab.

Ball’s legacy, lost and found

Ball’s death meant she didn’t have the opportunity to publish her research. Arthur Dean, chair of the College of Hawaii’s chemistry department, took over the project.

Dean mass-produced the treatment and published a series of articles on chaulmoogra oil. He renamed Ball’s method the “Dean Method,” and he never credited Ball for her work.

Ball’s other colleagues did attempt to protect Ball’s legacy. A 1920 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association praises the Ball Method, while Hollmann clearly credits Ball in his own 1922 article.

Ball is described at length in a 1922 article in volume 15, issue 5, of Current History, an academic publication on international affairs. That feature is excerpted in a June 1941 issue of Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro History Bulletin,” referring to Ball’s achievement and untimely death.

Joseph Dutton, a well-regarded religious volunteer at the leprosy settlements on Molokai, further referenced Ball’s work in a 1932 memoir broadly published for a popular audience.

Historians such as Paul Wermager later prompted a modern reckoning with Ball’s poor treatment by Dean and others, ensuring that Ball received proper credit for her work. Following Wermager’s and others’ work, the University of Hawaii honored Ball in 2000 with a bronze plaque, affixed to the last remaining chaulmoogra tree on campus.

In 2019, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine added Ball’s name to the outside of its building. Ball’s story was even featured in a 2020 short film, “The Ball Method.”

The Ball Method represents both a scientific achievement and a history of marginalization. A young woman of color pioneered a medical treatment for a highly stigmatizing disease that disproportionately affected an already disenfranchised Indigenous population.

In 2022, then-Gov. David Ige declared Feb. 28 Alice Augusta Ball Day in Hawaii. It was only fitting that the ceremony took place on the Mānoa campus in the shade of the chaulmoogra tree.

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

Last month, Danny Mamlok, a friend of mine and an Israeli professor from Tel Aviv University, was scheduled to give a talk at Concordia University in Montreal on the topic of education for tolerance. Four days before the presentation was supposed to take place, the organizers of this event said they were subjected to significant pressure from pro-Palestinian activist groups at McGill and Concordia to cancel Mamlok’s presentation.

Not wanting to give in to this pressure, the organizers insisted that Mamlok, who has advocated for peace for decades and as an Israeli soldier even refused to serve in the West Bank, be allowed to deliver his talk.

Ironically, in order to attend a presentation on tolerance, the audience was directed to enter the venue through the basement, since the pro-Palestinian activists had blocked the main access and later disrupted the talk on Zoom.

This effort to cancel individuals or silence free speech on college campuses has become a more common occurrence in the days since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. But even before, it was a growing phenomenon in higher education and the media across America.

A 2023 report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in Education, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech, found that “attempts to punish college and university scholars for their speech skyrocketed over the past two decades, from only four in 2000 to 145 in 2022.” That report also showed that censorship of professors has come from both sides of the American political spectrum and that a majority of these cases led to some form of sanction, including about 20% that resulted in termination.

In her 2021 Atlantic magazine article titled “The New Puritans,” Anne Applebaum documented more than a dozen cases of professors and journalists who were punished for saying or writing controversial statements. Applebaum focused on the cases of Donald McNeil, science reporter from The New York Times; Laura Kipnis, an academic at Northwestern; and Ian Buruma, editor of The New York Review of Books. Applebaum’s investigative report concluded that these individuals were victims of mob justice and online campaigns that demanded the swift firing of “offenders.” Moreover, she noted that these campaigns lacked just cause and did not grant the canceled individuals the right to due process.

The issue of canceling and cancel culture has received considerable attention in the media and among various scholars, with a focus on the personal consequences suffered by those who have been canceled, the political risks, and the legal issues raised by this practice. Yet, I believe that the educational dangers for democracy that can come about from attempts to cancel individuals or ideas, though profound, have received less attention.

What does a democratic society stand to lose, educationally speaking, when people choose to ban or cancel someone or something? My own research suggests that there are at least four educational detriments that can result from the practice of canceling.

1. Cognitive biases

The practice of canceling has been shown to exacerbate a host of cognitive biases shared by many people, such as confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek and focus on information that supports one’s existing beliefs and discount contrary evidence.

Motivated reasoning is the inclination to scrutinize evidence with greater skepticism if it does not fit one’s existing beliefs or values. Studies have found that when people close themselves to alternative perspectives, voices and sources of information, they undermine their ability to gain a deeper understanding of issues and expand their knowledge. In contrast, the cognitive dissonance that results from views being challenged by those who have different perspectives can lead to new insights and enhanced learning.

2. Undermining discussions

The practice of canceling people or ideas reduces both the number and quality of discussions across differences.

Suppressing unorthodox opinions, dodging conflict or avoiding engaging with controversial perspectives often results in uninspiring conversations aimed at merely “preaching to the choir.” Such predictable conversation with a limited range of acceptable viewpoints can lead people to adopt a herd mentality, one that accepts a set of assumptions and values uncritically.

In his essay “On Liberty,” philosopher John Stuart Mill argued that having to justify one’s opinions to someone who opposes them is enlightening for all. Mill was adamant that the mission of higher education was not to indoctrinate students on what they should believe but to help them develop their own worldviews based on their interaction with different perspectives and sources of evidence.

3. Promoting dogmatism

Canceling has the adverse educational effect of promoting dogmatism rather than open-mindedness.

Silencing ideas that are politically incorrect, insensitive or controversial may make people feel good, but it does nothing – as Mill recognized and my own research shows – to engage or edify people holding on to those views.

The danger is that banning subversive opinions leaves both the people who hold them and those who oppose them in their segregated enclaves, thereby reducing the interactions of diverse perspectives that American philosopher and educator John Dewey regarded as the lifeblood of democracy. Following Mill and Dewey, I would argue that such critical interaction with controversial viewpoints helps promote intellectual open-mindedness and prevents people from becoming dogmatic.

4. Suppressing dissent

The practice of canceling is educationally dangerous because it seeks to suppress dissent and creates a false sense of consensus.

As historian and bioethicist Alice Dreger has illustrated with the help of numerous examples in her book “Galileo’s Middle Finger,” banning controversial or minority views deprives the public of valuable information on a host of social problems that should concern everyone. Likewise, canceling narrows the range of perspectives that can be used to analyze issues such as climate change and global pandemics and come up with potential solutions to resolve them.

Luis Alberto Lacalle, the former president of Uruguay, once said “consensus destroys democracy.”

Consensus destroys democracy by greatly curtailing the possibility that spirited discussion, diverse viewpoints and rigorous critique – all essential to maintaining the democratic process – will play a major role in shaping the direction of the U.S. and other democracies. And consensus destroys democracy by privileging the majority opinion, ignoring the needs and interests of minorities and marginalizing the voices of dissent.

My analysis suggests that canceling is a misguided and undemocratic practice – one that leads to numerous negative educational consequences, such as promoting dogmatism, discouraging dissent and undermining vigorous debates.

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

The Voynich manuscript has long puzzled and fascinated historians and the public. This late-medieval document is covered in illustrations of stars and planets, plants, zodiac symbols, naked women, and blue and green fluids. But the text itself – thought to be the work of five different scribes – is enciphered and yet to be understood.

In an article published in Social History of Medicine, my coauthor Michelle L. Lewis and I propose that sex is one of the subjects detailed in the manuscript – and that the largest diagram represents both sex and conception.

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Read more: Seven metals, ringed with four magical inscriptions: what other secrets does the 'Alchemical Hand Bell' hold?

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Late-medieval sexology and gynaecology

Research on the Voynich manuscript has revealed some clues about its origins.Carbon dating provides a 95% probability the skins used to make the manuscript come from animals that died between 1404 and 1438. However, its earliest securely known owner was an associate of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who lived from 1552 to 1612, which leaves more than a century of ownership missing.

Certain illustrations (the zodiac symbols, a crown design and a particular shape of castle wall called a swallowtail merlon) indicate the manuscript was made in the southern Germanic or northern Italian cultural areas.

One section contains illustrations of naked women holding objects adjacent to, or oriented towards, their genitalia. These wouldn’t belong in a solely herbal or astronomical manuscript. To make sense of these images, we investigated the culture of late-medieval gynaecology and sexology – which physicians at the time often referred to as “women’s secrets”.

First we looked at Bavarian physician Johannes Hartlieb (circa 1410–68), who lived around the time and place the Voynich manuscript was made.

Hartlieb wrote about plants, women, magic, astronomy and baths. He also recommended the use of “secret letters” (such as a cipher, secret alphabet, or similar) to obscure medical recipes and procedures that may result in contraception, abortion or sterility.

Although his secret alphabet hasn’t survived, analysing his work has helped us understand the attitudes that would have inspired the use of encipherment at the time. For instance, Hartlieb felt a strong apprehension about “women’s secrets” becoming widely known. He worried his writings could facilitate extramarital sex and that God would condemn him if this happened.

In his un-enciphered writings, he either refuses or hesitates to write about certain topics, such as post-partum vaginal ointments, women’s sexual pleasure, claims of women giving birth to animals, the “correct” coital positions for conception, libido-altering dietary advice, and information about poisonous, hallucinogenic, contraceptive or abortive plants.

Writing for male aristocrats in vernacular Bavarian (rather than academic Latin), Hartlieb says such knowledge should be restricted from sex workers, commoners, children, and in some cases from women themselves – who were becoming increasingly literate.

As a man who valued heterosexual marriage and women’s “modesty”, and who condemned lust, promiscuity and prostitution, he was perfectly conventional for his milieu.

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Read more: Deciphering the Philosophers' Stone: how we cracked a 400-year-old alchemical cipher

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Censorship

If such attitudes were widespread back then, was the censorship of women’s secrets also widespread? The short answer is: yes.

During our research, we decoded a number of ciphers from this period (but none from the Voynich manuscript). The longest was a 21-line cipher from late-medieval northern Italy that obscured a recipe with gynaecological uses, including abortion.

We also found many examples of authors self-censoring, or of readers erasing or destroying information in gynaecological and/or sexological texts. Censors would often only obscure a few words, usually genital terms or plant names in recipes – but sometimes they would remove entire pages or chapters.

One Bavarian manuscript includes recipes for invisibility and magic spells for sexually coercing women, after which two pages have been removed. The censor writes this removal was done “not without reason”.

The Rosettes

By analysing the Voynich illustrations through this lens, we propose the Rosettes – the manuscript’s largest and most elaborate illustration – represents a late-medieval understanding of sex and conception.

Our proposal is in keeping with the patriarchal culture of the time and resolves many of the manuscript’s apparent contradictions. It also allows us to identify several of the illustration’s features.

In late-medieval times the uterus was believed to have seven chambers, and the vagina two openings (one external and one internal).

We believe the nine large circles of the Rosettes represents these, with the central circle representing the outer opening, and the top-left circle representing the inner opening. The eight outer circles have smooth edges since they represent internal anatomy, while the central circle has a shaped edge since it represents external anatomy.

Abu Bakr Al-Rāzī, a Persian physician who influenced late-medieval European medicine, wrote that five small veins exist in the vaginas of virgins. We see these running from the top-left circle towards the centre.

Physicians back then also believed a male and female component were necessary for conception, and both of these were called “sperm”. These are shown in yellow (male) and blue (female). Women were thought to receive pleasure from the motion of the two sperms in the uterus, which is depicted through the lines and patterns.

It was also thought the uterus had two horns or spikes, which we can see on the top-right and bottom-right circles.

The castles and town walls may represent wordplay on the German term schloss, which had meanings including “castle”, “lock”, “female genitalia” and “female pelvis”.

And the two suns in the far top-left and bottom-right likely reflect Aristotle’s belief that the Sun provides natural heat to the embryo during its early development.

While many features of the illustration are yet to be understood, our proposal is worth close scrutiny. We hope future research into the manuscript will approach it through a similar lens. Perhaps, with enough clues, we might find a way to finally decode this elusive text.

Keagan Brewer receives funding from a Macquarie University Research Fellowship.

A review into gender identity services for young people has said under-18s are being let down by the NHS. The final report of the Cass review describes a lack of long-term data and “remarkably weak” evidence on the effects of medical interventions in gender care.

However, medical transitioning, through hormone therapy or surgery, is only one route for transgender and gender non-conforming people of any age to explore their identity. Many will “socially transition” before or instead of medically transitioning. The report, alongside other research, recommends more long-term, robust research on both social transitioning and medical intervention.

Broadly speaking, social transitioning consists of actions or expressions that align with a chosen gender other than that assumed at birth. This can include changing one’s appearance through clothes and hairstyle, or choosing to use a different name or pronouns.

People may identify as agender, gender-fluid or non-binary, and may use gender neutral pronouns such as they/them, or those that have arisen specifically for this purpose like ze/zir. Or, if people feel that they were assigned the wrong identity at birth they may wish to identify as transgender.

Social transitioning, as the report notes, usually occurs at home or in schools or workplaces, not in medical establishments. For young people exploring their gender identity, this makes schools a particularly important environment.

Existing research suggests that social transitioning in early adolescence itself is not harmful, but an unsupportive environment where gender-diverse young people feel “othered” or are subject to bullying can lead to long-term, negative wellbeing. Another study of trans UK adults identified a supportive environment for social transition as a key factor in decreasing suicidal thoughts.

Social transitioning is also an important first step in obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC). If someone wants to be legally recognised as their acquired gender, they must provide evidence of a change of name or title, or change of gender marker for at least two years.

A GRC cannot be obtained under the age of 18. The process does not require any medical interventions. For young people to obtain a GRC at 18, they must have socially transitioned and be recognised by another name or pronoun from at least age 16.

The role of schools and teachers

There is no question that educational institutions should foster positive, affirming environments for young people. What does this mean when it comes to gender exploration?

The review chair, retired consultant paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, noted that rigid binary gender stereotypes can be unhelpful for young people, and that exploration of gender is a normal process. In my research, I have interviewed teachers navigating interactions between schools, students and their parents regarding this exploration.

Citing their duty of care, teachers expressed a need for clear guidelines from the government on how to best support students who are socially transitioning.

To this end, the government has recently closed a consultation on guidance for schools on gender questioning children. The draft guidance encourages parental consent if a child wants to change their name or pronoun.

However, teachers I interviewed expressed concern that, in some cases, telling parents about a student’s social transitioning could lead to safeguarding risks. This disclosure, they said, would not be expected of teachers if the student was disclosing their sexuality.

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Read more: Trans guidance for schools: the voices of young people are missing

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The teachers I interviewed placed student welfare at the heart of their concerns. Some discussed safeguarding incidents where students were made homeless due to parents’ disapproval of their child’s gender identity or expression. Ultimately, they want students to feel safe, heard and have autonomy over their gender expression in school.

Teachers were concerned that existing school policies were based on the subjective beliefs of school leaders, rather than student wellbeing. Those I interviewed highlighted contradictions in how their schools treated gender-diverse students.

For example, many students prefer to be called by a shortened name or middle name rather than the name on their birth certificate. These name changes were never challenged. However, if a student presented as gender-diverse, a different approach was imposed by head teachers.

Above all, the teachers I spoke to in my research want schools to be a place where students feel acknowledged, safe, empowered and supported, whether they are navigating their sexuality or gender expression.

EJ-Francis Caris-Hamer 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.

“ هل أنت جاد ,” my co-worker says to my boss.  The bagel shop just finished its rush hour, and my co-workers fill the empty building with their Arabic conversation.  All I understand is their body language: mouths curving into smiles and bodies leaning back to release a laugh. My white girl, Florida-raised self, has […]

As the calendar turns to summer, we’re always looking for reasons to get out of the house, and one of our favorite experiences in Tampa encapsulates thousands of years of interactive Florida and Tampa Bay Area history. For kids, adults, and all curious minds, the Tampa Bay History Center is one of the region’s must-visit museums.

From a gigantic pirate ship and a virtual cruise through the Port of Tampa, to a pioneer cabin, Seminole history, and incredible dining at Columbia Cafe, the 60,000-square-foot museum houses an incredible array of experiences highlighting 12,000 years of Florida’s history. With rotating exhibits constantly arriving and a fantastic set of permanent collections, it’s always worth spending an afternoon roaming the cavernous galleries of the Tampa Bay History Center. See the full list of exhibits and get tickets here.

Pro tip: if you become a History Center member, you can get discounts at even more of the area’s best experiences. In April, members get $3 off per ticket at Tampa Theatre; in June they get free admission to the Tampa Museum of Art; and all year round, they get 50% off admission to The Florida Aquarium.

See Florida’s decade of change in the 1920s

Two historic exhibits are now in their final months at Tampa Bay History Center, appropriately showcasing a slice of history that commemorates 100 years since Florida as it had been known for thousands of years suddenly became the modern destination we know and love today.

The 1920s Florida Land Boom transformed almost every aspect of life in Florida, and between 1920 and 1930, the state’s population soared from 968,470 to 1,468,211. That wild increase – both the factors behind it and the effects it had – is beautifully detailed in “Sharps & Marks in Paradise: Selling Florida in the 1920s.”

Much of the “Old Florida” style we think of now was born in that time, as bootleggers flooded cities with prohibited booze, flappers danced to jazz, and workers erected bungalows and Mediterranean Revival-style suburban homes in Florida in the 1920s. All was not sunshine and daisies, however. Florida’s Jim Crow system was also being violently enforced at the time which, combined with so many other cultural headwinds, created quite the busy – and sometimes controversial – period of time as Florida first grew into modernity. That story is incredibly well-told in Tampa Bay History Center’s “Decade of Change: Florida in the 1920s.”

Sail the high seas and discover real treasure on Water Street

Tampa Bay History Center’s permanent collection is always a sight to see, and a favorite for all ages is the pirate ship housed on the museum’s fourth floor. Featuring a 60-foot, 18th-century pirate ship as its centerpiece, the “Treasure Seekers” exhibit introduces guests to the explorers who landed in “La Florida” more than 500 years ago as well as little-known pirates like “Calico” Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny, who prowled Florida’s coasts in the 1700s.

Meanwhile, as vintage and historic maps continue to hold a place in Floridian pop culture, Tampa Bay History Center has one of the most incredible cartographic exhibits in the country. The Touchton Map Library and Florida Center for Cartographic Education is home to thousands of maps, charts, and other documents dating back from the early European exploration of North America more than 500 years ago up through the early 21st century.

Experience Florida and Tampa history – without leaving the AC

Throughout its four floors of galleries and experiences, Tampa Bay History Center has a long list of interactive experiences, transformative galleries, and films that take you straight back in time (and often out on the water). Guests can set sail with European explorers, or with some of Florida’s last pirates. They can experience what life was like in the original Cigar City. They can uncover lost artifacts, sit in on conversations between Conquistadors and Florida’s first indigenous people, and walk through 500 years of slavery in Florida – including the path to freedom in the Sunshine State.

And there’s plenty to experience in the present day, as well. You can trace the history of baseball in Tampa Bay, the burgeoning beer scene in the region, and all the things that keep our region so vibrant. From ancient stories to modern-day showcases, all things Tampa and Florida can be found.

The Tampa Bay History Center is located at 801 Water Street in Tampa. Featuring a collection showcasing the best of the History Center’s 90,000+ artifacts, the museum is open daily from 10 am – 5 pm. Learn more and get tickets here. And while you’re there, we highly recommend making time for lunch at Columbia Cafe inside the museum, overlooking the Tampa Riverwalk and showcasing the iconic cuisine that made the restaurant famous.

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The post Pirates to Paradise: Experience 12,000 years of Florida at Tampa Bay History Center appeared first on That's So Tampa.

From the mid-sixteenth century, broadsheets depicting wondrous, celestial events circulated widely across the Holy Roman Empire against the backdrop of Reformation.

It’s rare to feel earthquakes in the U.S. Northeast, so the magnitude 4.8 earthquake in New Jersey that shook buildings in New York City and was felt from Maryland to Boston on April 5, 2024, drew a lot of questions. It was one of the strongest earthquakes on record in New Jersey, though there were few reports of damage. A smaller, magnitude 3.8 earthquake and several other smaller aftershocks rattled the region a few hours later. We asked geoscientist Gary Solar to explain what causes earthquakes in this region.

What causes earthquakes like this in the US Northeast?

There are many ancient faults in that part of New Jersey that extend through Philadelphia and along the Appalachians, and the other direction, past New York City and into western New England.

These are fractures where gravity can cause the rock on either side to slip, causing the ground to shake. There is no active tectonic plate motion in the area today, but there was about 250 million to 300 million years ago.

The earthquake activity in New Jersey on April 5 is similar to the 3.8 magnitude earthquake that we experienced in 2023 in Buffalo, New York. In both cases, the shaking was from gravitational slip on those ancient structures.

In short, rocks slip a little on steep, preexisting fractures. That’s what happened in New Jersey, assuming there was no man-made trigger.

How dangerous is a 4.8 magnitude earthquake?

Magnitude 4.8 is pretty large, especially for the Northeast, but it’s likely to have minor effects compared with the much larger ones that cause major damage and loss of life.

The scale used to measure earthquakes is logarithmic, so each integer is a factor of 10. That means a magnitude 6 earthquake is 10 times larger than a magnitude 5 earthquake. The bigger ones, like the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Tawian a few days earlier, are associated with active plate margins, where two tectonic plates meet.

The vulnerability of buildings to a magnitude 4.8 earthquake would depend on the construction. The building codes in places like California are very strict because California has a major plate boundary fault system – the San Andreas system. New Jersey does not, and correspondingly, building codes don’t account for large earthquakes as a result.

How rare are earthquakes in the Northeast, and will New Jersey see more in the same location?

Earthquakes are actually pretty common in the Northeast, but they’re usually so small that few people feel them. The vast majority are magnitude 2.5 or less.

The rare large ones like this are generally not predictable. However, there will likely not be other large earthquakes of similar size in that area for a long time. Once the slip happens in a region like this, the gravitational problem on that ancient fault is typically solved and the system is more stable.

That isn’t the case for active plate margins, like in Turkey, which has had devastating earthquakes in recent years, or rimming the Pacific Ocean. In those areas, tectonic stresses constantly build up as the plates slowly move, and earthquakes are from a failure to stick.

This article, originally published April 5, 2024, has been updated with several smaller aftershocks felt in the region.

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

Social media platforms have become more than mere tools for communication. They’ve evolved into bustling arenas where truth and falsehood collide. Among these platforms, X stands out as a prominent battleground. It’s a place where disinformation campaigns thrive, perpetuated by armies of AI-powered bots programmed to sway public opinion and manipulate narratives.

AI-powered bots are automated accounts that are designed to mimic human behaviour. Bots on social media, chat platforms and conversational AI are integral to modern life. They are needed to make AI applications run effectively, for example.

But some bots are crafted with malicious intent. Shockingly, bots constitute a significant portion of X’s user base. In 2017 it was estimated that there were approximately 23 million social bots accounting for 8.5% of total users. More than two-thirds of tweets originated from these automated accounts, amplifying the reach of disinformation and muddying the waters of public discourse.

How bots work

Social influence is now a commodity that can be acquired by purchasing bots. Companies sell fake followers to artificially boost the popularity of accounts. These followers are available at remarkably low prices, with many celebrities among the purchasers.

In the course of our research, for example, colleagues and I detected a bot that had posted 100 tweets offering followers for sale.

Using AI methodologies and a theoretical approach called actor-network theory, my colleagues and I dissected how malicious social bots manipulate social media, influencing what people think and how they act with alarming efficacy. We can tell if fake news was generated by a human or a bot with an accuracy rate of 79.7%. It is crucial to comprehend how both humans and AI disseminate disinformation in order to grasp the ways in which humans leverage AI for spreading misinformation.

To take one example, we examined the activity of an account named “True Trumpers” on Twitter.

The account was established in August 2017, has no followers and no profile picture, but had, at the time of the research, posted 4,423 tweets. These included a series of entirely fabricated stories. It’s worth noting that this bot originated from an eastern European country.

Research such as this influenced X to restrict the activities of social bots. In response to the threat of social media manipulation, X has implemented temporary reading limits to curb data scraping and manipulation. Verified accounts have been limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts can read 600 a day. This is a new update, so we don’t yet know if it has been effective.

Can we protect ourselves?

However, the onus ultimately falls on users to exercise caution and discern truth from falsehood, particularly during election periods. By critically evaluating information and checking sources, users can play a part in protecting the integrity of democratic processes from the onslaught of bots and disinformation campaigns on X. Every user is, in fact, a frontline defender of truth and democracy. Vigilance, critical thinking, and a healthy dose of scepticism are essential armour.

With social media, it’s important for users to understand the strategies employed by malicious accounts.

Malicious actors often use networks of bots to amplify false narratives, manipulate trends and swiftly disseminate misinformation. Users should exercise caution when encountering accounts exhibiting suspicious behaviour, such as excessive posting or repetitive messaging.

Disinformation is also frequently propagated through dedicated fake news websites. These are designed to imitate credible news sources. Users are advised to verify the authenticity of news sources by cross-referencing information with reputable sources and consulting fact-checking organisations.

Self awareness is another form of protection, especially from social engineering tactics. Psychological manipulation is often deployed to deceive users into believing falsehoods or engaging in certain actions. Users should maintain vigilance and critically assess the content they encounter, particularly during periods of heightened sensitivity such as elections.

By staying informed, engaging in civil discourse and advocating for transparency and accountability, we can collectively shape a digital ecosystem that fosters trust, transparency and informed decision-making.

Professor Nick Hajli works for Loughborough University.

Large areas of concrete and asphalt absorb and radiate heat, creating an “urban heat island effect”. It puts cities at risk of overheating as they are several degrees warmer than surrounding areas.

One of the best ways to keep our cool is to maintain leafy streets, parks and backyards. But in some cities, trees are being chopped down faster than local councils can replace them. Some councils are also fast running out of land to plant trees.

Most of the damage happens on private land. Usually it’s a result of large blocks being subdivided or undeveloped land being opened up for more homes.

Cutting down trees for urban development is well within the law. But tree-protection laws are weaker in some parts of Australia than in others. To ensure our cities remain liveable, some laws will have to change.

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Read more: In a heatwave, the leafy suburbs are even more advantaged

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Why cities need trees

Beyond just providing shade, trees reflect heat into the atmosphere. They also cool the air by releasing water through pores in their leaves, acting like evaporative air conditioners.

Trees provide many other benefits such as removing pollutants, limiting erosion and improving public health.

The influential 3-30-300 rule for green cities, proposed by Dutch researcher Cecil Konijnendijk, states:

• you should be able to easily see three trees from the window of your house or workplace

• cities should have at least 30% overall tree cover

• you should have a green space with trees within 300 metres (or a three-minute walk) of your house or workplace.

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Read more: A solution to cut extreme heat by up to 6 degrees is in our own backyards

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Why urban trees need better laws to protect them

How do Australians cities stack up against the 30% canopy goal of the 3-30-300 rule?

Brisbane leads the way, with 44% of the City of Brisbane council area blanketed in trees. Hobart also makes the grade, with analysis of aerial imagery from Google showing a tree canopy of 34%.

Other cities have some work to do to meet the benchmark. Recent aerial image analysis shows Perth sitting at 22% cover.

The NSW Department of Planning reported Sydney’s canopy cover as 21.7% in 2022. The Victorian Department of Transport and Planning reported 15.3% canopy cover across metropolitan Melbourne in 2018.

Green Adelaide reports today that Adelaide’s canopy is a mere 17%. That’s worrying for a city so vulnerable to urban heat.

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Read more: We're investing heavily in urban greening, so how are our cities doing?

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While it can be tempting to compare canopy results, this needs to be approached with caution. The two main techniques for estimating tree canopy, airborne LiDAR (using laser sensing) and analysis of aerial photographs, can produce different results. Even LiDAR data from the same location but analysed at different resolutions can be quite different.

But what’s concerning is that some cities seem to be losing trees very rapidly. An analysis of aerial photographs by Nearmap shows Adelaide suburbs are fast losing trees. A 2021 Conservation Council report estimates Adelaide is losing about 75,000 trees per year across the city. Most are on private land.

Local councils have been planting several thousand trees each year, but are running out of places to plant them. Requirements for clear space on road verges and around powerlines pose major limitations.

If we want greener cities, we also need to take a critical look at the laws on tree removal.

Our team at the University of Adelaide produced a 2022 report on tree-protection laws across Australia. The state government commissioned us to verify a claim that South Australia’s tree-protection laws were the weakest in the nation. We compared state and local council regulations, and the claim turned out to be true.

What’s wrong with the SA laws?

One consideration is the size thresholds used to define trees as “regulated” or “significant”. Of the 101 metropolitan councils outside SA that we investigated, 78% considered trees with trunk circumferences of more 50cm deserving of legal protection. And 95% applied protection when circumferences exceeded a metre. In South Australia, only trees with twice that trunk size get any legal protection.

Another issue is distance exemptions. In South Australia, large trees that would otherwise be protected may be removed if they are within 10 metres of a house or pool. This rule is regularly used to clear entire residential blocks – after all, nearly all trees on suburban blocks are within 10m of a house or pool.

A majority of the interstate councils had no distance exemptions to speak of.

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Read more: Out of alignment: how clashing policies make for terrible environmental outcomes

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So what needs to change?

Our findings were among the drivers of a South Australian parliamentary inquiry. An interim report was released last October. It includes sensible, straightforward recommendations to improve the state legislation.

The report suggests reducing the circumference at which trees qualify for protection. It recommends adding crown spread as another criterion. It wisely recommends deleting the distance exemption.

The report also weighs in on fees and fines – the “bottom line” deterrents and punishments for doing the wrong thing. It recommends increasing the fee for legally removing “regulated” trees from $489 to $4,000, for example. However, the value that large trees provide to the community is regularly estimated at hundreds to thousands of dollars per year.

Similarly, a recommendation to introduce a $40,000 fine for illegally removing a “significant” tree pales in comparison to laws interstate. In NSW, illegally removing protected trees can incur fines of over $1 million. To deter big developers, fines must be larger than what they might regard as a reasonable “cost of doing business”.

The report’s recommendation to pay fines and fees into an Urban Forest Fund to grow canopy near areas of tree removal is a good one. Planting trees on the other side of town doesn’t help residents (or biodiversity) when trees are removed locally.

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Read more: Climate change threatens up to 100% of trees in Australian cities, and most urban species worldwide

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Cities can draw inspiration from each other

Adelaide’s climate is shifting from a temperate Mediterranean climate to a semi-arid one. Semi-arid climates are less able to grow many temperate plant species and tend to have less vegetation overall. To create an extensive and healthy tree canopy for future generations, we need to act fast and think critically about what we’re planting (and protecting).

We hope the South Australian government will follow the inquiry recommendations, so the state’s tree laws are on par with those of other states and cities.

Cities like Melbourne, which are also becoming warmer and drier, can look toward Adelaide as a future climate analogue. Urban planning is often about learning from other cities and adapting their strategies to local contexts.

To cope with the twin challenges of climate change and rapid urban growth, Australian cities need to work together to actively develop greening strategies. If we don’t, our cities will become hot, dry and barren.

Stefan Caddy-Retalic and Kate Delaporte have received funding from the South Australian Government, University of Adelaide and SA Power Networks to analyse urban forest data across Adelaide.

Kate Delaporte is employed by the University of Adelaide and receives funding from University of Adelaide and the Environment Institute. She is affiliated with TREENET Inc., the Friends of Waite Arboretum and the Friends of the Waite Conservation Reserve, and is a board member of the Playford Trust Inc.

Kiri Marker is affiliated with the University of Adelaide and has previously received funding from the Environment Institute.

Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the consensus switched to fears of an imminent nuclear holocaust.

Similarly, today’s experts warn that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) doomsday is imminent. Others retort that large language models (LLMs) have already reached the peak of their powers.

It’s difficult to argue with David Collingridge’s influential thesis that attempting to predict the risks posed by new technologies is a fool’s errand. Given that our leading scientists and technologists are usually so mistaken about technological evolution, what chance do our policymakers have of effectively regulating the emerging technological risks from artificial intelligence (AI)?

We ought to heed Collingridge’s warning that technology evolves in uncertain ways. However, there is one class of AI risk that is generally knowable in advance. These are risks stemming from misalignment between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed.

The surest way to ignore such misalignment is by focusing exclusively on technical questions about AI model capabilities, divorced from the socio-economic environment in which these models will operate and be designed for profit.

Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not simply about preventing “monopoly,” “self-preferencing,” or “Big Tech dominance”. It’s about ensuring that the economic environment facilitating innovation is not incentivising hard-to-predict technological risks as companies “move fast and break things” in a race for profit or market dominance.

It’s also about ensuring that value from AI is widely shared, by preventing premature consolidation. We’ll see more innovation if emerging AI tools are accessible to everyone, such that a dispersed ecosystem of new firms, start-ups, and AI tools can arise.

OpenAI is already becoming a dominant player with US$2 billion (£1.6 billion) in annual sales and millions of users. Its GPT store and developer tools need to return value to those who create it in order to ensure ecosystems of innovation remain viable and dispersed.

By carefully interrogating the system of economic incentives underlying innovations and how technologies are monetised in practice, we can generate a better understanding of the risks, both economic and technological, nurtured by a market’s structure. Market structure is not simply the number of firms, but the cost structure and economic incentives in the market that follow from the institutions, adjacent government regulations, and available financing.

Degrading quality for higher profit

It is instructive to consider how the algorithmic technologies that underpinned the aggregator platforms of old (think Amazon, Google and Facebook among others) initially deployed to benefit users, were eventually reprogrammed to increase profits for the platform.

The problems fostered by social media, search, and recommendation algorithms was never an engineering issue, but one of financial incentives (of profit growth) not aligning with algorithms’ safe, effective, and equitable deployment. As the saying goes: history doesn’t necessarily repeat itself but it does rhyme.

To understand how platforms allocate value to themselves and what we can do about it, we investigated the role of algorithms, and the unique informational set-up of digital markets, in extracting so-called economic rents from users and producers on platforms. In economic theory, rents are “super-normal profits” (profits that are above what would be achievable in a competitive market) and reflect control over some scarce resource.

Importantly, rents are a pure return to ownership or some degree of monopoly power, rather than a return earned from producing something in a competitive market (such as many producers making and selling cars). For digital platforms, extracting digital rents usually entails degrading the quality of information shown to the user, on the basis of them “owning” access to a mass of customers.

For example, Amazon’s millions of users rely on its product search algorithms to show them the best products available for sale, since they are unable to inspect each product individually. These algorithms save everyone time and money: by helping users navigate through thousands of products to find the ones with the highest quality and the lowest price, and by expanding the market reach of suppliers through Amazon’s delivery infrastructure and immense customer network.

These platforms made markets more efficient and delivered enormous value both to users and to product suppliers. But over time, a misalignment between the initial promise of them providing user value and the need to expand profit margins as growth slows has driven bad platform behaviour. Amazon’s advertising business is a case in point.

Amazon’s advertising

In our research on Amazon, we found that users still tend to click on the product results at the top of the page, even when they are no longer the best results but instead paid advertising placements. Amazon abuses the habituated trust that users have come to place in its algorithms, and instead allocates user attention and clicks to inferior quality, sponsored, information from which it profits immensely.

We found that, on average, the most-clicked sponsored products (advertisements) were 17% more expensive and 33% lower ranked according to Amazon’s own quality, price, and popularity optimising algorithms. And because product suppliers must now pay for the product ranking that they previously earned through product quality and reputation, their profits go down as Amazon’s go up, and prices rise as some of the cost is passed on to customers.

Amazon is one the most striking examples of a company pivoting away from its original “virtuous” mission (“to be the most customer-centric company on Earth”) towards an extractive business model. But it is far from alone.

Google, Meta, and virtually all other major online aggregators have, over time, come to preference their economic interests over their original promise to their users and to their ecosystems of content and product suppliers or application developers. Science fiction writer and activist Cory Doctorow calls this the “enshittification” of Big Tech platforms.

But not all rents are bad. According to the economist Joseph Schumpeter, rents received by a firm from innovating can be beneficial for society. Big Tech’s platforms got ahead through highly innovative, superior, algorithmic breakthroughs. The current market leaders in AI are doing the same.

So while Schumpeterian rents are real and justified, over time, and under external financial pressure, market leaders began to use their algorithmic market power to capture a greater share of the value created by the ecosystem of advertisers, suppliers and users in order to keep profit growing.

User preferences were downgraded in algorithmic importance in favour of more profitable content. For social media platforms, this was addictive content to increase time spent on platform at any cost to user health. Meanwhile, the ultimate suppliers of value to their platform – the content creators, website owners and merchants – have had to hand over more of their returns to the platform owner. In the process, profits and profit margins have become concentrated in a few platforms’ hands, making innovation by outside companies harder.

A platform compelling its ecosystem of firms to pay ever higher fees (in return for nothing of commensurate value on either side of the platform) cannot be justified. It is a red light that the platform has a degree of market power that it is exploiting to extract unearned rents. Amazon’s most recent quarterly disclosures (Q4, 2023), shows year-on-year growth in online sales of 9%, but growth in fees of 20% (third-party seller services) and 27% (advertising sales).

What is important to remember in the context of risk and innovation is that this rent-extracting deployment of algorithmic technologies by Big Tech is not an unknowable risk, as identified by Collingridge. It is a predictable economic risk. The pursuit of profit via the exploitation of scarce resources under one’s control is a story as old as commerce itself.

Technological safeguards on algorithms, as well as more detailed disclosure about how platforms were monetising their algorithms, may have prevented such behaviour from taking place. Algorithms have become market gatekeepers and value allocators, and are now becoming producers and arbiters of knowledge.

Risks posed by the next generation of AI

The limits we place on algorithms and AI models will be instrumental to directing economic activity and human attention towards productive ends. But how much greater are the risks for the next generation of AI systems? They will shape not just what information is shown to us, but how we think and express ourselves. Centralisation of the power of AI in the hands of a few profit-driven entities that are likely to face future economic incentives for bad behaviour is surely a bad idea.

Thankfully, society is not helpless in shaping the economic risks that invariably arise after each new innovation. Risks brought about from the economic environment in which innovation occurs are not immutable. Market structure is shaped by regulators and a platform’s algorithmic institutions (especially its algorithms which make market-like allocations). Together, these factors influence how strong the network effects and economies of scale and scope are in a market, including the rewards to market dominance.

Technological mandates such as interoperability, which refers to the ability of different digital systems to work together seamlessly; or “side-loading”, the practice of installing apps from sources other than a platform’s official store, have shaped the fluidity of user mobility within and between markets, and in turn the ability for any dominant entity to durably exploit its users and ecosystem. The internet protocols helped keep the internet open instead of closed. Open source software enabled it to escape from under the thumb of the PC era’s dominant monopoly. What role might interoperability and open source play in keeping the AI industry a more competitive and inclusive market?

Disclosure is another powerful market-shaping tool. Disclosures can require technology companies to provide transparent information and explanations about their products and monetisation strategies. Mandatory disclosure of ad load and other operating metrics might have helped to prevent Facebook, for example, from exploiting its users’ privacy in order to maximise ad dollars from harvesting each user’s data.

But a lack of data portability, and an inability to independently audit Facebook’s algorithms, meant that Facebook continued to benefit from its surveillance system for longer than it should have. Today, OpenAI and other leading AI model providers refuse to disclose their training data sets, while questions arise about copyright infringement and who should have the right to profit from AI-aided creative works. Disclosures and open technological standards are key steps to try and ensure the benefits from these emerging AI platforms are shared as widely as possible.

Market structure, and its impact on “who gets what and why”, evolves as the technological basis for how firms are allowed to compete in a market evolves. So perhaps it is time to turn our regulatory gaze away from attempting to predict the specific risks that might arise as specific technologies develop. After all, even Einstein couldn’t do that.

Instead, we should try to recalibrate the economic incentives underpinning today’s innovations, away from risky uses of AI technology and towards open, accountable, AI algorithms that support and disperse value equitably. The sooner we acknowledge that technological risks are frequently an outgrowth of misaligned economic incentives, the more quickly we can work to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

We are not opposed to Amazon offering advertising services to firms on its third-party marketplace. An appropriate amount of advertising space can indeed help lesser-known businesses or products, with competitive offerings, to gain traction in a fair manner. But when advertising almost entirely displaces top-ranked organic product results, advertising becomes a rent extraction device for the platform.

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An Amazon spokesperson said:

We disagree with a number of conclusions made in this research, which misrepresents and overstates the limited data it uses. It ignores that sales from independent sellers, which are growing faster than Amazon’s own, contribute to revenue from services, and that many of our advertising services do not appear on the store.

Amazon obsesses over making customers’ lives easier and a big part of that is making sure customers can quickly and conveniently find and discover the products they want in our store. Advertisements have been an integral part of retail for many decades and anytime we include them they are clearly marked as ‘Sponsored’. We provide a mix of organic and sponsored search results based on factors including relevance, popularity with customers, availability, price, and speed of delivery, along with helpful search filters to refine their results. We have also invested billions in the tools and services for sellers to help them grow and additional services such as advertising and logistics are entirely optional.

Our project at UCL, referenced in this article, was funded by Omidyar. I personally did not receive any compensation from this grant, but I believe that all of my co-authors did.

Ilan Strauss receives funding from The Omidyar Network through the UCL IIPP research project on algorithmic rents

Mariana Mazzucato received funding for this project from the Omidyar Foundation.

Rufus Rock received funding from the Omidyar Network whilst pursuing the research referenced in this piece.

The fear of witchcraft led to centuries of persecution and executions across Europe. While there were an estimated 500 executions in England, and between 3,000 and 4,000 killings in Scotland, only five people were hanged for witchcraft in Wales.

Early modern Wales was unique in its outlook on witchcraft. Distinct elements of Welsh culture, including superstition and religion, halted the witch trials seen across the rest of Britain and Europe.

In fact, the witch is steeped in Welsh culture. There is speculation among some researchers that the traditional tall, black hat of the Welsh woman served as inspiration for the wide-brimmed hat of the fairy tale witch. Yet Wales saw no witch hunt. So, what are the reasons behind the lack of prosecutions in Wales?

It’s not that Welsh people had no fear of witchcraft or of supernatural harm – they did. But this fear usually played out in arguments among neighbours and family members, amounting to little more than name-calling.

There were other factors, such as the preference for unreformed religion. And the people’s reliance on wise women and soothsayers who could cure sickness and find missing items, and the ever-present influence of old beggar women, meant witchcraft was less poised to be brought to the attention of the courts. When it did very occasionally come to trial, it was usually dismissed.

Accusations of witchcraft

Welsh court records dating from the 16th century onward are held at the National Library of Wales. We know from those trial records that suspicions and verbal accusations of witchcraft like those seen across the rest of Britain and Europe were common in Wales. They also happened under similar circumstances where accusations often followed an argument, or a request for charity which was denied.

In the records, there are bitter arguments between neighbours and family members. Horses are killed, cattle are bewitched, pigs perish, men and women are injured, there are miscarriages and even murders. Most of the time, when someone was accused of being a witch, they were accused by other people in the community. Their accusers were neighbours, relatives and in many cases, people with financial and personal reasons to make accusations.

For a long time, Wales has been seen by outsiders as a land of magic, superstition and the supernatural. English men and women sometimes travelled into Wales looking for consultations with enchanters and soothsayers.

Women in Wales even looked like witches. They tended to dress in long, heavy woollen skirts, aprons, blouses and large woollen shawls. Most peasant women would have brewed mead and ale. They would have let their community know that there was ale for sale by placing some form of signage outside their cottages. The most popular and well-remembered of these signs was a broomstick.

There are similarities between average Welsh women and the witches written about in early modern literature such as the Malleus Maleficarum, written by a German Catholic clergyman in 1486. These similarities, such as appearance, unreformed religion and tendency to rely on charms and herbs, painted a picture of Wales as a magical land rife with witchcraft. This left juries in early modern Wales in serious doubt about how sensible witch accusations were.

Religion

The people of Wales were not without religion, but they preferred prayer to doctrine. This was perhaps as a result of language barriers. Generally, Welsh people could not read or understand the Bible, which was not fully translated into Welsh until the late 1500s.

Rather than conforming to the Protestant worship indicated by the reformed church, Welsh tradition preferred to worship within the household in ways that mimicked Catholic practices. There is evidence that many people continued to seek the aid of charmers instead of the church. And so Elizabethan and Stuart politicians frequently spoke about the religious “ignorance” in Wales.

The church in Wales also took part in practices some would describe as witchcraft. There was even a strong medieval tradition of cursing by clerics. This sort of formal cursing was often phrased as a petitionary prayer to God, emphasising the overlap between witchcraft and religion in Wales. Parsons were also responsible for writing protective prayers.

It was perhaps for this reason that religious radicals in the south of England saw Wales, as well as Cornwall and the north of England, as “dark corners of the land”. Religious ignorance, superstition and residual Catholicism all contributed to a view of Wales as rife with magic and mystery.

Both charms and curses across Wales contained Christian references and quotations taken from the Bible, showing the overlap between different belief systems. In many Welsh charms and curses, small crosses are written in the margins, indicating the need to perform the symbol of the cross.

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Read more: Five witchcraft myths debunked by an expert

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A charm shared by Gwen ferch Ellis, the first woman to be hanged for witchcraft in Wales, included the words “Enw'r Tad, y Mab, a’r Ysbryd Duw glân a’r tair Mair” (translated as “the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of God, and the three Marys”). Her execution was probably a result of having crossed the wrong people, who had enough influence to sway the assize judges.

Ultimately, there is no one reason that Wales never saw a witch hunt. Wise women, cunning folk and soothsayers were highly regarded in Wales, using “magic” to perform important services for the community. Even clerics were part of this ritual of charming and cursing.

Whether they were brewing, cursing, charming or soothsaying, in Wales, the people accused were rarely doing anything out of the ordinary. While fear of the supernatural was rife among common people, it seems Welsh juries tended to be more concerned with prosecuting theft than witchcraft.

Mari Ellis Dunning 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.

What makes a person beautiful has fascinated artists and scientists for centuries. Beauty is not, as it is often assumed to be, “in the eye of the beholder” – but follows certain predictable rules. Symmetry and proportions play a role, and though culture and norms shape our perception of beauty, researchers observe a consistently striking agreement among people on whom they regard as beautiful.

Not surprisingly the beauty market has been on a steady rise (besides a minor 2020 Covid slump), reaching $430 billion in revenue in 2023, according to a recent McKinsey report. The fascination for the perfect makeup or skincare is fired up by the impact of perfect faces displayed on social media and enhanced by image processing and filters. But is all this money well spent?

Pretty privilege

The short answer is: yes. In today’s fiercely competitive job market, the economic advantages of beauty are undeniable. Numerous studies have shown that attractive individuals benefit from a beauty bonus and earn higher salaries on average. Certain high-paying professions are built around beauty (such as show business) but what is more surprising is that for almost any kind of employment, beauty can lead to a positive halo effect. Beautiful individuals are consistently expected to be more intelligent and thought to be better leaders, which influences career trajectories and opportunities.

It is thought individuals perceived as beautiful are also more likely to benefit from people’s trust, which makes it easier for them to get promoted or to strike business deals. The idea is that individuals who look better are thought to be healthier or/and to have had more positive social interactions in their past, which might influence their trustworthiness.

Does being attractive make you more trustworthy?

But does that theory hold water? In our recent paper Adam Zylbersztejn, Zakaria Babutsidze, Nobuyuki Hanaki and I set out to find out. Previous studies presented different portraits of individuals to observers and asked them about their beliefs about these people. However, often these pictures are taken from portrait databases or even computer generated, and thus allow researchers to study perceptions but not whether these beliefs are accurate. To study this question, we needed to develop an experimental paradigm in which we could observe the trustworthiness of different people, take photos of them, and later present these photos to other individuals for rating. This is how we did it.

Comprising a total of 357 volunteers, our study started in Paris in October 2019, where we asked a first group of 76 volunteers to participate in a short experiment on economic decision-making. In the study, the participants were randomly matched into pairs without knowing with whom they were playing. Some played a role that required to trust another individual (Group A), while others were in a position to reciprocate or break the trust they had received (Group B). To heighten the stakes, real money was on the table.

It went like this: in a first stage, Player A had to choose whether to trust Player B (by saying “Right”) or not (by saying “Left”). Secondly, Player B had to decide whether to roll a dice or not.

Each player’s payoff thus depended on their own actions and/or the actions of the other player:

• If player A chooses “Left”, then regardless of player Bs’ choice:

  • player A and player B both receive a payoff of 5 euros;

• If player A chooses “Right” and player B chooses “Don’t roll”:

  • player A gets nothing and player B receives 14 euros;

• If player A chooses “Right” and player B chooses “Roll”:

  • When the number of on the die is between 1 and 5, player A gets 12 euros and player B receives 10 euros;
  • When the number on the die is 6, player A gets nothing and player B receives 10 euros.

Group A participants could earn up to 12 euros, but only if they trusted the other player. To do so they were presented with the abstract choice scenario explained above while individually sat in a cubicle.

If they decided not to trust, they were sure to receive a meagre 5-euro payout for their participation in the study. However, once an A player decided to trust their B partner, their fate was in the B player’s hands. The latter could act in a trustworthy fashion by rolling a dice that promised to generate a 12-euro gain for the A player – or untrustworthy by claiming a 14-euro reward for themselves and leaving nothing for the others.

This type of game (called a “hidden action game”) has been previously developed as a measure of the selfless trustworthiness attitude of individuals.

We not only observed how participants acted in this game but also took neutral ID pictures of them before they were introduced to the task. These photographs were presented to 178 participants recruited in Lyon. We first made sure that none of these individuals knew each other. We then gave the participants in Lyon the task of trying to predict how the person they saw in the picture behaved in the game. If they were right, they would be rewarded by earning more money for their participation. We finally showed the same photographs to a third group of 103 people from Nice, in southern France. These individuals were asked to rate how beautiful they considered the faces in the pictures.

Does gender come into play?

Our results confirm that those people who are considered to be more beautiful by our raters are also believed to be much more trustworthy. This implies that in our abstract economic exchange, beautiful individuals are more likely to benefit from the trust of others. However, when investigating actual behaviour, we see that beautiful individuals are neither more nor less trustworthy than anyone else. In other words, trustworthiness is driven by good old individual values and personality, which are not correlated with how someone looks.

A beauty premium has been previously observed as well for men as for women. We might however suspect that women, who are generally believed to have a higher degree of social intelligence, might be better at determining the trustworthiness of their partners. Our results do not show any evidence of this. Women are on average rated as more beautiful and also rate others on average as more beautiful. However women do not act any more honourably in the game then men. Finally men and women agree in their expectations about who will be acting trustworthy or not and thus women are no better in predicting behaviours than men.

Are beautiful people more suspicious of their peers?

The adage that “not everything that glitters is gold” is thus also true for beauty in humans. However, we might wonder who is more likely to fall prey to this bias. One idea is that people who are themselves often treated favourably because of their looks might be aware that this is not something that should influence who you should trust.

We constructed our study such that we could also investigate this question. Specifically, the participants we recruited in Lyon to make their predictions also had their photos taken. We thus knew how much they were influenced by the looks of others but also how conventionally good-looking they were themselves. Our results are clear. The beauty bias is there for everyone. Though we might think that those who benefit from good looks can see behind the mask, they are as much influenced by the looks of others upon deciding whom to trust.

The beauty industry is thus right. Investing in beauty really is worth it because it creates real benefits. However, recruiters or managers should guard themselves against being fooled. One way of doing this is to make CVs anonymous and forbid photos in applications. But in many interactions, we see people who we have to decide to trust. Being aware of one’s bias is therefore crucial. Our results stress that this bias is very hard to overcome, since even individuals who from their own experience should be aware of beauty’s skin-deep value fall prey to it.

Astrid Hopfensitz ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

People may think weight stigma only manifests as rude comments, is harmless or can even do some good.

At worst, it means overt discrimination, for example if somebody isn’t hired for a job because of their weight. But the reality is that weight stigma is often insidious, and pervasively entrenched into our society and environment. Based on data from nearly a thousand people, we show that weight stigma doesn’t have to be malicious or targeted directly at a person to cause harm.

Fat microaggressions

Recurrent and commonplace discriminatory acts that demean members of stigmatized groups are called microaggressions. The impacts of microaggressions have been described as “death by a thousand cuts,” referring to how seemingly minor incidents, when repeated cumulatively, contribute to real harm.

With combined input from reports of lived experiences, expert testimony and large studies with diverse samples, we identified four main types of fat microaggressions.

Direct microaggressions are the ones that most people might think of: rude remarks, being laughed at or publicly shamed on social media, being excluded from activities with friends or family, or having people make assumptions about them, for example, that they couldn’t possibly be in a loving relationship with a conventionally attractive partner.

The built environment can also be a source of direct microaggressions, such as at sporting events, theatres or restaurants where the seats are not wide or sturdy enough.

Indirect microaggressions are slights not targeted directly at an individual, but whose effects are still felt. Think fat jokes, unintelligent, gross, and/or unattractive fat characters on TV and in movies (like “Fat Monica” from Friends or Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal), and thin friends complaining they “feel fat” in front of a larger person and commenting on how much they hate their bodies.

Our data confirm that indirect microaggressions are the type most experienced by fat people — they invade every aspect of daily life and remind fat people that they are not viewed as OK.

Clothing exclusion

One type of direct microaggression that emerged as its own category in our analysis was clothing exclusion. Stores typically have far fewer options in larger sizes, or they are less stylish, yet cost more. It is also common to see clothing in stores with claims that “one size fits all,” that really don’t.

Limited choices for larger bodies send a message that they are not deserving or worthy of clothing to which others have access. But fat people still must turn up to work, social events, weddings, with sometimes the only purchasing criteria being, “does it fit?”

Easily overlooked by those who have endless options, selecting clothing is an everyday decision that can impact how fat people express themselves, how comfortable they feel in their bodies, as well as how the world sees them.

Fat activists have also long recognized that clothing exclusion acts as a proxy for other societal forms of erasure, in that the more standard options fail you, the more you are likely facing other forms of everyday oppressions.

Benevolent weightism

The other specific type of direct microaggression that was prominent in the lived experience of fat people is something we call “benevolent weightism.” These are the often (although not always) well-meaning suggestions of diets and other weight-loss strategies that friends, family, co-workers and even total strangers feel obliged to share with fat people.

You would be hard-pressed to find a fat person who has not tried multiple weight-loss methods, only to end up unsuccessful and feeling worse about themselves than ever.

Science tells us this is not about willpower. Indeed, the most likely outcome of weight-loss attempts is weight regain, and usually, weight rebound above your initial starting point. Studies that show otherwise are often methodologically flawed and frequently misleading in their headline messaging. It is perhaps, then, no coincidence that rises in obesity rates have paralleled attempts to make our populations thinner with the promotion of weight as an indicator of health.

Why fat microaggressions matter

Across four studies, we established the prominence of fat microaggressions in the lives of fat people and linked experiencing fat microaggressions to poorer mental health, such as greater stress, anxiety and depression, and worse self-esteem. Fat microaggressions were even associated with discrimination-related trauma symptoms, including feeling on edge or constantly on guard, fearing embarrassment or feeling isolated from others.

Experiencing fat microaggressions was also connected to avoidant coping strategies, such as not attending social events, avoiding eating in front of others or going to the gym, and fear of seeking advancement in education and employment. This avoidance can lead to the accumulation of worse life outcomes and additional negative health effects.

Importantly, these findings were consistent for all the different types of microaggressions, including simply observing weight stigma directed at others and those meant to be helpful.

How you can help

Microaggressions often seem trivial. But every single microaggression, however well meaning, is a small violation of feeling safe in the world and cumulatively creates a hostile environment, putting targets under constant stress and vigilance, anticipating future microaggressions.

Greater awareness and recognition of fat microaggressions is an important first step to confronting them. Understanding their harm may lead us to think twice before engaging in fat talk, sharing fat jokes and memes, or providing unsolicited diet advice. If you really are concerned about health, do not tell fat people they need fixing; these microaggressions make people’s health worse, not better.

Beyond this, speak up when you see these occurrences, and advocate for greater seating accessibility and better clothing options for people in larger bodies. Vote with your wallet when companies engage in fat shaming or exclusion. Challenging anti-fat attitudes when they manifest in these other ways is key to a more inclusive and less harmful world.

Angela Meadows has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Megan Lindloff and Rachel Calogero 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.

Didn’t understand this headline? You might want to consider taking up a second language. I remember the first time I recognized the value of knowing a second language. I was waitressing at this dinky hibachi restaurant and my next table had just been sat.  The customers looked frazzled. I could tell they were having difficulty […]

Howdy everyone,

Today’s house, built in 2001, comes to you from, you guessed it, the Chicago suburbs. The house is a testimony to traditional craftsmanship and traditional values (having lots of money.) The cost of painting this house greige is approximately the GDP of Slovenia so the owners have decided to keep it period perfect (beige.) Anyway.

This 5 bedroom, 7.5 bathroom house clocks in at a completely reasonable 12,700 square feet. If you like hulking masses and all-tile interiors, it could be all yours for the reasonable price of $2.65 million.

The problem with having a house that is 12,700 square feet is that they have to go somewhere. At least 500 of them were devoted to this foyer. Despite the size, I consider this a rather cold and lackluster welcome. Cold feet anyone?

The theme of this house is, vaguely, “old stuff.” Kind of like if Chuck E Cheese did the sets for Spartacus. Why the dining room is on a platform is a good question. The answer: the American mind desires clearly demarcated space, which, sadly, is verboten in our culture.

The other problem with a 12,700 square foot house is that even huge furniture looks tiny in it.

Entering cheat codes in “Kitchen Building Sim 2000” because I spent my entire $70,000 budget on the island.

Of course, a second sitting room (without television) is warranted. Personally, speaking, I’m team Prince.

I wonder why rich people do this. Surely they must know it’s tacky right? That it’s giving Liberace? (Ask your parents, kids.) That it’s giving Art.com 75% off sale if you enter the code ROMANEMPIRE.

Something about the bathroom really just says “You know what, I give up. Who cares?” But this is not even the worst part of the bathroom…

Not gonna lie, this activates my flight or fight response.

If you remember Raggedy Ann you should probably schedule your first colonoscopy.

Anyways, that does it for the interior. Let’s take a nice peek at what’s out back.

I love mowing in a line. I love monomaniacal tasks that are lethal to gophers.

Alright, that does it for this edition of McMansion Hell. Back to the book mines for me. Bonus posts up on Patreon soon.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! Student loans just started back up!

Throwing people out of windows (or defenestrating them, as the Latin has it) is an act imbued with longstanding political significance in Prague. From the Hussite revolt in the late Middle Ages through the Thirty Years’ War to modern instances of “autodefenestration”, Thom Sliwowski finds a national shibboleth imbued with ritual efficacy.

Citation standards vary wildly depending on the type of work. Here's why there is no singular standard for everything.

The post Why There is No One Standard of Plagiarism appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

Millions of Americans believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. They think Donald Trump won by a landslide in 2020 and lost only because of widespread voter fraud. Some of the people who hold these views are my relatives, neighbors and professional associates. Because I reject these claims, it can be difficult to talk to those who accept them.

Often, we avoid the topic of politics. But as a political science scholar, I expect that as the 2024 election gets closer, conversations about 2020 will become more common, more important and more unavoidable.

So, what does someone like me, who concludes that the last presidential election was legitimately won by Joe Biden, say to those who think that Trump was the actual winner? Here are a few of the questions I raise in my own conversations about 2020.

Polls and pollsters

I usually begin by asking about polls. Polls and pollsters are often wrong about close elections, and many prominent pollsters tilt toward Democrats. They predicted a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.

But even those polls and pollsters would be unlikely to have missed a 2020 landslide for Trump – or Biden. Unless, of course, as was the case, the landslide did not exist.

Recent political polling has been less accurate than many people expect. And all polls have margins of error: They provide an imperfect picture of public sentiment in a closely divided nation.

That said, even polls with a sizable margin of error should have been able to find a Trump landslide in 2020 – but they didn’t, because there wasn’t one. The last American presidential landslide, Reagan in 1984, was clearly seen in preelection polling.

If millions of fraudulent votes were cast in 2020, reputable pollsters would have discovered a discrepancy between their data and official election results. This would have been particularly true for the pollsters trusted by Republicans.

Trump himself has often praised the Rasmussen polling organization. But just before Election Day 2020, Rasmussen reported that Trump could win a narrow victory in the Electoral College only if he swept all the toss-up states – a daunting task. Rasmussen found no evidence of a forthcoming Trump landslide and projected that Biden would get 51% of the national popular vote. That’s almost exactly the percentage he received in the official count.

Where is the congressional investigation of 2020 voter fraud?

The House Republicans have not convened a special committee to investigate the 2020 election. Such a committee could summon witnesses, hold high-profile hearings and issue a detailed report. It could explain to the American people exactly what happened in the presidential election, how the election was stolen and who was responsible. If the evidence collected justified it, they could make criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The Democrats did all of these things in connection to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

What could be more important to the American public than a full and fair account of 2020 voter fraud? Donald Trump calls it “one of the greatest crimes in the history of our country.” Yet the Republicans on Capitol Hill have not authorized a major public and professional investigation of those alleged crimes. Perhaps, as former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney claims, most Republican members of Congress know that Trump’s statements about massive voter fraud are false.

It would be hard, even for Congress, to investigate something that did not happen.

When the big lie goes to court

Like Congress, or professional pollsters, the judicial system has ways to expose election fraud. Immediately after the 2020 election, the Trump campaign went to court more than 60 times to challenge voting procedures and results.

They lost in all but one case.

Related lawsuits have also been decided against those who claimed that the 2020 election was stolen.

For instance, Fox News was sued for defamation because of broadcasts linking Dominion voting machines to allegations of a rigged 2020 election. Fox, a powerful and wealthy corporation, could have taken the case to trial but didn’t. Instead, it paid three-quarters of a billion dollars to settle the case.

In another case, Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay $148 million to Georgia election workers he falsely accused of misconduct. More civil suits are pending.

Trump’s claim of a win in 2020 – known by its critics as “The Big Lie” – has regularly and repeatedly lost in court. If there were any truth to what Trump and his supporters say about the 2020 election, shouldn’t there be lawyers who present effective evidence and judges who give it credence? So far, there are not.

Democracy in America?

Hard conversations about election integrity often come around to a more fundamental question: Do we still have democracy in America?

I think we do. Our democracy is fragile and under greater stress than at any time since the Civil War. But it is still a democracy. The rule of law may be slow, but it prevails. Harassed and threatened election officials do their jobs with courage and integrity. Joe Biden, the official winner of the 2020 election, sits in the White House.

Supporters of Donald Trump are likely to think that the U.S. is not a democracy. In their beliefs about how America works, millions of illegal votes are cast and counted on a regular basis; news is fake; violence is justified to halt fraudulent government proceedings; and it’s OK for a presidential candidate to want to be a dictator – if only for a day.

In a functioning democracy, everyone has constitutionally protected rights to hold and express their political opinions. But I believe we should all be willing to discuss and evaluate the evidence that supports, or fails to support, those opinions.

There is no verified evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020. You can’t find it in the polls. You won’t get it from Congress. Claims of election wrongdoing have failed in the courts. I sometimes ask my friends what I am missing. Maybe what’s really missing is a readiness for the hard political conversations that I believe must be had in the 2024 election season.

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

It wasn’t called voter suppression back then, but civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer knew exactly how white authorities in Mississippi felt about Black people voting in the 1960s.

At a rally with Malcolm X in Harlem, New York, on Dec. 20, 1964, Hamer described the brutal beatings she and other Black people endured in Mississippi in their fight for civil and voting rights.

A year earlier, in June 1963, Hamer and several of her friends attended a voter education training workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. On their way back to Mississippi, the bus driver called the police to remove Hamer and her colleagues from the whites-only section of the bus where they had been sitting.

When they stopped in Winona, Mississippi, local police were waiting and promptly arrested them for disorderly conduct.

While in jail, Hamer told the Harlem rally, “I began to hear the sounds of licks and I began to hear screams. I couldn’t see the people, but I could hear them. … They would call her awful names. And I would hear when she would hit the floor again.”

After a while, Hamer said, she saw a friend pass her cell.

“Her clothes had been ripped off from the shoulder down to the waist,” Hamer said. “Her hair was standing up on her head. Her mouth was swollen and bleeding. And one of her eyes looked like blood. … And then three men came to my cell.”

Hamer was beaten, too, and sustained injuries that left her with lifelong injuries to her eyes, kidneys and legs. The experience also left her with little choice but to fight back. And fight she did, until her death at the age of 59 on March 14, 1977.

Challenging the status quo

The rally in Harlem was organized to support the political party that Hamer co-founded in 1964 as part of Freedom Summer, which saw hundreds of college students travel to Mississippi and other Southern states to help register Black people to vote.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was a racially integrated alternative to the state’s segregationist Democratic Party. Hamer was elected vice-chair of the party and also ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In addition to Hamer’s congressional campaign, one of her party’s main goals was to block the seating of the state’s five pro-segregation U.S. congressmen.

In 1964, less than 7% of the state’s Black population in Mississippi was registered to vote, despite the fact that nearly 40% of the state’s population was Black.

LBJ’s Southern problem

Hamer’s challenge of the segregated delegation couldn’t have come at a worse time for President Lyndon Johnson.

Locked at the time in a reelection campaign against right-wing conservative Barry Goldwater, Johnson feared losing Southern Democratic politicians and voters in the upcoming presidential election.

The fight in Mississippi erupted on the national stage when television networks broadcast Hamer’s Aug. 22, 1964, testimony before the Democratic Convention Credentials Committee, which determined who was qualified to serve as a state delegate. In her bid to get the committee to recognize her political party, Hamer talked about the second-class, often violent, treatment afforded Black people.

“All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens,” she said.

To prevent further testimony from Hamer that would further incense Southern Democrats, Johnson immediately held an impromptu press conference that would divert network television attention away from Hamer.

Despite Johnson’s tactics, Hamer’s story still spread throughout the nation in part because of a series of rallies held in Northern cities, including the one in Harlem.

“The truth is the only thing going to free us,” Hamer said during the speech in Harlem. “When I was testifying before the Credentials Committee, I was cut off because they hate to see what they been knowing all the time, and that’s the truth.”

Sick and tired

Born on Oct. 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, Hamer was the 20th and last child of sharecroppers Lou Ella and James Townsend. She began picking cotton at the age of 6, and she would be forced to leave school shortly afterward to help her family eke out a living.

“We would work 10 and 11 hours a day for three lousy dollars,” Hamer once said.

In 1961, while undergoing surgery to remove a uterine tumor, Hamer received a hysterectomy by a white doctor without her consent. The forced sterilization was one of the things that prompted Hamer to join the Civil Rights Movement.

In the summer of 1962, Hamer attended her first meeting of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights group of mostly Black college students who organized nonviolent protests against racial segregation and provided voter registration training. On Aug. 31, 1962, Hamer and 17 others decided to put their training to use by trying to register to vote at the Indianola, Mississippi, courthouse.

Of the 18 people, 16 were not allowed to take the test required for voter registration. Only Hamer and one other were allowed to take it – and both failed. These literacy tests consisted of reading and interpreting portions of the state constitution, such as the one on habeas corpus, a constitutional right to protect a person against illegal imprisonment.

Dejected, the group was further harassed when local police stopped their bus and fined them $100 for an overblown charge that the bus was too yellow.

The insults and constant fear of violence were examples of day-to-day life for Black people in Mississippi, a story Hamer argued was tragic, unconstitutional and sadly all too well-known.

“And you can always hear this long sob story,” she said. “For 300 years, we’ve given them time. And I’ve been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want a change.”

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

We think of Bermuda as a tiny paradise in the North Atlantic. But long before cruise ships moored up, prison ships carried hundreds of convicts to the island, first docking in 1824 and remaining there for decades.

Islands have long been places to deport, exile and banish criminals. Think of Alcatraz, the infamous penitentiary in San Francisco, or Robben Island in South Africa, which held Nelson Mandela. The French penal colony Devil’s Island was immortalised in the Steve McQueen film Papillon, while Saint Helena in the Atlantic is still remembered for Napoleon’s exile.

You may be familiar with the story of British convict transportation to Australia between 1788 and 1868, but the use of Bermuda as a prison destination is less well known. For 40 years, British prisoners worked backbreaking days labouring in Bermuda’s dockyards and died in their thousands.

I research the lives of prisoners across the British Empire, and have a particular interest in notorious floating prisons known as hulks. I was surprised to discover that in addition to locations across the Thames Estuary, Portsmouth and Plymouth, the British government used these ships as emergency detention centres in colonial outposts across the 19th century, detaining convicts in Bermuda between 1824 and 1863 and Gibraltar between 1842 and 1875.

England has a long history of banishing its criminal population. In the 18th century, criminals were typically sentenced to seven years overseas in America. Many worked as plantation labourers in Maryland and Virginia, but the start of the American Revolution brought this practice to a halt.

Britain believed that the war with America would end quickly and in its favour, but as the war continued, prisons filled with people who had nowhere to go. There was no emphasis on reforming prisoners and releasing them back into society.

Britain found itself with a prison housing crisis, and turned to hulks to cope with rising numbers. Each could hold between 300 and 500 men, and they were nicknamed “floating hells” for their unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

Officials proposed several locations to send convicts, and ultimately settled on Australia. But the government felt that convict labour could be put to use in other colonies, and so began an experiment in 1824 to send men to Bermuda.

Convict workers

Bermuda had been colonised by British settlers since the 17th century, and was governed by various trading companies until 1684 when the Crown took over. Though only 20 miles long, the island was already extremely important to naval strategy. It was used as a refuelling station for British ships travelling to colonial outposts such as Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Caribbean.

But the naval dockyard needed modernisation, and rather than employ local workers, convicts – a cheap and easily mobilised workforce – filled the labour gap.

Bermuda didn’t have a large prison, so men lived on board the ships they had sailed on (seven in total). Local traders, shipbuilders and whalers objected, complaining in newspapers that the government was sending a “swarm of felons” to the island. The government offered a compromise: no convicts would remain on the island at the end of their sentences. Instead, they had to return home, or travel on to Australia.

Work on the island wasn’t without risk. Many were injured in the dockyards, others went blind from the reflected glare of the sun as they quarried white limestone.

Convicts were at the mercy of hurricanes which battered the ships and caused injuries. They were burnt by scorching temperatures and suffered sunstroke, and the island’s humidity caused respiratory problems and spread deadly fevers on board.

Rising tensions over work, religion and alcohol consumption led to fights between prisoners, their overseers and the militias that guarded them. Some attempted escapes by stealing boats and trying to board ships bound for America.

Bermuda also received people convicted in other British colonies, including Canada and the Caribbean. During the years of the great famine in Ireland (1845 to 1852), thousands of Irish convicts arrived on the island, many suffering from malnourishment. This diversity was striking when compared to prisons in England.

The experiment ended after 40 years, in 1863, when dockyard repairs were completed. The remaining hulks were scuttled or broken up for scrap, and convicts were transported to Australia and Tasmania, or home to England with their meagre pay in their pockets.

Prison islands today

Prison islands are naturally isolated and cut off from land – escape is virtually impossible. Then and now, they enable states to lay claim to land, facilitate trade and secure commercial ambitions. Islands have many strategic advantages and are frequently used as military bases. Now, many former prison islands are Unesco world heritage sites, and tourist destinations.

Bermuda’s history as a prison island has been largely forgotten, but this story shares parallels with today. Prisons are suffering from overcrowding, and governments still detain prisoners and others on islands and modified ships.

In Dorset, the Bibby Stockholm ship is housing asylum seekers, while the island of Diego Garcia, used as a UK-US military base is detaining Tamil refugees in the Indian Ocean.

The convicts who lived, worked and died in Bermuda are part of a larger global story of coercion and empire. The product of their labour was imperial strength, but for those sent thousands of miles from home and buried in unmarked graves, the brutalities of their experience should also be remembered.

Anna McKay currently receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, and has previously received funding from the Irish Research Council and Arts and Humanities Research Council.

It’s hard to be bored in Tampa. This May, Tampa’s huge Riverfest will bring thousands to downtown Tampa to celebrate the Riverwalk, local businesses, art, and our local community. The latest addition to the multi-day festivities is a retro water ski show.

This oh-so-Florida event will take place on May 4 from 5pm-6pm, and is free to watch. The best views will be from the Riverwalk by Water Works Park in Tampa Heights (near Armature Works at 1910 N Ola Ave).

The hour-long extravaganza will feature dazzling displays of athleticism paired perfectly with old Florida charm. This festivity has also become a mainstay for Tampa’s big 4th of July Boat Parade.

Riverfest itself takes place on May 3 and 4. It will include two food festivals, a lantern parade, live music, a curated local vendor market, and more community events. See our full Riverfest guide for more information.

See the official Facebook event page for updates on the water ski show.

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The post A retro water ski show will take place along the Tampa Riverwalk this May appeared first on That's So Tampa.

Be honest — would you rather be living your best life in Europe year-round or work at a desk until you’re 65 in Tampa? During study breaks, I often find myself scrolling through social media seeing many users romanticize the European lifestyle.  With finals season quickly approaching, Bulls need to remember the importance of maintaining […]

The days of walking into a library bathroom to see a basket of complimentary menstrual products are gone.   These baskets have been replaced by colorful dispensers made by the brand Femly that will still provide free, organic tampons and pads. These dispensers were installed in seven bathrooms on March 15, according to Lennon Tomaselli, Health […]

Basking in his wholly expected re-election victory, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, addressed a large crowd in Moscow’s Red Square on March 18 to mark the 10th anniversary of his country’s annexation of Crimea.

The familiar themes of rectifying a historical injustice, the unbreakable unity of the Russian people and the importance of Crimea to Russian identity were trotted out once again. The crowd duly applauded.

Yet compared to ten years ago, when the whole country appeared to be in the grip of collective ecstasy, the celebrations seemed muted. Much has changed in the intervening ten years, not least that Putin’s miscalculations have put the status of Crimea in doubt again.

On the peninsular itself, life has changed profoundly. The “land of milk and honey” promised to the population of Crimea at the time of annexation has not materialised. International sanctions, high prices and increasing uncertainty have left the mainstay of the economy, tourism, in the doldrums. And the democratic freedoms that existed under Ukraine have disappeared, not only for the Ukrainian and Tatar populations, but for the Russians too.

The security of Crimea is also under threat as at no time since 2014. Ukrainian rockets and drones have destroyed about 20% of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, including the flagship Moskva. And the Kerch bridge – the symbol of Putin’s triumph – has been subject to repeated attacks.

The Russian navy has been driven ignominiously from its bases in Crimea to the safer haven of Novorossisk in Russia itself. Ships carrying Ukrainian grain can now exit the Black Sea due to defeats inflicted on the Russian fleet.

In one area, however, the Russians have enjoyed success. The Russification of the peninsula is continuing apace.

‘Russian World’

Russification of Crimea is not an ad hoc policy imposed after the occupation. It is rooted in the ideology of Russkii MIr (“Russian World”). This concept, which is espoused by Putin, is itself part of a long historical tradition going back to the annexation of the Crimea by Catherine the Great in 1783.

The Russian World ideology insists that Russia is a supra-national civilisation that extends far beyond the present borders of the Russian Federation to include Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other parts of the former Soviet Union. At the same time, the ideology is intolerant of any other expression of identity within its sphere and justifies the elimination of that identity, as is taking place in Crimea.

The Imperial Russian state (1721–1917), the Soviet State (1917–1991) and now the Russian Federation under Putin have at different times all sought to Russify the population of the Crimean peninsular. The Imperial government encouraged the migration of Tatars from the peninsular and Stalin completed the process in 1944 by deporting the entire Tatar population – some 200,000 people.

A partial return took place under Krushchev (premier of of the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1964), which greatly accelerated when the Crimea became part of a democratic Ukraine. Putin has now reversed that policy, seeking the destruction of both the Tatar and Ukrainian identities.

Eradicating non-Russian identity

Putin swore to safeguard the different national traditions that existed in Crimea when he launched the annexation. These promises were broken immediately and have continued to be broken ever since.

Ukrainian and Tatar languages have been suppressed, political activists arrested and any expression of cultural identity other than Russian is forbidden. The national body of the Crimean Tatars, the Mejlis, has been suppressed and all other representative institutions are a sham, as those in Russia itself.

Religious persecution against the Ukrainians and the Tatars, which is actively assisted by the Russian Orthodox Church, is also an essential part of the Russification policies.

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Read more: Do claims that Crimean Tatars are worse off under Putin than Stalin stand up? An expert examines the evidence

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What is striking about the Russification of Crimea is its comprehensive nature and the ruthlessness with which it is being carried out. A major instrument of Russification has been the imposition of Russian citizenship on the population of the peninsular. This has been achieved through a combination of incentives and crude threats.

Access to vital services such as health, education, banking, pensions and jobs are dependent on acceptance of Russian citizenship. No passport means that these services are not available. The refusal of Russian citizenship has lead to confiscations of property, expulsion from the peninsular and even threats to take away the children of those retaining Ukrainian citizenship.

Acceptance of citizenship makes men eligible for military service. And Putin’s government has ruthlessly mobilised men from the Crimea and the Donbas. A new citizenship law in April 2023 extended these practices to the territories occupied since 2022.

These changes have been accompanied by demographic changes that have taken place since the annexation. According to Russian figures, at least 200,000 Russians have migrated to Crimea since 2014. Ukrainian figures suggest that 50,000 Ukrainians and Tatars have left over the same period.

This is a form of ethnic cleansing designed to make the Crimea irrevocably Russian and protect it against any fair referendum that might return the peninsular to Ukraine.

The ten years since the annexation of Crimea has been a dismal exercise in the suppression of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society by a ruthless regime that tolerates no identities apart from the one that it prescribes. Russification in Crimea has also provided a model that has been imposed on Ukrainian territory taken since 2022 and is a grim warning to any future lands that fall under Russian occupation.

Shane O'Rourke 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.

How’s that sandwich? If you’re munching on a supermarket meal deal while reading this, well, I probably am too.

Brits in particular are known for their obsession with sandwiches, which they eat alone while continuing to work. This habit amuses but also disgusts our European counterparts. As one French scholar put it: “A sandwich or salad gulped down in front of a computer screen does not pass as a proper meal.”

Research has shown that 28% of British workers eat at their desks and 44% eat lunch alone, the highest rates in Europe. Sociologists have thoroughly researched family meals, children’s school meals, and even dining out in restaurants.

Only a handful of publications focus on the workday lunch, but studies have almost exclusively used large-scale surveys. While these are valuable in revealing patterns of behaviour and trends in how we eat, they do not help us understand why people eat the way that they do at lunch. For this, rich, in-depth interview data is required.

In my recently published research, I interviewed 21 people about what they ate for the workday lunch (and where and with whom). I found much greater variety in workday lunches than the solitary “al desko” sandwich. But there were shared understandings among my participants about how to lunch at work.

Most participants were willing to admit that the workday lunch was not exactly a premium gastronomic experience. One man described lunch as “my functional eating thing”.

Nevertheless, people greatly anticipated their lunch, seeing it as a reward or treat for a morning’s work, and noting that it was a time to eat what they wanted. One respondent, a teacher, confessed that she chose “carbs with carbs” and a cookie with custard from the canteen.

Unlike the family dinner where everyone tends to eat the same meal and the cook must cater to others’ tastes, the workday lunch was seen as a chance for personal indulgence, despite others’ distaste. Foods considered unacceptable in other circumstances (canned soup or microwave meals, for example) are acceptably convenient for the workday lunch because they are efficient. Couples I interviewed ridiculed each other for their “sad” or “terrible” lunch choices.

Efficient eating

My participants considered walking and waiting for food a waste of time. People reported using work breaks for a leg stretch and to buy lunch but, to minimise time away from work, ate back at their desks. Proximity and speed of service are deciding factors in where to eat out for lunch: you want to “go, eat and leave”.

And while it was not common among participants, the temporally efficient lunch par excellence is bringing food from home – you skip the queue altogether (not literally, Brits don’t like that).

As far as dining companions are concerned, there were mixed feelings among my participants. Eating with colleagues can be a good laugh peppered with lighthearted British banter and discussion of weekend plans. Sometimes though, being a good conversation partner and navigating the blurred line between friendly and professional with colleagues was seen as just more work.

To avoid the emotional effort of eating with others, people would signal to their colleagues they wanted to be left alone by sitting by themselves and scrolling on their phones, hiding behind a computer screen or even retreating to a parked car to eat without disturbance. One woman summarised: “Eating with other people interferes with that kind of pleasure of just looking after yourself”.

Lunch and our working lives

My findings suggest that British lunch habits are not simply a matter of low standards for meals. They are about balancing the pressures of work and the need for efficiency with taking care of oneself and navigating social interactions. Like quiet quitting and the great resignation, putting minimal effort into lunch can be seen as yet another response to a working culture that is getting more demanding.

I conducted these interviews before the COVID pandemic. The rise in hybrid and remote working has, for many people, moved the workday lunch from the office to home. The commercial sandwich trade has been hit hard. But even before the pandemic, participants who worked from home ate at their desks, despite (you might expect) having a more pleasant space to eat. Perhaps the impact of the pandemic on our lunches is not so dramatic after all.

What we eat for lunch every day (and how we eat it) has an impact on our health. Some organisations and countries have recognised the importance of this. France, for example, has a labour regulation that bans workers from eating lunch in the workplace. Long lunches among French workers are linked to better food choices and health.

Improving lunchtime habits, therefore, is not necessarily down to whether you choose a salad or a slice of pizza. Your employer, through lower workload, or even the government, through labour laws, may have an influence on what’s for lunch.

This research was co-funded by the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme and the Sustainable Consumption Research Institute at The University of Manchester.