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21 Feb 15:25

My Favorite Euphemisms for Plagiarism

by Jonathan Bailey

When retracting an article for plagiarism, many journals will bend over backwards to avoid saying the p-word. Here's some great examples.

The post My Favorite Euphemisms for Plagiarism appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

21 Feb 15:13

How to Use Wikimedia Commons for Free & Legal Images

by Jonathan Bailey

When you're looking for images on a specific topic, Wikimedia Commons can be a godsend. Here's how to use it correct and safely.

The post How to Use Wikimedia Commons for Free & Legal Images appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

16 Feb 18:22

New water taxi history tours arrive in Tampa this March

by Andrew Harlan

Take a deep dive into Tampa’s history along the Hillsborough River with a Tampa Bay History Center docent. The Pirate Water Taxi is already one of our favorite ways to explore the city, and this partnership with the History Center just deepens our appreciation for the fun transit alternative.

The 1-hour cruise will feature narration as well as viewing the sights of Downtown Tampa from the Pirate Water Taxi. The cruise will set sail from stop 7 located at the Tampa Convention Center (333 S Franklin St) where guests will cruise north to Armature Works (1910 N Ola Ave). On the return trip, the cruise will catch a glimpse of the Tampa Bay History Center before returning to Stop 7.

multiple yellow water taxis in the water
Pirate Water Taxis, and the Cross-Bay Ferry are among transport hubs right next to the Convention Center

The next upcoming cruise is set for March 22. Docent Mary Jo Shenk, a graduate of Florida State University and a 10-year docent at the Tampa Bay History Center, has lived in Tampa for more than five decades. She has rich, personal memories of early encounters with some of Tampa’s most notorious historical residents, with interesting stories to tell. Mary Jo also volunteers at St. John’s Episcopal Church as well as the Tampa Garden Club.

Boarding time is 6:15pm with opportunities for mingling. Tickets are $34.95 and available for purchase online.

What to read next:

The post New water taxi history tours arrive in Tampa this March appeared first on That's So Tampa.

15 Feb 20:36

Gold, silver and lithium mining on federal land doesn’t bring in any royalties to the US Treasury – because of an 1872 law

by Sam Kalen, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Wyoming
Aerial view of the Pinto Valley copper mine, located on private and U.S. national forest lands in Gila County, Ariz. Wild Horizon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

When Congress opened U.S. public lands for mining in 1872, the nation was less than a century old. Miners used picks, shovels and pressurized water hoses to pry loose valuable minerals like gold and silver.

Today, mining is a high-technology industry, but it is still governed by the Mining Law of 1872. As was true 150 years ago, companies can mine valuable mineral deposits from federal lands without paying any royalties to the U.S. Treasury.

Even when lands that formerly were available for mining receive new protected status as national parks or monuments, the 1872 mining law protects existing mining claims on those lands. That’s why a company called Energy Fuels Inc. just started mining uranium in January 2024 at a site in Arizona 10 miles from the Grand Canyon and inside a new national monument.

Men wield shovels and wheelbarrows next to a small timbered opening in a hillside.
Gold prospectors mining at Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, circa 1885. Graphic House/Archive Photos via Getty Images

Minerals like lithium, uranium and copper are essential for shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and for many other uses in our increasingly technological society. The Biden administration wants to produce these materials domestically, rather than relying on foreign sources – especially from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labor abuses in the mining industry persist.

As a natural resource and public land scholar, I agree with many others who argue that the 1872 mining law is archaic and overdue for an update. It allows the modern mining industry to develop valuable resources on public lands without returning any value to the American taxpayer, and to mine in areas that have sensitive ecosystems or contain important cultural resources for Indigenous peoples.

Royalty-free development

Allowing citizens to enter, explore and ultimately develop claims on federal lands with valuable mineral deposits was part of a broad push to settle the West. Congress enacted the 1872 mining law just a decade after the Homestead Act, which gave settlers up to 160 acres of public land for a small claim fee if they lived on it and farmed it, and three years after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Today, open federal public lands are managed by either the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. In either case, they are considered available for hard rock mining.

Companies that want to develop coal, oil, natural gas, geothermal energy and solar or wind power on public lands sign leases and pay royalties in return for using these lands to generate private wealth. For example, the current royalty rate for oil and gas production on federal land is 16.67% of the market value of these fuels.

Not so for mining companies, even if they extract precious metals like gold and silver. According to an Interior Department estimate, the value of gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, lead and zinc mined on federal lands in the West in 2019 was approximately US$4.9 billion. If the companies had paid royalties, they would have returned millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury.

A miner who locates a valuable mineral deposit on public lands and complies with federal and state law enjoys a right to explore and then develop the land, and can even prevent others from doing so. There are two principal qualifying rules.

First, claims can only be located on open public lands that have not been withdrawn from use for other purposes, such as protecting cultural resources or wilderness areas. Second, the 1872 law only applies to valuable mineral deposits, which it defines as those on lands containing locatable minerals that a prudent person would develop because the minerals can be mined and marketed at a profit.

These materials may include precious minerals, such as gold and silver; metallic minerals, such as uranium, lead, copper or zinc; or nonmetallic minerals, such as some types of limestone, bentonite and asbestos. High-profile mining proposals today include copper mines in Arizona and lithium mines in Nevada.

Native Americans have fought construction of a lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, which they contend sits on their ancestral land. Environmentalists are divided over the project, which would supply material for advanced batteries.

Decades of debate

Calls for reforming the 1872 law first surfaced in the late 19th century and have persisted ever since.

After all, the law transferred valuable public resources to private hands at virtually no cost, while saddling the public with the resulting environmental burdens, such as ponds contaminated with toxic cyanide. Mining on public lands, especially prior to the 1970s, left a multitude of contaminated zones that federal agencies are still working to clean up at taxpayer expense.

Today, mining operations are subject to modern land management and environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act. But these laws were not written specifically to address mining and do not fully cover issues such as disposal of mine waste.

University of California legal scholar John Leshy, a former solicitor at the Interior Department and the nation’s premier mining law expert, forcefully described in his 1987 book, “The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion,” how this statute languished for decades, widely understood as ill-suited to modern times yet eluding reform. Former University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson called the law a “lord of yesterday” in his classic 1992 book, “Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West.”

Reform advocates support adopting the type of traditional leasing model that is used for most other resources on public lands in the U.S. and elsewhere. As an example, for oil and gas production on federal lands and offshore in federal waters, agencies identify areas with development potential and hold competitive auctions to lease parcels for exploration and development.

Reformists also favor tighter environmental safeguards that would address issues such as management and disposal of mining wastes. Finally, they argue that mining should be prohibited in areas that are ecologically sensitive or are important to Indigenous peoples or tribal nations.

Bright orange water flows from a pipe into a plastic-lined settling pond.
Water from a 2015 spill at the abandoned Gold King mine in southwest Colorado flows into a holding pond. The spill released 3 million gallons of water laced with toxic metals, contaminating rivers in three states and the Navajo Nation. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

In contrast, the mining industry and its supporters complain that existing laws hinder mining activities. In their view, the federal government applies the 1872 mining law in a way that forces companies to spend years securing necessary approvals. A 2015 report prepared for the mining industry estimated that the average time required to secure all permits for a large mine in the U.S. was seven to 10 years, compared with two years in Canada and Australia.

The industry also contends that imposing a royalty requirement would make it hard for companies to produce critical materials profitably, although these companies currently pay royalties to 12 western states for mining on state land.

In September 2023, the Interior Department released a 168-page report making recommendations for improving mining on public lands. It calls for:

– Putting greater emphasis on environmental protection in mine permitting;

– Preventing mining in areas that are important to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples;

– Replacing the 1872 mining law with a more traditional leasing system that would charge royalties of 4% to 8%; and

– Charging mining companies a fee that would be used to help clean up abandoned mine sites, similar to a fee that coal mining companies have paid since 1977.

Bills are pending now in Congress, introduced by legislators from Nevada, a major mineral-producing state. These measures would retain the structure of the 1872 law while taking steps to streamline permitting for large-scale mining activities.

Balancing critical minerals and conservation

Mining conversations are taking on new urgency as the U.S. pursues a clean energy transition and works to secure essential materials for a modern technology-based economy. In my view, focusing myopically on critical minerals and moving forward with a new era of domestic mining should not occur without reforming the 1872 law.

A rewrite of the law could streamline permitting and create a planning process for mining on public land that mirrors the existing process for energy projects. Halting climate change and powering a new green economy may involve some trade-offs between short-term and long-term environmental protection goals.

But these choices can be made thoughtfully, with a focus on protecting America’s treasured public lands. In 1872, our nation’s lands and natural resources may have seemed inexhaustible; today, we know they are finite, and that using them responsibly means balancing development and stewardship.

The Conversation

Sam Kalen served as Special Assistant to the Associate Solicitor for Minerals and Resources at the US Department of the Interior from 1994-1996. Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

15 Feb 20:34

Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses − draining school budgets and especially hurting the poorest students

by Christine Wen, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, Texas A&M University
Exxon Mobil Corp.'s campus in East Baton Rouge Parish, left, received millions in tax abatements to the detriment of local schools, right. Barry Lewis/Getty Images, Tjean314/Wikimedia

Built in 1910, James Elementary is a three-story brick school in Kansas City, Missouri’s historic Northeast neighborhood, with a bright blue front door framed by a sand-colored stone arch adorned with a gargoyle. As bustling students and teachers negotiate a maze of gray stairs with worn wooden handrails, Marjorie Mayes, the school’s principal, escorts a visitor across uneven blue tile floors on the ground floor to a classroom with exposed brick walls and pipes. Bubbling paint mars some walls, evidence of the water leaks spreading inside the aging building.

“It’s living history,” said Mayes during a mid-September tour of the building. “Not the kind of living history we want.”

The district would like to tackle the US$400 million in deferred maintenance needed to create a 21st century learning environment at its 35 schools – including James Elementary – but it can’t. It doesn’t have the money.

Property tax redirect

The lack of funds is a direct result of the property tax breaks that Kansas City lavishes on companies and developers that do business there. The program is supposed to bring in new jobs and business but instead has ended up draining civic coffers and starving schools. Between 2017 and 2023, the Kansas City school district lost $237.3 million through tax abatements.

Kansas City is hardly an anomaly. An estimated 95% of U.S. cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors. The upshot is that billions have been diverted from large urban school districts and from a growing number of small suburban and rural districts. The impact is seen in districts as diverse as Chicago and Cleveland, Hillsboro, Oregon, and Storey County, Nevada.

The result? A 2021 review of 2,498 financial statements from school districts across 27 states revealed that, in 2019 alone, at least $2.4 billion was diverted to fund tax incentives. Yet that substantial figure still downplays the magnitude of the problem, because three-quarters of the 10,370 districts analyzed did not provide any information on tax abatement agreements.

Tax abatement programs have long been controversial, pitting states and communities against one another in beggar-thy-neighbor contests. Their economic value is also, at best, unclear: Studies show most companies would have made the same location decision without taxpayer subsidies. Meanwhile, schools make up the largest cost item in these communities, meaning they suffer most when companies are granted breaks in property taxes.

A three-month investigation by The Conversation and three scholars with expertise in economic development, tax laws and education policy shows that the cash drain from these programs is not equally shared by schools in the same communities. At the local level, tax abatements and exemptions often come at the cost of critical funding for school districts that disproportionately serve students from low-income households and who are racial minorities.

In Missouri, for example, in 2022 nearly $1,700 per student was redirected from Kansas City public and charter schools, while between $500 and $900 was redirected from wealthier, whiter Northland schools on the north side of the river in Kansas City and in the suburbs beyond. Other studies have found similar demographic trends elsewhere, including New York state, South Carolina and Columbus, Ohio.

The funding gaps produced by abated money often force schools to delay needed maintenance, increase class sizes, lay off teachers and support staff and even close outright. Schools also struggle to update or replace outdated technology, books and other educational resources. And, amid a nationwide teacher shortage, schools under financial pressures sometimes turn to inexperienced teachers who are not fully certified or rely too heavily on recruits from overseas who have been given special visa status.

Lost funding also prevents teachers and staff, who often feed, clothe and otherwise go above and beyond to help students in need, from earning a living wage. All told, tax abatements can end up harming a community’s value, with constant funding shortfalls creating a cycle of decline.

Incentives, payoffs and guarantees

Perversely, some of the largest beneficiaries of tax abatements are the politicians who publicly boast of handing out the breaks despite the harm to poorer communities. Incumbent governors have used the incentives as a means of taking credit for job creation, even when the jobs were coming anyway.

“We know that subsidies don’t work,” said Elizabeth Marcello, a doctoral lecturer at Hunter College who studies governmental planning and policy and the interactions between state and local governments. “But they are good political stories, and I think that’s why politicians love them so much.”

Academic research shows that economic development incentives are ineffective most of the time – and harm school systems.

While some voters may celebrate abatements, parents can recognize the disparities between school districts that are created by the tax breaks. Fairleigh Jackson pointed out that her daughter’s East Baton Rouge third grade class lacks access to playground equipment.

The class is attending school in a temporary building while their elementary school undergoes a two-year renovation.

The temporary site has some grass and a cement slab where kids can play, but no playground equipment, Jackson said. And parents needed to set up an Amazon wish list to purchase basic equipment such as balls, jump ropes and chalk for students to use. The district told parents there would be no playground equipment due to a lack of funds, then promised to install equipment, Jackson said, but months later, there is none.

Cement surface surrounded by a fence with grass beyond. There's no playground equipment..
The temporary site where Fairleigh Jackson’s daughter goes to school in East Baton Rouge Parish lacks playground equipment. Fairleigh Jackson, CC BY-ND

Jackson said it’s hard to complain when other schools in the district don’t even have needed security measures in place. “When I think about playground equipment, I think that’s a necessary piece of child development,” Jackson said. “Do we even advocate for something that should be a daily part of our kids’ experience when kids’ safety isn’t being funded?”

Meanwhile, the challenges facing administrators 500-odd miles away at Atlanta Public Schools are nothing if not formidable: The district is dealing with chronic absenteeism among half of its Black students, many students are experiencing homelessness, and it’s facing a teacher shortage.

At the same time, Atlanta is showering corporations with tax breaks. The city has two bodies that dole them out: the Development Authority of Fulton County, or DAFC, and Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency. The deals handed out by the two agencies have drained $103.8 million from schools from fiscal 2017 to 2022, according to Atlanta school system financial statements.

What exactly Atlanta and other cities and states are accomplishing with tax abatement programs is hard to discern. Fewer than a quarter of companies that receive breaks in the U.S. needed an incentive to invest, according to a 2018 study by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit research organization.

This means that at least 75% of companies received tax abatements when they’re not needed – with communities paying a heavy price for economic development that sometimes provides little benefit.

In Kansas City, for example, there’s no guarantee that the businesses that do set up shop after receiving a tax abatement will remain there long term. That’s significant considering the historic border war between the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City – a competition to be the most generous to the businesses, said Jason Roberts, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel. Kansas City, Missouri, has a 1% income tax on people who work in the city, so it competes for as many workers as possible to secure that earnings tax, Roberts said.

Under city and state tax abatement programs, companies that used to be in Kansas City have since relocated. The AMC Theaters headquarters, for example, moved from the city’s downtown to Leawood, Kansas, about a decade ago, garnering some $40 million in Promoting Employment Across Kansas tax incentives.

Roberts said that when one side’s financial largesse runs out, companies often move across the state line – until both states decided in 2019 that enough was enough and declared a cease-fire.

But tax breaks for other businesses continue. “Our mission is to grow the economy of Kansas City, and application of tools such as tax exemptions are vital to achieving that mission, said Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, the Kansas City Port Authority. The incentives speed development, and providing them "has resulted in growth choosing KC versus other markets,” he added.

In Atlanta, those tax breaks are not going to projects in neighborhoods that need help attracting development. They have largely been handed out to projects that are in high demand areas of the city, said Julian Bene, who served on Invest Atlanta’s board from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, for instance, the Fulton County development authority approved a 10-year, $16 million tax abatement for a 410-foot-tall, 27,000-square-foot tower in Atlanta’s vibrant Midtown business district. The project included hotel space, retail space and office space that is now occupied by Google and Invesco.

In 2021, a developer in Atlanta pulled its request for an $8 million tax break to expand its new massive, mixed-use Ponce City Market development in the trendy Beltline neighborhood with an office tower and apartment building. Because of community pushback, the developer knew it likely did not have enough votes from the commission for approval, Bene said. After a second try for $5 million in lower taxes was also rejected, the developer went ahead and built the project anyway.

Invest Atlanta has also turned down projects in the past, Bene said. Oftentimes, after getting rejected, the developer goes back to the landowner and asks for a better price to buy the property to make their numbers work, because it was overvalued at the start.

Trouble in Philadelphia

On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, an environmental team was preparing Southwark School in Philadelphia for the winter cold. While checking an attic fan, members of the team saw loose dust on top of flooring that contained asbestos. The dust that certainly was blowing into the floors below could contain the cancer-causing agent. Within a day, Southwark was closed – the seventh Philadelphia school temporarily shuttered since the previous academic year because of possible asbestos contamination.

A 2019 inspection of the John L Kinsey school in Philadelphia found asbestos in plaster walls, floor tiles, radiator insulation and electrical panels. Asbestos is a major problem for Philadelphia’s public schools. The district needs $430 million to clean up the asbestos, lead, and other environmental hazards that place the health of students, teachers and staff at risk. And that is on top of an additional $2.4 billion to fix failing and damaged buildings.

Yet the money is not available. Matthew Stem, a former district official, testified in a 2023 lawsuit about financing of Pennsylvania schools that the environmental health risks cannot be addressed until an emergency like at Southwark because “existing funding sources are not sufficient to remediate those types of issues.”

Meanwhile, the city keeps doling out abatements, draining money that could have gone toward making Philadelphia schools safer. In the fiscal year ending June 2022, such tax breaks cost the school district $118 million – more than 25% of the total amount needed to remove the asbestos and other health dangers. These abatements take 31 years to break even, according to the city’s own scenario impact analyses.

Huge subsets of the community – primarily Black, Brown, poor or a combination – are being “drastically impacted” by the exemptions and funding shortfalls for the school district, said Kendra Brooks, a Philadelphia City Council member. Schools and students are affected by mold, asbestos and lead, and crumbling infrastructure, as well as teacher and staffing shortages – including support staff, social workers and psychologists.

More than half the district’s schools that lacked adequate air conditioning – 87 schools – had to go to half days during the first week of the 2023 school year because of extreme heat. Poor heating systems also leave the schools cold in the winter. And some schools are overcrowded, resulting in large class sizes, she said.

Front of a four-story brick school building with tall windows, some with air-conditioners
Horace Furness High School in Philadelphia, where hot summers have temporarily closed schools that lack air conditioning. Nick-philly/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Teachers and researchers agree that a lack of adequate funding undermines educational opportunities and outcomes. That’s especially true for children living in poverty. A 2016 study found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public schooling results in nearly one-third of a year of more education, 7.7% higher wages and a 3.2% reduction in annual incidence of adult poverty. The study estimated that a 21.7% increase could eliminate the high school graduation gap faced by children from low-income families.

More money for schools leads to more education resources for students and their teachers. The same researchers found that spending increases were associated with reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases in teacher salaries and longer school years. Other studies yielded similar results: School funding matters, especially for children already suffering the harms of poverty.

While tax abatements themselves are generally linked to rising property values, the benefits are not evenly distributed. In fact, any expansion of the tax base due to new property construction tends to be outside of the county granting the tax abatement. For families in school districts with the lost tax revenues, their neighbors’ good fortune likely comes as little solace. Meanwhile, a poorly funded education system is less likely to yield a skilled and competitive workforce, creating longer-term economic costs that make the region less attractive for businesses and residents.

“There’s a head-on collision here between private gain and the future quality of America’s workforce,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director at Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that’s critical of tax abatement and tracks the use of economic development subsidies.

Three-story school building with police officers out front and traffic lights in the foreground
Roxborough High School in Philadelphia. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

As funding dwindles and educational quality declines, additional families with means often opt for alternative educational avenues such as private schooling, home-schooling or moving to a different school district, further weakening the public school system.

Throughout the U.S., parents with the power to do so demand special arrangements, such as selective schools or high-track enclaves that hire experienced, fully prepared teachers. If demands aren’t met, they leave the district’s public schools for private schools or for the suburbs. Some parents even organize to splinter their more advantaged, and generally whiter, neighborhoods away from the larger urban school districts.

Those parental demands – known among scholars as “opportunity hoarding” – may seem unreasonable from the outside, but scarcity breeds very real fears about educational harms inflicted on one’s own children. Regardless of who’s to blame, the children who bear the heaviest burden of the nation’s concentrated poverty and racialized poverty again lose out.

Rethinking in Philadelphia and Riverhead

Americans also ask public schools to accomplish Herculean tasks that go far beyond the education basics, as many parents discovered at the onset of the pandemic when schools closed and their support for families largely disappeared.

A school serving students who endure housing and food insecurity must dedicate resources toward children’s basic needs and trauma. But districts serving more low-income students spend less per student on average, and almost half the states have regressive funding structures.

Facing dwindling resources for schools, several cities have begun to rethink their tax exemption programs.

The Philadelphia City Council recently passed a scale-back on a 10-year property tax abatement by decreasing the percentage of the subsidy over that time. But even with that change, millions will be lost to tax exemptions that could instead be invested in cash-depleted schools. “We could make major changes in our schools’ infrastructure, curriculum, staffing, staffing ratios, support staff, social workers, school psychologists – take your pick,” Brooks said.

Other cities looking to reform tax abatement programs are taking a different approach. In Riverhead, New York, on Long Island, developers or project owners can be granted exemptions on their property tax and allowed instead to shell out a far smaller “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT. When the abatement ends, most commonly after 10 years, the businesses then will pay full property taxes.

At least, that’s the idea, but the system is far from perfect. Beneficiaries of the PILOT program have failed to pay on time, leaving the school board struggling to fill a budget hole. Also, the payments are not equal to the amount they would receive for property taxes, with millions of dollars in potential revenue over a decade being cut to as little as a few hundred thousand. On the back end, if a business that’s subsidized with tax breaks fails after 10 years, the projected benefits never emerge.

And when the time came to start paying taxes, developers have returned to the city’s Industrial Development Agency with hat in hand, asking for more tax breaks. A local for-profit aquarium, for example, was granted a 10-year PILOT program break by Riverhead in 1999; it has received so many extensions that it is not scheduled to start paying full taxes until 2031 – 22 years after originally planned.

Kansas City border politics

Like many cities, Kansas City has a long history of segregation, white flight and racial redlining, said Kathleen Pointer, senior policy strategist for Kansas City Public Schools.

James Elementary in Kansas City, Mo. Danielle McLean, CC BY-ND

Troost Avenue, where the Kansas City Public Schools administrative office is located, serves as the city’s historic racial dividing line, with wealthier white families living in the west and more economically disadvantaged people of color in the east. Most of the district’s schools are located east of Troost, not west.

Students on the west side “pretty much automatically funnel into the college preparatory middle school and high schools,” said The Federation of Teachers’ Roberts. Those schools are considered signature schools that are selective and are better taken care of than the typical neighborhood schools, he added.

The school district’s tax levy was set by voters in 1969 at 3.75%. But successive attempts over the next few decades to increase the levy at the ballot box failed. During a decadeslong desegregation lawsuit that was eventually resolved through a settlement agreement in the 1990s, a court raised the district’s levy rate to 4.96% without voter approval. The levy has remained at the same 4.96% rate since.

Meanwhile, Kansas City is still distributing 20-year tax abatements to companies and developers for projects. The district calculated that about 92% of the money that was abated within the school district’s boundaries was for projects within the whiter west side of the city, Pointer said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t pick or choose where developers build,” said Meredith Hoenes, director of communications for Port KC. “We aren’t planning and zoning. Developers typically have plans in place when they knock on our door.”

In Kansas City, several agencies administer tax incentives, allowing developers to shop around to different bodies to receive one. Pointer said he believes the Port Authority is popular because they don’t do a third-party financial analysis to prove that the developers need the amount that they say they do.

With 20-year abatements, a child will start pre-K and graduate high school before seeing the benefits of a property being fully on the tax rolls, Pointer said. Developers, meanwhile, routinely threaten to build somewhere else if they don’t get the incentive, she said.

In 2020, BlueScope Construction, a company that had received tax incentives for nearly 20 years and was about to roll off its abatement, asked for another 13 years and threatened to move to another state if it didn’t get it. At the time, the U.S. was grappling with a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

“That was a moment for Kansas City Public Schools where we really drew a line in the sand and talked about incentives as an equity issue,” Pointer said.

After the district raised the issue – tying the incentives to systemic racism – the City Council rejected BlueScope’s bid and, three years later, it’s still in Kansas City, fully on the tax rolls, she said. BlueScope did not return multiple requests for comment.

Recently, a multifamily housing project was approved for a 20-year tax abatement by the Port Authority of Kansas City at Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center in an affluent part of the city. The housing project included no affordable units. “This project was approved without any independent financial analysis proving that it needed that subsidy,” Pointer said.

All told, the Kansas City Public Schools district faces several shortfalls beyond the $400 million in deferred maintenance, Superintendent Jennifer Collier said. There are staffing shortages at all positions: teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff. As in much of the U.S., the cost of housing is surging. New developments that are being built do not include affordable housing, or when they do, the units are still out of reach for teachers.

That’s making it harder for a district that already loses about 1 in 5 of its teachers each year to keep or recruit new ones, who earn an average of only $46,150 their first year on the job, Collier said.

East Baton Rouge and the industrial corridor

It’s impossible to miss the tanks, towers, pipes and industrial structures that incongruously line Baton Rouge’s Scenic Highway landscape. They’re part of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s campus, home of the oil giant’s refinery in addition to chemical and plastics plants.

Aerial view of industrial buildings along a river
Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baton Rouge campus occupies 3.28 square miles. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Sitting along the Mississippi River, the campus has been a staple of Louisiana’s capital for over 100 years. It’s where 6,000 employees and contractors who collectively earn over $400 million annually produce 522,000 barrels of crude oil per day when at full capacity, as well as the annual production and manufacture of 3 billion pounds of high-density polyethylene and polypropylene and 6.6 billion pounds of petrochemical products. The company posted a record-breaking $55.7 billion in profits in 2022 and $36 billion in 2023.

Across the street are empty fields and roads leading into neighborhoods that have been designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income food desert. A mile drive down the street to Route 67 is a Dollar General, fast-food restaurants, and tiny, rundown food stores. A Hi Nabor Supermarket is 4 miles away.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s McKinley High School, a 12-minute drive from the refinery, serves a student body that is about 80% Black and 85% poor. The school, which boasts famous alums such as rapper Kevin Gates, former NBA player Tyrus Thomas and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gardner C. Taylor, holds a special place in the community, but it has been beset by violence and tragedy lately. Its football team quarterback, who was killed days before graduation in 2017, was among at least four of McKinley’s students who have been shot or murdered over the past six years.

The experience is starkly different at some of the district’s more advantaged schools, including its magnet programs open to high-performing students.

Black-and-white outline of Louisiana showing the parishes, with one, near the bottom right, filled in red
East Baton Rouge Parish, marked in red, includes an Exxon Mobil Corp. campus and the city of Baton Rouge. David Benbennick/Wikimedia

Baton Rouge is a tale of two cities, with some of the worst outcomes in the state for education, income and mortality, and some of the best outcomes. “It was only separated by sometimes a few blocks,” said Edgar Cage, the lead organizer for the advocacy group Together Baton Rouge. Cage, who grew up in the city when it was segregated by Jim Crow laws, said the root cause of that disparity was racism.

“Underserved kids don’t have a path forward” in East Baton Rouge public schools, Cage said.

A 2019 report from the Urban League of Louisiana found that economically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic students are not provided equitable access to high-quality education opportunities. That has contributed to those students underperforming on standardized state assessments, such as the LEAP exam, being unprepared to advance to higher grades and being excluded from high-quality curricula and instruction, as well as the highest-performing schools and magnet schools.

“Baton Rouge is home to some of the highest performing schools in the state,” according to the report. “Yet the highest performing schools and schools that have selective admissions policies often exclude disadvantaged students and African American and Hispanic students.”

Dawn Collins, who served on the district’s school board from 2016 to 2022, said that with more funding, the district could provide more targeted interventions for students who were struggling academically or additional support to staff so they can better assist students with greater needs.

But for decades, Louisiana’s Industrial Ad Valorem Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, allowed for 100% property tax exemptions for industrial manufacturing facilities, said Erin Hansen, the statewide policy analyst at Together Louisiana, a network of 250 religious and civic organizations across the state that advocates for grassroots issues, including tax fairness.

The ITEP program was created in the 1930s through a state constitutional amendment, allowing companies to bypass a public vote and get approval for the exemption through the governor-appointed Board of Commerce and Industry, Hansen said. For over 80 years, that board approved nearly all applications that it received, she said.

Since 2000, Louisiana has granted a total of $35 billion in corporate property tax breaks for 12,590 projects.

Louisiana’s executive order

A few efforts to reform the program over the years have largely failed. But in 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order that slightly but importantly tweaked the system. On top of the state board vote, the order gave local taxing bodies – such as school boards, sheriffs and parish or city councils – the ability to vote on their own individual portions of the tax exemptions. And in 2019 the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board exercised its power to vote down an abatement.

Throughout the U.S., school boards’ power over the tax abatements that affect their budgets vary, and in some states, including Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey and South Carolina, school boards lack any formal ability to vote or comment on tax abatement deals that affect them.

Edwards’ executive order also capped the maximum exemption at 80% and tightened the rules so routine capital investments and maintenance were no longer eligible, Hansen said. A requirement concerning job creation was also put in place.

Concerned residents and activists, led by Together Louisiana and sister group Together Baton Rouge, rallied around the new rules and pushed back against the billion-dollar corporation taking more tax money from the schools. In 2019, the campaign worked: the school board rejected a $2.9 million property tax break bid by Exxon Mobil.

After the decision, Exxon Mobil reportedly described the city as “unpredictable.”

However, members of the business community have continued to lobby for the tax breaks, and they have pushed back against further rejections. In fact, according to Hansen, loopholes were created during the rulemaking process around the governor’s executive order that allowed companies to weaken its effectiveness.

In total, 223 Exxon Mobil projects worth nearly $580 million in tax abatements have been granted in the state of Louisiana under the ITEP program since 2000.

“ITEP is needed to compete with other states – and, in ExxonMobil’s case, other countries,” according to Exxon Mobil spokesperson Lauren Kight.

She pointed out that Exxon Mobil is the largest property taxpayer for the EBR school system, paying more than $46 million in property taxes in EBR parish in 2022 and another $34 million in sales taxes.

A new ITEP contract won’t decrease this existing tax revenue, Kight added. “Losing out on future projects absolutely will.”

The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has continued to approve Exxon Mobil abatements, passing $46.9 million between 2020 and 2022. Between 2017 and 2023, the school district has lost $96.3 million.

Taxes are highest when industrial buildings are first built. Industrial property comes onto the tax rolls at 40% to 50% of its original value in Louisiana after the initial 10-year exemption, according to the Ascension Economic Development Corp.

Exxon Mobil received its latest tax exemption, $8.6 million over 10 years – an 80% break – in October 2023 for $250 million to install facilities at the Baton Rouge complex that purify isopropyl alcohol for microchip production and that create a new advanced recycling facility, allowing the company to address plastic waste. The project created zero new jobs.

The school board approved it by a 7-2 vote after a long and occasionally contentious board meeting.

“Does it make sense for Louisiana and other economically disadvantaged states to kind of compete with each other by providing tax incentives to mega corporations like Exxon Mobil?” said EBR School Board Vice President Patrick Martin, who voted for the abatement. “Probably, in a macro sense, it does not make a lot of sense. But it is the program that we have.”

Obviously, Exxon Mobil benefits, he said. “The company gets a benefit in reducing the property taxes that they would otherwise pay on their industrial activity that adds value to that property.” But the community benefits from the 20% of the property taxes that are not exempted, he said.

“I believe if we don’t pass it, over time the investments will not come and our district as a whole will have less money,” he added.

In 2022, a year when Exxon Mobil made a record $55.7 billion, the company asked for a 10-year, 80% property tax break from the cash-starved East Baton Rouge Parish school district. A lively debate ensued.

Meanwhile, the district’s budgetary woes are coming to a head. Bus drivers staged a sickout at the start of the school year, refusing to pick up students – in protest of low pay and not having buses equipped with air conditioning amid a heat wave. The district was forced to release students early, leaving kids stranded without a ride to school, before it acquiesced and provided the drivers and other staff one-time stipends and purchased new buses with air conditioning.

The district also agreed to reestablish transfer points as a temporary response to the shortages. But that transfer-point plan has historically resulted in students riding on the bus for hours and occasionally missing breakfast when the bus arrives late, according to Angela Reams-Brown, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers. The district plans to purchase or lease over 160 buses and solve its bus driver shortage next year, but the plan could lead to a budget crisis.

A teacher shortage looms as well, because the district is paying teachers below the regional average. At the school board meeting, Laverne Simoneaux, an ELL specialist at East Baton Rouge’s Woodlawn Elementary, said she was informed that her job was not guaranteed next year since she’s being paid through federal COVID-19 relief funds. By receiving tax exemptions, Exxon Mobil was taking money from her salary to deepen their pockets, she said.

A young student in the district told the school board that the money could provide better internet access or be used to hire someone to pick up the glass and barbed wire in the playground. But at least they have a playground – Hayden Crockett, a seventh grader at Sherwood Middle Academic Magnet School, noted that his sister’s elementary school lacked one.

“If it wasn’t in the budget to fund playground equipment, how can it also be in the budget to give one of the most powerful corporations in the world a tax break?” Crockett said. “The math just ain’t mathing.”

The Conversation

Christine Wen worked for the nonprofit organization Good Jobs First from June 2019 to May 2022 where she helped collect tax abatement data.

Nathan Jensen has received funding from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.

Danielle McLean and Kevin Welner do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

14 Feb 20:39

Immigrants do work that might not otherwise get done – bolstering the US economy

by Ramya Vijaya, Professor of Economics, Stockton University
Hundreds protested peacefully in Immokalee, Fla., against a state law enacted in 2023 that imposes restrictions on undocumented immigrants. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

Although Congress is failing to pass laws to restrict the number of migrants arriving in the U.S., a majority of Americans – about 6 in 10 – believe there’s an immigration crisis along the Mexico-U.S. border. Politicians who want fewer people to move here often cast those arriving without prior authorization as a burden on the economy.

As an economist who has researched immigration and employment, I’m confident that economic trends and research findings contradict those arguments.

The U.S. is experiencing a labor market shortage that is likely to last well into the future as the U.S.-born population gets older overall, slowing growth in the number of workers.

Rather than a drain on the economy, an uptick in immigration presents an opportunity to alleviate this shortage. Data from my own research and studies conducted by other scholars shows that immigrant workers in the U.S. are more likely to be active in the labor market – either employed or looking for work – and tend to work in professions with the most unmet demand.

Help really wanted

The U.S. had 9 million job openings in December 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government agency also found that there were 6.1 million unemployed people actively seeking paid work.

Economists generally compare the two numbers to calculate the labor shortage. It currently stands at nearly 3 million workers, and the bureau expects this gap to grow as the population ages and people have fewer children over the next decade.

In other words, the U.S. faces a long-term shortage of people looking for employment.

That shortfall would be much bigger without foreign-born workers, who accounted for a record high of 18.1% of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More likely to be active in the workforce

Another reason why immigrants can help fill that big hole in the U.S. labor market is that so many of them tend to be employed or are looking for work.

About 65.9% of all people who were born elsewhere were either employed or actively looking for work as of 2022, in comparison to 61.5% of people born in the U.S.

This difference has been consistent since 2007, according to research by the Peterson Foundation, a think tank that focuses on long-term budget problems.

In a study I conducted a few years ago, I found that immigrants who arrive in the United States as refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries are eventually more likely to be employed or looking for work than people who are born in the U.S.

More home health aides and janitors

Some of the labor market’s biggest shortages are especially acute in professions that tend to attract immigrants, such as home health aides.

The health care and social services sector as a whole has about 1.8 million open jobs, the largest number of job openings currently available.

This is followed by professional and business services with 1.7 million open jobs. This category encompasses everything from legal services to janitorial work, including cleaning and grounds maintenance.

Currently, about 22% of employed immigrants work in one of those two high-demand categories or another service occupation.

Making it easier to age in place

A team of economists has found that the cost of home health care and support services is lower than average in places with large numbers of immigrant service workers. This in turn makes it more likely that older adults can avoid institutionalization and stay in their own homes.

But, to be sure, immigrant workers providing these vital community support services often endure exploitative working conditions.

The labor market data not only makes it clear that the U.S. economy can absorb large numbers of immigrants, but it shows that these newcomers could be a much-needed solution to a labor supply crisis.

And yet people arriving in the U.S. as political asylum applicants are enduring backlogs and facing hurdles in securing employment authorization, which is delaying their entry into the workforce.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Congress to expand pathways for legal employment access for migrants? From an economic perspective, that seems to be the most prudent course of action.

The Conversation

Ramya Vijaya 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.

14 Feb 20:29

Back in the day, being woke meant being smart

by Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State University
Demonstrators march on Jan. 1, 1934, in Washington against the unjust trials of nine Black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Bettmann/Getty Images

If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.

As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

DeSantis’ war on “woke ideology” has resulted in the banning of an advanced placement class in African American studies and the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Florida’s universities and colleges.

Given the origins of the use of the word as a code among Black people, DeSantis has a nearly impossible task, despite his tireless efforts.

For Black people, the modern-day meaning of the word has little to do with school curriculum or political jargon and goes back to the days of Jim Crow and legal, often violent, racial segregation. Back then, the word was used as a warning to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.

In my view as a behavioral scientist who studies race, being woke was part of the unwritten vocabulary that Black people established to talk with each other in a way that outsiders could not understand.

The early days of wokeness

It’s unclear when exactly “woke” became a word of Black consciousness. Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper.

In their introductory editorial on April 21, 1827, the editors wrote that their mission was to “plead our own cause.” Part of that mission was offering analysis on the state of educating enslaved Black people who were prohibited from learning how to read and write.

Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement.

By the turn of the 20th century, the use of versions of the word “woke” by other Black newspaper editors expanded to include the fight for Black voting rights. In a 1904 editorial in the Baltimore Afro-American, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.

By 1919, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey frequently used a version of the word in his speeches and newspaper, The Negro World, as a clarion call to Black people to become more socially and politically conscious: “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!”

At around the same time, blues singers were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs. On the surface, Willard “Ramblin’” Thomas laments a lost love in “Sawmill Moan”:

If I don’t go crazy, I’m sure gonna lose my mind ‘Cause I can’t sleep for dreamin’, sure can’t stay woke for cryin’

But instead of a love song, some historians have suggested that the lyrics were a veiled protest against the atrocious conditions faced by Black workers in Southern sawmills.

The song given the most credit by historians for the use of the word woke was written and performed in 1938 by Huddie Leadbetter, known as Lead Belly. He advises his listeners to “stay woke” lest they run afoul of white authority.

In an archived interview about the song “Scottsboro Boys,” Lead Belly explained how tough it was at the time for Black people in Alabama.

“It’s a hard world down there in Alabama,” Lead Belly said. “I made this little song about down there. … I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

Lead Belly explains his “stay woke” advice to Black people at the 4:30 mark.

And that’s the message that came out in the song lyrics:

“Go to Alabama and ya better watch out The landlord’ll get ya, gonna jump and shout Scottsboro Scottsboro Scottsboro boys Tell ya what it all about.”

A miscarriage of justice

On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, falsely accused a group of several Black young men of rape.

Several white men dressed in uniforms and carrying shotguns walk in front of a group of Black men.
National Guard troops protect members of the Scottsboro Boys as they enter an Alabama courtroom on Jan. 1, 1932. Bettmann/GettyImages

Based on their words, the nine Black men – ages 12 to 19 years old – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death.

A white woman is sitting on a chair as she answers questions.
One of the alleged victims, Victoria Price, testifies on April 4, 1933, against nine young Black men in the Scottsboro case. Bettmann/GettyImages

All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1932 Powell v. Alabama decision, the court overturned the verdicts in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial. But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again.

There were four more trials, seven retrials and, in 1935, two landmark Supreme Court decisions – one requiring that defendants be tried by juries of their peers and the other requiring that indigent defendants receive competent counsel.

The nine young men spent a combined total of 130 years in prison. The last was released in 1950. By 2013, all were exonerated.

How woke became a four-letter word

Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of staying woke. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. used a version of woke during his commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965.

“The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution,” he said.

In recent times, use of the word has ebbed and flowed throughout Black culture but became popular again in 2014 during the protest marches organized by Black Lives Matter in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Two years later, a documentary on the group was called “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”

A white man waves to a crowd from a stage that has the words awake and not woke in large letters in the background.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a conservative political conference on Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

But for GOP lawmakers and conservative talk show pundits, such as DeSantis, “woke” is a pejorative word used to describe those who believe that systemic racism exists in America and remains at the heart of the nation’s racial shortcomings.

When asked to define the term in June 2023, DeSantis explained: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism. It’s about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth.”

Desantis couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that being aware of America’s racist past cannot be dictated by conservative politicians. Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.

The Conversation

Ronald E. Hall 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.

12 Feb 20:15

Is Mickey Mouse in the Public Domain?

by Hayleigh Bosher

On 1st January every year we celebrate the array of works entering the public domain, as their copyright term expires. This year, entering the public domain [generally speaking] are copyright protected works created by people who died in 1953, for countries with a copyright term of life plus 70 years (e.g., UK, most of EU and South America); works by people who died in 1973, for countries with a term of life plus 50 years (e.g., New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia); as well as films and books published in 1928 for the United States. 

Walt Disney Animation Studios' Steamboat Willie is one of the works that entered into the public domain this year, at least in the US. Whilst some are excited that the copyright in the first iteration of Mickey and Minnie Mouse has finally expired, others are sceptical that the reality is different. I debated this on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking episode; Dickens, Disney and Copyright, together with David Bellos and Katie McGettigan. 

Some of the key points are highlighted below but, first, here are some other works of note joining the public domain in 2024 [feel free to add more in the comments!]:

• Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág’s, not another name for the IPKat, but thought to be the oldest American picture book still in print.

• The works of Dylan Thomas.

• Harmsen van der Beek’s illustrations, including Enid Blyton's Noddy books.

• David Herbert Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

• Songs by Hank Williams.

• Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.

• Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 anti-war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

• Henrik Bull’s architecture design of Oslo’s National Theatre.

• Herman Jacob Mankiewicz’s screenplay, Citizen’s Kane. 

• Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

• Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle.

• Lights of New York, the first US all-talking feature film directed by Bryan Foy.

• Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation, by Margaret Mead.

• Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography.

• The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht.

• Laurel and Hardy's first comic duo film directed by Leo McCarey and James Parrott, Should Married Men Go Home?

• In countries with life plus 50 years, the works of art by Pablo Picasso, and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, including The Hobbit and Lords of the Rings, enter the public domain. 

Alan Alexander Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner enters the public domain which means that Tigger will join his friends Winnie the Pooh and Piglet in the public domain. This also means a second instalment of the horror movie Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood & Honey 2 which now includes Tigger! 

Sir James Matthew Barrie’s play Peter Pan will enter the public domain in the United States but not in the United Kingdom. This is because, although the UK copyright expired in 1987, the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides a special exception for the play. Section 301 confers a perpetual royalty right for the public performance, commercial publication, communication to the public of the play, or any adaptation of the play, on Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

Fuller list can be found here.

Steamboat Willie enters the public domain after 95 years 

Steamboat Willie is an American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, which premiered in 1928. It was produced in black and white by Walt Disney Studios and featured both Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse for the first time. [Steamboat Willie was the third film to be produced with the Mickey Mouse character, but it was the first to be distributed. This was because Walt Disney had seen The Jazz Singer (the first film to synchronise sound, which came into the public domain in 2023) which inspired him to create one of the first fully synchronized sound cartoons.]

 Image: Doo Lee (CC by 4.0)
Steamboat Willie was published under 1909 United States copyright law which provided protection for 28 years from the date of publication and could be renewed for a further 28 years to a maximum of 56 years. So, the film’s copyright term would have originally expired in 1965. It came close to entering the public domain on several occasions but, as it happened, the regulation extended the term each time. [What a coincidence.] First in 1955, at which point the copyright was extended to 1986. It was then extended by the Copyright Act of 1976 which provided a copyright term extension for corporations by 47 years, giving it 75 in total, meaning it would expire in 2003. Lastly, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 moved the goalpost to 2023, giving Steamboat Willie a copyright lifespan of 95 years from first publication, and here we are. 

But, Steamboat Mickey is a registered trade mark 

So, technically the copyright in Steamboat Willie and the iterations of Mickey and Minnie Mouse depicted in the film entered the public domain in the US on 1st January 2024. However, readers will no doubt be aware that Disney has also registered Mickey Mouse in many iterations as trade marks. It has also not gone unnoticed that Disney have been using a clip from Steamboat Willie as a logo shown before its films since 2007. Therefore, this raises doubts that the work can be used in practice without infringing Disney’s trade mark rights. 

Uses of Steamboat Willie

Despite the fears there have already been at least three uses of the Steamboat Willie work [again, feel free to share if readers are aware of more!]. 

1. The image above, depicting Mickey Mouse driving his steamboat into the public domain. 

 Playing Kat and Mouse... 
2. Following in the footsteps of Winnie the Pooh’s horror film, Fewture Studios have premiered a teaser trailer for their horror film The Return of Steamboat Willie. They tweeted the tagline: "After 95 years of being locked away, Willie is free and he wants his Steamboat back." Watch the trailer here. 

3. In April 2023, comedian John Oliver announced that he would use the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse as the new mascot for his satire show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And, indeed the poster for the upcoming season includes a giant Mouse with the caption “What are they gonna do, sue?”


12 Feb 15:39

Welcome to 1928!

by Judy G. Russell

The copyright clock keeps ticking

This is the second day of January and, for many Americans, the first work day of 2024.

For The Legal Genealogist, it’s the second day of 1928.

No, that’s not a typo. I really do mean 1928.

The year that books like D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front were all published for the first time.1

The year that “Mack the Knife” and “Makin’ Whoopee!” were first available as sheet music.2

And — sigh — the year that this blankety-blank-blank pesky film was first released to the public:

Yeah, that’s Disney’s Steamboat Willie. And I’m embedding the clip here and spreading it as far and as wide as I can today. Simply because I can.

Because, as of the second the clock ticked over to 2024, that film and everything else legally published in the United States at any time in the year 1928 — thousands and thousands of books, sheet music, films, photos and more — entered the public domain.

A whole year’s worth of materials, wonderfully free for all of us to use in our research, our blogs, our presentations, our publications without having to try to find the copyright owner and secure permission. Remember, that’s what public domain means: when copyright expires and a work goes into the public domain, we’re allowed to use it freely, any way we want, for any purpose (with some limits3), without needing permission from or payment to the creator of the work.4

This really is A Very Big Deal — and it really shouldn’t have been one.

Because of the way the copyright law works, providing protection only for a set number of years, a number of copyrights should have expired every year and we should have been getting a whole year’s worth of materials released into the public domain every year. But that copyright clock stopped ticking in 1998.

There’s a whole long backstory as to why it stopped ticking, and it was all because of that blankety-blank-blank pesky film. The Disney people didn’t want Steamboat Willie — the film where Mickey Mouse made his debut — to become public domain. So it lobbied to get the copyright statute changed to add 20 years of protection to all then-copyrighted works. The amended law provided that the copyright clock would stop, dead, on anything then-copyrighted and wouldn’t start to run again until 12:00.01 a.m. 1 January 2019.5

At that point, the statute said, after those additional 20 years, for most things, the clock would start moving again and, as it ticked over into 2019, the law said we should get an entire year’s worth of published works — everything legally published in the United States during 1923 — transferred into the public domain.6

Of course, since copyright law is a matter of statute, and any statute can always be amended, at any time up until midnight on 31 December 2018 — “the end of the calendar year in which (copyrights) would otherwise expire” — Congress could still have bollixed this up. So, as 2018 drew to a close, all of us who watch copyright issues held our collective breath.

And — somehow, astonishingly — Congress didn’t manage to foul it up. On 1 January 2019, thousands and thousands of items passed from copyright-protected status into the public domain. And we could all then say that the public domain included “everything legally published in the United States before 1924” (instead of the “before 1923” we’d been saying for 20 years).7

And then we started worrying. Because, of course, since copyright law is a matter of statute, and any statute can always be amended…8 Yeah, as of 1 January 2020, we were supposed to get another year’s worth of goodies. But — ulp — Congress could still foul it up.

Amazingly enough, as that year drew to an end, the clock kept right on ticking and, as of 1 January 2020, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1925. Then, as of 1 January 2021, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1926. And as of 1 January 2022, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1927. And as of 1 January 2023, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1928.

And — may miracles never cease — Congress didn’t manage to foul it up last year either. In copyright terms, 1928 finally got here. As of 1 January 2024, we can now say that copyright has expired for works published before 1929. And on 1 January 2025, we can include works published before 1930. And so on.9

For now, at least, that copyright clock is still ticking…

Welcome to 1928 — and the wealth of now-out-of-copyright materials produced that year.


Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Welcome to 1928!,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 2 Jan 2024).

SOURCES

  1. Public Domain Day 2024,” Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School (https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/ : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  2. Ibid.
  3. Just as one example, I really wouldn’t use a photo of a living person without that person’s permission, even a photo that’s out of copyright, on a pornography website. Just sayin’…
  4. See generally Judy G. Russell, “Where is the public domain?,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 21 Dec 2015 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  5. See generally Glenn Fleishman, “For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2019 online issue (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  6. See generally 17 U.S.C. §305 (“All terms of copyright provided by sections 302 through 304 run to the end of the calendar year in which they would otherwise expire”).
  7. See Judy G. Russell, “Welcome to 1923!,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 2 Jan 2019 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  8. I did say that, right? It really can happen…
  9. Unless of course Congress changes its mind. I did mention that, right? So keep your fingers crossed… and your eyes on Congress.
12 Feb 15:25

The Hidden Danger I Overlooked in My New Apartment (That Almost Burned It Down)

by Charli Penn
Missing this one little detail nearly cost us everything. READ MORE...
12 Feb 15:09

‘It needs to be talked about earlier’: some children get periods at 8, years before menstruation is taught at school

by Olivia Marie Bellas, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide
Karolina Grabowska/ AAP, CC BY

Managing menstruation in public can be challenging at the best of times, but imagine being eight years old and having to deal with your period at school. You might need to change your pad during class and explain to your friends why you are not going to the swimming carnival. You might be scared you will bleed through your uniform because there aren’t any sanitary bins in the junior years’ bathroom.

In Australia, the average age of the first period is about 13. But about 12% of children get their period between the ages of eight and 11. Researchers call this “early menarche” or “early onset menstruation”.

But even though a significant proportion of students are getting their first period as early as Year 3 or even Year 2, primary school students are not officially taught about puberty until Years 5 and 6 (when they are aged between 10 and 12).

Our research explores current period education and what support is available for early menstruators. It shows how schools can act as gatekeepers of knowledge about this essential and very normal part of human development.

Period shame exists but is not inevitable

Shame about periods has existed in many parts of the world for centuries. Researchers have noted how children are taught not to talk about menstruation and if they do, it is often negatively (with a focus on pain and discomfort).

A 2021 survey found 29% of 659 menstruating Australian students aged ten to 18 were concerned they would be teased at school for having their period.

Similar issues occur as students grow older. A 2022 Australian survey of 410 university students who menstruate found only 16.2% felt completely confident in managing their periods at university. Just over half believed society thought periods were taboo (and so, not something you talk about).

But the stigma is not inevitable. There are examples of education programs in other countries that celebrate periods and are accessible across ages.

There is a Swedish program that provides information for young people, stories about first periods and advice on how adults can talk to children about menstruation. In the United Kingdom, there are moves to introduce a “period positive” curriculum for school students.


Read more: 'Dirty red': how periods have been stigmatised through history to the modern day


What is taught in Australian schools?

The Australian curriculum does not not explicitly mention “period” or “menstruation” in any of its online health and physical education curriculum resources, for any year levels up to Year 10.

We can assume schools would cover it under topics such as “understand the physical […] changes that are occurring for them”. But without explicit mention to menstruation or periods, it is likely what is being taught across classrooms in Australia is variable and insufficient.

It was last updated in 2022, under the former Morrison government.

Our research

We interviewed 15 staff across government, Catholic and private primary schools in Australia. We asked staff about their awareness of students who have experienced early onset menstruation, how their students are educated about periods, and what support is available to them.

Staff spoke about how students who menstruated early “felt isolated” and voiced the need for earlier “matter-of-fact” menstruation education. As one teacher told us:

I think we’ve got to take it down to Years 3 and 4 and be a lot more specific than we have been, because you are going to get more and more being younger.

However, several participants shared apprehension around having discussions about periods with young students. As one teacher explained:

You don’t want to scare young girls, like seven-and eight-year-olds […] if it is happening earlier, it needs to be talked about earlier. But that’s a hard one because a lot of girls […] aren’t really mature enough to understand […]

Another teacher said that talking about periods in Year 3 was “probably a bit too much […] you don’t want to traumatise the child”.

Gatekeeping knowledge and awareness about periods from younger children is a problem on multiple levels. For one, it can deprive children of vital information about their bodies. For another, it frames menstruation as something inherently inappropriate, scary or crude. This in turn can reinforce stigma and taboo.

Can we tell boys about this?

Staff also spoke about how boys were not necessarily included in lessons about periods, and how male teachers may not have experience talking about these issues. As one teacher told us:

It is a discussion that’s been done where they don’t really include the boys in it […].

School staff also raised concerns that teaching boys about menstruation might present an opportunity for bullying or teasing. One school support officer suggested only girls should be taught about periods, noting:

they [boys] might be like ‘oh, I found your pad!‘

However, separating classrooms by gender for these lessons does not encourage the normalisation of periods. A 2016 study explored the attitudes of 48 Australian men towards menstruation. Participants reported being told little or nothing about periods while growing up, and so they grew up believing it was taboo.

Other teachers in our study noted how important it was for male students to be taught about periods.

I found it really frustrating that we’re giving young men who are eventually going to be in workplaces and potentially in positions of leadership, who are being deprived of these matter-of-fact moments of teaching [about menstruation] where they’re going to sort of pick up these things through like hearsay, through sort of uneducated conversation […]


Read more: First periods can come as a shock. 5 ways to support your kid when they get theirs


What needs to happen instead?

Our study emphasises how a lack of timely and comprehensive education and support for early menstruators in Australian schools is underpinned by menstrual stigma and taboo.

But it also showed how the issue is driven by perceptions of children’s capacity to learn about periods, based on their age and gender.

This research highlights the need for the Australian curriculum to introduce specific menstruation education by at least Year 3 or earlier. The curriculum needs to explain what menstruation is, why it happens, the ways it can be managed and how it will begin happening to their peers and that this is normal.

In the meantime, we encourage all school staff to work towards building menstrual wellbeing by becoming comfortable discussing periods with all students, make period products accessible to all year levels in all bathrooms, and advertise free period product locations to students from Year 3.

This will enable all children who menstruate to manage their periods in school easily and without shame.

The Conversation

Jessica Shipman receives funding from Flinders Foundation.

Olivia Bellas 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.

12 Feb 15:07

FCC bans robocalls using deepfake voice clones − but AI-generated disinformation still looms over elections

by Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies, Boston University
The FCC is responding to the threat of deepfakes. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

The Federal Communications Commission on Feb. 8, 2024, outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence.

The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans artificial voices in robocalls. The FCC’s Feb. 8 ruling declares that AI-generated voices, including clones of real people’s voices, are artificial and therefore banned by law.

The move follows on the heels of a robocall on Jan. 21, 2024, from what sounded like President Joe Biden. The call had Biden’s voice urging voters inclined to support Biden and the Democratic Party not to participate in New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 GOP primary election. The call falsely implied that a registered Democrat could vote in the Republican primary and that a voter who voted in the primary would be ineligible to vote in the general election in November.

The call, two days before the primary, appears to have been an artificial intelligence deepfake. It also appears to have been an attempt to discourage voting.

The FCC and the New Hampshire attorney general’s office are investigating the call. On Feb. 6, 2024, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella identified two Texas companies, Life Corp. and Lingo Telecom, as the source and transmitter, respectively, of the call.

Injecting confusion

Robocalls in elections are nothing new and not illegal; many are simply efforts to get out the vote. But they have also been used in voter suppression campaigns. Compounding this problem in this case is the application of AI to clone Biden’s voice.

In a media ecosystem full of noise, scrambled signals such as deepfake robocalls make it virtually impossible to tell facts from fakes.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is investigating the call.

Recently, a number of companies have popped up online offering impersonation as a service. For users like you and me, it’s as easy as selecting a politician, celebrity or executive like Joe Biden, Donald Trump or Elon Musk from a menu and typing a script of what you want them to appear to say, and the website creates the deepfake automatically.

Though the audio and video output is usually choppy and stilted, when the audio is delivered via a robocall it’s very believable. You could easily think you are hearing a recording of Joe Biden, but really it’s machine-made misinformation.

Context is key

I’m a media and disinformation scholar. In 2019, information scientist Brit Paris and I studied how generative adversarial networks – what most people today think of as AI – would transform the ways institutions assess evidence and make decisions when judging realistic-looking audio and video manipulation. What we found was that no single piece of media is reliable on its face; rather, context matters for making an interpretation.

When it comes to AI-enhanced disinformation, the believability of deepfakes hinges on where you see or hear them or who shares them. Without a valid and confirmed source vouching for it as a fact, a deepfake might be interesting or funny but will never pass muster in a courtroom. However, deepfakes can still be damaging when used in efforts to suppress the vote or shape public opinion on divisive issues.

AI-enhanced disinformation campaigns are difficult to counter because unmasking the source requires tracking the trail of metadata, which is the data about a piece of media. How this is done varies, depending on the method of distribution: robocalls, social media, email, text message or websites. Right now, research on audio and video manipulation is more difficult because many big tech companies have shut down access to their application programming interfaces, which make it possible for researchers to collect data about social media, and the companies have laid off their trust and safety teams.

Timely, accurate, local knowledge

In many ways, AI-enhanced disinformation such as the New Hampshire robocall poses the same problems as every other form of disinformation. People who use AI to disrupt elections are likely to do what they can to hide their tracks, which is why it’s necessary for the public to remain skeptical about claims that do not come from verified sources, such as local TV news or social media accounts of reputable news organizations.

It’s also important for the public to understand what new audio and visual manipulation technology is capable of. Now that the technology has become widely available, and with a pivotal election year ahead, the fake Biden robocall is only the latest of what is likely to be a series of AI-enhanced disinformation campaigns, even though these calls are now explicitly illegal.

I believe society needs to learn to venerate what I call TALK: timely, accurate, local knowledge. I believe that it’s important to design social media systems that value timely, accurate, local knowledge over disruption and divisiveness.

It’s also important to make it more difficult for disinformers to profit from undermining democracy. For example, the malicious use of technology to suppress voter turnout should be vigorously investigated by federal and state law enforcement authorities.

While deepfakes may catch people by surprise, they should not catch us off guard, no matter how slow the truth is compared with the speed of disinformation.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 23, 2024.

The Conversation

Joan Donovan is on the board of Free Press and the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute.

12 Feb 14:53

Are you seeing news reports of voting problems? 4 essential reads on election disinformation

by Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation US
A voter emerges from a voting booth in New Hampshire in January 2024. AP Photo/David Goldman

In certain circles, the 2020 presidential election isn’t over – and that seems to be at least a little bit true. In recent weeks, official reviews of election records and processes from the 2020 presidential election have reported findings that might be used to spread rumors about voting integrity.

For instance, election officials in Virginia’s Prince William County announced on Jan. 11, 2024, that 4,000 votes from the 2020 presidential election had been miscounted. None of them changed the results. Those miscounts gave Donald Trump 2,327 more votes than he actually got, and Joe Biden 1,648 votes fewer. Errors in counting turned up in other races, too, with both parties’ candidates for U.S. Senate being given fewer votes than they actually received, and a Republican who won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives actually won by a slightly larger margin than previously reported.

An audit of South Carolina’s 2020 voting records released in mid-January found no fraud and no indication any election results could have been different with the errors that were identified. But the report did recommend election officials cross-check lists of registered voters with other state lists more frequently than they have done in the past. Death reports and prison inmate rolls can help them determine who should remain eligible to voter and who should be removed from voting lists, the report said.

The Conversation U.S. has published several articles about the systems protecting election integrity. Here are four examples from our archives.

A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Pa., elections warehouse
A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Penn., elections warehouse in 2020 in Pittsburgh. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

1. Changing numbers are evidence of transparency, not fraud

The news reports of election audits came, originally, from election officials themselves, who specified they were below the small margins that would have triggered recounts. The reports also offered explanations for what had happened and how to fix it in the future – and included statements that at least some of the problems had already been fixed for upcoming elections.

That’s an example of what Kristin Kanthak, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, was talking about when she explained that election results that change over time aren’t inherently a problem:

(T)his doesn’t mean the system is ‘rigged.’ Actually, it means the system is transparent to a fault,” she wrote.


Read more: How votes are counted in Pennsylvania: Changing numbers are a sign of transparency, not fraud, during an ongoing process


2. Easier voting is not a threat to election integrity

Erecting obstacles to voting will not prevent the problems that do exist in the election system, for the simple reason that the flaws are not a result of easier voting methods, such as early voting and voting by mail.

Grinnell College political scientist Douglas R. Hess observed that the COVID-19 pandemic was a massive test of whether a secure election could be held with a lot of accommodations that made voting easier, and safer from the spread of disease.

As he wrote,

“(E)arly voting and voting by mail are targeted for restrictions in many states, even though both reforms are popular with the public, worked securely in 2020 and have been expanded in many states for years without increases in fraud. Likewise, the collection of absentee ballots – a necessity for some voters – can be implemented securely.”


Read more: Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity


3. It’s possible for election workers to be both partisan and fair-minded

For many years, elections have been run by people who were members of one political party or the other but behaved in good faith to run fair elections, wrote Thom Reilly, a scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs.

But both the facts and the rhetoric have changed, he explained, noting that a significant share of the electorate is not a member of either party – so the people who supervise elections, who are typically party members, are “an increasingly partisan set of officials.”

Even so, many of them work hard to conduct fair elections. Yet, he wrote,

(W)idespread misinformation and disinformation on election administration is hobbling the ability of election officials to do their job and has created fertile ground for mistrust.”


Read more: Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore


A woman with gray hair helps a man with gray hair cast a ballot at a voting machine.
A poll worker helps a voter cast a ballot in the Kansas primary election at Merriam Christian Church on Aug. 2, 2022, in Merriam, Kan. Kyle Rivas/Getty Images

4. Beware those who aim to confuse or mislead

Political disinformation efforts are particularly intense around elections, warn scholars of information warfare Kate Starbird and Jevin West at the University of Washington and Renee DiResta at Stanford University.

Situations to watch out for are those in which “lack of understanding and certainty can fuel doubt, fan misinformation and provide opportunities for those seeking to delegitimize the results,” they wrote.

Specifically, look out for:

Politically motivated individuals (who) are likely to cherry-pick and assemble these pieces of digital "evidence” to fit narratives that seek to undermine trust in the results. Much of this evidence is likely to be derived from real events, though taken out of context and exaggerated.“

They provide a reminder to keep your wits about you and be sure to double-check any claims before believing or sharing them.


Read more: 5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after


This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

The Conversation
08 Feb 19:51

What’s sociology? A sociologist explains why Florida’s college students should get the chance to learn how social forces affect everyone’s lives

by Joya Misra, Provost Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, UMass Amherst
Studying this discipline helps you understand how society works. FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

In January 2024, Florida officially voted to reduce the number of students enrolled in sociology courses.

That might sound baffling if you haven’t tuned into this cultural skirmish. But for me – I’m the American Sociological Association’s current president and a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – it’s both disturbing and an opportunity to help the public better understand my academic discipline.

Sociology is the study of social life, social change and the social causes and consequences of human behavior.

Sociologists analyze how society is structured and how people interact with one another in groups, organizations and society.

A central concept to sociology is the “sociological imagination.” As defined by the scholar C. Wright Mills, it’s the ability to link someone’s experiences to societal forces or historical trends; for example, connecting losing a job to waves of unemployment due to a recession.

Sociology can change how you see the world.

Why does sociology matter?

Because my discipline helps identify how social structures work, it provides insight into how to fix processes that malfunction. Sociological research has helped address questions like why 700 people died during a Chicago heat wave in 1995, or why the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, identifying strategies to avoid such catastrophes in the future.

The research that sociologists conduct can identify better approaches for supporting people with breast cancer. It can explain how social media platforms like X, formerly Twitter, profit from hostility between users.

Sociologists do studies that show that jobs with unpredictable schedules are bad for your health and that homicide rates typically increase as inequality grows.

Sociologists also study inequalities, such as gender or racial inequalities in workplaces. These studies can show how workplaces can create more inclusive cultures that benefit Black workers as well as other employees.

Learning about sociology can help students hone their critical thinking skills by training them to evaluate evidence, analyze data and clearly communicate its meaning – all skills needed in most well-paid jobs.

Sociology also provides students with soft skills, giving them a better understanding of how to work effectively with others, including those with different backgrounds and experiences.

The Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, an exam required for anyone wishing to attend medical school, emphasizes sociological concepts because they give future doctors tools for how to engage with their patients most effectively.

In 2020, more than 25,000 students earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and approximately 1,300 earned a master’s degree, with another 600 earning a Ph.D.

Many people who majored in sociology work as social workers, teachers, school counselors, market research analysts, human resource coordinators, tech workers, paralegals, public relations professionals, urban planners and community health workers.

Curbing sociology in Florida

The boards that oversee the education of hundreds of thousands of students enrolled in Florida’s public colleges and universities voted to reduce the number of students who study sociology on those campuses.

They officially removed principles of sociology from the lists of classes that count as core courses that satisfy requirements for undergraduate degrees.

This change, made in January 2024, was in response to a law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2023. That measure bans general education college credits for instruction “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

Introductory sociology classes, such as the principles of sociology course taught in Florida’s public colleges and universities, teach students how a variety of social institutions work, such as families, education, religion, health care, the economy, politics, the criminal justice system and the media.

Students also learn about topics such as globalization and inequality – whether it’s tied to wealth, income, race, gender, age or whether people live in urban or rural areas.

Sociology is a major that most students first become acquainted with in college, often through courses that satisfy general education requirements. As a result of this policy change, it is likely that enrollment in sociology classes will drastically drop in Florida, and fewer students will major in sociology.

Sociology courses, by considering inequalities by wealth, income, race, gender, sexuality and age, may seem overly “woke” to conservatives. But sociological findings are based on scientific analysis of data from objective sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau.

Global history of censorship

U.S. conservatives are not the only ones who have tried to ban the spread of sociological knowledge.

Sociology has been censored for long periods in many countries, including Russia, Hungary and China.

In April 2019, then-president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil also lashed out at sociology. Since January 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is again serving as Brazil’s president. Because he married sociologist Rosângela Lula da Silva in 2022, sociology is safe for the time being in Brazil.

The Conversation

Joya Misra is currently the president of the American Sociological Association.

06 Feb 18:50

we’ve found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Come on, Kate, that’s a little kooky, but certainly it’s not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory.” Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it’s a cheap joke. But there’s something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there’s this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don’t think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they’re not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house’s most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God’s sitting.

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.

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02 Feb 20:26

We are living in a ‘digital dark age’ – here’s how to protect your photos, videos and other data

by Esperanza Miyake, Chancellor's Fellow - Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Strathclyde
If your computer crashed, would you be able to access your data? Nebojsa Tatomirov/Shutterstock

If you have grown up with social media, chances are you have taken more photos in the last couple of decades than you will ever remember. When mobile phones suddenly became cameras too, social media turned into a community photo album, with memories kept online forever and ever. Or so we thought.

In 2019, MySpace lost 12 years’ worth of music and photos, affecting over 14 million artists and 50 million tracks. If Instagram or the entire internet suddenly disappeared, would you be able to access your precious memories?

We are living in a “digital dark age”, a term popularised by information and communication specialist Terry Kuny. Back in 1997, Kuny warned we were “moving into an era where much of what we know today, much of what is coded and written electronically, will be lost forever”.

He argued that, like monks from the Middle Ages who preserved books (and therefore, knowledge), we must preserve digital objects of today. Otherwise, future generations will be left with gaps in knowledge about our present-day lives.


Quarter life, a series by The Conversation

This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

You may be interested in:

Instapoetry is successful and there’s nothing wrong with that

TikTok’s pomegranate obsession: the trendy fruit was also big during the Renaissance to talk about female fertility

Is someone using your pictures to catfish? Your rights when it comes to fake profiles and social media stalking


People often say the “internet is forever”, but digital artefacts like photos and videos are actually unstable and non-permanent. You’ve likely encountered “linkrot”, when a URL to an important source leads to a now-deleted webpage. Hardware becomes obsolete, degraded and upgraded over time. Bit-rot (also called data or file rot, or data degradation) means we may have no physical means to access our past data.

Many people already find it hard to use technology and software that has reached its “end of life”. With the lack of backwards compatibility (when updated technology or software cannot support older versions), how will future generations access old data stored in obsolete formats?

We are also seeing issues emerge related to ownership of data, particularly when controlled by private corporations. Families have faced legal difficulties accessing the social media accounts of deceased loved ones. Similarly, if Spotify or Netflix shut down tomorrow, you wouldn’t own any of the songs or films you stream on a daily basis.

A digital life

For a number of reasons, you may not even notice that we are in the middle of a new digital dark age.

From Google smart homes to contact-tracing technology, life is increasingly digital. Without an app, internet or social media account, it is difficult to verify your identity and gain access to data – even your own. Many people don’t even consider non-digital means of recording, proving and living their existence.

With Instagram stories disappearing after 24 hours, and Snapchat and WhatsApp’s vanishing messages features, you are probably used to data disappearing instantly.

With the growing need for environmental sustainability, turning to digital formats seems like the responsible solution to reducing our carbon footprint – though have you thought about the e-waste you produce?

Even with data protection laws now giving people the right to have personal data erased, many may not want their data to be preserved forever. Identity theft can occur with social media content that reveals biometric or other personal data. And that’s not to mention cyberstalking, cyberbullying, the distribution of “revenge porn” and online grooming.

But despite all these very understandable concerns, there are still good reasons to think seriously about how you preserve the digital artefacts and data that are most important to you.

A young man smiles while browsing a selection of vinyl records in a shop
If Spotify crashed tomorrow, how would you listen to your favourite albums? Guillem de Balanzo/Shutterstock

Protecting and preserving your old data

If you misplaced your phone, could you remember important phone numbers, or navigate streets when lost? If the answer is no, you may want to think more carefully about data preservation.

This is something we should all think about, and not just leave it to digital archivists and preservationists. When organised efforts are made to preserve data, who decides what should be preserved can become a political issue as much as a technological one.

When it comes to your own digital memories, there are services you can use and steps you can take to preserve data from being lost to history:

  • Keep multiple copies (and formats) of important data across different devices: SD cards, USB thumb drives, DVD/Blu-ray discs, external hard drives and NAS (network attached storage) boxes. This has to be coupled with ensuring you regularly migrate important data to the newest device or format (remember, avoid bit-rot).

  • Try (re)discovering analogue trends – board games alongside video games, vinyl records over streaming music, or celebrate the resurgence of Polaroid cameras. Many services are available to convert digital photos into printed photos, albums and physical artwork.

  • Embrace the ethos of the FAIR principles) – findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable– so that you and others can locate and access any important data you wish to preserve easily.

  • Finally, if you come across a rotten link or other missing data, you can explore data preservation initiatives like the Long Now Foundation’s publicly accessible Rosetta Project or the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of free digital books, movies, software, music and websites.

The Conversation

Esperanza Miyake 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.

02 Feb 20:20

Body appreciation has been linked to better sexual and life satisfaction – here’s how to cultivate it

by Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University
shurkin_son/Shutterstock

These days it’s hard to miss the body positivity movement. But love and respect for the body isn’t new and wasn’t invented by the west. Indeed, global research I’ve collaborated on has found that body appreciation is understood and experienced the same way all over the world – even if we did find large differences in levels of body appreciation between different countries.

But first, it’s important to understand what body image and body appreciation mean in psychology.

Body image is the “inside view” that you have of yourself. Historically, body image research was focused on negative aspects, such as appearance anxiety or clinical conditions including body dysmorphic disorder. Over the past two decades, however, the study of positive body image has gained momentum.

There are different forms of positive body image, but perhaps the most important and most widely studied is body appreciation.

People who have high body appreciation are more likely to appreciate the unique characteristics of, and be attentive to the needs of, their bodies. These people also tend to reject narrow appearance ideals as the only form of human beauty.

Body positivity is a movement that promotes positive views of all bodies, whereas body appreciation is an inner relationship to your own body.

Body appreciation in diverse populations

Body appreciation is usually measured by researchers using the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2), which includes statements such as “I respect my body” and “I feel love for my body”. An important question for scientists is whether the BAS-2 measures body appreciation in the same way for different groups of people.

To answer this question, my colleagues and I in the Body Image in Nature Survey – a consortium of 253 international scientists – asked participants from 65 countries speaking 40 different languages to complete the BAS-2. In one of the largest studies ever conducted on body image, we found that the BAS-2 was understood in the same way across all communities.

Other studies have found that the BAS-2 is understood in much the same way across sexual orientations and gender identities. This means that body appreciation can be considered a good example of a positive phenomenon, much like feelings of happiness and life satisfaction.

It also means scientists can compare levels of body appreciation across diverse communities. In our cross-national study, we found large differences in body appreciation across countries – with Malta, Taiwan and Bangladesh having the highest overall scores, and Australia, India and the UK having the lowest. One possibility, supported by our findings, is that greater cultural distance from westernised contexts allows people to disentangle their self-worth from their physical appearance.

Man hugging himself
Men seem to have greater body appreciation. Koldunov/Shutterstock

Other work has shown that men tend to have higher body appreciation than women, and that body appreciation increases with age. It may be that men and older people tend to experience less pressure to attain prescriptive appearance ideals.

When does it start?

Experiences of body appreciation often develop early in life. For example, interviews with Swedish adolescents who were satisfied with their appearance found that they accepted their physical imperfections. These adolescents seemed to appreciate what the body is able to do, rather than what it looks like.

Social contexts in which people can feel acceptance and belonging – such as supportive friends and encouraging romantic partners – are crucial for the early development of body appreciation.

In these and other interviews, participants typically say that excelling in physical or other activities, such as singing or exploring one’s sexuality, helped them develop feelings of agency and body appreciation.

Why is body appreciation important?

There are many reasons why developing body appreciation is beneficial. For example, greater body appreciation is reliably associated with heathier eating styles. It also reduces the likelihood of experiencing symptoms of eating disorders, including binge eating and restrictive eating.

Body appreciation is also associated with more positive mental health. A 2022 review of 240 papers found that higher levels of body appreciation were associated with greater self-compassion and life satisfaction, as well as fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Greater body appreciation is also associated with healthier lifestyle choices. Another 2022 review of nine studies with mostly western participants found that body appreciation was associated with less health-compromising behaviour, including risky sexual activity and alcohol abuse.

Other research has found that greater body appreciation provides a strong foundation for developing more liberal, sex-positive attitudes, as well as more positive sexual experiences including sexual satisfaction. Additionally, greater body appreciation is associated with more positive attitudes toward breastfeeding and stronger motivation to engage in physical activity.

Promoting body appreciation

What all of these studies suggest is that greater body appreciation can provide a strong platform for all manner of positive behaviour and attitudes. When people appreciate their bodies, they are more likely to be attentive to their bodily needs and feel more connected to their bodies. This, in turn, motivates a desire to maintain good mental and physical health.

For children and adolescents, yoga and physical activity are beneficial, and there are also picture books that can help children understand what body appreciation looks and feels like.

For adults, many embodying activities – things that promote a sense of inhabiting our bodies – can promote body appreciation. Examples include dance and other forms of physical activity, life drawing, and even just going for a walk in nature.

The Conversation

Viren Swami 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.

02 Feb 20:15

Biden is campaigning against the Lost Cause and the ‘poison’ of white supremacy in South Carolina

by Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston
President Joe Biden at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina on Jan. 8, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

In the blur of breaking news, one of President Joe Biden’s first speeches of the 2024 campaign was given in South Carolina and has already been mostly forgotten in the ongoing coverage of the state’s democratic primary on Feb. 3, 2024.

We should pay it more attention.

The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state representative. At Pinckney’s funeral, then-President Barack Obama sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn Amazing Grace.

From the pulpit, Biden sounded like a preacher.

“The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison,” Biden said. “A poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. … Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart.”

As a historian who studies democracy in the American South, I am doing research for a book on free speech, lying and fascism in America during the 1920s and 1930s. What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.

Joe Biden speaks at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The original big lie

In 1820, 44 years after the nation’s birth, U.S. Sen. William Smith of South Carolina was the first to claim in Congress that men were not created equal. Boldly rejecting the Declaration of Independence as effusive “enthusiasm,” Smith injected white supremacy into public discourse.

It spread like wildfire, and there’s little wonder. Smith, who owned several plantations and at least 71 enslaved people, was among more than 1,800 U.S. legislators who enslaved Black people.

Southern propagandists rewrote history, arguing the founders never really believed in equality. If you disagreed, vigilante thugs would beat you up or chase you into exile. They killed more than a few people who spoke up against slavery.

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’

The Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford extended Southern racist ideology into the North. Black people, the court held, are “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and … the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery.”

The following year, in his campaign for the U. S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln sounded the alarm. He addressed the consequences of slavery on America’s democracy and warned that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

“This government cannot endure,” he said, “permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it … or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

In this black-and-white photograph, a white man dressed in a dark suit sits in a chair with his hands on his lap.
An 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Civil War was supposed to end slavery and the white supremacist ideology that underpinned it. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, made equality explicit in the Constitution, extending civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans.

That upended the Southern social order.

The South then invented what Biden called the “self-serving lie” of the “Lost Cause,” the rewritten version of the Civil War that claims slavery had nothing to do with the war. The white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan was the violent hammer of this “Lost Cause,” and its emergence coincided with Jim Crow laws that established racial segregation across the South and disenfranchised Black voters until the 1960s.

Democracies in peril

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a new alarm. His “Four Freedoms” speech was an updated version of Lincoln’s and further defined freedom within a democracy.

The immediate issue was whether the U.S. should help England and other European allies defend against the fascist regimes of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

This was no academic question of foreign policy. In helping Britain, President Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

Biden has rung a similiar alarm. During his speech at Mother Emanuel church – and again during other campaign stops before the Feb. 3 Democratic Party primary in South Carolina – Biden acknowledged that he is not only running against the GOP front-runner Donald Trump but also against a “second lost cause” myth.

Biden called out Trump for his “big lie” about the 2020 election that Trump has repeatedly claim was “rigged” against him. He criticized those who he said are attempting to “steal history” again and spin the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as “a peaceful protest.”

At its core, Biden warned, Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a resurrection of southern-style white nationalism and the age-old disregard for equal rights.

We all know who Donald Trump is,” Biden said during his speech and in his ads, calling on Americans to work to make up for centuries of racism and discrimination “The question we have to answer is who are we?”

The Conversation

Joseph Patrick Kelly volunteers for the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party.

25 Jan 13:51

1 in 10 US workers belong to unions − a share that’s stabilized after a steep decline

by Jake Rosenfeld, Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St Louis
Members of the faculty union of the California State University system walk a picket line in December 2023. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
CC BY-ND

The share of U.S. workers who belong to a union fell slightly to 10% in 2023, from 10.1% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As a scholar of organized labor, I’m not shocked by this slight decline, although if there was ever a year to expect the unionization rate to increase, it was 2023.

Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation that unites 60 unions, has proclaimed 2023 “the year of labor.” She wasn’t exaggerating.

Successful walkouts by Hollywood actors and screenwriters, autoworkers and health care professionals demonstrated how effective strikes can be in achieving union gains.

And a serious threat of a strike produced a historic contract for hundreds of thousands of UPS workers. Combined with the continuation of union-organizing victories at companies such as Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, it certainly seemed like 2023 was, as a New York Times headline proclaimed, “Labor’s very good year.”

Why would all that successful labor organizing fail to boost growth in the percentage of workers who belong to a union?

Research points to a number of factors, including the difficulties of organizing at a large scale and the pushback by companies facing organizing drives.

Workforce growth

The economy has been growing at a healthy clip, expanding by 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023. The U.S. gained 3 million jobs over the course of 2023.

When the overall labor force grows, unions must recruit new members just to maintain the prior unionization rate. With the size of the labor force today, simply maintaining the status quo requires adding roughly 300,000 new union members annually to keep the level of unionization in the workforce stable.

In 2023, 14.4 million U.S. workers belonged to a union, edging up from 14.2 million the previous year, the government determined. That’s impressive, but not quite enough of a gain for unions to maintain their prior organization rate.

The nation’s unionization rate is the lowest it has been in over a century. While many nations with similar economies have also experienced this kind of decline, the low American rate is both historically and internationally unique.

Sweden’s unionization rate is 6.5 times higher. Canada’s is nearly three times as high.

The decline of union ranks in the U.S. has been sharpest in the private sector, where only 6% of workers belong to a union. Among government workers, nearly 1 in 3 do.

Stalled momentum

Given the difficulties in organizing in the private sector in the U.S., periods of substantial union growth occur in rare spurts. A successful union drive can prove contagious, leading to a rapid wave of union wins in an industry. This is what labor leaders and supporters were hoping for from a string of high-profile victories at Amazon, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and other big employers.

But for unionization to spread, nonunion workers must be convinced that the very real risks of a unionization drive are worth it.

A union contract can provide evidence that the benefits of organizing outweigh the costs. Without such a contract, many nonunion workers won’t take the risk. Companies know this and employ a number of delay tactics to drag out the process and dampen the early enthusiasm for union recognition.

For example, in the spring of 2022, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize – the first union footprint in Amazon’s vast and expanding U.S. workforce. Nearly two years later, that warehouse remains the lone unionized facility among the more than 100 fulfillment centers Amazon operates in the U.S.

The company’s refusal to bargain to a first contract is a big factor stymieing momentum.

Better faith required

Labor actions continue to crop up, with strikes by educators and journalists underway in January 2024. United Auto Workers leader Shawn Fain boldly vows to expand his union’s ranks by organizing employees of electric and foreign-owned vehicle companies.

But without changes to the nation’s labor laws that get more employers to bargain in good faith – and to do so speedily – it’s reasonable to expect to see companies continue to delay and disrupt attempts to negotiate a first contract.

As a result, even another “very good year” for labor won’t translate into substantial gains in the ranks of union members.

The Conversation

Along with Patrick Denice and Jennifer Laird, Jake Rosenfeld recently received a grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to study labor union dynamics in the public sector.

25 Jan 13:50

Mosquitoes can spread the flesh-eating Buruli ulcer. Here’s how you can protect yourself

by Cameron Webb, Clinical Associate Professor and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney
A/Prof Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology)

Each year, more and more Victorians become sick with a flesh-eating bacteria known as Buruli ulcer. Last year, 363 people presented with the infection, the highest number since 2004.

But it has been unclear exactly how it spreads, until now. New research shows mosquitoes are infected from biting possums that carry the bacteria. Mozzies spread it to humans through their bite.

What is Buruli ulcer?

Buruli ulcer, also known as Bairnsdale ulcer, is a skin infection caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium ulcerans.

It starts off like a small mosquito bite and over many months, slowly develops into an ulcer, with extensive destruction of the underlying tissue.

While often painless initially, the infection can become very serious. If left untreated, the ulcer can continue to enlarge. This is where it gets its “flesh-eating” name.

Thankfully, it’s treatable. A six to eight week course of specific antibiotics is an effective treatment, sometimes supported with surgery to remove the infected tissue.

Where can you catch it?

The World Health Organization considers Buruli ulcer a neglected tropical skin disease. Cases have been reported across 33 countries, primarily in west and central Africa.

However, since the early 2000s, Buruli ulcer has also been increasingly recorded in coastal Victoria, including suburbs around Melbourne and Geelong.

Scientists have long known Australian native possums were partly responsible for its spread, and suspected mosquitoes also played a role in the increase in cases. New research confirms this.

Our efforts to ‘beat Buruli’

Confirming the role of insects in outbreaks of an infectious disease is achieved by building up corroborating, independent evidence.

In this new research, published in Nature Microbiology, the team (including co-authors Tim Stinear, Stacey Lynch and Peter Mee) conducted extensive surveys across a 350 km² area of Victoria.

We collected mosquitoes and analysed the specimens to determine whether they were carrying the pathogen, and links to infected possums and people. It was like contact tracing for mosquitoes.

Dead mosquito specimen in museum collection
Aedes notoscriptus was the mosquito identified as carrying the bacteria that caused Buruli ulcer. Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology)

Molecular testing of the mosquito specimens showed that of the two most abundant mosquito species, only Aedes notoscriptus (a widespread species commonly known as the Australian backyard mosquito) was positive for Mycobacterium ulcerans.

We then used genomic tests to show the bacteria found on these mosquitoes matched the bacteria in possum poo and humans with Buruli ulcer.

We further analysed mosquito specimens that contained blood to show Aedes notoscriptus was feeding on both possums and humans.

To then link everything together, geospatial analysis revealed the areas where human Buruli ulcer cases occur overlap with areas where both mosquitoes and possums that harbour Mycobacterium ulcerans are active.

Stop its spread by stopping mozzies breeding

The mosquito in this study primarily responsible for the bacteria’s spread is Aedes notoscriptus, a mosquito that lays its eggs around water in containers in backyard habitats.

Controlling “backyard” mosquitoes is a critical part of reducing the risk of many global mosquito-borne disease, especially dengue and now Buruli ulcer.


Read more: It's warming up and mozzies are coming. Here's how to mosquito-proof your backyard


You can reduce places where water collects after rainfall, such as potted plant saucers, blocked gutters and drains, unscreened rainwater tanks, and a wide range of plastic buckets and other containers. These should all be either emptied at least weekly or, better yet, thrown away or placed under cover.

A watering can sitting in garden and filled with water
Mosquitoes can lay eggs in a wide range of water-filled items in the backyard. Cameron Webb (NSW Health Pathology)

There is a role for insecticides too. While residual insecticides applied to surfaces around the house and garden will reduce mosquito populations, they can also impact other, beneficial, insects. Judicious use of such sprays is recommended. But there are ecological safe insecticides that can be applied to water-filled containers (such as ornamental ponds, fountains, stormwater pits and so on).

Recent research also indicates new mosquito-control approaches that use mosquitoes themselves to spread insecticides may soon be available.


Read more: Stickers and wristbands aren't a reliable way to prevent mosquito bites. Here's why


How to protect yourself from bites

The first line of defence will remain personal protection measures against mosquito bites.

Covering up with loose fitted long sleeved shirts, long pants, and covered shoes will provide physical protection from mosquitoes.

Applying topical insect repellent to all exposed areas of skin has been proven to provide safe and effective protection from mosquito bites. Repellents should include diethytolumide (DEET), picaridin or oil of lemon eucalyptus.

While the rise in Buruli ulcer is a significant health concern, so too are many other mosquito-borne diseases. The steps to avoid mosquito bites and exposure to Mycobacteriam ulcerans will also protect against viruses such as Ross River, Barmah Forest, Japanese encephalitis, and Murray Valley encephalitis.


Read more: How can the bite of a backyard mozzie in Australia make you sick?


The Conversation

Cameron Webb and the Department of Medical Entomology, NSW Health Pathology, have been engaged by a wide range of insect repellent and insecticide manufacturers to provide testing of products and provide expert advice on mosquito biology. Cameron has also received funding from local, state and federal agencies to undertake research into mosquito-borne disease surveillance and management.

Peter Mee receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Stacey Lynch receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The work on this subject was undertaken while employed in a former role at Agriculture Victoria.

Tim Stinear receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

25 Jan 13:42

The US is getting embroiled in yet another Middle East conflict. It should increase pressure on Israel instead

by Ben Rich, Senior Lecturer in History and International Relations, Curtin University

The United States is once again enmeshing itself in a rapidly escalating and unpredictable conflict in the Middle East with no clear off ramps.

On numerous occasions in the past two weeks, the US and UK (in a lesser role) have struck Yemeni Houthi militants who have been targeting shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in protest at Israeli actions in the current Gaza war.

Made with Flourish

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah (or “supporters of God”), are a militia group that has been at war with the Saudis and the central Yemeni government for most of the last decade. The group emerged in the 1990s from the indigenous Zaydi Shi'a sect of northern Yemen, motivated by grievances about their community’s second-class status in Yemeni society.

They gained particular prominence in the wake of the Arab Spring, which weakened the already-fragile Yemeni state and provided them with an opportunity to seize the majority of the country before the Saudi-led intervention in 2015 attempted to push them back.


Read more: Why US strikes will only embolden the Houthis, not stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea


In recent months, the Houthis have positioned themselves as an external champion for the besieged Palestinian population, declaring:

We will continue to prevent Israeli ships or those heading to the occupied Palestinian ports until the aggression and siege on Gaza stops.

It is clear the Houthis’ broader goal is to create uncertainty and risk in global trade. Disrupting business as usual in this way ensures the ongoing war is felt globally, making it impossible for the major players to ignore or downplay, as has been the case in the past.

The depressing history of genocides, massacres and episodes of ethnic cleansing shows us that human rights violations on their own rarely motivate serious collective action. However, hit the international community where it hurts – in the wallet – and it is far more likely to pay attention and seek a negotiated resolution.

In essence, through economic warfare, the Houthis are seeking to elevate a moral crisis to a level that can’t be ignored.

Why the US is intervening

At a tactical level, the US reprisals against the Houthis are predictable and make sense. As the pre-eminent global naval power and guarantor of freedom of navigation, the US has long sought to ensure the free flow of oceanic trade.

Indeed, it has gained much experience protecting shipping in the region against a variety of state and non-state threats during times of international crisis and instability over the years.

As such, the US sees itself as obligated to respond against Houthi militancy threatening global shipping. To do anything else would be seen as abdicating its fundamental function in the liberal economic order, creating even further risk and uncertainty and threatening economic prosperity.

But as much as the US would like portray itself as an impartial force for stability in its response to the Houthi attacks, its overt commitment to effectively unlimited, no-strings-attached support for Israel’s war in Gaza has only emboldened the Israeli Defence Forces in their actions.

Such support goes far beyond running diplomatic cover for Israel in the United Nations. According to a Bloomberg News report, the Pentagon is actively restocking the munitions Israel is using against Palestinians in the war.

Given the Houthis’ stated aims, one cannot separate Gaza from the Red Sea. The latter cannot be truly addressed without resolving the former, and a major component of resolving the war requires far stronger US pressure on Israel.


Read more: Where do Israel and Hamas get their weapons?


Why US pressure on Israel would have more impact

In this regard, US claims it is powerless to rein in Israel seem far from convincing when one examines the power dynamics between the two countries.

As a middle power in the wider US-centric liberal international order, Israel certainly exercises more autonomy and agency than a simple client state.

At the same time, however, history has shown us assertive US presidents are more than capable of reining in the excesses of Tel Aviv in short order.

What is lacking at this moment is not influence, but willpower, especially on the part of the current president, Joe Biden. Biden has a demonstrated history of exceptional support for Israel beyond that of his own party. This includes in his former role as vice president under Barack Obama.

For their part, the Houthis are battle-hardened by nearly a decade of war with the Saudis. They have made something of an art of withstanding precision strikes using US-made munitions and guided by US-supplied intelligence.

As such, it is unlikely the current US strikes will halt the Houthis’ attacks on shipping vessels. The Houthis are also highly likely to continue to evolve their own tactics to account for US weapon superiority. Given this, they have significant incentive to escalate their attacks in defiance of US actions.


Read more: Why US strikes will only embolden the Houthis, not stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea


The Gaza war has already claimed the lives of more than 25,000 Palestinians – primarily civilians. The bombing has been more destructive in its first 100 days than the razing of the Syrian city of Aleppo by the Assad regime from 2012–16, according to experts in mapping wartime damage.

As the conflict continues unabated and outrage continues to grow, it is likely the Houthis or other militant actors or even states will ramp up efforts to intervene, especially through unconventional methods.

In such a context, the US and UK strikes against the Houthis increasingly risk producing unintended consequences and spiralling out of control towards an even more complex and broader regional crisis.

The Conversation

Ben Rich receives funding from the US State Department for work around preventing violent extremism available at https://www.curtincern.com/educational-resources

23 Jan 20:58

Back in the USSR: New high school textbooks in Russia whitewash Stalin’s terror as Putin wages war on historical memory

by Anya Free, Faculty Associate in History, Arizona State University

Hey, kids, meet Josef Stalin.

New Russian high school textbooks – introduced in August 2023 on the instruction of President Vladimir Putin – attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy. While schools and teachers previously could pick educational materials from a variety of choices, these newly created textbooks are mandatory reading for 10th and 11th graders in Russia and occupied territories.

As a scholar of Russian and Soviet history, I see the new books as just another example of state-sponsored efforts to use history and scholarship to serve Putin’s agenda and goals.

Other recent attempts along these lines include the establishment in November 2023 of the National Center of Historical Memory, tasked with preserving “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory”; the creation of a sprawling network of historical parks called “Russia: My History,” with new branches in occupied Ukrainian cities Luhansk and Melitopol; and the 2023 publication of a collection of archival documents called “On Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”

These projects not only demonstrate Putin’s desire to control the historical narrative but to serve the goal of promoting Russian cultural and educational imperialism.

Putin’s efforts to redeem the Soviet past may help explain why Stalin is up in the polls, with 63% of Russians asked in June 2023 expressing a positive attitude toward the Soviet dictator behind widespread purges, mass executions, forced labor camps and policies leading to the deaths of millions of his own compatriots.

But Stalin’s place in history remains divisive within the nations he once ruled over, especially where Russia retains significant political and cultural influence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin walks statue of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin walks by the grave of Soviet leader Josef Stalin on June 25, 2015, in Moscow. Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

In January 2024, a newly installed icon honoring Stalin in his homeland of Georgia was defaced – an act exposing deep divisions.

The number of privately funded monuments to the dictator is increasing, while the memorials to victims of political repression in Russia are disappearing. Yet, activists are still fighting to commemorate those who perished.

Whitewashing history

Putin, famously obsessed with history, has been talking about the creation of national history textbooks since 2013. In August 2023, Putin’s wish was finally granted when one of his closest associates, former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, presented new textbooks for 10th and 11th grade students: two in Russian history and two in World history. Medinsky co-authored all four.

The 10th grade textbooks cover the period from 1914 to 1945. The 11th grade textbooks cover history from 1945 to the present day and include sections on the current Russian-Ukrainian war, called in Russia a “Special Military Operation” as an official euphemism.

Warping historical narratives

The new school textbooks maintain some nuance in their coverage of Stalinism, yet that nuance can be described as “yes, but,” which makes it even more effective in warping the historical narrative.

The 10th grade Russian history textbook, for example, briefly mentions the dramatic consequences of collectivization of Soviet agriculture, including the 1932-33 man-made famines in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus and other regions. Yet it puts the blame exclusively on the poor harvests and mistakes of the local leadership rather than the Stalinist policies that caused and exacerbated the famines. Ukraine’s great famine, or Holodomor, in particular is considered by many historians and international organizations to be a genocide.

Coffee mugs with images of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Putin.
Mugs decorated with images of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Soviet leader Josef Stalin are seen on sale among other items at a gift shop in Moscow on March 11, 2020. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

Additionally, in the section on World War II, the students learn that the “collective feat of the peasantry” during the war would have been “impossible in the case of the domination of the private landholdings” – in other words, it was only possible under the Soviet system.

The Russian history textbook briefly mentions the “Great Terror” of 1937-38, in which millions were arrested and an estimated 700,000 to 1.2 million were executed. Mention is also made of the personal role of Stalin, while also emphasizing the role of private denunciations and authorities of various Soviet republics and regions. But the creator of the Soviet secret police and an architect of the post-revolutionary “Red Terror,” Felix Dzerzhinsky, is praised for his role in “combating counter-revolution,” “creation of the professional educational system” and “restoration of the railroads.”

All national histories are inherently biased, even in democratic societies. Medinsky’s textbooks are, however, a distortion of history. The authors lose any attempt at objectivity while discussing Soviet foreign policy as always defensive and serving to protect everyone whom the USSR occupies and annexes.

The whitewashing of Stalin and his crimes is, I believe, crucial for understanding Putin’s creep toward ever more imperialist ideology and goals. In 2017, Putin participated in the opening ceremony for the memorial to the victims of political repressions in Moscow, during which he acknowledged the violence of Stalin’s terror and argued that it cannot be “justified by anything.” Yet his obsession with World War II led him to just that.

Putin and ideologists in the Russian leader circle have increasingly asserted that Stalin’s foreign policy and his leadership in World War II supersede his crimes against his own people. In his 2020 article in the U.S. journal National Interest, Putin praised Stalin for his great “understanding of the nature of external threats” and actions that he undertook to “strengthen the country’s defenses.”

The war on historical memory

The more aggressive Russia’s politics are, the more protective the state is over the Soviet historical legacy. Since 2020, Moscow authorities have not allowed demonstrations traditionally held in Moscow on Oct. 29 to commemorate victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s.

In December 2021, Russian authorities ordered the “liquidation” of the human rights group Memorial , fully unleashing the war on historical memory. The organization, which was among the three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was blamed by the Russian Supreme Court for “distorting memory about the War,” “rehabilitating Nazis” and “creating a false image of the USSR and Russia as terrorist states.” It is not a coincidence that an attack on the organization that for decades documented the Soviet terror came in the midst of the anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian hysteria and right before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Memorial, however, still stands, despite immense pressure from the authorities, attesting to the great power of resistance.

In the newly written Putinist narrative of history, the state and its expansion is always at the center, just as it was during Stalinism. The people are treated according to a proverb favored by Stalin, which sums up his attitude toward the ruthless and brutal measures he imposed: “When the wood is cut down, the chips are flying.”

The Conversation

Anya Free 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.

23 Jan 20:57

A TikTok ‘expert’ says you have post-traumatic stress disorder − but do you? A trauma psychiatrist explains what PTSD really is and how to seek help

by Arash Javanbakht, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University
Some social media posts about PTSD mislead rather than inform. Tarik Vision/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Among the many emerging trends on social media, one recent concerning fad is a casual and often inaccurate portrayal of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD – along with an array of questionable interventions suggested for its cure.

But what really is PTSD, who suffers from it, and what are the available treatments?

As a psychiatrist specializing in trauma, I’ve worked with hundreds of people with PTSD. Some are refugees, first responders and survivors of torture and human trafficking. Others have survived childhood trauma, shootings, assault, rape or robbery.

As part of my outreach, I post educational material about trauma and PTSD on social media, so my news feeds often contain misleading material along these lines:

“Procrastination is not laziness. It is childhood trauma.”

“Trauma test: What image did you see first? A shark, A leg?”

“People who say sorry for no reason have PTSD.”

Mental health advocacy work has led to great progress in making the public aware of trauma and overcoming its stigma. But misuse of terms such as “trauma,” “childhood trauma” and “PTSD” has filled the social media sphere with misinformation. It is often spread by people with a financial or emotional incentive, such as those seeking followers, selling tests, therapies, interventions, coaching and more.

Such posts treat trauma and PTSD as something that’s trendy, at times even romanticizing trauma. In turn, this trivializes the suffering of those who really have endured traumatic experiences. It can also create confusion for those with a real need for help and prevent them from receiving the right support.

It’s normal to have bad dreams following a trauma, or even to feel like the trauma is happening again.

Trauma explained

In popular culture and in the everyday vernacular, the word trauma is often used too loosely. As a result, on social media a difficult breakup or an argument with a family member might be portrayed as traumatic. While these experiences could be highly stressful, they are not considered trauma in the clinical world.

The field of psychiatry defines trauma as direct exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violence. That includes experiences such as war, assault, sexual abuse and rape, robbery, being shot at, severe car accidents and natural disasters. Trauma exposure is common among, though certainly not limited to, urban populations.

Trauma exposure does not necessarily have to be direct; it can also happen by witnessing or being near the event or by exposure to its aftermath. This is what often happens to first responders, those in the vicinity of or exposed to the aftermath of mass shootings, and refugees, all of whom see the worst of what humans do to each other.

The immediate response to trauma can include shock, severe anxiety or panic, confusion, helplessness, constant recall of the event, feeling on edge, difficulty sleeping, anger, guilt or physical discomfort. Trauma can have numerous long-term effects, including anxiety, difficulty with trust, depression and substance use.

Trauma can lead to PTSD but doesn’t necessarily have to.

PTSD explained

Not everyone who experiences trauma has PTSD. For the majority of people exposed to trauma, symptoms subside over time. But some people remain in a constant state of “fight or flight,” a physiological response in which the brain stays fully alert to ensure escape or to neutralize a real or perceived danger.

When the severity of symptoms passes a specific threshold, mental health clinicians consider a PTSD diagnosis. To be diagnosed with the disorder, the person must have one or two symptoms from all of the following categories:

  • “Intrusion” symptoms, such as recurring, unwanted memories of the traumatic event, or frequent nightmares or flashbacks as if the event is happening again. This includes seeing the scenes, hearing the sounds or experiencing the smells of the event.

  • Intense avoidance of anything that is a reminder of the trauma, including thoughts and memories of the event, people who could resemble the perpetrator, and places or times of day that are associated with where, when or how the trauma happened.

  • Persistent negative emotions and thoughts, such as anxiety, sadness, guilt, a negative perception of self – that is, a feeling that you’re permanently damaged – or a mistrust of the world. This might include an inability to experience positive emotions.

  • Hyperarousal – meaning constantly being on the lookout for danger – and being easily startled or angered and being unable to sleep.

Getting help

Like any other medical condition, a diagnosis of PTSD must be made by a mental health professional, preferably one skilled in trauma and PTSD. Some people endure certain symptoms without meeting all criteria for PTSD. If this causes significant social, academic or occupational dysfunction and distress, the person will still need help.

If you have endured traumatic experiences, first understand that PTSD is not your identity. It is a disease that can be and should be treated. Getting an evaluation from your primary care doctor is the first step. They may refer you to a mental health professional. Or you can reach out directly to a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist or a licensed social worker for an evaluation.

Your insurance provider can help you find a therapist or psychiatrist, preferably specialized in trauma. You can also find a list of providers through the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. If you don’t have insurance, you can get help at a local community mental health clinic or a federally qualified health center.

If a diagnosis is confirmed, know that you do not have to suffer for years to come. There are effective and safe psychotherapy treatments that can help process the traumatic memories, overcome the related negative thoughts or feelings of guilt and shame and help overcome avoidance of normal life situations because of the trauma.

There are treatment options for PTSD, along with ways to get support.

In my newly published book, I discuss new, cutting-edge treatments as well as stories from those who overcame their illness.

For instance, our team has created AI-enhanced mixed reality technologies to produce immersive and interactive diverse situations of encounters with digital humans. This will allow the patients to, for example, experience the sensation of being in a crowded grocery store, with their therapist alongside to help them navigate and overcome their fears.

Medications can also help. Often labeled as antidepressants, these medications are safe and nonaddictive, and they can lower the intensity of anxiety to a level that allows the patients to deal with their fears.

Lifestyle changes like diet, mindfulness and exercise can also help a lot.

I have seen many traumatized people get back on their feet and resume their normal lives after the right intervention and lifestyle adjustments. Those who continue to have some symptoms often manage to build life around them without letting the trauma take away the joy and prosperity of their lives.

The Conversation

Arash Javanbakht 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.

23 Jan 20:34

The Public Domain Benefits Everyone – But Sometimes Copyright Holders Won’t Let Go

by Cara Gagliano

Every January, we celebrate the addition of formerly copyrighted works to the public domain. You’ve likely heard that this year’s crop of public domain newcomers includes Steamboat Willie, the 1928 cartoon that marked Mickey Mouse’s debut. When something enters the public domain, you’re free to copy, share, and remix it without fear of a copyright lawsuit. But the former copyright holders aren’t always willing to let go of their “property” so easily. That’s where trademark law enters the scene.

Unlike copyright, trademark protection has no fixed expiration date. Instead, it works on a “use it or lose it” model. With some exceptions, the law will grant trademark protection for as long as you keep using that mark to identify your products. This actually makes sense when you understand the difference between copyright and trademark. The idea behind copyright protection is to give creators a financial incentive to make new works that will benefit the public; that incentive needn’t be eternal to be effective. Trademark law, on the other hand, is about consumer protection. The function of a trademark is essentially to tell you who a product came from, which helps you make informed decisions and incentivizes quality control. If everyone were allowed to use that same mark after some fixed period, it would stop serving that function.

So, what’s the problem? Since trademarks don’t expire, we see former copyright holders of public domain works turn to trademark law as a way to keep exerting control. In one case we wrote about, a company claiming to own a trademark in the name of a public domain TV show called “You Asked For It” sent takedown demands targeting everything from episodes of the show, to remix videos using show footage, to totally unrelated uses of that common phrase. Other infamous examples include disputes over alleged trademarks in elements from Peter Rabbit and Tarzan. Now, with Steamboat Willie in the public domain, Disney seems poised to do the same. It’s already alluded to this in public statements, and in 2022, it registered a trademark for Walt Disney Animation Studios that incorporates a snippet from the cartoon.

The news isn’t all bad: trademark protection is in some ways more limited than copyright—it only applies to uses that are likely to confuse consumers about the use’s connection to the mark owner. And importantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that trademark law cannot be used to control the distribution of creative works, lest it spawn “a species of mutant copyright law” that usurps the public’s right to copy and use works in the public domain. (Of course, that doesn’t mean companies won’t try it.) So go forth and make your Steamboat Willie art, but beware of trademark lawyers waiting in the wings.

22 Jan 20:58

My favourite fictional character: Wintering’s grotesque widows reveal the 'monstrous' woman as wise and progressive

by Martine Kropkowski, PhD Candidate and Casual Academic, The University of Queensland
Phil Robson/Unsplash

A coven of faces. All women, all weathered. Old, middle-aged, younger; one teenager among them. […] They sat and breathed in each other’s stale exhalations. Breath like the grave. Jessica couldn’t help thinking that they were rotting inside. And now she was one of them. She had started to decompose.

The widows are foul, unwashed, rank. They gather at an old farmstead with peeling wooden boards and “holes in the veranda you could put a fist though”. They give off a “urinous fug of sweat and unwashed clothing”. A woman in “a brown shapeless dress, sweat-stained at the armpits” grows long, dark hairs from her upper lip and neck. Their partners have all disappeared. And so has Jessica’s.

These women are from Kris Kneen’s novel Wintering, which includes one of my favourite depictions of monstrosity – a man–thylacine hybrid, a type of werewolf, that stalks remote southern Tasmania, turning people into monsters (in a recognisable gothic tradition).

But it’s not the man–thylacine monster that has stayed with me all these years. It’s the second type of (metaphorical) monster, the widows, who speak to me far more profoundly.

Initially, the stories these widows tell – about monster hunting – are easy for the novel’s protagonist, Jessica, to reject. They’re the kind of ramblings she might hear from people she’d stand next to at the liquor store and joke about afterwards.

But there’s more to their monstrosity than the grotesque. The widows present as a collection of disparate elements — a Frankenstein’s creature composed of fragments. They are a collective aberration, in a society bent on advancing women who meet social expectations while rejecting those who do not.

What monsters mean

Monsters – millennia old – continue to populate our imaginations. The gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, have menaced shelves for hundreds of years.

More recently and closer to home, Lisa Fuller’s Ghost Bird and First Nations anthology This All Come Back Now (edited by Mykaela Saunders) depict monsters from Indigenous perspectives, while novels such as Trent Jamieson’s Day Boy, which inventively reimagines the vampire, breathe new life into gothic monsters.

As American philosopher and cultural theorist Noel Carroll points out, monsters are not just physically threatening – they threaten and challenge our ways of thinking, too. And in this way, Kneen’s mismatched collection of othered women prompts me to reflect on our assumptions about women and the social norms we’ve constructed for them.

Monsters represent the ‘other’

I’m fascinated by the many ways we interpret monsters. Dracula represents concerns about racial otherness and imperial decline. No, it’s about fears of AIDS infection and supernatural surveillance – no, it’s about homoerotic desire. Zombies illuminate rampant consumerism, slave labour and, by pushing them to their limits, the intricate workings of human communities. (If you’ve read or watched The Walking Dead, this last one will be familiar to you.)

These readings attempt to project and inscribe a specific cultural meaning, belonging to a particular time and place, onto a monstrous creature. “The monstrous body is pure culture,” writes Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who researches the cultural function of monsters. It “exists only to be read”. And maybe this is why monsters preoccupy me.

Monsters often depict the so-called “other”: the outside, the beyond and all that we perceive as distant and distinct from us … but actually comes from within. Monsters, after all, always require a creator. They exist only because we design them, constructing them from our deepest fears.

Monsters exist because we design them – constructing them from our deepest fears.

Monsters reveal how societies define – and decide how to punish – difference and deviance. And by doing so, they also call into question the very social structures on which those decisions are based.

By creating monsters, we police social boundaries and define community norms. In Wintering, Jessica does this by rejecting the widows. Initially, she sees them as something other: something to be avoided, something lesser.

At the same time, though, Kneen’s widows subvert and challenge – even reappropriate – their categorisation as “other”. They are women who don’t meet conventional beauty standards, who flout social expectations. They are women who are older, single, who are sole parents. In short, they’re characters who transgress ideas of traditional womanhood – a transgression traditionally punished by derision and exclusion.

But Jessica’s initial repulsion gradually shifts into acceptance and eventually respect. Later, she’ll view widow elder Marijam as a window onto her future self:

[…] she felt dizzy, seeing her future staring into her eyes. And it wasn’t so bad really. Tough, solitary, self-sufficient. Wise? Maybe.


Read more: Bram Stoker's Dracula: bats, garlic, disturbing sexualities and a declining empire


Reframing ‘monstrous’ women as wise

Literature is a powerful vehicle for revealing and naturalising different ways of thinking. I first read Wintering after having children, when I was experiencing a newfound respect for the wisdom and strength of my own mother – and by extension, all those who have carried, lost, terminated, delivered or nurtured babies.

It was a time when I really started to unpack monstrous tropes for what I think they are – particularly those of the female monster, so often maligned for their reproductive experiences. Maybe this is why Kneen’s creation spoke to me so profoundly (especially Marijam, the wise, wrinkled old lady, who’s quick on a walking stick and slick on a monster hunt).

Kneen’s reframing of the widows contributes to our ongoing process of dismantling internalised misogyny. It alerts me to a different view of those women society might have us trivialise or ignore. Certainly, this is the journey Jessica takes in the novel, eventually viewing herself as a member of the widows.

“Well,” the old lady said, her smile, unbelievably, wrinkling her face even more. “We are glad you are with us, love.”

Wintering’s widows leave me thinking about the women in my own life – about my own coven – and how they’re strong and wise in ways not always recognised or endorsed by the mainstream.

These covens have seen me through. They have decimated the idea we’re all write-offs to some degree, depending on how near or far we are from meeting “ideal” social expectations. They have shown me that together, we can be monstrously powerful.

And they’ve shown me it’s my job to pass this knowledge forward: the way Marijam passes hers to Jessica.


Read more: The Clearing's investigation of The Family invites us to ask: what's the appeal – and risk – of crime stories based on real events?


More work to do

Unpicking harmful tropes, of course, is an unfinished task. We have more work to do, especially for women whose identities include further marginalisation surrounding disability, race, class and gender. Monsters are particularly well equipped to help us do this.

Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane, for instance, writes about how Indigenous speculative fiction – including fiction containing monsters – “unwrites settler control and knowing of the future and the present and the past” and re-establishes First Nations ways of knowing, being and telling.

There’s another, more literal, monster in Wintering – the man–thylacine werewolf – which skilfully picks at the threads of coercive control, domestic abuse and violence. It deserves its own analysis.

But it’s the monstrous widows who have remained with me, long after finishing the novel. They’ve invited me to reject the label of “monstrous” woman as an indication of shame or exclusion – and to reassign it as a symbol of progress.

The Conversation

Martine Kropkowski 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.

22 Jan 20:43

Transgender regret? Research challenges narratives about gender-affirming surgeries

by Harry Barbee, Assistant Professor of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University
Gender-affirming surgeries give transgender people the opportunity to align their bodies with their gender identity. Luke Dray/Getty Images
CC BY-SA

You’ll often hear lawmakers, activists and pundits argue that many transgender people regret their decision to have gender-affirming surgeries – a belief that’s been fueling a wave of legislation that restricts access to gender-affirming health care.

Gender-affirming care can include surgical procedures such as facial reconstruction, chest or “top” surgery, and genital or “bottom” surgery.

But in an article we recently published in JAMA Surgery, we challenge the notion that transgender people often regret gender-affirming surgeries.

Evidence suggests that less than 1% of transgender people who undergo gender-affirming surgery report regret. That proportion is even more striking when compared to the fact that 14.4% of the broader population reports regret after similar surgeries.

For example, studies have found that between 5% and 14% of all women who receive mastectomies to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer say they regretted doing so. However, less than 1% of transgender men who receive the same procedure report regret.

These statistics are based on reviews of existing studies that investigated regret among 7,928 transgender individuals who received gender-affirming surgeries. Although some of this prior research has been criticized for overlooking the fact that regret can sometimes take years to develop, it aligns with the growing body of studies that show positive health outcomes among transgender people who receive gender-affirming care.

Why access to gender-affirming surgery matters

About 1.6 million people in the U.S. identify as transgender. While only about 25% of these individuals have obtained gender-affirming surgeries, these procedures have become more commonplace. From 2016 to 2020, roughly 48,000 trans people in the U.S. received gender-affirming surgeries.

These procedures provide transgender people with the opportunity to align their physical bodies with their gender identity, which could positively impact mental health. Research shows that access to gender-affirming surgeries may reduce levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation among transgender people.

The mental health benefits may explain the low levels of regret. Transgender people have far higher rates of mental health concerns than cisgender people, or people whose gender identity aligns with their sex at birth. This is largely because transgender people have a more difficult time living authentically without experiencing discrimination, harassment and violence.

Gender-affirming surgery often involves going through a number of hoops: waiting periods, hormone therapy and learning about the potential risks and benefits of the procedures. Although most surgeries are reserved for adults, the leading guidelines recommend that patients be at least 15 years old.

This thorough process that trans people go through before receiving surgery may also explain the lower levels of regret.

In addition, many cisgender people get surgeries that, in their ideal world, they wouldn’t receive. But they go through with the surgery in order to prevent a health problem.

For instance, a cisgender woman who receives a mastectomy to avoid breast cancer may ultimately regret the decision if she dislikes her new appearance. Meanwhile, a transgender man who receives the same procedure is more likely to be pleased with a masculine-looking chest.

Improving research and public policy

It’s important to note that this research is not conclusive. Views of surgeries can change over time, and patients can feel quite differently about their outcomes eight years after their surgery as opposed to one year after their surgery.

Nonetheless, the consensus among experts, including at the American Medical Association, is that gender-affirming surgery can improve transgender people’s health and should not be banned.

U.S. states such as Oklahoma and North Dakota have ignored this consensus and have restricted access to these procedures. In response, 12 states have designated themselves “sanctuaries” for gender-affirming care.

Although our statistics on surgical regret may change as researchers learn more, they are the best data that health care providers have. And public policies that are based on the best available evidence have the most potential to improve people’s lives.

The Conversation

Harry Barbee has received funding from the National Institute on Aging for their past work.

Bashar Hassan and Fan Liang do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

22 Jan 12:36

OPINION: USF, don’t value pocket change more than your employees.

by Liv Baker, Correspondent
With faculty working hard to make USF a great experience for students, employers should show their appreciation. Yet, 14,980 members of faculty and staff at USF are slapped with a parking bill each year. “Apparently we have plenty of money to build fancy vanity buildings and a stadium,” said Richard Manning, faculty senate secretary and […]
19 Jan 20:55

Old forests are critically important for slowing climate change and merit immediate protection from logging

by Beverly Law, Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology and Terrestrial Systems Science, Oregon State University
An old-growth forest of noble fir trees at Marys Peak in Oregon's Coast Range. Beverly Law, CC BY-ND

Forests are an essential part of Earth’s operating system. They reduce the buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion, deforestation and land degradation by 30% each year. This slows global temperature increases and the resulting changes to the climate. In the U.S., forests take up 12% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions annually and store the carbon long term in trees and soils.

Mature and old-growth forests, with larger trees than younger forests, play an outsized role in accumulating carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere. These forests are especially resistant to wildfires and other natural disturbances as the climate warms.

Most forests in the continental U.S. have been harvested multiple times. Today, just 3.9% of timberlands across the U.S., in public and private hands, are over 100 years old, and most of these areas hold relatively little carbon compared with their potential.

The Biden administration is moving to improve protection for old-growth and mature forests on federal land, which we see as a welcome step. But this involves regulatory changes that will likely take several years to complete. Meanwhile, existing forest management plans that allow logging of these important old, large trees remain in place.

As scientists who have spent decades studying forest ecosystems and the effects of climate change, we believe that it is essential to start protecting carbon storage in these forests. In our view, there is ample scientific evidence to justify an immediate moratorium on logging mature and old-growth forests on federal lands.

Remote sensing data from space is a new tool for estimating forest growth and density.

Federal action to protect mature and old-growth forests

A week after his inauguration in 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that set a goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 to address what the order called “a profound climate crisis.” In 2022, Biden recognized the climate importance of mature and old-growth forests for a healthy climate and called for conserving them on federal lands.

Most recently, in December 2023, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it was evaluating the effects of amending management plans for 128 U.S. national forests to better protect mature and old-growth stands – the first time any administration has taken this kind of action.

These actions seek to make existing old-growth forests more resilient; preserve ecological benefits that they provide, such as habitat for threatened and endangered species; establish new areas where old-growth conditions can develop; and monitor the forests’ condition over time. The amended national forest management plans also would prohibit logging old-growth trees for mainly economic purposes – that is, producing timber. Harvesting trees would be permitted for other reasons, such as thinning to reduce fire severity in hot, dry regions where fires occur more frequently.

A woman rests her hand on the trunk of an enormous tree, looking up toward its crown.
Forest biologist Beverly Law with an old-growth Douglas fir in Corvallis, Oregon. Beverly Law, CC BY-ND

Remarkably, however, logging is hardly considered in the Forest Service’s initial analysis, although studies show that it causes greater carbon losses than wildfires and pest infestations.

In one analysis across 11 western U.S. states, researchers calculated total aboveground tree carbon loss from logging, beetle infestations and fire between 2003 and 2012 and found that logging accounted for half of it. Across the states of California, Oregon and Washington, harvest-related carbon emissions between 2001 and 2016 averaged five times the emissions from wildfires.

A 2016 study found that nationwide, between 2006 and 2010, total carbon emissions from logging were comparable to emissions from all U.S. coal plants, or to direct emissions from the entire building sector.

Close-up of a furry animal with small rounded ears
Pacific fishers (Pekania pennanti) are small carnivores related to minks and otters. They live in forests with large, mixed-tree canopy covers, mainly on federal land on the West Coast. A subpopulation in the southern Sierra Nevada is listed as endangered. Pacific Southwest Forest Service, USDA/Flickr, CC BY

Logging pressure

Federal lands are used for multiple purposes, including biodiversity and water quality protection, recreation, mining, grazing and timber production. Sometimes, these uses can conflict with one another – for example, conservation and logging..

Legal mandates to manage land for multiple uses do not explicitly consider climate change, and federal agencies have not consistently factored climate change science into their plans. Early in 2023, however, the White House Council on Environmental Quality directed federal agencies to consider the effects of climate change when they propose major federal actions that significantly affect the environment.

Multiple large logging projects on public land clearly qualify as major federal actions, but many thousands of acres have been legally exempted from such analysis.

Across the western U.S., just 20% of relatively high-carbon forests, mostly on federal lands, are protected from logging and mining. A study in the lower 48 states found that 76% of mature and old-growth forests on federal lands are vulnerable to logging. Harvesting these forests would release about half of their aboveground tree carbon into the atmosphere within one or two decades.

An analysis of 152 national forests across North America found that five forests in the Pacific Northwest had the highest carbon densities, but just 10% to 20% of these lands were protected at the highest levels. The majority of national forest area that is mature and old growth is not protected from logging, and current management plans include logging of some of the largest trees still standing.

Letting old trees grow

Conserving forests is one of the most effective and lowest-cost options for managing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and mature and old-growth forests do this job most effectively. Protecting and expanding them does not require expensive or complex energy-consuming technologies, unlike some other proposed climate solutions.

Allowing mature and old-growth forests to continue growing will remove from the air and store the largest amount of atmospheric carbon in the critical decades ahead. The sooner logging of these forests ceases, the more climate protection they can provide.

Richard Birdsey, a former U.S. Forest Service carbon and climate scientist and current senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, contributed to this article.

This is an update of an article originally published on March 2, 2023.

The Conversation

Beverly Law receives funding from the Conservation Biology Institute.

William Moomaw receives funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

19 Jan 20:47

Six surprising things about placebos everyone should know

by Jeremy Howick, Professor and Director of the Stoneygate Centre for Excellence in Empathic Healthcare, University of Leicester
esoxx/Shutterstock

Placebos have been studied more than any treatment in the history of medicine, yet they remain mysterious.

I’ve been studying placebos for 20 years and I’ve done some of the key studies that have advanced the scientific knowledge in this area. Here are six facts about this strange effect that still fascinate me.

1. Placebos have a dark cousin: nocebos

A 29-year-old builder went to the hospital after having jumped onto a 15cm nail that pierced his boot. Moving the nail was so painful he had to be sedated with powerful drugs (fentanyl and midazolam) to remove it. But when he took off his boot, the medics discovered that the nail had gone between his toes. The builder’s pain was caused by the wrong belief that the nail had penetrated his foot.

The detrimental effects of negative expectations are called nocebo effects. For evolutionary reasons (survival depends on avoiding danger), nocebo effects are larger than placebo effects.

Unfortunately, patients are often told more about the bad things that might happen than the good things, which can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, learning that a drug has a possible side-effect of nausea or pain can actually cause nausea or pain.

A builder about to step on a nail
The nocebo effect is much stronger than the placebo effect. Gustavo MS_Photography/Shutterstock

2. Placebos work even if people know they are placebos

Linda Buonanno suffered so badly from irritable bowel syndrome that she often couldn’t leave the house for weeks. She signed up for a trial of “honest” (open-label) placebos, which is a placebo that patients know is a placebo.

The Harvard doctors in the trial told her the pills were “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in [irritable bowel] symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes”.

The honest placebos worked so well that she was able to resume a normal life.

Honest placebos have worked in other trials for treating depression, back pain and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Honest placebos work because of our subconscious expectations. Our past experiences of doctors and hospitals can generate subconscious expectations that activate our body’s inner pharmacy, which produces morphine (endorphins) and other beneficial drugs.

3. Honest placebos are ethically acceptable

It is often considered unethical for doctors to give placebos to patients because this supposedly involves lying (telling patients that a sugar pill is a powerful medication). But honest placebos do not involve lying, so there is no ethical barrier.

In one ongoing trial, doctors asked patients whether they would be willing to try a mix of real painkillers and honest placebos. Patients in this trial have the same level of pain relief following surgery, but are less likely to become dependent on painkillers.

4. Placebo effects are part of most treatment effects

When a doctor prescribes ibuprofen for back pain, the effects are due to the ibuprofen and the patient’s beliefs and expectations, which can be influenced by the doctor’s communication. Doctors who offer positive messages in a warm, empathic manner will increase the effect of the drugs.

The size and colour of the pill can also influence the effect. A large, orange pill can reduce pain more than a small, red one.

By contrast, blue pills generally have a sedative effect – except for Italian men, for whom blue pills have an excitative effect), probably because their revered football team wears blue.

Doctors’ ethical duty to benefit patients suggests it is an ethical duty to maximise the placebo effects of all treatments they provide.

5. You don’t need placebos to have placebo effects

In one trial, patients were given morphine via an intravenous line following surgery. However, only half of the patients were told they were receiving morphine. The patients who were told this had 50% more pain relief than those who were not told they were receiving morphine. This is an example of a placebo effect without a placebo.

6. You can generate placebo (and nocebo) effects in yourself

All communication can have a beneficial or harmful effect. One study found that teaching communication skills to families reduced anxiety and depression. On the other hand, couples who dwell on problems and negative aspects of their relationships were shown in a study to have weaker immune systems.

Acts of altruism, focusing on a brighter future, or gratitude are proven ways to reduce the effect of negative communication. An easy way to generate positive placebo effects for yourself is by performing a random act of kindness, such as making a colleague a cup of tea, or simply smiling and saying hello.

You can learn more about the amazing effects of placebos and nocebos in my latest book, The Power of Placebos: How the Science of Placebos and Nocebos can Improve Health Care.

The Conversation

Jeremy Howick has received funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the General Medical Council (GMC). He is currently funded by the Stoneygate Trust.

18 Jan 19:36

The maths of rightwing populism: easy answers + confidence = reassuring certainty

by Dorje C Brody, Professor of Mathematics, University of Surrey
Shutterstock/Pictrider

Rightwing populists appear to be enjoying a surge across the western world. For those who don’t support these parties, their appeal can be baffling and unsettling. They appear to play on people’s fears and offer somewhat trivial answers to difficult issues.

But the mathematics of human inference and cognition can help us understand what makes this a winning formula.

Because politics largely boils down to communication, the mathematics of communication theory can help us understand why voters are drawn to parties that use simple, loud messaging in their campaigning – as well as how they get away with using highly questionable messaging. Traditionally, this is the theory that enables us to listen to radio broadcasts and make telephone calls. But American mathematician Norbert Wiener went so far as to argue that social phenomena can only be understood via the theory of communication.

Wiener tried to explain different aspects of society by evoking a concept in science known as the second law of thermodynamics. In essence, this law says that over time, order will turn into disorder, or, in the present context, reliable information will be overwhelmed by confusion, uncertainties and noise. In mathematics, the degree of disorder is often measured by a quantity called entropy, so the second law can be rephrased by saying that over time, and on average, entropy will increase.

One of Wiener’s arguments is that as technologies for communication advance, people will circulate more and more inessential “noisy” information (think Twitter, Instagram and so on), which will overshadow facts and important ideas. This is becoming more pronounced with AI-generated disinformation.

The effect of the second law is significant in predicting the future form of society over a period of decades. But another aspect of communication theory also comes into play in the more immediate term.

When we analyse information about a topic of interest, we will reach a conclusion that leaves us, on average, with the smallest uncertainty about that topic. In other words, our thought process attempts to minimise entropy. This means, for instance, when two people with opposing views on a topic are presented with an article on that subject, they will often take away different interpretations of the same article, with each confirming the validity of their own initial view. The reason is simple: interpreting the article as questioning one’s opinion will inevitably raise uncertainty.

In psychology, this effect is known as confirmation bias. It is often interpreted as an irrational or illogical trait of our behaviour, but we now understand the science behind it by borrowing concepts from communication theory. I call this a “tenacious Bayesian” behaviour because it follows from the Bayes theorem of probability theory, which tells us how we should update our perspectives of the world as we digest noisy or uncertain information.

A corollary of this is that if someone has a strong belief in one scenario which happens to represent a false reality, then even if factual information is in circulation, it will take a long time for that person to change their belief. This is because a conversion from one certainty to another typically (but not always) requires a path that traverses uncertainties we instinctively try to avoid.

Polarised society

When the tenacious Bayesian effect is combined with Wiener’s second law, we can understand how society becomes polarised. The second law says there will be a lot of diverging information and noise around us, creating confusion and uncertainty. We are drawn to information that offers greater certainty, even if it is flawed.

For a binary issue, the greatest uncertainty happens when the two alternatives seem equally likely – and are therefore difficult to choose between. But for an individual person who believes in one of the two alternatives, the path of least uncertainty is to hold steady on that belief. So in a world in which any information can easily be disseminated far and wide but in which people are also immovable, society can easily be polarised.

Where are the leftwing populists?

If a society is maximally polarised, then we should find populists surging on both the left and right of the political spectrum. And yet that is not the case at the moment. The right is more dominant. The reason for this is, in part, that the left is not well-positioned to offer certainty. Why? Historically, socialism has rarely been implemented in running a country – not even the Soviet Union or China managed to implement it.

At least for now, the left (or centrists, for that matter) also seem a lot more cautious about knowingly offering unrealistic answers to complex problems. In contrast, the right offers (often false) certainty with confidence. It is not difficult to see that in a noisy environment, the loudest are heard the most.


Read more: Why have authoritarianism and libertarianism merged? A political psychologist on 'the vulnerability of the modern self'


Today’s politics plays out against a backdrop of uncertainties that include wars in Ukraine and Gaza with little prospect of exit strategies in sight; the continued cost of living crisis; energy, food and water insecurity; migration; and so on. Above all, the impact of the climate crisis.

The answer to this uncertainty, according to rightwing populists, is to blame everything on outsiders. Remove migrants and all problems will be solved – and all uncertainties eradicated. True or false, the message is simple and clear.

In conveying this message, it is important to instil in the public an exaggerated fear of the impact of migration, so their message will give people a false sense of certainty. What if there are no outsiders? Then create one. Use the culture war to label the “experts” (judges, scholars, etc.) as the enemy of the people.

For populists to thrive, society needs to be divided so that people can feel certain about where they belong – and so that those on the opposing side of the argument can be ignored.

The problem, of course, is that there are rarely simple solutions to complex issues. Indeed, a political party campaigning for a tough migration policy but weak climate measures is arguably enabling mass migration on a scale unseen in modern history, because climate change will make many parts of the world uninhabitable.

Wiener was already arguing in 1950 that we will pay the price for our actions at a time when it is most inconvenient to do so. Whatever needs to be done to solve complex societal issues, those who wish to implement what they believe are the right measures need to be aware that they have to win an election to do that – and that voters respond to simple and positive messages that will reduce the uncertainties hanging over their thoughts.

The Conversation

Dorje C Brody receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/X019926/1).