Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Singleton, Lecturer in Journalism & Global Media Studies, University of Galway

Each year as Spotify Wrapped drops, social media timelines fill with neon slides declaring who we “really” are. We trade our top artists and most-played songs like postcards from a year already fading.

It feels communal, a party game to end the year of listening. But this cheerful ritual shows how deeply surveillance has woven itself into our leisure – and, how readily we accept it. It’s what the social psychologist and philosopher Shoshana Zuboff describes in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism the “claiming of human experience as free raw material” for predictive data.

Wrapped does more than reflect our taste. It turns private listening into public connection, and connection into content. What looks like play can instead be seen as work. And what feels like recognition of our uniqueness is a reflection of how well we have conformed to the algorithm.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Five tips for becoming a cinephile in the age of streaming algorithms

• Why musicians are leaving Spotify – and what it means for the music you love

• Seven albums to listen to during a breakup – from Lily Allen to Marvin Gaye

At first glance, it’s simple. You listen, Spotify counts. Then it wraps those counts in bright colours and confident language, diagnosing who you are, or who the platform imagines you to be.

Wrapped acts as an identity machine: statistics made into self-portrait. You appear as the “indie purist” or “pop maximalist”. But behind the graphics lies the attention economy, turning every pause into data. What looks like a mirror is really a map drawn to lead you back to using Spotify. That map is built from collecting data on your skipping habits, workout playlists and time-of-day listening.

Leisure once stood apart from labour. Datafication – turning everyday behaviour into trackable, monetisable data – is an answer to an old problem: how to profit from free time. Through this perspective, nearly every facet of life now includes some form of labour.

With apps like Spotify, every engagement creates the highly valuable byproduct of data. Every skip or replay generates data that can be traded and sold. Every share is free advertising. Even when we think we’re unwinding, we’re producing value for someone else.

The sociologist David Beer, who researches the role of data in social and cultural life, wrote that his Wrapped “in some ways … feels like a performance review of [his] leisure time”.

Being told you’re in the top 1% of listeners of a certain artist feels like recognition, but that pleasure masks a loss of agency. Beer felt his Wrapped was humouring him and rewarding him for being a “good listener”, which seems like a byword for “worker”.

By telling him how long and “well” he had listened, by informing him he had “found ways to grow”, he felt like it was boosting his sense of self in order to keep him coming back.

It is an effective platform strategy. Wrapped spikes app downloads and engagement each December, with Spotify crediting it as a major driver of growth.

Narrowing your tastes

Another thing to be wary of is how Wrapped and Spotify’s algorithm could be shaping your taste. Research suggests recommendation loops tend to reinforce existing habits rather than expand them, producing what scholars call “taste tautology”.

Read more:
Four ways to cultivate a unique taste in music in the age of streaming algorithms

These recommendations – new albums like the ones you love, artists spotlighted who are like your favourites – are presented on the interface so readily or built into the design. For instance, the feature where tracks chosen by the algorithm start playing immediately when the song or album you put on ends. Or “curated” playlists like Discover Weekly – described as “your shortcut to hidden gems, deep cuts, and future faves”.

But the more we click on these curated options and the more data we feed the app about our listening habits the more we teach the algorithm to serve more of the same rather than surprise us.

Engagement becomes affirmation of who we seemingly are as predictions reshape preferences, and the preferences it serves us harden into identity. Research suggests that rather than expanding your taste by introducing you to new tracks and artists, this type of algorithmic recommendation can actually narrow your taste.

What kind of individuality can exist in a system that decides what we see and rewards compliance? This subtle erosion of choice isn’t accidental. Wrapped struggles to capture eclectic or erratic listening, flattening diversity into generic categories that distort more than they reveal.

Posting your Wrapped is a small cultural performance, part taste, part humour, part self-awareness. Friends reply with theirs; brands join in. The ritual doubles as free global marketing. Each share delivers a flicker of pleasure that keeps the attention economy turning, our emotions becoming raw material.

A better use of Wrapped is to treat it as a prompt, not a verdict or refelection. Close the app, follow a friend’s suggestion, watch a band live. Keep some of your taste uncounted. Not because numbers are evil, but because taste is more than what can be measured and you deserve to find something you love off the beaten track.

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

– ref. Spotify Wrapped reminds us even our leisure time is being surveilled and sold – https://theconversation.com/spotify-wrapped-reminds-us-even-our-leisure-time-is-being-surveilled-and-sold-270119

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Champneys, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University

Just as humans have historically gathered during winter, many animals do the same. Animals may not be exchanging presents or decorating their nests and dens but a lot of species become more social in winter – even ones that are normally solitary.

Animals have more to worry about this time of year than bickering relatives or the last date for Christmas post. Winter poses severe challenges for wildlife, from freezing temperatures to a scarcity of food. One of the main reasons animals aggregate during the winter is to keep warm. Some species avoid these harsh conditions by migrating to warmer areas, such as cuckoos in the UK overwintering in central Africa. Others grow insulating coats (like mountain hares in the Scottish highlands), or develop a thick layer of blubber (grey seals and harbour porpoises for example) to keep the cold at bay.

But some animals come together instead. Brandt’s voles inhabit the grasslands and steppe of inner Mongolian, where winter temperatures drop as low as -30 °C and strong winds and blizzards are frequent.

During the summer months, the voles are largely solitary. However, throughout the
long, harsh winters, they form small huddling groups of around four in the nesting chambers of their underground burrows to share body heat. Huddling conserves energy by reducing resting metabolic rate by up to 37% and limits heat loss.

Safety in numbers

Arctic hares live in one of the harshest environments on Earth in northern Canada
where the long winters last up to nine months and temperatures can drop to -40°C.
During this time, they abandon their solitary summer habits and form large aggregations of up to a hundred hares.

The purpose of this behaviour is not for thermoregulation, since they do not come into close contact. Rather, it is for safety against predators. When Arctic hares form winter groups, they are increasing vigilance against predators including Arctic foxes and wolves.

A major advantage for prey species living in a group is that each animal can spend less time on the lookout for predators (and more time feeding). This is crucial for Arctic hares in winter when food is scarce and they need more energy to keep warm.

Larger groups also cause predator confusion, making it harder for predators to target individual animals. The group dilution effect means that in the event of an attack each hare’s chance of being caught is reduced.

Information network

Rooks are highly social birds living in small flocks of typically ten or fewer unrelated birds all year round. During the winter months many small flocks will join up to form huge colonies of hundreds or thousands of birds from the surrounding area.

Buckenham Carrs woodland in Norfolk has the largest rookery in Britain where an estimated 50,000 rooks have been gathering every winter for centuries. Each evening birds travel to the roost from across the Norfolk Broads, sometimes up to 20 miles, when the bare trees become foliated with rooks.

During the day, the rooks go off in smaller foraging groups and then return to the roosts each evening. Roosting closely together not only helps reduce heat-loss but also makes it easier to find food. These large communal roosts also function as information exchange centres about where the best places to forage are.

When rooks leave their roosts in the morning, they pay close attention to inadvertent cues given by other rooks such as their body condition (as an indicator of recent foraging success) and the direction in which they fly. Less successful rooks copy their more prosperous roost mates. Group foraging is more efficient and therefore reduces exposure to danger.

Water conservation

Another example of the benefits of winter groups is water conservation. Ladybirds
enter a physiological dormancy, called diapause, which allows them to survive the
winter months without feeding. During this period, they form clusters of hundreds or even thousands of ladybirds, which helps conserve energy, as clustered individuals have lower metabolic rates.

Moreover, these aggregations create a microclimate with more stable temperatures and higher humidity, which helps reduce the risk of desiccation, as ladybirds do not consume water during overwintering.

In addition, ladybirds gain extra protection when they form large clusters because their warning colouration, advertising their toxicity, is more obvious to predators.

In the UK, native seven-spot ladybirds aggregate under tree bark or leaf litter, whereas the non-native harlequin ladybird prefers houses and pack together in huge numbers around windows and in lofts during the winter.

Record warm temperatures for both spring and summer in the UK during 2025 may have led to a surge in insect populations. This may explain why many people have noticed large clusters of ladybirds around windows in their homes.

If you find a cluster of ladybirds in your home, it is best just to leave them alone as they pose no risk to people or wooden surfaces. Plus, long term data indicates insect populations are dwindling.

Reproductive advantage

In the cold prairies of Manitoba (Canada), red sided garter snakes congregate in
communal, overwintering dens, sometimes by the thousand. Snakes rely on existing underground structures such as the abandoned burrows of chipmunks, disused wells or limestone sink holes to overwinter. These snakes detect and follow the pheromone trails left by other snakes, which leads them directly to the communal dens.

This seasonal assembly not only increases survival rate during the winter months but also facilitates mating success come the spring. The close proximity of males and females after emergence reduces the time spent searching for a mate during the
short northern breeding season. Courtship begins immediately upon emergence from the dens. Multiple males coil around single females in a “mating ball” ensuring the chances of mating before the females disperse.

This seasonal social behaviour are adaptations for survival in harsh conditions. Similar to many animal species, early humans likely congregated during severe winters to share warmth and resources, illustrating a shared strategy for survival in challenging environments. Understanding this behaviour is vital as climate change alters winter severity and availability of food and shelter.

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

– ref. Humans aren’t the only animals that gather to hunker down together at Christmas – https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-the-only-animals-that-gather-to-hunker-down-together-at-christmas-271015

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Karolina Nieberle, Associate Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology, Durham University

Loneliness is the pain we feel when our social connections fall short of fulfilling our needs. At its core, it reflects a fundamental human need: to feel close to and connected with others. But it is also often an invisible experience.

Loneliness is not just a personal issue. It is also a workplace one. Gallup’s 2025 global workplace report showed that 22% of employees felt lonely on their previous workday. Managers weren’t immune either: 23% of them reported feeling lonely.

Workplace loneliness can affect anyone and can quietly damage engagement, wellbeing and performance. For leaders, the stakes are high. When they experience loneliness, it can subtly shape how they interact with their teams. They may communicate less openly, avoid feedback or appear withdrawn. A lonely leader influences their entire workplace environment, shaping team dynamics, morale and performance.

With our colleagues, Michelle Hammond (Oakland University) and Keming Yang (Durham University), we have studied loneliness in the workplace and found that managers might feel lonely due to the demands of their role and the things they experience during the workday. These things can vary from day to day.

As managers move up the hierarchy, their status and responsibilities increase, which can create distance from both their team members and peers. Building connections depends on being able to show vulnerability. But daily pressures, tough decisions and confidentiality constraints often make it difficult for managers to open up. As a result, their need for social connection can go unmet on some days, while on other days they may feel engaged and well connected.

Our research looked at the consequences of short-term loneliness among leaders. In two independent studies with UK managers, we found that fluctuations in their loneliness levels had implications for how they approached leadership.

On days or in situations when managers felt lonely, they engaged less with their work (this could be spending time on matters unrelated to work or letting others do their tasks) and lower levels of engagement with their team members (avoiding their employees, for instance).

The consequences of short-term loneliness for managers did not stop at the end of the workday. After a day in which they felt lonely, managers distanced themselves more from others in the evening. This created a loop that perpetuated loneliness into the next workday, and it helps to explain why managers sometimes feel lonely for extended periods.

But our research uncovered a key resource outside of work that helped managers mitigate the consequences of loneliness and stopped it from affecting them for a longer period. This centred on how important their relationships with family and friends were in their life – something we called “family identity salience”.

Managers who placed greater value on their family and social connections were better able to switch off from work in the evenings, and loneliness from their workday did not spill over into their home life. Loneliness still affected their leadership at work, but it didn’t lead them to withdraw socially at home. As a result, they were able to start the next workday with a clean slate.

This “family identity salience” motivates managers to create protective boundaries between their daily work and home domains. It helps them shift out of work mode and reconnect with their friends and families after work – especially important on tough days.

Not just managers

Although managers’ loneliness has the greatest implications for the health of the workplace overall, anyone can feel lonely at work sometimes, whether or not they are a manager.

It may be helpful for workers to explore which experiences and situations make them feel lonely. They could also consider the situations when their manager might feel lonely. On the other hand, some situations might make them feel close to others, including managers. Talking to peers and sharing experiences can help to raise awareness of the issue.

To prevent occasional loneliness, workers could make themselves (and others) aware of the networks and groups that offer connection. These could be immediate team members, peers, (senior) managers, colleagues in other departments or external partners. They should think about what connects them with each of these groups and the steps they can take to strengthen their connection with them.

In addition to workplace networks, employees should invest in their relationships outside work. They can remind themselves why these relationships matter, and keep family and social goals visible (with photos, reminders or personal notes) to reinforce a sense of identity beyond work. The energy and support resources that people gain from time with friends and family outside work can unlock benefits in the professional sphere too.

Workers can also take steps to sustain and expand their relationships outside of work. For example, they might be the one who arranges dates, phone calls and shared activities with the people they value.

The best way for people to shield themselves from workplace loneliness is by not placing all their eggs in their “work basket”. Building resilience by nourishing and investing in interests and connections to places and people is a good way to celebrate all the facets of what makes us human.

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

– ref. Could your boss be lonely? Here’s why it matters more than you might think – https://theconversation.com/could-your-boss-be-lonely-heres-why-it-matters-more-than-you-might-think-272129

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nikiforos Panourgias, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London

Most people outside of banking won’t have heard of Euroclear. It’s a Brussels-based settlement provider that enables the transfer of ownership of securities between seller and buyer. The firm is the focal point of a major geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the European Union.

The controversy stems from an EU initiative to leverage frozen Russian assets held at Euroclear to finance Ukraine’s war effort. In response, Russia’s central bank has filed a lawsuit in Moscow seeking damages for the freezing of its assets.

This legal manoeuvre represents an attempt to seize assets worth €17 billion (£14.89 billion) held by Euroclear in Russia on behalf of its clients and pursue further claims on similar Euroclear assets in other jurisdictions not part of the international sanctions imposed on Russia. These could include China, Hong Kong and states in the Gulf and Central Asia.

To appreciate the implications of these competing claims, it is essential to understand Euroclear’s role and origins.

Euroclear functions as a central securities depository (CSD). These are invisible, yet vital, pieces of infrastructure for financial markets. The function of a CSD is to transfer ownership of securities – titles of ownership of financial assets – from seller to buyer once payment is confirmed.

Euroclear is an international CSD. This means it handles not just equities traded on a particular stock exchange like national CSDs do, but a vast range of financial instruments across many markets and jurisdictions.

This includes Eurobonds, supranational agency bonds, government and corporate debt, money market instruments, asset-backed securities and more. It also provides critical collateral management and securities borrowing and lending services.

In 2024, it processed 331 million transactions worth €1,162 trillion (£877 billion) and held more than €40 trillion of clients’ assets.

This privileged position depends on trust. Depositories such as Euroclear process ownership changes via book-entry transfer. That means assets are held by the CSDs and recorded in a database of holdings, which confers legal ownership of the titles. This ensures uncontested and efficient transactions and reduces the risk of one side of a trade not fulfilling its obligations.

If the trust that allows market participants to assign their assets to a CSD like Euroclear for safekeeping falters, the book-entry transfer system breaks down and markets suffer.

Risks of EU’s plan

The EU’s plan to use frozen Russian assets as collateral for loans to Ukraine introduces significant risks. If market participants fear politically motivated asset seizures, they may relocate holdings to jurisdictions perceived as safer. This could potentially weaken Euroclear’s position and destabilise the markets it serves.

The recent EU proposals have evolved to avoid outright seizure of the Russian assets. Instead it has opted for freezing them indefinitely. Under this arrangement, legal ownership remains with Euroclear’s Russian clients, while Euroclear uses these assets as collateral for loans to the EU to finance Ukraine.

But this raises important questions. What happens if sanctions are lifted or Russia’s legal challenges are successful? Could Euroclear demand immediate repayment from the EU? And could Euroclear withstand the financial strain of restoring all these assets to their Russian owners en masse? These uncertainties are a threat to Euroclear’s stability – and, by extension, the smooth operation of the global markets it serves.

Even unsuccessful litigation on the side of Euroclear’s Russian clients could freeze Euroclear’s holdings at national CSDs in non-sanction jurisdictions for prolonged periods. This could create operational problems for Euroclear and unsettle its clients.

The European Commission has suggested that Euroclear compensate clients for Russian-related losses using its immobilised Russian funds. But this would mean fewer funds available for loans to the EU for financing Ukraine.

The issues above are further complicated by Euroclear’s history and its part in the vast multitrillion dollar Eurodollar and Eurobond markets for offshore currency deposits and debt securities. Founded in 1968 by Morgan Guaranty Trust in Brussels, Euroclear supported the burgeoning Eurodollar and Eurobond markets.

These markets were based on offshore dollar pools that included Soviet dollar deposits seeking refuge from US jurisdiction during the cold war.

Belgium and Euroclear had an interest in nurturing Soviet trust. This was formalised in the 1989 Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union–USSR bilateral investment treaty that is still in force between Belgium and Russia.

The treaty guarantees fair treatment, protection against expropriation, free transfer of funds and provides for dispute resolution and arbitration mechanisms. Allowing Russian assets to be used as loan collateral may be in breach of that treaty.

European financial leadership under threat

Europe’s world leadership in offshore currency and debt markets and the international financial infrastructures that support them) was achieved in the 1950s and 1960s due to perceived political risks in the US. But it’s now threatened by similar perceived risks in Europe if this plan to leverage Russian assets against its will is realised.

Euroclear is a rare example of a European global financial services champion which could provide valuable economic returns to fund Europe’s future ability to counter external threats. This could be both directly, through the generation of revenues and taxes, as well as indirectly.

Euroclear acts as part of a backbone for the EU’s financial infrastructures. It helps make Europe a central and critical part of the global financial system, enhancing market integration in Europe and across the globe, and channelling large reserves of international capital into the European financial system.

A misstep now could damage that competitive advantage, as well as cause financial turmoil and – in the longer run – potentially divert asset flows away from Europe to other, competing jurisdictions.

Nikiforos Panourgias currently receives research funding from the Chartered Institute of Management Accounting. He has also received funding in the past from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme and worked on a project with funding from the Science Foundation of Ireland.

– ref. How Europe could use billions in frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort – and why it’s so risky – https://theconversation.com/how-europe-could-use-billions-in-frozen-russian-assets-to-fund-ukraines-war-effort-and-why-its-so-risky-272087

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ed Hutchinson, Professor, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, University of Glasgow

Viruses, as we all know, are invisibly small things that make us sick. But is that the whole story?

Zoom in close enough and you’ll discover the complex, unseen world of viruses. Some do make us sick, but many others simply exist alongside us as part of the natural world. Most are very beautiful and many, it turns out, look a bit like snowflakes.

It’s the time of year for seasonal decorations. So the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has created a set of papercraft virus snowflakes you can print and cut out. They’re a fun way to explore the viruses around us this winter – and the vaccines that protect us from them.

Here are some of our favourites.

On the first day of Christmas a virus gave to me: a world that is too small to see

An elegantly decorated adenovirus, just 100 nanometres across – that’s a ten-thousandth of a millimetre, or smaller than a quarter of the wavelength of visible light.

On the second day of Christmas a virus gave to me: two twinned capsids

Many viruses use repeating protein blocks to package their genetic material (genome) into regular, rounded “capsids”. The geminiviruses of plants pull off a beautiful geometrical trick, stacking their proteins into a doubled capsid structure.

On the third day of Christmas a virus gave to me: three genome segments

Most viruses store their genes in one molecule, but some split them into segments – just like how our DNA is divided into multiple chromosomes. This virus, Heartland virus, has three of them.

On the fourth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: four COVID vaccines

There are four main types of COVID vaccine (clockwise from top left): protein subunit vaccines (which use harmless virus fragments), inactivated virus vaccines (using killed virus particles), mRNA vaccines (delivered in tiny lipid bubbles), and adenoviral vector vaccines (using a harmless virus as a delivery vehicle).

On the fifth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: FIIIIVE TIIINY RIIIIIIINGS

Anelloviruses (named after the Latin word for “ring” because of their circular genomes) are extremely common blood-borne viruses. Despite infecting almost everyone on the planet, they don’t appear to cause any disease – so they went completely unnoticed for decades.

On the sixth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: six wasps a-laying

Bracoviriforms have formed a remarkable partnership with a particular type of wasp. The wasp passes the virus’s genes directly to its offspring, and in return, the virus provides capsids (protein shells) for the wasp to use. The wasp then uses those capsids to disable a caterpillar’s immune system, allowing it to lay eggs inside the living caterpillar. Not the nicest story, but that’s nature for you.

On the seventh day of Christmas a virus gave to me: seven dogs a-barking

A vaccine made from inactivated rabies virus particles. Rabies vaccines were among the first ever developed, and, unusually, they can protect someone even after a dog bite has exposed them to this otherwise deadly virus.

On the eighth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: eight tools for teaching

Bacteriophage lambda infects the most commonly studied strain of lab bacteria, E coli. Instead of being a nuisance, it turned out to be a revelation. By manipulating its host with a clever set of genetic switches, lambda helped scientists understand how cells and genes are controlled.

On the ninth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: nine childhood vaccines

From January 1 2026, all children in the UK will be offered free vaccines against these nine viruses. They are (clockwise from top left) measles virus (the cause of measles and of measles encephalitis), varicella zoster virus (chickenpox, shingles, and a potential contributor to dementia), poliovirus (poliomyelitis and paralysis), mumps virus (mumps), hepatitis B virus (hepatitis, cirrhosis and liver cancer), human papillomavirus (cervical cancer), influenza virus (influenza), rotavirus (gastroenteritis) and rubella virus (German measles, miscarriage, congenital rubella syndrome).

On the tenth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: ten lunar landers

Bacteriophage T4 is one of the most complex and beautiful of the bacterial viruses. It lands on a bacterium like a tiny lunar module, then squats down to inject its genome and take over the cell. One small step.

On the eleventh day of Christmas a virus gave to me: eleven Christmas dinners

A wreath of ten crAssviruses – hugely abundant viruses that infect gut bacteria and are part of your normal, healthy microflora. They surround one norovirus, which causes winter vomiting disease, and is not part of your normal, healthy microflora.

On the twelfth day of Christmas a virus gave to me: twelve fights worth winning

Viruses representing pandemics or major outbreaks since the start of the 20th century: four influenza viruses (from the pandemics of 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009), SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, Zika virus, mpox virus, HIV, polio virus and Ebola virus.

The responses to all of these outbreaks were complex and flawed, but in every case their effects would have been far worse were it not for the tireless work of healthcare professionals, scientists and public health specialists. This work must continue – with a space for “disease X”, the ghost of viruses yet to come.

If you’d like to see more, you can download and try out the virus snowflakes for yourself, along with lesson plans and other free resources.

Ed Hutchinson receives funding from UKRI and the Wellcome Trust. He has unpaid positions on the board of the European Scientific Working group on Influenza, on Virus Division of the Microbiology Society and as an scientific advisor for Pinpoint Medical.

– ref. The twelve viruses of Christmas, and how to make your own – out of paper – https://theconversation.com/the-twelve-viruses-of-christmas-and-how-to-make-your-own-out-of-paper-271008