Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shelley Boulianne, Professor in Communication Studies, Mount Royal University

Since taking office, United States President Donald Trump has used tariffs to address perceived trade deficits with other countries. He claims that other countries have cheated and pillaged the U.S. via trade deficits.

In response, many political leaders have implemented retaliatory tariffs on American products, although Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently lifted many of them in an apparent peace offering amid Canada-U.S. trade negotiations.

Citizens have also been engaged in these trade wars by avoiding the purchase of American products and services, as well as avoiding travel to the U.S.

From June 25 to July 8, 2025, Kantar, a global research and consulting company, conducted a survey through its online panels of 1,500 respondents in Canada, France and the United Kingdom, respectively.

Strict quotas were used to ensure the survey respondents would match the census profile of the adult population in each of the three countries.

Surveying consumers

As a social scientist who examines citizen engagement in civic and political life, I designed the survey questions. Respondents answered yes or no to:

Due to Trump’s recent tariffs, have you boycotted: a) American products, including grocery items; b) American services, such as Facebook, Amazon, or TV streaming services; and c) Travel to the United States.

The graph below outlines the results. Compared to the U.K. and France, Canadians were far more likely to report boycotting American products, services and travel.

Canadians, of course, have greater opportunities to boycott compared to other countries, given historically high levels of travel and international trade with the U.S. and Canada’s close proximity to the country. Statistics Canada reports that Canadian trips to the U.S. are down by 28.7 per cent from last year.

This case study of political consumerism reveals important distinctions compared to traditional boycotts.

Politically motivated boycotting is typically associated with those holding left-wing views.

In this case, both left-wing and right-wing people are participating in the boycott of American products. There are no ideological differences in participation in Canada and France. However, in the U.K., those on the right are more likely to boycott American products, services and travel than those on the left.

Existing research also shows well-educated people are more likely to boycott, particularly in Canada and France.

But in the Kantar survey, education did not impact participation in the boycott of American products, services and travel. All educational groups were motivated to participate.

Expressing discontent

Boycotting is a particularly attractive form of political behaviour in the case of international relations, because angry international citizens cannot simply contact Trump to express their discontent.

In fact, criticizing U.S. policies under Trump may result in being turned away at the American border by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Instead, consumers can express their discontent through the choices they make when grocery shopping, when making travel plans, and finally, in their choice to refrain from using American-owned social media like Facebook.

This situation is also unique because Trump actively encourages citizens to boycott companies with which he disagrees. Despite his own calls to boycott companies, Trump and American officials have called Canadians “nasty” for boycotting U.S. alcohol and travel in retaliation of American tariffs.

Follow the leader?

Now Canada has lifted most of the retaliatory tariffs, with Carney explaining that Canada has the “best deal with the United States right now.”

Canadians may choose to follow the direction of their prime minister or they may view this as an opportunity to take more responsibility and continue to use their purchasing choices to influence trade relations.

The responses may also differ across countries.

The U.K. says it has negotiated the lowest U.S. tariff rate so far and therefore, British citizens may choose to end their boycotting.

In contrast, political leaders in France continue to criticize the European Union’s recent trade agreement with the U.S. In this case, French citizens may follow suit and continue to use their purchasing power to influence trade relations.

Shelley Boulianne 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. Canada is leading the U.K. and France in boycotting American goods due to Trump’s tariffs – https://theconversation.com/canada-is-leading-the-u-k-and-france-in-boycotting-american-goods-due-to-trumps-tariffs-263395

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By S. Mehmet Ozsoy, Assistant Professor of Finance, Concordia University

Unlike hurricanes and floods, which arrive suddenly and tend to dominate headlines with dramatic images of wrecked homes and submerged towns, droughts are often overlooked by media, governments and markets because they unfold more slowly.

Their gradual toll on fields, reservoirs and rural communities tends to be overshadowed by flashier disasters, but their consequences are no less severe.

A drought is a shortage of precipitation — typically lasting a season or longer — that results in insufficient water availability for ecosystems, agriculture and human use.

As climate change accelerates, droughts are projected to become more frequent and intense, especially in dry regions. This makes it increasingly urgent to understand their complex impact on agriculture, water supplies and regional economies.

Droughts don’t just hurt farmers

Droughts barely register in financial markets, despite their widespread consequences. Yet research shows that droughts can slash food industry profits by increasing farming costs, disrupting supply chains and tightening profit margins.

Droughts hit utilities and agriculture hardest. Shrinking water supplies wilt crops and strain water providers. But the impact extends far beyond them: low river levels can stall hydropower production, pushing up electricity costs and affecting water-heavy industries like textiles and chemicals.

Shallow waterways can also delay or block barges carrying goods, which hikes shipping costs. These disruptions ripple outward, affecting everyone from factory workers to shoppers.

Yet markets often ignore these risks until damage becomes impossible to overlook. With climate change poised to make droughts more frequent and severe, this blind spot could pose growing risks to investors and the stability of food supply chains.

Banks reveal the economic toll of droughts

Climate shocks like droughts hit local economies hardest — especially small, private businesses. While researchers can access financial data for public companies, the finances of private firms are far more opaque, making it difficult to understand the local impact of droughts.

To address this gap, we studied how prolonged droughts affect the financial stability and loan performance of regional banks across the United States. The stability, or fragility, of these banks can sway the economy, as seen in the 2008-09 crisis.

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The window of opportunity to address increasing drought and expanding drylands is vanishing

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By examining bank balance sheets, we traced the broader economic ripples of droughts and found that a two-year drought can have the same economic impact on a region as a one-percentage point increase in the unemployment rate.

Communities suffer when banks do

Smaller banks are closely tied to their communities and often lend locally — often within just five miles — making them especially vulnerable when droughts strike. As small firms struggle to repay loans in the wake of such disasters, banks see an increase in missed payments.

Our data shows that droughts disrupt entire communities as job losses and tight budgets create a domino effect throughout local economies.

Banks in drought-hit areas see lower profits and rising risks. Unpaid loans, or “non-performing loans,” spike not just for farmers but for homeowners, businesses and commercial properties.

When farm workers lose income from unplanted or failed crops, they may fall behind on mortgage payments, even if farms themselves are insured.

Missed mortgage payments signal household distress, while defaulted business loans hit farms, food producers and service providers like caterers as customer demand dries up. Reduced wages also means less spending at local restaurants, equipment stores and other small businesses.

Unlike hurricanes or floods — which are designated disasters by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency — droughts receive no such status.

Once a flood or hurricane is declared a federal disaster, U.S. federal agencies provide financial assistance to eligible households and businesses. FEMA offers several programs, including financial assistance for temporary housing, home repairs and the replacement of personal property.

FEMA also supports the Disaster Unemployment Assistance and the Dislocated Worker Grant program. In addition, the Small Business Administration provides long-term, low-interest loans to eligible businesses and some homeowners, while the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) offers administrative disaster-related tax relief.

Because droughts don’t have access to the same resources, banks and local economies are left to cope on their own instead of receiving emergency aid from FEMA. As a result, our research found that banks are more likely to close branches in drought-hit areas. These closures can make recovery even harder for local businesses left reeling from droughts as they lose vital loan access.

Diversification offers some protection

From banks reeling with unpaid loans to families struggling to make ends meet, the fallout from droughts is real and far-reaching. Droughts don’t just dry up water — they drain livelihoods and destabilize economies.

Larger banks and firms with operations across multiple states are better able to weather climate shocks. This diversification acts as a form of self-insurance, helping them absorb losses in one region while staying afloat in others.

This might explain why stock markets often ignore the risks posed by droughts. Large players are less exposed to local downturns. But smaller, more vulnerable businesses that are reliant on local stability don’t have the same buffer.

As these crises grow more common, markets, regulators and policymakers need to rethink how droughts are measured and mitigated before entire communities are left behind.

Regulators have begun to take some notice. Climate risks are now formally recognized as threats to financial stability by the Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors the global financial system.

Still, recognition is only the first step. Without concrete action, droughts will continue to destabilize communities.

Erkan Yonder receives funding from Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ).

S. Mehmet Ozsoy 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. Droughts don’t just dry up water — they drain livelihoods and weaken local economies – https://theconversation.com/droughts-dont-just-dry-up-water-they-drain-livelihoods-and-weaken-local-economies-261140

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Matt Polacko, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Political Science, University of Toronto

Canada’s recent federal election reversed a trend of declining voter turnout, increasing by more than six percentage points over 2021. Elections Canada reported a turnout of almost 70 per cent, the highest level in 32 years.

The predominant consensus as to why turnout surged this year is the increased stakes at play amid United States President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to Canadian sovereignty and his imposition of heavy tariffs on Canadian goods.

While this is certainly true, this explanation somewhat obscures the fact that the election was also heavily focused on the state of the Canadian economy. Ongoing tensions with the U.S. were front and centre, to be sure, but voters were also concerned about the rapidly rising cost of living as well as housing affordability and job precarity.

These economic anxieties were simply magnified by the U.S.-Canada trade war and its perceived pocketbook threats to jobs and inflation.

Turnout by social status

Can Canada expect voter turnout to increase further in the future?

Probably not, given that both support for democracy and satisfaction with democracy have been on the decline, with roughly half of Canadians not feeling represented by their government. These indicators are particularly acute among Canadians of lower class, income and education levels.

To better understand these trends, I investigated turnout by social status since the 1960s in new research published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

I found that people at lower socio-economic levels are significantly less likely to vote than the rest of the population. This was not always the case.

Since the 1980s, these individuals have become much less likely to vote than their higher socio-economic counterparts. This has opened up a large turnout gap for each demographic group.

The voter turnout gap between the bottom and top third of income earners has increased roughly 12 percentage points since 1980 and between non-degree and degree holders by roughly seven percentage points.

Electoral participation

These large turnout gaps are being driven by the demobilization of lower status individuals, as middle-income earners and the middle class have tended to vote at rates much closer to the upper class and top third of earners.

When we compare these class turnout gaps to other advanced democracies, Canada’s are quite large. This finding shows that like the U.S., social class has a modest effect on which party that voters support in Canada, but a particularly strong influence on electoral participation.

What could be driving the class turnout gap and demobilization of lower socio-economic individuals?

Prevailing evidence points to the resource model of political participation, whereby individuals with jobs, a higher income and education are more likely to have access to a wider range of resources (particularly money, networks, time and skills), which better facilitates their participation in politics.

But people must also be motivated to participate by interest groups and political candidates and parties.

Failure to prioritize the economy

A crucial way political parties attempt to mobilize voters is through their platforms. Using data form Comparative Manifesto Project, an international research program, I show that over time, parties in Canada have devoted increasing attention to socio-cultural issues compared to economic issues, especially since the 1980s.

This reduced focus on economic issues has tended to align with both a decline in overall turnout as well as the decrease in voter turnout of lower status individuals. Could there be a connection?

When I examine economic preferences by socio-economic status in Canada, it is revealing that lower status individuals care a lot about economic issues; they’re significantly more likely to favour economic redistribution than the rest of the population.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that I found lower voters are more likely to cast ballots when political parties devote greater attention to economic issues.

This research suggests that Canada’s party system has failed to adequately prioritize economic issues to keep lower socio-economic people engaged in voting. It’s not surprising these groups check out of politics, especially when there is mounting evidence across the country that legislators favour higher status voters.

Political disengagement of large social groups is a fundamental problem that deeply undermines democracy and representative government.

A growing class gap in electoral participation means that the elevated position in society of the privileged few can magnify political and social inequalities in a never-ending loop. Socio-economic inequality fosters political inequality, which then fosters socio-economic inequality, and so on in a pervasive self-reinforcing cycle.

Politicians should take note

The 2025 federal election was the first in many years where the economy and pocketbook issues were in the spotlight, which very likely played a role in the uptick in turnout to buck recent trends. In the coming months, once the data is available, I will test this assumption through further research.

However, parties should take note if they want to increase the electoral participation of lower status groups, especially with rising inequality and a cost-of-living crisis showing little signs of abating.

Matt Polacko receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).

– ref. Canada’s class divide at the ballot box is growing – https://theconversation.com/canadas-class-divide-at-the-ballot-box-is-growing-263504

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Marta-Marika Urbanik, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta

Public concerns about fentanyl’s proliferation across Canada have focused on overdose deaths and drug-related disorders. However, in addition to these pressing concerns, our recent research in Thunder Bay, Ont., unmasks additional impacts of Canada’s street-based drug economy.

Our work with 81 unhoused and street-involved community members reveals how big-city drug traffickers moving into smaller Canadian communities can wreak havoc. These out-of-town dealers often forcefully take over people’s homes so they can use them as a base to sell and produce drugs.

These groups and their home takeovers are a significant contributor to homelessness. Home takeovers force people out of housing and into homelessness, deepening cycles of poverty, housing instability and trauma.

Drug traffickers move in

In recent years, drug trafficking groups have distributed and manufactured fentanyl within
and beyond Canada. Canada’s major urban centres, like Toronto and Edmonton, are now saturated with various criminal groups competing for a share of profits from the illicit drug trade.

Consequently, some groups have figured out that expanding or exporting their operations into smaller Canadian communities like Thunder Bay can be immensely profitable. Smaller cities often bring less competition, significantly drive up drug prices and provide these newly arrived dealers with greater anonymity from law enforcement.

Drug traffickers’ movements into smaller cities have raised serious public safety concerns, increasing local residents’ exposure to gun and drug-related violence.

Organized drug trafficking networks have significant resources but even so, moving into a new community to set up shop within the criminal underworld is no easy task.

One reason is that smaller communities often have some established players in the informal drug economy who may not be willing to step aside or share their client base with the newly arrived urban dealers.

That means entrepreneurial groups have adapted the long-standing practice of deploying home takeovers within drug economies. This works for their market expansion efforts..

‘Trap houses’

In a home takeover, out-of-town drug traffickers prey on low-income residents in social housing units and those who are otherwise marginalized. They forcefully take over their residence, and convert them into “trap houses.”

In other words, people’s residences become the base from which these groups produce and sell drugs and operate their business. These trap houses shield the drug traffickers from police and other authorities by reducing their need to sell drugs in public spaces.

Residents often have no choice but to accept these groups into their residence. Our research participants reported that out-of-town drug traffickers use a range of violent, coercive and manipulative tactics to gain initial access to their homes, including providing free drugs, forcing drug repayments, violence and extortion.

As one of our participants said, resisting a home takeover is almost impossible because drug traffickers can always find a way into their homes and will retaliate if they can’t get in:

“…they find their way in. There’s always a way in, and there’s always a weak point.”

Drug traffickers often prey on seniors or newly housed individuals, often within days or weeks of them moving in:

“When a homeless person gets pulled off the street, and they get given [a housing unit]… [the drug traffickers] reach out anywhere between six and eight weeks, and then it becomes a trap [house].”

Homelessness and housing insecurity

Residents whose homes have been taken over are left with little to no recourse.

Reporting takeovers to police or housing authorities is rarely an option. Many residents fear eviction, criminal charges or that dealers will retaliate with violence toward them or their family and friends. As one participant put it:

“If you call the cops, you’re probably dead.”

Given these fears, they see abandoning their home as the only way to escape this dire situation.

By not reporting to their housing authority or police, their homelessness and need for new housing remain undocumented. Critically, many former residents are often precluded from joining other housing support waiting lists.

Even after moving and somehow managing to get a new residence, several of our participants became homeless once again after their new place was also taken over.

Risk for homelessness

Home takeovers should be treated as a serious risk factor for homelessness.

Social housing providers can help by creating pathways for residents to report these takeovers safely, protecting them from legal consequences, and by moving people quickly into a new residence if needed, without penalizing them.

Police also play a critical role. They must treat residents experiencing home takeovers as victims, not as suspects, and build trust with the victimized individuals assuring them that they can be protected from retaliation if they speak up.

Addressing home takeovers is not only about limiting drug trafficking — it is also about protecting people’s homes, reducing homelessness and strengthening community safety.

Marta-Marika Urbanik receives funding from Killam Trusts and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Carolyn Greene receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Katharina Maier receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Matthew Valasik 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. Drug dealers are plundering people’s homes into ‘trap houses,’ driving up homelessness and violence in Thunder Bay – https://theconversation.com/drug-dealers-are-plundering-peoples-homes-into-trap-houses-driving-up-homelessness-and-violence-in-thunder-bay-260061

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Mark Daley, Professor & Chief AI Officer, Western University

Grok is a generative artificial intelligence (genAI) chatbot by xAI that, according to Elon Musk, is “the smartest AI in the world.” Grok’s latest upgrade is Ani, a porn-enabled anime girlfriend, recently joined by a boyfriend informed by Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.

This summer, both xAI and OpenAI launched updated versions of their chatbots. Each touted improved performance, but more notably, new personalities. xAI introduced Ani; OpenAI rolled out a colder-by-default GPT-5 with four personas to replace its unfailingly sycophantic GPT-4o model.

Similar to claims made by Google DeepMind and Anthropic, both companies insist they’re building AI to “benefit all humanity” and “advance human comprehension.” Anthropic claims, at least rhetorically, to be doing so responsibly. But their design choices suggest otherwise.

Instead of equipping every person with an AI assistant — a research collaborator with PhD-level intelligence — some of today’s leaders have released anthropomorphized AI systems that operate first as friends, lovers and therapists.

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More people are considering AI lovers, and we shouldn’t judge

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As researchers and experts in AI policy and impact, we argue that what’s being sold as scientific infrastructure increasingly resembles science fiction gone awry. These chatbots are engineered not as tools for discovery, but as companions designed to foster para-social, non-reciprocal bonds.

Human/non-human

The core problem is anthropomorphism: the projection of human traits onto non-human entities. As cognitive scientist Pascal Boyer explains, our minds are tuned to interpret even minimal cues in social terms. What once aided our ancestors’ survival now fuels AI companies by capturing the minds of their users.

When machines speak, gesture or simulate emotion, they trigger those same evolved instincts such that, instead of recognizing it as a machine, users perceive it like a human.

Nonetheless, AI companies have pushed on, building systems that exploit these biases. The justification is that this makes interaction feel seamless and intuitive. However, the consequences that result can render anthropomorphic design deceptive and dishonest.

Consequences of anthropomorphic design

In its mildest form, anthropomorphic design prompts users to respond as if there were another human on the other side of the exchange, and can be as simple as saying “thank you.”

The stakes grow higher when anthropomorphism leads users to believe the system is conscious: that it feels pain, reciprocates affection or understands their problems. Although new research reveals that it’s possible the criteria for consciousness may be met in the future, false attributions of consciousness and emotion have led to some extreme outcomes, such as leading users to marry their AI companions.

However, anthropomorphic design does not always inspire love. For others it has led to self-harm or harming others after forming unhealthy attachments.

Some users even behave as though AI could be humiliated or manipulated, lashing out abusively as if it were a human target. Recognizing this, Anthropic, the first company to hire an AI welfare expert, has given its Claude models the unusual capacity to end such conversations.

Across this spectrum, anthropomorphic design pulls users away from leveraging AI’s true capabilities, forcing us to confront the urgent question of whether anthropomorphism constitutes a design flaw — or more critically, a crisis.

De-anthropomorphizing AI

The obvious solution seems to be stripping AI systems of their humanity. American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett argued that this may be humanity’s only hope. But such a solution is far from simple because the anthropomorphization of these systems has already led users to form deep emotional attachments.

When OpenAI replaced GPT-4o with GPT-5 as the default in ChatGPT, some users expressed genuine distress and genuinely mourned the loss of 4o. However, what they mourned was the loss of its prior speech patterns and the way it used language.

This is what makes anthropomorphism such a problematic design model. As a result of the impressive language abilities of these systems, users attribute mentality to them — and their engineered personas exploit this further.

Instead of seeing the machine for what it is — impressively competent but not human — users read into its speech patterns. While AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton warns that these systems may be dangerously competent, something much more insidious seems to result from the fact these systems are anthropomorphized.

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A neuroscientist explains why it’s impossible for AI to ‘understand’ language

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Flaw in the design

AI companies are increasingly catering to people’s AI companion desires, whether sexbot or therapist.

Anthropomorphism is what makes these systems dangerous today because humans have intentionally built them to mimic us and exploit our instincts. If AI consciousness proves impossible, these design choices will be the cause of human suffering.

But in a hypothetical world in which AI does attain consciousness, our choice to force it into a human-shaped mind — for our own convenience and entertainment, replicated across the world’s data centres — may invent an entirely new kind, and scale, of suffering.

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Increasingly sophisticated AI systems can perform empathy, but their use in mental health care raises ethical questions

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The real danger of anthropomorphic AI isn’t some near or distant future where machines take over. The danger is here, now, and hiding in the illusion that these systems are like us.

This is not the model that will “benefit all humanity” (as OpenAI promises) or “help us understand the universe” (as xAI’s Elon Musk claims). For the sake of social and scientific good, we must resist anthropomorphic design and begin the work of de-anthropomorphizing AI.

Mark Daley receives funding from NSERC, SSHRC and Schmidt Initiative for Long Covid.

Carson Johnston is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. The rise of humanlike chatbots detracts from developing AI for the human good – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-humanlike-chatbots-detracts-from-developing-ai-for-the-human-good-261787

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Neil McArthur, Director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba

The United Kingdom recently launched a broad system of age verification that requires any platforms that host pornography or other “harmful” content to ensure their users are 18 or older.

Around the world, large swathes of the open web are being replaced by walled gardens. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Texas’s age restriction law. Twenty-one other states have similar laws in place, and more have been proposed.

Australia restricts young people’s access not just to specific websites, but to all social media, and it will soon extend this to search engines.

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Read more:
Australia is banning social media for teens. Should Canada do the same?

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In Canada, Bill S-209, which would require age verification for adult websites, could soon become law. It is at the reporting stage in Parliament, the final stage before it comes to a vote.

The spread of these age-gating laws is a disaster for free speech, privacy and the future of the internet itself. It is not too late to take a stand against them.

Think about the children

The basic purpose of these laws is admirable enough. We all want to protect children from harm. But we need to ask two questions. First, do they actually accomplish their goal? And second, do the benefits of these laws outweigh the costs?

We should be clear on one thing at the outset. Proponents of the laws sometimes talk about protecting children from exploitation. But age-gating does nothing to address the problem of child pornography. It restricts access based on the age of the user, not the age of the person depicted. And almost all child-abuse material is already on the dark web or on other sites that do not adhere to any laws.

When it comes to restricting young people’s access, the reality is that age gates are easily bypassed by a determined user. A recent Australian survey showed that almost a quarter of teens routinely get around age barriers.

The simplest circumvention method is through the use of a virtual private network to hide a user’s location. These are easy to set up and many are free. However, young people can also, depending on the verification technology being used, upload an adult’s credentials or use simple tricks to fool facial recognition systems.

A massive cost

Even if some young people are circumventing the blocks, many are not, and so age verification will reduce the exposure some young people have to banned material. But this modest victory comes at a massive cost.

First of all, these laws place the burden on adults who are trying to access material they have a right to see. We are, in the name of protecting children, sleepwalking into a dystopian vision of the internet where every user must flash their papers before being allowed to go online.

To verify their age, people have to upload photos of their government-issued identification without knowing if their data is secure. Often, it won’t be.

One major age-verification service left users’ data, including their legal identification, exposed for more than a year.

Second, these laws define harmful material so vaguely that it is impossible for content producers to predict when they will fall afoul of them. This affects not just the producers of explicit content, but the internet as a whole. Smaller websites in particular cannot afford to hire lawyers to vet all of their content, or to fight for their rights if they’re charged.

It’s easier just to block access to everyone in an age-gated jurisdiction, which many sites have already started doing, or to shut down entirely.

Third, the laws make the state the arbiter of what young people can read and see. But what is appropriate to a particular user is highly individual. It depends on their age and their emotional maturity. And inevitably, censorship gives governments the power to impose their own moral agendas.

Not surprisingly, some American states have used their age-gate laws to censor material related to abortion, sexual health and LGBTQ identity.

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Is childproofing the internet constitutional? A tech law expert draws out the issues

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Russell Vought, at the time the vice president of a conservative lobbying organization and currently the head of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, was caught last year on a hidden camera admitting that age-verification laws were meant as a move towards banning pornography altogether.

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court found an early age-restriction law, the Communications Decency Act, unconstitutional. Explaining the court’s unanimous decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the law “threaten[ed] to torch a large segment of the internet community” and declared that “the interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.”

Though a more conservative Supreme Court has set aside this precedent, Stevens’ prescient words remain as true today as ever.

Parental involvement

There is a better alternative to age-gating, one that places the power where it belongs: in the hands of parents. Many devices, including those made by Apple and Google, already offer parental controls. While not perfect, they are both less intrusive and harder to circumvent than online age verification systems.

These measures place data security in the hands of a small number of trusted companies and remove the need for constant age verification when accessing different websites. These controls could be mandatory for all mobile devices and computer operating systems.

This is a crucial moment for the internet. The walls are coming up fast, and if we do not stop them now, they will be hard to tear down.

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

– ref. New age-gating laws aimed at making the internet safer actually threaten free speech – https://theconversation.com/new-age-gating-laws-aimed-at-making-the-internet-safer-actually-threaten-free-speech-263401

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Glen Hvenegaard, Professor, Environmental Science, University of Alberta

On a cold winter night in a rural area, I looked through a scope to see the rings of Saturn for the first time. Connecting grade school science book descriptions with a real life view amazed me.

Even without a telescope or binoculars, many of us have had similar memorable moments — like watching the Milky Way galaxy, identifying constellations and safely observing a solar eclipse.

Dark skies are places mostly free of light pollution and where one can see celestial features easily. Dark skies can be awe-inspiring, but they are also vitally important for both animal health, human health and local economies.

Even though our current night skies have become polluted with excessive light, there are ways to promote understanding, reduce light pollution and support local communities. Tourism researchers in Australia have defined dark sky tourism (DST) as “tourism based on unpolluted night skies involving observation and appreciation of naturally occurring celestial phenomena.”

My colleague Clark Banack and I have researched factors contributing to the success of the Jasper Dark Sky festival in Alberta. This research was informed by our combined expertise studying protected areas and environmental education (my areas) and sustainable rural communities (Banack’s area).

Wildlife, humans need night and darkness

Dark skies are important because wildlife and humans have evolved to rely on predictable patterns of dark and light. For example, some amphibians plan their breeding rituals around darkness patterns. Hatchling sea turtles use the bright sea horizon to find the sea. Many mammals and birds hunt at night, using natural light from the moon and stars.

In response, some species evade their predators using the cover of darkness. Many birds migrate at night with the help of cues from the dark skies. For humans, past and present travellers have planned navigation using dark skies.

The amazing night sky has inspired many cultures in the realms of science, religion, philosophy, art and literature. Regular schedules of dark and light help us live and sleep well.

Negative effects of light pollution

Unfortunately, light pollution can cause negative effects. For example, artificial light confuses migratory species in finding their way, changes the timing of reproduction and reduces concealment for prey animals. Nocturnal predators are less effective in catching prey. Artificial lights attract insects in unnaturally high densities.

Furthermore, humans are affected by light pollution, with impacts on our natural circadian rhythms and sleep patterns, which may lead to other more serious health problems. Up to 80 per cent of the world’s population can’t see key night sky features.

Aside from the environmental effects, the financial costs are high: in the United States alone, researchers estimate the financial cost of wasted energy from light pollution to be about US$7 billion per year.

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Read more:
It’s not too late to save the night sky, but governments need to get serious about protecting it

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Dark sky tourism

Despite the spread and impacts of light pollution, many people actively seek out dark skies. Dark sky tourism (DST) appears to be growing, based on the number of visits to astronomical observatories, development of dark sky preserves, watching auroras, dark sky festivals, solar eclipses, star parties and sky-watching domes.

There are no accurate estimates of the size of DST, but many tourism sites indicate significant visitation and economic impact. For example, research published in 2019 found that dark sky enthusiasts spend more than US$500 million each year visiting the Colorado Plateau, creating 10,000 jobs.

Yellowknife has been called the aurora capital of North America with an average of 240 potential nights per year and suitable conditions to view the northern lights. In 2018, about 34,000 visitors spent CA$57 million in the Northwest Territories capital.

Local economic benefits

The large demand for DST and the local economic benefits are strong motivations for maintaining dark skies. Dark sky tourists want reliable opportunities to view the night sky and seek out guided educational programs to support those activities. Communities offering such tourism tend to support these same goals in order to maintain economic impacts.

Some organizations promote efforts to reduce light pollution through advocacy, education, retrofits and the designation of certified dark sky sites.

These night sky advocate groups want to minimize light pollution by limiting brightness on lights, using sensors and timers, changing light hues, minimizing the number of lights and directing lights downwards.

Canadian dark sky sites

To certify such efforts, Dark Sky International recognizes more than 200 dark sky places in 22 countries.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada recognizes 27 dark sky sites across the country, including dark sky preserves, nocturnal preserves and urban star parks, each with unique approaches to reducing lighting.

Canadian sites include Point Pelee National Park, in Ontario (most southerly), Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland (most easterly) and Cattle Point urban star park in British Columbia (most westerly), as well as Wood Buffalo National Park, which spans the Alberta and Northwest Territories border. These and other dark sky sites are natural attractions for dark sky tourists.

Jasper dark sky preserve

Following designation of the Jasper dark sky preserve (11,228 square kilometres) in 2011, the annual Jasper Dark Sky Festival has sought to promote dark skies among the public and policy-makers and to reduce artificial light.

The festival is held during the October tourist season. Despite the damage in Jasper from wildfires in 2024, the festival will celebrate its 15-year anniversary this fall.

After a small-scale start (with aspects like night-time walks and telescope viewing), the festival expanded its offerings with some ticketed events and a range of options, including science education, entertainment and cultural events. People can choose from both free and paid activities.

As our research examined, the success of the festival has depended on the dark sky designation, balance between growth and sustainability, balance between education and entertainment, strong relationships with stakeholders, local champions, community support and a strong reputation. The economic impacts on Jasper have been positive during a season that normally under-utilizes local restaurants and hotels.

Dark sky tourism can help protect dark skies by generating support among educated and satisfied tourists and among communities receiving economic impacts. Such impacts may persuade decision-makers to enact policies to protect dark skies, such as dark sky preserves that have worked well in places like Jasper.

During your next night-time outing, be sure to look upward to appreciate our amazing dark skies, and consider the benefits for tourists and communities alike.

Glen Hvenegaard received support for this project from the University of Alberta’s Augustana Faculty Research Committee through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. Dark sky tourism offers time with darkness and celestial wonders – https://theconversation.com/dark-sky-tourism-offers-time-with-darkness-and-celestial-wonders-259633

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ramona Alaggia, Professor, Social Work, University of Toronto

The long-awaited Oasis reunion tour is a rousing success. Since launching in Wales in July, the band has been selling out shows across four continents, including two stops in Toronto.

Reviews have been glowing, and fans are thrilled not just with the music but also with the sight of Noel and Liam Gallagher showing each other genuine brotherly affection on stage — something that once seemed impossible.

This is a far cry from 2009, when Oasis broke up after an epic fallout. Noel, the elder brother, announced he could no longer put up with Liam’s drug-fuelled antics and frequent no-shows. The brothers then spent nearly 15 years estranged.

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Read more:
Oasis reunion: How to stop your sibling feud from becoming a lifelong estrangement

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Painful childhood

Their conflict isn’t surprising when you consider their childhood. Research shows that family violence and abuse can have lasting effects on sibling relationships.

In the Gallaghers’ case, Noel has spoken of being abused by their father, and both brothers witnessed domestic violence against their mother. Growing up with these adversities can make close family bonds harder to sustain — and may help explain the long rift between them.

So what’s made the difference? How have they managed to heal wounds and reunite? One answer may be resilience.

In my research, I’ve found that resilience is what allows some people, with the right support and circumstances, to rise above adversity and come out stronger. Back in 2017, I explored how this might apply to the Gallagher brothers, who grew up in a difficult and sometimes violent home.

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Read more:
The Oasis brothers: Father’s abuse explains feud, resilience could end it

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Parental influence

Resilience is a complex idea, and one way to understand it is through social learning theory. The basic idea is that we learn from the examples around us.

For the Gallaghers, growing up in a violent and chaotic home meant they were exposed to unhealthy patterns of behaviour and relationships. But at the same time, they also had a powerful positive influence in their lives through their mother, Peggy.

By ultimately leaving her abusive husband, despite the difficulties that followed, she modelled to her children that there are alternatives to destructive relationships.

This balance of negative and positive role models matters. Harmful examples can damage development, but protective role models can demonstrate healthier ways of coping, relating and moving forward.

In 2024, when the brothers announced their reunion tour, I revisited their story offering ideas on how they might get along to make the tour a success and how they might finally put their long-running feud behind them.

I suggested that counselling focused on conflict resolution could help. These approaches often include learning skills like open communication, active listening, exploring options together, collaborating, compromising, and aiming for a win-win solution.

Apologizing and avoiding casting blame are also important parts of the process. While we may never know if the Gallagher brothers were provided any of these supports, or used them to resolve their conflicts, it’s clear they’ve achieved some significant measure of reconciliation.

Noel has even recently talked about how much he enjoys being around his brother and how proud he is of him.

Not looking back in anger

The combined raw talent of the Gallagher brothers, along with the drive and persistence to form a band, captured the hearts of a generation of music-lovers and is continuing to attract new and younger fans around the world.

After years apart, their return to the stage shows that reconciliation is possible and that even the most fractured relationships can find a way forward.

Watching the Gallaghers side by side on stage, frequently laughing and embracing, it seems clear that resilience, combined with a genuine desire to reconcile, has helped bring them back together.

Their reunion is more than a comeback tour; it’s a story of overcoming adversity that speaks to a universal hope. They’re showing that even long-standing family conflicts can be healed.

Ramona Alaggia’s studies have been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. The triumph of the Oasis reunion: Resilience rules the day as the Gallaghers end their feud – https://theconversation.com/the-triumph-of-the-oasis-reunion-resilience-rules-the-day-as-the-gallaghers-end-their-feud-263789

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jade Radke, PhD Student, Behavioral Sustainability Lab, University of British Columbia

Have you ever wondered if a bizarre dream was caused by something you ate the night before? If so, you’re not alone. We all have strange or unsettling dreams now and then, and when we do, we want to know what might cause them.

For centuries, people have believed that what and when they eat can influence their dreams. A prominent example of this can be found in the early 20th-century comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, in which characters often blamed their strange dreams on having eaten a cheese dish — like Welsh rarebit — the night before.

But even though folklore has long suggested that food and dreams are connected, scientific research into this notion has been limited.

A few exploratory surveys have provided preliminary, suggestive results. One study from 2007 found that people who ate more organic food reported having more vivid and bizarre dreams than those who consumed more fast food.

Similarly, a 2022 survey linked fruit consumption to more frequent dream recall, high fruit and fish intake to more lucid dreams, and sugary food consumption to more nightmares. And in our 2015 study, we found that nearly 18 per cent of participants endorsed the idea that what they ate influenced their dreams, with dairy being the most frequently cited culprit.

As a follow-up to that study, we recently conducted an online survey with 1,082 Canadian psychology students that asked them about their food habits, general health, sleep quality and dreams. We tested several hypotheses about how diet and food sensitivities might influence dreaming — including possible influences on the severity of nightmares.

What we found

Just over 40 per cent of participants told us that certain foods either worsened or improved their sleep quality. Around five per cent believed food affected their dreams, with desserts, sweets and dairy being the most frequently cited culprits.

People with food allergies or gluten intolerance were more likely to perceive that food influenced their dreams, while participants with lactose intolerance were more likely to report that food worsened their sleep.

We also found that participants with a food allergy or lactose intolerance reported more frequent and severe nightmares. Interestingly, the frequency of gastrointestinal symptoms, such as abdominal pain and bloating, was associated with both lactose intolerance and nightmares, thereby possibly explaining the relationship between the two.

These findings support a growing body of evidence suggesting a connection between the gut microbiome and the central nervous system (the gut-brain axis). What is novel about our findings is that they suggest gut discomfort can manifest psychologically during sleep as nightmares.

This connects to developing research examining the relationship of diet to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), one symptom of which is frequent nightmares. While research in this area has focused on the relationship of overall dietary patterns to PTSD, our findings suggest that specific foods, such as dairy and sweets, could exacerbate nightmares in particular.

This suggests that treatments for PTSD might usefully include an assessment of dietary habits, allergies and intolerances, and making dietary changes.

While our research provides insight into how food might affect dreaming, the results are correlational. Experiments are needed to test the extent to which certain foods can impact dreams.

The next steps could involve controlled experiments that test what happens when people consume certain trigger foods, such as cheese that contains lactose versus cheese that does not contain lactose, especially among those with lactose intolerance or who have frequent nightmares. Similar experiments could be done for participants with various types of food allergies.

Some practical takeaways

Beyond dreaming, our findings, combined with what we know from previous research, suggest a few things you could do to help minimize food-related sleep disruptions:

1. Avoid eating late at night, especially heavy, sugary or spicy foods. We found that evening eating was associated with more negative dream content and poorer sleep quality.

2. If you’re lactose intolerant, try avoiding dairy before bed or switching to lactose-free options. For example, hard, aged cheeses tend to be lower in lactose than soft, fresh cheeses.

3. If you have food allergies, consider minimizing your intake of culprit foods before bed. Fears and anxieties associated with potential allergic reactions could creep into your dreams.

4. Keep track of any foods that seem to influence your sleep or dreams, and experiment with removing them for intermittent periods of time to see if they influence your sleep or dream quality.

In general, eating a nutrient-dense, balanced diet with fibre, fruits, vegetables and lean proteins could help support sleep or dream quality. Overall, the main takeaway is to listen to your body. If certain foods or dietary habits consistently lead to poor sleep or strange dreams, it’s worth taking these symptoms seriously.

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. Is your diet influencing your dreams? Here’s what our research says about food and nightmares – https://theconversation.com/is-your-diet-influencing-your-dreams-heres-what-our-research-says-about-food-and-nightmares-260796

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daryl Janzen, Observatory Manager and Instructor, Astronomy, University of Saskatchewan

Few ideas in modern science have reshaped our understanding of reality more profoundly than space-time — the interwoven fabric of space and time at the heart of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Space-time is frequently described as the “fabric of reality.” In some accounts, this fabric is referred to as a fixed, four-dimensional “block universe” — a complete map of all events, past, present and future.

In others, it’s a dynamic field that bends and curves in response to gravity. But what does it really mean to say that space-time exists? What kind of thing is it — is space-time structure, substance or metaphor?

The heart of modern physics

These questions aren’t just philosophical. They sit at the heart of how we interpret modern physics and quietly shape everything from how we understand general relativity to how we imagine time travel, multiverses and our origins.

These questions inform the emergence of space-time itself and radical new proposals that treat it as the universe’s memory. And yet the language we use to describe space-time is often vague, metaphorical and deeply inconsistent.

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Read more:
Why do metaphors of space help us understand time?

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Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once warned that philosophical problems arise when “language goes on holiday.” Physics, it turns out, may be a prime example.

Over the last century, familiar words such as “time,” “exist” and “timeless” have been repurposed in technical contexts without examining what baggage they carry from everyday speech.

This has led to widespread confusion about what these terms actually mean.

The problem with language

In the philosophy of physics, particularly in a view known as eternalism, the word “timeless” is used literally. Eternalism is the idea that time doesn’t flow or pass — that all events across all time are equally real within a four-dimensional structure known as the “block universe.”

According to this view, the entire history of the universe is already laid out, timelessly, in the structure of space-time. In this context, “timeless” means that the universe itself does not endure or unfold in any real sense. There is no becoming. There is no change. There is only a block, and all of eternity exists atemporally within it.

But this leads to a deeper problem. If everything that ever happens throughout eternity is equally real, and all events are already there, what does it actually mean to say that space-time exists?

An elephant in the room

There’s a structural difference between existence and occurrence. One is a mode of being, the other, of happening.

Imagine there’s an elephant standing beside you. You’d likely say: “This elephant exists.” You might describe it as a three-dimensional object, but importantly, it is a “three-dimensional object that exists.”

In contrast, imagine a purely three-dimensional elephant that flashes into the room for an instant: a cross-sectional moment in the life of an existing elephant, appearing and disappearing like a ghost. That elephant doesn’t really exist in the ordinary sense. It happens. It occurs.

An existing elephant endures over time, and space-time catalogues every moment of its existence as a four-dimensional world line — an object’s path through space and time throughout its existence. The imaginary “occurring elephant” is just one spacelike slice of that tube; one three-dimensional moment.

Now apply this distinction to space-time itself. What does it mean for four-dimensional space-time to exist in the sense that the elephant exists? Does space-time endure in the same sense? Does space-time have its own set of “now” moments? Or is space-time — the manifold of all the events that happen throughout eternity — merely something that occurs? Is space-time simply a descriptive framework for relating those events?

Eternalism muddies this distinction. It treats all of eternity — that is, all of space-time — as an existing structure, and takes the passage of time to be an illusion. But that illusion is impossible if all of space-time occurs in a flash.

To recover the illusion that time passes within this framework, four-dimensional space-time must exist in a manner more like the three-dimensional existing elephant — whose existence is described by four-dimensional space-time.

Every event

Let’s take this thought one step further.

If we imagine that every event throughout the universe’s history does “exist” within the block universe, then we might ask: when does the block itself exist? If it doesn’t unfold or change, does it exist timelessly? If so, then we’re layering another dimension of time onto something that was supposed to be timeless in the literal sense.

To make sense of this, we could construct a five-dimensional framework, using three spatial dimensions and two time dimensions. The second time axis would let us say that four-dimensional space-time exists in exactly the same way we commonly think of an elephant in the room as existing within the three dimensions of space that surround us, the events of which we catalogue as four-dimensional space-time.

At this point, we’re stepping outside established physics that describes space-time through four dimensions only. But it reveals a deep problem: we have no coherent way to talk about what it means for space-time to exist without accidentally smuggling time back in through an added dimension that isn’t part of the physics.

It’s like trying to describe a song that exists all at once, without being performed, heard or unfolding.

From physics to fiction

This confusion shapes how we imagine time in fiction and pop science.

In the 1984 James Cameron film, The Terminator, all events are treated as fixed. Time travel is possible, but the timeline cannot be changed. Everything already exists in a fixed, timeless state.

In the fourth film in the Avengers franchise, Avengers: Endgame (2019), time travel allows characters to alter past events and reshape the timeline, suggesting a block universe that both exists and changes.

That change can only occur if the four-dimensional timeline exists in the same way our three-dimensional world exists.

But regardless of whether such change is possible, both scenarios assume that the past and future are there and ready to be travelled to. However, neither grapples with what kind of existence that implies, or how space-time differs from a map of events.

Understanding reality

When physicists say that space-time “exists,” they are often working within a framework that has quietly blurred the line between existence and occurrence. The result is a metaphysical model that, at best, lacks clarity, and at worst obscures the very nature of reality.

None of this endangers the mathematical theory of relativity or the empirical science that confirms it. Einstein’s equations still work. But how we interpret those equations matters, especially when it shapes how we talk about reality and how we approach the deeper problems in physics.

These understandings include attempts to reconcile general relativity with quantum theory — a challenge explored both in philosophy and popular science discussions.

Defining space-time is more than a technical debate — it’s about what kind of world we think we’re living in.

Daryl Janzen 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. What, exactly, is space-time? – https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-space-time-259630